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The Secular Stagnation as an Immanent Feature of Post-2008 Neoliberalism

Image courtesy of Koren Shadmi (What’s Behind a Rise in Ethnic Nationalism? Maybe the Economy - The New York Times, Oct 14, 2016)
News Neoliberalism as a New Form of Corporatism Recommended Links GDP as a false measure of a country economic output Ethno-linguistic and "Cultural" Nationalism as antidote to Neoliberalism Chronic Unemployment Redistribution of wealth up as the essence of neoliberalism
Forthcoming slow motion collapse of global neoliberal empire led by the USA Anti-globalization movement Why Peak Oil Threatens the International Monetary System Brexit as the start of the reversal of neoliberal globalization Immigration, wage depression and free movement of workers Economics of Peak Energy Upward Redistribution of Wealth
Identity politics as diversion of attention from social inequality Neoliberalism war on labor The Great Transformation Eroding Western living standards Immigration, wage depression and free movement of workers Greece debt enslavement Ukraine debt enslavement
Neoliberal rationality Neoliberal "New Class" as variant of Soviet Nomenklatura The fiasco of suburbia Quite coup Casino Capitalism Lawrence Summers Oil glut fallacy
Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks: The efficient markets hypothesis Austerity Financial Sector Induced Systemic Instability of Economy Energy Geopolitics Corruption of Regulators MSM propagated myth about Saudis defending market share Great condensate con
Russia oil production Helicopter Ben: Arsonist Turned into Firefighter Financial Quotes Casino Capitalism Dictionary Financial Humor Humor Etc

Introduction

Secular stagnation is a term proposed by Keynesian economist Alvin Hansen back in the 1930s to explain the USA dismal economic performance during this period. The period in which sluggish growth and output, and employment levels well below potential, coincide with a problematically low (even negative) real interest rates even in the face of the extraordinarily easy monetary policy. Later a similar phenomenon occurred in Japan. that's why it is often called called Japanification of the economy.  Secular stagnation returned to the USA in full force after the financial crisis of 2008 (so called The Long Recession), so this is the second time the USA society experience the same socio-economic phenomenon. 

Formally it can be defined as any stagnation that lasts substantially longer then the business cycle (and dominates the business cycle induced variations of economic activities), the suppression of economic performance for a long (aka secular) period. It also can be viewed as the crisis of demand, when demand became systemically weak (which under neoliberalism is ensured by redistribution of wealth up).

The global stagnation we are experiencing is the logical result of the dominance of neoliberalism and a sign of its crisis an a ideology. It is somewhat similar to the crisis of Bolshevik's ideology in the USSR in 60th when everybody realized that the existing society cannot fulfill the key promise of higher living standards. And that over centralization of economic life naturally leads to stagnation.  The analogy does not ends here, but this point is the most important.

Neoliberalism replaced over-centralization (with iron fist one party rule) with over-financialization (with iron fist rule of financial oligarchy), with generally the same result as for the economy ( In other words neoliberalism like bolshevism is equal to economic stagnation; extremes meet).  The end of cheap oil did not help iether. In a sense neoliberalism might be viewed as the elite reaction to the end of cheap oil, when it became clear that there are not enough cookies for everyone.

This growth in the financial sector's profits has not been an accident; it is the result of  engineered shift in the elite thinking, which changed government policies. The central question of politics is, in my view, "Who has a right to live and who does not".  In the answer to this question, neoliberal subscribes to Social Darwinism: ordinary citizens should be given much less rather than more social protection. Such  policies would have been impossible in 50th and 60th (A Short History of Neo-liberalism)

In 1945 or 1950, if you had seriously proposed any of the ideas and policies in today's standard neo-liberal toolkit, you would have been laughed off the stage at or sent off to the insane asylum. At least in the Western countries, at that time, everyone was a Keynesian, a social democrat or a social-Christian democrat or some shade of Marxist.

The idea that the market should be allowed to make major social and political decisions; the idea that the State should voluntarily reduce its role in the economy, or that corporations should be given total freedom, that trade unions should be curbed and citizens given much less rather than more social protection--such ideas were utterly foreign to the spirit of the time. Even if someone actually agreed with these ideas, he or she would have hesitated to take such a position in public and would have had a hard time finding an audience.

And this change in government polices was achieved in classic Bolsheviks coup d'état way, when yoiu first create the Party of "professional neoliberal revolutionaries". Who then push for this change and "occupy" strategic places like economics departments at the universities, privately funded think tanks, MSM, and then subvert one or both major parties.  The crisis of "New Deal Capitalism" helped, but without network of think tanks and rich donors, the triumph of neoliberalism in the USA would have been impossible:

...one explanation for this triumph of neo-liberalism and the economic, political, social and ecological disasters that go with it is that neo-liberals have bought and paid for their own vicious and regressive "Great Transformation". They have understood, as progressives have not, that ideas have consequences. Starting from a tiny embryo at the University of Chicago with the philosopher-economist Friedrich von Hayek and his students like Milton Friedman at its nucleus, the neo-liberals and their funders have created a huge international network of foundations, institutes, research centers, publications, scholars, writers and public relations hacks to develop, package and push their ideas and doctrine relentlessly.

Most economists are acutely aware of the increasing role in economic life of financial markets, institutions and operations and the pursuit of prifits via excotic instruments such as derivatives (all this constituted  financialization). This dominant feature of neoliberalism has huge the re-distributional implications, huge effects on the US economy, international dimensions and monetary system, depth and longevity of financial crises and unapt policy responses to them.

They have built this highly efficient ideological cadre because they understand what the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci was talking about when he developed the concept of cultural hegemony. If you can occupy peoples' heads, their hearts and their hands will follow.

I do not have time to give you details here, but believe me, the ideological and promotional work of the right has been absolutely brilliant. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, but the result has been worth every penny to them because they have made neo-liberalism seem as if it were the natural and normal condition of humankind. No matter how many disasters of all kinds the neo-liberal system has visibly created, no matter what financial crises it may engender, no matter how many losers and outcasts it may create, it is still made to seem inevitable, like an act of God, the only possible economic and social order available to us.  

Neoliberalism naturally leads to secular stagnation due to redistribution of wealth up. which undermines purchasing power of the 99%, or more correctly 99.9 of the population. In the USA this topic became hotly debated theme in establishment circles after Summers speech in 2013.  Unfortunately it was suppressed in Presidential campaign of 2016. Please note that Sanders speaks about Wall Street shenanigans, but not about ideology of neoliberalism.  No candidates tried to address this problem of "self-colonization" of the USA, which is probably crucial to "making America great again" instead of continued slide into what is called "banana republic" coined by American writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter 1862–1910). Here is how Wikipedia described the term:

Banana republic or banana state is a pejorative political science term for politically unstable countries in Latin America whose economies are largely dependent on exporting a limited-resource product, e.g. bananas. It typically has stratified social classes, including a large, impoverished working class and a ruling plutocracy of business, political, and military elites.[1] This politico-economic oligarchy controls the primary-sector productions to exploit the country's economy.[2]

... ... ...

In economics, a banana republic is a country operated as a commercial enterprise for private profit, effected by a collusion between the State and favoured monopolies, in which the profit derived from the private exploitation of public lands is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are a public responsibility.

This topic is of great importance to the US elite because the USA is the citadel of  neoliberalism. It also suggest that the natural way neoliberal economic system based on increasing of the level of inequality (redistribution of wealth up) should behave: after the initial economic boom (like in case of steroids use) caused by  financialization of economy (as well as dissolution of the USSR), helped by off-shoring of manufacturing, the destructive effects of this temporary boost come into foreground. Redistribution of wealth up increases inequality which after a certain delay starts to undercuts domestic demand. It also tilts the demand more toward conspicuous consumption (note the boom of luxury cars sales in the USA).  

But after  inequality reaches certain critical threshold  the economy faces extended period of low growth reflecting persistently weak private demand (purchasing power of lower 90% of population).  People who mostly have low level service economy jobs (aka MC-jobs) can't buy that much.  Earlier giants of American capitalism like Ford understood that, but Wall Street sharks do not and does not want.  They operate under principle "Après nous le déluge" ("After us, the deluge").

An economic cycle enters recession when total spending falls below expected by producers and they realize that production level is too high relative to demand. What we have under neoliberalism is Marx's crisis of overproduction on a new level. At this level it is intrinsically connected with the parasitic nature of complete financialization of the economy. The focus on monetary policy and the failure to enact fiscal policy options is the key structural defect of neoliberalism ideology and can't be changed unless neoliberal ideology is abandoned. Which probably will not happen unless another huge crisis hits the USA. That might not happen soon.  Bolshevism lasted more then 70 years. If we assume that the "age of neoliberalism" started at 1973 with Pinochet coup d'état in Chile, neoliberalism as a social system is just 43 years old (as of 2016). It still has some "time to live"(TTL) in zombies state due to the principle first formulated by Margaret Thatcher as TINA ("There Is No Alternative") -- the main competitor, bolshevism, was discredited by the collapse of the USSR and China leadership adoption of neoliberalism. While Soviet leadership simply abandoned the sinking ship and became Nouveau riche in a neoliberal society that followed, Chinese elite managed to preserved at least outer framework of the Marxist state and the political control of the Communist party (not clear for how long). But there was a neoliberal transformation of Chinese economy, initiated, paradoxically, by the Chinese Communist Party.

Currently, no other ideology, including old "New Deal" ideology can  compete with neoliberal ideology, although things started to change with Sanders campaign in the USA on  the left and Trump campaign on the right. Most of what we see as a negative reaction to neoliberalism in Europe generally falls into the domain of cultural nationalism.    

The 2008 financial crisis, while discrediting neoliberalism as an ideology (in the same way as WWII discredited Bolshevism), was clearly not enough for the abandonment of this ideology. Actually neoliberalism proved to be remarkably resilient after this crisis. Some researchers claim that it entered "zombie state" and became more bloodthirsty and ruthless.

There is also religious overtones of neoliberalism which increase its longevity (similar to Trotskyism, and neoliberalism can be called "Trotskyism for rich"). So, from a small, unpopular sect with virtually no influence, neo-liberalism has become the major world religion with its dogmatic doctrine, its priesthood, its law-giving institutions and perhaps most important of all, its hell for heathen and sinners who dare to contest the revealed truth.  Like in most cults adherents became more fanatical believers after the prophecy did not materialized. The USA elite tried partially alleviate this problem by resorting to military Keynesianism as a supplementary strategy. But while military budget was raised to unprecedented levels, it can't reverse the tendency. Persistent high output gap is now a feature of the US economy, not a transitory state.

But there is another factor in play here: combination of peak (aka "plato" ;-) oil and established correlation of  the speed of economic growth and prices on fossil fuels and first of all on oil. Oil provides more than a third of the energy we use on the planet every day, more than any other energy source (How High Oil Prices Will Permanently Cap Economic Growth - Bloomberg). It is dominant fuel for transport and in this role it is very difficult to replace. 

That means that a substantial increase of price of oil acts as a fundamental limiting factor for economic growth. And "end of cheap oil" simply means that any increase of supply of oil to support growing population on the planet and economic growth now requires higher prices. Which naturally undermine economic growth, unless massive injection of currency are instituted. that probably was the factor that prevented slide of the US economy into the recession in 2009-2012.  Such a Catch-22.

Growth dampening potential of over $100-a-barrel oil is now a well established factor. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true. Drop of oil price to below $50 as happened in late 2014 and first half of 2015 did not increase growth rate of the USA economy. It might simply prevented it from sliding it into another phase of Great Recession. Moreover when  economies activity drops, less oil is needed.  Enter permanent stagnation.

Also there is not much oil left that can be profitably extracted at prices below $80. So the current oil price slump is a temporary phenomenon, whether it was engineered, or is a mixture of factors including temporary overcapacity . Sooner or later oil prices should return to level "above $80", as only at this level of oil price capital expenditures in new production make sense. That des not mean that oil prices can't be suppressed for another year or even two, but as Herbert Stein aptly noted   "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,"

 The alien spaceship landing

Imagine the alien spaceship landed somewhere in the world. There would be denial, disbelief, fear, and great uncertainty for the future. World leaders would struggle to make sense of the events. The landing would change everything.

The secular stagnation (aka "end of permanent growth") is a very similar event.  This also is the event that has potential to change everything, but it is much more prolonged in time and due to this less visible ("boiling frog effect").  Also this is not a single event, but a long sequence of related events that probably might last several decades (as Japan had shown) or even centuries. The current "Great Recession" might be just a prolog to those events. It is clearly incompatible with capitalism as a mode of production, although capitalism as a social system demonstrated over the years tremendous adaptability and it is too early to write it down completely.  Also no clear alternatives exists. 

A very slow recovery and the secular stagnation is characteristic of economies suffering from a balance-sheet recession (aka crisis of overproduction), as forcefully argued by Nomura’s Richard Koo and other economists. The key point is that private investment is down, not because of “policy uncertainty” or “increased regulation”, but because business-sector expectations about future profitability have become dramatically depressed — and rationally so — in a context characterized by heavy indebtedness (of both households and corporations). As businesses see the demand falls they scale down production which creates negative feedback look and depresses demand further. 

The key point is that private investment is down, not because of “policy uncertainty” or “increased regulation”, but because business-sector expectations about future profitability have become dramatically depressed — and rationally so — in a context characterized by heavy indebtedness (of both households and corporations). As businesses see the demand falls they scale down production which creates negative feedback look and depresses demand further.   

Five  hypothesis about the roots of secular stagnation

There are at least five different hypothesis about the roots of secular stagnation:

Summers’s remarks and articles were followed by an explosion of debate concerning “secular stagnation”—a term commonly associated with Alvin Hansen’s work from the 1930s to ’50s, and frequently employed in Monthly Review to explain developments in the advanced economies from the 1970s to the early 2000s.2 Secular stagnation can be defined as the tendency to long-term (or secular) stagnation in the private accumulation process of the capitalist economy, manifested in rising unemployment and excess capacity and a slowdown in overall economic growth. It is often referred to simply as “stagnation.” There are numerous theories of secular stagnation but most mainstream theories hearken back to Hansen, who was Keynes’s leading early follower in the United States, and who derived the idea from various suggestions in Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936).

Responses to Summers have been all over the map, reflecting both the fact that the capitalist economy has been slowing down, and the role in denying it by many of those seeking to legitimate the system. Stanford economist John B. Taylor contributed a stalwart denial of secular stagnation in the Wall Street Journal. In contrast, Paul Krugman, who is closely aligned with Summers, endorsed secular stagnation on several occasions in the New York Times. Other notable economists such as Brad DeLong and Michael Spence soon weighed in with their own views.3

Three prominent economists have new books directly addressing the phenomena of secular stagnation.4 It has now been formally modelled by Brown University economists Gauti Eggertsson and Neil Mehrotra, while Thomas Piketty’s high-profile book bases its theoretical argument and policy recommendations on stagnation tendencies of capitalism. This explosion of interest in the Summers/Krugman version of stagnation has also resulted in a collection of articles and debate, edited by Coen Teulings and Richard Baldwin, entitled Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures.5

Seven years after “The Great Financial Crisis” of 2007–2008, the recovery remains sluggish. It can be argued that the length and depth of the Great Financial Crisis is a rather ordinary cyclical crisis. However, the monetary and fiscal measures to combat it were extraordinary. This has resulted in a widespread sense that there will not be a return to “normal.” Summers/Krugman’s resurrection within the mainstream of Hansen’s concept of secular stagnation is an attempt to explain how extraordinary policy measures following the 2007–2008 crisis merely led to the stabilization of a lethargic, if not comatose, economy.

But what do these economists mean by secular stagnation? If stagnation is a reality, does their conception of it make current policy tools obsolete? And what is the relationship between the Summers/Krugman notion of secular stagnation and the monopoly-finance capital theory?

... ... ...

In “secular stagnation,” the term “secular” is intended to differentiate between the normal business cycle and long-term, chronic stagnation. A long-term slowdown in the economy over decades can be seen as superimposed on the regular business cycle, reflecting the trend rather than the cycle.

In the general language of economics, secular stagnation, or simply stagnation, thus implies that the long-run potential economic growth has fallen, constituting the first pillar of MISS. This has been most forcefully argued for by Robert Gordon, as well as Garry Kasparov and Peter Thiel.6 Their argument is that the cumulative growth effect of current (and future) technological changes will be far weaker than in the past. Moreover, demographic changes place limits on the development of “human capital.” The focus is on technology, which orthodox economics generally sees as a factor external to the economy and on the supply-side (i.e., in relation to cost). Gordon’s position is thus different than that of moderate Keynesians like Summers and Krugman, who focus on demand-side contradictions of the system.

In Gordon’s supply-side, technocratic view, there are forces at work that will limit the growth in productive input and the efficiency of these inputs. This pillar of MISS emphasizes that it is constraints on the aggregate supply-side of the economy that have diminished absolutely the long-run potential growth.

The second pillar of MISS, also a supply-side view, goes back at least to Joseph Schumpeter. To explain the massive slump of 1937, Schumpeter maintained there had emerged a growing anti-business climate. Moreover, he contended that the rise of the modern corporation had displaced the role of the entrepreneur; the anti-business spirit had a repressive effect on entrepreneurs’ confidence and optimism.7 Today, this second pillar of MISS has been resurrected suggestively by John B. Taylor, who argues the poor recovery is best “explained by policy uncertainty” and “increased regulation” that is unfavorable to business. Likewise, Baker, Bloom, and Davis have forcefully argued that political uncertainty can hold back private investment and economic growth.8

Summers and Krugman, as Keynesians, emphasize a third MISS pillar, derived from Keynes’s famous liquidity trap theory, which contends that the “full-employment real interest rate” has declined in recent years. Indeed, both Summers and Krugman demonstrate that real interest rates have declined over recent decades, therefore moving from an exogenous explanation (as in pillars one and two) to a more endogenous explanation of secular stagnation.9 The ultimate problem here is lack of investment demand, such that, in order for net investment to occur at all, interest rates have to be driven to near zero or below. Their strong argument is that there are now times when negative real interest rates are needed to equate saving and investment with full employment.

However, “interest rates are not fully flexible in modern economies”—in other words, market-determined interest rate adjustments chronically fail to achieve full employment. Summers contends there are financial forces that prohibit the real interest rate from becoming negative; hence, full employment cannot be realized.10

Some theorists contend that there has been demographic structural shifts increasing the supply of saving, thus decreasing interest rates. These shifts include an increase in life expectancy, a decrease in retirement age, and a decline in the growth rate of population.

Others, including Summers, point out that stagnation in capital formation (or accumulation) can be attributed to a decrease in the demand for loanable funds for investment. One mainstream explanation offered for this is that today’s new technologies and companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook, require far less capital investment. Another hypothesis is that there has been an important decrease in the demand for loanable funds, although they argue this is due to a preference for safe assets. These factors can function together to keep the real interest rate very low. The policy implication of secular low interest rates is that monetary policy is more difficult to implement effectually; during a recession, it is weakened and can even become ineffectual.

Edward Glaeser, focusing on “secular joblessness,” places severe doubt on the first pillar of MISS, but then makes a very important additional argument. Glaeser rejects the notion that there has been a slowdown in technological innovation; innovation is simply “unrelenting.” Likewise, he is far less concerned with secular low real interest rates, which may be far more cyclical. “Therefore,” contends Glaeser, “stagnation is likely to be temporary.”

Nonetheless, Glaeser underscores secular joblessness, and thus the dysfunction of U.S. labor markets constitutes a fourth pillar of MISS: “The dysfunction in the labour market is real and serious, and seems unlikely to be solved by any obvious economic trend.” Somehow, then, the problem is due to a misfit of skills or “human capital” on the side of workers, who thus need retraining. “The massive secular trend in joblessness is a terrible social problem for the US, and one that the country must try to address” with targeted policy.11 Glaeser’s argument for the dysfunction of U.S. labor markets is based on recession-generated shocks to employment, specifically of less-skilled U.S. workers. After 1970, when workers lost their job, the damage to human capital became permanent. In short, when human capital depreciates due to unemployment, overall abilities and “talent” are “lost” permanently. This may be because the skills required in today’s economy need to be constantly practiced to be retained. Thus, there is a ratchet-like effect in joblessness caused by recessions, whereby recession-linked joblessness is not fully reversed during recoveries—and all this is related to skills (the human capital of the workers), and not to capital itself. According to Glaeser, the ratchet-like effect of recession-linked joblessness is further exacerbated by the U.S. social-safety net, which has “made joblessness less painful and increased the incentives to stay out of work.”12

Glaeser contends that, if his secular joblessness argument is correct, the macroeconomic fiscal interventions argued for by Summers and Krugman are off-base.13 Instead, the safety net should be redesigned in order to encourage rather than discourage people from working. Additionally, incentives to work need to be radically improved through targeted investments in education and workforce training.14 Such views within the mainstream debate, emphasizing exogenous factors, are generally promoted by freshwater (conservative) rather than saltwater (liberal) economists. Thus, they tend to emphasize supply-side or cost factors.

The fifth pillar of MISS contends that output and productivity growth are stagnant due to a failure to invest in infrastructure, education, and training. Nearly all versions of MISS subscribe to some version of this, although there are both conservative and liberal variations. Barry Eichengreen underscores this pillar and condemns recent U.S. fiscal developments that have “cut to the bone” federal government spending devoted to infrastructure, education, and training.

The fifth pillar of MISS necessarily reflects an imbalance between public and private investment spending. Many theorists maintain that the imbalance between public and private investment spending, hence secular stagnation, “is not inevitable.” For example, Eichengreen contends if “the US experiences secular stagnation, the condition will be self-inflicted. It will reflect the country’s failure to address its infrastructure, education and training needs. It will reflect its failure to…support aggregate demand in an effort to bring the long-term unemployed back into the labour market.”15

The sixth pillar of MISS argues that the “debt overhang” from the overleveraging of financial firms and households, as well as private and public indebtedness, are a serious drag on the economy. This position has been argued for most forcefully by several colleagues of Summers at Harvard, most notably Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.16 Atif Mian and Amir Sufi also argue that household indebtedness was the primary culprit causing the economic collapse of 2007–2008. Their policy recommendation is that the risk to mortgage borrowers must be reduced to avoid future calamities.17

As noted, the defenders of MISS do not necessarily support a compatibility between the above six pillars: those favored by conservatives are supply-side and exogenous in emphasis, while liberals tend towards demand-side and endogenous ones. Instead, most often these pillars are developed as competing theories to explain the warrant of some aspect of secular stagnation, and/or to defend particular policy positions while criticizing alternative policy positions. However, the concern here is not whether there is the possibility for a synthesis of mainstream views. Rather, the emphasis is on how partial and separate such explanations are, both individually and in combination.

Neoliberal economy actually needs bubbles to function

As Krugman said "We now know that the economic expansion of 2003-2007 was driven by a bubble. You can say the same about the latter part of the 90s expansion; and you can in fact say the same about the later years of the Reagan expansion, which was driven at that point by runaway thrift institutions and a large bubble in commercial real estate." In other words blowing bubbles is the fundamental way neoliberal economy functions, not an anomaly.

As much as the USA population is accustomed to hypocrisy of the ruling elite and is brainwashed by MSM, this news, delivered to them personally by the crisis of 2008 was too much for them not question the fundamentals (A Primer on Neoliberalism):

Of course, the irony that those same institutions would now themselves agree that those “anti-capitalist” regulations are required is of course barely noted. Such options now being considered are not anti-capitalist. However, they could be described as more regulatory or managed rather than completely free or laissez faire capitalism, which critics of regulation have often preferred.

But a regulatory capitalist economy is very different to a state-based command economy, the style of which the Soviet Union was known for. The points is that there are various forms of capitalism, not just the black-and-white capitalism and communism. And at the same time, the most extreme forms of capitalism can also lead to the bigger bubbles and the bigger busts.

In that context, the financial crisis, as severe as it was, led to key architects of the system admitting to flaws in key aspects of the ideology.

At the end of 2008, Alan Greenspan was summoned to the U.S. Congress to testify about the financial crisis. His tenure at the Federal Reserve had been long and lauded, and Congress wanted to know what had gone wrong. Henry Waxman questioned him:

[Greenspan’s flaw] warped his view about how the world was organized, about the sociology of the market. And Greenspan is not alone. Larry Summers, the president’s senior economic advisor, has had to come to terms with a similar error—his view that the market was inherently self-stabilizing has been “dealt a fatal blow.” Hank Paulson, Bush’s treasury secretary, has shrugged his shoulders with similar resignation. Even Jim Cramer from CNBC’s Mad Money admitted defeat: “The only guy who really called this right was Karl Marx.” One after the other, the celebrants of the free market are finding themselves, to use the language of the market, corrected.

Raj Patel, Flaw PDF formatted document, The Value of Nothing, (Picador, 2010), pp.4, 6-7

Now for the second time in history, the challenge is to save capitalism from itself

Now for the second time in history, the challenge is to save capitalism from itself: to recognize the great strengths of open, competitive markets while rejecting the extreme capitalism and unrestrained greed that have perverted so much of the global financial system in recent times. It took such a statesman as Franklin Delano Roosevelt to rebuild American capitalism after the Great Depression. New Deal policies allowed to rebuild postwar domestic demand, to engineer the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and to set in place the Bretton Woods system to govern international economic engagement.

With the abolishment of those policies blowing of one bubble after another, each followed by a financial crisis  became standard chain of the events. Since 1973 we already have a half-dozen bubbles following by economic crisis. It started with  Savings and loan crisis which partially was caused by the deregulation of S&Ls in 1980, by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act signed by President Jimmy Carter on March 31, 1980, an important step is a series that eliminated regulations initially designed to prevent lending excesses and minimize failures.

To hide this unpleasant fact neoliberals resort to so called the Great Neoliberal Lie:

What is neoliberalism

The fallacious and utterly misleading argument that the global economic crisis (credit crunch) was caused by excessive state spending, rather than by the reckless gambling of the deregulated, neoliberalized financial sector.

Just as with other pseudo-scientific theories and fundamentalist ideologies, the excuse that "we just weren't fundamentalist enough last time" is always there. The neoliberal pushers of the establishment know that pure free-market economies are as much of an absurd fairytale as 100% pure communist economies, however they keep pushing for further privatizations, tax cuts for the rich, wage repression for the ordinary, and reckless financial sector deregulations precisely because they are the direct beneficiaries of these policies. Take the constantly widening wealth gap in the UK throughout three decades of neoliberal policy. The minority of beneficiaries from this ever widening wealth gap are the business classes, financial sector workers, the mainstream media elite and the political classes. It is no wonder at all that these people think neoliberalism is a successful ideology. Within their bubbles of wealth and privilege it has been. To everyone else it has been an absolute disaster.

Returning to a point I raised earlier in the article; one of the main problems with the concept of "neoliberalism" is the nebulousness of the definition. It is like a form of libertarianism, however it completely neglects the fundamental libertarian idea of non-aggression. In fact, it is so closely related to that other (highly aggressive) US born political ideology of Neo-Conservatism that many people get the two concepts muddled up. A true libertarian would never approve of vast taxpayer funded military budgets, the waging of imperialist wars of aggression nor the wanton destruction of the environment in pursuit of profit.

Another concept that is closely related to neoliberalism is the ideology of minarchism (small stateism), however the neoliberal brigade seem perfectly happy to ignore the small-state ideology when it suits their personal interests. Take the vast banker bailouts (the biggest state subsidies in human history) that were needed to save the neoliberalised global financial sector from the consequences of their own reckless gambling, the exponential growth of the parasitic corporate outsourcing sector (corporations that make virtually 100% of their turnover from the state) and the ludicrous housing subsidies (such as "Help to Buy and Housing Benefits) that have fueled the reinflation of yet another property Ponzi bubble.

The Godfather of neoliberalism was Milton Friedman. He made the case that illegal drugs should be legalised in order to create a free-market drug trade, which is one of the very few things I agreed with him about. However this is politically inconvenient (because the illegal drug market is a vital source of financial sector liquidity) so unlike so many of his neoliberal ideas that have consistently failed, yet remain incredibly popular with the wealthy elite, Friedman's libertarian drug legalisation proposals have never even been tried out.

The fact that neoliberals are so often prepared to ignore the fundamental principles of libertarianism (the non-aggression principle, drug legalisation, individual freedoms, the right to peaceful protest ...) and abuse the fundamental principles of small state minarchism (vast taxpayer funded bailouts for their financial sector friends, £billions in taxpayer funded outsourcing contracts, alcohol price fixing schemes) demonstrate that neoliberalism is actually more like Ayn Rand's barmy (greed is the only virtue, all other "virtues" are aberrations) pseudo-philosophical ideology of objectivism  than a set of formal economic theories.

The result of neoliberal economic theories has been proven time and again. Countries that embrace the neoliberal pseudo-economic ideology end up with "crony capitalism", where the poor and ordinary suffer "austerity", wage repression, revocation of labor rights and the right to protest, whilst a tiny cabal of corporate interests and establishment insiders enrich themselves via anti-competitive practices, outright criminality and corruption and vast socialism-for-the-rich schemes.

Neoliberal fanatics in powerful positions have demonstrated time and again that they will willingly ditch their right-wing libertarian and minarchist "principles" if those principles happen to conflict with their own personal self-interest. Neoliberalism is less of a formal set of economic theories than an error strewn obfuscation narrative to promote the economic interests, and  justify the personal greed of the wealthy, self-serving establishment elite.
 

Bubbles as the neoliberal tool for wealth redistribution

The 1930s, a well researched period of balance-sheet recession, provides some interesting perspective despite large historical distance.  Roosevelt was no socialist, but his New Deal did frighten many businesses, especially large business which BTW attempted a coupe to remove him from is position. Fortunately for Roosevelt CIA did not exist yet.  And New Deal  government projects has been much bigger and bolder, then anything Obama ever tried, because Obama administration was constrained in its action by dominant neoliberal thinking. Like regulatory capture, which is an immanent feature of neoliberalism,  there is also less known and less visible ideological capture of the government. Which also makes neoliberalism more similar to bolshevism as this ideological capture and related inability of the USSR elite to modernize the economy on some "mixed" principles, when over-centralization stopped working. It, along with the collapse of the ideology,  probably was one of the main reasons of the collapse of the USSR.  Chinese leadership managed to do this and introduced "new economic policies"(NEP). 

Uner New deal regime when public investment and hence aggregate demand expanded, the economy started to grow anyway. Roosevelt did have a vision and he did convince the electorate about the way to go. Cheap optimism of Reagan, or even audacity of hope "Obama style" were not enough. After all, as Francis Bacon may remind us: “Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper” (Apophthegms, 1624).

Obama/Bernanke-style attempts to stimulate growth by pure injection of cheap money in this environment not only inflate new bubbles instead of old one, with which the fighting starts. They also lead to massive redistribution of wealth that makes the problem even worse:

Paul Krugman tells us that Larry Summers joined the camp concerned about secular stagnation in his I.M.F. talk last week, something that I had not picked up from prior coverage of the session. This is good news, but I would qualify a few of the points that Krugman makes in his elaboration of Summers' remarks.

First, while the economy may presently need asset bubbles to maintain full employment (a point I made in Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy), it doesn't follow that we should not be concerned about asset bubbles. The problem with bubbles is that their inflation and inevitable deflation lead to massive redistribution of wealth.

Larry Summers was the first establishment economist who conceded that this is the fact (Wikipedia)

... Larry Summers presented his view during November 2013 that secular (long-term) stagnation may be a reason that U.S. growth is insufficient to reach full employment: "Suppose then that the short term real interest rate that was consistent with full employment [i.e., the "natural rate"] had fallen to negative two or negative three percent. Even with artificial stimulus to demand you wouldn't see any excess demand. Even with a resumption in normal credit conditions you would have a lot of difficulty getting back to full employment."[13][14]

Robert J. Gordon wrote in August 2012:

"Even if innovation were to continue into the future at the rate of the two decades before 2007, the U.S. faces six headwinds that are in the process of dragging long-term growth to half or less of the 1.9 percent annual rate experienced between 1860 and 2007. These include demography, education, inequality, globalization, energy/environment, and the overhang of consumer and government debt. A provocative 'exercise in subtraction' suggests that future growth in consumption per capita for the bottom 99 percent of the income distribution could fall below 0.5 percent per year for an extended period of decades".[15]

One hypothesis is that high levels of productivity greater than the economic growth rate are creating economic slack, in which fewer workers are required to meet the demand for goods and services. Firms have less incentive to invest and instead prefer to hold cash. Journalist Marco Nappolini wrote in November 2013:

 "If the expected return on investment over the short term is presumed to be lower than the cost of holding cash then even pushing interest rates to zero will have little effect. That is, if you cannot push real interest rates below the so-called short run natural rate [i.e., the rate of interest required to achieve the growth rate necessary to achieve full employment] you will struggle to bring forward future consumption, blunting the short run effectiveness of monetary policy...Moreover, if you fail to bring it below the long run natural rate there is a strong disincentive to increase fixed capital investment and a consequent preference to hold cash or cash-like instruments in an attempt to mitigate risk. This could cause longer-term hysteresis effects and reduce an economy's potential output."[13] 

Cost of energy as a defining new factor

The cost of energy is probably another reason of secular stagnation along with excessive public and private debt. Rising cost of energy is deadly for capitalism.  Here are some comments that might clarify the situation:

raskolnikov:

This is the biggest crybaby column Krugman's ever written. He should be ashamed of himself and return his Nobel prize immediately. Has he ever put down Keynes long enough to read a little Marx?  Here's Robert Brenner summing it up in 2009:

 What mainly accounts for the long-term weakening of the real economy is a deep, and lasting, decline of the rate of return on capital investment since the end of the 1960s.

The failure of the rate of profit to recover is all the more remarkable, in view of the huge drop-off in the growth of real wages over the period.

The main cause, though not the only cause, of the decline in the rate of profit has been a persistent tendency to overcapacity in global manufacturing industries."

 There's more, too. Instead of siding with crackpot Summers, Krugman should expand his research and be of some use to us all.

Kievite

I am not sure that it is correct to think about public debt as internal debt. It's all about energy.

That means that public debt is to a large extent foreign due to unalterable oil consumption (and related trade deficits). And that completely changes the situation unless you are the owner of the world reserve currency.

But even in the latter case (exorbitant privilege as Valéry Giscard d'Estaing called it ) you can expect attacks on the status of the currency as world reserve currency. The growth is still supported via militarization, forced opening of foreign markets (with military force, if necessary) and conversion of the state into national security state. But as Napoleon admitted "You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them"

One positive thing about high public (and to a large extent foreign owned) debt in the USA is that it undermines what Bacevich called "new American militarism" (http://www.amazon.com/The-New-American-Militarism-Americans/dp/0195173384). Bacevich argues that this is distinct political course adopted by the "defense intellectuals," the evangelicals, and the neocons. And they will never regret their failed efforts such as Iraq invasion.

From Amazon review:

=== Quote ===

Bacevich clearly links our present predicaments both at home and abroad to the ever greater need for natural resources, especially oil from the Persian Gulf. He demolishes all of the reasons for our bellicosity based on ideals and links it directly to our insatiable appetite for oil and economic expansion. Naturally, like thousands of writers before him, he points out the need for a national energy policy based on more effective use of resources and alternative means of production.

=== End of Quote ==

Heinberg's Five Axioms of Sustainability

As Heinberg explained fossil fuels, primarily oil, permeate every aspect of our modern culture - from agriculture to cities and a long-term perspective. In the age of almost 7 billion people demanding more and more of limited resources, the media, politicians and governments tend to only report short-term perspectives and ignore Heinberg's Five Axioms of Sustainability to the extent that these concepts are taboo to be spoken, discussed or thought (Heinberg, Richard (2007) Five Axioms of Sustainability):

1. (Tainter’s Axiom): Any society that continues to use critical resources unsustainably will collapse.

Exception: A society can avoid collapse by finding replacement resources.

Limit to the exception: In a finite world, the number of possible replacements is also finite.

...

2. (Bartlett’s Axiom): Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained.

...

3. To be sustainable, the use of renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is less than or equal to the rate of natural replenishment.

...

4. To be sustainable, the use of non-renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is declining, and the rate of decline must be greater than or equal to the rate of depletion.

The rate of depletion is defined as the amount being extracted and used during a specified time interval (usually a year) as a percentage of the amount left to extract.

...

5. Sustainability requires that substances introduced into the environment from human activities be minimized and rendered harmless to biosphere functions.

In cases where pollution from the extraction and consumption of non-renewable resources that has proceeded at expanding rates for some time threatens the viability of ecosystems, reduction in the rates of extraction and consumption of those resources may need to occur at a rate greater than the rate of depletion. 

Archaeologist Joseph Tainter, in his classic study The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), demonstrated that collapse is a frequent if not universal fate of complex societies and argued that collapse results from declining returns on efforts to support growing levels of societal complexity using energy harvested from the environment.  Jared Diamond’s popular book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005) similarly  makes the argument that collapse is the common destiny of societies that ignore resourse constraints. This axiom defines sustainability by the consequences of its absence—that is, collapse.

Historical periods of stagnation in the United States

Adapted from Wikipedia

Excluding the current, there were two period of stagnation in the USA history:

Construction of structures, residential, commercial and industrial, fell off dramatically during the depression, but housing was well on its way to recovering by the late 1930s.[17]

The depression years were the period of the highest total factor productivity growth in the United States, primarily to the building of roads and bridges, abandonment of unneeded railroad track and reduction in railroad employment, expansion of electric utilities and improvements wholesale and retail distribution.[17]

The war created pent up demand for many items as factories that once produced automobiles and other machinery converted to production of tanks, guns, military vehicles and supplies. Tires had been rationed due to shortages of natural rubber; however, the U.S. government built synthetic rubber plants. The U.S. government also built synthetic ammonia plants, aluminum smelters, aviation fuel refineries and aircraft engine factories during the war.[17] After the war commercial aviation, plastics and synthetic rubber would become major industries and synthetic ammonia was used for fertilizer. The end of armaments production free up hundreds of thousands of machine tools, which were made available for other industries. They were needed in the rapidly growing aircraft manufacturing industry.[18]

The memory of war created a need for preparedness in the United States. This resulted in constant spending for defense programs, creating what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex.

U.S. birth rates began to recover by the time of World War II, and turned into the baby boom of the postwar decades. A building boom commenced in the years following the war. Suburbs began a rapid expansion and automobile ownership increased.[17]

High-yielding crops and chemical fertilizers dramatically increased crop yields and greatly lowered the cost of food, giving consumers more discretionary income. Railroad locomotives switched from steam to diesel power, with a large increase in fuel efficiency. Most importantly, cheap food essentially eliminated malnutrition in countries like the United States and much of Europe.

Many trends that began before the war continued:

Researchers who contributed to understating secular stagnation

One of the first researchers who clearly attributed secular stagnation problem to neoliberalism was Alan Nasser, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy and Philosophy at The Evergreen State College. In his September 22, 2005 paper  ECONOMIC LAWS, STRUCTURAL TENDENCIES, SECULAR STAGNATION THEORY, AND THE FATE OF NEOLIBERALISM  he pointed out the key features of secular stagnation long before Summers started to understand the problem  and even befor the economic crash of 2008 ;-)

September 22, 2005 | alannasser.org

Alan Nasser Invited presentation, University of Lille,

"We have now grown used to the idea that most ordinary or natural growth processes (the growth of organisms, or popu- lations of organisms or, for example, of cities) is not merely limited, but self-limited, i.e. is slowed down or eventually brought to a standstill as a consequence of the act of growth itself. For one reason or another, but always for some reason, organisms cannot grow indefinitely, just as beyond a certain level of size or density a population defeats its own capacity for further growth."

Sir Peter Medawar, The Revolution of Hope

"A business firm grows and attains great strength, and afterwards perhaps stagnates and decays; and at the turning point there is a balancing or equilibrium of the forces of life and decay. And as we reach to the higher stages of our work, we shall need ever more and more to think of economic forces as those which make a young man grow in strength until he reaches his prime; after which he gradually becomes stiff and inactive, till at last he sinks to make room for other and more vigorous life."

Alfred Marshall, Principals of Economics (1890)

"Though Keynes's 'breakdown theory is quite different from Marx's, it has an important feature in common with the latter: in both theories, the breakdown is motivated by causes inherent to the working of the economic engine, not by the action of factors external to it."

Joseph Schumpeter, Ten Great Economists

In this paper I shall address two major issues. Firstly, I shall discuss the implications for economic theory of a conception of economic laws widely at variance with the empiricist and/or positivist account of what laws are, how they are discovered, and how they are related to theory. At the same time, I will reject one cornerstone of anti-positivist thought, namely the idea that one cannot provide an account of laws that is fundamentally the same for the natural and the social sciences. Thus, I shall argue that an anti-positivist account of laws is entirely compatible with a conception of scientific laws that applies to both the "hard" (natural) and the "soft" (social) sciences. I shall defend this position by showing its application to economics and economic laws. In doing so, I will compare and contrast both natural-scientific (primarily physical) laws and social-scientific (primarily economic) laws. Secondly, I will argue that perhaps the most significant economic law descriptive of mature capitalism is the law of secular stagnation. The latter states that it is the natural tendency of a developed, industrialized capitalist economy to default to a state of chronic excess capacity and underconsumption. And this is itself a result of the tendency in advanced capitalism for the economic surplus (roughly, the difference between the Gross Domectic Product and the cost of producing the GDP) to grow at a rate more rapid than the growth of profitable industrial investment opportunities. In the course of my discussion I will use the United States as a paradigm case, Much as Marx attempted to identify the underlying features of the accumulation process by reference to England during the Industrial Revulution.

This has in fact been the state of global capital since the end of the "Golden Age" and the commencement of the age of globalized Reaganism/Thatcherism, i.e. the Age of Neoliberalism. I date the transition as commencing in 1973, the last year of post-War Keynesian growth rates in the USA. In fact, I will argue, neoliberal economic policy exacerbates capitalism'a tendency to stagnation. Let me begin with an account of economic laws.

LAWS, GENERATIVE MECHANISMS AND TENDENCIES

On the Humean or radical empiricist (positivist) account of laws, the latter are descriptions of observed regularities. Presumably, the scientist observes a "constant conjunction" of different kinds of happening, and infers from the regularity of the conjunction that the latter could not be merely accidental, and so concludes that the observed pattern of regularities must be nomological or law-like. 'Sodium chloride dissolves in water' and 'Metal expands when heated' would be simple examples of the results of this account of how laws of nature are discovered.

That this empiricist account is flawed becomes evident when we consider full-fledged laws of a genuine natural science, e.g. physics. I emphasize that laws are components of theories, which themselves are constitutive of established scientific disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, and biology. In fact, the two "laws" mentioned at the end of the preceding paragraph are not laws of physics at all. Among the genuine laws of physics is, e.g., 'Falling bodies near the surface of the earth accelerate at a constant rate.' This law is certainly not established by the observation of repeated conjunctions of events. On the contrary, actually observed falling bodies in "open systems", that is, in the circumstances of everyday life, conspicuously fail to conform to this law. Yet this is not taken to refute the law. For the law describes the behavior of bodies in a vacuum, that is to say, in a "closed system", one created by the scientist, typically in a laboratory situation. Philosophers of science have tended to ignore the distinction between regularities observed only in closed systems, and conjunctions observed in everyday life, which, as such, have no value as contributions to scientific knowledge. These philosophers have, accordingly, written as if the regularities in question were features of open systems, of nature. This confusion impedes our understanding of all types of laws, from physical to economic.

This failure –until relatively recently- of philosophers of science to properly attend to the importance of laboratory work in the acquisition of scientific knowledge is due to the fact that these philosophers have focused almost exclusively on science as established theory, i.e. as a way of representing the world. They had ignored how these theories were actually established. That is, they paid little attention to experiment, which is a way of intervening in the world. This inattention to what happens in closed systems created in the laboratory led thinkers to miss the importance of the concept of tendencies or dispositions in grasping the concept of a law of science. Let us dwell on this point and its relation to economic laws.

It is not that our knowledge of natural laws is not based on observed regularities. The point, rather, is that these regularities are not found in nature. They are found in closed systems, elaborately designed experimental circumstances found in laboratories. Yet, we correctly believe that what we learn in experimental situations gives us knowledge that is not confined to these situations. We believe that what we learn from observations of repeated patterns in experiments gives us not only knowledge of the behavior of objects in laboratory circumstances, but also knowledge of these same (kinds of) objects as they behave in nature, in the open systems of everyday life. But scientifically significant repeated patterns are not found in the world of daily life. This raises profound epistemological and ontological questions.

The most significant epistemological question arises from the following consideration: Were it not for the intervention of the experimenter, closed-system regularities would not obtain. Hence, the experimenter is a causal agent of the pattern of regularities observed in the laboratory. It is these contrived conjunctions which we invoke to justify our belief in (usually causal) laws. And while these regularities are the (partial) result of the intervention of the experimenter, we do not believe that the experimenter in any way originates the laws whose existence is attested to by the contrived regularities. The question therefore arises: What justifies our (correct) belief that knowledge obtained in closed laboratory systems designed by an agent applies also in open systems, i.e. in nature, which of course is not designed by scientists and does not evidence the regularities found under designed experimental circumstances?

I want to suggest that this question comes to the same as the following question: What must nature be like, and what must experiment reveal, in order for experimental knowledge to be able to be legitimately extended to the world outside of the laboratory, i.e. to nature? Note that this is a Realist question: it asks what we must presuppose about the constitution of the world in order that our experimentally-based scientific beliefs be justified. This is the precise Realist counterpart to Kant's Idealist question: What must we presoppose our minds –as opposed to nature or the world- to be like in order for scientific knowledge to be possible? I will argue that the answer to our Realist question provides the conceptual resources to elucidate the general nature of economic laws and economic theory, and the nature of the subject matter investigated by economists.

I will argue that since we believe that what we learn by experimental observation justifies our claim to knowledge of the experimental objects as they behave in nature, we must assume that these objects possess natural structures, similar to what Aristotle and the scholastics called "natures" or "essences." A natural structure must be conceived as what Critical Realists call a generative mechanism (hereafter, GM). The latter is a specific mode of material organization. What GMs generate are tendencies or dispositions to behave in characteristic ways. The statement that a physical thing or a social institution or structure tends to generate characteristic regularities is a statement of a law. The natural structure of salt, expressed in chemistry as HCl, is such that when it is mixed with water, whose natural structure or organization is expressed as H2O, it tends to dissolve. Gases tend to expand when heated and falling bodies near the surface of the earth tend to accelerate at a constant rate. These are statements of chemical and physical laws. We shall see that precisely the same kind of analysis can be made of laws in economics.

Tendencies are not the same as trends. The latter are merely observed regularities; there need be no implication that an underlying structural feature of the thing in question generates the regularity. This feature of laws is reflected in ordinary language in non-scientific contexts: we might say "He has a tendency to exaggerate." We mean that a disposition to exaggerate is a natural expression of his underlying character. We do not usually mean that he exaggerates whenever it is possible for him to exaggerate. This is part of the meaning of 'tendency.' Thus, tendencies can exist without being exercised. This happens when, e.g. salt is not mixed with water. Salt's nomological tendency to dissolve in water remains its categorical property even in the absence of circumstances in which its tendency to dissolve can be exercised. In addition, tendencies can be exercised without being realized. This is the case in the natural sciences when we observe, in non-laboratory situations, falling bodies accelerating at different rates. Indeed, no falling body in open systems is observed to accelerate at a constant or the same rate. But of course this is not taken to falsify the law of falling bodies. In nature, GMs continue to act in their characteristic ways without producing the patterned outcomes observable in closed experimental systems. This is so because in nature a multiplicity of GMs combine, interact and collide such as to result in the (scientifically irrelevant) flux of phenomena of the everyday world. The realization of a natural tendency can, in other words, be offset by counteracting forces. Thus, empiricism's mistake is to fail to recognize that GMs operate independent of the effects they generate. That is, GMs endure and go on acting (in the way that experimental closure enables us to identify) in nature, i.e. in open systems, where patterned regularities do not prevail. Statements about tendencies are not equivalent, salva veritate, to statements about their effects. Laws may exist and exercise their tendencies or powers even though no Humean "constant conjunctions" are observed. (This would be the case if it happened that the practice of creating closed experimental conditions had never been engaged in, i.e. in a world without science.)

LAWS, GENERATIVE MECHANISMS AND TENDENCIES IN ECONOMICS

GMs are not confined to the natural world. Natural structures are not the only structures there are. Plainly, there are humanely constructed structures. Capitalism is one such structure. Structures of this kind, GMs, that are dynamic by nature, i.e. which are characteristically diachronic, be they natural or socially constituted, share the same ontology. This should not be confused with the radical empiricist (positivist) claim that the natural and the social sciences share the same method. Clearly they do not: closed experimental situations exist but are not typical i istic outcomes ceteris paribus, ie. other things being equal, i.e. ceteris absentibus, other things being absent. When we identify the tendency of a thing, we specify what will happen, as a matter of course, if interfering conditions are absent. That is the point of vacuums in the closed systems created in laboratory experiments: they permit exercised tendencies, i.e. tendencies in operation, to be realized. If we want to know what gases tend to do when acted upon by heat, we eliminate all potential counteracting forces by creating a vacuum in the chamber, so that both gas and heat can express their natures unimpeded.

Thus, implicit in both physical- and social-scientific practice is the crucial distinction between the exercise and the realization (or manifestation) of a tendency. This distinction is essential to structural analysis in economics because of the impossibility of creating the social equivalent of a vacuum in the social sciences, which deal with the open systems of everyday life, where a great many forces and tendencies collide. Accordingly, just as the law of the tendency of falling bodies to accelerate at a constant rate is not falsified by the failure of falling bodies to behave accordingly in open systems, so too, e.g., the law of the tendency of the growth of productive capacity to outpace the growth of profitable investment opportunities -the thesis of secular stagnation theory- is not undermined by the remarkable growth rates of the Golden Age. In both cases, the presence of offsetting factors prevents the structurally generated tendency from being realized or manifested. I argue that the same can be said for any putative economic law.

In social science –and this is most conspicuous in economics, the most theoretically developed of the human sciences- we compensate for the absence of experimentally closed systems by constructing their functional equivalent, which we might call, in terms redolent of Weber, an ideal-typical theoretical model. It is an unfortunate habit (perhaps a tendency in the above-elaborated sense…) of mainstream economists to employ these models as if they described the open-system observable facts of economic life. This is, I suspect, a consequence of the economic empiricist's mistake referred to above, namely to think that GMs, if they must be spoken of at all, are to be conceived as reducible to their effects. (Recall Hume's claim, inspired by his reading of Newton, to expunge all notions of "power", "generation" and "production" from his analyses.) But, as noted above, GMs in both the social and the natural sciences employ unrealistic models, i.e. models which do not pretend to offer the equivalent of a photographic representation of the world. In both natural-scientific experiments and social-scientific ideal-type models, an attempt is made to abstract from the nonessential. We seek to place the spotlight of theory on what is necessary to the situation, system or institution under investigation, and to prescind from the arbitrary and accidental. In economics we seek to identify those features of capitalism that make it what it is. This enables us to identify capitalism's distinct and characteristic tendencies, and to describe what will happen as a result of the exercise of these tendencies, ceteris absentibus.

That there are such tendencies seems to me to be uncontroversial. We all know, for example, that cyclical downturns are not mere empirical contingencies of capitalist development, but structurally generated tendencies which follow inexorably from the specific mode of organization (structure) of capitalism. And like all tendencies, their realization can be offset, as we have seen above, by counteracting factors, such as fiscal and monetary policy. Other examples would be what Marx called the tendencies of capital to concentrate and centralize. The tendency, and corresponding law, with which I will be primarily concerned in this paper is constitutive of the theory of secular stagnation, and is far more likely than the immediately foregoing examples to generate controversy. I refer to the tendency of mature capitalism to suffer from a chronic paucity of profitable industrial investment opportunities, relative to the great magnitude of its investable surplus. Let us look more closely at this tendency.

THE THEORY OF SECULAR STAGNATION

It is worth mentioning that the view that the continuous accumulation of capital is both essential to the normal development of capitalist societies and essentially self-limiting was held by virtually all of the major modern political economists, in the form of one version or another of the doctrine of the falling rate of profit. Adam Smith explained the secular decline of the profit rate by the increasing abundance of capital in a developing capitalist society. Ricardo and Mill believed that the rate of profit would be depressed by the diminishing productivity of the land which would drive up the price of wage goods and therefore of the wages of labor, and so drive down the profits of capital. Marx pointed to the increasing capital-intensity of industry and the paucity of working-class purchasing power relative to the productive capacity of the economy, as the principal threat to the profit rate. And Keynes held that in mature capitalist economies the "marginal efficiency of capital", i.e. the expected rate of return (over cost) on an additional unit of a given capital asset, would tend to decline. All these thinkers had an at least intuitive appreciation of the fact that the growth of capital tends to be terminally self-limiting. (It is worth citing a remark of Joseph Shumpeter at this point:

"Though Keynes's 'breakdown theory is quite different from Marx's, it has an important feature in common with the latter: in both theories, the breakdown is motivated by causes inherent to the working of the economic engine, not by the action of factors external to it.")

In my estimation, no one understood the underlying dynamics of the tendency to stagnation better than the Polish economist Michal Kalecki, who is known to have developed the essentials of Keynes's General Theory before Keynes himself (and to have produced far more elegant mathematical formulations thereof). Perhaps the best way to understand Kalecki's thought is to see him as having argued that certain features of a not-yet-mature industrializing economy persist after the process of industrialization has been accomplished, with the effect that the developed capitalist economy is saddled with a problem of chronic excess capacity. Let me sketch this train of thought.

In the course of their natural growth capitalist economies reach a level of industrial development characterizable as maturity, a point beyond which growth must either cease, or be sustained by exogenous (in a sense to be elucidated below) means. Straight away we are confronted with a rejection of an assumption that is implicit in mainstream neoclassical theory, viz. that both the supply and the demand curves shift, virtually automatically, to the right. On the stagnationist conceptualization of growth or development, the process of development is not everlasting, but rather is at some point accomplished. There is the period, industrialization, during which the economy is developing, and which culminates in a (finally) industrialized or developed infrastructure. At this stage there will have been built up, or "accumulated", a complement of plant and equipment in steel production, machine tools, power stations, transport systems, etc., that is capable of satisfying a level of consumption demand consistent with the moral limits of a reasonably civilized style of life, the constraints imposed by a finite fund of natural resources, and, most importantly for stagnation theory, the limited possibilities of what Marx called "expanded reproduction" imposed by the accumulation process itself.

This account point can be expanded as follows. During any period of industrialization, the growth of the capital goods industry (hereafter, following Marx, Department I, or DI) must outpace the growth of the consumption goods industries (hereafter, again following Marx, Department II, or DII). Indeed, it belongs to the nature of the process of industrialization that the demand for the output of DI cannot be a function of the behavior of consumption demand; during industrialization, investment demand is both rapid and relatively autonomous. For if the principal project is to develop the means of production, then a disproportionate share of national wealth must be devoted to investment/accumulation at the expense of consumption. Strategic capital goods such as transport and communications networks and steel mills cannot be built bit by bit. This is clear with respect to railroads (Recall Keynes's remark that "Two pyramids are better than one, and two masses for the dead better than one; but two railroads from London to York are not necessarily better than one."), but perhaps not as clear with respect to steel facilities.

Suppose 1) that the efficient production of steel requires equipment with the capacity to produce 200,000 tons of steel, and 2) that demand turns out to be for 300,000 tons. The investor has two alternatives, either to forgo an extra market or to take a chance and add another 200.000 tons. On the second alternative, the one virtually assured in a period of (rapid) industrialization, the manufacturer is left with a surplus capacity of 100,000 tons. Here we see, writ small, a crucial source of two basic tendencies of capitalist development, the unrelenting pressure to expand markets, and the tendency to overproduction of a specific kind, namely the overproduction of capital goods, the tendency to overaccumulation. Each of these tendencies is the basis of a corresponding law of economics: Wherever we find a competitive, profit-driven market economy, we must also find a system-driven tendency to expand markets, and: Wherever we find a competitive, profit-driven market economy, we must also find a system-driven tendency for the growth of productive capacity to outpace the growth of effective demand.

As we have seen, all the major classical political economists anticipated the stationary state; they all assumed that the period of development or industrialization would come to an end. Basic industries would be in place, and DI would be capable of meeting all the replacement and expansion demands of DII. Prescinding for the moment from the emergence of new industries, DI would no longer be a source of substantial expansion demand for its own output; most of DI's internal expansion demand would be extinct.

But this is not th hread of classical (and perhaps neoclassical) theory contains the assurance that the capitalist economy provides a mechanism that in the long run counteracts the tendency of the demand for the products of DI to peter out. As one might expect, this is the price mechanism, which brings about, in the circumstances described above, a falling rate of profit (or interest) and thereby a simultaneous check on accumulation and spur to consumption. The causal chain is simple: the fall of the profit rate would lower capital's share of national income, i.e. it would transfer income from capital to labor. Thus, the demand gap created by the sharp waning of DI's expansion demand would be made up by the increase in consumption demand, which would of course mean an expansion in the demand for the output of DII. Moreover, an immediate expansion of DII at the expense of DI in order to assure a rapid transition out of the stationary state would be entirely feasible given the adaptability of certain key industries in DI to new market conditions resulting from the newly-expanded purchasing power of the working class. The construction of new factories could, for example, yield to the construction of new homes.

The theoretical elegance of this scenario is impressive -almost inspirational- but, alas for illusions, the price mechanism does not work this way. For the above-mentioned transfer in national income from capital to labor is supposed to happen when industrialization comes to an end by virtue of its having been accomplished. But from the capitalists' perspective, it is as if nothing counts as industrialization coming to an end. New industries, for example, can create a situation functionally equivalent to industrialization. "Accumulate, accumulate, that is Moses and the prophets."

We have at this point arrived at a picture of a developed capitalist economy which is in a state of permanent industrialization. Excess capacity prevails and working-class income is stagnant or declining. Interestingly, this has in fact been the state of both the U.S. and the global economy since 1973. According to the foregoing analysis, this reflects the fact that the U.S. and global economies are now instances not merely of the exercise of the law of the tendency of mature capitalism to stagnate, but of its realization. To put it differently: these economies are now in their natural state.

But important questions immediately arise. Why are these economies in their natural state now? And if there is a structurally generated tendency for capitalist economies to stagnate, how shall we account for the historically unprecedented growth rates of the Golden Age? I have barely sketched an outline of a response to these challenges above: if there is indeed a tendency for capitalism to stagnate, then there must have been in operation during the Golden Age what I called "counteracting forces and tendencies" which had spent themselves by the mid-1970s. In the absence of new offsetting forces, the tendency to stagnate has, as we should expect, re-asserted itself. These claims require further elaboration, and it is to this task that I now turn.

SECULAR STAGNATION AND TRANSFORMATIONAL GROWTH

In order to account for the actual pattern of capitalist growth in the context of stagnation theory, we must reflect on the kind of growth required by capitalist economic arrangements. Mainstream theory does not distinguish between kinds of growth if and when it addresses the specific requirements of capitalist growth at all. This is, I believe, a serious error. I will begin by introducing the notion of transformational growth, which transforms the entire way of life of society and absorbs exceptionally large amounts of the investible surplus. My point shall be that a capitalist economy cannot sustain growth merely by producing more and more different types of widgets, in the absence of pervasive structural change. Growth sustained in the latter manner is transformational growth.

We are forced to introduce the concept of transformational growth for reasons related to my earlier discussion of the structural features of mature capitalism which generates a chronic tendency to stagnation. I will now embellish this analysis. It should be clear that capitalism cannot grow in the way in which a balloon grows: its growth cannot leave its proportions intact, i.e. such that there are no new products and no new processes of production. This is to say that a capitalist economy either undergoes transformational growth or it stagnates. The argument is as follows.

Investment expands productive capacity, which in turn requires that demand increase at the same rate as potential production. Without the required rate of demand growth, underutilization/excess capacity will discourage further investment or capital accumulation and the result will of course be stagnation. Let us not address this issue in the manner of the neoclassical economist, who seems to assume that both supply and demand curves can be counted on to perennially shift to the right (absent, of course, undue government interference). But this quaint assumption is belied by the enormous literature on the development and indispensability to capitalism of the marketing and advertising industries, which we might view as massive efforts to counteract Keynes's declining marginal propensity to consume by deliberately creating among the consuming masses a full panoply of "manufactured" consumption desires. These considerations point to the need constantly to exogenously stimulate consumption demand in order to narrow the demand gap generated by the tendency to overaccumulation. But they do not yet establish the need to generate a broad, nation-wide pattern of demand required by structural change and transformational growth.

What is needed at this point are concrete examples of the generators of transformational growth, and of exactly how these generators accomplish one of the fundamental features of transformational growth, the mobilization and coordination of the economic resources of the entire country into a grand national project which stimulates demand not merely for this and that consumption good, but for crucial commodities and institutions such as oil, steel rubber, and other primary products, and communication and transportation facilities. What this requires are what Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy termed, in their influential Monopoly Capital (Monthly Review Press, 1966), "epoch-making innovations". Edward Nell and Robert Heilbroner have characterized these same innovations as "transformative innovations". Let me approach transformative innovations by looking at the tendency to stagnation from yet another perspective, one which focuses on the role of competition as a major force behind the growth of both investment and consumption.

Competition reduces the need for investment by tending to increase both productivity and savings. Let us see how this happens. As a result of competition business is under continuous pressure to cut costs and produce more efficiently. To the extent that business succeeds in these respects, productive potential is increased. At the same time, competition also requires business to hold down wages and salaries and to pay out dividend and profit income relatively sparingly. Together, these pressures hold back both worker and capitalist consumption. The result is a tendency for productive capacity to expand faster than consumption. This means that there is no reason for investment to grow, for capital to achieve the required rate of accumulation, unless there are major pressures transforming the way people live. In the absence of such pressures, we may expect stagnation.

There are two dimensions of transformative innovations which are in fact two aspects of the same phenomenon. One dimension is solely technological, and the other points to changes in a population's entire way of life. Neither of these is part of a process of steady, balloon-like growth, nor is either automatically, or normally, generated by the fundamental capitalist dynamics identified by the mainstream textbooks. For this reason I have called the stimulus imparted by these innovations 'exogenous'. Let us look first at the technological dimension of transformative innovation.

This can be identified, after the owl of Minerva has spread its wings, by reflecting on some of the requirements of ideal-typical capitalism. Neoliberals correctly remind us that the bottom line is of course "freedom", primarily the freedom of capital to roam the world seeking markets, sources of cheap labor and investment opportunities. Microecenomic textbooks in fact tend to assume the perfect mobility of both capital and labor.

Let us focus on sources of power, which became especially important after the industrial revolution. Technological development resulted in the virtually total replacement of human and animal muscle power by inanimate sources of power, mainly water and steam. But reliance on water as a source of power places extreme limits on the mobility of capital, and hence on the possibilities of capitalist growth. Water power is site-specific, and the number of rivers and streams is limited. Moreover, the water had to be fast-running and productive facilities had to be located as far downstream as possible. And of course water power is only seasonally available. These restraints alone place an intolerable obstacle to the free and ongoing accumulation of capital. Here we find an overwhelming incentive to switch from water to steam power. This constitutes a huge stimulus to the accumulation of capital on a national scale.

Capitalism requires sources of power that are independent of nature and can be applied constantly wherever they are needed. And these are precisely what steam power made possible. It was now possible to set up productive facilities virtually anywhere; a major fetter to the accumulation of capital was removed. The universal mobility required by capital was now much more fully realized. At this point I want to emphasize that this technological /economic transformation was necessarily accompanied by profound social and cultural changes. For the steam engine's reduction of the seasonality of water power made possible a feature of work that is increasingly common on a global scale: the emergence of modern year-round work habits. With this change comes a dramatic transformation of our notions (and practices) of work and leisure, with all the consequences these have for the felt experience of everyday life. That is an instance of the second dimension of transformative innovation, i.e. its introduction of dramatic cultural changes, changes in the way populations live.

Much the same can be said for the subsequent shift to electrical power, which makes possible trolley cars, refrigerators (as opposed to what used to be called, in the U.S., "ice boxes"), ranges, toasters, radios, washing machines, fans, et al.

The railroad too is a transformative innovation par excellence. Consider the spectacular effects of railroad expansion: internal transport costs are sharply reduced; both new products and new geographical areas are brought into commercial markets; it is now possible to deliver exports to port with unprecedented efficiency, thereby encouraging the extensive development of the export sector; and impetus is provided to the development of the coal, iron and engineering industries. As with the steam engine, these technological and economic benefits wee necessarily accompanied by profound social and cultural changes. The railroads changed the way of life of the people by binding them as never before. The possibility now existed for mass production, mass consumption and indeed mass culture.

And of course the establishment of a national rail network absorbed massive amounts of investible capital, thereby spurring sustainable growth and offsetting the realization of the economic law that capitalist economies tend to stagnate. Apropos: in the latter third of the nineteenth century, railroad investment in the U.S. amounted to more than all investment in manufacturing industries.

And who can doubt that the transformative effects of the introduction of the automobile were epoch-making? The expansion of the automobile industry was the single most important force in the economic expansion of the 1920s. Car production increased threefold during this decade. (The automobile industry produced 12.7% of all manufactured output, employed 7.1% of all manufacturing workers, and paid 8.7% of all industrial wages.) Immediately after World War II the auto industry continued what was to be its breakneck expansion, and the possibilities created thereby constituted what was perhaps the most extensive transformation of the country's way of life in its history.

Consider the stimulus to capital accumulation and employment constituted by the following, each and all a consequence of the increasing automobilization of American society and culture: the migration of the population from the central city to the suburbs and exurbs (first made possible by the streetcar, before the major streetcar operations were bough and then quickly dismantled by the auto companies); the need for surfaced roads, road construction and maintenance, highway construction and maintenance (which had already accounted for 2% of GDP in 1929); the suburbanization of America, with the attendant construction of housing, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and more; the growth of shopping malls; the expansion of the credit industry; the spread of hotels and motels; and of course the growth of the tourism/travel industry. Never before had any population's way of living been transformed so profoundly in so short a period of time. And of course no one has failed to recognize that Americans' main symbol of their most precious possession, their personal freedom/liberty, is their ability to drive, solo, cars that have increasingly come to resemble tanks. Americans' liberty, embodied in the automobile, has become, literally, a commodity.

The long-term growth of the U.S. economy cannot be adequately explained or described without reference to these transformative innovations. None of these are required by the models of capital accumulation found in neoclassical, Keynesian or Marxian growth theory. After the civil war, growth in the last third of the nineteenth century was spurred primarily by the railroads. This stimulus fizzled, as railroad expansion began to slow down, around 1907, when, in spite of extensive electrification of urban (and even some rural) areas, the U.S. economy began a stretch of slow growth, which lasted until the outbreak of World War I. After the end of the War, the economy experienced a brief slump, which was followed by a period of fairly sustained expansion in the 1920s. The latter, as we have seen, was spurred mainly by the growth of the automobile industry. But the rate of growth of the automobile industry slowed down after 1926, and with it the rate of growth of almost all other manufacturing industries. And wages and employment had not risen as rapidly as production, productivity or profits.

In fact, the economic situation in the U.S. at the end of the 1920s bore a remarkable resemblance to the current economic situation in America. After 1926 overcapacity emerged in many key industries, the most significant of these being automobiles, textiles, and residential construction. Contractionary forces are cumulative: excess capacity caused business confidence to decline, with resulting cutbacks in spending on productive capacity in the consumer durables and capital goods industries. The economy was intensely unsound at the end of the 1920s, and the indications at the time were clear. Consumer demand was held down by a steadily growing inequality of income. Thus, an increasing percentage of total purchases were financed by credit in order to foster purchases of consumer durables. About seventy-five percent of all cars were sold on credit. Accordingly, both home mortgages and installment debt grew rapidly. This was the extension of a trend that had begun as early as 1922, when total personal debt began rising faster than disposable income. Thus, underconsumption and traces of excess capacity, key indicators of stagnationist forces, were in effect from the very beginning of the "roaring '20s". These tendencies became increasingly foregrounded over the course of the decade.

Excess capacity in key manufacturing industries was displacing workers from capital-intensive, technologically advanced sectors to industries relatively devoid of technological advance, i.e. service industries such as trade, finance and government. With capital unable to find sufficiently profitable investment opportunities in high-productivity industries, rampant speculative activity ensued, fostered by the growing concentration of income and therefore savings during the decade. More than two thirds of all personal savings was held by slightly over two percent of all families. The wanton optimism of the 1920s led those with substantial savings to want to get richer quickly, and with little effort. The stock market bubble that materialized at the end of the decade seemed to justify the expectations that fortunes could be made overnight in real estate and the stock market. When investors acted on these expectations, the existing bubble became bigger and hence more fragile. To those familiar with the current state of the U.S. economy, the present situation presents itself as history repeating itself -contra Marx- yet again as farce.

FROM GREAT DEPRESSION TO GOLDEN AGE TO NEOLIBERALISM

The mounting instabilities of the economy of the 1920s led to a Depression that was unresponsive to the Roosevelt administration's elevenfold increase in government spending. When U.S. entry into World War II finally brought about a resumption of growth, there was nonetheless an abiding fear among economists that once War spending ceased, the forces and tendencies that had generated the Depression might reassert themselves and exceptionally slow growth could resume. Instead, much to the surprise of many economists, American capitalism began the most sustained period of expansion in its entire history. The period from 1947 to 1973 has come to be called "The Golden Age", and appears, on the face of it, to be a fatal anomaly with respect to secular stagnation theory. After all, if the causes of the Great Depression were structural, and the exogenous stimulus provided by the War was what produced a resumption of growth, how was it possible that the economy, in the absence of powerful exogenous stimulus, exhibited an historically unprecedented period of long-term growth?

I have suggested that sustained national (as opposed to intra-national regional) growth has been engendered by the emergence of transformative innovations, and it is this kind of consideration that I believe offers the most plausible explanation both of Golden-Age expansion and of the petering out of this growth period and the resumption of (global) stagnation. Five stimuli to long-term growth were set in motion after the War, and these were for the most part exogenous in the sense indicated, and essentially limited. I will construe these stimuli as forces counteracting the tendency to stagnation. Once most of these stimuli had spent their potential, stagnationist tendencies re-asserted themselves, and overinvestment became evident once again. With profitable industrial investment opportunities in short supply, the economic surplus was invested instead in what became a vast proliferation of financial instruments. When the bubble created by this process finally burst, it was replaced with a housing bubble. Indeed a variety of bubbles, in financial assets, in housing, in credit, and a substantially overvalued dollar now threaten an historically unparalleled reassertion of the tendency to stagnation. But let us look first at the counteracting forces.

After the War, and as a result of wartime rationing, Americans had accumulated a very large fund of savings, and the time had come when these could finally be spent. This accounted for an immediate surge of consumption spending which temporarily averted the onset of recession. But the effectiveness of this source of spending was soon spent. What truly impelled the sustained growth of the Golden Age was 1) the resumption of a vast expansion of the automobile industry, and with it the stimulation of the broad range of investment and employment opportunities discussed above in connection with automobilization; 2) large-scale economic aid to Europe, which stimulated export demand; 3) a nationwide process of suburbanization, which, in tandem with the expansion of auto production, expanded significantly the demand for the output of every other major industry; 4) the emergence of what president Eisenhower christened the "military-industrial" complex, which provided additional stimulus to the industries most vulnerable to economic instability, the industries of DI, the capital goods sector; and finally 5) the steady and growing expansion of business and especially consumer credit, which in recent years has assumed elephantine proportions.

Three of these factors bear the two most important features of epoch-making innovations. The expansion of the auto industry, suburbanization, and the ever-increasing expansion and extension of credit all absorb massive amounts of investible surplus, and transform the mode of life of the entire population. In so doing they impart a massive push to the macro-growth process. The first two of these have their initial direct effect on investment. The third factor, the growing importance of credit, affects both investment and consumption, but the long-term trend of the credit industry in the U.S., evident now in hindsight, is much more significant in relation to consumption. There is now in the States a credit bubble of menacing proportions, with consumers now in debt to the tune of about107% of disposable income. The Marshall Plan (number 2 above) affected mainly and directly investment and employment, with boosts to consumption following thereupon. By the mid- to late-1970s, the employment-generating capacity of the military had declined. Washington determined, in the light of the defeat in Vietnam, that hi-tech warfare, which is of course technology- rather than labor-intensive, must replace traditional forms of subversion and aggression, in order to render less likely a repeat of the "Vietnam Syndrome."

It is worth mentioning that the military-industrial complex and the vast extension of consumer credit were what constituted what Joan Robinson called "bastard Keynesianism" in the United States. Recall that Keynes had insisted that fiscal and monetary policy were necessary but not sufficient conditions for avoiding stagnation. The tendency to stagnation could be offset for the long run only if some key industries were nationalized, and income redistributed. Nationalization would allow the State to offset lagging demand by providing cheap inputs to the private sector, thereby enabling lower prices. And redistributing income would transfer liquidity from those who had more than they could either consume or invest to those whose consumption demand was severely constrained.

American policymakers saw it as their challenge to reap the effects of nationalization and redistribution without actually nationalizing industries or redistributing income. The solution was ingenious: the military-industrial complex would be the functional equivalent of state-owned industries, and would, as noted above, stimulate the demand for the output of those very firms that produced capital goods. And the extension of consumer credit would allow working people to mortgage future years' incomes and spend more without a corresponding increase in either their private or their social wage.

As mentioned earlier, these forces counteracting the tendency to stagnation were all inherently limited and temporary. By the late 1960s, the automobile industry had achieved maturity, suburbanization had been accomplished, and aid to Europe had not only long ended, but had apparently created for America the economic equivalent of Frankenstein's monster. Europe and Japan were now formidable threats to U.S. economic hegemony. (Germany, for example, has overtaken the U.S. as an exporter of capital goods.) These three colossal absorbers of surplus were now no longer in operation. In the mid-1960s social spending had overtaken military spending as the larger share of government spending. And credit had begun to function as a supplement to declining real income, rather than a further addition to growing income.

These combined developments rendered the post-War counters to the realization of the tendency to stagnation obsolete. The result was the onset of stagnation not only in the U.S. but also worldwide. In America there has been overcapacity in autos, steel, shipbuilding and petrochemicals since the mid- to late-1970s.

This general picture is widely reflected in the business press. Business Week noted that "..supply outpaces demand everywhere, sending prices lower, eroding corporate profits and increasing layoffs" (Jan. 25, 1999, p. 118). The former chairman of General Electric claimed that "..there is excess capacity in almost every industry" (The New York Times, Nov. 16, 1997, p. 3). The Wall Street Journal noted that "..from cashmere to blue jeans, silver jewelry to aluminum cans, the world is in oversupply" (Nov. 30, 1998, p. A17). And The Economist fretted that " the gap between sales and capacity is "at its widest since the 1930s" (Feb. 20, 1999, p. 15). At this time excess capacity in steel is exceeding twenty percent, in autos it has fluctuated around 30%. And these figures look good in comparison to unused capacity numbers in the "industries of the future" of the "New Economy", semiconductors and telecommunications. Not long ago, ninety-seven percent of fibre optic capacity was idle.

MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS AND STAGNATION THEORY

Let us begin with the indisputable fact that the regime of neoliberalism has brought with it a substantial decline in economic growth. The most widely cited study on this issue, produced for the IECD by Angus Maddison, shows that the annual rate of growth of real global GDP fell from 4.9% in 1950-1973 to 3 % in 1973-1998, a drop of 39 %. Theoretical commitments can guide perception: neoliberal economists either denied or ignored the decline in global growth because of their reliance on Say's Law, that it is not possible for total demand to fall below full-capacity supply over the long run. In my earlier remarks I offered an explanation of sluggish growth rates since 1973. Many orthodox economics have done something similar: they have offered explanations of the initial rise in excess capacity. But what has not been explained is why global supply did not eventually adjust itself to the slower rate of demand growth, with the result that in the mid-1970s the global economy would enter a period of sluggish expansion. And it is worth mentioning that even Keynesian macro-theory is inadequate in this regard. It assumes that slow growth in aggregate demand will result in a proportionate decline in the growth of aggregate supply through its effect upon investment and therefore productivity.

An adequate explanation of the sustained character of excess capacity can be constructed from insights from Schumpeter, Marx and the contemporary economist James Crotty. The analysis that follows should be understood within the framework of the version of secular stagnation theory sketched above.

Before the shift to neoliberal policies by Jimmy Carter, Reagan and Thatcher, the global economy was already subject to downward pressures on demand growth resulting from two oil price shocks and the restrictive macro policy imposed in response to oil-price induced inflation. These impediments to demand growth were exacerbated by neoliberal policies. In combination, these forces led to a sharp rise in excess capacity in globally competing industries. At the same time competitive pressures were further intensified by the reduction of the market power of national oligopolies caused by the removal of protectionist barriers to the free movement of goods and money across national boundaries. Accordingly, competitive pressures between nations rose dramatically. In this context, normal stagnationist tendencies operated to further constrain global demand growth and further reproduce industrial capacity faster than either neoclassical or Keynesian theory could comprehend.

The Achilles Heel of neoclassical theory with respect to its inability to account for the persistence of overcapacity during the neoliberal period is its account of competition. So-called "perfect competition" is alleged to lead to maximum efficiency and the elimination of excess capacity. This claim appears inconsistent with the history of real-world, pre- and post-oligopolistic competition. Textbook-like competition has led to periodic market gluts or overproduction crises, price wars, plummeting profits, unbearable debt burdens and violent labor relations. Neoclassical theory banishes these demons with the aid of two assumptions which appear designed explicitly to make them impossible. The first assumption claims that production cost per unit rises rapidly as output increases, and the second that exit from low-profit industries is free or costless. If these assumptions were indeed true, then pure competition could not be shown to have stagnation- or depression-inducing effects. But these assumptions are, I shall suggest, false.

I will begin with the least plausible of these two assumptions. It states that there is free or costless exit from low-profit industries. But productive assets are typically immobile or irreversible, i.e., they are not liquid, and this forces a sizeable loss in the value of a firm's capital should it choose to leave an unprofitable industry. Whether they are sold on a second-hand market or reallocated to a different industry, productive assets will lose substantial value. Capital flowing out of the aerospace industry has been found to sell for one third of its replacement cost. Insolvent telecom firms in the U.S. have sold their assets for 20 cents on the dollar. And isn't this what one would expect? For it is usually poor profit prospects and/or great excess capacity that heighten a firm's incentive to leave an industry. But it is precisely those circumstances which deeply depress the price of industry-specific assets on the second-hand market, since the supply of these assets grows even as the demand for them has collapsed.

Before I turn to the slightly more plausible (yet still false) assumption -that unit production cost rises dramatically as output increases- I will outline the corollary of neoclassical theory itself which neoclassical economists seek to evade by introducing this assumption. The theory tells us that pure competition will force price down until it covers marginal cost. Now if unit production cost remained constant irrespective of the output level, then marginal production cost and average production cost per unit would be equal. When perfect competition forces price to equal marginal cost, total revenue will be equal to total production cost. But in this case there will be no revenue left over either to pay the "fixed" cost of maintaining capital stock in the face of depreciation or obsolescence, or to pay interest and/or dividends to investors. Thus, perfect competition is seen to cause the representative firm to suffer, in each production period, a loss that is equal to fixed costs. Keeping in mind that most important global industries have huge fixed costs, no industry could long survive the consequences of intense competition.

We seem to have found a tendency to stagnation or complete system breakdown where we would least expect to find it - in neoclassical theory itself. But the theory claims to have a response to this embarrassment. It simply denies the claim that appears to entail the undesired consequence, namely the claim that unit production cost remains constant no matter what the output level. Armed now with the (false) assumption that unit production cost rises rapidly as production increases, the conclusion is drawn that marginal cost and price are greater than average unit production cost. Thus, in equilibrium, the gap between price and average production cost is sufficiently large to cover all fixed costs. Let competition be as fierce as you wish, the typical firm will not lose money. Voila!

I have claimed that each of the rescuing assumptions discussed above is false. What would realistic assumptions about marginal cost and the reversibility of invested capital look like? To answer this question we must recognize the distinctive character of the dominant industries of global trade and investment. These industries include steel, autos, aircraft, shipbuilding, petrochemicals, consumer durables, electronics, semiconductors and banking. Studies of this type of industry suggest that marginal cost does not typically rise with output, with the rare exception of cases when the industry is producing near full capacity output. Marginal cost behaves as we would expect in cases of economies of scale: it remains constant or declines as capacity utilization rises. It follows that if free competition forces price to equal marginal cost in these industries, we should count on an ensuing wave of bankruptcies. Here again we see that neoclassical theory, corrected for unrealistic assumptions, seems to commit us to conceptualize mature capitalism as subject to the law of an inherent tendency to stagnation or worse.

The issue I am focusing on here turns on the dynamics of unrestricted competition among oligopolies in the context of economies of scale. The importance of economies of scale underscores the crucial similarity of all the dominant industries, including the new information-technology and telecommunications (ITC) industries. I stress this point because influential neoclassical economists have wanted to claim a significant difference, with respect to overcapacity problems, between the ITC industries and the other dominant industries. For purposes of explaining the persistence of excess capacity under neoliberalism, we want to remember that as scale economies grow, marginal costs fall as fixed costs per unit rise. Thus, the greater the economies of scale, the more destructive becomes the marginal cost pricing required by intense competition. With this in mind, we can more easily see that 1) these dynamics in especially conspicuous operation in the ITC industries, and 2) that such differences as there are between ITC and the other dominant oligopolies are insignificant for the analysis of secular stagnation theory, and of capitalist growth in general.

The key issue right now, recall, is the highly destructive consequences of the tendency of free competition among dominant industries to force price to equal marginal cost. That this is the case is easier to see in the ITC sector than in the other dominant industries. This is because in ITC marginal cost is often close to zero. Producing another copy of software or adding another customer to eBay is virtually costless. This has led many mainstream economists to argue that ITC industries are exempt from the laws of the neoclassical theory of perfect competition. Since ITC firms have marginal costs much lower than their large fixed costs, the argument goes, the possession of at least temporary monopoly power is the only guarantee of an incentive to produce anything at all. Without monopoly pricing power prices will be competed down to marginal cost and fixed costs will be unable to be covered. Thus, the motor of the "new economy" is said to be the constant pursuit of monopoly power. But, contrary to the neoclassical claim, none of this distinguishes significantly between ITC and other key industries. The drive to monopoly power is characteristic of all large corporations in the present age.

As Paul Sweezy argued in his Marshall Lectures, the typical firm in an oligopolized industry strives to be a monopolist. Each firm does this individually, and they all do it collectively. Individual firms seek monopoly status through the sales effort, where the firm's product is put forth as the best in the industry and as different from all the others. Firms within the same industry seek to approach monopoly status by collusion with respect to pricing policy, especially by agreeing to refrain from cutthroat price competition. For reasons developed at length above, therefore, all dominant firms, whether old- or new-economy operations, will tend to achieve monopoly status and to be chronically saddled with excess capacity.

A SCANDALOUSLY BRIEF LOOK AT SLOW-GROWTH CAPITALISM

We are in the midst of another unparalleled period of historical capitalism. Since the onset of stagnation, the median wage in the States has not changed at all for the vast majority of wage workers. Over the past six quarters the gowth of wage income has been negative. A brief sketch of the state of the U.S. economy toward the end of last year highlights features whose most plausible explanation may lie in the fact of secular stagnation. If stagnation theory is accurate, what follows is precisely what we would expect to find. The current state of the U.S. and the global economy is best understood, I believe, against the background too briefly elaborated above. Here is a picture of the U.S. economy today. The key to a healthy economy is job- and income-creating investment in capital goods, which in turn generates a virtuous cycle of further growth in investment, jobs and income. Ominously, the investment, growth, employment and income pictures are unprecedentedly dismal.

Compared to cyclical recoveries between 1949 and 1973, recoveries during the neoliberal period have been weak. Indeed, one or two of the post-1973 upturns has been weaker than some downturns during the Golden Age. Since the stock market collapse of four years ago, the situation has worsened. Growth rates since 2000 have been half their previous average. Even this weak performance required historically unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus: 13 rate cuts, three tax cuts, massive government deficits and record growth in money and credit.

Official figures mask the economy's most serious problems. Growth figures are annualized by U.S. statisticians. Thus, the much-touted 7.1% growth rate in the third quarter of 2003 was the one that would emerge after twelve months if the current trend were to continue. The same growth rate would have been reported in the eurozone as 1.8%. This is an uncommonly weak performance.

Investment data are equally misleading. Since the mid-1990s the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has adjusted upward actual business dollar outlays on computers and related equipment to take into account quality improvements (faster processors, bigger hard drives, more memory). BEA calls this "hedonic adjustment." Accordingly, the BEA estimates that business high-tech investment quadrupled between 1996 and 2002, from $70.9 to $283.7. But in actual dollars spent, the increase was only from $70.9 billion to $74.2 billion, very low by historic standards. The high-tech boom was both greatly exaggerated and misleading. After all, neither profits nor wages are taken in "hedonically adjusted" dollars.

The difference between real and hedonic outlays explains what would otherwise be a paradoxical feature of the years 2000-2003: government was reporting big increases in high-tech investment, while manufacturers were bemoaning declining sales.

Hedonic pricing has accounted for a steadily rising percentage of all reported capital investment. But if we look at actual dollars spent, we find that since 1998 the growth rate of business fixed investment has actually been declining. Real capital investment has in fact not been this weak since the Great Depression.

The fudging of investment figures also obscures the sorry state of the jobs market. The Commerce Department's figures on nonresidential investment for the third and fourth quarters of 2003 reported increases of, respectively, 12.8 and 9.6%. A closer look reveals that the "adjusted" hi-tech sector is the only bright spot, with production and capacity rising, respectively, 24.6% and 11.1% over the past year. But hi-tech is not where significant jobs increases are found. Employment in hi-tech has declined steadily through the so-called "recovery" since its 2001 peak.

In non-hi-tech manufacturing, where investment figures are not adjusted, production from January 2003 to January 2004 rose only 0.9%, while capacity actually declined -0.2%. This represents a record nineteen-straight-month decline in mainline manufacturing capacity. Since it is mainline manufacturing which employs almost 95% of all manufacturing workers, it comes as no surprise that for the first time since the Great Depression the economy has gone more than three years without creating any jobs.

The jobs crisis is even worse than it appears. Here again statistical sleight-of-hand, this time by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), obscures economic reality. Based on data gathered employing the "net birth/death adjustment," BLS announced in April, 2004, that the long-awaited jobs recovery had finally arrived. Nonfarm payrolls had allegedly surged by a whopping 308,000 in March, 2004. The birth/death model uses business deaths to "impute" employment from business births. Thus, as more businesses fail, more new jobs are imputed to have materialized through business births. This improbable statistical artefact accounts for about half of the reported 308,000 March, 2004 payroll increase.

The birth/death model is based on statistics covering 1998-2002. This was a period of explosive telecom and dot.com startups, quite unlike today's flat economic landscape. Thus, two thirds of the 947,000 new jobs BLS "imputed" for March-May, 2004, were never actually counted by BLS and never reported by any firm.

BlS's household and establishment surveys tell a more sobering story. March employment by private industry actually fell by 175,000, and the number of self-employed workers declined by 288,000. Without the simultaneous increase of 439,000 government jobs, the March job announcement would have been a calamity. And both average weekly hours and total hours worked declined markedly, even as (according to the dubious birth/death findings) the work force increased. This is the first time in U.S. history that net job growth has been negative 26 months into a recovery.

The wage and salary picture has also set grim records. During the current recovery, wage and salary growth has actually been negative, at -0.6%, in contrast to the average increase of 7.2% characteristic of this point into each of the other eight post-War recoveries. In fact, median family income in the post-War period exhibits an ominous trend. From 1947 to 1967, real median family income rose by 75%. But since 1967, it has grown by only 30%.

Labor's losses have been capital's gain: since the peak of the last recovery, in the first quarter of 2001, corporate profits have risen 62.2%, compared to the average of 13.9% at the same point in the last eight recoveries. Never in American history has any recorded recovery had such a lopsided balance in the distribution of income gains between labor and capital.

Given the dismal investment, wage/salary and employment pictures, how has it been possible for consumption to have risen to 71% of GDP in the early nineties, from its prior post-War average of 66%? The answer is a growth rate of consumer debt never seen before in America. For the first time ever, in March 2001, overall debt levels (mortgage debt plus consumer debt, mainly credit card debt and car loans) rose above annual disposable income. And from 2001 to 2004 consumer debt rose from 101% to 116% of disposable income. In the first half of 2004, consumer borrowing has been at its highest ever. It has declined slightly in the meantime. So has consumer spending. Should Americans decide to significantly increase their saving and service debts, while lowering correspondingly their consumption expenditures, the global economy could experience a major disruption.

Up until very recently, consumers had stepped up their borrowing to compensate for slowing income growth. Thus, such growth as the U.S. has experienced in recent years has been almost entirely consumption- and debt-driven. More fundamentally, it has been bubble-driven, fueled principally by bubbles in home values and credit.

Since the collapse of stock market/hi-tech bubbles in 2001, the illusory "wealth effect" has been sustained, and consumer spending thereby encouraged, by another bubble, the enormous inflation of house prices. The biggest increase in household debt came from home mortgage debt, especially home mortgage refinancing. With mortgage rates low and home prices rising, households' home equity ballooned. Bloated home equity then provided rising collateral to underwrite still more borrowing.

What makes this especially problematic is that over the last ten years, the average family has suffered under large increases in health premiums, housing costs, tuition fees and child care costs. As a result, households' and individuals' margin of protection against insolvency has dramatically declined. Filings for personal bankruptcy are approaching a record high.

There are indications that these weaknesses and imbalances in the economy are reaching a critical mass. The mortgage refi boom has fizzled, and consumer spending is beginning to decline. Two years ago the Fed's quarterly Beige Book reported a disturbing shift in the composition of credit spending: more and more families are using their credit cards to finance spending on essentials, such as food and energy.

It is no exaggeration to say that both the U.S. economy and the global economy are hugely dependent on the American consumer's increasing willingness to spend more than (s)he makes. (Imported goods have been a rising proportion of all goods purchased here.) Thus, a decline in U.S. consumer spending portends further declines in investment, jobs and income. From January to July of 2004, consumer spending rose at an annual rate of 2.8%, down from 3.3% in 2003 and 3.1 % in 2002. For perspective, during the boom years 1999-2000, growth rates were 5.1% and 4.7%.

Spending on consumer durables is the most significant indicator of healthy growth, and the drastically lower spending in this area is cause for alarm: spending for consumer durables was down to $23.5 billion in the first seven months of this year, in contrast to $71 billion on 2003 and $58 billion in 2002.

Should consumer spending continue to decline, the economy faces the genuine likelihood of a severe recession. Of course not a single American politician addresses this issue.

What is required is a shift from bubble-, debt-, and consumption-driven growth to investment- and income-driven growth. This in turn necessitates a decline in Americas principal export, jobs. Domestic job growth, a higher minimum wage, tax cuts aimed predominantly at low- and middle-income families, a sharp reduction in defense spending and a redirection of these funds to long-neglected and pressing social needs such as health care reform, the provision of universal pre-school, and across-the-board repair and upgrading of America's deteriorated infrastructure of roads, highways,tunnels and bridges, all these should be at the forefront of a Democratic administration's agenda. The restoration of infrastructure is especially labor intensive, and would generate an enormous number of productive jobs. And as a national project spearheaded by government initiative, government would emerge as a major employer.

All this si entirely incompatible with the overwhelming neoliberal bent of even the most "liberal" political leaders. It was after all Bill Clinton who urinated on the grave of Franklin Roosevelt when he proclaimed "the end of welfare as we know it".

As unfashionable as it is to suggest such a thing at a conference of economists, the only hope for the world's majority seems to be the revival of the kinds of mass movements witnessed here in May of 1968, and throughout the world during the 1960s. And time may be short.

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Alan Nasser is Professor emeritus of Political Economy and Philosophy at The Evergreen State College. His book, The “New Normal”: Persistent Austerity, Declining Democracy and the Globalization of Resistance will be published by Pluto Press in 2013. If you would like to be notified when the book is released, please send a request to [email protected]

Thomas Palley » Blog Archive » Explaining Stagnation Why it Matters

John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff clearly identify stagnation in their 2009 book The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (HERE). They conclude with a section titled “Back to the real economy: the stagnation problem” and they write:

“It was the reality of economic stagnation beginning in the 1970s, as heterodox economists Ricardo Belliofiore and Joseph Halevi have recently emphasized, that led to the emergence of “the new financialized capitalist regime,” a kind of “paradoxical financial Keynesianiasm” whereby demand in the economy was stimulated primarily “thanks to asset-bubbles” (Foster and Magdoff, p.129).”

My own 2009 New America Foundation report, “America’s Exhausted Paradigm: Macroeconomic Causes of the Financial Crisis and Great Recession”, concluded (HERE):

“The bottom line is macroeconomic failure rooted in America’s flawed economic paradigm is the ultimate cause of the financial crisis and Great Recession…. Now, there is a grave danger that policymakers only focus on financial market reform and ignore reform of America’s flawed economic paradigm. In that event, though the economy may stabilize, it will likely be unable to escape the pull of economic stagnation. That is because stagnation is the logical next stage of the existing paradigm.”

That report became a core chapter in my 2012 book, From Financial Crisis to Stagnation, the blurb for which reads (HERE):

“The U.S. economy today is confronted with the prospect of extended stagnation. This book explores why…. Financial deregulation and the house price bubble kept the economy going by making ever more credit available. As the economy cannibalized itself by undercutting income distribution and accumulating debt, it needed larger speculative bubbles to grow. That process ended when the housing bubble burst. The earlier post–World War II economic model based on rising middle-class incomes has been dismantled, while the new neoliberal model has imploded. Absent a change of policy paradigm, the logical next step is stagnation. The political challenge we face now is how to achieve paradigm change.”

The big analytical difference between Foster and Magdoff and myself is that they see stagnation as inherent to capitalism whereas I see it as the product of neoliberal economic policy. Foster and Magdoff partake of the Baran-Sweezy tradition that recommends deeper socialist transformation. I use a structural Keynesian framework that recommends reconstructing the income and demand generation mechanism via policies that include rebuilding worker bargaining power, reforming globalization, and reining in corporations and financial markets.

Larry Summers’ story of serial bubbles delaying stagnation has substantial similarities with both accounts but he avoids blaming either capitalism or neoliberalism. That is hardly surprising as Summers has been a chief architect of the neoliberal system and remains committed to it, though he now wants to soften its impact. Instead, he appeals to the black box of “secular stagnation” as ultimate cause and suggests fiscal policies that would ameliorate the demand shortage problem. However, those policies would not remedy the root cause of stagnation as they leave the economic architecture unchanged.

Though Summers and Krugman are relative late-comers to the stagnation hypothesis, they have still done a great public service by drawing attention to it. Now that stagnation has been identified, the real debate can begin.

The questions are what caused stagnation and what must be done to restore shared prosperity? There is no guarantee we will answer those questions correctly (my prior is mainstream economists will continue their track record of getting it wrong). But it is absolutely certain we will not get the right answer if we do not ask the right question. So thank you Larry Summers and Paul Krugman for putting stagnation on the table. Let the debate begin.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 24th, 2014 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Economics, U.S. Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Summers makes the idea of secular stagnation mainstream

Larry Summers (“Why Stagnation May Prove To Be The New Normal,” The Financial Times, December 15, 2013)  suggested the current "lack of demand" is not anomaly but a feature of the current sociao-economic system.  He suggested that we have been in the throes of stagnation for a long while, but that has been obscured by years of serial asset price bubbles. His article produced great public debate and marked the point when the idea became mainstream. The debate began with Summers’ speech to the IMF’s Fourteenth Annual Research Conference in Honor of Stanley Fisher. Summers noted that the panic of 2008 was “an event that in the fall of 2008 and winter of 2009 … appeared, by most of the statistics—GDP, industrial production, employment, world trade, the stock market—worse than the fall of 1929 and the winter of 1930. …”

Tha means the major defeat for “stabilization policies” that were supposed to smooth the capitalist industrial cycle and abolish panics. And the problem preceeds the 2008 panic itself.

The highly misleading unemployment rate calculated by the U.S. Department of Labor notwithstanding, there has been a massive growth in long-term unemployment in the U.S. in the wake of the crisis, as shown by the declining percentage of the U.S. population actually working.

The current situation also refute the key tenet of neoclassical economy (which is pseudo-religious doctrine, so that only increase fanatic devotion of its well-paid adherents). Neoclassical economists insisted that since a “free market economy” naturally tends toward an equilibrium with full employment of both workers and machines, the economy should should quickly return to “full employment” after a recession. This is not the case. See also Secular Stagnation Lawrence H. Summers

There were several uncessful attempts to explaint his situation from neoclassical positions. In Secular Stagnation, Coalmines, Bubbles, and Larry Summers - NYTimes.com Paul Krugman  emphasized the liquidity trap – zero lower bound to interest rates which supposedly prevents spending from reaching a level sufficient for full employment.

Larry’s formulation of our current economic situation is the same as my own. Although he doesn’t use the words “liquidity trap”, he works from the understanding that we are an economy in which monetary policy is de facto constrained by the zero lower bound (even if you think central banks could be doing more), and that this corresponds to a situation in which the “natural” rate of interest – the rate at which desired savings and desired investment would be equal at full employment – is negative.

And as he also notes, in this situation the normal rules of economic policy don’t apply. As I like to put it, virtue becomes vice and prudence becomes folly. Saving hurts the economy – it even hurts investment, thanks to the paradox of thrift. Fixating on debt and deficits deepens the depression. And so on down the line.

This is the kind of environment in which Keynes’s hypothetical policy of burying currency in coalmines and letting the private sector dig it up – or my version, which involves faking a threat from nonexistent space aliens – becomes a good thing; spending is good, and while productive spending is best, unproductive spending is still better than nothing.

Larry also indirectly states an important corollary: this isn’t just true of public spending. Private spending that is wholly or partially wasteful is also a good thing, unless it somehow stores up trouble for the future. That last bit is an important qualification. But suppose that U.S. corporations, which are currently sitting on a huge hoard of cash, were somehow to become convinced that it would be a great idea to fit out all their employees as cyborgs, with Google Glass and smart wristwatches everywhere. And suppose that three years later they realized that there wasn’t really much payoff to all that spending. Nonetheless, the resulting investment boom would have given us several years of much higher employment, with no real waste, since the resources employed would otherwise have been idle.

OK, this is still mostly standard, although a lot of people hate, just hate, this kind of logic – they want economics to be a morality play, and they don’t care how many people have to suffer in the process.

But now comes the radical part of Larry’s presentation: his suggestion that this may not be a temporary state of affairs.

2. An economy that needs bubbles?

We now know that the economic expansion of 2003-2007 was driven by a bubble. You can say the same about the latter part of the 90s expansion; and you can in fact say the same about the later years of the Reagan expansion, which was driven at that point by runaway thrift institutions and a large bubble in commercial real estate.

So you might be tempted to say that monetary policy has consistently been too loose. After all, haven’t low interest rates been encouraging repeated bubbles?

But as Larry emphasizes, there’s a big problem with the claim that monetary policy has been too loose: where’s the inflation? Where has the overheated economy been visible?

So how can you reconcile repeated bubbles with an economy showing no sign of inflationary pressures? Summers’s answer is that we may be an economy that needs bubbles just to achieve something near full employment – that in the absence of bubbles the economy has a negative natural rate of interest. And this hasn’t just been true since the 2008 financial crisis; it has arguably been true, although perhaps with increasing severity, since the 1980s.

One way to quantify this is, I think, to look at household debt. Here’s the ratio of household debt to GDP since the 50s:

There was a sharp increase in the ratio after World War II, but from a low base, as families moved to the suburbs and all that. Then there were about 25 years of rough stability, from 1960 to around 1985. After that, however, household debt rose rapidly and inexorably, until the crisis struck.

So with all that household borrowing, you might have expected the period 1985-2007 to be one of strong inflationary pressure, high interest rates, or both. In fact, you see neither – this was the era of the Great Moderation, a time of low inflation and generally low interest rates. Without all that increase in household debt, interest rates would presumably have to have been considerably lower – maybe negative. In other words, you can argue that our economy has been trying to get into the liquidity trap for a number of years, and that it only avoided the trap for a while thanks to successive bubbles.

And if that’s how you see things, when looking forward you have to regard the liquidity trap not as an exceptional state of affairs but as the new normal.

3. Secular stagnation?

How did this happen? Larry explicitly invokes the notion of secular stagnation, associated in particular with Alvin Hansen (pdf).  He doesn’t say why this might be happening to us now, but it’s not hard to think of possible reasons.

Back in the day, Hansen stressed demographic factors: he thought slowing population growth would mean low investment demand. Then came the baby boom. But this time around the slowdown is here, and looks real.

Think of it this way: during the period 1960-85, when the U.S. economy seemed able to achieve full employment without bubbles, our labor force grew an average 2.1 percent annually. In part this reflected the maturing of the baby boomers, in part the move of women into the labor force.

This growth made sustaining investment fairly easy: the business of providing Americans with new houses, new offices, and so on easily absorbed a fairly high fraction of GDP.

Now look forward. The Census projects that the population aged 18 to 64 will grow at an annual rate of only 0.2 percent between 2015 and 2025. Unless labor force participation not only stops declining but starts rising rapidly again, this means a slower-growth economy, and thanks to the accelerator effect, lower investment demand.

By the way, in a Samuelson consumption-loan model, the natural rate of interest equals the rate of population growth. Reality is a lot more complicated than that, but I don’t think it’s foolish to guess that the decline in population growth has reduced the natural real rate of interest by something like an equal amount (and to note that Japan’s shrinking working-age population is probably a major factor in its secular stagnation.)

There may be other factors – a Bob Gordonesque decline in innovation, etc.. The point is that it’s not hard to think of reasons why the liquidity trap could be a lot more persistent than anyone currently wants to admit.

4. Destructive virtue

If you take a secular stagnation view seriously, it has some radical implications – and Larry goes there.

Currently, even policymakers who are willing to concede that the liquidity trap makes nonsense of conventional notions of policy prudence are busy preparing for the time when normality returns. This means that they are preoccupied with the idea that they must act now to head off future crises. Yet this crisis isn’t over – and as Larry says, “Most of what would be done under the aegis of preventing a future crisis would be counterproductive.”

He goes on to say that the officially respectable policy agenda involves “doing less with monetary policy than was done before and doing less with fiscal policy than was done before,” even though the economy remains deeply depressed. And he says, a bit fuzzily but bravely all the same, that even improved financial regulation is not necessarily a good thing – that it may discourage irresponsible lending and borrowing at a time when more spending of any kind is good for the economy.

Amazing stuff – and if we really are looking at secular stagnation, he’s right.

Of course, the underlying problem in all of this is simply that real interest rates are too high. But, you say, they’re negative – zero nominal rates minus at least some expected inflation. To which the answer is, so? If the market wants a strongly negative real interest rate, we’ll have persistent problems until we find a way to deliver such a rate.

One way to get there would be to reconstruct our whole monetary system – say, eliminate paper money and pay negative interest rates on deposits. Another way would be to take advantage of the next boom – whether it’s a bubble or driven by expansionary fiscal policy – to push inflation substantially higher, and keep it there. Or maybe, possibly, we could go the Krugman 1998/Abe 2013 route of pushing up inflation through the sheer power of self-fulfilling expectations.

Any such suggestions are, of course, met with outrage. How dare anyone suggest that virtuous individuals, people who are prudent and save for the future, face expropriation? How can you suggest steadily eroding their savings either through inflation or through negative interest rates? It’s tyranny!

But in a liquidity trap saving may be a personal virtue, but it’s a social vice. And in an economy facing secular stagnation, this isn’t just a temporary state of affairs, it’s the norm. Assuring people that they can get a positive rate of return on safe assets means promising them something the market doesn’t want to deliver – it’s like farm price supports, except for rentiers.

Oh, and one last point. If we’re going to have persistently negative real interest rates along with at least somewhat positive overall economic growth, the panic over public debt looks even more foolish than people like me have been saying: servicing the debt in the sense of stabilizing the ratio of debt to GDP has no cost, in fact negative cost.

I could go on, but by now I hope you’ve gotten the point. What Larry did at the IMF wasn’t just give an interesting speech. He laid down what amounts to a very radical manifesto. And I very much fear that he may be right.

Supplement 1: Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit (reprint)

Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit - The Baffler

David Graeber

A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like. I am referring not to the standard false promises that children are always given (about how the world is fair, or how those who work hard shall be rewarded), but to a particular generational promise—given to those who were children in the fifties, sixties, seventies, or eighties—one that was never quite articulated as a promise but rather as a set of assumptions about what our adult world would be like. And since it was never quite promised, now that it has failed to come true, we’re left confused: indignant, but at the same time, embarrassed at our own indignation, ashamed we were ever so silly to believe our elders to begin with.

Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?

We are well informed of the wonders of computers, as if this is some sort of unanticipated compensation, but, in fact, we haven’t moved even computing to the point of progress that people in the fifties expected we’d have reached by now. We don’t have computers we can have an interesting conversation with, or robots that can walk our dogs or take our clothes to the Laundromat.

As someone who was eight years old at the time of the Apollo moon landing, I remember calculating that I would be thirty-nine in the magic year 2000 and wondering what the world would be like. Did I expect I would be living in such a world of wonders? Of course. Everyone did. Do I feel cheated now? It seemed unlikely that I’d live to see all the things I was reading about in science fiction, but it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t see any of them.

At the turn of the millennium, I was expecting an outpouring of reflections on why we had gotten the future of technology so wrong. Instead, just about all the authoritative voices—both Left and Right—began their reflections from the assumption that we do live in an unprecedented new technological utopia of one sort or another.

The common way of dealing with the uneasy sense that this might not be so is to brush it aside, to insist all the progress that could have happened has happened and to treat anything more as silly. “Oh, you mean all that Jetsons stuff?” I’m asked—as if to say, but that was just for children! Surely, as grown-ups, we understand The Jetsons offered as accurate a view of the future as The Flintstones offered of the Stone Age.

Surely, as grown-ups, we understand The Jetsons offered as accurate a view of the future as The Flintstones did of the Stone Age.

Even in the seventies and eighties, in fact, sober sources such as National Geographic and the Smithsonian were informing children of imminent space stations and expeditions to Mars. Creators of science fiction movies used to come up with concrete dates, often no more than a generation in the future, in which to place their futuristic fantasies. In 1968, Stanley Kubrick felt that a moviegoing audience would find it perfectly natural to assume that only thirty-three years later, in 2001, we would have commercial moon flights, city-like space stations, and computers with human personalities maintaining astronauts in suspended animation while traveling to Jupiter. Video telephony is just about the only new technology from that particular movie that has appeared—and it was technically possible when the movie was showing. 2001 can be seen as a curio, but what about Star Trek? The Star Trek mythos was set in the sixties, too, but the show kept getting revived, leaving audiences for Star Trek Voyager in, say, 2005, to try to figure out what to make of the fact that according to the logic of the program, the world was supposed to be recovering from fighting off the rule of genetically engineered supermen in the Eugenics Wars of the nineties.

By 1989, when the creators of Back to the Future II were dutifully placing flying cars and anti-gravity hoverboards in the hands of ordinary teenagers in the year 2015, it wasn’t clear if this was meant as a prediction or a joke.

The usual move in science fiction is to remain vague about the dates, so as to render “the future” a zone of pure fantasy, no different than Middle Earth or Narnia, or like Star Wars, “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” As a result, our science fiction future is, most often, not a future at all, but more like an alternative dimension, a dream-time, a technological Elsewhere, existing in days to come in the same sense that elves and dragon-slayers existed in the past—another screen for the displacement of moral dramas and mythic fantasies into the dead ends of consumer pleasure.

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Might the cultural sensibility that came to be referred to as postmodernism best be seen as a prolonged meditation on all the technological changes that never happened? The question struck me as I watched one of the recent Star Wars movies. The movie was terrible, but I couldn’t help but feel impressed by the quality of the special effects. Recalling the clumsy special effects typical of fifties sci-fi films, I kept thinking how impressed a fifties audience would have been if they’d known what we could do by now—only to realize, “Actually, no. They wouldn’t be impressed at all, would they? They thought we’d be doing this kind of thing by now. Not just figuring out more sophisticated ways to simulate it.”

That last word—simulate—is key. The technologies that have advanced since the seventies are mainly either medical technologies or information technologies—largely, technologies of simulation. They are technologies of what Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco called the “hyper-real,” the ability to make imitations that are more realistic than originals. The postmodern sensibility, the feeling that we had somehow broken into an unprecedented new historical period in which we understood that there is nothing new; that grand historical narratives of progress and liberation were meaningless; that everything now was simulation, ironic repetition, fragmentation, and pastiche—all this makes sense in a technological environment in which the only breakthroughs were those that made it easier to create, transfer, and rearrange virtual projections of things that either already existed, or, we came to realize, never would. Surely, if we were vacationing in geodesic domes on Mars or toting about pocket-size nuclear fusion plants or telekinetic mind-reading devices no one would ever have been talking like this. The postmodern moment was a desperate way to take what could otherwise only be felt as a bitter disappointment and to dress it up as something epochal, exciting, and new.

In the earliest formulations, which largely came out of the Marxist tradition, a lot of this technological background was acknowledged. Fredric Jameson’s “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” proposed the term “postmodernism” to refer to the cultural logic appropriate to a new, technological phase of capitalism, one that had been heralded by Marxist economist Ernest Mandel as early as 1972. Mandel had argued that humanity stood at the verge of a “third technological revolution,” as profound as the Agricultural or Industrial Revolution, in which computers, robots, new energy sources, and new information technologies would replace industrial labor—the “end of work” as it soon came to be called—reducing us all to designers and computer technicians coming up with crazy visions that cybernetic factories would produce.

End of work arguments were popular in the late seventies and early eighties as social thinkers pondered what would happen to the traditional working-class-led popular struggle once the working class no longer existed. (The answer: it would turn into identity politics.) Jameson thought of himself as exploring the forms of consciousness and historical sensibilities likely to emerge from this new age.

What happened, instead, is that the spread of information technologies and new ways of organizing transport—the containerization of shipping, for example—allowed those same industrial jobs to be outsourced to East Asia, Latin America, and other countries where the availability of cheap labor allowed manufacturers to employ much less technologically sophisticated production-line techniques than they would have been obliged to employ at home.

From the perspective of those living in Europe, North America, and Japan, the results did seem to be much as predicted. Smokestack industries did disappear; jobs came to be divided between a lower stratum of service workers and an upper stratum sitting in antiseptic bubbles playing with computers. But below it all lay an uneasy awareness that the postwork civilization was a giant fraud. Our carefully engineered high-tech sneakers were not being produced by intelligent cyborgs or self-replicating molecular nanotechnology; they were being made on the equivalent of old-fashioned Singer sewing machines, by the daughters of Mexican and Indonesian farmers who, as the result of WTO or NAFTA–sponsored trade deals, had been ousted from their ancestral lands. It was a guilty awareness that lay beneath the postmodern sensibility and its celebration of the endless play of images and surfaces.

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Why did the projected explosion of technological growth everyone was expecting—the moon bases, the robot factories—fail to happen? There are two possibilities. Either our expectations about the pace of technological change were unrealistic (in which case, we need to know why so many intelligent people believed they were not) or our expectations were not unrealistic (in which case, we need to know what happened to derail so many credible ideas and prospects).

Most social analysts choose the first explanation and trace the problem to the Cold War space race. Why, these analysts wonder, did both the United States and the Soviet Union become so obsessed with the idea of manned space travel? It was never an efficient way to engage in scientific research. And it encouraged unrealistic ideas of what the human future would be like.

Could the answer be that both the United States and the Soviet Union had been, in the century before, societies of pioneers, one expanding across the Western frontier, the other across Siberia? Didn’t they share a commitment to the myth of a limitless, expansive future, of human colonization of vast empty spaces, that helped convince the leaders of both superpowers they had entered into a “space age” in which they were battling over control of the future itself? All sorts of myths were at play here, no doubt, but that proves nothing about the feasibility of the project.

Some of those science fiction fantasies (at this point we can’t know which ones) could have been brought into being. For earlier generations, many science fiction fantasies had been brought into being. Those who grew up at the turn of the century reading Jules Verne or H.G. Wells imagined the world of, say, 1960 with flying machines, rocket ships, submarines, radio, and television—and that was pretty much what they got. If it wasn’t unrealistic in 1900 to dream of men traveling to the moon, then why was it unrealistic in the sixties to dream of jet-packs and robot laundry-maids?

In fact, even as those dreams were being outlined, the material base for their achievement was beginning to be whittled away. There is reason to believe that even by the fifties and sixties, the pace of technological innovation was slowing down from the heady pace of the first half of the century. There was a last spate in the fifties when microwave ovens (1954), the Pill (1957), and lasers (1958) all appeared in rapid succession. But since then, technological advances have taken the form of clever new ways of combining existing technologies (as in the space race) and new ways of putting existing technologies to consumer use (the most famous example is television, invented in 1926, but mass produced only after the war.) Yet, in part because the space race gave everyone the impression that remarkable advances were happening, the popular impression during the sixties was that the pace of technological change was speeding up in terrifying, uncontrollable ways.

Alvin Toffler’s 1970 best seller Future Shock argued that almost all the social problems of the sixties could be traced back to the increasing pace of technological change. The endless outpouring of scientific breakthroughs transformed the grounds of daily existence, and left Americans without any clear idea of what normal life was. Just consider the family, where not just the Pill, but also the prospect of in vitro fertilization, test tube babies, and sperm and egg donation were about to make the idea of motherhood obsolete.

Humans were not psychologically prepared for the pace of change, Toffler wrote. He coined a term for the phenomenon: “accelerative thrust.” It had begun with the Industrial Revolution, but by roughly 1850, the effect had become unmistakable. Not only was everything around us changing, but most of it—human knowledge, the size of the population, industrial growth, energy use—was changing exponentially. The only solution, Toffler argued, was to begin some kind of control over the process, to create institutions that would assess emerging technologies and their likely effects, to ban technologies likely to be too socially disruptive, and to guide development in the direction of social harmony.

While many of the historical trends Toffler describes are accurate, the book appeared when most of these exponential trends halted. It was right around 1970 when the increase in the number of scientific papers published in the world—a figure that had doubled every fifteen years since, roughly, 1685—began leveling off. The same was true of books and patents.

Toffler’s use of acceleration was particularly unfortunate. For most of human history, the top speed at which human beings could travel had been around 25 miles per hour. By 1900 it had increased to 100 miles per hour, and for the next seventy years it did seem to be increasing exponentially. By the time Toffler was writing, in 1970, the record for the fastest speed at which any human had traveled stood at roughly 25,000 mph, achieved by the crew of Apollo 10 in 1969, just one year before. At such an exponential rate, it must have seemed reasonable to assume that within a matter of decades, humanity would be exploring other solar systems.

Since 1970, no further increase has occurred. The record for the fastest a human has ever traveled remains with the crew of Apollo 10. True, the commercial airliner Concorde, which first flew in 1969, reached a maximum speed of 1,400 mph. And the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144, which flew first, reached an even faster speed of 1,553 mph. But those speeds not only have failed to increase; they have decreased since the Tupolev Tu-144 was cancelled and the Concorde was abandoned.

None of this stopped Toffler’s own career. He kept retooling his analysis to come up with new spectacular pronouncements. In 1980, he produced The Third Wave, its argument lifted from Ernest Mandel’s “third technological revolution”—except that while Mandel thought these changes would spell the end of capitalism, Toffler assumed capitalism was eternal. By 1990, Toffler was the personal intellectual guru to Republican congressman Newt Gingrich, who claimed that his 1994 “Contract With America” was inspired, in part, by the understanding that the United States needed to move from an antiquated, materialist, industrial mind-set to a new, free-market, information age, Third Wave civilization.

There are all sorts of ironies in this connection. One of Toffler’s greatest achievements was inspiring the government to create an Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). One of Gingrich’s first acts on winning control of the House of Representatives in 1995 was defunding the OTA as an example of useless government extravagance. Still, there’s no contradiction here. By this time, Toffler had long since given up on influencing policy by appealing to the general public; he was making a living largely by giving seminars to CEOs and corporate think tanks. His insights had been privatized.

Gingrich liked to call himself a “conservative futurologist.” This, too, might seem oxymoronic; but, in fact, Toffler’s own conception of futurology was never progressive. Progress was always presented as a problem that needed to be solved.

Toffler might best be seen as a lightweight version of the nineteenth-century social theorist Auguste Comte, who believed that he was standing on the brink of a new age—in his case, the Industrial Age—driven by the inexorable progress of technology, and that the social cataclysms of his times were caused by the social system not adjusting. The older feudal order had developed Catholic theology, a way of thinking about man’s place in the cosmos perfectly suited to the social system of the time, as well as an institutional structure, the Church, that conveyed and enforced such ideas in a way that could give everyone a sense of meaning and belonging. The Industrial Age had developed its own system of ideas—science—but scientists had not succeeded in creating anything like the Catholic Church. Comte concluded that we needed to develop a new science, which he dubbed “sociology,” and said that sociologists should play the role of priests in a new Religion of Society that would inspire everyone with a love of order, community, work discipline, and family values. Toffler was less ambitious; his futurologists were not supposed to play the role of priests.

Gingrich had a second guru, a libertarian theologian named George Gilder, and Gilder, like Toffler, was obsessed with technology and social change. In an odd way, Gilder was more optimistic. Embracing a radical version of Mandel’s Third Wave argument, he insisted that what we were seeing with the rise of computers was an “overthrow of matter.” The old, materialist Industrial Society, where value came from physical labor, was giving way to an Information Age where value emerges directly from the minds of entrepreneurs, just as the world had originally appeared ex nihilo from the mind of God, just as money, in a proper supply-side economy, emerged ex nihilo from the Federal Reserve and into the hands of value-creating capitalists. Supply-side economic policies, Gilder concluded, would ensure that investment would continue to steer away from old government boondoggles like the space program and toward more productive information and medical technologies.

But if there was a conscious, or semi-conscious, move away from investment in research that might lead to better rockets and robots, and toward research that would lead to such things as laser printers and CAT scans, it had begun well before Toffler’s Future Shock (1970) and Gilder’s Wealth and Poverty (1981). What their success shows is that the issues they raised—that existing patterns of technological development would lead to social upheaval, and that we needed to guide technological development in directions that did not challenge existing structures of authority—echoed in the corridors of power. Statesmen and captains of industry had been thinking about such questions for some time.

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Industrial capitalism has fostered an extremely rapid rate of scientific advance and technological innovation—one with no parallel in previous human history. Even capitalism’s greatest detractors, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, celebrated its unleashing of the “productive forces.” Marx and Engels also believed that capitalism’s continual need to revolutionize the means of industrial production would be its undoing. Marx argued that, for certain technical reasons, value—and therefore profits—can be extracted only from human labor. Competition forces factory owners to mechanize production, to reduce labor costs, but while this is to the short-term advantage of the firm, mechanization’s effect is to drive down the general rate of profit.

For 150 years, economists have debated whether all this is true. But if it is true, then the decision by industrialists not to pour research funds into the invention of the robot factories that everyone was anticipating in the sixties, and instead to relocate their factories to labor-intensive, low-tech facilities in China or the Global South makes a great deal of sense.

As I’ve noted, there’s reason to believe the pace of technological innovation in productive processes—the factories themselves—began to slow in the fifties and sixties, but the side effects of America’s rivalry with the Soviet Union made innovation appear to accelerate. There was the awesome space race, alongside frenetic efforts by U.S. industrial planners to apply existing technologies to consumer purposes, to create an optimistic sense of burgeoning prosperity and guaranteed progress that would undercut the appeal of working-class politics.

These moves were reactions to initiatives from the Soviet Union. But this part of the history is difficult for Americans to remember, because at the end of the Cold War, the popular image of the Soviet Union switched from terrifyingly bold rival to pathetic basket case—the exemplar of a society that could not work. Back in the fifties, in fact, many United States planners suspected the Soviet system worked better. Certainly, they recalled the fact that in the thirties, while the United States had been mired in depression, the Soviet Union had maintained almost unprecedented economic growth rates of 10 percent to 12 percent a year—an achievement quickly followed by the production of tank armies that defeated Nazi Germany, then by the launching of Sputnik in 1957, then by the first manned spacecraft, the Vostok, in 1961.

It’s often said the Apollo moon landing was the greatest historical achievement of Soviet communism. Surely, the United States would never have contemplated such a feat had it not been for the cosmic ambitions of the Soviet Politburo. We are used to thinking of the Politburo as a group of unimaginative gray bureaucrats, but they were bureaucrats who dared to dream astounding dreams. The dream of world revolution was only the first. It’s also true that most of them—changing the course of mighty rivers, this sort of thing—either turned out to be ecologically and socially disastrous, or, like Joseph Stalin’s one-hundred-story Palace of the Soviets or a twenty-story statue of Vladimir Lenin, never got off the ground.

After the initial successes of the Soviet space program, few of these schemes were realized, but the leadership never ceased coming up with new ones. Even in the eighties, when the United States was attempting its own last, grandiose scheme, Star Wars, the Soviets were planning to transform the world through creative uses of technology. Few outside of Russia remember most of these projects, but great resources were devoted to them. It’s also worth noting that unlike the Star Wars project, which was designed to sink the Soviet Union, most were not military in nature: as, for instance, the attempt to solve the world hunger problem by harvesting lakes and oceans with an edible bacteria called spirulina, or to solve the world energy problem by launching hundreds of gigantic solar-power platforms into orbit and beaming the electricity back to earth.

The American victory in the space race meant that, after 1968, U.S. planners no longer took the competition seriously. As a result, the mythology of the final frontier was maintained, even as the direction of research and development shifted away from anything that might lead to the creation of Mars bases and robot factories.

The standard line is that all this was a result of the triumph of the market. The Apollo program was a Big Government project, Soviet-inspired in the sense that it required a national effort coordinated by government bureaucracies. As soon as the Soviet threat drew safely out of the picture, though, capitalism was free to revert to lines of technological development more in accord with its normal, decentralized, free-market imperatives—such as privately funded research into marketable products like personal computers. This is the line that men like Toffler and Gilder took in the late seventies and early eighties.

In fact, the United States never did abandon gigantic, government-controlled schemes of technological development. Mainly, they just shifted to military research—and not just to Soviet-scale schemes like Star Wars, but to weapons projects, research in communications and surveillance technologies, and similar security-related concerns. To some degree this had always been true: the billions poured into missile research had always dwarfed the sums allocated to the space program. Yet by the seventies, even basic research came to be conducted following military priorities. One reason we don’t have robot factories is because roughly 95 percent of robotics research funding has been channeled through the Pentagon, which is more interested in developing unmanned drones than in automating paper mills.

A case could be made that even the shift to research and development on information technologies and medicine was not so much a reorientation toward market-driven consumer imperatives, but part of an all-out effort to follow the technological humbling of the Soviet Union with total victory in the global class war—seen simultaneously as the imposition of absolute U.S. military dominance overseas, and, at home, the utter rout of social movements.

For the technologies that did emerge proved most conducive to surveillance, work discipline, and social control. Computers have opened up certain spaces of freedom, as we’re constantly reminded, but instead of leading to the workless utopia Abbie Hoffman imagined, they have been employed in such a way as to produce the opposite effect. They have enabled a financialization of capital that has driven workers desperately into debt, and, at the same time, provided the means by which employers have created “flexible” work regimes that have both destroyed traditional job security and increased working hours for almost everyone. Along with the export of factory jobs, the new work regime has routed the union movement and destroyed any possibility of effective working-class politics.

Meanwhile, despite unprecedented investment in research on medicine and life sciences, we await cures for cancer and the common cold, and the most dramatic medical breakthroughs we have seen have taken the form of drugs such as Prozac, Zoloft, or Ritalin—tailor-made to ensure that the new work demands don’t drive us completely, dysfunctionally crazy.

With results like these, what will the epitaph for neoliberalism look like? I think historians will conclude it was a form of capitalism that systematically prioritized political imperatives over economic ones. Given a choice between a course of action that would make capitalism seem the only possible economic system, and one that would transform capitalism into a viable, long-term economic system, neoliberalism chooses the former every time. There is every reason to believe that destroying job security while increasing working hours does not create a more productive (let alone more innovative or loyal) workforce. Probably, in economic terms, the result is negative—an impression confirmed by lower growth rates in just about all parts of the world in the eighties and nineties.

But the neoliberal choice has been effective in depoliticizing labor and overdetermining the future. Economically, the growth of armies, police, and private security services amounts to dead weight. It’s possible, in fact, that the very dead weight of the apparatus created to ensure the ideological victory of capitalism will sink it. But it’s also easy to see how choking off any sense of an inevitable, redemptive future that could be different from our world is a crucial part of the neoliberal project.

At this point all the pieces would seem to be falling neatly into place. By the sixties, conservative political forces were growing skittish about the socially disruptive effects of technological progress, and employers were beginning to worry about the economic impact of mechanization. The fading Soviet threat allowed for a reallocation of resources in directions seen as less challenging to social and economic arrangements, or indeed directions that could support a campaign of reversing the gains of progressive social movements and achieving a decisive victory in what U.S. elites saw as a global class war. The change of priorities was introduced as a withdrawal of big-government projects and a return to the market, but in fact the change shifted government-directed research away from programs like NASA or alternative energy sources and toward military, information, and medical technologies.

Of course this doesn’t explain everything. Above all, it does not explain why, even in those areas that have become the focus of well-funded research projects, we have not seen anything like the kind of advances anticipated fifty years ago. If 95 percent of robotics research has been funded by the military, then where are the Klaatu-style killer robots shooting death rays from their eyes?

Obviously, there have been advances in military technology in recent decades. One of the reasons we all survived the Cold War is that while nuclear bombs might have worked as advertised, their delivery systems did not; intercontinental ballistic missiles weren’t capable of striking cities, let alone specific targets inside cities, and this fact meant there was little point in launching a nuclear first strike unless you intended to destroy the world.

Contemporary cruise missiles are accurate by comparison. Still, precision weapons never do seem capable of assassinating specific individuals (Saddam, Osama, Qaddafi), even when hundreds are dropped. And ray guns have not materialized—surely not for lack of trying. We can assume the Pentagon has spent billions on death ray research, but the closest they’ve come so far are lasers that might, if aimed correctly, blind an enemy gunner looking directly at the beam. Aside from being unsporting, this is pathetic: lasers are a fifties technology. Phasers that can be set to stun do not appear to be on the drawing boards; and when it comes to infantry combat, the preferred weapon almost everywhere remains the AK-47, a Soviet design named for the year it was introduced: 1947.

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The Internet is a remarkable innovation, but all we are talking about is a super-fast and globally accessible combination of library, post office, and mail-order catalogue. Had the Internet been described to a science fiction aficionado in the fifties and sixties and touted as the most dramatic technological achievement since his time, his reaction would have been disappointment. Fifty years and this is the best our scientists managed to come up with? We expected computers that would think!

Overall, levels of research funding have increased dramatically since the seventies. Admittedly, the proportion of that funding that comes from the corporate sector has increased most dramatically, to the point that private enterprise is now funding twice as much research as the government, but the increase is so large that the total amount of government research funding, in real-dollar terms, is much higher than it was in the sixties. “Basic,” “curiosity-driven,” or “blue skies” research—the kind that is not driven by the prospect of any immediate practical application, and that is most likely to lead to unexpected breakthroughs—occupies an ever smaller proportion of the total, though so much money is being thrown around nowadays that overall levels of basic research funding have increased.

Yet most observers agree that the results have been paltry. Certainly we no longer see anything like the continual stream of conceptual revolutions—genetic inheritance, relativity, psychoanalysis, quantum mechanics—that people had grown used to, and even expected, a hundred years before. Why?

Part of the answer has to do with the concentration of resources on a handful of gigantic projects: “big science,” as it has come to be called. The Human Genome Project is often held out as an example. After spending almost three billion dollars and employing thousands of scientists and staff in five different countries, it has mainly served to establish that there isn’t very much to be learned from sequencing genes that’s of much use to anyone else. Even more, the hype and political investment surrounding such projects demonstrate the degree to which even basic research now seems to be driven by political, administrative, and marketing imperatives that make it unlikely anything revolutionary will happen.

Here, our fascination with the mythic origins of Silicon Valley and the Internet has blinded us to what’s really going on. It has allowed us to imagine that research and development is now driven, primarily, by small teams of plucky entrepreneurs, or the sort of decentralized cooperation that creates open-source software. This is not so, even though such research teams are most likely to produce results. Research and development is still driven by giant bureaucratic projects.

What has changed is the bureaucratic culture. The increasing interpenetration of government, university, and private firms has led everyone to adopt the language, sensibilities, and organizational forms that originated in the corporate world. Although this might have helped in creating marketable products, since that is what corporate bureaucracies are designed to do, in terms of fostering original research, the results have been catastrophic.

My own knowledge comes from universities, both in the United States and Britain. In both countries, the last thirty years have seen a veritable explosion of the proportion of working hours spent on administrative tasks at the expense of pretty much everything else. In my own university, for instance, we have more administrators than faculty members, and the faculty members, too, are expected to spend at least as much time on administration as on teaching and research combined. The same is true, more or less, at universities worldwide.

The growth of administrative work has directly resulted from introducing corporate management techniques. Invariably, these are justified as ways of increasing efficiency and introducing competition at every level. What they end up meaning in practice is that everyone winds up spending most of their time trying to sell things: grant proposals; book proposals; assessments of students’ jobs and grant applications; assessments of our colleagues; prospectuses for new interdisciplinary majors; institutes; conference workshops; universities themselves (which have now become brands to be marketed to prospective students or contributors); and so on.

As marketing overwhelms university life, it generates documents about fostering imagination and creativity that might just as well have been designed to strangle imagination and creativity in the cradle. No major new works of social theory have emerged in the United States in the last thirty years. We have been reduced to the equivalent of medieval scholastics, writing endless annotations of French theory from the seventies, despite the guilty awareness that if new incarnations of Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, or Pierre Bourdieu were to appear in the academy today, we would deny them tenure.

There was a time when academia was society’s refuge for the eccentric, brilliant, and impractical. No longer. It is now the domain of professional self-marketers. As a result, in one of the most bizarre fits of social self-destructiveness in history, we seem to have decided we have no place for our eccentric, brilliant, and impractical citizens. Most languish in their mothers’ basements, at best making the occasional, acute intervention on the Internet.

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If all this is true in the social sciences, where research is still carried out with minimal overhead largely by individuals, one can imagine how much worse it is for astrophysicists. And, indeed, one astrophysicist, Jonathan Katz, has recently warned students pondering a career in the sciences. Even if you do emerge from the usual decade-long period languishing as someone else’s flunky, he says, you can expect your best ideas to be stymied at every point:

You will spend your time writing proposals rather than doing research. Worse, because your proposals are judged by your competitors, you cannot follow your curiosity, but must spend your effort and talents on anticipating and deflecting criticism rather than on solving the important scientific problems. . . . It is proverbial that original ideas are the kiss of death for a proposal, because they have not yet been proved to work.

That pretty much answers the question of why we don’t have teleportation devices or antigravity shoes. Common sense suggests that if you want to maximize scientific creativity, you find some bright people, give them the resources they need to pursue whatever idea comes into their heads, and then leave them alone. Most will turn up nothing, but one or two may well discover something. But if you want to minimize the possibility of unexpected breakthroughs, tell those same people they will receive no resources at all unless they spend the bulk of their time competing against each other to convince you they know in advance what they are going to discover.

In the natural sciences, to the tyranny of managerialism we can add the privatization of research results. As the British economist David Harvie has reminded us, “open source” research is not new. Scholarly research has always been open source, in the sense that scholars share materials and results. There is competition, certainly, but it is “convivial.” This is no longer true of scientists working in the corporate sector, where findings are jealously guarded, but the spread of the corporate ethos within the academy and research institutes themselves has caused even publicly funded scholars to treat their findings as personal property. Academic publishers ensure that findings that are published are increasingly difficult to access, further enclosing the intellectual commons. As a result, convivial, open-source competition turns into something much more like classic market competition.

There are many forms of privatization, up to and including the simple buying up and suppression of inconvenient discoveries by large corporations fearful of their economic effects. (We cannot know how many synthetic fuel formulae have been bought up and placed in the vaults of oil companies, but it’s hard to imagine nothing like this happens.) More subtle is the way the managerial ethos discourages everything adventurous or quirky, especially if there is no prospect of immediate results. Oddly, the Internet can be part of the problem here. As Neal Stephenson put it:

Most people who work in corporations or academia have witnessed something like the following: A number of engineers are sitting together in a room, bouncing ideas off each other. Out of the discussion emerges a new concept that seems promising. Then some laptop-wielding person in the corner, having performed a quick Google search, announces that this “new” idea is, in fact, an old one; it—or at least something vaguely similar—has already been tried. Either it failed, or it succeeded. If it failed, then no manager who wants to keep his or her job will approve spending money trying to revive it. If it succeeded, then it’s patented and entry to the market is presumed to be unattainable, since the first people who thought of it will have “first-mover advantage” and will have created “barriers to entry.” The number of seemingly promising ideas that have been crushed in this way must number in the millions.

And so a timid, bureaucratic spirit suffuses every aspect of cultural life. It comes festooned in a language of creativity, initiative, and entrepreneurialism. But the language is meaningless. Those thinkers most likely to make a conceptual breakthrough are the least likely to receive funding, and, if breakthroughs occur, they are not likely to find anyone willing to follow up on their most daring implications.

Giovanni Arrighi has noted that after the South Sea Bubble, British capitalism largely abandoned the corporate form. By the time of the Industrial Revolution, Britain had instead come to rely on a combination of high finance and small family firms—a pattern that held throughout the next century, the period of maximum scientific and technological innovation. (Britain at that time was also notorious for being just as generous to its oddballs and eccentrics as contemporary America is intolerant. A common expedient was to allow them to become rural vicars, who, predictably, became one of the main sources for amateur scientific discoveries.)

Contemporary, bureaucratic corporate capitalism was a creation not of Britain, but of the United States and Germany, the two rival powers that spent the first half of the twentieth century fighting two bloody wars over who would replace Britain as a dominant world power—wars that culminated, appropriately enough, in government-sponsored scientific programs to see who would be the first to discover the atom bomb. It is significant, then, that our current technological stagnation seems to have begun after 1945, when the United States replaced Britain as organizer of the world economy.

Americans do not like to think of themselves as a nation of bureaucrats—quite the opposite—but the moment we stop imagining bureaucracy as a phenomenon limited to government offices, it becomes obvious that this is precisely what we have become. The final victory over the Soviet Union did not lead to the domination of the market, but, in fact, cemented the dominance of conservative managerial elites, corporate bureaucrats who use the pretext of short-term, competitive, bottom-line thinking to squelch anything likely to have revolutionary implications of any kind.

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If we do not notice that we live in a bureaucratic society, that is because bureaucratic norms and practices have become so all-pervasive that we cannot see them, or, worse, cannot imagine doing things any other way.

Computers have played a crucial role in this narrowing of our social imaginations. Just as the invention of new forms of industrial automation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had the paradoxical effect of turning more and more of the world’s population into full-time industrial workers, so has all the software designed to save us from administrative responsibilities turned us into part- or full-time administrators. In the same way that university professors seem to feel it is inevitable they will spend more of their time managing grants, so affluent housewives simply accept that they will spend weeks every year filling out forty-page online forms to get their children into grade schools. We all spend increasing amounts of time punching passwords into our phones to manage bank and credit accounts and learning how to perform jobs once performed by travel agents, brokers, and accountants.

Someone once figured out that the average American will spend a cumulative six months of life waiting for traffic lights to change. I don’t know if similar figures are available for how long it takes to fill out forms, but it must be at least as long. No population in the history of the world has spent nearly so much time engaged in paperwork.

In this final, stultifying stage of capitalism, we are moving from poetic technologies to bureaucratic technologies. By poetic technologies I refer to the use of rational and technical means to bring wild fantasies to reality. Poetic technologies, so understood, are as old as civilization. Lewis Mumford noted that the first complex machines were made of people. Egyptian pharaohs were able to build the pyramids only because of their mastery of administrative procedures, which allowed them to develop production-line techniques, dividing up complex tasks into dozens of simple operations and assigning each to one team of workmen—even though they lacked mechanical technology more complex than the inclined plane and lever. Administrative oversight turned armies of peasant farmers into the cogs of a vast machine. Much later, after cogs had been invented, the design of complex machinery elaborated principles originally developed to organize people.

Yet we have seen those machines—whether their moving parts are arms and torsos or pistons, wheels, and springs—being put to work to realize impossible fantasies: cathedrals, moon shots, transcontinental railways. Certainly, poetic technologies had something terrible about them; the poetry is likely to be as much of dark satanic mills as of grace or liberation. But the rational, administrative techniques were always in service to some fantastic end.

From this perspective, all those mad Soviet plans—even if never realized—marked the climax of poetic technologies. What we have now is the reverse. It’s not that vision, creativity, and mad fantasies are no longer encouraged, but that most remain free-floating; there’s no longer even the pretense that they could ever take form or flesh. The greatest and most powerful nation that has ever existed has spent the last decades telling its citizens they can no longer contemplate fantastic collective enterprises, even if—as the environmental crisis demands— the fate of the earth depends on it.

What are the political implications of all this? First of all, we need to rethink some of our most basic assumptions about the nature of capitalism. One is that capitalism is identical with the market, and that both therefore are inimical to bureaucracy, which is supposed to be a creature of the state.

The second assumption is that capitalism is in its nature technologically progressive. It would seem that Marx and Engels, in their giddy enthusiasm for the industrial revolutions of their day, were wrong about this. Or, to be more precise: they were right to insist that the mechanization of industrial production would destroy capitalism; they were wrong to predict that market competition would compel factory owners to mechanize anyway. If it didn’t happen, that is because market competition is not, in fact, as essential to the nature of capitalism as they had assumed. If nothing else, the current form of capitalism, where much of the competition seems to take the form of internal marketing within the bureaucratic structures of large semi-monopolistic enterprises, would come as a complete surprise to them.

Defenders of capitalism make three broad historical claims: first, that it has fostered rapid scientific and technological growth; second, that however much it may throw enormous wealth to a small minority, it does so in such a way as to increase overall prosperity; third, that in doing so, it creates a more secure and democratic world for everyone. It is clear that capitalism is not doing any of these things any longer. In fact, many of its defenders are retreating from claiming that it is a good system and instead falling back on the claim that it is the only possible system—or, at least, the only possible system for a complex, technologically sophisticated society such as our own.

But how could anyone argue that current economic arrangements are also the only ones that will ever be viable under any possible future technological society? The argument is absurd. How could anyone know?

Granted, there are people who take that position—on both ends of the political spectrum. As an anthropologist and anarchist, I encounter anticivilizational types who insist not only that current industrial technology leads only to capitalist-style oppression, but that this must necessarily be true of any future technology as well, and therefore that human liberation can be achieved only by returning to the Stone Age. Most of us are not technological determinists.

But claims for the inevitability of capitalism have to be based on a kind of technological determinism. And for that very reason, if the aim of neoliberal capitalism is to create a world in which no one believes any other economic system could work, then it needs to suppress not just any idea of an inevitable redemptive future, but any radically different technological future. Yet there’s a contradiction. Defenders of capitalism cannot mean to convince us that technological change has ended—since that would mean capitalism is not progressive. No, they mean to convince us that technological progress is indeed continuing, that we do live in a world of wonders, but that those wonders take the form of modest improvements (the latest iPhone!), rumors of inventions about to happen (“I hear they are going to have flying cars pretty soon”), complex ways of juggling information and imagery, and still more complex platforms for filling out of forms.

I do not mean to suggest that neoliberal capitalism—or any other system—can be successful in this regard. First, there’s the problem of trying to convince the world you are leading the way in technological progress when you are holding it back. The United States, with its decaying infrastructure, paralysis in the face of global warming, and symbolically devastating abandonment of its manned space program just as China accelerates its own, is doing a particularly bad public relations job. Second, the pace of change can’t be held back forever. Breakthroughs will happen; inconvenient discoveries cannot be permanently suppressed. Other, less bureaucratized parts of the world—or at least, parts of the world with bureaucracies that are not so hostile to creative thinking—will slowly but inevitably attain the resources required to pick up where the United States and its allies have left off. The Internet does provide opportunities for collaboration and dissemination that may help break us through the wall as well. Where will the breakthrough come? We can’t know. Maybe 3D printing will do what the robot factories were supposed to. Or maybe it will be something else. But it will happen.

About one conclusion we can feel especially confident: it will not happen within the framework of contemporary corporate capitalism—or any form of capitalism. To begin setting up domes on Mars, let alone to develop the means to figure out if there are alien civilizations to contact, we’re going to have to figure out a different economic system. Must the new system take the form of some massive new bureaucracy? Why do we assume it must? Only by breaking up existing bureaucratic structures can we begin. And if we’re going to invent robots that will do our laundry and tidy up the kitchen, then we’re going to have to make sure that whatever replaces capitalism is based on a far more egalitarian distribution of wealth and power—one that no longer contains either the super-rich or the desperately poor willing to do their housework. Only then will technology begin to be marshaled toward human needs. And this is the best reason to break free of the dead hand of the hedge fund managers and the CEOs—to free our fantasies from the screens in which such men have imprisoned them, to let our imaginations once again become a material force in human history.


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[Jul 29, 2021] What Happens to Stocks and Cryptocurrencies When the Fed Stops Raining Money

Inflation also might be coming via the devaluation of the dollar.
Notable quotes:
"... These articles are great at d ..."
"... There are no safe options. TIPS are indexed to the CPI. The CPI is "adjusted" by weighting, substitution, and hedonics to preserve the mirage of low inflation. We are being forced to either speculate in the market or watch our savings get swallowed by inflation. ..."
May 08, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Zeb Long
These articles are great at describing the problem, but not so great at suggesting what investors ought to do to protect themselves.

TIPS are sometimes suggested, but if the govt is manipulating the reporting of inflation then TIPS aren't going to be much help. Gold and blue chip stocks... "diversify"? how about some articles that will explore strategies.

J James Robertson
There are no safe options. TIPS are indexed to the CPI. The CPI is "adjusted" by weighting, substitution, and hedonics to preserve the mirage of low inflation. We are being forced to either speculate in the market or watch our savings get swallowed by inflation.

[Jul 24, 2021] Higher Inflation Is Here to Stay for Years, Economists Forecast by Gwynn Guilford and Anthony DeBarros

Jul 11, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Strong economic rebound and lingering pandemic disruptions fuel inflation forecasts above 2% through 2023, survey finds. The U.S. inflation rate reached a 13-year high recently, triggering a debate about whether the country is entering an inflationary period similar to the 1970s. WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath looks at what consumers can expect next.

Americans should brace themselves for several years of higher inflation than they've seen in decades, according to economists who expect the robust post-pandemic economic recovery to fuel brisk price increases for a while.

Economists surveyed this month by The Wall Street Journal raised their forecasts of how high inflation would go and for how long, compared with their previous expectations in April.

The respondents on average now expect a widely followed measure of inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy components, to be up 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2021 from a year before. They forecast the annual rise to recede to slightly less than 2.3% a year in 2022 and 2023.

That would mean an average annual increase of 2.58% from 2021 through 2023, putting inflation at levels last seen in 1993.

"We're in a transitional phase right now," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics LLC. "We are transitioning to a higher period of inflation and interest rates than we've had over the last 20 years."

[Jul 24, 2021] U.S. inflation is still climbing and now higher labor costs are adding to the pressure

Cost of energy is climbing and that will increase the level of inflation.
The position of dollar is weakening too and that might contribution to inflation pressures.
Jul 24, 2021 | www.msn.com

The yearly rate of inflation leaped to a 13-year high of 3.6% in April, using the Fed's preferred PCE price gauge. By another measure inflation hit a 28-year peak .

Inflation likely rose sharply again in May. Economists polled by Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal predict the consumer price index rose 0.5% last month. The report comes out on Thursday. If so, that would push the yearly rate close to 5% from 4.2% in April.

Consumer prices have only risen that fast twice in the past 30 years, most recently in 2008 when the cost of a barrel of oil topped $150.

... ... ...

The central bank has stuck to its prediction that inflation will drop back toward 2% by next year. But many are beginning to wonder.

"The writing is on the wall: The Fed's temporary-inflation mantra is sounding more dated by the week," said senior economist Sal Guatieri of BMO Capital Markets.

[Jul 20, 2021] Problems with labor in oil sector are real

Jul 20, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

SHALLOW SAND IGNORED 07/19/2021 at 10:33 pm

Rasputin.

We have owned rigs. We could never keep an operator around long enough to make it worthwhile. We had a double drum and a single drum. Mud pump. Power swivel. Power tongs on both. Testing truck. The whole enchilada.

We sold them all to a man who had worked for someone else and then went out on his own. We gave him a good deal, and he did a lot of work for us. He still does work for us, but he can't find help that will stay.

We also owned a tank truck. Sold it also. It is currently parked, the man we sold it to cannot find a driver. He is a one horse tank truck driver. He turns down work all the time. We had to shut down a lease we haul water on for a few days when he got COVID. Thankfully he recovered.

All of us around here just cannot quite believe what is going on with the oilfield labor force. It is a perfect storm.

Meanwhile, most recently we paid $5.63 per foot for 2 3/8" steel tubing, which was under $3 a year ago. We priced a 115 fiberglass tank for $6,800, would have been $3,900 a year ago.

We had a couple wells down for a few weeks because we could neither get new nor rewound motors for them.

The man who owns the backhoes, trackhoes and cranes that does contract work for us is in his 70's and has great grandkids. He works in the field daily beside his son and grandson.

One of the last rig hands we had broke into our shop last winter. He got out of jail after a few weeks and immediately got a job in a local factory. Hope he stays clean. He was a good hand when he was, and had learned to operate a single drum also.

The prosecutor in our county announced the first six months of 2021 that 162 felony cases had been filed in our small county, that in 2019 the total for the year was 204 felonies, and that 33 of the 34 jail inmates were addicted to meth.

We do have one pumper now under 50. The rest are from 51 to 63. REPLY INGRAHAMMARK7 IGNORED 07/20/2021 at 1:34 am

How much land do you have left? At one well per section how many can you drill and how long it takes? That's when your business wraps up. REPLY RASPUTIN IGNORED 07/20/2021 at 2:40 am

Holy Moly SS

I guess the days of vertical doing things in house are gone. That labor mess is unreal. However, here in nowhere USA it is hard to find good help but you can usually find help. I was so surprised at some of the job turnover even during peak covid when some businesses were restricted and some essential. How are people living that have no jobs? Over the years I hired relatives that never got it, didn't stay sober and didn't see the long term upside. Maybe it's all about today for the younger generation.

Over the past year and a half I've been following your posts including labor issues. Were they so dreadful before covid and helicopter money? It might appear to the uninformed that training rig help. pumpers and the like is easy, but it's not. One small oops for man is one huge oops for you.

Perhaps, as we move away from the false narrative that you must have a college degree to get a good or high paying job, things will improve in the trades and the oilfield.

About 20 years ago I was visiting with a substantial independent stimulation company that was having labor issues. The head honcho lamented that they had already poached all of the young guys that grew up on farms and knew machinery, getting up early and how to work. Having known a few guys and what they earned they most likely didn't point their kids at basket weaving degrees.

Sure wish I had an answer for you. Personally, I'm shrinking down to a few wells close to the house/shop/yard, one of which I could walk to for daily exercise. However, I'll run my equipment myself as long as possible.

The best to you. REPLY SHALLOW SAND IGNORED 07/20/2021 at 5:53 am

Rasputin.

The number of basically "homeless" people living here in my part of very rural USA is startling. People aren't generally sleeping in the parks. They have duffle bags and backpacks and crash place to place.

We have the tremendous labor shortage, yet the public defender and conflicts public defender have over 400 clients combined. This in a county of a little less than 20K people. That right there is the labor force for a decent sized factory around here.

To qualify for the PD you must have income below 125% of federal poverty guidelines, which is very low. During the height of COVID, nothing got done with their cases because the PD's couldn't get ahold of them. Few have cell phones that are permanent (track phones) and few have permanent addresses. The jail is full so there aren't a lot of warrants being issued for the lower level crimes. So people haven't been showing up for their court cases for months/ over a year. Our county is going to send close to 100 people to prison this year, almost all for meth delivery. This is the situation all over rural USA. People who live here and aren't in the court system are oblivious to it until they get broken into or robbed (or have an addicted relative, which many do).

The primary reason for the labor shortage here is a combination of young people moving to larger towns/cities, a very large percentage of the working age population being addicted to meth (which is now being cut with heroin, fentanyl, etc) and the significant benefits that have been paid to not work. I hate to think of how many billions of borrowed money stimulus our future generations are now indebted with that went directly into the pockets of the foreign drug cartels.

As for the oilfield, add to that the hard work, not the greatest pay in the world at the bottom end (rig hands) the need to find people who can work unsupervised outdoors, and the young people being told the industry is dead and a job in that field will soon be gone. Finally, a ton of "old timers" simply retired during COVID.

Our country has no idea how dependent we are on labor from Mexico and Central America that keeps us alive. The only farm workers are Hispanic. However, most don't want to work in the oilfield either, it seems. We just harvested green beans, and all the crew were Hispanic. The same will be the case here shortly as we harvest watermelons and cabbage. If Trump were successful and closed the borders and sent everyone back, we would starve.

The largest oil company here shut in everything it owned when oil went negative. Unfortunately for them they laid off a lot of people. Many of their wells are still idle.

Maybe we are an outlier. But I doubt it. A decent amount people at the lower end of the labor force seem to have decided they aren't going to work, and offering a lot more $$ won't bring them back. Maybe they will come back when the government benefits end.

Even the prisons can't find employees. They pay $70K+ plus great benefits. Mentally difficult work though. Also, can't have a criminal record and cannot use drugs, even pot.

Keep in mind a large percentage of the USA population now smokes or ingests pot. That doesn't work well in a lot of industries where sobriety is mandatory.

The gas station I fill up at is offering a $300 signing bonus which is paid after 30 days of no unexcused absences. $13 and hour to start at the cash register. They can't find people to take that.

I'm rambling now, and I'll stop.

Surely there are some shale basin people reading this. Could any of you comment about whether there is a labor shortage in your shale basin? If there isn't, maybe we could persuade a few of them to come to our neck of the woods and work on the simple, shallow wells. Not a lot of traveling, no weekends unless you pump, and work is daytime only. KANSAS OIL IGNORED 07/20/2021 at 9:10 am

Shallow Sand –

I echo all of your sentiments. We are a small operator in Kansas, producing about 300 bbl/day in 13 various counties. We have approximately 50-60 bbl/day offline pushing 3 weeks. We're talking 8/8ths approximately $75,000 in revenue. Pre-Covid you could count on getting a pulling unit sometimes next day if you had a mechanical failure. Now it's 3-4 weeks. $20/hour for green rig hands evidently isn't enough to move the needle, whether it's because the work is too difficult, or it's easier to keep cashing the government checks. And by my count we are in a similar situation with oil field pumpers. We have 13 of them. 2 are 50s, and the rest are all over 60. I'm in my early 40s and my field superintendent is 56. He loves to work and will probably do so until he's 70-75. When he checks out will probably be when I check out. REPLY SHALLOW SAND IGNORED 07/20/2021 at 9:55 am

Kansas Oil.

Great to hear from you.

Thanks for confirming what we are experiencing.

The big question is whether this is also going on in the shale basins, primarily Permian. If it is, don't see how USA production grows much.

I drive across Kansas on both I 70 and the South Route through Wichita to the OK panhandle quite a bit. Always keep my eyes open for whether pumping units are moving or not.

I worry about whether the huge feed lots, hog facilities and packing plants out there can find enough help. People have no clue how much of the USA is fed from the TX, OK panhandles on up through Western KS and NE.

Hang in there!

[Jul 20, 2021] Higher Inflation Is Here to Stay for Years, Economists Forecast by Gwynn Guilford and Anthony DeBarros

Jul 11, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Strong economic rebound and lingering pandemic disruptions fuel inflation forecasts above 2% through 2023, survey finds. The U.S. inflation rate reached a 13-year high recently, triggering a debate about whether the country is entering an inflationary period similar to the 1970s. WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath looks at what consumers can expect next.

Americans should brace themselves for several years of higher inflation than they've seen in decades, according to economists who expect the robust post-pandemic economic recovery to fuel brisk price increases for a while.

Economists surveyed this month by The Wall Street Journal raised their forecasts of how high inflation would go and for how long, compared with their previous expectations in April.

The respondents on average now expect a widely followed measure of inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy components, to be up 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2021 from a year before. They forecast the annual rise to recede to slightly less than 2.3% a year in 2022 and 2023.

That would mean an average annual increase of 2.58% from 2021 through 2023, putting inflation at levels last seen in 1993.

"We're in a transitional phase right now," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics LLC. "We are transitioning to a higher period of inflation and interest rates than we've had over the last 20 years."

[Jul 15, 2021] Many Jobs Lost During the Coronavirus Pandemic Just Aren't Coming Back by Lauren Weber

when the tax rates increase even more, it just encourages automation or DIY (bring your own sheets to avoid paying the cleaning fee), which just grinds down growth rather than accelerates it.
Notable quotes:
"... Applebee's is now using tablets to allow customers to pay at their tables without summoning a waiter. ..."
Jul 15, 2021 | www.wsj.com
Companies see automation and other labor-saving steps as a way to emerge from the health crisis with a permanently smaller workforce
PHOTO: JIM THOMPSON/ZUMA PRESS

... ... ...

Economic data show that companies have learned to do more with less over the last 16 months or so. Output nearly recovered to pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2021 -- down just 0.5% from the end of 2019 -- even though U.S. workers put in 4.3% fewer hours than they did before the health crisis.

... ... ...

Raytheon Technologies Corp. RTX 0.08% , the biggest U.S. aerospace supplier by sales, laid off 21,000 employees and contractors in 2020 amid a drastic decline in air travel. Raytheon said in January that efforts to modernize its factories and back-office operations would boost profit margins and reduce the need to bring back all those jobs. The company said that most if not all of the 4,500 contract workers who were let go in 2020 wouldn't be called back.

... ... ..

Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. HLT -0.78% said last week that most of its U.S. properties are adopting "a flexible housekeeping policy," with daily service available upon request. "Full deep cleanings will be conducted prior to check-in and on every fifth day for extended stays," it said.

Daily housekeeping will still be free for those who request it... Unite Here, a union that represents hotel workers, published a report in June estimating that the end of daily room cleaning could result in an industrywide loss of up to 180,000 jobs...

... ... ...

Restaurants have become rapid adopters of technology during the pandemic as two forces -- labor shortages that are pushing wages higher and a desire to reduce close contact between customers and employees -- raise the return on such investments. ... Applebee's is now using tablets to allow customers to pay at their tables without summoning a waiter. The hand-held screens provide a hedge against labor inflation, said John Peyton, CEO of Applebee's parent Dine Brands Global Inc.

... ... ...

The U.S. tax code encourages investments in automation, particularly after the Trump administration's tax cuts, said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the impact of automation on workers. Firms pay around 25 cents in taxes for every dollar they pay workers, compared with 5 cents for every dollar spent on machines because companies can write off capital investments, he said.

... ... ...

-- Heather Haddon contributed to this article. D


DANIEL WEBER

A lot of employers were given Covid-aid to keep employees employed and paid in 2020. I assume somebody has addressed that obligation since it wasn't mentioned.

But, what happens to the unskilled workers whose jobs have been eliminated? Do Raytheon and Hilton just say "have a nice life on the streets"?

No, they will become our collective burdens.

I am all for technology and progress and better QA/QC and general performance. But the employers that benefit from this should use part of their gains in stock valuation to keep "our collective burdens" off our collective backs, rather than pay dividends and bonuses first.

Maybe reinvest in updated training for those laid off.

No great outcome comes free. BUT, as the article implies, the luxury of having already laid off the unskilled, likely leaves the employer holding all the cards.

And the wheel keeps turning...

Jeffery Allen
Question! Isn't this antithetical (reduction of employees) to the spirit and purpose of both monetary and fiscal programs, e.g., PPP loans (fiscal), capital markets funding facilities (monetary) established last year and current year? Employers are to retain employees. Gee, what a farce. Does anyone really care?
Philip Hilmes
Some of this makes sense and some would happen anyway without the pandemic. I don't need my room cleaned every day, but sometimes I want it. The wait staff in restaurants is another matter. Losing wait staff makes for a pretty bad experience. I hate having to order on my phone. I feel like I might as well be home ordering food through Grubhub or something. It's impersonal, more painful than telling someone, doesn't allow for you to be checked on if you need anything, doesn't provide information you don't get from a menu, etc. It really diminishes the value of going out to eat without wait staff.
al snow
OK I been reading all the comments I only have a WSJ access as the rate was a great deal.
Hotel/Motel started making the bed but not changing the sheets every day for many years I am fine as long as they offer trash take out and towel/paper every day
and do not forget to tip .
clive boulton
Recruiters re-post hard to fill job listings onto multiple job boards. I don't believe the reported job openings resemble are real. Divide by 3 at least.

[Jul 14, 2021] Cryptos are a collectors item just like fine art.

Jul 13, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

jsanprox , Jul 12 2021 1:59 utc | 103

Cryptos are a collectors item just like fine art. While money has value based on the military jack boot of empire which insures its value only with its domination of most countries and the violent destruction of any attempt to set up a transparent real money system exchangable for gold (Libya). A painting by a hot painter is worth 900k because there are a handful of people who will pay that for it, they're interest in it keeps the value at a certain level. Same with Bitcoin, but that interest is spread out to millions of people. If they all decide its worthless than it is, but why would they? I think a lot of these evidence free claims of hacking and ransom wear are made to devalue the currency that the ransom is paid in, it could have easily been paid in dollars via the internet, as cryptos is basiclly just that: a stand in for the dollar being moved to an account that is a number. Cryptos in this way provide a window to real capitalism. This to me is natural human evolution toward anarchism and a system of exchange that is transparent and based on people working together instead of militaristic violence. You can exchange cryptos for gold, rubles and yaun, so saying that it exist only based on the dollars supremacy is wrong.


Hoarsewhisperer , Jul 12 2021 3:36 utc | 104

What I know about computers and Bitcoin would get lost in a thimble. However, what I've learnt about the US Govt over the years tells me that this problem wouldn't be happening if the USG hadn't dedicated itself to micro-managing, and dominating the www - for Top Secret (i.e. bullshit) reasons.

I was appalled when I learnt that the USG had made strong encryption ILLEGAL, and dumbfounded when I first heard about the PRISM 'co-operative' USG-mandated www surveillance program. Edward Snowden's NSA revellations confirmed that the USG has KILLED computer security for crappy, feeble-minded reasons.

It's more or less par for the course that the USG blames other entities for its own prying and mischief-making. Were it not for the USG placing LOW limits on computer security, we would all have access to Pretty Good Privacy and pro-active, timely means of detecting and defending and/or evading malware.

Stonebird , Jul 12 2021 8:31 utc | 107

Jörgen Hassler | Jul 12 2021 5:32 utc | 105

"They mostly never see the piece, it's kept in climate controlled storage."

This is standard practice. Using "Ports Franches" as in several Swiss towns including Geneva. Perfectly legal as they are not IN the country (for Tax purposes).

However, this is not really for "drug" cartels but just a way of transferring assets from one rich person to another. Many ownership deals are made inside the Port Franche itself, without the need to transport the work outside. There is a limitation on the time a work can be left inside the building, but I believe all that they have to do is drive more or less "round the block" and re-enter it. I'm a bit hazy about that detail, as I do not have a spare Rembrandt to verify this personally.

****

jsanprox | Jul 12 2021 1:59 utc | 103

A painting by a hot painter is worth 900k because there are a handful of people who will pay that for it, they're interest in it keeps the value at a certain level.

The primary dealers agree on a common price level for a stated painter. These paintings can even be used as collateral when borrowing money.
Other painters do not have a "guaranteed" price level but one based on auction values (ie. What the customer is willing to pay.)
The Primary dealers are a very small group who control all the big art fairs and which other dealers are allowed to sell or deal there -.
There are "rules" about "participation" (not sure about the terminology here), that various dealers will have made between themseves. ie. There is a split-up of profits following certain agreed parts. Woe unto a dealer that doesn't pay his part. (OK; personal note here, I once accidently fell foul of the "cartel" because a gallery owner with my works, had not paid "out" on a large sum that he had made on another artist he was representing. They decided to "get" him.)

****

Ransomware ; Why are people getting all hot and bothered about Corporations paying money in Bitcoin? Happens all the time.

Another Personal anecdote ; About five years ago I started recieving emails from unknown "people", Real first names, with an attachement. As normal, these go into trash without being opened (or into a folder I have, called "dodgy spam?) About 20 + of them. Next I recieved one email saying (in French) " I know your little secret, and if you don't want everyone else to know, pay (about €30) a "Small" sum into the following bitcoin account xxxxx."

In France you can " porter plainte" , ie, denounce and start a legal process against an "unknown person, or persons". This is to protect yourself, and is run by the Government/police. In my case, never having opened any of the "attachments", I don't know what they were, probably porn of some sort. IF they had been opened there would have been a suspicion that I was a "willling" victim. (The first question asked by the Gov. Site was "Have you paid them/it, and by how much". in my case - none)

******

Haven't heard anything since. BUT, Bitcoin was already being used for criminal purposes.

Nobody had to find a super-secret backdoor into my computer. Just buy a data base with working emails - Corporations use them all the time to send publicity. By looking at the address, and other more or less freely available information, they can target people, by location, age, etc.


vk , Jul 12 2021 15:47 utc | 113

@ Posted by: jsanprox | Jul 12 2021 1:59 utc | 103

But you only know a Picasso is worth a lot because you can calculate it in USD terms (ultimately: you can also calculate in any other fiat currency, but, since we live in the USD Standard, we only know a certain amount of fiat currency is worth if we can convert it to USDs). The USD is still the unit of accountancy and the means of payment even in the art market.

You can never pay your taxes or fill the tank of your car with a Picasso - you would have to sell it for USDs, and use these USDs to pay for everything you need. Sure, two megarich persons could exchange art between them as some kind of permute, but that doesn't constitute a societal unity (because billionares don't exist in a vacuum). It is a particularity of society, not society itself.

The same is true with crypto. And with gold. And with platinum. And with whatever else you want. It is a myth crypto is "fake" just because it is purely digital: the material specification of the thing doesn't matter for its status of money. Being digital is the lesser of crypto's problems. Crypto's main problem is the very economic foundations of its existence, which ensure it will never be money.

And no: subdividing crypto wouldn't solve it - they tried it with gold when capitalism lived through the Gold Standard (when it was on its death throes) and there's a limit to this. Even if the digital era allowed it, you would then simply have fiat money system with extra steps and double the brutality, because then the power to issue money would rest with few private individual hoarders of the crypto with no legal accountability and responsibility; it would be a dystopian "Pirates of the Caribbean" meets "Mad Max" scenario.

[Jul 08, 2021] Tucker Carlson Responds To Unmasking In Blistering Monologue, Discusses With Glenn Greenwald

Jul 08, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Update (2130ET): Tucker Carlson responded to today's 'unmasking' - namely an Axios report which accuses him of trying to set up an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I'm an American citizen, I can interview whoever I want - and plan to," said the Fox News host.

Presented without further comment, along with Carlson's sit-down with journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Edward Snowden revelations about domestic spying and other illicit activities conducted by the US government.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1412936005305475077

Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a bombshell broadcast that an NSA whistleblower had approached him with evidence that the National Security Agency has been spying on his communications , with the intent to leak his emails to the press and 'take this show off the air.'

Today, Carlson told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo that the emails have in fact been leaked to journalists - at least one of whom has contacted him for what we presume is an upcoming article on their contents.

"I was in Washington for a funeral last week and ran into someone I know well, who said ' I have a message for you ,' and then proceeded to repeat back to me details from emails and texts that I sent, and had told no one else about. So it was verified. And the person said 'the NSA has this,' and that was proven by the person reading back the contents of the email, 'and they're going to use it against you.'

To be blunt with you, it was something I would have never said in public if it was wrong, or illegal, or immoral. They don't actually have anything on me, but they do have my emails. So I knew they were spying on me, and again, to be totally blunt with you - as a defensive move, I thought 'I better say this out loud.'"

"Then, yesterday, I learned that - and this is going to come out soon - that the NSA leaked the contents of my email to journalists in an effort to discredit me. I know, because I got a call from one of them who said 'this is what your email was about.'

So, it is not in any way a figment of my imagination. It's confirmed. It's true. They aren't allowed to spy on American citizens - they are. I think more ominously, they're using the information they gather to put leverage and to threaten opposition journalists, people who criticize the Biden administration. It's happening to me right now..."

" This is the stuff of banana republics and third-world countries ," replied Bartiromo.

[Jul 08, 2021] New Jobless Claims Hold Near Pandemic Low, as Number on Benefits Falls

Jul 08, 2021 | www.wsj.com

What recovery ? What booming economy if they layoff people? Look like stagnation of the US economy continues unabated...

Initial unemployment claims, a proxy for layoffs, rose by 2,000 the week ended July 3, from a pandemic low the prior week, to a seasonally adjusted 373,000 , the Labor Department said Thursday.

... ... ...

...some unemployed workers say they are still struggling to find jobs. Marcellus Rowe of Dunwoody, Ga., said he has been unable to find a job that pays a salary near the roughly $50,000 he made working for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. Mr. Rowe, 29 years old, lost that job in November 2019, before the pandemic, but was able to stay on unemployment benefits because of the federal extensions. Georgia cut off those benefits late last month.

Mr. Rowe said he has applied for more than 100 jobs, including security-guard and customer-service roles. He said the few employers who have responded to him said he doesn't have the experience needed for the positions. Mr. Rowe, a Black man, added that he thinks his race is a reason he has been passed over for some jobs.

me title=

He said he is reluctant to take a minimum-wage job because $7.25 an hour wouldn't be enough to pay his rent and other bills. He sought housing assistance from his county when benefits expired.

"The job market isn't looking so great," he said. "I'm looking for suitable jobs, but it's not happening here in Georgia."

[Jul 08, 2021] Grocery Stores Are Masking Price Hikes Via Shrinkflation

Jul 08, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

The continued decline in Treasury yields has prompted many short-sighted arm-chair analysts to declare that the Fed was right about inflationary pressures being "transitory". Of course, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen herself admitted, a little inflation is necessary for the economy to function long term - because without "controlled inflation," how else will policymakers inflate away the enormous debts of the US and other governments.

As policymakers prepare to explain to the investing public why inflation is a "good thing", a report published this week by left-leaning NPR highlighted a phenomenon that is manifesting in grocery stores and other retailers across the US: economists including Pippa Malmgren call it "shrinkflation". It happens when companies reduce the size or quantity of their products while charging the same price, or even more money.

As NPR points out, the preponderance of "shrinkflation" creates a problem for academics and purveyors of classical economic theory. "If consumers were the rational creatures depicted in classic economic theory, they would notice shrinkflation. They would keep their eyes on the price per Cocoa Puff and not fall for gimmicks in how companies package those Cocoa Puffs."

me title=

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However, research by behavioral economists has found that consumers are "much more gullible than classic theory predicts. They are more sensitive to changes in price than to changes in quantity." It's one of many well-documented ways that human reasoning differs from strict rationality (for a more comprehensive review of the limitations of human reasoning in the loosely defined world of behavioral economics, read Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow").

Just a few months ago, we described shrinkflation as "the oldest trick in the retailer's book" with an explanation of how Costco was masking a 14% price hike by instead reducing the sheet count in its rolls of paper towels and toilet paper.

NPR's report started with the story of Edgar Dworsky, who monitors grocery store shelves for signs of "shrinkflation".

A couple of weeks ago, Edgar Dworsky walked into a Stop & Shop grocery store in Somerville, Mass., like a detective entering a murder scene.

He stepped into the cereal aisle, where he hoped to find the smoking gun. He scanned the shelves. Oh no, he thought. He was too late. The store had already replaced old General Mills cereal boxes -- such as Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs -- with newer ones. It was as though the suspect's fingerprints had been wiped clean.

Then Dworsky headed toward the back of the store. Sure enough, old boxes of Cocoa Puffs and Apple Cinnamon Cheerios were stacked at the end of one of the aisles. He grabbed an old box of Cocoa Puffs and put it side by side with the new one. Aha! The tip he had received was right on the money. General Mills had downsized the contents of its "family size" boxes from 19.3 ounces to 18.1 ounces.

Dworsky went to the checkout aisle, and both boxes -- gasp! -- were the same price. It was an open-and-shut case: General Mills is yet another perpetrator of "shrinkflation."

It's also being used for paper products, candy bars and other packaged goods.

Back in the day, Dworsky says, he remembers buying bigger candy bars and bigger rolls of toilet paper. The original Charmin roll of toilet paper, he says, had 650 sheets. Now you have to pay extra for "Mega Rolls" and "Super Mega Rolls" -- and even those have many fewer sheets than the original. To add insult to injury, Charmin recently shrank the size of their toilet sheets. Talk about a crappy deal.

Shrinkflation, or downsizing, is probably as old as mass consumerism. Over the years, Dworsky has documented the downsizing of everything from Doritos to baby shampoo to ranch dressing. "The downsizing tends to happen when manufacturers face some type of pricing pressure," he says. For example, if the price of gasoline or grain goes up.

The whole thing brings to mind a scene from the 2000s comedy classic "Zoolander".

[Jul 04, 2021] How Many Have Died From COVID Vaccines

As of July 2, 2021 out of 4456 total deaths attributed to vaccination (of them 1890 after vaccination with Pfizer), it looks like there were at least 36 death of people aged less then 30 years after vaccination with Pfizer vaccine (out of 61 total). Around 136 millions were fully vaccinated,.
Other sources list higher figure (6113) CDC- 6,113 DEAD Following COVID-19 Injections ("Besides the 6,113 deaths reported, there are 5,172 permanent disabilities, 6,435 life threatening events, and 51,558 emergency room visits." )so my method of extracting those data from VAERS database might be wrong or not all death are reported to VAERS.
Another 5 young people were crippled but survived (67 total).
Jul 03, 2021 | undercurrents723949620.wordpress.com

In a May 5, 2021, Fox News report, Tucker Carlson asked the question no one is really allowed to ask: "How many Americans have died after taking the COVID vaccine?" 1

Mefobills says: July 4, 2021 at 1:24 am GMT • 1.8 hours ago • 300 Words ↑ @RoatanBill

Then there's not selling Syria the latest S#00 system to help keep Israel out of Syrian skies. That tells me he's using Syria for personal / State gain and that is where he's wrong. That's what makes him just another politician.

I totally get it, there are things that are puzzling to those of us in the audience, watching the moves from afar.

An advanced S-300 or S-400 system could paint every F-16 as it took off from Israel. This would be a red line for Israel and would bring in Uncle Shmuel.

Syria (and by extension Russia) has been allowing Israel to overfly her territory and bomb Hezbollah installations.

It's puzzling – why would you allow a foreign power to bomb your territory, especially if you have S-300's. The answer must be that Syria and Russia are holding back on purpose for reasons only known to them. I can speculate, in that they don't want to give away military capability unless the war goes hot.

Think about the situation now, as opposed to the 90's. Russia's military has been modernized; Military physical fitness is up by 30% (better nutrition?); Foreign exchange is in good shape; the economy is modernizing; food production is up – so Russia is no longer food insecure; oil can be extracted at prices that Saudi cannot compete with; the Artic route is opening up; national economy is more diversified thanks to the western sanctions; Yamal LNG will be fueling Asia; Nordstream will be fueling Europe.

[Jul 03, 2021] Plato oil: Russia edition

Jun 30, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

POLLUX IGNORED 06/28/2021 at 5:46 am

Russia plans to cut oil exports from its Western ports by 22% in July vs June – schedule

"On a daily basis, loadings will decline by 22% in July compared to the current month, Reuters calculations showed." REPLY POLLUX IGNORED 06/28/2021 at 1:37 pm

Russia struggles to raise oil output despite price rally -sources

"Russian oil production has declined so far in June from average levels in May despite a price rally in oil market and OPEC+ output cuts easing, two sources familiar with the data told Reuters on Monday.

Russia's compliance with the OPEC+ oil output deal was at close to 100% in May, which means the state is about to exceed its target in June.

Two industry sources said that lower output levels may be due to technical issues some Russian oil producers are experiencing with output at older oilfields." RON PATTERSON IGNORED 06/28/2021 at 2:38 pm

Yes, they are definitely experiencing issues with their older oilfields, it's called depletion. But that decline is only 33,000 bpd or .3%. But your post above that one says exports in the third quarter will decline by 22%. What gives there?

Their decline in May was 23,000 bpd. OVI IGNORED 06/28/2021 at 3:25 pm

Ron

I just checked the Russia site and they have revised up their original May estimate. It is one week later than the original. Production is now down 9,000 b/d. RON PATTERSON IGNORED 06/28/2021 at 4:50 pm

Yeah, they revised it up by 14,000 pbd. A pittance. Now they are down only 9,000 bpd instead of 23,000. Nothing to get excited about. Basically, they were flat in May. JEAN-FRANÇOIS FLEURY IGNORED 06/28/2021 at 4:09 pm

"Russia plans to decrease oil loadings from its Western ports to 6.22 million tonnes for July compared to 7.75 million tonnes planned for loading in June, the preliminary schedule showed." 7,75 x 10^6 – 6,62 x 10^6 = 1130000 t. 1130000×7,3/30 = 274966 b/d. Therefore, these decrease of oil export suggests a decrease of production of 274966 b/d. Precedently, it was announced that oil exports of Russia would decrease of 7,2 % for the period July-September or a decrease of 308222 b/d. Therefore, it's coherent. https://www.zawya.com/mena/en/markets/story/Russias_quarterly_crude_oil_exports_to_drop_72_schedule-TR20210617nL5N2NY2IQX8/?fbclid=IwAR0ZjvwzjVS427CbUAzTL1vJfqog7R8CDwaJAvI3uUdaw_0z5S5l_57SGFY I notice that it concerns the "Western ports", therefore the exports toward EU and USA. Well, EU is also the main customer of Russia with 59% of the oil exports of Russia. RON PATTERSON IGNORED 06/28/2021 at 4:59 pm

Western Syberia is where all the very old supergiant fields are. They produce 60% of Russian crude oil. Or at least they used to. LIGHTSOUT IGNORED 06/29/2021 at 2:11 am

Ron
If one of the West Siberian giants is rolling over in the same way as Daquing did, things could get very interesting very quickly. RON PATTERSON IGNORED 06/29/2021 at 7:24 am

Four of Russia's five giant fields are in Western Siberia. The fifth is in the Urals, on the European side. All five have been creamed with infill horizontal drilling for almost 20 years. All five are on the verge of a steep decline. Obviously, one and possibly more have already hit that point.

This linked article below is 18 months old but there is a chart here that shows where Russia's oil is coming from. Notice only a tiny part is coming from Eastern Siberia, the hope for Russia's oil future. Those hopes are fading fast.

The Worrying Truth About Russia's Oil Industry EULENSPIEGEL IGNORED 06/29/2021 at 6:32 am

As I have written a few months ago: When you reduce output voluntarily for a longer time, all the nickel nursers from accounting and controlling will cut you any investing in over capacity you can't use at the moment. That works like this in any industry.

So you have to drill these additional infills and extensions after the cut is liftet. And this will take time, while fighting against the ever lasting decline.

[Jul 03, 2021] Larry Summers Sees 5% Inflation At The End Of 2021

Notable quotes:
"... This is not the first time Summers has predicted that the firehose of fiscal and monetary stimulus will unleash soaring inflation. While career economists at the White House and Fed - who have peasants doing their purchases for them - urge Americans to ignore the current hyperinflation episode, saying that the recent inflation surge will soon pass, Summers has been unique among his fellow Democrats in predicting that massive monetary and fiscal stimulus alongside the reopening of the economy would spark considerable price pressures. ..."
"... Asked how financial markets may behave in the rest of 2021, Summers said "there will probably be more turbulence" as traders react to faster inflation by pushing up bond yields. "We've got a lot of processing ahead of us in markets," he said. ..."
Jul 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

It may not be quite hyperinflation - loosely defined as pricing rising at a double-digit clip or higher - but if former Treasury Secretary and erstwhile democrat Larry Summers is right, it will be halfway there in about six months.

One day after Bank of America warned that the coming "hyperinflation" will last at least 2 and as much as 4 years - whether or not one defines that as transitory depends on whether one has a Federal Reserve charge card to fund all purchases in the next 4 years - Larry Summers, who is this close from being excommunicated from the Democrat party, predicted inflation will be running "pretty close" to 5% at the end of this year and that bond yields will rise as a result over the rest of 2021.

Considering that consumer prices already jumped 5% in May from the previous year, his forecast is not much of a shock.

Speaking on Bloomberg TV, Summers said that "my guess is that at the end of the year inflation will, for this year, come out pretty close to 5%," adding that "it would surprise me if we had 5% inflation with no effect on inflation expectations." If he is right, the recent reversal in one-year inflation expectations which dipped from 4.6% to 4.2% according to the latest UMich consumer sentiment survey, is about to surge to new secular highs.

This is not the first time Summers has predicted that the firehose of fiscal and monetary stimulus will unleash soaring inflation. While career economists at the White House and Fed - who have peasants doing their purchases for them - urge Americans to ignore the current hyperinflation episode, saying that the recent inflation surge will soon pass, Summers has been unique among his fellow Democrats in predicting that massive monetary and fiscal stimulus alongside the reopening of the economy would spark considerable price pressures.

Asked how financial markets may behave in the rest of 2021, Summers said "there will probably be more turbulence" as traders react to faster inflation by pushing up bond yields. "We've got a lot of processing ahead of us in markets," he said.

Ironically, Summers - who now teaches at Harvard University whose president he was not too long ago when he hung out with his buddy Jeffrey Epstein...


Plus Size Model 5 hours ago (Edited)

Exactly!! Not only that, it's not just the FED that is contributing to inflation. We can also blame the SEC and the DOJ. I've never seen a Zero Hedge article blaming stock price appreciation or buybacks for causing inflation or increasing the money supply. The DOJ never enforces antitrust laws. The FBI never investigates money laundering from overseas that creates artificial real estate appreciation that inflates the money supply when people take out HELOC. There are other oversight bodies that, in a sane world, would not allow foreign investment in real estate. Bitcoin and others are a new tool that is being used to manipulate the money supply. It's comical how coins always go down when the little guys are holding the bag and go up when Coinbase executives want to cash out.

Another thing, this artificial chip shortage, punitive tariffs, and new tax laws are also adding to price increases.

Totally_Disillusioned 1 hour ago

Speculative investments have NEVER been included in the forumulation of CPI that determines inflation rate.

Revolution_starts_now 6 hours ago

Larry Summers is a tool.

gregga777 5 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Banksters in 2010's: We've got to revise how we calculate inflation again to conceal it from the Rubes.

Banksters in 2020: Ho Lee Fuk! Gun the QE engine! Pedal to the metal! Monetize all of the Federal government's debt! Keep those stonks zooming upwards!

Banksters in 2021: Ho Lee Fuk! The Rubes have caught onto our game! Gun the QE engine! Keep that pedal to the metal! Maybe the Rubes won't notice housing prices going up 20% per year?

Summer 2021: Ho Lee Fuk! They are noticing Inflation! We'd better revise how we calculate inflation again to conceal it from the Rubes.

[Jul 03, 2021] Plato oil, Abu Dabi edition

Jul 03, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

POLLUX IGNORED 06/28/2021 at 5:42 am

Adnoc imposes deeper cuts to September crude exports

"Abu Dhabi's state-owned Adnoc has informed customers that it will implement cuts of around 15pc to client nominations of all its crude exports loading in September, even as the Opec+ coalition considers further relaxing production quotas.

It was unclear why Adnoc is deepening reductions for its September-loading term crude exports, with the decision coming ahead of the next meeting of Opec+ ministers scheduled for 1 July when the group is expected to decide on its production strategy for at least one month"

[Jul 03, 2021] The Fed Faces The Greatest Risk In Its History- An Economic Crisis Accompanied By Inflation - ZeroHedge

Jul 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

The Fed Faces The Greatest Risk In Its History: An Economic Crisis Accompanied By Inflation BY TYLER DURDEN SUNDAY, JUN 27, 2021 - 11:58 AM

From Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

The fed funds rate was 9.75% when I arrived in the pit, Chicago 1989. US GDP that year was 3.7%, unemployment 5.4%, and inflation 4.6%. But the S&L crisis was widening, as they do. So the Fed cut rates 75bps. Back then, the Fed certainly didn't signal its intentions. In fact, the Fed neither confirmed nor denied what changes it made to interest rates even after it made them. Unimaginable, right? So we had to guess Fed policy changes by observing what happened in money markets. I obviously didn't understand any of it, after all, I was an economics major.

The S&P 500 loved that 75bp rate cut more than it feared the S&L crisis, so stocks took out the 1987 peak, making new highs in the autumn of '89. There was still tons of brain damage from '87, and traders are notorious for being superstitious, so the pit was nervy that October. When the S&P plunged -6% out of the blue on October 13th, the trading pit went utterly berserk. I was so happy in that market mayhem. Soon enough, the Fed cut rates another 75bps. The S&P 500 grinded back up through the end of my first year, but never made new highs.

me title=

Pause Unmute Duration 0:33 / Current Time 0:06 Loaded : 40.09% Fullscreen Up Next

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.469.0_en.html#goog_756093940 Wall Street Bounces, After Selloff Fed Boosts Liquidity NOW PLAYING SoftBank Said to Plan $14 Billion Sale of Alibaba Shares China's Companies Have Worst Quarter on Record, Beige Book Says U.S.-Saudi Oil Alliance Under Consideration, Brouillette Says ETF Volumes Surge in Current Market Environment Investors Have Given Up on a V-Shaped Recovery, BNY's Young Cautions

Despite the 150bps of rate cuts in 1989, and the record S&P highs, the economy soon entered a recession. The Fed kept cutting rates for a couple years, ending at an impossibly low rate of 3.00% in Feb 1992. US GDP was 3.5%, unemployment 7.4% and inflation was 2.9%. I had made my way to London that year as a prop trader, just in time for the Exchange Rate Mechanism collapse. The Europeans had created a system to ensure stability, certainty. And this naturally encouraged traders and investors to build massive leveraged investment positions.

When systems designed to ensure stability fail, which they inevitably do when applied to things as unstable as economies, the consequences are profound. As Europe worked through its ERM collapse, Greenspan held fed funds at 3.00% for what seemed an eternity. No one could understand anything he ever said, so you can't blame him for promising certainty, stability. But people see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, believe what they want to believe. And soon, folks discovered how to make money by betting rates would never change, much as they had bet on stability and certainty ahead of the ERM collapse.

US GDP in 1994 was 4.0%, unemployment was 5.5% and inflation 2.7%. Greenspan hiked rates 25bps to 3.25% in Feb 1994. Employment gains had been on a tear, and yet, somehow no one expected that rate hike. Naturally, he hadn't pre-signaled a change. The bond market collapsed . Most people don't think bond markets can crash, but that's only because they haven't traded long enough to live through one. Like all crashes, that one happened for all sorts of complex reasons, but the biggest was that the system was highly leveraged to a certain future.

Each interest rate cycle has been different of course. Over the decades, the Fed became increasingly transparent. That transformation was surely well-intended, seeking to reduce the risk of creating crises like that '94 crash. But it is impossible to create certainty without also increasing fragility - that's how markets work . As the system became more fragile, it required increasingly aggressive Fed intervention with each downturn. The process has been reflexive. Now markets move based on what policy changes the Fed says it may make in 18-30 months.

* * *

Anecdote :

Congress mandated that the Federal Reserve promote maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. That was in 1978. Unsurprisingly, the nation was reeling from years of high unemployment, rapidly inflating prices, and soaring long-term interest rates. In the decades since, the Fed has done a remarkably good job at meeting their specific mandate. But like all systems built to create certainty, stability, it has simultaneously produced profound fragility. This is most clearly seen in the need for ever more dramatic monetary interventions with each cyclical downturn.

Less obvious is the rising political fragility which is increasingly destabilizing the nation . Having tasked the Fed with producing economic prosperity by any monetary means necessary, our politicians then stepped away. They stopped governing effectively, fanned the flames of animosity, shielded from the adverse economic consequences of their dereliction of duty.

In each economic crisis, it was the Fed that provided leadership, forestalling collapse, but at a compounding cost. Now the nation approaches a point of peak economic and political fragility . And while it is easy to condemn the Fed for having enabled the decades of dysfunction, it is the political system that must bear the blame. But no matter, the Fed must soldier on, like a magnificent machine, attempting the impossible, delivering certainty without fragility, spinning ever faster to stand still.

And the greatest risk it now faces in meeting its mandate is an economic crisis accompanied by inflation. Such a crisis would force it to choose between a return to orthodox policy and the consequent defaults that would devastate asset prices, or a currency collapse and runaway inflation that rebalances the value of our assets and liabilities. Without a determined improvement in our politics, it is increasingly likely that we must endure the latter, followed by the former. And this drama will surely play out in the decade ahead.

[Jul 02, 2021] Mom details 12-year-old daughter's extreme reactions to COVID vaccine, says she's now in wheelchair

Notable quotes:
"... De Garay explained that after receiving the second coronavirus vaccine dose, her daughter started developing severe abdominal and chest pains. Maddie described the severity of the pain to her mother as "it feels like my heart is being ripped out through my neck." ..."
"... The Ohio mother added her daughter experienced additional symptoms that included gastroparesis, nausea, vomiting, erratic blood pressure, heart rate, and memory loss. "She still cannot digest food. She has a tube to get her nutrition," De Garay said to Carlson. "She also couldn't walk at one point, then she could I don't understand why and [physicians] are not looking into why...now she's back in a wheelchair and she can't hold her neck up. Her neck pulls back." ..."
"... De Garay said she had joined a Facebook support group to help people cope with the unexpected events happening from the coronavirus vaccine trial, and she said it was shut down. "It's just not right," she said. ..."
"... Sen. Ron Johnson , R-Wis., has sent letters to the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna seeking answers about adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine following a June 28 press conference with affected individuals. The conference in Milwaukee included stories from five people, including De Garay ..."
"... The Wisconsin senator noted that some adverse reactions were detailed in Pfizer's and Moderna's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use authorization (EUA) memorandums following early clinical trials ..."
"... Those reactions included nervous system disorders and musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders for the Pfizer EUA memo. The Moderna EUA memo included reactions such as nervous system disorders, vascular disorders and musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders, according to Johnson's letter. ..."
"... You missed the whole point! The issue is that the government is not acknowledging and and not reporting these side effects of the vaccine. Instead they are lying about the safety. If you are young, you are much more likely to get sick and injured by the vaccine than COVID. ..."
"... anyone under 25 should not get the vaccine because the percentages are about the same or worse having a negative impact from the vaccine versus the actual virus. ..."
"... With the Covid19 mortality rate among the children why even vaccinate? As a Chemist / Biochemist I learned that there is always unintended consequences. ..."
"... Vaccines may have long term effects that are not known today. ..."
"... The CDC's generic guidelines for getting a vaccine for any reason are very restrictive, first being, the disease you're getting vaccinated against has to pose a real, immediate danger. CV-19 poses virtually no danger whatsoever to kids under 14. Of all the deaths of children 14 and under in the last 18 months only .8% of them had a case of CV-19. That's 367 deaths out of over 46,000. (Data from CDC website) Forcing them to take an experimental vaccine that they absolutely don't need is criminal. As a parent, allowing your child to take the vaccine without spending a few hours doing some research is criminally negligent. This is like some terribly warped Kafka novel but it's real. ..."
Jul 02, 2021 | www.foxnews.com

Mom details 12-year-old daughter's extreme reactions to COVID vaccine, says she's now in wheelchair Stephanie De Garay shares story with Tucker Carlson By Stephanie Giang-Paunon | Fox News Facebook Twitter Flipboard Comments Print Email

https://static.foxnews.com/static/orion/html/video/iframe/vod.html?v=20210701170943#uid=fnc-embed-1 Mom describes daughter's bad COVID vaccine reaction, says she's now in wheelchair

Mother Stephanie De Garay joins 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' to discuss how her 12-year-old daughter volunteered for the Pfizer vaccine trial and is now in a wheelchair.

An Ohio mother is speaking out about her 12-year-old daughter suffering extreme reactions and nearly dying after volunteering for the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine trial.

Stephanie De Garay told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Thursday that after reaching out to multiple physicians they claimed her daughter, Maddie De Garay, couldn't have become gravely ill from the vaccine.

"The only diagnosis we've gotten for her is that it's conversion disorder or functional neurologic symptom disorder, and they are blaming it on anxiety," De Garay told Tucker Carlson. "Ironically, she did not have anxiety before the vaccine."

De Garay explained that after receiving the second coronavirus vaccine dose, her daughter started developing severe abdominal and chest pains. Maddie described the severity of the pain to her mother as "it feels like my heart is being ripped out through my neck."

Video

The Ohio mother added her daughter experienced additional symptoms that included gastroparesis, nausea, vomiting, erratic blood pressure, heart rate, and memory loss. "She still cannot digest food. She has a tube to get her nutrition," De Garay said to Carlson. "She also couldn't walk at one point, then she could I don't understand why and [physicians] are not looking into why...now she's back in a wheelchair and she can't hold her neck up. Her neck pulls back."

Carlson asked whether any officials from the Biden administration or representatives from Pfizer company have reached out to the family. "No, they have not," she answered.

"The response with the person that's leading the vaccine trial has been atrocious," she said. "We wanted to know what symptoms were reported and we couldn't even get an answer on that. It was just that 'we report to Pfizer and they report to the FDA.' That's all we got."

After her heartbreaking experience, the Ohio mother said she's still "pro-vaccine, but also pro-informed consent." De Garay mentioned she's speaking out because she feels like everyone should be fully aware of this tragic incident and added the situation is being "pushed down and hidden."

De Garay said she had joined a Facebook support group to help people cope with the unexpected events happening from the coronavirus vaccine trial, and she said it was shut down. "It's just not right," she said.

"They need to do research and figure out why this happened, especially to people in the trial. I thought that was the point of it," De Garay concluded. "They need to come up with something that's going to treat these people early because all they're going to do is keep getting worse."

Sen. Ron Johnson , R-Wis., has sent letters to the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna seeking answers about adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine following a June 28 press conference with affected individuals. The conference in Milwaukee included stories from five people, including De Garay.

The Wisconsin senator noted that some adverse reactions were detailed in Pfizer's and Moderna's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use authorization (EUA) memorandums following early clinical trials.

Those reactions included nervous system disorders and musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders for the Pfizer EUA memo. The Moderna EUA memo included reactions such as nervous system disorders, vascular disorders and musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders, according to Johnson's letter.

Pfizer and Moderna did not immediately respond to inquiries from Fox News about Johnson's letters.

J jeff5150357 6 hours ago

My daughter had the same thing happen to her after getting a flu vaccine 9 years ago. Within days of getting it, she went from being as healthy as an ox to years of awful, unexplained illness. The short version is they concluded that she had a severe adverse reaction to the vaccine, but from the delivery chemicals, not the flu content itself. Formaldehyde was the likely major cause. Now she is getting ready to begin college and is being required to get the Covid vaccine by her university and the NCAA for athletics. It is causing her, my wife and I horrible anxiety and we feel like we are being railroaded into something that could be very dangerous for her. Any discussion or concern expressed on social media is immediately blocked. I know from years of working in the research grants office at Yale University that the big pharma industry is powerful and will go to great lengths to control the narrative. What I don't understand is why mainstream media and social media are so willing to help them these days!

jeff5150357 4 hours ago

While the college experience is great for a young adult. I would look at getting a degree online. Her future earnings will be based on her merit, not where she went to school. If someone was telling me what to do with my personal health, and I was uncomfortable with their prescription, I would follow my instincts.

LoraJane92649 jeff5150357 5 hours ago

If her flu vax is well documented she should be able to get a waiver. Hopefully you have an able bodied family physician or medical team to advocate on your behalf.

G gunvald 7 hours ago

You know when you take it that there can be adverse reactions. So, in that sense, you are informed. Any one of us could be the odd person. That said, I have a problem with any child getting these vaccines, especially when most people recover from the disease. It's one thing for me as an elderly person to make the decision to take it as covid affects the elderly person more and I wanted to avoid that ventilator. Most of my life has been lived and that's how I evaluated it. This will always come down to putting it in God's hands.

TheTruthAsItIs gunvald 6 hours ago

You missed the whole point! The issue is that the government is not acknowledging and and not reporting these side effects of the vaccine. Instead they are lying about the safety. If you are young, you are much more likely to get sick and injured by the vaccine than COVID.

D DontDestoryUSA gunvald 4 hours ago

It's not being informed when you are forced to take a vaccination that they clearly had trouble with past vaccination sounds like a lawsuit for the university is on the horizon. With a big pay day

Tony5SFG 7 hours ago

"Ohio mother said she's still "pro-vaccine, but also pro-informed consent." " And as a pediatrician for over 40 yrs (retired now) and a 10 year member of my medical school's Institutional Review Board (which had to approve all human research), THAT is a problem I have been bringing up As far as requiring all young people, such as entering or in college, to get the vaccine Children are a protected class and the informed consent for research on them is much more strenuous than for adults And, requiring young people to take these new vaccines is the equivalent of doing research on them. The issue of myocarditis is quite troubling. And while it has been seen in natural infections, I have not yet seen an adequate risk - benefit evaluation regarding risking natural infection versus vaccination And people say that the myocarditis is not severe, no one can be sure of the long term effects of a young person getting it. The vaccines that we give children have been used for decades and the risks/benefits have been well established

D DallasAmEmail Tony5SFG 6 hours ago

A friends daughter who just went through internship as Physicians assistant based on the percentages in age groups believes anyone under 25 should not get the vaccine because the percentages are about the same or worse having a negative impact from the vaccine versus the actual virus. Yes, older age groups the percent having negative impact from the virus is much greater than the vaccine, so yes older age groups should get the vaccine. What really is bothersome is when Youtube removes Dr. Robert Malone video who helped create the mrna vaccine express concern that normal testing has not happened and be cautious about taking it, especially for the young.

marinesfather601 Tony5SFG 5 hours ago

With the Covid19 mortality rate among the children why even vaccinate? As a Chemist / Biochemist I learned that there is always unintended consequences.

Hilltopper9 7 hours ago

Vaccines may have long term effects that are not known today. The same could be said of all the chemicals we apply to our body daily through shampoos, hair dyes, body lotions, and suntan lotions. Life's a gamble. It's up to each individual to make the best decisions possible given the facts available.

A akbushrat Hilltopper9 6 hours ago

The CDC's generic guidelines for getting a vaccine for any reason are very restrictive, first being, the disease you're getting vaccinated against has to pose a real, immediate danger. CV-19 poses virtually no danger whatsoever to kids under 14. Of all the deaths of children 14 and under in the last 18 months only .8% of them had a case of CV-19. That's 367 deaths out of over 46,000. (Data from CDC website) Forcing them to take an experimental vaccine that they absolutely don't need is criminal. As a parent, allowing your child to take the vaccine without spending a few hours doing some research is criminally negligent. This is like some terribly warped Kafka novel but it's real.

F Fauxguy930 Hilltopper9 5 hours ago

☢️ N-butyl-N-(4-hydroxybutyl)nitrosamine is a nitrosamine that has butyl and 4-hydroxybutyl substituents. In mice, it causes high-grade, invasive cancers in the urinary bladder, but not in any other tissues. It has a role as a carcinogenic agent. Ingredient in all shots. How did a carcinogen get FDA approved, oh it was an emergency.

R RussellRika 6 hours ago

I have a twelve year old, and not a chance I'd allow her to volunteer for any vaccine trial, and especially not this one. She very much wanted to get a vaccine, until she started reading about some of the adverse reactions. Sorry, but I'm a child, the benefit does not outweigh the risk.

MrEd50 6 hours ago

I took the vaccine because I'm 60 years old and work with special ed kids. My 18 year old child refuses to take it and I support him on this. COVID shouldn't be an issue for most of us.

[Jun 26, 2021] There Is No Labor Shortage, Only Labor Exploitation and burning desire not to spend money on training by Sonali Kolhatkar

Notable quotes:
"... Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with the plight of wealthy business owners who can't find workers to fill their low-paid positions, instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet. ..."
"... West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has made this great country." Interestingly, Justice owns a resort that couldn't find enough low-wage workers to fill jobs. Notwithstanding a clear conflict of interest in cutting jobless benefits, the Republican politician is now enjoying the fruits of his own political actions as his resort reports greater ease in filling positions with desperate workers whose lifeline he cut off. ..."
Jun 12, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

For the past few months, Republicans have been waging a ferocious political battle to end federal unemployment benefits, based upon stated desires of saving the U.S. economy from a serious labor shortage. The logic, in the words of Republican politicians like Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, goes like this: "the government pays folks more to stay home than to go to work," and therefore, "[p]aying people not to work is not helpful." The conservative Wall Street Journal has been beating the drum for the same argument, saying recently that it was a " terrible blunder " to pay jobless benefits to unemployed workers.

If the hyperbolic claims are to be believed, one might imagine American workers are luxuriating in the largesse of taxpayer-funded payments, thumbing their noses at the earnest "job creators" who are taking far more seriously the importance of a post-pandemic economic growth spurt.

It is true that there are currently millions of jobs going unfilled. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released statistics showing that there were 9.3 million job openings in April and that the percentage of layoffs decreased while resignations increased. Taking these statistics at face value, one could conclude this means there is a labor shortage.

But, as economist Heidi Shierholz explained in a New York Times op-ed , there is only a labor shortage if employers raise wages to match worker demands and subsequently still face a shortage of workers. Shierholz wrote, "When those measures [of raising wages] don't result in a substantial increase in workers, that's a labor shortage. Absent that dynamic, you can rest easy."

Remember the subprime mortgage housing crisis of 2008 when economists and pundits blamed low-income homeowners for wanting to purchase homes they could not afford? Perhaps this is the labor market's way of saying, if you can't afford higher salaries, you shouldn't expect to fill jobs.

Or, to use the logic of another accepted capitalist argument, employers could liken the job market to the surge pricing practices of ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft. After consumers complained about hiked-up prices for rides during rush hour, Uber explained , "With surge pricing, Uber rates increase to get more cars on the road and ensure reliability during the busiest times. When enough cars are on the road, prices go back down to normal levels." Applying this logic to the labor market, workers might be saying to employers: "When enough dollars are being offered in wages, the number of job openings will go back down to normal levels." In other words, workers are surge-pricing the cost of their labor.

But corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a real labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce insists that "[t]he worker shortage is real," and that it has risen to the level of a "national economic emergency" that "poses an imminent threat to our fragile recovery and America's great resurgence." In the Chamber's worldview, workers, not corporate employers who refuse to pay better, are the main obstacle to the U.S.'s economic recovery.

Longtime labor organizer and senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies Bill Fletcher Jr. explained to me in an email interview that claims of a labor shortage are an exaggeration and that, actually, "we suffered a minor depression and not another great recession," as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. In Fletcher's view, "The so-called labor shortage needs to be understood as the result of tremendous employment reorganization, including the collapse of industries and companies."

Furthermore, according to Fletcher, the purveyors of the "labor shortage" myth are not accounting for "the collapse of daycare and the impact on women and families, and a continued fear associated with the pandemic."

He's right. As one analyst put it, "The rotten seed of America's disinvestment in child care has finally sprouted." Such factors have received little attention by the purveyors of the labor shortage myth -- perhaps because acknowledging real obstacles like care work requires thinking of workers as real human beings rather than cogs in a capitalist machine.

Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with the plight of wealthy business owners who can't find workers to fill their low-paid positions, instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet.

Already, jobless benefits were slashed to appallingly low levels after Republicans reduced a $600-a-week payment authorized by the CARES Act to a mere $300 a week , which works out to $7.50 an hour for full-time work. If companies cannot compete with this exceedingly paltry sum, their position is akin to a customer demanding to a car salesperson that they have the right to buy a vehicle for a below-market-value sticker price (again, capitalist logic is a worthwhile exercise to showcase the ludicrousness of how lawmakers and their corporate beneficiaries are responding to the state of the labor market).

Remarkably, although federal jobless benefits are funded through September 2021, more than two dozen Republican-run states are choosing to end them earlier. Not only will this impact the bottom line for millions of people struggling to make ends meet, but it will also undermine the stimulus impact that this federal aid has on the economies of states when jobless workers spend their federal dollars on necessities. Conservatives are essentially engaged in an ideological battle over government benefits, which, in their view, are always wrong unless they are going to the already privileged (remember the GOP's 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy?).

The GOP has thumbed its nose at federal benefits for residents before. In order to underscore their ideological opposition to the Affordable Care Act, recall how Republican governors eschewed billions of federal dollars to fund Medicaid expansion. These conservative ideologues chose to let their own voters suffer the consequences of turning down federal aid in service of their political opposition to Obamacare. And they're doing the same thing now.

At the same time as headlines are screaming about a catastrophic worker shortage that could undermine the economy, stories abound of how American billionaires paid peanuts in income taxes according to newly released documents, even as their wealth multiplied to extraordinary levels. The obscenely wealthy are spending their mountains of cash on luxury goods and fulfilling childish fantasies of space travel . The juxtaposition of such a phenomenon alongside the conservative claim that jobless benefits are too generous is evidence that we are indeed in a "national economic emergency" -- just not of the sort that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants us to believe.

West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has made this great country." Interestingly, Justice owns a resort that couldn't find enough low-wage workers to fill jobs. Notwithstanding a clear conflict of interest in cutting jobless benefits, the Republican politician is now enjoying the fruits of his own political actions as his resort reports greater ease in filling positions with desperate workers whose lifeline he cut off.

When lawmakers earlier this year debated the Raise the Wage Act , which would have increased the federal minimum wage, Republicans wagged their fingers in warning, saying higher wages would put companies out of business. Opponents of that failed bill claimed that if forced to pay $15 an hour, employers would hire fewer people, close branches, or perhaps shut down altogether, which we were told would ultimately hurt workers.

Now, we are being told another story: that companies actually do need workers and won't simply reduce jobs, close branches, or shut down and that the government therefore needs to stop competing with their ultra-low wages to save the economy. The claim that businesses would no longer be profitable if they are forced to increase wages is undermined by one multibillion-dollar fact: corporations are raking in record-high profits and doling them out to shareholders and executives. They can indeed afford to offer greater pay, and when they do, it turns out there is no labor shortage .

American workers are at a critically important juncture at this moment. Corporate employers seem to be approaching a limit of how far they can push workers to accept poverty-level jobs. According to Fletcher, "This moment provides opportunities to raise wage demands, but it must be a moment where workers organize in order to sustain and pursue demands for improvements in their living and working conditions."

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of "Rising Up With Sonali," a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute. This article was produced by Economy for All , a project of the Independent Media Institute.

[Jun 26, 2021] Paul Tudor Jones Says Inflation risk isn't transitory and that Economic Orthodoxy Has Turned Upside Down

Jun 14, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Paul Tudor Jones said economic orthodoxy has been turned upside down with the Federal Reserve focused on unemployment even as inflation and financial stability are growing concerns.

Inflation risk isn't transitory, the hedge fund manager said in an interview on CNBC.

If the Fed says the U.S. economy is on the right path, "then I would go all in on the inflation trade, buy commodities, crypto and gold," he said. "If they course correct, you will get a taper tantrum and a sell off in fixed income and a correction in stocks.

[Jun 26, 2021] The End of Faucism is Nigh as Democrats Ditch the Doctor by JD Rucker

"Objective judgement is our jugement about the people we do not like ;-)"
In view of the fact that Delta (Indian) variant can infect vaccinated with the first generation of vaccines people Fauci statement "when you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health, that of the family, but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community." i obviously wrong. Delta Covid-19 Variant Can Infect Vaccinated People
See also Delta variant infected two Orange County residents who were fully vaccinated - Orlando Sentinel and Just 26 fully vaccinated people have died from Delta variant
May 16, 2021 | freedomfirstnetwork.com

Those who don't get their news from mainstream media have been aware of Anthony Fauci's connection to "gain of function" research for months. Now, mainstream media is picking it up so the White House is scrambling.

For months, there wasn't a day that went by when Dr. Anthony Fauci wasn't doing multiple interviews spreading fear of Covid-19, demanding people take the various "vaccines," and changing his talking points from moment to moment on a slew of healthcare-related issues. We saw a clear change last week when the White House's chief doc seemed to fly under the radar for the first time since Joe Biden took office.

It all comes down to "gain of function" research that is almost certainly the cause of the Wuhan Flu. Developed in the Wuhan Virology Lab, Covid-19 either escaped or was intentionally released. While many in academia still hold onto the notion that the pandemic was started by bats, they do so simply because it hasn't -- and likely cannot -- be completely ruled out as long as the Chinese Communist Party has a say in the matter. But many are now accepting the likelihood that it came from the Wuhan Virology Lab as a result of "gain of function" research.

We also now know that Fauci has been a huge proponent of this research and he participated in funding it at the Wuhan Virology Lab. More evidence is emerging every day despite the bad doctor's protestations. And when I say "we also now know," that's to say more mainstream media watchers know. Those who turn to alternative media have known about Fauci's involvement with the Wuhan Virology Lab for a while.

They've been trying to cover their tracks. A bombshell revelation from The National Pulse yesterday showed they realized this was going to be a problem long before Rand Paul or Tucker Carlson started calling Fauci out.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology scrubbed the U.S. National Institutes of Health as one of its research partners from its website in early 2021. The revelation comes despite Dr. Anthony Fauci insisting no relationship existed between the institutions.

Archived versions of the Wuhan lab's site also reveal a research update – " Will SARS Come Back? " – appearing to describe gain-of-function research being conducted at the institute by entities funded by Dr. Anthony Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

On March 21st, 2021, the lab's website listed six U.S.-based research partners: University of Alabama, University of North Texas, EcoHealth Alliance, Harvard University, The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the United States, and the National Wildlife Federation.

One day later, the page was revised to contain just two research partners – EcoHealth Alliance and the University of Alabama. By March 23rd, EcoHealth Alliance was the sole partner remaining .

EcoHealth Alliance is run by long-standing Chinese Communist Party-partner Dr. Peter Daszak , who National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam has repeatedly claimed will be the first "fall guy" of the Wuhan lab debacle.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology's decision to wipe the NIH from its website came amidst heightened scrutiny that the lab was the source of COVID-19 – and that U.S. taxpayer dollars from the NIH may have funded the research. The unearthing of the lab's attempted coverup also follows a heated exchange between Senator Rand Paul and Fauci, who attempted to distance his organization from the Wuhan lab.

Beyond establishing a working relationship between the NIH and the Wuhan Institue of Virology, now-deleted posts from the site also detail studies bearing the hallmarks of gain-of-function research conducted with the Wuhan-based lab. Fauci, however, asserted to Senator Paul that "the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

There is still a tremendous gap between those who know the truth about Fauci and those who still think he's just a smart little guy who tells Joe Biden what to do when it comes to Covid. As we've documented multiple times in the past, there seems to be a cult of personality surrounding Fauci, or as many have called it, Faucism. He is practically worshipped as a savior by millions who believe everything he says even if he contradicts something he had said in the past.

Today, he was interviewed on CBS News during "Face the Nation." It was a softball interview, as always, and at no point was "gain of function" research discussed. Instead, John Dickerson tried to sound smart and Fauci gave him kudos in an odd back-and-forth promoting vaccines.

JOHN DICKERSON : So, if- if a person is deciding whether or not to get vaccinated, they have to keep in mind whether it's going to keep them healthy. But based on these new findings, it would suggest they also have an opportunity, if vaccinated, to knock off or block their ability to transmit it to other people. So, does it increase the public health good of getting the vaccination or make that clearer based on these new findings?

DR. FAUCI : And you know, JOHN, you said it very well. I could have said it better. It's absolutely the case. And that's the reason why we say when you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health, that of the family, but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community. And in other words, you become a dead end to the virus. And when there are a lot of dead ends around, the virus is not going to go anywhere. And that's when you get a point that you have a markedly diminished rate of infection in the community. And that's exactly the reason, and you said it very well, of why we encourage people and want people to get vaccinated. The more people you get vaccinated, the safer the entire community is.

JOHN DICKERSON : And do you think now that this guidance has come out on relaxing the mass mandates if you've been vaccinated, that people who might have been hesitant before will start to get vaccinated in greater numbers?

DR. FAUCI : You know, I hope so, JOHN. The underlying reason for the CDC doing this was just based on the evolution of the science that I mentioned a moment ago. But if, in fact, this serves as an incentive for people to get vaccinated, all the better. I hope it does, actually.

Don't let the presence of this interview fool you. It was almost certainly scheduled before the "gain of function" research discussion hit the mainstream. But as Revolver News reported today, we should start seeing less and less of Fauci going forward.

What happened to the almighty Dr. Fauci? Last week he was on TV telling all of us that life wouldn't get back to normal for at least another year or so, and this week he's pretty much gone. So what happened?

Well, a lot, actually. The biggest turn for Fauci involves 3 little words: Gain of Function. It was this past week when the "gain of function" dots were publicly connected to the good doctor. This is nothing new for those of us on the right. Here on Revolver, we've covered Fauci's gain of function research extensively and the evidence against him is very damning.

A couple of months ago Fox News Host Steve Hilton blew the lid off of Fauci's macabre obsession (and funding) of research involving the manipulation of highly contagious viruses. Hilton laid the groundwork, but it was Senator Rand Paul who called out Fauci and his ghoulish research face to face during a Senate hearing.

But even more notable, is that the CDC just updated their guidelines on mask-wearing and essentially ended the pandemic -- a pandemic that Fauci has been the proud face of for over a year now -- and when that announcement hit, he was nowhere to be found. And his absence didn't go unnoticed.

Yes indeed, you'd think that Fauci would have been front and center to discuss the CDC's new guidelines the moment the news hit. The "Golden Boy" taking yet another victory lap. After all, Fauci never misses a moment in the spotlight. But he was not hitting the airwaves with the typical fanfare.

It is still very possible that Fauci can make a resurgence. His fan-base is up there with Meghan Markle and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though even more devoted than the divas'. Unlike other useful idiots, the White House will not be able to detach easily from Fauci, nor do they want to. At this point, they're telling him to lay low and avoid any interviews in which they do not have complete control over the "journalist" involved. John Dickerson has been a Democrat Party pawn for decades.

Behind the scenes, they're already planning on ditching him. It will be done with all the pomp one would expect for one of their heroes and will be used to mark the end of the "emergency" in the United States. He'll still be promoting vaccines and will try to stay in his precious limelight, but Democrats are ready to move on and open up the country. It has just been too politically suicidal to persist with their lockdown mentality.

The key to seeing Fauci's narcissistic reign end is for patriots to continue to hammer him on his involvement with developing Covid-19. His beloved "gain of function research" needs to be explained to any who will listen. Then, maybe, Fauci will go away.

... ... ...

[Jun 26, 2021] The Racism Of Low Expectations

Sounds like a great book for Tucker to recommend to that Army Chief of Staff!
Notable quotes:
"... I call it ROLE -- The Racism Of Low Expectations. This phenomenon has done ten times more to damage Black lives than can be attributed to CRT or institutionalized racism. ..."
"... A subset of ROLE is MVT. This is Manufactured Victimhood Theory. This comes about from influential Black "leaders" who, instead of teaching Blacks the truth about how to live good lives (work hard, develop skills, etc.), they told them to apply as their life strategy "say you are a victim." ..."
Jun 26, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Cindy Fryman 4 hours ago

Recently the Joint Chiefs of Staff remarked that the US military should teach CTR to our military essentially because they shoild teach all theories.

That doesn't make sense to me but I would like to put another theory into the public sphere. I call it ROLE -- The Racism Of Low Expectations. This phenomenon has done ten times more to damage Black lives than can be attributed to CRT or institutionalized racism.

A subset of ROLE is MVT. This is Manufactured Victimhood Theory. This comes about from influential Black "leaders" who, instead of teaching Blacks the truth about how to live good lives (work hard, develop skills, etc.), they told them to apply as their life strategy "say you are a victim."

I am hoping that ROLE and MVT will become part of all aspects of American life -- all levels of education, the military, businesses, the media, etc.

If the goal really is to improve Black lives, ROLE and MVT should be the rage over the next few years.

Tom F

John Callahan 4 hours ago
Corporate America 'makes money critiquing itself.' The rest of us pay the price in diminished freedom.
Wokeism is fascism dressed up in new clothes- the censorship, demonization of groups and individuals and the physical violence against people and property remain the same. Corporate America has one overriding interest- making money. Paying the left (and yes, fascism is of the left) through critiquing itself and token monetary donations is a get out of jail free card for Corporate America.

"Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it."
- Thomas Sowell

Dom Fried 4 hours ago
It will end the same. Almost, because there will be nobody to stop it.
Ed Baron 3 hours ago
Very well said, John. Fascism is a fundamental element or subset of Leftist or Marxist thought. It demands conformity of the individual to the new "woke" state and it punishes any who dissent. It's not incidental that American Leftists, including FDR, loved Mussolini prior to WWII. That bromance has been washed clean, and attributed instead to the Right. Such a typical transference technique used by Marxist.
Alex Guiness
I interpret your supposition 'White male global warming', as meaning White Males are particularly flatulent hence are producing Green House Gases with their diets of greasy meats (some on sticks), carnival funnel cakes, corn dogs, Philly cheese-steaks, Popeyes fried chicken, all washed down with Bud Light. Would it kill them to have a salad now and then? How can their spouses stand to be around them unless they are also consuming the same foods. Imagine what it must be like at a sermon in a Lutheran Church, the whitest church of all. They leave the doors open else a spark could set the whole place ablaze.
carol Perry
Thanks for today's chuckle Alex.
Alex Guiness
read my smurfs comment. i just posted it
Lynn Silton
Mr. Ramaswamy is right in every way! I don't belong to the Woke Church. I'll never join. America is an inspirational country as is all it's written declarations. We, the people rule. No religion can overrule it. We will not allow religious 'honor killings.' They are murder here. We will not allow Wokism here it is the murder of our hopes and dreams which belong to everybody regardless of appearance. I don't even know how appearance (of all things) became a religion. The whole thing is so sick, people of all shades are speaking out and we will put this crazy idea down. Here, we marry across all appearances. New people are often different in appearance than parents. Woke will die of that alone. That's why we have an immigration 'problem' . People love our constitution and Declaration of Independence. People love that they rule here, not the government. That's our creed and promise. Help protect it!!

[Jun 26, 2021] VAERS data

Jun 23, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

boyplunger7777 13 hours ago remove link

VAERS data: "5,888 deaths", "19,597 hospitalizations", "43,891 urgent care", "58,800 office visits", "1,459 anaphylaxis", "1,737 Bell's palsy", "2,190 heart attacks" and "652 miscarriages". CDC says data is "unreliable". You choose who to believe.

WarrenLiz 16 hours ago

Over 15,472 dead from Jab in 27 EU countries, about half of Europe's 50 countries.

The EudraVigilance database reports that through June 19, 2021 there are 15,472 deaths and 1,509,266 injuries reported following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots:

From the total of injuries recorded, half of them (753,657) are serious injuries.

ALL UNNECESSARY...

https://vaccineimpact.com/2021/15472-dead-1-5-million-injured-50-serious-reported-in-european-unions-database-of-adverse-drug-reactions-for-covid-19-shots/

Globalist Overlord 14 hours ago remove link

So between the EU and US there are a confirmed MINIMUM of 21,000 MURDERED by BigPharma and their highly-paid apparatchiks like Fauci and Walensky.

And the public does nothing.

pods 16 hours ago

Graphing VAERS numbers alongside the shot numbers should show abnormalities.

They probably saw the numbers and put the brakes on putting them in the database. So a slope change will be seen in the VAERS data.

They run it so they can do what they want. Public can submit a case, but that doesn't mean it goes into the database. Crooks.

pmc 17 hours ago (Edited)

Tucker Carlson: How many Americans have died after taking the COVID vaccine?

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-how-many-americans-have-died-after-taking-the-covid-vaccine

The answer to Carlson's question is because.. it's a money grabbing death cult!.

Natural immun system is destroyed... just wait till next flu season or the next virus they relase and see what death numbers we see!

racing_flowers 17 hours ago

Isn't it curious that the 3 big pharma Corps (think Vacc pushers) and the big 2 MSM Corps are BOTH controlled by Blackrock Partners Hedge Fund...

Nona Yobiznes 18 hours ago remove link

Them going after the children makes me deeply suspicious. Nobody under 50, unless they're made of blubber, dies from this. In 2020, there was practically zero excess death for people younger than 70 years old in Sweden. These are their official statistics. For the vast majority of people it's basically a flu you get for a couple days and you're over it. What the **** is all this about? If the vaccine is only really good for preventing hospitalizations, and doesn't stop you from spreading or from catching variants, what in the hell are we giving kids vaccines when they are more likely to die from the regular flu? It's freaky, and it stinks.

[Jun 26, 2021] I think we are heading for the confirmation of peak oil sometime between mid 2022 and late 2023

Jun 23, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

OVI IGNORED 06/19/2021 at 8:01 pm

Ron

Enjoy a fourth. I wonder how much production will drop due to Claudette.

I think we are heading for the confirmation of peak oil sometime between mid 2022 and late 2023. REPLY RON PATTERSON IGNORED 06/19/2021 at 8:16 pm

What do you mean by confirmation? Do you mean they will confirm that the peak was 2018-2019? If so, I cannot agree. No, there will be deniers all the way down. There is something about the human psyche that just cannot accept reality... MATT MUSHALIK IGNORED 06/19/2021 at 8:57 pm

Thanks for continuing to monitor crude oil production. As of now, we are back to 2005 levels!

I have been looking at BP

17/6/2021
BP peak oil (UK decline, asset sales and decommissioning part 2)
https://crudeoilpeak.info/bp-peak-oil-uk-decline-asset-sales-and-decommissioning-part-2

30/4/2021
BP peak oil (UK decline, asset sales and decommissioning part 1)
https://crudeoilpeak.info/bp-peak-oil-uk-decline-asset-sales-and-decommissioning-part-1

Many problems we see are now worse than in any peak oil scenario, especially in the airline industry. So I have been looking at the numbers and found:

22/5/2021
China-Australia passenger traffic has peaked 2018-19 before Covid
https://crudeoilpeak.info/china-australia-passenger-traffic-has-peaked-2018-19-before-covid

It is also generally assumed that electric vehicles will take over.

But in Australia power generation is insufficient to support any number of EVs which would be relevant to reduce oil demand:

14/6/2021
NSW power spot price spikes May 2021 become regular (part 2)
https://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-power-spot-price-spikes-may-2021-become-regular-part-2

7/6/2021
NSW power spot price spikes May 2021 become regular (part 1)
https://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-power-spot-price-spikes-may-2021-become-regular-part-1

[Jun 26, 2021] So Much Of What The CIA Used To Do Covertly It Now Does Overtly - ZeroHedge

Jun 22, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

In the later years of an abusive relationship I was in, my abuser had become so confident in how mentally caged he had me that he'd start overtly telling me what he is and what he was doing. He flat-out told me he was a sociopath and a manipulator, trusting that I was so submitted to his will by that point that I'd gaslight myself into reframing those statements in a sympathetic light. Toward the end one time he told me "I am going to rape you," and then he did, and then he talked about it to some friends trusting that I'd run perception management on it for him.

The better he got at psychologically twisting me up in knots and the more submitted I became, the more open he'd be about it. He seemed to enjoy doing this, taking a kind of exhibitionistic delight in showing off his accomplishments at crushing me as a person, both to others and to me. Like it was his art, and he wanted it to have an audience to appreciate it.

me title=

Close 168.1K Pfizer CEO on mRNA Vaccine Creation, R&D, Drug Costs

me scrolling=

I was reminded of this while watching a recent Fox News appearance by Glenn Greenwald where he made an observation we've discussed here previously about the way the CIA used to have to infiltrate the media, but now just openly has US intelligence veterans in mainstream media punditry positions managing public perception.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/jU58mrEpPvU

"If you go and Google, and I hope your viewers do, Operation Mockingbird, what you will find is that during the Cold War these agencies used to plot how to clandestinely manipulate the news media to disseminate propaganda to the American population," Greenwald said .

"They used to try to do it secretly. They don't even do it secretly anymore. They don't need Operation Mockingbird. They literally put John Brennan who works for NBC and James Clapper who works for CNN and tons of FBI agents right on the payroll of these news organizations. They now shape the news openly to manipulate and to deceive the American population."

In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled " The CIA and the Media " reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America's most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird . It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media are meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and the public is too brainwashed and gaslit to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits . The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor , and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known CIA assets like NBC's Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.

They're just rubbing it in our faces now. Like they're showing off.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=879036821954539520&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fso-much-what-cia-used-do-covertly-it-now-does-overtly&sessionId=f90acd7ceb3bc7675f43696376e59f5ebdc79571&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

And that's just the media. We also see this flaunting behavior exhibited in the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a propaganda operation geared at sabotaging foreign governments not aligned with the US which according to its own founding officials was set up to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly. The late author and commentator William Blum makes this clear :

[I]n 1983, the National Endowment for Democracy was set up to "support democratic institutions throughout the world through private, nongovernmental efforts". Notice the "nongovernmental"" part of the image, part of the myth. In actuality, virtually every penny of its funding comes from the federal government, as is clearly indicated in the financial statement in each issue of its annual report. NED likes to refer to itself as an NGO (Non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a GO.

"We should not have to do this kind of work covertly," said Carl Gershman in 1986, while he was president of the Endowment. "It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the C.I.A. We saw that in the 60's, and that's why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that's why the endowment was created."

And Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, declared in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."

In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED.

We see NED's fingerprints all over pretty much any situation where the western power alliance needs to manage public perception about a CIA-targeted government, from Russia to Hong Kong to Xinjiang to the imperial propaganda operation known as Bellingcat.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1278456656305643521&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fso-much-what-cia-used-do-covertly-it-now-does-overtly&sessionId=f90acd7ceb3bc7675f43696376e59f5ebdc79571&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-2&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1337063301113581568&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fso-much-what-cia-used-do-covertly-it-now-does-overtly&sessionId=f90acd7ceb3bc7675f43696376e59f5ebdc79571&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

Hell, intelligence insiders are just openly running for office now. In an article titled " The CIA Democrats in the 2020 elections ", World Socialist Website documented the many veterans of the US intelligence cartel who ran in elections across America in 2018 and 2020:

"In the course of the 2018 elections, a large group of former military-intelligence operatives entered capitalist politics as candidates seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 50 congressional seats" nearly half the seats where the Democrats were targeting Republican incumbents or open seats created by Republican retirements. Some 30 of these candidates won primary contests and became the Democratic candidates in the November 2018 election, and 11 of them won the general election, more than one quarter of the 40 previously Republican-held seats captured by the Democrats as they took control of the House of Representatives. In 2020, the intervention of the CIA Democrats continues on what is arguably an equally significant scale."

So they're just getting more and more brazen the more confident they feel about how propaganda-addled and submissive the population has become. They're laying more and more of their cards on the table. Soon the CIA will just be openly selling narcotics door to door like Girl Scout cookies.

Or maybe not. I said my ex got more and more overt about his abuses in the later years of our relationship because those were the later years. I did eventually expand my own consciousness of my own inner workings enough to clear the fears and unexamined beliefs I had that he was using as hooks to manipulate me. Maybe, as humanity's consciousness continues to expand , the same will happen for the people and their abusive relationship with the CIA.

* * *

The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported , so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook , Twitter , Soundcloud or YouTube , or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi , Patreon or Paypal . If you want to read more you can buy my books . Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I've written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I'm trying to do with this platform, click here .

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[Jun 25, 2021] U.S. inflation likely to remain elevated for up to four years - BofA

Jun 25, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

BofA expects U.S. inflation to remain elevated for two to four years, against a rising perception of it being transitory, and said that only a financial market crash would prevent central banks from tightening policy in the next six months.

It was "fascinating so many deem inflation as transitory when stimulus, economic growth, asset/commodity/housing inflations (are) deemed permanent", the investment bank's top strategist Michael Hartnett said in a note on Friday.

Thyagaraju Adinarayan
Fri, June 25, 2021, 5:24 AM
By Thyagaraju Adinarayan

LONDON (Reuters) - BofA expects U.S. inflation to remain elevated for two to four years, against a rising perception of it being transitory, and said that only a financial market crash would prevent central banks from tightening policy in the next six months.

It was "fascinating so many deem inflation as transitory when stimulus, economic growth, asset/commodity/housing inflations (are) deemed permanent", the investment bank's top strategist Michael Hartnett said in a note on Friday.

Hartnett thinks inflation will remain in the 2%-4% range over the next 2-4 years. U.S. inflation has averaged 3% in the past 100 years, 2% in the 2010s, and 1% in 2020, but it has been annualising at 8% so far in 2021, Bofa said in the note.

Global stocks were holding near record highs hours ahead of the reading of May core personal consumption expenditures index, an inflation gauge tracked closely by the Fed. The gauge is estimated to rise 3.4% year-on-year.

... In the week to Wednesday, investors pumped $7 billion into equities and $9.9 billion into bond funds, while pulling $53.5 billion from cash funds, BofA calculated, using EPFR data.

[Jun 22, 2021] Possibility of Seneca cliff are increasing

Jun 22, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

OVI IGNORED 06/17/2021 at 10:03 am

Ron

The chart is old and was published in 2016 by Wood Mackenzie and there is no data for 2016. It also leaves out the discovery of Ghawar in 1948, first bar/spike. I have not seen any updates since then. Not sure if Guyana had been discovered in 2016. The original is attached.

REPLY SCHINZY IGNORED 06/18/2021 at 5:57 am

Here is Rystad's discovery graph 2013-2019 including gas. 2019 was better than 2016-2018 in terms of BOE, but it was a bit gassy:

REPLY RON PATTERSON IGNORED 06/17/2021 at 6:00 am

Is the energy transition just a fad??? Irina Slav at Oil Price.com says it is.

Energy Transition Fad Will Send Oil Sky High

Ironically, the wave of ESG investing in global energy markets may lead to much higher oil prices as a serious lack of capital expenditure on new fossil fuels dries up just as demand for crude continues to grow

Pressure from investors, tighter emissions regulation from governments, and public protests against their business have become more or less the new normal for oil companies. What the world -- or at least the most affluent parts of it -- seem to want from the oil industry is to stop being the oil industry.

Many investors are buying into this pressure. ESG investing is all the rage, and sustainable ETFs are popping up like mushrooms after a rain. But some investors are taking a different approach. They are betting on oil. Because what many in the pressure camp seem to underestimate is the fact that the supply of oil is not the only element of the oil equation.

"Imagine Shell decided to stop selling petrol and diesel today," the supermajor's CEO Ben van Beurden wrote in a LinkedIn post earlier this month. "This would certainly cut Shell's carbon emissions. But it would not help the world one bit. Demand for fuel would not change. People would fill up their cars and delivery trucks at other service stations."

Van Beurden was commenting on a Dutch court's ruling that environmentalists hailed as a landmark decision, ordering Shell to reduce its emissions footprint by 45 percent from 2019 levels by 2030.

[Jun 18, 2021] Corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a real labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs

In IT corporate honchos shamelessly put more then a dozen of very specific skills into the position rescription and want a cog that hit that exactly. they are not interested in IQ, ability to learn and such things. that want already train person for the position to fill, so that have zero need to train this persn and they expect that he will work productively from the day one.
Jun 14, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Hayek's Heelbiter , June 12, 2021 at 7:50 am

But corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a real labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs.

Duh. This is so blindingly obvious, but NC is the only place that seems to mention this fact.

Here in the UK, the outmigration of marginally paid workers from Eastern Europe and the resultant "labour shortage" triggered by Brexit has made it abundantly clear that Blair's change to open borders was not from any idealistic considerations but as a way of importing easily exploited labor.

Business leaders quoted in the the tsunami of hand-wringing MSM articles about the current catastrophe are offering such helpful solutions as allowing housekeepers to use pools and gyms in off hours, free meals to waiters, etc. Anything but a living wage.

Dr. R.k. Barkhi , June 12, 2021 at 5:57 pm

" I don't actually see any untruths to the GOP talking points. "
"" Workers are less likely to accept a job while receiving Gov't benefits" and "workers are less likely to accept low wage crappy jobs ".

Well,if u can survive on a $300/week program that ends after several weeks pass,bless u. No one else in America can. That's a $7.50 hr full time "summer job" with no pension or medical benefits that teenagers with no dependents,few bills n maintenance issues might be interested in; adults with adult responsibilities,no way. That so called RepubliCons, the "economics experts", can make such a fraudulent claim n anyone out of elementary school believes it has a quantum particle of reality or value is . well I'll just say a sad n unbelievable situation.

Now the rest of your comments are laudable.

Objective Ace , June 13, 2021 at 11:57 am

They get 300 dollars plus regular UI. They can also get Medicaid and CHIP, or if they are still making too much they are eligible for Obamacare exchange. Plus they're eligible for SNAP and housing vouchers

Equitable > Equal , June 13, 2021 at 4:38 am

There is one significant fallacy in this article: The author conflates Republican opposition to enhanced benefits with opposition to unemployment benefits overall.

I very much stand with labour over business on most (probably all) points, but the Republican argument is to end the enhanced benefits in most cases – Not to abolish unemployment assistance. They believe the role of government is to step in to help pay basic bills in the event of unemployment, but oppose the current higher level of benefit due to the market distortions it causes (Hence the appearance of the term 'labour shortage'.)

I agree that it basically forces mcdonalds et al to up their wages if they want to do business, which should be a positive for society, but I find it unlikely that the author could have unintentionally mistunderstood the argument on such a fundamental level, and all it does is try to drive a wedge further between each side of the argument.

Sierra , June 12, 2021 at 3:46 pm

Hayek,

Sonali Kohatkar is pro open borders and has the nerve to complain about wage arbitrage?
https://freespeech.org/stories/prop-287-immigration-ca/

Anyone that believes that workers supported their jobs being sent overseas is either demented or delusional or suffers from a mental hernia. The same goes for the common working stiffs supporting massive immigration to help drive down their ability to demand a livable wage.

American labor has been sold down the river by the International Labor Leaders, politicians and the oligarchy of US corporate CEO's.
======

Got a new hip recently. Do your P.T., take it easy, follow the warnings of what not to do until you heal and you should discover that decades feel like they are lifted off your shoulders.

Hayek's Heelbiter , June 13, 2021 at 12:16 pm

Sierra,
You've made a very interesting point that actually never occurred to me and one in which I never seen fully examined.
Exploiting labour and outsourcing it are two sides of the same coin with the same goal in mind, diverting revenue streams into the C-suite and rentier class.
Obviously you cannot outsource most of the workers in the hospitality industry or the non-virtual aspects of world's oldest profession, but a lot of the tech industry and the virtual aspects of the latter are very amenable to being shipped overseas.
Immigrants are extremely visible and an easy target, while outsourcing is essentially an impossible to contain concept that creates real world hardship.
Dear NC readers, do you know of any studies comparing and contrasting the economic impact of immigration and/or limiting it and outsourcing?

sierra , June 12, 2021 at 3:51 pm

Those hip words were meant for Yves of course

Fazal Majid , June 12, 2021 at 8:46 am

Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of private employers and their lobbyists.

You are acting if economists and lobbyists are separate groups, as opposed to largely a subset thereof. Funny how a field entirely based on the study of incentives claims incentives don't distort their policy prescriptions, isn't it?

As for low-paid jobs, they are traditionally the last resort of immigrants and other marginalized populations, but the anti-immigration push that began under Obama, and enthusiastically continued by Trump and Biden, has perfectly predictable consequences.

One factor not mentioned is many free-riding businesses refuse to pay for training, then wonder why there are no trained workers to hire.

Now, there are definitely fields where there is a genuine and deliberate labor shortage. Usually white-collar credentialed professions like medical doctors and the AMA cartel.

Yves Smith , June 12, 2021 at 8:51 am

Economics is not based on incentives. That's behavioral economics. I hate to quote Larry Summers, but this is Summers on financial economics:

Ketchup economists reject out of hand much of this research on the ketchup market. They believe that the data used is based on almost meaningless accounting information and are quick to point out that concepts such as costs of production vary across firms and are not accurately measurable in any event. they believe that ketchup transactions prices are the only hard data worth studying. Nonetheless ketchup economists have an impressive research program, focusing on the scope for excess opportunities in the ketchup market. They have shown that two quart bottles of ketchup invariably sell for twice as much as one quart bottles of ketchup except for deviations traceable to transaction costs, and that one cannot get a bargain on ketchup by buying and combining ingredients once one takes account of transaction costs. Nor are there gains to be had from storing ketchup, or mixing together different quality ketchups and selling the resulting product. Indeed, most ketchup economists regard the efficiency of the ketchup market as the best established fact in empirical economics.

Howard Beale IV , June 12, 2021 at 9:22 am

Happy to see you back at a keyboard, and hoping your recovery is progressing well. I had the misfortune of spending two days in the hospitals while they got my blood chemistry strightened out. Here's the kicker; the hospitalist, who I saw 3 times, submitted a bill for a whopping $17,000. Just yesterday, the practice she works for submitted a bill that was one-tenth her charges for the work she did, yet her bill is still sitting waiting to be processed.

Yves Smith , June 12, 2021 at 9:53 am

OMG, how horrible. HSS is a small hospital for a big city like NYC, only 205 beds and 25 operating rooms. No emergency room. They are not owned by PE and so I don't think play outsourcing/markup games (they are very big on controlling quality, which you can't do if you have to go through middlemen for staffing). Some of the MDs do that their own practices within HSS but they are solo practitioners or small teams, which is not a model that you see much of anywhere outside NYC

Howard Beale IV , June 12, 2021 at 12:05 pm

The last time I was hospitalized, all the hospitalists were in the employ of the hospital, now they are in the employ of a nationwide hospitalist practice, which has all the smell of private equity around it. I'm really beginning to think that a third party focusted on healthcare might have a real shot at upsetting the political order – maybe it's time to drag out your skunk party for 2024.

Arizona Slim , June 12, 2021 at 1:22 pm

How are you feeling? We miss you around here.

tegnost , June 12, 2021 at 10:25 am

As for low-paid jobs, they are traditionally the last resort of immigrants and other marginalized populations, but the anti-immigration push that began under Obama, and enthusiastically continued by Trump and Biden, has perfectly predictable consequences.

Well I'm sorry you can't find easily exploitable labor, except I'm not immigrants face the same ridiculous costs, and weren't hispanic workers more heavily impacted by covid due to those marginal jobs (I'll switch your dynamic to low wage workers , and marginal jobs, thanks), so by your logic more should have been let in to die from these marginal jobs? but yeah we need more PMC except we don't
Now, there are definitely fields where there is a genuine and deliberate labor shortage. Usually white-collar credentialed professions like medical doctors and the AMA cartel."
Last I checked it was private equity, wall st and pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists that drive up costs so labor needs to charge more.
Wake up and smell the coffee.

Bill Smith , June 12, 2021 at 9:24 am

How much of this is over specification on the part of employers in the ad for the job? We want the perfect candidate who can do the job better than we can with no training .

Yves Smith , June 12, 2021 at 9:48 am

OMG this is such a long-standing pet peeve! We've commented on this nonsense regularly. Companies took the position that they don't have to train and now they are eating their cooking.

Bill Smith , June 12, 2021 at 10:30 am

Exactly.

The mismatch between job openings and job applicants is not just about wages.

In fact, if companies were willing to take a chance on people who didn't exactly match the job requirements, the likely effect would be to raise the wages some of those that did not qualify under the over exacting job requirements. [And likely paying these new employees less than they had contemplated paying the perfect candidate.]

But that seems like someone making the hiring decision might, just possibly, be seen as taking a risk.

Howard Beale IV , June 12, 2021 at 2:55 pm

At my empolyer we know we can't find any colleges that teach mainframe skills, so we bring in graduates who are willing to learn those skills – we submit them to a 3-month bootcamp and then there's a long period of mentorship under a senior person to their group that has an opening. Since everybody and their dog are now moving headfirst into DevOps, where all the tooling is in somewhat less ancient software, they get exposed using those Eclipse/VScode-based tools and are able to come up to speed somewhat quicker. Still, no one in corporate America dares to bite the bullet and re-platform their core systems with few exceptions (SABRE) for fear of losing all the institutional knowledge that's in software, rather than wetware (humans).

Howard Beale IV , June 12, 2021 at 3:03 pm

Just think what is happening right now with everyone holding an Indian outsourcing contract. You don't have individual's cellphone numbers over in India, which would cost you an arm and a leg to call, never mind what's going on in their facilities.

Mike Elwin , June 13, 2021 at 2:27 pm

On the other hand, there's something to be said for employers not training their staffs. In the SF Bay Area computer industry, employees and independent contractors alike continually race to train themselves in the new technologies that seem to crop up like mushrooms after a rain. Many companies train their customers–and charge them for it–before they'll train their staffs. This is a principal reason there's a market for contractors. Training oneself in new technologies lays a base for opportunities that don't appear if you spend a decade in the same job (unless, like mainframe programming, your job is so old it's new). I suppose this is a beneficial side of capitalism?

Lambert Strether , June 13, 2021 at 2:37 pm

> continually race to train themselves in the new technologies that seem to crop up like mushrooms after a rain

And what, one might ask, do mushrooms grow best in .

Louis , June 12, 2021 at 10:38 am

I get that you want experience for mid to senior level jobs but the experience requirements for what are ostsensibly entry-level jobs have gotten absurd. The education requirements have also gotten out of hand in some cases.

That being said, a lot of the shortages are in low-wage, part-time jobs so the issue isn't necessarily ridiculous requirements, like you sometimes see for entry level white collar jobs, but wages that are too low and awful working conditions.

How many people want to be treated like dirt–be it by customers, management, or both–for not much more than minimum wage if they have other options?

A wage increase will help fill these jobs but there also needs to be a paradigm shift in how employees are treated–the customer is not always right and allowing them to treat employees in ways that would not be tolerated in other businesses, and certainly not in many white-collar workplaces is a huge part of the problem and why these jobs have long had high-turnover.

TomDority , June 12, 2021 at 9:51 am

It never ends – when it was about immigrant labor under George B junior – I think – the call was
-- - They do jobs that Americans won't -- or something to that effect.
It always bothered me that the sentence was never, in my mind, completed. It should have been said
-- They do jobs that Americans won't do at that pay level. --
The tax system, economic system and higher education departments have been perverted by the continuous bribery and endowments by the rentier class to our elected law makers and dept heads for decades –
The creditor, debtor relationships distorted for eons.
The toll takers have never, in history, been in any higher level of mastery than they are now.
It is not to throw out the constitution but, to throw out those who have perverted it.

Oh , June 12, 2021 at 12:23 pm

The construction industry knows how to exploit immigrant labor, documented as well as undocumented. I'm sure most peole born here refuse to work for the same wages.

chris , June 12, 2021 at 6:14 pm

The exploitation occurs on many levels. For small residential jobs, a lot of wage theft occurs. For larger jobs, a lot of safety regs get ignored. When you have a population that won't use the legal avenues available to other citizens to push back against abuse you can get a lot done :/

King , June 12, 2021 at 10:04 am

When I go looking for a job if a degree isn't required I am very unlikely to pursue it further. Same if the list of 'required' is overly detailed. I'm making assumptions in both of these cases (that might not be correct) about pay, benefits, work environment, etc. and what is actually going on with a job listing. Why? Chiefly my likelihood of actually getting a reasonable offer. I expect either being seen as overqualified in the first case or the job only being listed because of some requirement in the second.

I have to wonder if many places know how to hire. This is made much more difficult by years of poorly written (maybe deceptive) job postings. You probably know many of the phrases; flexible schedule, family ___, reliable transportation required, and so on. Its no surprise if puffery doesn't bring back the drones.

Noone from Nowheresville , June 12, 2021 at 10:07 am

If we're playing with statistics. How many of these posted job openings, how many interviews did the companies offer v. how many offers were made until the position was filled? If position remains open, has the company increased the base pay offer? guaranteed an increased min. number of weekly hours? offered bonuses or increased benefits? How many times has this same job opening using the original posting criteria been re-posted? Is this a real single job opening that the company plans to fill in real time or just a posting that they keep opening because they have high turnover? etc., etc., etc.

The real problem with this workers are lazy meme is that it is repeated and repeated all year long on the local news from the viewpoint of business. It has filtered down to local people. I hear them repeating what the local news said without giving it any critical thought. Even those who say that we need unions and believe themselves to be on the side of workers.

Ear wigs are good for businesses. Insidious for workers.

synoia , June 12, 2021 at 12:03 pm

In the UK, in the days of Labor Strive, before Neo-liberalism , there was always newspaper reports about "Labor Strife" and "bolshy workers." Never once did the press examine Management had behaved and caused the workers to become "bolshy" – a direct reaction to Management's attitudes and behavior, probably based on the worst attributes of the UK's class system.

Definition: A bolshy person often argues and makes difficulties.
Management get the workers (Their Attitudes) it deserves.
I recommend reading "The Toyota Way" to explore a very successful management style.

tegnost , June 12, 2021 at 10:40 am

This song is getting a probably getting more hits these days
Take this job and Shove It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjEauGiRLo
But I hear lots of businesses will close to to no labor, so when they close they can go work for 7.25 an hour for one of their competitors who also needs laborors Solidarinosc!

tegnost , June 12, 2021 at 11:40 am

Geez this song is probably getting more hits these days due to no laborors? hmmm.it must mean something, like proof read your posts .,

Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg , June 12, 2021 at 10:43 am

If businesses are suffering, it's restaurants and small scale enterprise. The Covid response was tailored to the needs of economy of scale mega biz. They likely knew multitides of mom-n-pops would go away- and they have. But that's fine.

Susan the other , June 12, 2021 at 11:24 am

So if state governments can turn down federal unemployment supplements because they want labor to go back to work for unlivable wages this means the federal government can do nothing about it. When push comes to shove the question that must be settled is, Is it a human right to receive employment assistance until a job is found that pays a livable wage? (Not even a republican will actually say No). So then that puts all the stingy states on notice that there is a human rights issue here. States will have the choice to either let businesses shut down for lack of workers, or states can subsidize minimum wages and benefits. If states choose, in desperation, to subsidize minimum wages, then the states can apply to the feds to be compensated. The thing that is needed in the interim, between when the real standoff starts and ends, is a safety net for workers who are being blocked by the state from receiving unemployment benefits. I say call in the national guard. This is a human rights issue.

Dr. R.k. Barkhi , June 12, 2021 at 6:08 pm

Great point. Im appalled at the RepubliCon governers responses. And they call themselves Christians?

Imo Profitism (or Crapitalism if u pref2) is a Rights issue.

jim truti , June 12, 2021 at 11:45 am

The real exploitation happened when we allowed companies to delocalize, manufacture product in China and sell it here with no strings attached.
James Goldsmith seems like a prophet now, he was so absolutely right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwmOkaKh3-s

eg , June 12, 2021 at 11:45 pm

He sure does

Tom , June 13, 2021 at 5:34 pm

Wow. The Clinton flack was insufferable. AND WRONG about pretty much everything. Goldsmith was brilliant. I wasn't paying enough attention at he time, but how many high profile people were making the arguments he was making?

Michael Hudson , June 12, 2021 at 12:23 pm

I'm surprised that nobody has taken the opportunity to comment on how this discussion shows how hypocritical Biden and the democrats were not to press for raising the minimum wage.
The pretense (which they must have coached the "Senate scholar" on) was that raising the minimum wage was not related to revenue (i.e., a revenue bill). But of course it is! Right now, paying below-poverty wages enabled Walmart and other employers to make the government pay part of their wage bill. Higher minimum wages would raise these government aid recipients out of the poverty range, saving public revenue.
That is so obvious that the failure of the Democrats to make the point shows that they really didn't want to raise wages after all.

Nikkikat , June 12, 2021 at 1:40 pm

I didn't expect much from Biden but he's even worse than I thought. Along with those bought senators hiding behind Joe Manchin. Depressing to think how much worse everything will become for working people here.

Lambert Strether , June 12, 2021 at 1:48 pm

> the Democrats to make the point shows that they really didn't want to raise wages after all.

Come on, man. They're "fighting for" it.

chris , June 12, 2021 at 6:41 pm

This all day long and twice on Sunday

When I think about how they're complaining about Manchin now when there was a serious primary challenge against him last year, and how the Democrat organization rallied around Manchin and not his challenger, it is disgusting to see Slate/The Guardian/NYT/other "Blue no matter who" mouth breathers write articles asking what can be done to salvage a progressive agenda from the curse of bipartisanship.

I had given up on national politics long before the 2020 election circus but this latest has confirmed my resolve. The destruction of the Democrat party can't come soon enough.

Noone from Nowheresville , June 12, 2021 at 5:25 pm

If I call them Hypocritics, when I never believed them in the first place, will they feel any shame at all? Or must I be part of their class for them to feel even the tiniest of niggles?

Perhaps they'll feel ashamed once they cut the check for the $600 they shorted us this winter. Or maybe that they are reneging on the extended unemployment benefits early or

One side makes you sleep on a bed of nails and swear allegiance.The other side generously offers to help you out, no strings attached, but you might bleed out from the thousands of tiny means-testing cuts. Each side want the lower tiers to face the gauntlet and prove one's worthiness, hoping to convince us that a black box algorithm is the same thing as a jury of peers.

Telee , June 12, 2021 at 9:30 pm

Exactly right! And keep in mind deluge of op-eds telling us that Biden is a transformational president! The same authors presented a deluge of op-eds telling us how Senator Sanders was to radical for the American people after he did well in early primaries. That the reforms he supported like Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, lowering drug costs, help with daycare, doing something about climate change etc. were reforms that the people would never accept because the people value their freedom and don't want to live in a socialistic country.
It looks like none of the promises Biden made during the campaign will be implemented by President Biden. That why he is in the White House.

rowlf , June 12, 2021 at 12:38 pm

Would a lot of these positions be filled if the US had single payer healthcare or similar? Would workers accept low paying positions if they didn't have to lose so much of their pay to crappy health insurance?

Nikkikat , June 12, 2021 at 1:31 pm

At our local Petsmart they cut staff during the pandemic. They laid off all full time workers
And are only hiring back part time. I knew several of the laid off people and they are not coming back. Two of the people that worked full time have found other jobs one with slightly better pay the other with slightly better benefits. We are in California where rent is very high so another person we know decided to use this as a chance to relocate to another state where housing is less expensive. Our older neighbor retired, although vaccinated now, he decided it just wasn't safe and after the CDC told everyone to take off their mask off. He is glad he just decided to live on a little less money. I suspect there are a lot of reasons as Yves stated above for a lack of workers, but this "they are lazy" trope is capitalistic nonsense.

Petter , June 12, 2021 at 4:53 pm

This "they are lazy" trope has a long history. Yasha Levine wrote about it for the Exiled and it was reposted here at NC.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/yasha-levine-recovered-economic-history-everyone-but-an-idiot-knows-that-the-lower-classes-must-be-kept-poor-or-they-will-never-be-industrious.html

Some highlights:
>> everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.
-- Arthur Young; 1771
>>Even David Hume, that great humanist, hailed poverty and hunger as positive experiences for the lower classes, and even blamed the "poverty" of France on its good weather and fertile soil:
'Tis always observed, in years of scarcity, if it be not extreme, that the poor labour more, and really live better.

>>Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.

athingtoconsider , June 12, 2021 at 1:38 pm

I'll just point out, per the Old Testament, that wage, debt and rent slavery were the exception, not the norm (as they are in the US) for citizens (Hebrews) in ancient Israel/Judah.

That's because the assets in ancient Israel/Judah were roughly equally owned by all citizens with provisions in the OT Law (eg. Leviticus 25, eg. Deuteronomy 15, eg. Deuteronomy 23:19-20) to keep it that way in the long run (but less than 50 years).

Contrast that to US where we have privileges for a private credit cartel, aka "the banks", and no limits to the concentration of land ownership and the roots of our problems are evident.

So begging for better jobs for citizens is, in the Biblical context, pathetically weak tea indeed.

Amateur Socialist , June 12, 2021 at 1:53 pm

On a personal note I had a great job interview Thursday at the local food co-op. This is my first in person interview since I was terminated without cause by IBM (after almost 24 years there in a server development job) almost a year ago. Despite applying for over 100 positions. I'm over 60 and haven't worked in a year so I admit I'm grateful to even get the chance.

I have another interview with them next week and hoping to start soon as a produce clerk making $13.50 an hour. If I can get on full time they offer a decent insurance plan including dental. The HR person acknowledged that I was "wildly overqualified" but encouraging. The possibility of getting health care is key; my IBM Cobra benefits will start costing me almost $1400/monthly for myself and my husband in September after the ARA subsidy expires.

I've adjusted my expectations to reinvent myself as a manual laborer after decades in fairly cushy corporate life. I've managed to keep my health and physical capacity so somewhat optimistic I can meet the job requirements that include lifting 50 lb boxes of produce. But we'll see.

athingtoconsider , June 12, 2021 at 2:52 pm

and haven't worked in a year Amateur Socialist

You mean you haven't had a job in a year since it's highly doubtful that you have not done any work in a year; eg. cooking, cleaning, shopping, car maintenance, gardening, chauffeuring, mowing the lawn, home maintenance and caring for others count as work.

We need to stop conflating work (good) with wage slavery as if the former necessarily requires the latter.

Amateur Socialist , June 12, 2021 at 3:57 pm

Okay sure. I haven't earned in a year. But it's still a problem I'm trying to sort out best as I can.

Since I still live in the US where earning is highly correlated with insurance coverage, and I still have about 5 years until we're both qualified for Medicare this may turn out to be a great thing that has happened.

And since I don't see a path out of wage slavery today I'll be happy to accept almost any offer from the food co-op. It's a union job with decent pay and benefits and may offer other opportunities in the future. They mostly buy and sell products that are locally made so that makes it easier too. The money we are all enslaving each other over is staying around here as much as possible. Okay.

Arizona Slim , June 12, 2021 at 4:32 pm

A former neighbor worked in our local food co-op and loved her job. At the co-op, she was a cashier. She also was a retired attorney.

Dr. R.k. Barkhi , June 12, 2021 at 6:25 pm

Good luck! Fyi i strongly suggest u look into taking your IBM pension asap as 1. It will minimally impact your taxes as u r now earning less n 2. How many more years do u think it will be there? ( I usually recommend most people take their social security at 62 for similar reasons but in your case I'd do your research b4 making any move like that. ) Take a blank state n Fed tax form n pencil in the new income n see what the results are.
Btw truly wonderful people are involved in food co-ops,enjoy!

Eudora Welty , June 12, 2021 at 3:17 pm

Good luck! I will be thinking of you next week.

Sound of the Suburbs , June 12, 2021 at 2:52 pm

No one really questions the idea of maximising profit.
How do you maximise profit?
You minimise costs, including labour costs, i.e. wages.

Where did the idea of maximising profit comes from?
It certainly wasn't from Adam Smith.

"But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin." Adam Smith
Exactly the opposite of today's thinking, what does he mean?
When rates of profit are high, capitalism is cannibalising itself by:
1) Not engaging in long term investment for the future
2) Paying insufficient wages to maintain demand for its products and services
Today's problems with growth and demand.
Amazon didn't suck its profits out as dividends and look how big it's grown (not so good on the wages).

The benefits of the system can be passed upwards in dividends or downwards in wages.
Both actually detract from the money available for re-investment as Jeff Bezos knows only too well.
He didn't pay dividends, and paid really low wages, to maximise the amount that he could re-invest in Amazon and look how big it's grown.
The shareholders gains are made through the value of the shares.
Jeff Bezos hopes other people are paying high enough wages to buy lots of stuff from Amazon; his own workers don't have much purchasing power.

Where do the benefits of the system go?
Today, we pass as much as possible upwards in dividends.
In the Keynesian era they passed a lot more down in wages.

cnchal , June 12, 2021 at 10:34 pm

> Jeff Bezos hopes other people are paying high enough wages to buy lots of stuff from Amazon; his own workers don't have much purchasing power.

You are missing the tree in the forest. Jeff hopes other people will pay a high enough price for Amazon stawk. We already know Jeff doesn't give a shit about the stuff he sells, or the inhumane working conditions that go along with the low pay and short "career". I mean, not even the nastiest farmer would treat his mules like that, even if mules were easy and cheap to come by.

So far, Mr Market says beating workers, good.

Sound of the Suburbs , June 12, 2021 at 2:55 pm

We don't think people should get money when they are not working.
Are you sure?

What's the point in working?
Why bother?
It's just not worth all the effort when you can make money doing nothing.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned" income.
They love easy money.

With a BTL portfolio, I can get the capital gains on a number of properties and extract the hard earned income of generation rent at the same time.
That sounds good.
What is there not to like?

We love easy money.

You've just got to sniff out the easy money.
All that hard work involved in setting up a company yourself, and building it up.
Why bother?
Asset strip firms other people have built up, that's easy money.

People do love easy money.

Sound of the Suburbs , June 12, 2021 at 3:45 pm

"West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has made this great country."
Have you had a look around recently?

In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned" income.
America is not about work at all.

athingtoconsider , June 12, 2021 at 5:44 pm

America is not about work at all. SoS

The US is largely about exploiting or being exploited with most of US doing both.

We should resent an economic system that requires we exploit others or be a pure victim ourselves.

That said and to face some truths we'd rather not, the Bible offers some comfort, eg:

Ecclesiastes 7:16
Do not be excessively righteous, and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself?

Ecclesiastes 5:8-9
If you see oppression of the poor and denial of justice and righteousness in the province, do not be shocked at the sight; for one official watches over another official, and there are higher officials over them. After all, a king who cultivates the field is beneficial to the land.

Nonetheless, we should support economic justice and recognize that most of us are net losers to an unjust economic system even though it offers some corrupt compensation* to divide and confuse us.

*eg positive yields and interest on the inherently risk-free debt of a monetary sovereign.

KLG , June 12, 2021 at 6:54 pm

Jim Justice made his money the old fashioned way, he inherited it:

From Wiki: James Conley Justice II (born April 27, 1951) is an American businessman and politician who has been serving as the 36th governor of West Virginia since 2017. With a net worth of around $1.2 billion, he is the wealthiest person in West Virginia. He inherited a coal mining business from his father and built a business empire with over 94 companies, including the Greenbrier, a luxury resort.

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

chris , June 12, 2021 at 6:31 pm

I wonder how much of this is also related to a change in the churn we assume existed pre-pandemic? For example, the most recent JOLTS survey results from April 2021 show the total number of separations hasn't really changed but the number of quits has increased.

So, one possible interpretation of that would be employers are less likely to fire people and those who think they have skills in demand are more interested in leaving for better opportunities now. That makes intuitive sense given what we've been through. If you had a good gig and it was stable through 2020 you had very little reason to leave it even if an offer was better with another company. That goes double if you were a caregiver or had children. Which of course is why many women who were affected by the challenges of balancing daycare and a career gave up.

This is also my experience lately. While it's only anecdotal evidence, we're having a hard time hiring mid career engineers. Doesn't seem like pay is the issue. We offer a ton of vacation, a separate pool of sick time, decent benefits, and wages in the six figures with a good bonus program. We're looking to hire 3 engineers. We can't even get people to apply. In 2019 we could be sure to see a steady supply of experienced candidates looking for new opportunities. Now? If you have an engineering position and your company is letting you work from home it seems you don't have a good reason to jump.

Buckeye , June 12, 2021 at 10:47 pm

Look no further than Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. They had only half the staff they normally need at $10 an hour. So they double the wage to $20 an hour and filled every job in less than a week. The Conservaturds will never admit they are lying.

DWoolley , June 13, 2021 at 3:24 pm

As a small business owner providing professional services I am grateful for the comment section here.

I have called professional peers to get a behind the corporate PR perspective of their businesses. Although anecdotal, the overall trend in our industry is to accept the labor shortage and downsize. Most firms have a reliable backlog of work and will benefit from an infrastructure bill. Our firm has chosen to downsize and close vacant positions.

Remote work, although feasible, has employees thinking they are LeBron James, regardless of their skill set. Desperate employers are feeding their belief. Two years from now it will be interesting to see if these employees they fail forward. Company culture minimized employee turnover pre-covid. This culture has little meaning to an employee working in his daughter's playroom.

For context, in California, I believe the median income for licensees is approximately $110,000 with lower level technicians easily at $75k in the urban areas.

Lastly, the "paltry" $300 per week is in additional to the state unemployment checks and is not subject to taxes. As stated previously, $300 is equal to $7.50 per hour. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 and is adopted by many states minimum, for what it's worth.

Thanks again for the forum.

JBird4049 , June 13, 2021 at 6:32 pm

With respect, I do not see any there there in the comment. Adjusted for inflation the minimum wage at its height in 1968 at 1.60, would be just under $13 per hour today. However, even at $15 in California, it is inadequate.

Anyone making anything like the minimum wage would not be working from home, but would be working in some kind of customer service job, and would find paying for adequate food, clothing, and shelter very difficult. Not in getting any extras, but only in getting enough to survive. People, and their families, do need to eat.

If the response of not paying enough, and therefore not getting new hires, is to downsize, perhaps that is good. After all no business deserves to remain in business, especially if the business model depends on its workers being unable to survive.

Sue inSoCal , June 13, 2021 at 4:13 pm

I am also fed up with the "lazy worker" meme. Or rather, propaganda. People are literally exhausted working 2 or 3 lousy jobs and no real healthcare. Equally irritating to me is a misguided notion that we have some magically accessible generous safety net in the US. As though there aren't thousands and thousands on waiting lists for government subsidized housing. Section 8 vouchers? Good luck.

https://homesnow.org/short-history-of-public-housing-in-the-us-1930s-present/

We've ended "welfare as we [knew] it" (AFDC) thanks to Bill Clinton and then the screw was turned tightly by Junior Bush (no child care, but go to work.) The upshot was bad news for kids.

https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2019/02/25/how-welfare-reform-has-had-a-negative-effect-on-the-children-of-single-mothers

Seems to me one of the few things left is the food stamp program, and I can't imagine how that's been reconfigured. Whomever gave that fantastic list of goodies people can get in the US with a mere snap of the fingers isn't in the real world, imho.

Ok! Yves, lovely to see you again, my friend! (Cue the Moody Blues ) Get well!

10 legged shadow , June 13, 2021 at 4:54 pm

Here is my story.
I am 56 years old, on dialysis and I was collecting SSI of 529 a month.
I was living with and taking care of my mother in her home because she had dementia.
She died in December and I had to start paying the bills. In March I inherited her IRA which I reported to SS. I was able to roll it over into my own IRA because I am disabled, due to the Trump tax law changes.
I reported the changes in a timely manner and because I couldn't afford to live here without a job, I took a part time job for 9 an hour.
So now, because I inherited my mother's IRA and have too much resources I no longer qualify for SSI and have been overpaid to the tune of almost 2 grand, which I am assuming I will have to pay back. I have no idea how that works either. Do they just grab money out of your account? Anyone who knows please tell me.

JBird4049 , June 13, 2021 at 11:35 pm

I would run, run, run to the nearest public assistance counselor or lawyer. In the San Francisco Bay Area, it is should not be too hard to find one. They saved me. There are also in California several state websites. There was a useful to me benefits planning site (It only covers nine states though).

The rules for SSI (Supplemental Security Income), SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance), Social Security, Medi-Cal or Medicaid, and Medicare are each different. Each state has its own modifications as well, so that is fifty additional sets of modified rules especially for the medical benefits. If they are determined to claw back the money, how it is done might depend on the individual state. It is truly a maze of flycatchers and trapdoors out for you and your money.

The overworked benefits clerks often do not have the knowledge to deal with anything even slightly unusual and are not encourage or at least discouraged from finding out due to the never shrinking pile, not from anyone's malice. This means you could lose benefits because they did not know what they were doing or just by mistake. So, it is up to you to find those nonprofit counselors or the for profit lawyer to help you through the laws, rules, and whatever local regulations there are. Hopefully, you will not have to read through some of the official printed regulations like I did. If wasn't an experience paper pusher.. The average person would have been lost. Intelligence and competence has nothing to do with. Hell, neither does logic, I think.

In my case, when I inherited a retirement account, SSDI was not affected, because of how the original account was set up. However, SSDI is different from SSI although both have interesting and Byzantine requirements. I guess to make sure we are all "deserving" of any help.

So don't ask anonymous bozos like me on the internet and find those local counselors. If it is nonprofit, they will probably do it completely free. If needed, many lawyers, including tax lawyers, and CPAs will offer discounted help or will know where you can go.

Sound of the Suburbs , June 14, 2021 at 12:03 pm

What is the floor on wages?
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Set disposable income to zero.
Minimum wages = taxes + the cost of living
So, as we increase housing costs, we drive up wages.

The neoliberal solution.
Try and paper over the cracks with Payday loans.
This what we call a short term solution.

Someone has been tinkering with the economics and that's why we can't see the problem.
The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with "capital".
They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the Classical Economists as this is where rentier activity in the economy shows up.
It's so well hidden no one even knows it's there and everyone trips up over the cost of living, even the Chinese.

Angus Deaton rediscovers the wheel that was lost by the early neoclassical economists.
"Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States, but rent-seekers like the banking and the health-care sectors just might" Angus Deaton, Nobel prize winner.
Employees get their money from wages and the employers pay the cost of living through wages, reducing profit.
This raises the costs of doing anything in the US, and drives off-shoring.

The Chinese learn the hard way.
Davos 2019 – The Chinese have now realised high housing costs eat into consumer spending and they wanted to increase internal consumption.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNBcIFu-_V0
They let real estate rip and have now realised why that wasn't a good idea.

The equation makes it so easy.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
The cost of living term goes up with increased housing costs.
The disposable income term goes down.
They didn't have the equation, they used neoclassical economics.
The Chinese had to learn the hard way and it took years, but they got there in the end.

They have let the cost of living rise and they want to increase internal consumption.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
It's a double whammy on wages.
China isn't as competitive as it used to be.
China has become more expensive and developed Eastern economies are off-shoring to places like Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

[Jun 18, 2021] You Can't Create Permanent Inflation From Artificial Growth

Inflation for common people level means devaluation of the dollar. It can happen for reasons completely detached from money supply issues. For example shortage of commodities (especially oil) or diminishing of the world reserve currency status of the dollar (refusal of some countries to hold their currency reserves in dollars and switch to other currencies in mutual trade). Increase of military expenses (Pentagon budget is over trillion dollars now) also does not help (guns instead of butter policy)
Jun 18, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

The reason that rates are discounting the current "economic growth" story is that artificial stimulus does not create sustainable organic economic activity.

"This is because bubble activities cannot stand on their own feet; they require support from increases in money supply that divert to them real savings from wealth generators. Also, note again that a major cause behind the possible decline in the pool of real savings is unprecedented increases in money supply and massive government spending. While the pool of real savings is still growing, the massive money supply increase is likely to be followed by an upward trend in the growth rate of the prices of goods and services. This could start early next year. Once the pool of real savings starts to decline, however -- because of massive monetary pumping and reckless fiscal policies -- various bubble activities are will plunge. This, in turn, is likely to result in a large decline in economic activity and in the money supply." – Mises Institute

As stimulus fades from the system, that decline in money supply is only one of several reasons that "deflation" will resurface.

Monetary & Fiscal Policy Is Deflationary

The Federal Reserve and the Government have failed to grasp that monetary and fiscal policy is "deflationary" when "debt" is required to fund it.

How do we know this? Monetary velocity tells the story.

What is "monetary velocity?"

"The velocity of money is important for measuring the rate at which money in circulation is used for purchasing goods and services. Velocity is useful in gauging the health and vitality of the economy. High money velocity is usually associated with a healthy, expanding economy. Low money velocity is usually associated with recessions and contractions. " – Investopedia

With each monetary policy intervention, the velocity of money has slowed along with the breadth and strength of economic activity.

While in theory, "printing money" should lead to increased economic activity and inflation, such has not been the case.

A better way to look at this is through the " veil of money" theory.

If money is a commodity, more of it should lead to less purchasing power, resulting in inflation. However, this theory began to fail as Governments attempted to adjust interest rates rather than maintain a gold standard.

Crossing The Rubicon

As shown, beginning in 2000, the "money supply" as a percentage of GDP has exploded higher. The "surge" in economic activity is due to "reopening" from an artificial "shutdown." Therefore, the growth is only returning to the long-term downtrend. As shown by the attendant trendlines, increasing the money supply has not led to either more sustainable economic growth rates or inflation. It has been quite the opposite.

However, it isn't just the expansion of the Fed's balance sheet that undermines the strength of the economy. For instance, it is also the ongoing suppression of interest rates to try and stimulate economic activity. In 2000, the Fed "crossed the Rubicon," whereby lowering interest rates did not stimulate economic activity. Therefore, the continued increase in the "debt burden" detracted from it.

Similarly, we can illustrate the last point by comparing monetary velocity to the deficit.

As a result, monetary velocity increases when the deficit reverses to a surplus. Such allows revenues to move into productive investments rather than debt service.

The problem for the Fed is the misunderstanding of the derivation of organic economic inflation

6-More Reasons Deflation Is A Bigger Threat

Previously, Mish Shedlock discussed Dr. Lacy Hunt's views on inflation, or rather why deflation remains a more significant threat.

To summarize, the long-term risk to current outlooks remains the "3-Ds:"

Conclusion

With this in mind, the debt problem remains a massive risk. If rates rise, the negative impact on an indebted economy quickly depresses activity. More importantly, the decline in monetary velocity shows deflation is a persistent threat.

Treasury&Risk clearly explained the reasoning :

"It is hard to overstate the degree to which psychology drives an economy's shift to deflation. When the prevailing economic mood in a nation changes from optimism to pessimism, participants change. Creditors, debtors, investors, producers, and consumers all change their primary orientation from expansion to conservation.

These behaviors reduce the velocity of money, which puts downward pressure on prices. Money velocity has already been slowing for years, a classic warning sign that deflation is impending. Now, thanks to the virus-related lockdowns, money velocity has begun to collapse. As widespread pessimism takes hold, expect it to fall even further."

There are no real options for the Federal Reserve unless they are willing to allow the system to reset painfully.

Unfortunately, we now have a decade of experience of watching monetary experiments only succeed in creating a massive "wealth gap."

Most telling is the current economists' inability to realize the problem is trying to "cure a debt problem with more debt."

In conclusion, the Keynesian view that "more money in people's pockets" will drive up consumer spending, with a boost to GDP being the result, has been wrong. It hasn't happened in 40 years.

Unfortunately, deflation remains the most significant threat as permanent growth doesn't come from an artificial stimulus.


bikepath999 2 hours ago

Title is 100% wrong! It's artificial growth (money printing) that is the inflation! Organic growth thru increased production can actually lead to deflation!

OldNewB 2 hours ago

Exactly. Inflation can be the reduction in the rate of deflation due to productivity increases.

bikepath999 2 hours ago

Transitory is just the new little catch phrase to have you chasing after your own tail rather than skinning alive a central banker or politician

dead hobo 2 hours ago (Edited)

Transitory was Janet Yellen's favorite word for years. It was her catch phrase like Bernanke's was 'The benefits outweigh the costs'. Total blather in both cases.

In both cases, it was muppet-speak for 'p*ss off'. But it sounded oh so intelligent and the media lapped it up.

About the above article ... Economics, as commonly applied by sales folk, teachers, experts, and pundits is theology, not science. One credibility trick is to quote an expert who quoted another expert. Like above. How can you argue against this depth?

Misesmissesme 2 hours ago (Edited)

They are somewhat correct on the technical definition of inflation. However, hyper-inflation does not care about any of that. It only needs a government willing to print and a populace that has lost faith in the currency. We know the gov and the Fed are game. It's just a matter of time until the masses lose faith in the dollar.

OldNewB 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Devaluing the fiat by printing to infinity has nothing to do with growth.

Printing IS inflation. Where it shows up is another matter.

Whether it results in higher prices is a function of behavior between buyers and sellers of assets, products and services.

-- ALIEN -- 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link

International Energy Agency said GLOBAL PEAK OIL PRODUCTION for all liquids happened in 2018.

NO economic growth is possible without growing the energy supply, so 2% predicted growth is BS,

unless other countries contract by 2+%.

Quia Possum 2 hours ago

We're beyond the point of pulling the rip cord.

Some ZH writer had an excellent analogy to a hot air balloon on fire. Up to a height X, you can jump off safely. Up to a height Y you can jump off and survive with some broken bones, but you're going to have to muster some courage to do that. But once you pass that height you're dead whether you jump or stay in the balloon all the way.

[Jun 16, 2021] FBI Operatives Likely 'Unindicted Co-Conspirators', Organizers Of Capitol Riot- Report

Comments for this article are pretty instructive about the particular strata of US population mindset right now. Reminds the mood of dissidents in the USSR.
Jun 16, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Tucker Carlson dropped several bombshells on his show Tuesday night, chief among them was from a Revolver News report that the FBI was likely involved in organizing the Jan. 6 Capitol 'insurrection,' and were similarly involved in the kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor Gretchin Whitmer .

" Why are there so many factual matters that we don't understand about that day? " asked Carlson.

" Why is the Biden administration preventing us from knowing? Why is the administration still hiding more than 10,000 hours of surveillance tape from the US capitol on January 6th? What could possibly be the reason for that - even as they call for more openness... they could release those tapes today, but they're not. Why?"

Carlson notes that Revolver News has dissected court filings surrounding the Capitol riot, suggests that unindicted co-conspirators in the case are likely to have been federal operatives.

We at Revolver News have noticed a pattern from our now months-long investigation into 1/6 -- and in particular from our meticulous study of the charging documents related to those indicted. In many cases the unindicted co-conspirators appear to be much more aggressive and egregious participants in the very so-called "conspiracy" serving as the basis for charging those indicted.

The question immediately arises as to why this is the case, and forces us to consider whether certain individuals are being protected from indictment because they were involved in 1/6 as undercover operatives or confidential informants for a federal agency.

Key segment from Tucker:

"We know that the government is hiding the identity of many law enforcement officers that were present at the Capitol on January 6th, not just the one that killed Ashli Babbitt. According to the government's own court filing, those law enforcement officers participated in the riot - sometimes in violent ways . We know that because without fail, the government has thrown the book at most people who were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6. There was a nationwide dragnet to find them - and many are still in solitary confinement tonight. But s trangely, some of the key people who participated on Jan. 6 have not been charged ."

Look at the documents , the government calls those people 'unindicted co-conspirators.' What does that mean? Well it means that in potentially every case they were FBI operatives ... in the Capitol, on January 6th."

"For example, one of those unindicted co-conspirators is someone government documents identify only as "person two." According to those documents, person two stayed in the same hotel room as a man called Thomas Caldwell - an 'insurrectionist.' A man alleged to be a member of the group "The Oathkeepers." Person two also "stormed the barricades" at the Capitol on January 6th alongside Thomas Caldwell. The government's indictments further indicate that Caldwell - who by the way is a 65-year-old man... was led to believe there would be a "quick reaction force" also participating on January 6th. That quick reaction force Caldwell was told, would be led by someone called "Person 3," who had a hotel room and an accomplice with them . But wait. Here's the interesting thing. Person 2 and person 3 were organizers of the riot . The government knows who they are, but the government has not charged them. Why is that? You know why. They were almost certainly working for the FBI. So FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the Capitol on January 6th according to government documents. And those two are not alone. In all, Revolver news reported there are "upwards of 20 unindicted co-conspirators in the Oath Keeper indictments, all playing various roles in the conspiracy, who have not been charged for virtually the exact same activities and in some cases much, much more severe activities - as those named alongside them in the indictments."

Watch:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1404985019420987398&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Ffbi-operatives-were-unindicted-co-conspirators-organizers-capitol-riot-report&sessionId=ebe7b0399e890bf12ec9d97d458e9766a17255c1&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

Revolver , meanwhile, has important questions about January 6th

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has demanded an explanation from FBI Director Christopher Wray:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1405186330284412934&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Ffbi-operatives-were-unindicted-co-conspirators-organizers-capitol-riot-report&sessionId=ebe7b0399e890bf12ec9d97d458e9766a17255c1&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

More:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-2&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1404987282273181696&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Ffbi-operatives-were-unindicted-co-conspirators-organizers-capitol-riot-report&sessionId=ebe7b0399e890bf12ec9d97d458e9766a17255c1&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

We recommend you read the entire Revolver piece, which includes the fact that at least five individuals involved int he "Whitmer Kidnapping Plot" were undercover agents and federal informants .


_Rorschach 7 hours ago

Just remember folks

a Klan meeting is always 33 FBI agents

and 2 ACTUAL white supremacists

Dragonlord 7 hours ago

No CIA? I am disappointed.

_Rorschach 7 hours ago (Edited)

Glowies are never at the meetings

theyre busy planting bombs for the false flag afterwards

Misesmissesme 6 hours ago

90% of "terrorists" would never commit acts of terror if the US Guv wasn't coercing them to commit said acts. The wrong people are in jail.

Wonder who in government started the ball rolling on 9/11 before it got away from them?

Sedaeng PREMIUM 6 hours ago

it never got away from them! They directed through and afterwards... Patriot act just 'happened' to be on standby just in case? ha!

Not Your Father's ZH 6 hours ago (Edited)

Amid this chronic Machiavellian conniving, here are creatures who know how to act right:

Goldendoodle Harley saved fawn in lake and then loved on her keeping her safe

"Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing things historians usually record; while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks of the river." ~ Will Durant, "The Story of Civilization"

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss , the abyss also gazes into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in Heaven." ― Mark Twain

thomas sewell 6 hours ago

everything in the USA is bull sheet. its all polluted with mind fook.

the last 1+ year has gone beyond any psycho drama i could ever imagine.

krda 5 hours ago

Didn't Brennan issue the 9/11 hijackers' visas?

zedwork 1 hour ago

Yes, but no planes. That would have been way too risky when you can just add them into the live feed later using CGI.

Bob Lidd 1 hour ago

You mean like what happen in the 1993 WTC bombing.....??

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1993-10-28-1993301015-story.html

Misesmissesme 59 minutes ago

How there hasn't been a day of reckoning yet is beyond me.

SexyJulian 6 hours ago

And stacks of bricks.

E5 5 hours ago

The FBI does not have the right to commit a crime. They chose to run an operation they should disavow all agents involved and they know it. Arrest them.

Not Your Father's ZH 4 hours ago

Breaking: Court Documents Confirm FBI Planned & Executed Jan. 6th 'Insurrection'

vova_3.2018 3 hours ago remove link

The FBI does not have the right to commit a crime. ...

Like 9/11, the "Capitol Hill Riot", was a false-flag operation staged by the Deep-State and falsely attributed to a group the DS sought to target.

BaNNeD oN THe RuN 7 hours ago

DoD also has a domestic undercover army of 60,000... so they may have been more involved than the FBI...

https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-inside-militarys-secret-undercover-army-1591881

There is strong evidence that Ashli Babbit's shooting was also fake...

https://www.bitchute.com/video/gb5nZYoFLuar/

DinduNuffin 6 hours ago

that video destroys the whole narrative ... EVERYTHING IS FAKE

Not Your Father's ZH 5 hours ago

The Pentagon Uses the World's Largest 'Secret Army' of 60,000 Undercover Operatives To Carry Out 'Domestic & Foreign' Operations

Feck Weed 6 hours ago

With Wray out there spreading fear about the Great White Supremacy Threat, you can bet the FBI is working overtime to make something newsworthy happen. Remember folks: 3 "militia" = 2 FBI informants + 1 patsy

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eatapeach 7 hours ago

https://mises.org/library/conspiracy-theory-history-revisited

Until the JFK murder/coup is brought to light, you can bet it's all hoax, including Trump being an 'outsider'. He's not. He did everything Israel told him to do.

GhostOLaz 3 hours ago

America's perception of the FBI comes from TV "programs", not history or reality.

Joiningupthedots 1 hour ago

"Why is the administration still hiding more than 10,000 hours of surveillance tape from the US capitol on January 6th?"

For the same reason the UK government wont release the Skripal Tapes from Salisbury, UK.......LMAO.

Its an inside job........OBVIOUSLY!

Faeriedust 2 hours ago

So. Incidents are being staged and then used as excuses for more draconian State security powers. How is this different from the behavior of known historical groups such as the SS and the KGB? How can this be interpreted except as the actions of a totalitarian State?

Sizzurp PREMIUM 6 hours ago

Scary stuff. They manufacture their own crimes to suit their political narrative and agenda. This is straight out of the Nazi playbook.

Garciathinksso 6 hours ago

this is SOP for FBI, long rich history of manufacturing crimes and low, mid and high level corruption . Prior to that the BOI was even worse.

JaxPavan 7 hours ago remove link

The chickens coming home to roost.

This was a "color revolution" by us, against us. And, it was designed to fail. Like a freakish side show.

Why? Let off political steam. Keep all the people in their respective aisle of the democan and republicrat uniparty bus. Distract political attention away from the full ****** plandemic lockdowns. Keep the rest of the world agape for a few more years thinking things will fall apart on their own, while their resources are extracted. . .

Jam 47 minutes ago

This scam getting some press now is better late than never, but not by much. Some of these media types being all surprised by this must have lived pretty sheltered lives and are lacking any street smarts. This set up was obvious since day one, this is the same bunch that won't call out these crooks for rigged elections.

Oxygen Likes Carbon 48 minutes ago

It should be painfully clear that with the level of surveillance in 2021, nobody can walk into high security governmental building, without being arrested. Let alone organize a mass demonstration then go into Capitol Building during the day, while the politicians being there, to take ... selfies.

... without some help, or coordination from some governmental services.

anti-bolshevik 7 hours ago (Edited)

Replace 'unindicted co-conspirators.' with Agent Provocateurs.

The entire chain-of-command that authorized / planned / executed / gave material support to this Operation should be indicted and prosecuted.

Reminder, Fordham Law's findings

In this course of its investigation, researchers at Fordham discovered that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the 138 terrorist incidents recorded in the USA between 2001-2012 involved FBI informants who played leading roles in planning out, supplying weapons, instructions and even recruiting Islamic terrorists to carry out terrorist acts on U.S. soil.

Enraged 56 minutes ago

With FBI Director Comey, Assistant Director McCabe, and FBI agent/covert CIA agent Strzok acting against President Trump, this should be considered treasonous, and hopefully they will be prosecuted.

The question is who authorized the latest actions on January 6 since Comey, McCabe, and Strzok were fired.

Conductor "Corn Pop" Angelo 38 minutes ago

I can think of two to start with. Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi. Both refused additional security even after being told that the latest intel suggested there was going to be a protest at the capital building on Jan 6th. The two were offered National Guard troops, in addition to Capital Police, to help out, but refused. IIRC, both the Senate and House Sgt at Arms lost their jobs over this, too

Make it three, Mayor Bowser had the same intel and did nothing

Andro1345 7 hours ago

These are old tricks by the FBI. They have been just as bad as the CIA for years.

So many instances going back so far. They plan things, set it up, help to encourage and supply sheep to do these things. If I had someone trying to encourage me to get on board something similar my first guess would be a government operative, seriously.

WeNamedTheDogIndiana 1 hour ago

I attended protests after the election, and it was obvious to be that the rallies at our state capitol were infiltrated by FBI/deep state stooges. A number of them were talking civil war, and said it too boldly in my opinion, and then many of them were carrying AKs, when that was not necessary.

The only rally that I attended that seemed uncorrupted was the first protest in DC a few weeks after the election.

taketheredpill 7 hours ago

Don't be shocked if the FBI funded some of the trips, hotels etc.

And for sure the FBI operatives "wound up" the participants...

But you won't find out for 10 years.

Alfred 7 hours ago

Not just infiltrated.

The FBI actually creates the organizations they then infiltrate.

Someone goes on a good rant here or there, can expect to be befriended by someone of like mind. Thereafter that someone undergoes radicalization and then organization via FBI sting ops. They get funding, they get resources, they get ready, they get busted.

Ha! It's all shake-n-bake, baby!

ProudZion 6 hours ago

...The proud boys was led by a FBI agent....

Mad Muppet PREMIUM 1 hour ago

They're called Agents Provacateurs and it's nothing new. The Government always initiates the violence they say they want to prevent.

Ms No PREMIUM 1 hour ago remove link

"Informants" is a very misleading title. They aren't out there ferretting info of people up to no good. It's more an infiltration and steering game and always has been.

They are basically agents without the boundaries of law. Good front guys too. They will keep them out of trouble and protect them if they can but if it gets too hot they are expendable and even easily patsied. It's all actually actually technically illegal because even when they do real informant work it's actually entrapment.

We used to be protected from these things and now you see the reason behind that. Nothing is new it just has different names and since it's always avoided by media, some of it doesn't even have proper names, at least for the public.

It's basically false flag color revolution operations.

QuiteShocking 6 hours ago (Edited) remove link

The USA's standing in the world is vastly diminished by the continue lies and mischaracterizations of what happened on Jan 6th by the democrats. The police officer died from a stroke and not from the rioters. The unarmed white woman was executed by capital police and no one was held responsible. The democrats have continued to blatantly lie and mislead on what really happened on Jan 6th for political gain...

Max21c 7 hours ago

We recommend you read the entire Revolver piece, which includes the fact that at least five individuals involved int he "Whitmer Kidnapping Plot" were undercover agents and federal informants .

People were already aware that the FBI kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was an FBI thing from the start and all throughout. Just as many if not most of these things are as they involve the secret police creating the plots and then unraveling the plots they've created and managed and orchestrated all along the way.

Angular Momentum 7 hours ago

The states need to outlaw entrapment in cases like that. The FBI moles need to be punished as severely as the dupes.

junction 7 hours ago

The FBI and the CIA apparently fund the so-call White Supremacist organizations. Your tax dollars at work. Meanwhile, total silence for a decade from the FBI as Jeffrey Epstein ran a transnational white slavery operation out of his Manhattan mansion, aided by the Israeli Mossad.

Max21c 7 hours ago

The intelligence community and secret police community were well aware of what was going on with the Epstein operation. It's not just the US side either as the UK and Israelis were aware of it also.

Uncle Sugar PREMIUM 7 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Trump is better than Xiden, but

He left Chris Wray running the FIB

He didn't prosecute Comey, Brennan, anyone

He pushed the "Vax"

He spent worse than a drunken sailor

Conclusion - He's not the answer

OldNewB 6 hours ago

He should have pardoned Snowden.

otschelnik 7 hours ago

Well looks like the DOJ is bringing back the Obummer spygate team. John P. Carlin who was head of DOJ/National Security Division is now deputy AG. He let the FBI give 4 civilian contractors access to the NSA database for 702 inquiries, which Admiral Rogers stopped. Also back is Lisa Monoco who oversaw the FISA warrants for Carter Page, and now she's going to be heading up Garland's domestic terror task force.

That's all very ominous.

Farmer Tink 4 hours ago

I didn't realize that Carlin was back. He tried to defend his actions in the annual report to the FISA court but Adm. Mike Rogers, on whose watch the NSA found out what the DOJ was doing, carried the day. I also didn't realize that Lisa Monaco was the one in charge of those illegal Page warrants. It's just sickening that they are being rewarded. Thanks for the info.

glenlloyd 2 hours ago (Edited)

With such a high percentage of those 'involved' in the "insurrection" (said loosely here) and the so called Whitmer kidnapping being from FBI / CIA / other intelligence agencies AND those same people end up apparently being in leadership roles in these groups that are supposedly going to be doing the kidnapping and insurrecting, then it's really hard not to come to the conclusion that the fault was with the FBI et al.

It just seems like the FBI et al were way more involved in this than they should have been, if you're going to suggest that it was the others that are to blame. The tough pill to swallow is the claim that it was the people the FBI et al infiltrated and coerced into do these things, that are to blame.

Things really do stink with this.

newworldorder 5 hours ago

How are these actions are not "entrapment."

InfiniteIntellRules 5 hours ago

I will stop, just too many tales of FBI corruption. Last 1

From the book " The United States of Paranoia " by Jesse Walker:

Under COINTELPRO, FBI agents infiltrated political groups and spread rumors that loyal members were the real infiltrators. They tried to get targets fired from their jobs, and they tried to break up the targets' marriages. They published deliberately inflammatory literature in the names of the organizations they wanted to discredit, and they drove wedges between groups that might otherwise be allied. In Baltimore, the FBI's operatives in the Black Panther Party were instructed to denounce Students for a Democratic Society as "a cowardly, honky group" who wanted to exploit the Panthers by giving them all the violent, dangerous "dirty work." The operation was apparently successful: In August 1969, just five months after the initial instructions went out, the Baltimore FBI reported that the local Panther branch had ordered its members not to associate with SDS members or attend any SDS events.

EVERY MAJOR EVENT. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

heehaw2 6 hours ago

All happened under Trumps watch. He said he was going to lead the March to Capital building, then totally disappeared.

MrNoItAll 7 hours ago

Got to hand it to them. Those Fed guys sure know how to stage a riot to get media attention and shape public opinion. How else could they explain why all the guard troops were needed in D C. When getting them there could have been the primary goal of this staged event.

lightwork 7 hours ago

In the early 70's it seemed that a government informant/ mole was instrumental in the activities of virtually every left wing group in the country. It became common knowledge that whomever was most vocal and advocated the most activist positions was usually "that guy". It was effective since paranoia caused most groups to disintegrate.

otschelnik 8 hours ago remove link

Probably more snitches than that.

Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell who is one of the lucky few released but still charged is a former FBI contractor who had top secret security clearance according to his lawyer.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/538018-man-charged-in-capitol-riot-says-he-worked-for-fbi-and-holds-top

Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio who was arrested 2 days before the riot for vandalism (burning a BLM banner), had been an informer to the FBI and law inforcement in Florida, according to his lawyer.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/27/proud-boys-leader-enrique-tarrio-fbi-informant

Max21c 6 hours ago remove link

They forgot Antifa and BLM in their list of groups.

State sponsored terrorist groups favored by Liberal Elites and their secret police are generally omitted and immune.

heehaw2 6 hours ago

George Bush Senior, then head of CIA was in Dallas when JFK was assinated. Ol George announced as President the New World order

QE49er 6 hours ago

Reichstag Fire style false flag.

Ruff_Roll 6 hours ago

It makes perfect sense that FBI or government supported operatives were acting as agents provocateurs on 1/6, organizing and instigating the riot, and subsequently let off as "unindicted co-conspirators." Pelosi was probably in on it, too.

TheySayIAmOkay 7 hours ago

This is the biggest "duh" ever. Of course the government is involved. Just like they were in 9/11. Just like they were stealing the election. Just like they are in at least some of these mass shootings (the FBI was warned about the Parkland shooter multiple times). Just like they will be in the next big incident that massively strips rights from the people.

The Deep State is real. And it is the upper echelons of the FBI, DHS, CIA, ATF, etc. They are the shadow government that wags the tail. They can do whatever they want and nobody can do anything about it. Do you think if Ted Cruz or Nancy Pelosi killed someone they'd get away with it? No. They are figures. The limits of their power can be stripped with a single, stupid, scandal. How about John Brennan? I have absolutely no doubt in my mind he could. Because who will hold him accountable? Nobody in the CIA or FBI went down for not listening to the FBI agent about the 20th hijacker. Mueller got PROMOTED! He's deep state. Brennan was regional chief of the CIA in Riyadh leading up to 9/11. He got... PROMOTED! Deep state.

3-fingered_chemist 7 hours ago

The fact the Capitol had essentially zero security the day all members were present to tally the EC votes and people still think this wasn't faked?

Jim in MN 7 hours ago

Speaking as someone who actually attended the earlier 'Stop the Steal' rally in DC, I said at the time that the Jan. 6th event didn't smell right and felt like a setup. Recommended that folks stay away, expect trouble and stay frosty at that time.

Note that the FBI was/is also deeply involved in the BLM riots. AKA a criminal conspiracy to destabilize US civil order. Of course a lot of mayors and police chiefs are also involved in that criminal conspiracy.

The more you know.....

jammyjo 7 hours ago

FBI is making contact with unstable people, and do nothing but keep them on a list of "assets" to be activated when needed.

Patmos 7 hours ago

Gives new meaning to false narrative. More than just spin, they actually create the events themselves. Not quite a false flag, because nothing really happened.

Is anyone involved going to stand up and say no? Or have they all just decided to reserve themselves to being corrupt little b!tches?

Feck Weed 7 hours ago

FBI is the US domestic secret police force for the Globalist Empire. Nationalism is the enemy of the globalists...

[Jun 14, 2021] Economist David Rosenberg says the Bond Market might have inflation right

The price of energy is growing. and that means inflation is accelerating, but it will probably take the form of stagflation...
Stagflation is characterized by slow economic growth and relatively high unemployment -- or economic stagnation -- which is at the same time accompanied by rising prices (i.e. inflation). Stagflation can also be alternatively defined as a period of inflation combined with a decline in gross domestic product (GDP). See also Stagflation - Wikipedia
Stagflation led to the emergence of the Misery index . This index, which is the simple sum of the inflation rate and unemployment rate, served as a tool to show just how badly people were feeling when stagflation hit the economy.
Under neoclassic economic doctrine stagflation was long believed to be impossible. This pseudoscience demonstrated in the Phillips Curve portrayed macroeconomic policy as a trade-off between unemployment and inflation.
Jun 14, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

I commented above on direction. I believe the bond market has the direction in June correct (falling yields).

That said, the "real yield" is nearly -5% (CPI minus the 3-Month Treasury Yield). This fosters speculation in assets.

We are in the midst of the third big bubble in just over 20 years.

Extrapolating Conditions

It's usually a big mistake to extrapolate current conditions far into the future. And that includes now.

Sure, there are huge wage pressures and the price of some commodities, especially lumber, went through the roof.

But where to from here is what's important.

Despite Wage Increases, Real Hourly Pay Is Losing to Inflation

On June 11, I commented Despite Wage Increases, Real Hourly Pay Is Losing to Inflation

I also noted Huge Upward Wage Pressures for Both Skilled and Unskilled Labor

But Lacy Hunt is holding pat as well.

He pinged me in response to Explaining the Shortage of Skilled Workers and Why It Will Get Worse with these thoughts.

Mish,

Excellent analysis. I would add one point as a result of your conclusion. Older populations with declining birth rates and slower population, depress household, business and public investment. The contracting effect on investment is highly deflationary and overwhelms the impact of inflation due to the smaller labor force. This condition is plainly evident in Japan and Europe. Moreover, this pattern will be increasingly apparent in the US .

The Transitory Boat

The transitory boat is a small one. Powell and Yellen have to say that no matter what they believe.

Rosenberg, Hunt, and I are in the small boat.

And if you want another reason to be in that boat with us, then think about what happens when asset bubbles burst. It won't be inflationary, that's for sure.

Meanwhile, "I just say buy the gold," Rosenberg said. "Gold has 1/5 of the volatility that bitcoin has."

For more on gold and real interest rates, please see my June 11 post Real Interest Rates Suggest It's a Good Time to Buy and Hold Gold

[Jun 14, 2021] World War II Was Transitory- - Putting Inflation In Context

Jun 14, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Via Global Macro Monitor,

Let us preface our inflation note with one of our favorite quotes:

"World War II was transitory"

– GMM

Inflation has eroded my purchasing power in my transitory life. Bring back the $.35 Big Mac, which was only about 20% of the minimum wage. Now? About 40-50%... Enough to spark a revolution?

[Jun 13, 2021] Another scenario doe Seneca cliff is that some exporting nations realize they will need this oil as the world stares into a scarcity of oil. They might say: "Shit, why are we selling this stuff when we will desperately need it for ourselves in a few years?"

Jun 13, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

RON PATTERSON IGNORED 06/13/2021 at 2:44 pm

Another scenario is that some exporting nations realize they will need this oil as the world stares into a scarcity of oil. They might say: "Shit, why are we selling this stuff when we will desperately need it for ourselves in a few years?" And as they cut back, or stop exporting altogether, the problem gets a lot worse, and prices spike even higher. REPLY DOUG LEIGHTON IGNORED 06/13/2021 at 3:34 pm

L.O.L. The decision concerning the proportion of a domestic resource that should be preserved for domestic needs, and how much to export, is interesting. China's REE deposits come to mind. Also, the impact of the immediate use of a resource versus a lower level of exploitation over time might come into play in some (perhaps unrealistic) scenarios as well. Not many examples of countries that have exhaustible natural resources saving some for future generations I'm aware of; probably would result in an unwelcome war or another ugly result!

[Jun 12, 2021] Stockman Warns -Buckle Up!-, May's Soaring CPI Print Was No 'Transitory' Blip

All factors that Stokman sites does not exclude bond rate remaining withing this yea max-min band for the rest of the year. You never know how long Fed will continue to buy bonds to suppress the yield.
The last "dead chicken bounce" of 10 year bond caught many people unprepared and surprised.
Jun 12, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

The Fed's destructive money-pumping has many victims, but chief among these is the Wall Street financial narrative itself.

It emits not a whiff about the patent absurdity of the Fed's monthly purchase of $120 billion of treasury and GSE debt under current circumstances; and treats with complete respect and seriousness the juvenile word game known as "thinking about thinking about tapering" by which the clowns in the Eccles Building fearfully attempt to placate the liquidity-intoxicated speculators on Wall Street.

So it's not surprising that today's 5.0% CPI reading was made inoperative within minutes after the BLS release by a chorus of financial pundits gumming about "base effects" and ridiculing outliers like soaring used car prices (up 29.7% YoY), which, of course, Bloomberg reporters never see the inside of anyway.

Then again, that's why we look at the two-year stacked CAGRs, which smooth the ups and downs of the worst lockdown months last spring; and also why we use the 16% trimmed mean CPI, which eliminates the highest 8% and lowest 8% of items in the overall CPI each month (both sets of deleted outliers are different each month).

In the present instance, therefore, off-setting the used car prices in the highest 8% of items during May is the -5.0% YoY drop in health insurance costs (if you believe that BLS whopper) and the -5.3% drop in sporting event prices, which, of course, have been largely zero since last April.

In any event, the 16% trimmed mean CPI for May was up by 4.7% annualized versus the April number and was higher by 2.62% on YoY basis.

Still, the more salient point is that on a two-year stacked basis the plain old CPI -- used car prices and all -- leaves not a scintilla of doubt: Consumer inflation is accelerating and rapidly.

During the last eight months the growth rate for the two year stack has risen from 1.48% to 2.55% per annum. And we don't recall a word in May 2019 about that year's reading being particularly deflationary. It was actually up 1.83% from May 2018.

Per Annum CPI Increase, Two-Year Stack:

Still, according to the Fed apologists there's nothing troubling about the above because the Fed is now only trying to hit its 2.00% inflation target "averaged over time".

Let's see. Here are the CPI growth rates going back to May 2014. It turns out you have to average back seven years before you have a shortfall from the 2.00% target!

CPI Increase per Annum To May 2021 From:

You get the scam. These mendacious fools will just keep averaging back in time until the get a number that's a tad under 2.00%, smack their lips loudly and then pronounce the current inflation to be "transitory".

And they will also toss out any inflation index that undercuts their MOAAR inflation mantra -- like all of the data reported above!

So we will say it again : The CPI is a highly imperfect general price measure owing to its one-sided treatment of quality (hedonic) improvements, wherein some reported prices are adjusted downward for improved product features like airbags and more powerful PCs, put few prices are adjusted upward for the junkie toys, towels, kitchenware, appliances and furniture that comes out of China.

But with the 8% highest and 8% lowest prices dropped out monthly to filter out the short-run noise, the 16% trimmed mean version of the CPI at least purports to be a fixed basket price index, not a variable weight deflator like the Fed's beloved PCE deflator.

In short, the 16% trimmed mean CPI puts paid to the "transitory" scam. Come hell or high water, this serviceable inflation measure has been rising at 2.00% per annum since the year 2000, and even more than that during the 1990s.

Thus, during the 112 months since the Fed formally adopted inflation targeting in January 2012, it has risen by 2.03% per annum and by 2.15% per annum since January 2000.

Equally significantly, there have been only a handful of times during the 256 monthly readings since January 2000 when the year-over-year measure dropped materially below 2.00%.

YoY Change, 16% Trimmed Mean CPI, 2000-2021

For want of doubt, here is the Fed's preferred short-ruler -- -the core PCE (personal consumption expenditure deflator less food and energy). And the Fed's case for its insane money-pumping essentially boils down to the dueling information covered by the red bars above and the purple bars below.

As it happens, the one-year change in the core PCE deflator is 3.1% and the stacked two-year gain is 1.99% per annum. That latter is apparently not close enough to 2.00% for government work, meaning that the Fed needs to get more years into its average.

Even then, you have to be trained in the medieval theology of counting angels on the head of a pin to ascertain the purported earth-shaking "shortfall" from target. Compared to April 2021, here are the multi-year CAGRs on an April-to-April basis:

That's right. For the five year-pairs shown above, the average CAGR for the core PCE deflator was 1.90%. It seems that "lowflation" amounts to that which you need a magnifying glass to ascertain -- 10 basis points of shortfall.

Of course, our monetary bean counters are not done "averaging", either. If you go back to January 2012 when the Fed officially adopted inflation targeting, the core PCE deflator is up by 1.69% per annum, and since January 2000 it has risen by 1.75% per annum.

So there you have it. For want of 25-31 basis points of annual inflation -- -averaging back to the beginning of the current century -- you have a camarilla of central bankers giving deer in the headlights an altogether new meaning. That is to say, they are apparently not even thinking about thinking about tapering their massive bond-buying fraud owing to the barely detectable differences between purple and red bars of these dueling charts.

As we said a few days back, would that they had applied the 25th Amendment to the Federal Reserve Board.

These sick puppies are in urgent need of palliative care.

YoY Change In Core PCE Deflator, 2000-2021

They are also in need of a dose of realism, and on that score there are three figures in the May CPI report which tell you all you need to know. To wit, compared to May 2020, durable goods prices were up by 10.3%, nondurables were higher by 7.4% and services less energy gained 2.9%.

In fact, in the recent history of these three figures lays a stinging refutation of the entire "lowflation" scam promulgated by the Fed money printers and their acolytes and shills on Wall Street and in Washington, too.

On this matter, the Donald was right, even if by accident or for the wrong reasons. What we are referring to, of course, is the "Shina" factor.

Beijing's form of state-controlled printing press capitalism has systematically drivendown the cost of manufactured goods and especially durables by, in effect, draining the rice paddies of China's great interior and herding its latent industrial work force into spanking new factories which paid wages less than meager. And CapEx costs were rock bottom, too, owing to $50 trillion of central bank-fueled domestic debt and the greatest cheap capital-driven malinvestment spree in human history.

The result was an intense, multi-decade long deflation of manufactured goods as the high labor costs embodied in US and European manufacturers were steadily squeezed out of global prices levels as production shifted to China and its East Asian supply chain.

That impact is patently obvious in the composition of the CPI among the three components which were flashing warning lights in today's inflation report.

Composition of CPI By Major Components, 2000-2021

In the first place, the core of domestic inflation lies in the 58.8% weight of the CPI consisting of mainly domestically supplied services. The 2.9% YoY gain reported for May for CPI services less energy was essentially par for the course.

That is, during the last 21 years (since January 2000) this component (black line) has risen by 2.71% per annum, and since January 2012 it has gained a similar 2.63% per annum.

Needless to say, if there is any part of the inflation rate that the Fed can most powerfully impact, it is domestically supplied services like health care, education, housing, entertainment, travel and foods services. So where's the "lowflation" in that part of the CPI basket?

Alas, we don't have lowflation in services at all, but a stubborn 2.6%-3.0% upward price drift in domestic service components which account for nearly three-fifths of the household budget.

By contrast, the durable goods component (brown line) accounts for 11.1% of the CPI, and it's been an anchor to the windward for more than two decades. As of May 2021, prices were still 8% below their January 2000 level.

The truth is, the alleged lowflation on the top line CPI has been heavily attributable to the deflationary durable goods sector, but, alas, that era is apparently over. The Chinese rice paddies have been drained on a one-time basis and its labor force is now actually shrinking, while the Donald's ill-timed tariff barriers have forced production to move to higher cost venues, albeit not necessary the USA of A.

Either way, the anchor to the windward is largely gone , meaning that rising durable goods prices going forward will no-longer weigh as heavily on the CPI.

It should be further noted that during the past two-decades nondurable prices have also held-down the CPI top line -- again in large part owing to the "Shina" factor and downward pressures from cheap apparel, footwear, home furnishings and the like.

During the past 21 years, the nondurables component (yellow line) of the CPI rose by 1.99% per annum, which is as close as you please to the target, but was also on anchor on the overall CPI top-line ( purple line) which increased by 2.19% per annum.

Alas, during the period since January 2012, nondurables rose by just 0.63% per annum owing to flat-lining energy and commodity prices, thereby pulling the overall CPI down to 1.80% per annum, where it too fell awry of the Fed's sacred 2.00% target.

But here's the thing. A smattering of surging nondurable goods prices in the May 2021 report are a stark reminder that the times they are a changin'.

On a YoY basis, these components suggest that "lowflation" in durables may have passed its sell-by date and that the 7.4% YoY gain in nondurables overall may be lifting, not suppressing, the CPI top-line going forward.

YoY Change In Major Nondurables Components:

In sum, the chart above captures the one-time history of the Fed's phony "lowflation" narrative -- an aberrant condition that is now fading fast. Sooner or latter they will run out of excuses and back inflation reports to average down. And that, in turn, means tapering of the Fed's great bond-buying fraud -- the lynch pin of the greatest bond and stock bubble in recorded history.

Do we think that will trigger the greatest financial asset value collapse in modern times?

Why, yes, we do! play_arrow


wareco 4 hours ago remove link

Seriously? David Stockman? This guy has been perpetually wrong for the last 4 years, at least. In June, 2017, he was calling for the S&P to fall to 1600. Never happened. In October 2019, he loudly proclaimed that everyone should get out of the "casino". S&P up 40% since then. He has as much credibility as that self-promoter, Harry Dent, who has been calling for gold to drop to $700 since 2012.

Sound of the Suburbs 8 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Stage one – The markets are rising.

Look at all that wealth we are creating.

Stage two – It's a bubble.

That wealth is going to disappear.

Stage three – Oh cor blimey! I remember now, this is what happened last time

At the end of the 1920s, the US was a ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices.

The use of neoclassical economics, and the belief in free markets, made them think that inflated asset prices represented real wealth.

1929 – Wakey, wakey time

The use of neoclassical economics, and the belief in free markets, made them think that inflated asset prices represented real wealth, but it didn't.

It didn't then, and it doesn't now.

Putting a new wrapper around old economics did fool global elites.

You'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to catch me out.

E5 9 hours ago

Not going to happen.

No one is buying.

No one is raising salaries.

Inflation is a stalled plane.

Everyone is waiting.

Self fulfilling prophecy. Mainstreet is waiting on their inheritance from dead Boomers. The only thing that will save America. Money being spent and Cuban Missile Crisis not happening under Boomers.

[Jun 12, 2021] Jet Fuel Demand Poised For A 30% Surge During Summer

Jun 12, 2021 | oilprice.com

John Kilduff of Again Capital has predicted Brent to hit $80 a barrel and WTI to trade between $75 and $80 in the summer, thanks to robust gasoline demand. Brent is currently trading at $71.63 per barrel, while WTI is changing hands at $69.13.

[Jun 12, 2021] Annual Reserve Revisions Part III- Larger Independents Peak Oil Barrel

Jun 11, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

HHH IGNORED 06/11/2021 at 4:57 am

On 05/07/21 the US 10year chart formed a hammer candlestick on daily chart within a consolidation pattern. Which suggested higher yields coming. Well little over a month later price broke below the bottom of that candlestick which suggest that the bond market doesn't believe the inflation we have seen is here to stay. Yield headed lower.

The inflation we have had seems to be supply side due to covid. If inflation is at peak which bond market is suggesting. Oil price might not have much more room to run higher. And I'd take it a step further and say price inflation due to a weaker dollar is starting to real hurt places like China and they are going to act by tightening monetary policy. You think this would be positive for the yuan and push the dollar even lower. But when you tightening monetary policy credit contracts and economic activity contracts.

I do expect oil price to rollover and head back to $50-$55 might happen from a slightly higher price from here because of lag time between when bond market signals rollover in inflation back into deflation and when prices start reacting to this. REPLY EULENSPIEGEL IGNORED 06/11/2021 at 10:07 am

This isn't your history bond market.

Inflation doesn't really matters, what only matters is the one big question: "How much bonds does the one market member with unlimited funds buy?".

And the time the FED was able to rise more than .25% is in the rear mirror "" when they hike now, inflation or not, all these zombie companies and zombie banks will fail and no lawyer in the world will be able to clean up the chaos after all these insolvency filings.

They have to talk the way out of this inflation. They have to talk until it stops, or longer. They can't hike. They can perhaps hike again when most of the debt is inflated away "" a period with 10+% inflation and 1% bond interrest.

And yes, they can buy litterally any bond dumped onto the market "" shown this in March last year when they stopped the corona crash in an action of one week.

I think most non-investment-banks are zombies at the moment, and more than 20% of all companies. They all will fail in less than 1 year when we would have realistic interrest rates. On the dirty end, this would mean 10%+ for all this junk out there "" even mighty EXXON will be downgraded to B fast.

In old times the FED rates would be more than 5% now with these inflation numbers. Nobody can pay this these days.

And now in the USA "" look for how much social justice and social security laws you'll get. The FED has to provide cover for all of them.

We in Europe will do this, too. New green deal, new CO2 taxes, better social security "" the ECB already has said they will swallow everything dumped on the market.

So, oil 100$ the next years "" but some kind of strange dollars buying less then they used to.

Just my 2 cents. REPLY D COYNE IGNORED 06/11/2021 at 7:58 am

From

https://longforecast.com/oil-price-today-forecast-2017-2018-2019-2020-2021-brent-wti

better resolution at link above, a very different oil price forecast from HHH. Over $100/bo for Brent by the end of 2021.

REPLY RON PATTERSON IGNORED 06/11/2021 at 8:28 am

This is nonsense. They have Brent crude oil prices peaking, so far, in March 2025 at $164.11. And they have WTI peaking the same month at $132.55, $32.56 lower. There is no way the spread could be that large. Also, they have natural gas prices dropping over the same period. Just who the hell are these "Longforcast.com" people?

REPLY KLEIBER IGNORED 06/11/2021 at 11:35 am

Disregard anything with "forecast" in the title. They don't have a time machine, and extrapolation is a horrible metric with dynamic markets as complex as the energy ones.

Might as well show me the tea leaves or goat entrails and tell me the price on 11 June 2027. REPLY SHALLOW SAND IGNORED 06/11/2021 at 3:58 pm

Dennis Gartman is still considered a commodities expert.

He infamously said in 2016 that WTI would never be above $44 again in his lifetime. He is still alive last I knew.

Since I have owned working interests in oil wells (1997) I have sold oil for a low of $8 and a high of $140 per barrel. 6/14 oil sold for $99.25 per barrel. 4/20 oil sold for $15.40 per barrel.

Predicting oil prices is impossible.

About the only oil price prediction I have had right so far is that if Biden won, oil prices would rebound. Of course, we can argue about why that is, and if there is even any connection.

There are still no drilling rigs running in the field we operate in. There are still hundreds of production wells shut in. There are still less than 10 workover rigs running in our field. The largest operator still has a help wanted sign up in front of its office. We finally found one summer worker, he is still in high school, but thankfully covered by our workers comp. He cannot drive our trucks, and is limited to painting, mowing, weed control, digging with a shovel, cleaning the shops and pump houses and other tasks like those. That's ok, because we need that, but not being able to drive is a pain. But auto ins won't allow anyone under 21 to be covered. REPLY IRON MIKE IGNORED 06/11/2021 at 11:53 am

Yea Ron i agree with Kleiber, I wouldn't take anything on that site too seriously. REPLY OVI IGNORED 06/11/2021 at 1:34 pm

The IEA is now starting to sound warnings about supply. Last week they were telling the oil companies to stop exploring and to move toward a renewable energy future.

IEA: OPEC needs to increase supply to keep global oil markets adequately supplied

In its monthly oil report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that global oil demand is set to return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2022, rising by 5.4 million bpd in 2021 and by a further 3.1 million bpd next year. The OECD accounts for 1.3 million bpd of 2022 growth while non-OECD countries contribute 1.8 million bpd. Jet and kerosene demand will see the largest increase ( 1.5 million bpd year-on-year), followed by gasoline ( 660 000 bpd year-on-year) and gasoil/diesel ( 520 000 bpd year-on-year).

World oil supply is expected to grow at a faster rate in 2022, with the US driving gains of 1.6 million bpd from producers outside the OPEC alliance. That leaves room for OPEC to boost crude oil production by 1.4 million bpd above its July 2021-March 2022 target to meet demand growth. In 2021, oil output from non-OPEC is set to rise 710 000 bpd, while total oil supply from OPEC could increase by 800 000 bpd if the bloc sticks with its existing policy.

https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-june-2021

https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/special-reports/11062021/iea-opec-needs-to-increase-supply-to-keep-global-oil-markets-adequately-supplied/ REPLY RON PATTERSON IGNORED 06/11/2021 at 2:09 pm

(IEA) has said that global oil demand is set to return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2022, rising by 5.4 million bpd in 2021 and by a further 3.1 million bpd next year.

That comes to about 500,000 barrels per day monthly increase, every month until the end of 2022. I really don't believe that is going to happen. No doubt most nations can increase production somewhat, but returning to pre-pandemic levels will be a herculean task for most of them.

[Jun 12, 2021] Headline CPI is expected to jump 4.7% year-over-year

May CPI is expected at 8:30 a.m. ET Thursday. It is unclear to me why the 10-year Treasury yield fell below the key 1.5% Wednesday. Was it short-covering? if so what triggered it? If predictions are true it might jump up on Jun 10, 2021 because you can't have Headline CPI 4.7% and the 10-year Treasury yield 1.5%. That's the theatre of absurd.
Rent, owners' equivalent rent and medical care services collectively are 50% of the core CPI basket.
Notable quotes:
"... Headline CPI is expected to jump 4.7% year-over-year, the highest rate since sky high energy prices spiked inflation readings in the fall of 2008. ..."
"... "I am worried about rent and owners' equivalent rent because it should go up. It had decelerated," she said. Shelter is more than 30% of CPI , and rent costs have bottomed in some cities, Swonk added. "The issue is it could have longer legs and keep overall inflation measures buoyed more than people expect." ..."
Jun 09, 2021 | www.msn.com

...The consensus forecast for the core consumer price index, which excludes food and energy, is 3.5% on a year-over-year basis, according to Dow Jones. That's the fastest annual pace in 28 years.

Economists expect both core and headline CPI rose by 0.5% in May. Headline CPI is expected to jump 4.7% year-over-year, the highest rate since sky high energy prices spiked inflation readings in the fall of 2008.

... ... ...

"I am worried about rent and owners' equivalent rent because it should go up. It had decelerated," she said. Shelter is more than 30% of CPI , and rent costs have bottomed in some cities, Swonk added. "The issue is it could have longer legs and keep overall inflation measures buoyed more than people expect."

[Jun 12, 2021] How Fanatics Took Over The World

Jun 12, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

Early in the pandemic, I had been furiously writing articles about lockdowns. My phone rang with a call from a man named Dr. Rajeev Venkayya. He is the head of a vaccine company but introduced himself as former head of pandemic policy for the Gates Foundation.

Now I was listening.

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I did not know it then, but I've since learned from Michael Lewis's (mostly terrible) book The Premonition that Venkayya was, in fact, the founding father of lockdowns. While working for George W. Bush's White House in 2005, he headed a bioterrorism study group. From his perch of influence "" serving an apocalyptic president" he was the driving force for a dramatic change in U.S. policy during pandemics.

He literally unleashed hell.

That was 15 years ago. At the time, I wrote about the changes I was witnessing, worrying that new White House guidelines (never voted on by Congress) allowed the government to put Americans in quarantine while closing their schools, businesses, and churches shuttered, all in the name of disease containment.

I never believed it would happen in real life; surely there would be public revolt. Little did I know, we were in for a wild ride"¦

The Man Who Lit the Match

Last year, Venkayya and I had a 30-minute conversation; actually, it was mostly an argument. He was convinced that lockdown was the only way to deal with a virus. I countered that it was wrecking rights, destroying businesses, and disturbing public health. He said it was our only choice because we had to wait for a vaccine. I spoke about natural immunity, which he called brutal. So on it went.

The more interesting question I had at the time was why this certified Big Shot was wasting his time trying to convince a poor scribbler like me. What possible reason could there be?

The answer, I now realized, is that from February to April 2020, I was one of the few people (along with a team of researchers) who openly and aggressively opposed what was happening.

There was a hint of insecurity and even fear in Venkayya's voice. He saw the awesome thing he had unleashed all over the world and was anxious to tamp down any hint of opposition. He was trying to silence me. He and others were determined to crush all dissent.

This is how it has been for the better part of the last 15 months, with social media and YouTube deleting videos that dissent from lockdowns. It's been censorship from the beginning.

For all the problems with Lewis's book, and there are plenty, he gets this whole backstory right. Bush came to his bioterrorism people and demanded some huge plan to deal with some imagined calamity. When Bush saw the conventional plan" make a threat assessment, distribute therapeutics, work toward a vaccine" he was furious.

"This is bulls**t," the president yelled.

"We need a whole-of-society plan. What are you going to do about foreign borders? And travel? And commerce?"

Hey, if the president wants a plan, he'll get a plan.

"We want to use all instruments of national power to confront this threat," Venkayya reports having told colleagues.

"We were going to invent pandemic planning."

This was October 2005, the birth of the lockdown idea.

Dr. Venkayya began to fish around for people who could come up with the domestic equivalent of Operation Desert Storm to deal with a new virus. He found no serious epidemiologists to help. They were too smart to buy into it. He eventually bumped into the real lockdown innovator working at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

Cranks, Computers, and Cooties

His name was Robert Glass, a computer scientist with no medical training, much less knowledge, about viruses. Glass, in turn, was inspired by a science fair project that his 14-year-old daughter was working on.

She theorized (like the cooties game from grade school) that if school kids could space themselves out more or even not be at school at all, they would stop making each other sick. Glass ran with the idea and banged out a model of disease control based on stay-at-home orders, travel restrictions, business closures, and forced human separation.

Crazy right? No one in public health agreed with him but like any classic crank, this convinced Glass even more. I asked myself, "Why didn't these epidemiologists figure it out?" They didn't figure it out because they didn't have tools that were focused on the problem. They had tools to understand the movement of infectious diseases without the purpose of trying to stop them.

Genius, right? Glass imagined himself to be smarter than 100 years of experience in public health. One guy with a fancy computer would solve everything! Well, he managed to convince some people, including another person hanging around the White House named Carter Mecher, who became Glass's apostle.

Please consider the following quotation from Dr. Mecher in Lewis's book: "If you got everyone and locked each of them in their own room and didn't let them talk to anyone, you would not have any disease."

At last, an intellectual has a plan to abolish disease" and human life as we know it too! As preposterous and terrifying as this is "" a whole society not only in jail but solitary confinement" it sums up the whole of Mecher's view of disease. It's also completely wrong.

Pathogens are part of our world; they are generated by human contact. We pass them onto each other as the price for civilization, but we also evolved immune systems to deal with them. That's 9th-grade biology, but Mecher didn't have a clue.

Fanatics Win the Day

Jump forward to March 12, 2020. Who exercised the major influence over the decision to close schools, even though it was known at that time that SARS-CoV-2 posed almost risk to people under the age of 20? There was even evidence that they did not spread COVID-19 to adults in any serious way.

Didn't matter. Mecher's models" developed with Glass and others" kept spitting out a conclusion that shutting down schools would drop virus transmission by 80%. I've read his memos from this period" some of them still not public" and what you observe is not science but ideological fanaticism in play.

Based on the timestamp and length of the emails, he was clearly not sleeping much. Essentially he was Lenin on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution. How did he get his way?

There were three key elements: public fear, media and expert acquiescence, and the baked-in reality that school closures had been part of "pandemic planning" for the better part of 15 years. Essentially, the lockdowners, over the course of 15 years, had worn out the opposition. Lavish funding, attrition of wisdom within public health, and ideological fanaticism prevailed.

Figuring out how our expectations for normal life were so violently foiled, how our happy lives were brutally crushed, will consume serious intellectuals for many years. But at least we now have a first draft of history.

As with almost every revolution in history, a small minority of crazy people with a cause prevailed over the humane rationality of multitudes. When people catch on, the fires of vengeance will burn very hot.

The task now is to rebuild a civilized life that is no longer so fragile as to allow insane people to lay waste to all that humanity has worked so hard to build.

[Jun 12, 2021] China Notes That the Same Journalist Pushing Wuhan Lab Hoax Pushed Iraq WMD Hoax by Andrew Anglin

Jun 09, 2021 | www.unz.com
China Notes That the Same Journalist Pushing Wuhan Lab Hoax Pushed Iraq WMD Hoax ANDREW ANGLIN "¢ JUNE 5, 2021 "¢ 1,100 WORDS "¢ 150 COMMENTS REPLY Tweet Reddit Share Share Email Print More RSS Share to Gab

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Previously: There is Nothing Interesting in the Fauci Emails

China is inching dangerously close to dangerous anti-Semitism.

RT :

China's Foreign Ministry blasted the resurgent interest in the Covid-19 lab-origin theory, noting that the journalist behind a report about Wuhan scientists falling ill is the same one who peddled lies that led to the Iraq War.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin took aim at Michael R. Gordon, a national security correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and one of the authors of the report that added fuel to speculation about Covid-19's lab origin.

"Not long ago, Michael R. Gordon, an American journalist, by quoting a so-called "˜previously undisclosed US intelligence report,' hinted [at] a far-fetched connection between the "˜three sick staff' at the Wuhan lab and the Covid-19 outbreak," Wang said at a briefing on Friday.

"Nineteen years ago, it was this very reporter who concocted false information by citing unsubstantiated sources about Iraq's "˜attempt to acquire nuclear weapons,' which directly led to the Iraq War," he charged, referring to the 2003 US invasion.

The WSJ piece , published on May 23, cites "a previously undisclosed US intelligence report" as saying that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell seriously ill in November 2019 with symptoms "consistent" with Covid-19 as well as a seasonal flu.

The report got picked up by other mainstream media, which recently began shifting their coverage on Covid-19's origins from outright dismissing theories that the virus was man-made to admitting that a lab leak remains a possibility.

Gordon is supposedly not Jewish, but he co-wrote the New York Times pieces with the Jew Judith Miller.

Furthermore, I wouldn't personally point to Gordon as the source for the "Wuhan Lab Leak Hypothesis" "" I would point to the Jewish neocon Josh Rogin.

Rogin, like Gordon, spent years promoting various atrocity hoaxes in the Middle East and pushing wars for Israel, and is the original source for the version of the "Wuhan Lab theory," that is currently circulating, writing a Washington Post column promoting the hoax on April 14, 2020.

The point of course is that everywhere you look, there are neocons "" most of them Jewish "" promoting this Wuhan Lab stuff. They are the absolute source of the claim "" they and a Falun Gong Hong Kong CIA feminist woman, Li-Meng Yan.

She is claiming to be a "whistleblower," despite the fact that she in no way meets the definition of that term. The term necessarily implies insider knowledge "" usually, a whistleblower is an employee or former employee of the organization they are blowing the whistle on.

Though none of the media promoting her says it outright, there is an implication that she worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. She did not. She worked at a university in Hong Kong when she was funded by Steve Bannon to write a paper making the claim that the supposed coronavirus is a Chinese bioweapon.

Bannon has recently been associated with Guo Wengui, a billionaire who was exiled from China for fraud and various crimes. In June of last year, Bannon declared that Guo is now the real ruler of China in a bizarre video on a boat.

While they were on the boat in front of the Statue of Liberty saying they were going to "overthrow the government of China," they flew planes around with signs announcing their new government.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1268317112524775431&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Faanglin%2Fchina-notes-that-the-same-journalist-pushing-wuhan-lab-hoax-pushed-iraq-wmd-hoax%2F&sessionId=de5a6d92152ac92d71b73e567a6ff0bf88e406ff&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=500px

No one understood what was going on, and even Fox News reported on "confusion" regarding the banners and the livestream on the boat. The livestream has since been deleted, and there is no news from the Federal State of New China. But there is a Wikipedia page documenting this incredibly strange event.

Guo also runs a fake news website (I use that term in the most literal sense) where he published the Hunter Biden footjob videos.

The point is: this is a very weird operation, and it is absurd to take a person funded by these people seriously, as Tucker Carlson shamefully has.

(I'm not attacking Tucker over this, he's overall great and is sometimes just really slow on the uptake, unfortunately "" but it is shameful to get involved with a Hong Kong woman who was literally given money by Steve Bannon and his "Federation of New China" group to write a fake science paper.)

To pretend that she is a whistleblower, to pretend that political organizations funding papers with a predetermined outcome is serious science, is non-serious behavior.

The first time I heard the Wuhan lab leak theory it was being promoted by neocon extremist Tom Cotton. It was then promoted by neocon extremist Mike Pompeo, who was then in the process of trying to start a war with China. Now, it is being promoted by the Jews of CNN.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/WVTZBh83RWk?feature=oembed

There is no one involved in claiming that the supposed coronavirus came from a Chinese lab who doesn't have vested interests in starting a war with the Chinese. This goes for all of these Jews, as well as Steve Bannon, who has actually declared "overthrowing the government of China" (his words) to be his goal.

It's very obvious to see how people who want a war with China would use this hoax, and it is great that China is making the link to the Iraqi WMD hoax. It truly is the same thing.

The United States is a country with a lot of problems. None of those problems are the fault of China. China is not promoting gay sex to children, they are not flooding us with millions of brown people, they did not steal our election, they did not take all of our freedoms and collapse the economy.

Our enemies are domestic and they are Jewish. Any attempt to fear-monger and attack China is intended as a distraction from what is going on in this country, and intended to stoke a war.

Furthermore, this "lab leak" nonsense is designed to get people to continue to believe in this coronavirus hoax.


Rahan , says: June 6, 2021 at 6:33 am GMT "¢ 3.8 days ago

Though none of the media promoting her says it outright, there is an implication that she worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. She did not. She worked at a university in Hong Kong when she was funded by Steve Bannon to write a paper making the claim that the supposed coronavirus is a Chinese bioweapon.

Bannon has recently been associated with Guo Wengui, a billionaire who was exiled from China for fraud and various crimes. In June of last year, Bannon declared that Guo is now the real ruler of China in a bizarre video on a boat.

This style of presentation is updated "internet culture" gonzo that stands on the shoulders of Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and in a sense Mark Twain.

That fact that today's Anglospheric system no longer has a place within itself for this type of "dominant narrative-jamming" creativity, and to write like this means one has chosen to become a hunted outcast, means this culture is in a death spiral. It's no longer a self-renewing organism, but simply a collection of isolated biomass units used and thrown away by the masters.

Andreas , says: June 6, 2021 at 8:18 am GMT "¢ 3.7 days ago

"Nineteen years ago, it was this very reporter who concocted false information by citing unsubstantiated sources about Iraq's "˜attempt to acquire nuclear weapons,' which directly led to the Iraq War," he charged, referring to the 2003 US invasion.

Either the neo-cons thought no one would notice or the noe-cons didn't notice themselves.

I'm leaning towards the latter, especially with sloppy drunk Steve Bannon and a "Falun Gong Hong Kong CIA feminist woman" in the mix. Is this really the best they can do?

... ... ...

Ber , says: June 6, 2021 at 8:48 am GMT "¢ 3.7 days ago

"Coronavirus Has Been Found in Sewage Samples From 2019 in Spain, Italy and Brazil Samples as old as March 2019"

https://anti-empire.com/coronavirus-has-been-found-in-sewage-samples-from-2019-in-spain-italy-and-brazil/

BluEidDvl , says: June 6, 2021 at 9:46 am GMT "¢ 3.6 days ago

These times we're living in are absolutely surreal. Not surprised though, we've been doing this for a long time now. Alas, a great many of my fellow White Americans will fall for it completely & be all in for a war with China. None of them ever even contemplating what that would mean for us & the world. But, these are the same people who boast "we're number one" when we rank at or near the bottom in positive stats for all developed nations, beset with crippling societal ills. The same people who think we can vote ourselves out of this mess & Trump will win in "˜24 & somehow save the day. The same people who think our best days are ahead when our productivity base has been utterly gutted, our infrastructure is collapsing & our ability to maintain it & the skill set needed to sustain that productivity/infrastructure is slipping away. The same people who boast of "muh freedoms" when their freedoms & their children's future is being pulled from right under their feet. The same people who think we'll always be on top even when every example of history shows that every empire in history has collapsed. We're racing toward a cliff but they still think "god" is on their side & won't let it happen or we'll stay on top because, well, "we're America"..

Utter denial & abject delusion seem to be a central aspect of our people..

Joe Levantine , says: June 6, 2021 at 10:24 am GMT "¢ 3.6 days ago

" There is no one involved in claiming that the supposed coronavirus came from a Chinese lab who doesn't have vested interests in starting a war with the Chinese. This goes for all of these Jews, as well as Steve Bannon, who has actually declared "overthrowing the government of China" (his words) to be his goal."

" History often repeats itself, first as a tragedy and second as a farce"

Karl Marx.

The tragedy of the WMD of Iraq follows many other tragedies that got young Americans to spill their blood for the sake of special interests making a killing as war profiteers. The farce of " China spread the Corona virus will the biggest tragedy to hit America if the waning bald eagle tries to poke the rising dragon.

Andrew Anglin, is one of the few American journalists who stand boldly for the truth. Not bad for someone labelled a Neo Nazi by Wikipedia.

VICB3 , says: June 6, 2021 at 11:18 am GMT "¢ 3.6 days ago
@Andreas the similarly rotten United States Empire.

We'll all get to see what happens, I guess.

I like reading history, but I don't want to live it.

Just a thought.

VicB3

*That website can offer up a number of interesting links, including this interview with Putin: https://tass.com/economy/1299287

And here's a quote from him:

"The problem of empires is that they think they are so powerful that they can afford small inaccuracies and mistakes. "But problems keep piling up. And, at some point, they are no longer able to cope with them. And the United States is now walking the Soviet Union's path, and its gait is confident and steady."

Dutch Boy , says: June 6, 2021 at 8:13 pm GMT "¢ 3.2 days ago

The current consensus that Covid was likely a Wuhan lab leak was triggered by an article by Nicholas Wade, a former science writer for the NY Times and an impeccably establishmentarian journalist. Previous attempts by right wingers or maverick scientists to advance this hypothesis were ignored or scorned by the establishment press. Wade could not be so easily dismissed. His article, plus the release of emails by Fauci acknowledging the possibility of a lab-created virus (which he publicly ridiculed) and the revelation that Fauci had funded bat research at Wuhan, have changed the game entirely. My own suspicion is that the Biden administration is preparing to throw Fauci under the bus and has signaled the press that he is now fair game. He has served his purpose and can now be used as a scapegoat. It is unlikely that the Wuhan release will ever be definitively proven. It is more important to realize that this research is not restricted to Wuhan or China and that steps should be taken to shut down all such research world-wide, including the USA, lest we have a succession of these disasters.

Mulga Mumblebrain , says: June 7, 2021 at 6:51 am GMT "¢ 2.8 days ago
@Dutch Boy

The USA has been using bio-warfare for 200 years plus and can NEVER be trusted not to carry on such research. It controls c.200 labs, worldwide, where research into pathogens and vectors, particularly arthropods, and the collection of pathogens, is carried out. It used biological agents in Korea in the early 50s, and against Cuba (African Swine Fever and dengue) in the 70s, and God knows where else, and against its own people, most infamously the Tuskegee syphilis abomination. And it is responsible for SARS CoV2, you can be sure.

Commentator Mike , says: June 7, 2021 at 12:37 pm GMT "¢ 2.5 days ago
@Mulga Mumblebrain

The West has been trying to bring down China since they tried to turn them all into opium addicts. Americans were complicit with the British in this and many of the so-called deep state players made their money from the opium trade. Apparently the same families control the present day drugs trade and the laundering of the profits from it; the so-called drug cartels are mostly minor actors well below those who run the operation at the top. Members of the cartels are often sacrificed but those at the top remain the same.

Trial by Wombat , says: June 7, 2021 at 11:02 pm GMT "¢ 2.1 days ago
@Ber t we have is the Josh Hawley demand to declassify everything related to Covid from day-1, and since he made that proposal, it has been crickets from everyone else, which is again indicative that no one in the power elite has any incentive or goal to do more than batter their usual targets.

All that said "" the best practices at this stage of overwhelming deception is to start with what we can in fact establish and prove as actual plain fact, and proceed from there. If you start from what you suspect or theorize, you will soon be enmeshed in fevered propositions ("missiles hit the pentagon on 9/11") that crap all over the genuine facts and do nothing but hand-craft a made-to-order, wild goose chase. This is very welcome by those who want to control the entire denouement, to serve their own agenda.

Arthur MacBride , says: June 9, 2021 at 8:24 am GMT "¢ 16.8 hours ago
@Joe Levantine

"¦ many other tragedies that got young Americans to spill their blood for the sake of special interests making a killing as war profiteers.

Agree the main thrust of your post, Joe.

It is also worth remembering that very many innocent souls in countries across the world have been going about their daily lives when they were attacked, maimed and killed, their houses destroyed, infrastructure wrecked etc by those same young Americans. Some countries at this very hour are occupied and are being looted by the same.

Perhaps not a comfortable thought for Americans to add in as they see their country now descending into certifiable lunacy.
But what goes around does have a habit of coming around, sooner or later.

anonym25 , says: June 9, 2021 at 11:02 am GMT "¢ 14.2 hours ago
@Anon t Ron Unz has been saying from the beginning. If you look at it geostrategically, this is most plausible conclusion. They released the virus in China but those who created it suffered a massive blowback and even worse China came out of it even stronger than ever before. They were hoping China would crumble but instead got stronger while they weakened. That's why they are fanning out a major Anti-China propaganda campaign to contain her now openly with an overwhelming support of western citizens. This frenziness displayed by western politicians is the reflection that China is on the verge an unstoppable economic powerhouse within a few years and they need to put the brakes right now. It is an implicit admission of desperation. The tussle between China and the US is going to dramatically intensify.
Abbybwood , says: June 9, 2021 at 8:52 pm GMT "¢ 4.4 hours ago
@Mulga Mumblebrain

A country can't bring another country down by giving it "Most Favored Nation Trading Status".

Then sending all it's major corporations there to make big deals.

And how has it served the United States where practically every item, pill in the US is "Made in China"?

The American people were sold out decades ago in order for the 1% and their Congressional lackeys to make major bucks. We were even working with them to create a deadly virus!

[Jun 12, 2021] Sidewalk Robots are Now Delivering Food in Miami

Notable quotes:
"... Florida Sun-Sentinel ..."
"... [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and in-field team looking for the robot."] ..."
"... the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000 deliveries... ..."
Jun 06, 2021 | hardware.slashdot.org

18-inch tall robots on four wheels zipping across city sidewalks "stopped people in their tracks as they whipped out their camera phones," reports the Florida Sun-Sentinel .

"The bots' mission: To deliver restaurant meals cheaply and efficiently, another leap in the way food comes to our doors and our tables." The semiautonomous vehicles were engineered by Kiwibot, a company started in 2017 to game-change the food delivery landscape...

In May, Kiwibot sent a 10-robot fleet to Miami as part of a nationwide pilot program funded by the Knight Foundation. The program is driven to understand how residents and consumers will interact with this type of technology, especially as the trend of robot servers grows around the country.

And though Broward County is of interest to Kiwibot, Miami-Dade County officials jumped on board, agreeing to launch robots around neighborhoods such as Brickell, downtown Miami and several others, in the next couple of weeks...

"Our program is completely focused on the residents of Miami-Dade County and the way they interact with this new technology. Whether it's interacting directly or just sharing the space with the delivery bots,"

said Carlos Cruz-Casas, with the county's Department of Transportation...

Remote supervisors use real-time GPS tracking to monitor the robots. Four cameras are placed on the front, back and sides of the vehicle, which the supervisors can view on a computer screen. [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and in-field team looking for the robot."] If crossing the street is necessary, the robot will need a person nearby to ensure there is no harm to cars or pedestrians. The plan is to allow deliveries up to a mile and a half away so robots can make it to their destinations in 30 minutes or less.

Earlier Kiwi tested its sidewalk-travelling robots around the University of California at Berkeley, where at least one of its robots burst into flames . But the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000 deliveries...

"Kiwibot now offers their robotic delivery services in other markets such as Los Angeles and Santa Monica by working with the Shopify app to connect businesses that want to employ their robots." But while delivery fees are normally $3, this new Knight Foundation grant "is making it possible for Miami-Dade County restaurants to sign on for free."

A video shows the reactions the sidewalk robots are getting from pedestrians on a sidewalk, a dog on a leash, and at least one potential restaurant customer looking forward to no longer having to tip human food-delivery workers.

... ... ...

[Jun 10, 2021] Mcjobs increases in May. Good jobs no so much. Labor-force participation dropped

Jun 10, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Job gains in May were led by leisure and hospitality, with the sector adding 292,000 jobs. Payrolls grew by 559,000 last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, up from a revised 278,000 in April, which marked a sharp drop from March's figure.

The labor recovery has slowed from earlier in the year -- in March, the economy added 785,000 jobs

... The labor-force participation rate, the share of adults working or looking for work, edged slightly lower in May to 61.6%, down from 63.3% in February 2020.

M

Michael Quick

Republicans, always eager to snatch the bread from the mouths of the poor, are blaming unemployment benefits for the reluctance of workers to return to jobs. In some red states, they already are snatching it.

But more men are returning to work than are women. Doesn't that prove that unemployment benefits are not holding back former workers?

I'll bet more women will return to work in September, after schools start up in-person classes.

William Lamb
Republican turn a blind on helping people, except themselves. They would rather have one being a slave and get pay less then nothing with little perks in making less then high quality item that will still have defects, even if we pride our workmanship that is suppose to equal to none. It would like being in 1950s, when there was not much world competition, when world economy was still recovering from WW2.

I guessed Republican want American to continue working by low paying wages so they can enrich themselves, and show that America can still produce things with slave wages.

johm moore
Most of the jobs are insufficient to support a reasonable quality of life. A job today is about like a half a job pre-NAFTA and the job export process in terms of the quality of life that it supports.
Bryson Marsh
If UI was holding back employment, then why are we adding so many low wage jobs? The missing jobs are in *middle income* sectors.
David Chait
I wouldn't call people returning to work "new" jobs, that just seems disingenuous.
rich ullsmith
Asset prices rise when the jobs report is lukewarm. Thank you, Federal Reserve. May I have another.
Sam Trotter
It should be made mandatory to publish the offered wage/rate. I see so many fake jobs posted on LinkedIn with no description of bill rate for contract positions or Base+Bonus for Full-Time roles. Too many mass scam messages.

[Jun 10, 2021] U.S. 10-Year Treasury Yield Slips Below 1.5%

In view of rising energy prices what those "other factors" might be? Does it mean that the USA are still in secular stagnation started in 2008?
The unemployment rate fell to 5.8% in May from 6.1% the prior month. U6 is still over 10% -- the depression level. See Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization
Jun 10, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Analysts said other factors are driving lower yields, including a weaker dollar, which has lifted demand for Treasurys from foreign investors. Foreign investors tend to hold more Treasurys when the dollar declines and reduces the costs of protecting against swings in currencies.

[Jun 10, 2021] Inflation Remains Hot, but Treasury Yields Still Aren't Moving. Here's Why

Jun 10, 2021 | financialgazette.co.uk

That is a counterintuitive response , because rising inflation erodes the value of Treasuries' payouts. And the data did indicate stronger inflation: Excluding volatile food and energy costs, prices rose 0.7% in May. That was the second-highest monthly increase in consumer prices since the early 1980s, behind April's 0.8% rise. Compared with last year, when the global economy was mired in a pandemic-driven slowdown, headline consumer prices rose at a 5% pace . (Excluding food and energy, they rose 3.8%.)

The market's moves could be muted because investors are betting that central bankers are going to stick with their view that most of the strength in consumer prices will pass after a potentially bumpy reopening period and keep policy easy.

... ... ...

... Most Fed watchers expect the central bank to start discussing a reduction of its bond purchases this summer or early fall.

That doesn't mean Treasuries have much room to rally more from here.

The Fed's meeting next week may be the first test. If central-bank officials talk about starting to remove accommodation earlier than expected, that could send yields higher. In fact, strategists from TD Securities decided to take a bearish view on the 10-year note on Thursday, after yields fell below 1.5% earlier this week. They argued that continued economic momentum and stronger inflation could lead central-bank officials to take a more upbeat tone on the economy than investors expect at their meeting on June 15 and 16.

[Jun 09, 2021] Nearly 4 million people quit their jobs in April

Jun 09, 2021 | www.marketwatch.com

The percentage of people quitting their jobs, meanwhile, also rose to a record 2.8% among private-sector workers. That's a full percentage point higher than a year ago, when the so-called quits rate fell to a seven-year low.

...A recent study by Bank of America, for example, found that job switchers earned an extra 13% in wages from their new positions. That's a big chunk of money.

...Normally people who quit their jobs are ineligible for unemployment benefits, but they can get an exemption in many states for health, safety or child-care reasons.

About half of the states, all led by Republican governors, plan to stop giving out the federal benefit by early July to push people back into the labor force. Economists will be watching closely to see how many people go back to work.

[Jun 09, 2021] If the pandemic hasn't called into question the application of JIT logistics for all industries, then the loss of cheap diesel certainly will.

Jun 09, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

KLEIBER IGNORED 06/09/2021 at 1:57 pm

If nothing else, this scenario will lead to a radical reshaping of how we as a species go about doing logistics. If the pandemic hasn't called into question the application of JIT logistics for all industries, then the loss of cheap diesel certainly will. Even if long haul electric trucks become a thing, it will require a different approach to matters.

Cars are otherwise a solved issue with EVs. There's nothing that an ICE can really offer over an EV. Trucking and heavy industry is another matter, and that's where problems will be. Frankly, I welcome this uprooting of a paradigm that has no resilience built in whatsoever.

[Jun 09, 2021] No inflation fears here -- ARK's Wood says portfolio should triple in five years

Jun 09, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Wood, who became the face of the outsized rally in technology stocks such as Zoom Video Communications Inc and electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc during the coronavirus pandemic last year, said that falling lumber and copper prices signal that the market is "beginning to see signs that the risks are overblown" from inflation.

...Wood, whose ARK Innovation ETF was the top-performing actively managed U.S. equity fund tracked by Morningstar last year, has seen her performance stagnate along with the slowdown in growth stocks. Her flagship fund is down nearly 28% from its early February high.

[Jun 07, 2021] How Inflation Eats Away at Your Retirement Income

A short-term period of slightly higher inflation wouldn't be memorable, but an extended run of inflation above 3% can be problematic. Social Security Is Your Best Inflation Hedge; you need to maximize it.
Social Security checks represent about a third of income for all retirees. Among elderly recipients, those checks represent half of their retirement income for married couples and 70% for singles.
A primary residence, if you own a house and it is fully paid off, also gave some minimal inflation protection.
Another factor is that once people actually get into retirement, , their spending generally decreases so much that they're spending less overall, even accounting for inflation.
Jun 07, 2021 | www.investopedia.com
​ While seniors can't directly affect the inflation rate, there are ways to minimize the shadow it casts over their retirement.

Reducing housing costs, for instance, is a step in the right direction. Trading in a larger home for a smaller one, even if the mortgage is paid off, reduces the monthly outflow for property taxes, utilities, homeowners insurance, and maintenance.

Another smart move is adding investments to your portfolio that are likely to increase in value as inflation rises.

A real estate investment trust (REIT) or energy sector stocks, for example, are better positioned to see their value grow in tandem with the inflation rate.

[Jun 07, 2021] Yes, inflation is rising but no individual equity sector, including the energy sector, offers significant protection against high and rising inflation

Jun 07, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Yes, inflation is rising, and retirees must now consider repositioning not just their short-term safe-haven investments (we'll talk more about that in part two) but their entire portfolio as well (which we'll focus on here). Well that, conveniently enough, is the subject (and title) of a paper soon to be published in the Journal of Portfolio Management that was co-authored by Campbell Harvey, a professor at Duke University, and several of his colleagues affiliated with Man Group. What more, Harvey and his co-authors found that no individual equity sector, including the energy sector, offers significant protection against high and rising inflation.

... here's what Harvey and his co-authors discovered after researching eight periods of inflation dating back to 1925: Neither equities nor bonds performed well in real terms during the inflationary periods studied. Real being the nominal rate of return minus the rate of inflation.

... ... ...

TIPS

"Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) are robust when inflation rises, giving them the benefit of generating similar real returns in inflationary and noninflationary regimes, both of which are positive," the authors wrote.

In fact, TIPS had a 2% annualized real return during the most recent five periods of inflation.

But what looks promising in a research paper might not work in reality given the current yield on TIPS (0.872% as of June 2, 2021). The low yield means that TIPS are a "really super expensive" inflation hedge going forward, said Harvey.

"It means that you're going to get a negative return in noninflationary periods," he said. "So yes, they provide the protection, but they're an expensive way to get that protection."

Commodities

"Traded commodities" have historically performed best during high and rising inflation. In fact, traded commodities have a "perfect track record" of generating positive real returns during the eight U.S. periods studied, averaging an annualized 14% real return.

Now investors might not be able to trade commodities in the same manner as institutional investors using futures, but they can invest in ETFs that invest in a broad basket of commodities, said Harvey.

Other assets

Residential real estate on average holds its value during inflationary times, though not nearly as well as commodities. Collectibles such as art (7%), wine (5%) and stamps (9%) have strong real returns during inflationary periods, as well.

And while some suggest adding bitcoin to a diversified portfolio as an inflation protection asset, caution is warranted given that bitcoin is untested with only eight years of quality data -- over a period that lacks a single inflationary period, the authors wrote. "It's not just untested," said Harvey. "It's too volatile."

Gold is also too volatile as a reliable hedge against inflation. Harvey noted, for instance, that the performance of gold since 1975 is largely driven by a single year, 1979, when gold dramatically appreciated in value. "And that makes the average look really good," he said.

Read: Gold- it's not just for crazies

Dynamic strategies

Harvey also said his number one dynamic strategy for inflationary times is changing the sector exposures in your portfolio. With this strategy, you would allocate a greater portion of your assets to sectors that have historically performed well during inflationary periods, such as medical equipment, and less if anything at all to sectors that have performed poorly during inflationary periods, such as consumer durables and retail. "You can naturally rebalance your portfolio to be a little more defensive," he said. "And that can be done by any investor."

Harvey and his co-authors also found active equity factors generally hold their own during inflation surges with "quality stocks" having a small positive real return and "value stocks" having a small negative return.

Dynamic strategies are "active" strategies that involve monthly rebalancing of portfolios, according to Harvey. In contrast, passive strategies require minimal or no rebalancing; for example, holding an S&P 500 index fund.

Active equity factor investing uses frequent rebalancing to take bets that deviate from the investment weights implied by a passive market portfolio. These bets seek to produce returns over and above the passive market portfolio, said Harvey.

In Harvey's study, quality is defined as a combination of profitability, growth and safety and value is defined with traditional metrics such as the book-to-price ratio.

Is now the time to reposition your portfolio?

According to Harvey, inflation surging from 2% to more than 5% is bad for stocks and bonds. We're not there yet; the current rate of inflation is 4.2%. But we are getting close to the "red zone" and now would be a good time to "rethink the posturing of your portfolio," Harvey said. "So even if it doesn't occur, it doesn't matter. If the risk is high enough, you take some actions, you're basically buying some insurance."

And being proactive is the key. "So, at least right now, it's better to have the discussion now than when it's too late; when we're already in the surge and the asset prices have already dropped," said Harvey.

Remember too that what you hedge is "unexpected" inflation, Harvey said. "What you really are concerned with is unexpected inflation or a surprise in inflation. We call it an economic shock."

But not a transitory shock. That won't have any effect on asset prices. "You need to consider long-term inflation," he said.

And that place to look for that is in the break-even inflation (BEI) rate reflected in TIPS and nominal Treasurys. The BEI is the weighted average of inflation expectations over the life of the bond. And changes in the BEI have the advantage of reflecting changes in long-term or permanent inflation expectations. Presently the BEI is 2.44%. "Anything that is a long-term measure of inflation is going to have the maximum reflection in the asset prices," he said.

As for the current inflationary environment, Harvey said it's a mix of transitory and not-so transitory elements. Lumber prices are up but likely not permanently. The rising prices of other goods and services, however, may not be transitory. "It's obviously difficult to dissect this," he said. "But it's really important for people that are running a portfolio draw that distinction."

[Jun 07, 2021] Will hot US inflation data unsettle markets-

Jun 05, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

FT reporters

US government bonds rallied on Friday following a weaker-than-expected reading on American job growth for the month of May. But a key report on consumer price inflation will provide a fresh test for investors. Consumer prices rose at its fastest pace in more a decade in the 12 months to April, but analysts project that it has picked up even more since then, raising fears that the economy is overheating. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect the year on year inflation rate to have jumped to 4.7 per cent in May in figures to be released by the Department of Labor on Thursday, compared with 4.2 per cent in April.

[Jun 07, 2021] Commodity Price Surges Add to Inflation Fears

Jun 07, 2021 | www.wsj.com

It looks like this surge is suitable, especially in energy... That spells troubles for the US economy which is based on cheap energy.

Higher prices for commodities are flowing through to more companies and consumers, making it harder for central bankers to ignore them

...The world hasn't seen such across-the-board commodity-price increases since the beginning of the global financial crisis, and before that, the 1970s. Lumber, iron ore and copper have hit records . Corn, soybeans and wheat have jumped to their highest levels in eight years . Oil recently reached a two-year high .

At current metal prices, Rio Tinto PLC, BHP Group Ltd. , Anglo American PLC and Glencore PLC could this year generate a combined $140 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to Royal Bank of Canada. That compares with $44 billion in 2015, when metals prices were at or near lows.

However, in Russia, a commodity exporter, surging commodity prices also are driving up inflation. While Russia's international reserves hit $600.9 billion in May, the highest ever, its central bank increased its benchmark interest rate by 0.5 percentage point to 5% in April. It said it would consider further increases, citing "pro-inflationary risks generated by price movements in global commodity markets."

"We think that the inflation pressure in Russia is not transitory, not temporary," Russia's central-bank governor Elvira Nabiullina told CNBC in a recent interview.

...Nicolas Peter, chief financial officer of BMW AG , said in May that it expects an impact of 500 million euros, equivalent to about $608 million, from prices for raw materials. Increased steel prices have added about $515 to the cost of an average U.S. light vehicle, according to Calum MacRae, an auto analyst at GlobalData.

[Jun 07, 2021] When it comes to inflation, the Fed must consider inequality

Jun 07, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Like most central banks, the US Federal Reserve has been forced to ask why more than a decade of ultra-loose monetary policy has had such lacklustre economic results.

The Fed's data are misleading because they assume the US is the middle-class nation it has ceased to be.

Until it uses data that reflect the nation as it is, the Fed will no more get America back to shared prosperity than someone using a map of New Amsterdam will find the pond in Central Park.

[Jun 07, 2021] Yellen says higher interest rates would be 'a plus' for policy makers

Only if they can control it... And that is not given.
Jun 07, 2021 | www.msn.com

Speaking with Bloomberg News following a G-7 finance ministers' meeting in London, Yellen said it's OK if President Joe Biden's $4 trillion spending plans trigger inflation and higher rates.

"If we ended up with a slightly higher interest-rate environment it would actually be a plus for society's point of view and the Fed's point of view," she told Bloomberg.

"We've been fighting inflation that's too low and interest rates that are too low now for a decade," she said. "We want them to go back to" a normal environment, "and if this helps a little bit to alleviate things then that's not a bad thing -- that's a good thing."

The Fed has said it won't start to scale back its $120 billion-a-month asset purchases until the economy had made "substantial further progress" toward the Fed's goals of full employment and stable long-run 2% inflation.

While indicators of inflation have been rising , bond yields have been subdued, leaving many experts skeptical that a "taper tantrum" in in the cards whenever the Fed starts paring back its purchases.

[Jun 07, 2021] Rossneft CEO Sechin said that the world was facing an acute oil shortage in the long-term due to underinvestment amid a drive for alternative energy, while demand for oil continued to rise

Jun 07, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

OVI IGNORED 06/06/2021 at 8:40 pm

WTI Punched a $70 ticket sometime after 6:00 PM EST, June 6, 2021. The last time this happened was Oct 16, 2018, $71.92 before falling below $70 the next day.

HICKORY IGNORED 06/06/2021 at 10:59 pm

"Igor Sechin, the head of Russian oil major Rosneft (ROSN.MM), said on Saturday the world was facing an acute oil shortage in the long-term due to underinvestment amid a drive for alternative energy, while demand for oil continued to rise."

Indeed.

[Jun 07, 2021] Exxon Exits Oil Exploration Prospect in Ghana After Seismic Work - Bloomberg

Jun 07, 2021 | www.bloomberg.com

Exxon Mobil Corp. is pulling out of a deep-water oil prospect in Ghana just two years after the west African nation ratified an exploration and production agreement with the U.S. oil titan.

The company relinquished the entirety of its stake in the Deepwater Cape Three Points block and resigned as its operator after fulfilling its contractual obligations during the initial exploration period, according to a letter to Ghana's government seen by Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the information isn't public.

[Jun 07, 2021] BP Sees Global Crude Oil Demand to Last, CEO Bernard Looney Says - Bloomberg

Jun 07, 2021 | www.bloomberg.com

Energy giant BP Plc sees a strong recovery in global crude demand and expects it to last for some time, with U.S. shale production being kept in check, according to Chief Executive Officer Bernard Looney.

"There is a lot of evidence that suggests that demand will be strong, and the shale seems to be remaining disciplined," Looney told Bloomberg News in St. Petersburg, Russia. "I think that the situation we're in at the moment could last like this for a while."

[Jun 07, 2021] Sidewalk Robots are Now Delivering Food in Miami

Notable quotes:
"... Florida Sun-Sentinel ..."
"... [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and in-field team looking for the robot."] ..."
"... the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000 deliveries... ..."
Jun 07, 2021 | hardware.slashdot.org

18-inch tall robots on four wheels zipping across city sidewalks "stopped people in their tracks as they whipped out their camera phones," reports the Florida Sun-Sentinel .

"The bots' mission: To deliver restaurant meals cheaply and efficiently, another leap in the way food comes to our doors and our tables." The semiautonomous vehicles were engineered by Kiwibot, a company started in 2017 to game-change the food delivery landscape...

In May, Kiwibot sent a 10-robot fleet to Miami as part of a nationwide pilot program funded by the Knight Foundation. The program is driven to understand how residents and consumers will interact with this type of technology, especially as the trend of robot servers grows around the country.

And though Broward County is of interest to Kiwibot, Miami-Dade County officials jumped on board, agreeing to launch robots around neighborhoods such as Brickell, downtown Miami and several others, in the next couple of weeks...

"Our program is completely focused on the residents of Miami-Dade County and the way they interact with this new technology. Whether it's interacting directly or just sharing the space with the delivery bots,"

said Carlos Cruz-Casas, with the county's Department of Transportation...

Remote supervisors use real-time GPS tracking to monitor the robots. Four cameras are placed on the front, back and sides of the vehicle, which the supervisors can view on a computer screen. [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and in-field team looking for the robot."] If crossing the street is necessary, the robot will need a person nearby to ensure there is no harm to cars or pedestrians. The plan is to allow deliveries up to a mile and a half away so robots can make it to their destinations in 30 minutes or less.

Earlier Kiwi tested its sidewalk-travelling robots around the University of California at Berkeley, where at least one of its robots burst into flames . But the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000 deliveries...

"Kiwibot now offers their robotic delivery services in other markets such as Los Angeles and Santa Monica by working with the Shopify app to connect businesses that want to employ their robots." But while delivery fees are normally $3, this new Knight Foundation grant "is making it possible for Miami-Dade County restaurants to sign on for free."

A video shows the reactions the sidewalk robots are getting from pedestrians on a sidewalk, a dog on a leash, and at least one potential restaurant customer looking forward to no longer having to tip human food-delivery workers.

... ... ...

[Jun 06, 2021] Rethinking Unemployment- From Adam Smith to Marx -Reserve Army of the Unemployed- to the Neoliberal War on Full Employment -

Jun 06, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Rethinking Unemployment: From Adam Smith to Marx "Reserve Army of the Unemployed" to the Neoliberal War on Full Employment Posted on June 5, 2021 by Yves Smith

Yves here. This post gives a useful, high level view of how the basis for unemployment has changed over time, including under Covid.

By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst, Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at t he Institute for New Economic Thinking website

Canadian economist Mario Seccareccia, recipient of this year's John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics, says it's time to reconsider the idea of full employment. He spoke to Lynn Parramore of the Institute for New Economic Thinking about why 2021 offers a rare opportunity to rebalance the economy in favor of Main Street.

Once upon a time – not so long ago, really – unemployment was not a thing.

In agricultural societies, even capitalistic ones, most people worked on the land. A smaller number worked in villages and towns – shoemakers and carpenters and so on. Some might go back and forth from the countryside to the town, depending on the availability of work. If your work in town building houses dried up, you might come back to the country for the harvest.

Economist Mario Seccareccia, who loves history, notes that before the Industrial Revolution, it was unthinkable that someone ready and able to work had no job to do.

Questions: If unemployment was once unknown, why do we accept it now?

Where did unemployment come from?

In those pre-Industrial Revolution times, there were paupers, mostly people who could not work for some reason such as a disability. These were deemed deserving of charity. A small number of paupers were considered deviants and treated harshly, perhaps made to labor in public work-houses under vile conditions.

Seccareccia notes that early classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo recognized that able-bodied people could experience temporary joblessness, but not the long-term variety. The word "unemployment" only became widely used in the nineteenth century. As cities grew and manufacturing took off, people living in cities and towns grew apart. Movement between the two places grew less fluid. The agricultural sector of the economy was shrinking.

At first, if you lost your factory job, you could still probably pick up something in the countryside to tide you over. But if you had grown up in the city, as more and more people did, you might not know how to do rural work. By the late nineteenth century, most city dwellers could no longer count on falling back on agricultural work during hard times.

Karl Marx noted that England's enclosure movement, which gained momentum as early as the seventeenth century, had made things hard for agricultural workers as wealthy landowners grabbed up the rights to common lands that workers had traditionally been allowed to use and were a vital part of their sustenance. Uprooting peasants from the land and traditional ways of life, Marx observed, created an "industrial reserve army" – basically a whole bunch of people wanting to work but unable to find a job during times when industrialists held back investment or when machines took over certain jobs.

Marx saw that this new kind of unemployment was a feature of capitalism, not a bug. Still, a lot of mainstream bourgeois economists thought that the market would somehow sort things out and eventually provide enough job openings to prevent mass unemployment.

It didn't turn out that way. Exhibit A: The Great Depression.

Especially after World War I, many later economists, most notably John Maynard Keynes, warned that high rates of unemployment were getting to be the norm in the twentieth century. Keynes predicted that a lot of people would go on being jobless unless the government did something. This was very bad for society.

Keynes emphasized that full employment was never going to just happen on its own. Mainstream economists thought that if wages fell enough, full employment would eventually prevail. Keynes disputed that. As wages fell, demand contracted even further, leading to even less business investment and so forth in a never-ending cycle. No, capitalism, with its business cycles led to involuntary unemployment, according to Keynes.

Seccareccia observes that economist Michał Kalecki agreed that the government could make policies to help more people stay employed at a decent wage, but there was just one problem: wealthy capitalists weren't going to have it. They would oppose state-supported systems to hold demand up so that fear of unemployment checked workers' demands for better pay and improved work conditions.

For a while, after World War II, the capitalists were on the defense. The Great Depression and the Communist threat got western countries spooked enough to go along with Keynes's argument that governments should try to encourage employment by doing things like creating big projects for people to work on. Safety nets were created to keep folks from falling into poverty. The goal of full employment gained popularity and many more workers joined unions.

Capitalists v. Full Employment

Economists have bandied about various definitions of what full employment ought to look like, explains Seccareccia: "A well-known definition came from William Beveridge, who said that what you wanted was as many jobs open as people looking for them – or even more jobs because every person can't take every type of job."

In the mid-twentieth century, with the economy doing well, neoclassical economists like Milton Friedman started to push back against the idea of full employment. He discouraged the use of fiscal and monetary policy to support employment, arguing that attempts to push down unemployment beyond what he insisted was its "natural" rate in the economy would simply lead to inflation.

In the 1960s, some of what Friedman warned about did actually happen. Employment was low and prices started to go up mildly, particularly during the Vietnam War era. However, the biggest boost to the credibility of Milton Friedman came with the OPEC cartel oil-price hikes of the 1970s that pushed the inflation rate to double-digit levels while simultaneously pushing up unemployment. So, in the '70s, western countries started backing off from encouraging full employment and maintaining strong safety nets. Proponents of the new neoliberal framework were in favor of cutting safety nets, shedding government jobs, and leaving it to the market to decide how much unemployment there would be. They said that it had to be this way to keep inflation from rising, even though the cause of that high inflation of the '70s had nothing to do with high public spending and excessive money creation that Friedman and his friends talked about.

Seccareccia points to proof that the neoclassical logic didn't hold up. In the two decades before the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8, the rate of unemployment went down, but inflation didn't go up. That proved that the neoclassical economists were wrong. But unfortunately, policymakers didn't really digest this before the Great Recession hit. So, they bungled the response badly by putting the brake on public spending too quickly because of fears of excessive budget deficits and potentially higher future inflation that never materialized. They kept insisting that the employment level would return to that "natural" state Friedman had talked about if they just left things to the market.

"But it didn't work out that way," says Seccareccia. "Unemployment skyrocketed and it took a decade to return to pre-crisis levels.

Which brings us to the COVID-19 crisis.

A Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Seccareccia says that we have to understand the difference between the current situation and the Global Financial Crisis. This time, it really is different.

"The earlier crisis started in the financial sector and spread to the real economy," he explains. "But in 2020, when the Coronavirus emerged, the financial and industrial sectors got hammered at the same time." This meant that people in both sectors stopped spending. Households couldn't spend even if they wanted to because traveling, dining out, and other activities were off-limits. Businesses cut investment as uncertainty loomed and exports declined due to restrictions at borders. Unless you were Home Depot or an e-commerce company, you couldn't sell anything.

The COVID-19 crisis also saw workers pulled out of activities thought to be too high risk for spreading the virus. Across the country, non-essential workers were sent home and told to stay there. Most, especially in sectors like leisure and hospitality, can't do their work from home . A lot of these people lost their wages, and because most of them were low-wage to begin with, they could least afford the hit. Many were only able to maintain their incomes through government unemployment insurance. Businesses, meanwhile, were kept afloat with subsidies.

Seccareccia notes that unemployment had an interesting twist in the pandemic because it was both the problem and the initial cure for the health crisis. Unemployment kept the virus from circulating. It saved lives.

Fast-forward to late spring, 2021. As America and other western countries seek to put the pandemic behind them, the economy is opening back up. Employers are wanting to hire, and they are even competing with each other for workers. But many job seekers are waiting to go back to work. There are a lot of reasons why: caregiving for kids is still a huge burden, and people are still worried about getting sick. Transit routes have been disrupted making it harder for people to get to work. It's also possible that some workers may be resisting jobs on offer which come with low pay and inadequate benefits.

Employers have started complaining they can't find workers and blame the social safety net as the problem. Some employers, like those in the hospitality industry, are offering higher pay to lure workers back.

Just as Kalecki predicted, the wealthy capitalists are getting uneasy. The Chamber of Commerce, for example, has pushed the U.S. to stop expanded unemployment insurance benefits so that people will be forced to return to low-wage jobs. Some Republican-dominated states have jumped on board with this idea. Economist Larry Summers, for his part, is warning about inflation and telling the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates so that wages don't go up. He complains that when he walks outside, all he sees are people eager to fill job vacancies . It's unclear where he was living when he said that, or which people he is talking about.

Others argue that expanded unemployment insurance isn't the problem, but the crappy jobs on offer. Seccareccia believes that it's a good thing if employers raise their wages, even if that means a little bit of inflation.

Rising inequality, he emphasizes, is unsustainable in a healthy society, and it's about time ordinary people had a little power to improve their lot. "When employers are worried about people quitting," he says, "that's when you know you're getting close to full employment. And in a capitalist society, it's an extremely rare situation when the number of quits begins to exceed the number of new hires as an economy nears the peak of a business cycle."

In Seccareccia's view, "there's a balancing act between workers 'fearing the sack' and employers 'fearing the quit.'" He observes that capitalists are very good at making sure that the former situation is more common, and they've been spectacularly successful in the last 40 years. "This is why you have flat wages and runaway inequality," says Seccareccia. "Productivity goes up but the workers don't share in it." Profits pile up at the top.

Right now, inflation has been creeping up in some areas. In a couple of sectors, like used cars, it's rising a lot. The question is, beyond a couple of unique cases, what will happen to inflation overall? And will be temporary? A lot of economists think that inflation will be short-lived and will not get very high, so it's nothing to get excited about. Some economists, like Antonella Palumbo, think the worry about inflation is overdone . She notes that with unemployment still high and vast numbers of people who formerly worked but are still out of the labor force, the ranks of the famous reserve army of unemployed are still huge. As the economy restarts, all kinds of short-run bottlenecks are cropping up, but that reserve army is not going anywhere fast and will continue to limit wage increases.

Seccareccia points out that wealthy capitalists trying to stop workers from getting paid better and conservatives complaining about laziness fail to mention that meanwhile, the stock market is soaring, making the rich richer. Plus, the housing market is booming because the more affluent people lucky enough to have kept their jobs over the pandemic now have extra money saved to spend on big-ticket items. "Is it really fair," he asks, "to complain about a few hundred dollars a week received by those at the bottom of the economic ladder? Especially how much the economy is already titled in favor of the haves?"

So, what exactly should the government do about unemployment? Should it do anything at all? For Seccareccia's part, he thinks this is a perfect time to reconsider the idea of full employment, which has been so long abandoned by policymakers in favor of some "natural" unemployment rate. "Policymakers need to understand why COVID may offer a chance not seen since the end of WWII," he says. "We could actually make the economy fairer for ordinary people."


Alice X , June 5, 2021 at 6:02 am

The 1943 Michal Kalecki piece can be found here:

https://mronline.org/2010/05/22/political-aspects-of-full-employment/

EarlyGray , June 5, 2021 at 6:07 am

> So, what exactly should the government do about unemployment?

My favoured solution, and that of other readers of this blog, I suspect, is the Job Guarantee as promoted by MMT.
Because a well designed job guarantee would provide a floor on wages and benefits, the private sector would be forced to match it at the very least. But as has been pointed out on this blog many times before, Kalecki's point that full employment would remove employers ability to effectively threaten workers with the sack, means that it will be very difficult politically to see it implemented.

Mikel , June 5, 2021 at 9:47 am

Still building "houses" with floors only?

I think a definition of "enough" is needed.

Amateur Socialist , June 5, 2021 at 8:07 am

Next week I start my 2nd year of pandemic triggered unemployment after I was terminated without cause. On June 26th my extended UI benefits will be halted by TX Governor Greg Abbot. Okay.

In a year of applying for new positions I have managed to get exactly 1 phone interview after a 40 year career in technology development, ending up with almost 24 years at IBM. In my last year with them I received both a performance bonus and a salary hike. But I'm now over 60 and have been unemployed longer than 3 months so that's probably fairly typical experience. Okay.

The path to full employment is probably going to require the creation of new opportunities in a still contracting economic system. It's not impossible if you're focused on the goal. Here's my shortlist of policy initiatives that could dramatically and quickly grow the number of available jobs, particularly for the under employed younger people who are paying off student loans.

Dramatically increase social security and medicare eligibility/benefits to convince older workers to leave the workforce.
Expand paid family leave and vacation policies to align with other industrialized nations in order to require businesses to hire to cover needed absences.
Drop the number of hours that define full time work to allow more workers to get full benefits.

Yeah, I'd like to be considered for another good paying job in a still viable industry. I spent decades developing skills that are still relevant and valuable. But I'm old and I'm expensive because I have expectations based on my own employment history that 40 years of neoliberal policies have rendered obsolete. Okay.

I'm close enough to retirement and lucky enough in my ability to save and plan that this won't wreck us. I try to imagine my pandemic inspired involuntary retirement as an opportunity to become a labor rights activist. It helps.

Rolf , June 5, 2021 at 9:23 am

My situation is virtually the same, although in academia as research scientist at major US university, with last 6 years as invited scientist at German research institute. Returned to US to the nightmare of Trump at 63, but fully (and naively) intending to continue working. I've lost count of how many job applications I've tendered, with only one interview in two years, then COVID. Now resigned to the fact that work for me from here on out will be different. I continue to write papers with colleagues at university to maintain a reputation in my field. Now recognize that people take one look at my CV, and think: "Old! Expensive!" -- but the truth is I would be willing to work for little just to stay active in a field applying expertise I've spent decades acquiring. I've since met many, many seniors in the same boat: trained professionals with lots of experience who still want to work (and, in my case, need at least some income).

But at least I had a career. I can't imagine the hopelessness of people 35-40 years my junior, with huge debt from college, grad school, and unable to find a decent job.

Something must change. The situation as it exists is unsustainable. One bright light seems to be increasing recognition of the way the economy actually functions, the role of public spending, and the real limits to growth, prosperity.

Amateur Socialist , June 5, 2021 at 9:40 am

Appreciate your commiseration Rolf. I expect there is an army of people like us who are in this situation or about to be.

Fwiw (maybe not much), I'm actively trying to get hired full time at the food coop near my house. The workers there are represented by a union and get full insurance benefits including dental with a 40 hour work week. The Vt minimum wage of $11.75/hr doesn't matter as much as those insurance benefits do; we're still in that 5 year gap between age 60 and age 65 where you are on your own if you need healthcare.

And I've pretty much decided to laugh off Beaux Jivin's campaign promise to drop the medicare eligibility age to 60 etc. It's abandoned along with many other campaign promises. Okay.

Rolf , June 5, 2021 at 12:18 pm

Thanks, A/S, for your kind words. Yes, benefits are key. I really am increasingly worried that Biden, and the Democratic Party in general, don't seem the grasp the fact that the GOP is absolutely committed to recovering control of Congress and the White House by *any* means necessary. Biden in particular seems to entertain the notion that he can bring the right wing to his way of thinking by conciliation, negotiation, compromise, and good performance. But the GOP is not interested in Dem's performance or compromise -- McConnell has made this quite clear. So Dems have an opportunity to make significant history, a true course correction, but only this once. To pursue "bipartisanship" with a party that has no interest in compromise is hugely naïve -- I can't imagine Biden is that foolish, except that he did begin his campaign with the promise that "nothing would fundamentally change".

The food coop gig sounds like a good, sound shot -- all the best to you.

Left in Wisconsin , June 5, 2021 at 1:32 pm

Fellow army member, age 61. Lucky to have health care via spouse but definitely not enough wealth to retire. Two interviews in last two years, both in retrospect clearly designed to fill out an interview field when preferred (much younger) hire had already been identified. The canard about atrophied skills might apply in the occasional instance but IMO is just more bullsh1t in defense of existing social order.

Dem obliviousness to the reality all around us is truly horrifying. I used to argue that the big sort would result in fenced "progressive" enclaves in which all parties – those inside and those outside – would be thrilled to not have to interact with each other. But it's clear to me now that progressives don't need physical separation to avoid seeing what they don't want to; they are completely able to not see the world right in front of them.

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 10:52 am

I spent decades developing skills that are still relevant and valuable .

Well, you agree. And I agree with you, though I don't know you.
But Obviously the 'Market' does not.
Whose right here, and why?? is the issue.

Amateur Socialist , June 5, 2021 at 12:29 pm

I guess I should include this post script regarding my IBM termination:

After I'd been unemployed for about 90 days I was contacted by a recruiter working on behalf of IBM and my former managers. They were looking for people with exactly my skills and experience to come back to work at IBM as temporary contractors. I agreed to a short phone interview to learn more about the opportunity.

Once the recruiter verified my experience and contacts at IBM, I managed to confirm that they expected to bring me back on at about 80% of my former salary. With no benefits and zero job security. I laughed out loud at this acknowledgment of their duplicity but agreed to let myself be considered and provided a resume. Never heard back which is probably okay.

Carla , June 5, 2021 at 8:29 pm

Amateur Socialist, Rolf and Left in Wisconsin -- I take my hat off to all of you. Work left both my partner and me a number of years ago, and we quickly learned that we had aged out of the market and were useless to society as we thought of it. Fortunately, we relatively quickly became eligible for Medicare, which even in its steadily diminishing state was (and is) a significant help.

Good luck to all of you, and A/S, please let us know the outcome of your pursuit of the job with benefits at your local Food Co-op.

Objective Ace , June 5, 2021 at 5:39 pm

I think your experience demonstrates the problem with defining full Employment as, "anyone who wants a job has one". Using this definition, the simple way to get the economy to FE then is to just make all the jobs so terrible and low paying that no one wants them. You dont need a job, and you dont want just any old crappy job. You want one similiar to your old one, If that doesnt exist anymore, one would reasonably say you dont want a job, since what you want doesn't exist, hence we're at full employment

All of this is to say, we shouldnt necessarily just encourage the government to get us to FE. Capitalists by themselves are quite capable of getting us there, as I'd argue they did in the 19th century. Its government interventions like minimum wage and basic safety protocols that keep us from reaching FE since that's what makes people actually want a job

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 9:08 am

Interesting overview.

it was unthinkable that someone ready and able to work had no job to do.

I think there is a conflation of the language terms bandied about–work-v-jobs-v-employment are all couched in the concept of a Consumption Based Economy. I am tired of this.

weeding the garden is work–unless I'm paying you then it becomes a job. In both instances, however, you are employed in the endeavor. This is grooming behavior using language, imo, and needs to stop.

I think this muddle is a componant of the current 'Jobs Discussion".

Covid has rattled generations coming out of Displacements following the very unequal GFC, and an undefined(maybe) examination of Meaning and Place within the current state of the world and the Economy that has been chosen to fulfill the needs of that Economy (Societal and Personal). More Intuitive than cognitive to many.

Selling Plastic bric-a-brac for the Man, to make the rent in an endless cycle, may have lost its cache' subconsciously, to the 'common man' in this time of apparent Climate Crises et al.

There is still plenty to do, and little time for Idleness( itself a "reward' promoted as a 'something' by the Consumptive Economy).

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 9:19 am

There is still plenty to do , like this(and all it encompasses)

Hero rat that sniffed out over 70 landmines retires The Hill

Mikel , June 5, 2021 at 9:41 am

"Proponents of the new neoliberal framework were in favor of cutting safety nets, shedding government jobs, and leaving it to the market to decide how much unemployment there would be. They said that it had to be this way to keep inflation from rising,"

"The market" – that's the first con people have to get over. There is.no "the market" like there it is something like nature.
It's system of intentional, changeable human decisions backed by beliefs and emotions of all kinds now matter how many theories or quantifications occur. And a corporate beuracracy is still a beuracracy.

And actually this neoliberal thinking of letting some imaginary entity "the market" "decide" (we should be lughing at this silliness!) to keep people unemployed to avoid "inflation" only makes sense if it actually meant to signify "avoid inflation of the population."

Phil in KC , June 5, 2021 at 9:44 am

The modern police force is a consequence of idle and unemployed city dwellers. Idled workers don't just sit down and die from malnutrition. Instead, they roam around looking for food, or opportunities that would lead to procuring food. Hungry, impoverished mobs are never a good idea: Ask Czar Nicholas, Kaiser Wilhelm, or the French aristocrats of the 1780's (rather, interrogate their ghosts) how idle, hungry crowds furthered their reigns. For all that, look to the unrest of the 1930's in the US.

Given this reality–that unemployed and starving people refuse to sit down and die peacefully–what will happen as automation starts to rob routine jobs? Already we are seeing robots prowling the Walmart aisles, driverless vehicles delivering pizzas, and self-checkout lines in big box stores. We who work are losing the war on unemployment, which leads to a question: Who is the winner?

Almost as an afterthought, one wonders how much in contributions to Social Security and Medicare have been lost because of automation. Robots don't pay taxes.

Jesper , June 5, 2021 at 10:21 am

Maybe Keynes had an idea what to do?
https://www.openculture.com/2020/06/when-john-maynard-keynes-predicted-a-15-hour-workweek-in-a-hundred-years-time-1930.html

After the achievement of the 40-hour workweek, paid vacations, and other labor concessions, many influential figures believed that egalitarian access to leisure would only increase in the 20th century. Among them was economist John Maynard Keynes, who forecast in 1930 that labor-saving technologies might lead to a 15-hour workweek when his grandchildren came of age. Indeed, he titles his essay, "Economic Possibility for our Grandchildren."

The benefits of labour-saving technologies have mostly been taken as money instead of time and by doing so the capitalist class kept power thereby leading to them getting the lions-share of the benefits of the labour-saving techologies.
The political class could, and still can, side with people and decide that labour-saving technologies is to be taken out as reduced amount of hours spent working for someone else. As is the politcal class have bought the 'lump of labour'-fallacy-fallcy hook, line and sinker so what we see is increased pension-age etc

Vicotria H , June 5, 2021 at 10:31 am

I tried out retirement for a few months. I'm 62 and got SS and a very small pension. It's not enough so I went back – temping. The jobs I can get as a paralegal/admin person don't pay a lot but there seem to be quite a few of them based on companies that are merging or have merged and have a huge mess to clean up. So they hire you for a few months to slog through chaos and fix it. Then on to the next one. I'll keep doing this until I can move to a cheaper part of the U.S. Remote helps in that if I don't have a Zoom interview they can't tell how old I am. I feel for everyone who can't even get tedious work. If my SS was higher I would stop working. If my salary had matched that of the male co-workers that had the exact same job as me, my pension would be higher. Retiring in America for many people is part nomadic as you have to move out of your area to survive after you leave your regular job, or it gets rid of you and the other part is being extremely frugal. Woohoo what a life after over 40 years of helping companies make money.

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 11:00 am

If my SS was higher I would stop working

Is this a complete and true statement, or a shortcut to meaning something else?
No criticism, just looking for the clarity.

Victoria H , June 5, 2021 at 11:20 am

Yes a totally true statement. For it to be higher I would have had to wait until almost 67 to take it. It will go up a tad from my additional employment – maybe. Anyway it's a mostly a set amount. I make as a temp in 2 weeks (take home) what I get in SS once per month. If I make over about $19k annually while taking the SS, the US gov will begin to reduce the SS payment.

John Zelnicker , June 5, 2021 at 1:22 pm

@Victoria H
June 5, 2021 at 11:20 am
-- -- -

Social Security takes the highest 40 quarters (10 years) of your earnings to calculate your benefit. If your current work results in higher numbers than are being used currently, the higher numbers will be used and your benefit will increase.

Victoria H , June 5, 2021 at 11:40 am

I tried to reply to your question – yes it is a true statement. What I wrote additionally may have been moderated out for some reason so I won't repeat it. It only mentioned dollar amounts and the US gov so maybe that was bad – not sure!

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 2:06 pm

Victoria H
and I thank you for that.
But I think you, and I will 'work' until we die–

What does work mean?
noun. exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil. productive or operative activity. employment, as in some form of industry, especially as a means of earning one's livelihood: to look for work. the result of exertion, labor, or activity; a deed or performance.

Work | Definition of Work at Dictionary.comhttps://www.dictionary.com › browse › work

I am personally familiar with what you are going through and My wife is there right now.

I waited till full retirement at 66 to collect–not being able to leave 2k on the table(diff btwn 62 and 66 for me). I cannot describe the amount of effort and gyration I needed to extend to achieve that– which may explain why I am the only one in my 'Friend Circle' to actually accomplish it.

Trigger Warning

I thought the coup de grace was when I had to sign up for–and Pay For, with cash, Quarterly–Medicare without a SS check to have it automatically deducted from. Because of my birthday I needed to pony up about 5 months worth of premiums(but i had 3 months to save up for the next Q pymt). I doubt you've ever been curbed at the end of a physical altercation, but that is what it felt like to me. Best think about all that.
Good news–do your own taxes for your enlightenment and you will see that the SS Income Worksheet provides a path to structuring your Income to counter-balance additional Income.
Discalimer–I am in no way an Acc'tant or Tax Man or even giving Advice. I am a Carpenter–but Written Instructions are Written Instructions and Numbers are Numbers and I made a paid living following both–so it's understandable enough to give you some options to ponder.

And to Rolf/AmSoc and all the others -- IMNSHO(the first ever time I have used this phrase) the most dispiriting element about 'Retirement' in America is the Stranding of So Many Valuable Assets embodied in the Retired when the world desperatly needs "All Hands On Deck" to resist the Man Made Extinction looming.

Rolf , June 5, 2021 at 3:22 pm

the most dispiriting element about 'Retirement' in America is the Stranding of So Many Valuable Assets embodied in the Retired when the world desperately needs "All Hands On Deck" to resist the Man Made Extinction looming.

These are true words, Rod. I think catastrophic changes (no hyperbole) lie ahead, for which there is little precedent. Many make absurdly blithe assumptions, thinking they won't be affected, or that wealth will insulate them. This is arrogant folly, and we will need everyone to row in the same direction.

Carla , June 5, 2021 at 9:32 pm

The man who owns the Heating and Air Conditioning company I have been using for the last decade lives in the neighborhood and is 88 years old. After his brother had health problems, and the young nephew he employed left for greener pastures,he now does pretty much all the work himself, and let me tell you, he knows his stuff. I know I should have a back-up in mind, just in case, but so far, haven't found anyone else I can trust.

Dr. R.k. Barkhi , June 5, 2021 at 5:49 pm

Well said. I took retirement at 62 for several reasons,number 1 being i didn't believe it would be around long enough to pay me back.

"All hands on deck" is imo exactly what is needed,but the mostly planned divisiveness (fake right vs fake left aka RepubliCons vs Dumbocrats) will help ensure that never occurs,to someone's benefit.

redleg , June 5, 2021 at 12:20 pm

Just think how many people would quit working, or enter self-employment, if they weren't dependent on employer providedmedical insurance. I don't know the answer/estimate; it would have to be a large number, enough to significantly raise wages across the board.

Amateur Socialist , June 5, 2021 at 11:29 am

Retiring in America for many people is part nomadic

This observation made me remember a critical scene from the excellent oscar winner last year, Nomadland . Frances McDormand's character meets a friend who explains why she took to the road: "Five hundred forty dollars a month from Social Security. After working non stop for over 40 years. How am I supposed to live on that".

I'm paraphrasing possibly badly from memory; it's a very short scene that isn't really pursued farther in the script. But I do remember thinking "Aha! This is the root cause of all this misery and despair "

We moved to southern Vermont from Texas just prior to the pandemic believing we had relocated to a cheaper part of the US as you also mentioned. But Vermont's strong public health track record during the pandemic has unleashed a huge real estate boom here so who knows We may end up priced out of Vermont eventually too.

Rolf , June 5, 2021 at 12:29 pm

Real estate is still relatively cheap in Texas (at least around Houston), with the caveat that Republicans don't always keep the power on or the water pressure up in the middle of winter.

Amateur Socialist , June 5, 2021 at 12:34 pm

Unfortunately our place was in the Austin exurb of Bastrop. Which is now part of the Austin insane real estate boom. And yes Houston can be cheap but only if you don't mind living near a refinery. Or in the path of many future hurricanes. Hard pass.

Pelham , June 5, 2021 at 11:11 am

I keep seeing references to "flat wages." While it's technically true, I suspect it's enormously deceptive.

Yes, we have flat wages. But the cost of necessities that add little or no value to people's lives but which they're FORCED to pay for have shot up far, far beyond the pace of inflation. Think medical care, housing and education, to name just three, all of which are somehow ignored or slighted in official inflation stats.

Susan the other , June 5, 2021 at 11:54 am

Right now the best transition is for the government to regulate capitalism in the direction the future (sustainability) dictates. The problem with regulating capitalism is that most capitalists think it is already too regulated; taxes are too high, etc. They are on the edge of revolution themselves. And regulated capitalism is almost an oxymoron to most Americans. It's just business as usual to a European because they have better social spending and blablablah. The statistic I remember is that the EU spends about 45% of its revenue on social stuff; the US spends a little less than 35%. The problem, as I see it, is this: If we in the US do not achieve adequate social spending we create the perfect breeding ground for exploitation of the environment. People will be desperate for a job – any job. Which will not only cause worse CO2 problems, it will poison off, or starve off, many many species now living on the edge. We will further pollute the oceans and waterways. And we will not only stick with our sick and poisonous agricultural practices, we will exponentiate them – precluding all efforts to fix these unsustainable things. Capitalism as we have known it must change. So, even the great idea of capitalism must adapt to reality. Somebody please tell Larry. At this point "inflation" is an absolutely meaningless word. It would be a very good thing if we followed Eisenhower's advice to LBJ and began to create social structures that are fair to all of society – to the capitalists whose current mandate of voracious profiteering is clearly unsustainable, as well as to "labor" – as we see it evolving – and now, most importantly, we must include the rights of the planet itself and all of our fellow travelers. We won't last very long if we kill them all off and trash the Earth. The race to the bottom that all privateering capitalism eventually creates is the most absurd thing in the history of civilization.

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 2:12 pm

Always with the Big Picture and the Clear Eyes.
Thanks

Carla , June 5, 2021 at 9:35 pm

Indeed.

redleg , June 5, 2021 at 12:13 pm

A good start would be breaking up all of the ubiquitous monopolies/monopsonies/cartels, that have taken over every sector of the economy, from food processing to entertainment to banking to manufacturing to politics to (ad infinitum/nauseum).

John Zelnicker , June 5, 2021 at 1:27 pm

I went to Firehouse Subs yesterday there was a whiteboard inside on a table, facing into the restaurant, that said they were hiring and offered starting pay of $9.00 for crew members and $12.00 for shift managers.

Just inside the door, facing out, was a whiteboard offering starting pay of $11.00 for crew members and $14.00 for shift managers. Seems like they're getting the message.

As an aside, I'd like to give props to Firehouse Subs for using pressed paper clam boxes and paper bags.

LawnDart , June 5, 2021 at 6:47 pm

The average mortgage payment in USA is $1158mo.

Using the 28/36 rule, how much should employers be paying hourly if their employees are valued enough to be able to afford a home?

[Jun 06, 2021] Eurozone Inflation Above Target Sooner Than The ECB Expected

The USA is not immune. Energy price will drive inflation here too. So the decline of 10 years bond rate might a trap.
Jun 02, 2021 | www.wsj.com

The annual rate of inflation in the eurozone rose in May to hit the European Central Bank's target for the first time since late 2018, as energy prices surged in response to a strengthening recovery in the global economy.


[Jun 06, 2021] Watch- A Vindicated Rand Paul Decimates Fauci Over Emails

If we take ZH commentariat opinions as a representative sample of the US conservatives opinion, Fauci days are now numbered. And not only because he over 80.
Jun 05, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Speaking to Laura Ingraham, Paul asserted that "The emails paint a disturbing picture, a disturbing picture of Dr. Fauci, from the very beginning, worrying that he had been funding gain-of-function research. He knows it to this day, but hasn't admitted it."

The Senator also urged that Fauci's involvement has not been adequately investigated because in the eyes of Democrats "he could do no wrong".

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1400317216143380482&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fmarkets%2Fwatch-vindicated-rand-paul-decimates-fauci-over-emails&sessionId=1c907408994e2f21116e1007779680c9a749f689&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

Paul pointed out that Fauci was denying that there was even any funding for gain of function research at the Wuhan lab just a few weeks back, a claim which is totally contradicted by his own emails in which he discusses it.

"In his e-mail, within the topic line, he says "˜acquire of perform research.' He was admitting it to his non-public underlings seven to eight months in the past," Paul emphasised.

The Senator also pointed to the email from Dr. Peter Daszak , President of the EcoHealth Alliance, a group that directly funded the Wuhan lab gain of function research, thanking Fauci for not giving credence to the lab leak theory.

Ingraham asked Paul if Fauci could face felony culpability, to which the Senator replied "At the very least, there is ethical culpability," and Fauci should be fired from his government roles.

Earlier Paul had reacted to Amazon pulling Fauci's upcoming book from pre-sale:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1400488919771369474&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fmarkets%2Fwatch-vindicated-rand-paul-decimates-fauci-over-emails&sessionId=1c907408994e2f21116e1007779680c9a749f689&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

In softball interviews with MSNBC and CNN Thursday, Fauci dismissed the notion that his emails show any conflicts of interest, and claimed that it is in China's "best interest" to be honest about the pandemic origins, adding that the US should not act "accusatory" toward the communist state.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-2&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1400417592624431105&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fmarkets%2Fwatch-vindicated-rand-paul-decimates-fauci-over-emails&sessionId=1c907408994e2f21116e1007779680c9a749f689&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

Fauci also said it is "far fetched that the Chinese deliberately engineered something so that they could kill themselves, as well as other people."

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-3&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1400445767530078215&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fmarkets%2Fwatch-vindicated-rand-paul-decimates-fauci-over-emails&sessionId=1c907408994e2f21116e1007779680c9a749f689&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

* * *


Dotard PRO 17 hours ago

Roger Stone was given 9 years for lying to Congress. Fauci should be on the same hook.

truth or go home 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Looks like Fauci is going the way of Gates, but he won't be arrested, because he is doing the bidding of the overlords.

What could he be arrested for? Let's see: Misappropriation of government funds, lying to a senator under oath, covering up a criminal operation, operating a conspiracy to deceive the people of the United States.

Seems like Rand is willing to nail Fauci to the wall, but he is not willing to go after the big kahuna - the entire hoax - the fake vaxxes, the fake lockdowns, the fake "cases", the fake death count, the elimination of flu...

Lucky Guesst 10 hours ago

Fauci is owned by big pharma. All the major news channels have at least one big pharma rat on the board. MSM continues to push the vaccines. They are all in bed together and need busted up if not taken out.

SummerSausage PREMIUM 15 hours ago

2012- Fauci says weaponized virus research may produce a pandemic but it would be worth it.

Jan 9, 2017 NIAD memo recommends lifting ban on funding weaponized virus research. Fauci controls the funds.

Jan 4, 2017 - CIA/FBI/DNC - under Obama's direction are told, essentially, to get Trump.

Obama is behind release of this virus, creating pandemic panic and lockdown to facilitate stealing the 2020 election.

OBAMA must be investigated.

play_arrow
CheapBastard 10 hours ago

"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."

~ Anonymous

serotonindumptruck 17 hours ago remove link

Call me a pessimist, but I predict no accountability, no malfeasance, no criminal charges will be filed against Fauci.

We've all witnessed similar criminal behavior being perpetrated by the wealthy elite which result in no consequences.

Why should this be any different?

(((They))) now know that (((they))) can lie to us with impunity, and get away with it.

alexcojones 16 hours ago

New Nuremberg Needed Now.

Fauci in the witness chair.

"So, Dr. Fauci, your decisions, your outright lies, led to thousands, perhaps millions of unnecessary deaths."

Kobe Beef 10 hours ago

Does the fluzilla exist?

It could be this thing...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26552008/

Baric & Batwoman published their chimeric coronavirus with ACE2 receptor access in 2015. Funded by Fauci, of course.

Kevin 3 hours ago (Edited)

That document only shows that Gain Of Function research exists - not that the deaths, falsely attributed to covid are due to the product of that research.

What self-respecting, lab-created, killer virus, supposedly so deadly that it warrants the shutting down of the entire planet, is incapable of doing any more damage than the flu does every year?

In the case of the UK, and according to its own official figures, it hasn't even been able to do that compared to its history of seasonal flu.

See: https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/deceptive-construction-why-we-must-question-covid-19-mortality-statistics

So, 2020 was just a blip compared to the past and most of that blip in increased deaths was due to the insane policies imposed rather than any lab-created Fluzilla. If you subtract the deaths that occurred due to:

1. Kicking seniors out of hospital and dumping them into nursing homes where they died because they no longer got the treatment they needed but where they could infect the other, previously healthy residents.

2. The many tens of thousands of people who had life-saving surgeries and procedures cancelled.

3. The huge increase in suicides.

..... I doubt there would even be that blip.

If those historically, insignificant 2020 death figures are due to a lab-created, chimeric coronavirus then that's an epic fail of the scientists and an enormous waste of money for their education and the G.o.F. research.

However, it has conned enough idiots into believing that there was a Fluzilla in 2020 and got them to beg for jabs that might be how a lab created, chimeric coronavirus with ACE2 receptor access gets into their bodies and kills them.

The new con that it was a leaked GoF bio-weapon that caused the 2020 'pandemic' is just a lie upon a lie.

But it will persuade many of the gullible and fence-sitters to get jabbed because they will have accepted (subconsciously), that the Fluzilla must have existed last year and that the only way to combat such a bio-weapon is to jab themselves with poison. Ironically, that will create in their bodies what they fear most.

Befits 9 hours ago remove link

No, you are not thinking clearly. The Covid death numbers were clearly and horrifically inflated

1) The CDC changed how death certificates were recorded. Co-morbidities ( cancer, congestive heart failure, COPD for example) that co- morbidity was listed as cause of death in part one of the death certificate for 2 decades until the CDC changed death certificates. If that person had for example a flu At that time ( cough, stuffy nose etc) it might be listed as a contributing factor ( part 2 of death certificate) person died of co- morbidity but flu was a contributing factor. The CDC reversed these to make sure Covid was the cause of death- but truth was people died with Covid not from Covid.

2) 95% of Covid listed deaths actually died of co- morbidities- with Covid not from Covid. The CDC published that only 5% of " Covid " deaths had only Covid- the other 95% had on average 4 co- morbidities. In other words their cause of death was co- morbidity not Covid.

3) personal experience. I was a nurse. A close friend's brother had cancer for 7 years- in and out of remission. He was " diagnosed with Covid via PCR, almost no symptoms but for a slight cough and runny nose in March 2020. In April his cancer came back his liver shut down and he was dead by May 2020. He died from liver cancer but his death was recorded as Covid 19 simply because he had tested positive 60 days before on a Covid PCR test. This is the fraud the CDC perpetrated.

4) Hospitals received greatly enhanced financial renumeration if a patient was " diagnosed" with Covid. Compare hospital reimbursement ( Medicare) for a hospitalized Covid patient v influenza patient - similar symptoms- on or off respirator. Bottom line the medical system was financially rewarded for diagnosing " Covid" v influenza. Indeed the hospital did not even have to confirm a " Covid diagnosis with the fraudulent PCR test to diagnose Covid- just " symptom" based.

5) The PCR test can not diagnose any viral illness- simply by amplification cycles (30 plus) you can " find" Covid from a dead, partial RNA fragment. As Kary Mullis, Nobel prize inventor of PCR testing said PCR testing is NOT a diagnostic tool. Hospitals and docs, universities and public health departments, corporations, the CDC, FDA, used false PCR testing to financially enrich themselves while destroying the lives and livelihoods of millions inc careers of medical truth- tellers.

Fauci, the CDC, and the FDA knows all of this. Crimes v humanity trials must be undertaken v every medical person- from Big Pharma, CDC, FDA, Doctor, nurse, hospital administrator, public health official, corporate leader etc who used this Covid plandemic for personal benefit or whom through their actions harmed another.

SoDamnMad 17 hours ago

Watch Tucker Carlson's expose on "Why they lied for so long" At 3:29 he goes into Peter Danzak getting 27 "scientists" to write in the Lancet that the Covid virus didn't come from the Wuhan Lab but rather from nature (with the HIV spliced into the genome). But he also tells individuals at UNC NOT to sign the letter so that their gain-of-function research isn't tied into this. His e-mail goes to Ralph Baric, Antoinette Baric, as well as Andre Alison and Alexsei Chmura at EcoHealthAlliance who Fauci got the money to for funding GOF Chinese research.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32V-e7saq60

SummerSausage PREMIUM 15 hours ago

Fauci is 80. Why was he allowed to stay on so long?

He controls $32 billion in annual grants that all US scientists and researchers depend on.

There's a whole lot more corruption to explore.

CatInTheHat 8 hours ago remove link

This whole thing feels CONTRIVED

Why does this even matter anymore?

China is NOT the problem here and focusing on CHINA DISTRACTS from a few things here.

1 FORT DETRIK. A nefarious US BIOWEAPONS lab that Fraudci worked at for 20 years. FD also works in conjunction with DARPA

2. Whenever it's WAPO or Buzzfeed (FFS!) who breaks a story related to the Rona, I am convinced that the elite have called them up to DISTRACT the public from something more important. Maybe that Fort Detrik was the source of the virus transferred to China via the US MIC/CIA and the Wuhan military games in China in Nov of 2019. 2 weeks later the first cases showed up at Wuhan.

3. This VACCINE has now killed over 5000 people and since the rollout for children between 12-16, several hundred have now been hospitalized with MYOCARDITIS OR PERICARDITIS.. In Israel a study conducted as the vax rolled out in YOUNG MEN, it was revealed that one in 3,000 was suffering from MYOCARDITIS within 4 days of the jab.

MSM is now reporting on adolescents in several states hospitalized with INFLAMMATION. ... Which they blame on RONA. FUNNY how every one of those states have rolled out the jab for CHILDREN

WE are being massively LIED too.

Also, Biden's press secretary PSAKI LIED when she said, today, that 63% of the population has had the jab.

Wrong. Only 41% of the US population has had BOTH jabs. Anti gun Biden is now offering guns in exchange for a vax in Virginia. And anti marijuana Biden offering MJ in AZ for those who take the jab. Why the desperation?

For more perspective on the massive deaths piling up due to this jab, in 1976, when 50 people were killed after the Swine flu jab IT WAS PULLED FROM THE MARKET.

Many thousands who have not had the jab are reporting illness after being in close contact with those who are vaxxed.

Lots and lots to DISTRACT from

WAKE UP PEOPLE!!

ableman28 10 hours ago

True story....one of my VC firms investments was approached by the defense department to create a wearable lapel style detector for chemical and biological weapons that would work in very low concentrations giving people time to put on their CBW gear. Our investee said sure, we'll take a crack at it, but where are we going to get all the biological and chemical agents to test it with. The DOD response was don't worry, we have everything you'll need. And they did.

The US bio weapons program was supposedly terminated by Nixon in 1969. And our official policy is that we don't research or stockpile such things. ********.

Armed Resistance 15 hours ago (Edited) remove link

This virus was engineered at Ft. Detrick. It's the same place that made the military-grade Anthrax the deep state sent to Tom Daschle and others in government post 9/11 to gin up more fear.

This was a Fauci-coordinated deep state bio weapon they released in Wuhan to kick off the scamdemic and the "great reset". Releasing it China gave some cover to the deep state and the people there are under total control of the state. The rest is just filler. Always about more control.....

BeePee 15 hours ago

The virus was not engineered at Ft. Detrick.

You are a CCP troll.

Sorry you have such a low pay grade job.

Armed Resistance 15 hours ago (Edited)

Anybody who Questions the deep state is a CCP troll? Look in the mirror. You're the one running cover for these satanists! You rack up downvotes like Jordan did points! ZH'ers can spot a troll a mile away son.

louie1 PREMIUM 14 hours ago (Edited)

The US way is to put the perpetrators in charge of the inuiry to control the outcome. Dulles, Zellick, Fauci

Mighty Turban of Gooch 11 hours ago

Our government is corrupt. As long as the Democrats and the MSM have Fauci's back, he has nothing to worry about no matter what he's done.

He's just a typical lying bureaucrat and lying to the public thru the media outlets, as we have seen countless times now by countless government 'officials', is not a crime. Lying under oath however is. But now days we see these guys get away with that too without consequence.

So don't hold your breath. There is absolutely nothing that can take these guys out. Even if they throw one of their own under the bus, the best you can ever hope for is a resignation as criminal charges would never happen.

dustinthewind 16 hours ago (Edited)

"The CDC Foundation operates independently from CDC as a private , nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization incorporated in the State of Georgia."

"Because CDC is a federal agency , all scientific findings resulting from CDC research are available to the public and open to the broader scientific community for review."

"The Board of Directors of the CDC Foundation today named Judith A. Monroe, MD, FAAFP, as the new president and CEO of the CDC Foundation . Monroe joins the CDC Foundation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ), where she leads the agency's Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support."

Gates is the largest private donor of the CDC and WHO. Gates is part of the World Economic Forum who controls Fauci which using US taxpayers funds did gain of function studies first in the US and caught moved to China where it was intentionally leaked to blame the Chinese. John Kerry is also part of the WEF and is their man in Washington calling the war mongering narrative against both China and Russia. Gates funded Imperial College and Ferguson to write the code that was fake and used by many countries to justify lockdowns. Gates is the largest ag landowner and wants to ban meat. Who just got hacked and now it is blamed on Russia? Boris is destroying the UK and after a call from Gates gave 500 million pounds to vaccinate third world countries and lockdowns. Both fathers were tied to Rockefeller Institute. Rand, connect the dots!

" Fauci under Global Attack"

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/corruption/fauci-under-global-attack/

Fauci is under attack globally and has shown himself to be unreliable and should be fired "" PERIOD! All the emails that have come out from an FOIA request are interesting, and it shows he has information that was credible concerning a leak from the lab in Wuhan. Let me make this PERFECTLY clear! This was NOT a DELIBERATE leak by the Chinese government. If China wanted to really hurt the West, the technology is there where a virus can be used as a delivery system, and as such, it can be designed to attack specific genetic sequences meaning that it could target just Italian, Greeks, English, Germans, or whoever.

COVID-19, based upon everything I see from our model and reliable sources, was created in a lab and was DELIBERATELY unleashed to further this Great Reset. I BELIEVE someone from this agenda bribed a lab technician to release it in the local community. China did NOT benefit from this pandemic. The only ones who benefitted were the World Economic Forum (WEF) consortium, which I know sold stocks and bonds ahead of the crash. They are also in league with the World Health Organization (WHO), and the head of the WHO is a politician and not even a doctor. That is like putting me in charge of surgery at a hospital. How can Tedros Adhanom be in such a position with no background in the subject matter? Tedros appears at the World Economic Forum and has participated in its agenda. The WHO should be compelled to turn over ALL emails and communication ASAP. My bet is they pull a Hillary"¦Oh sorry. They were hacked by Russians who destroyed everything.


The World Economic Forum is at the center of everything. When will someone investigate all of these connections right down to creating the slogan, Build Back Better? Of course, they will call this a conspiracy theory so they can avoid having to actually investigate anything. My point is simple: produce the evidence and prove this is just a conspiracy theory.

'John Kerry's Think Tank Calls for War With Russia Over Climate Change'

https://www.sgtreport.com/2020/12/john-kerrys-think-tank-calls-for-war-with-russia-over-climate-change/

" America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat it is."" John Kerry

Recently-appointed Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry has announced his intention of dealing with the pressing issue of global warming as a national security concern. "America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat it is," the 76-year-old former Secretary of State wrote. "I am proud to partner with the President-elect, our allies, and the young leaders of the climate movement to take on this crisis." Kerry is a founding member of the Washington think tank, the American Security Project (ASP) , whose board is a who's who of retired generals, admirals and senators.

For the ASP, the primary objectives were:

  1. A huge rebuilding of the United States' military bases,

  2. Countering China in the Pacific,

  3. Preparing for a war with Russia in the newly-melted Arctic.

The ASP recommends "prioritizing the measures that can protect readiness" of the military to strike at any time, also warning that rising sea levels will hurt the combat readiness of the Marine Expeditionary Force. Thus, a rebuilding of the U.S.' worldwide network of military bases is in order.

Nelbev 17 hours ago

... and what kind of kickbacks does Fauci get when he doles out $ millions in grant money?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK6gAbZdhDc

CatInTheHat 9 hours ago (Edited)

Fort Detrik a US BIOWEAPONS lab working in tandem with the Wuhan lab. The US is the leader in BIOWEAPONS research and has 100's of labs across the US and in other countries.

FRAUDCI having worked at FD for 20 years.

MommickedDingbatter 12 hours ago

Without Nuremberg trials 2.0, this is all meaningless.

Nycmia37 16 hours ago remove link

Follow the science, lol. Just ask yourself who controls the science?? Big drug pharmas, people is so stupid they believe in everything doctors tell them. The vast majority are on the field to get rich and enjoy from the big bonuses and trips they get paid in order to promote a drug. If they speak out they get called a conspiracy person. Nobody cant go against this mafia because they have the total control, media, politicians, government. We the people have to self educate about health and finance otherwise we will become zombies like the majority of people.

SoDamnMad 7 hours ago remove link

Here are the 27 starting with Peter Daszak who signed THE LANCET letter saying ," We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. "

  1. Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance, New York
  2. Charles Calisher, Colorado State University
  3. Dennis Carroll, Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, Texas
  4. Rita Colwell, University of Maryland
  5. Ronald Corley, NEIDL Institute, Boston
  6. Christian Drosten, Charité "" Universitatsmedizin Berlin, Germany
  7. Luis Enjuanes, National Center of Biotechnology, Madrid
  8. Jeremy Farrar, The Wellcome Trust, London
  9. Hume Field, EcoHealth Alliance, New York
  10. Josie Golding, The Wellcome Trust, London
  11. Alexander Gorbalenya, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands
  12. Bart Haagmans, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands
  13. James Hughes, Emory University, Atlanta
  14. William Karesh, EcoHealth Alliance, New York
  15. Gerald Keusch, Boston University
  16. Sai Kit Lam, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  17. Juan Lubroth, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy
  18. John Mackenzie, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
  19. Larry Madoff, Massachusetts Medical School
  20. Jonna Mazet, University of California at Davis
  21. Peter Palese, Icahn School of Medicine, New York
  22. Stanley Perlman, University of Iowa
  23. Leo Poon, The University of Hong Kong
  24. Bernard Roizman, University of Chicago
  25. Linda Saif, The Ohio State University
  26. Kanta Subbarao, The University of Melbourne, Australia
  27. Mike Turner, The Wellcome Trust, London
gaaasp 6 hours ago

Pangolins indeed.

Moribundus 12 hours ago remove link

Daszak is just cover up for Pentagon. In this case Daszak = Pentagon.

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/peter-daszaks-ecohealth-alliance-has-hidden-almost-40-million-in-pentagon-funding/

DesertEagle 12 hours ago

Fauci is protected at the very highest levels of the oligarchy. So regardless of these revelations nothing serious will ever happen to him. At worst, he will step down and retire to his villa in the south of France. Then the controlled MSM will refuse to mention him again.

Clearing 17 hours ago

Gee, while you're at it, sue Fauci in his individual capacity. He doesn't get immunity for lying. See below:

In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle that grants government officials performing discretionary (optional) functions immunity from civil suits unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known". It is a form of sovereign immunity less strict than absolute immunity that is intended to protect officials who "make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions" extending to "all [officials] but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law " Qualified immunity applies only to government officials in civil litigation, and does not protect the government itself from suits arising from officials' actions.

DemandSider 3 hours ago (Edited)

"PCR is separate from that, it's just a process that's used to make a whole lot of something out of something. That's what it is. It doesn't tell you that you're sick and it doesn't tell you that the thing you ended up with really was going to hurt you or anything like that," Mullis said.

-Nobel Prize winning inventor of PCR being used as a "test" to perpetuate the scamdemic. Mr. "small government" Rand Paul is only making it worse.

Almachius 2 hours ago

Never mind Fauci. White Supremacists are the greatest threat to America.

Obiden said so.

And Obiden is an honourable man.

Fiscal Reality 14 hours ago

Fauci doesn't give a crap what happens. He got his book deal payoff. He's praying to get fired so he can cash in on his taxpayer funded pension and get a $10 million contract with CNN.

2types PREMIUM 13 hours ago

Amazon pulled his book from presale so says the article. Probably in his best interest to keep his mouth shut right now. Anything he says can and will be used against him. On second thought.... maybe that's why water carrier Bezos suspended sales?

[Jun 03, 2021] Climate activists scored a major victory with a Dutch court ruling requiring Shell to drastically cut emissions, which in effect means cutting oil and gas output

Jun 03, 2021 | www.reuters.com

Defeats in the courtroom and boardroom mean Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) , ExxonMobil (XOM.N) and Chevron (CVX.N) are all under pressure to cut carbon emissions faster. That's good news for the likes of Saudi Arabia's national oil company Saudi Aramco (2222.SE) , Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, and Russia's Gazprom (GAZP.MM) and Rosneft (ROSN.MM) .

It means more business for them and the Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

"Oil and gas demand is far from peaking and supplies will be needed, but international oil companies will not be allowed to invest in this environment, meaning national oil companies have to step in," said Amrita Sen from consultancy Energy Aspects.

... ... ...

Climate activists scored a major victory with a Dutch court ruling requiring Shell to drastically cut emissions, which in effect means cutting oil and gas output. The company will appeal.

The same day, the top two U.S. oil companies, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, both lost battles with shareholders who accused them of dragging their feet on climate change.

...Western oil majors control around 15% of global output, while OPEC and Russia have a share of around 40 percent. That share has been relatively stable in recent decades as rising demand was met with new producers like smaller private U.S. shale firms, which face similar climate-related pressures.

...Despite pressure from activists, investors and banks to cut emissions, Western oil majors are also tasked with maintaining high dividends amid heavy debts. Dividends from oil companies represent significant contributions to pension funds.

[Jun 03, 2021] The Lab-Leak Theory: Investigating Fauci's COVID Can Of Worms

Abridged version. See the original for full version.
Notable quotes:
"... In October 2014, the Obama administration imposed a moratorium on new funding for gain-of-function research projects that could make influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses more virulent or transmissible. But a footnote to the statement announcing the moratorium carved out an exception for cases deemed "urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security." ..."
"... the review process shrouded in secrecy. "The names of reviewers are not released, and the details of the experiments to be considered are largely secret," said the Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Marc Lipsitch, whose advocacy against gain-of-function research helped prompt the moratorium. ..."
"... In May 2014, five months before the moratorium on gain-of-function research was announced, EcoHealth secured a NIAID grant of roughly $3.7 million, which it allocated in part to various entities engaged in collecting bat samples, building models, and performing gain-of-function experiments to see which animal viruses were able to jump to humans. The grant was not halted under the moratorium or the P3CO framework. ..."
"... Shi Zhengli herself listed U.S. government grant support of more than $1.2 million on her curriculum vitae: $665,000 from the NIH between 2014 and 2019; and $559,500 over the same period from USAID. At least some of those funds were routed through EcoHealth Alliance. ..."
"... EcoHealth Alliance's practice of divvying up large government grants into smaller sub-grants for individual labs and institutions gave it enormous sway within the field of virology. The sums at stake allow it to "purchase a lot of omertà" from the labs it supports, said Richard Ebright of Rutgers. ..."
"... now the spin doctors come around pointing the finger at china. Sure, china may have done the experimentation and research, but where did the funding, research resources, training, and direction come from? ..."
"... The US banned bioweapon development (in the US) and moved it to China with Fraudci in charge so that they could do human experiments and make lots of money on GMO "vaccines" And now the US is trying to spin the story and put the blame on China ..."
Jun 03, 2021 | ZeroHedge

As the NSC tracked these disparate clues, U.S. government virologists advising them flagged one study first submitted in April 2020. Eleven of its 23 coauthors worked for the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, the Chinese army's medical research institute. Using the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, the researchers had engineered mice with humanized lungs, then studied their susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2. As the NSC officials worked backward from the date of publication to establish a timeline for the study, it became clear that the mice had been engineered sometime in the summer of 2019, before the pandemic even started. The NSC officials were left wondering: Had the Chinese military been running viruses through humanized mouse models, to see which might be infectious to humans?

In October 2014, the Obama administration imposed a moratorium on new funding for gain-of-function research projects that could make influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses more virulent or transmissible. But a footnote to the statement announcing the moratorium carved out an exception for cases deemed "urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security."

In the first year of the Trump administration, the moratorium was lifted and replaced with a review system called the HHS P3CO Framework (for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight). It put the onus for ensuring the safety of any such research on the federal department or agency funding it. This left the review process shrouded in secrecy. "The names of reviewers are not released, and the details of the experiments to be considered are largely secret," said the Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Marc Lipsitch, whose advocacy against gain-of-function research helped prompt the moratorium. (An NIH spokesperson told Vanity Fair that "information about individual unfunded applications is not public to preserve confidentiality and protect sensitive information, preliminary data, and intellectual property.")

Inside the NIH, which funded such research, the P3CO framework was largely met with shrugs and eye rolls, said a longtime agency official: "If you ban gain-of-function research, you ban all of virology." He added, "Ever since the moratorium, everyone's gone wink-wink and just done gain-of-function research anyway."

British-born Peter Daszak, 55, is the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City–based nonprofit with the laudable goal of preventing the outbreak of emerging diseases by safeguarding ecosystems. In May 2014, five months before the moratorium on gain-of-function research was announced, EcoHealth secured a NIAID grant of roughly $3.7 million, which it allocated in part to various entities engaged in collecting bat samples, building models, and performing gain-of-function experiments to see which animal viruses were able to jump to humans. The grant was not halted under the moratorium or the P3CO framework.

By 2018, EcoHealth Alliance was pulling in up to $15 million a year in grant money from an array of federal agencies, including the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to 990 tax exemption forms it filed with the New York State Attorney General's Charities Bureau. Shi Zhengli herself listed U.S. government grant support of more than $1.2 million on her curriculum vitae: $665,000 from the NIH between 2014 and 2019; and $559,500 over the same period from USAID. At least some of those funds were routed through EcoHealth Alliance.

EcoHealth Alliance's practice of divvying up large government grants into smaller sub-grants for individual labs and institutions gave it enormous sway within the field of virology. The sums at stake allow it to "purchase a lot of omertà" from the labs it supports, said Richard Ebright of Rutgers. (In response to detailed questions, an EcoHealth Alliance spokesperson said on behalf of the organization and Daszak, "We have no comment.")

In July, the NIH attempted to backtrack. It reinstated the grant but suspended its research activities until EcoHealth Alliance fulfilled seven conditions, some of which went beyond the nonprofit's purview and seemed to stray into tinfoil-hat territory. They included: providing information on the "apparent disappearance" of a Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher, who was rumored on social media to be patient zero, and explaining diminished cell phone traffic and roadblocks around the WIV in October 2019.

Ebright likened Daszak's model of research -- bringing samples from a remote area to an urban one, then sequencing and growing viruses and attempting to genetically modify them to make them more virulent -- to "looking for a gas leak with a lighted match." Moreover, Ebright believed that Daszak's research had failed in its stated purpose of predicting and preventing pandemics through its global collaborations.

It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Freedom of Information group called U.S. Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but organized the influential Lancet statement, with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific unanimity.

Under the subject line, "No need for you to sign the "Statement" Ralph!!," he wrote to two scientists, including UNC's Dr. Ralph Baric, who had collaborated with Shi Zhengli on the gain-of-function study that created a coronavirus capable of infecting human cells: "you, me and him should not sign this statement, so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn't work in a counterproductive way." Daszak added, "We'll then put it out in a way that doesn't link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice."

Baric agreed, writing back, "Otherwise it looks self-serving and we lose impact."

Baric did not sign the statement. In the end, Daszak did. At least six other signers had either worked at, or had been funded by, EcoHealth Alliance. The statement ended with a declaration of objectivity: "We declare no competing interests."

Daszak mobilized so quickly for a reason, said Jamie Metzl: "If zoonosis was the origin, it was a validation of his life work . But if the pandemic started as part of a lab leak, it had the potential to do to virology what Three Mile Island and Chernobyl did to nuclear science." It could mire the field indefinitely in moratoriums and funding restrictions.

In a CNN interview on March 26, Dr. Redfield, the former CDC director under Trump, made a candid admission: "I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped." Redfield added that he believed the release was an accident, not an intentional act. In his view, nothing that happened since his first calls with Dr. Gao changed a simple fact: The WIV needed to be ruled out as a source, and it hadn't been.

After the interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just "wither and die."

Peter Daszak was getting death threats too, some from QAnon conspirators.

Inside the U.S. government, meanwhile, the lab-leak hypothesis had survived the transition from Trump to Biden. On April 15, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the House Intelligence Committee that two "plausible theories" were being weighed: a lab accident or natural emergence.

Even so, lab-leak talk was mostly confined to right-wing news outlets through April, gleefully flogged by Tucker Carlson and studiously avoided by most of the mainstream media. In Congress, the Energy and Commerce Committee's Republican minority had launched its own inquiry, but there was little buy-in from Democrats and the NIH didn't provide responses to its lengthy list of demands for information.

The ground began to shift on May 2, when Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times science writer known in part for writing a controversial book about how genes shape the social behavior of different races, published a lengthy essay on Medium. In it, he analyzed the scientific clues both for and against a lab leak, and excoriated the media for its failure to report on the dueling hypotheses. Wade devoted a full section to the "furin cleavage site," a distinctive segment of SARS-CoV-2's genetic code that makes the virus more infectious by allowing it to efficiently enter human cells.

Within the scientific community, one thing leapt off the page. Wade quoted one of the world's most famous microbiologists, Dr. David Baltimore, saying that he believed the furin cleavage site "was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus." Baltimore, a Nobel Laureate and pioneer in molecular biology, was about as far from Steve Bannon and the conspiracy theorists as it was possible to get. His judgment, that the furin cleavage site raised the prospect of gene manipulation, had to be taken seriously.

Weedlord Bonerhitler, 1 hour ago

Gain of function research is weaponization. We are under attack by a biological weapon designed in a laboratory to kill people. We are, in effect, at war.

KickIce, 1 hour ago, (Edited)

With who, Washington DC? FWIW, that would be my pick.

ted41776, 1 hour ago

Yes, except "we" moved this "research" to china many years ago to speed up the weaponization of bioweapons. the original researchers came to the us from nazi Germany after WW2 (Project Paperclip). it wasn't moving fast enough here because of that whole experimenting on humans thing was looked down upon here in the US (at least in the past). so "we" hired china what "we" couldn't do domestically on "our" own.

And now the spin doctors come around pointing the finger at china. Sure, china may have done the experimentation and research, but where did the funding, research resources, training, and direction come from?

gregga777, 1 hour ago

Gain of function research is weaponization

It's also insane. Hey, look at what we did! We made smallpox* in our gene sequencing laboratory. Oops! It's release into the 'wild' was an unfortunate accident.

Anyone engaged in the research & development of making viruses or bacteria more lethal or the resurrection of presumably extinct pathogens (e.g., smallpox*) are International War Criminals. They should be arrested and placed on trial in a suitable jurisdiction. At the very least they should be barred forever from working in any kind of even remotely related laboratory research.

*The complete gene sequence of smallpox is apparently freely available over the Internet.

tion, PREMIUM, 51 minutes ago, (Edited)

This study https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JVI.01085-07

is an example of GOF engineering that bat lady Shi Zhengli participated in, engineering chimeras of SARS and SARS like coronaviruses and splicing with HIV to make it more transmissible to humans.

Pax Romana, 1 hour ago

10 page article could have been condensed into one sentence: Fort Detrick -> Canadian Lab -> Wuhan -> Spooks -> Election Fraud -> Vax -> State Control

ted41776, 1 hour ago

The US banned bioweapon development (in the US) and moved it to China with Fraudci in charge so that they could do human experiments and make lots of money on GMO "vaccines" And now the US is trying to spin the story and put the blame on China

no, this covaids was MADE IN THE USA even if it was produced and manufactured in China under US funding, direction, and supervision

brian91145, 1 hour ago

100% right that is the truth that everyone will know very soon

ted41776, 1 hour ago, (Edited)

not sure if it will make any difference

911: US training and funding bin laden for over a decade? WMDs, they got WMDs! pools of molten metal caused by... kerosene (jet fuel)? building 7...

we gotta get that f||cker bin laden though

bammy arming cartels (fast and furious) and guns they got from him used to kill americans (including cops and border patrol)? crickets

there is no election fraud, after seeing them spend 4 years trying to overthrow a president who allegedly used fraud and russian collusion to get elected?

and on and on and on, the neverending 24/7 stream of lies and distortion

unfortunately, truth has become pretty worthless in this sick reality most people live in

konputa, 1 hour ago

Designed in the US, manufactured in China. We've known this since early 2020.

CheapBastard, 1 hour ago

(((Vanity Fair))) has the same editorial weight that Teen Vogue has.

Handful of Dust, 22 minutes ago

The Lab-Leak Theory- Investigating Fauci's COVID -Can Of Worms-

The article is meant to obfuscate the truth, not clarify it.

CheapBastard, 51 minutes ago, (Edited)

The author carefully avoids inconvenient but important truths including::

Fauci funded the Wuhan bioweapons lab thru NIH (proven by emails) Fauci lied repeatedly from day#1 about the characteristics and origin of the deadly virus (also proven by emails) the WHO lied repeatedly about the origin the involvement of Gates in this entire fiasco

S.Parker, · 1 hour ago

Fort Detrick, USA

Handful of Dust, · 4 minutes ago

· Bumbler-in-Chief Biden in the White House Backs 'Incredible' Dr. Anthony Fauci; Refuses Comment on Explosive Emails Exposing the Lies & Deceit

· https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/06/03/white-house-backs-incredible-dr-anthony-fauci-refuses-comment-on-explosive-emails/

LarryC, 1 hour ago

Its a book! Damn Tylers it will take me days to read. · The Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 states:

"Whoever knowingly develops, produces, stockpiles, transfers, acquires, retains, or possesses any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system for use as a weapon, or knowingly assists a foreign state or any organization to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both."

Weedlord Bonerhitler, 1 hour ago

Don't need a next leak. Just need time for the leaky vaccines to do their work. A vaccine that doesn't stop transmission and merely reduces symptoms, is not a vaccine, but an evolutionary pressure upon the virus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek's_disease

This is Marek's disease, found in chickens. A few decades ago, it was fairly benign, but then it was treated with a vaccine that merely reduced symptoms to a minimum without stopping the virus. Now, after evolving over a few decades while butting heads with that leaky vaccine, it's so deadly to chickens that any unvaccinated flocks tend to be wiped out by it, making vaccinating every chicken on Earth a necessity.

This is our future. They want people completely dependent on their vaccines to survive.

[Jun 01, 2021] Tesla is dying, and this is how it will end by Adam Kaslikowski

www.amazon.com
May 28, 2019

Tesla completely transformed the automotive landscape when it introduced the Roadster, pioneering the mass-market electric car and reinventing the car as we know . It sold the first widely-available EV, and it did it with a product that you could easily live with every day. The company has done more to further the electric game than anyone else and deserves total credit for making EVs a part of the discussion when it comes to the future of the automobile. Tesla has changed the world. It's also doomed.

The last mainstream automaker to be launched from scratch in the United States was Saturn, a heavily subsidized child of the GM family. Even with those deep pockets, it failed. History is littered with dead automotive brands. The list of deceased automakers is also replete with visionary leaders who pioneered new tech and aimed to dominate the luxury market.

The automobile game is tough. The dirty secret is that the big brands only make around 6% margin on every car they sell

This is all to say: we've been here before. Hudson, Tucker, DeLorean ( twice! ), Packard, and more. The stories here are all different in their specifics, with some succumbing to shady government dealing, others losing to price wars. While the immediate causes of their failures might be unique, the fact that they failed certainly is not.

The consumer automobile game is devilishly tough. The dirty secret of the car making world is that the big brands only make around 6% margin on every car they sell. That's a pathetic amount of profit when compared to other well-known brands like Nike, Apple, or Disney. Shoes, upscale electronics, and entertainment (as well as scores of other industries) all offer double the profit margins, faster production times, less regulation, and fewer unionized workforces. Building cars is dumb. Car companies make billions of dollars in profits because they sell so many cars, not because each car is so profitable. And therein lies the rub for Tesla.

Why Tesla is doomed

The only way to be successful at car manufacturing is to do it at a very large scale. You have to sell hundreds of thousands, if not millions of cars per year to be stable. In 2018, Tesla shifted a total of 245,240 cars . The Tesla Model 3 also became the best-selling luxury automobile in United States; last year was fantastic for Tesla. It also took the company to the very brink of imploding.

Scaling up production lines and capacity is the activity that is killing Tesla, but scaling up further is the only thing that can save it. The company is at the low point of a "production valley" where becoming capable of building 300,000 cars has made them wildly unprofitable, but the only way to get to profit is to build even more capacity to enable it to make 700,000 – 1,000,000 cars. Tesla could potentially have, or raise, the billions needed to do this. It could, that is, if the company could concentrate on doing one thing at a time.

Tesla's worst enemy is Elon Musk. The serial entrepreneur has an affliction that many serial entrepreneurs have: Shiny Thing Syndrome. Mr. Musk loves to chase after new challenges and novel projects. Tesla is currently producing 3 different cars, wall chargers, charging stations, electric semi-trucks, photovoltaic roofs, and spearheading autonomous technology. Throw in the odd flamethrower , underground tunnels , and a new insurance product (not to mention Space X ), and you see a leader not focused on doing the hard work of pushing his company through a crisis of scale, but a man obsessed with moon-shots and new projects.

Scaling up production is the activity that is killing Tesla, but scaling up further is the only thing that can save it

It should be noted that Musk has never operated any business at this scale before. Running a nimble online service such as Paypal is a very different thing than running a multinational car manufacturer -- especially one that is exclusively pursuing new technologies. Quite frankly, Musk is not qualified to be CEO of Tesla any longer, and the mismatch of his skills to the company's needs could not be worse timed for Tesla.

In the next 12 months, practically all other major global auto manufacturers have plans to release their own electric cars. Tesla ate their lunch last year when it became the best-selling luxury car, but at that time, it was the only EV game in town. More worryingly, the most common Tesla owner complaints happen to be the areas that traditional car companies excel at: Fit and finish , service infrastructure , and execution on timelines. When Porsche announced its Taycan electric sedan , its #1 source of reservations was from current Tesla owners. This is a surefire sign that the Tesla customer base is eager to upgrade to something better.

China, the world's largest car market, and the savior of many global brands, cannot save Tesla. Indeed, the current trade war between the U.S. and China is hurting Tesla more than any other car company. The current price for a Tesla Model 3 in China is approximately $73,000, with roughly $30,000 of that price being the result of China's import tariffs. In January, Elon Musk broke ground on a Gigafactory in China, and the total investment in the project is expected to exceed $4 billion, according to Goldman Sachs . That is an amount of money Tesla, quite frankly, doesn't have to spend. After a disastrous first quarter 2019, the company quickly raised $2.35 billion in stock and debt. Even with this recent cash infusion, Musk told employees the company would be out of cash in 10 months if spending continued at current levels.

The end of Tesla

Tesla will not go bankrupt. It cannot go bankrupt. At the moment, the company is still well-placed to raise another funding round and could likely even do as many as three more funding events before investors stop lining up. Failure for Tesla won't happen tomorrow, but it is coming. More and more evangelists are changing their tunes as competition in EVs gets fiercer. Wall street is losing patience with broken promises and erratic CEO behavior. And the everyday consumer is finding more electric car options that tempt their dollar now that Tesla is not the only game in town. No, Tesla's end will not happen tomorrow, nor will it be a dramatic collapse.

Telsa is too valuable a brand to disappear in a cloud of Chapter 11 smoke. Again, history bears this out. The vast majority of automotive brands from years past were acquired or absorbed into larger brands, where some succeeded brilliantly (Dodge) and others slowly morphed into something unrecognizable (Hudson). Arguably, the Tesla brand is the most valuable piece of Tesla's balance sheet as other manufacturers have caught up with their hard technology (batteries, chargers), and are rapidly chasing down their soft technology ( Autopilot ). The Tesla brand is global in reach, and still viewed favorably overall by the public.

The endgame for Tesla is an acquisition. It is the way of the automotive jungle -- the circle of corporate life, as it were. The unknowable part at the moment is exactly who will acquire Tesla, as the list is quite long. Another car company is the reflexive bet, but Silicon Valley and Chinese auto manufacturers are all likely bidders as well. Apple already offered to buy Tesla back in 2013 for more than the company is worth at the time of this story. The field of suitors is wide open, and the eventual winner could well come as a surprise to the everyday public.

Regardless of who steps up to the plate, it will be very surprising if the transaction is labelled as an acquisition. No -- this will be a "merger" or "partnership" to protect egos and that all-important Tesla brand (again, the most valuable asset on their books). Any upcoming news of a partnership with a Toyota or a Mercedes should not be seen as a life preserver thrown out in good faith, but a wholesale pirate sacking of the company. Musk will quietly slip away to chase his shiny things, popping in for product launches and tweetstorms, but the adults will be put in charge and set a profitable course. What happens after that, no one can know.

Before the pitchforks come out, make no mistake: The world is a better place for Tesla having existed. Electric cars are no longer made out of old Porsche 914s by a guy in a shed. We are moving toward an electric future, all thanks to underdog Tesla. The world, and Americans especially, are enamored with an underdog story. But more often than not, the underdog loses. That's why they are underdogs. In the best of worlds, Tesla can influence Mercedes or a Chinese company from the inside to really nail electric cars and make them the most affordable option for consumers. I hope that comes to pass for all our sakes.

Tesla is dead. Long live Tesla.

[May 31, 2021] For the first four months of this year, the seasonally-adjusted consumer-price index is rising at an annualized rate of 6.2%. Without the seasonal adjustments, it is rising at 7.8%.

May 31, 2021 | www.wsj.com

"The consumer-price index rose at a remarkable 4.2%," says your editorial, "Powell Gets His Inflation Wish" (May 13). Remarkable, yes, but our current inflation problem is far worse than that 4.2%, which is bad enough. The real issue is what is happening in 2021. We need to realize that for the first four months of this year, the seasonally-adjusted consumer-price index is rising at an annual rate of 6.2%. Without the seasonal adjustments, it is rising at 7.8%. Meanwhile, house prices are inflating at 12%.

We are paying the inevitable price for the Federal Reserve's monetization of government debt and mortgages. As for whether this is "transitory," we may paraphrase J.M. Keynes: In the long run, everything is transitory. But now it is high time for the Fed to begin reducing its debt purchases, and to stop buying mortgages.

[May 31, 2021] How to Know When Inflation Is Here to Stay

Skill shortages, wage pressures and "hawseholes flash with cash" is is a pretty questionable consideration (mostly neoliberal mythology). It is typical for WSJ not to touch controversial topics connected with the deterioration of global neoliberal empire centered in Washington and rampant money printing by Fed, which increases the level of debt to Japanese's level. They also are buying bonds to keep rate under check which is kind of counterfeiting money.
So we should expect US stock market to emulate Japanese's stock market. Under neoliberalism there can be no wage pressures as war of labor was won by financial oligarchy which institutes neo-feudal regime of wage slavery. One of the key methods is import of foreign workers to undermine wages in the USA. And neoliberalism is a trap, creating "Welcome to the hotel California" situation.
Automation and robotization puts further pressure on workers in the USA, especially low skill jobs (in some restaurants waiters are replaced by robots). In many large grocery shots, Wall Mart, etc automatic cashiers machines now are common. That increase theft but saving on casheer job partially compensate for that. In back office cash and check counting is also automated using machines.
The key issue here might be the status of dollar as world reserve currency... That allows the USA to export inflation. If dollar dominance will be shaken inflation chickens will come to roost.
May 31, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Inflation is here already, and in the long run there is a lot of upward pressure on prices. But between now and then lies a big question for investors and the economy: Is the Federal Reserve right to think that the price rises we're seeing now are temporary and will abate by next year?

Some at the Fed are already having vague doubts, starting to talk about when to discuss removing some of their extraordinary stimulus even as they continue to push the idea that inflation is likely to fall back of its own accord.

... ... ..

Inflation expectations can become self-fulfilling, and are watched closely by the Fed. One-year consumer inflation expectations reached 4.6% in May, according to the University of Michigan survey, the highest since the China commodity boom of 2011.


Jeffrey P

It is important to not underestimate market sentiment and expectations in such matters because sometimes in economics, the expectation can be strong enough to become a self-fulfilling prediction even when other indicators recede or normally wouldn't be a driver.
Jeffrey Whyatt
I wonder how COLAs in wages, pensions, social security, etc. will impact inflation when these kick in. Think most occur automatically on a given contractual date. Might add fuel to the fire.
BRANDON JAMES
Just look at the prices for all the things they exclude from the CPI and other indices of inflation.
stephen rollins
How do you tell when the Treasury Sec. and Fed Chair are lying about inflation? When you open your eyes in the morning and the Sun rises in the East.
RICHARD TANKSLEY
It seems wise not to overlook the upcoming problems that we might have with China which which have the potential to create even more inflation. Lots of tensions are still around and frankly we should seriously dent US imports from there over the Wuhan virus.
BRUCE MONTGOMERY
Economists are good at dissecting the past, but terrible at forecasting the future.
ROBERT BAILEY
They predicted 12 out of the last 3 recessions
stephen rollins
Yes, and non economists do even worse. Look at the Japanese stock market. About 37K in 1990, cratered, and still only at 28 today. Thats over 30 years, folks.
RODNEY EVERSON
Definition of a "Positive Carry Trade": Borrowing money at an interest rate and investing it at a higher rate to earn the difference.

Banks do this with deposits, for example, borrowing money from savers and investing it in higher-yielding loans.

Bond traders typically do it by purchasing longer maturities at, say, three percent and financing them in the repo market at a rate now close to zero.

The main risk to such a trade is that the higher-yielding investment loses value while holding it. The bank loan goes bad, or the long bond falls in value while holding it.

Today the Federal Reserve is running the largest positive carry trade in history, borrowing trillions of dollars from the banking system and paying them 1/10 of one percent on the loans while using the money to buy trillions of bonds and mortgages for its portfolio.

If they raise short rates today, the banks will want more than 1/10 of a percent while, simultaneously, bond prices will crater. Anyone see a conflict here?

RODNEY EVERSON
There seems to be universal agreement that inflation is underway today. The disagreement is three-part: 1) It will be transitory and we will return to low levels; 2) It will not be transitory and we are facing steadily rising prices for the foreseeable future; 3) Not only will it not be transitory, but it will begin to escalate rapidly with the Fed proving unable or even unwilling to control it, resulting in a hyperinflation.

The bond market is clearly betting on scenario #1, as is the Fed.

And yet the government is spending like the proverbial drunken sailor and the Fed has now abandoned the banking system's fractional reserve mechanism that Volcker employed to bring the 1970's inflation back under control. The result, to my mind, is that the U.S. Government's finances now closely approximate those of Venezuela and Zimbabwe in the recent past while the Fed has relinquished the tools that would ordinarily be used to yield a different result than those countries experienced.

C Cook
Economics and politics.

The story describes reality well. Economics is just fuzzy theory now, neither I nor 99% of America can sort it out. MMT... Print money forever and it doesn't matter?

Politics is clear. History has shown that new administrations lose the House at the first mid-term. If that happens next year, the entire woke/green/leftist agenda goes down in flames. Pelosi is back to being a pedestrian member of the House.

To avoid history, DNC will attempt to spend our grandchildren's future to buy every vote available. Free everything, all the time. No need to work, study, or even get out of bed before noon. Infrastructure is code for pay off Unions to get workers to vote, shake down companies who want construction contracts to donate to DNC.

Equity market is watching. Bond market is watching. Likely, they realize that the only reality is the massive damage to the US which will result from the DNC wanting to keep Nancy happy.

James Cornelio
Unexplored in this article is the issue of what CAN the Fed do if there is unacceptable inflationary pressures. To think that it could reduce its $100+ billion monthly purchases in debt let alone raise interest rates by any serious amount is to forget that we are a nation awash in debt and that any move by the Fed to do either would result in a 'taper tantrum' the likes of which will cause all previous tantrums to look like nothing more than naughty child's play.
William Mackey
The poster child for inflation has to be in the retail housing market. Fixer Uppers that went begging for a buyer two years ago are the subject of bidding wars today. Biden is pouring trillions into an emergency that is not there.
DANIEL PETROSINI
The Fed is now just another political entity. They are justifying the ridiculous increase in money supply with the 'temporary' argument. It is critical to note, they have always been late. This will not end well.
jennifer raineri
So right. And everyone is just whistling through the graveyard.
Ivaylo Ivanov
One possibility is that households spend some of their savings but continue to save more than before in case of future trouble, while higher prices make people think twice about splashing out.
When people see prices rising across the board they spend and hoard, they don't save, especially when savings accounts interest rates are 0%.
CHING CHANG TSAI
In my opinion, anyone with common sense knows that inflation is here. Everything is more expensive than before with a significant difference that draws buyer's attention. Even my home value appreciates about 20% more than the value in 2020, estimated by the local government. Thanks to my senior age that helped me to limit the raise to 10%. I protested in vain due to local taxing authority had hard data on hand to dispute my protest.

I accept the reality except that FED said this inflation is "transitory." I can hardly wait till next year to see my home value will depreciate back to my 2020 property value. I hope FED will not "lie" on this subject.

David Weisz
I accept the reality except that FED said this inflation is "transitory."

The Fed description is accurate... it's just whether the transition is to lower inflation or to runaway inflation.

[May 31, 2021] Yes inflation is transitionary. Thos only question is transitionary to what level?

Highly recommended!
As for whether this is "transitory," we may paraphrase J.M. Keynes: In the long run, everything is transitory.
May 31, 2021 | www.wsj.com
D

David Weisz

I accept the reality except that FED said this inflation is "transitory."

The Fed description is accurate... it's just whether the transition is to lower inflation or to runaway inflation.

Jim McCreary
The biggest single factor that will drive long-term inflation is the absence of downward price pressure from new Chinese market entrants. Cutthroat pricing from China is the ONLY reason the West has been able to get away with Money-Printing Gone Wild for the past 20 years without triggering runaway inflation.

There are no new Chinese entrants because the Chinese are now all in in the world economy. The existing Chinese competitors are seeing their costs go UP, not down, because they have fully employed the Chinese population, and have to pay up in order to get and keep workers.

So, without any more downward price pressure from China, this latest round of Money-Printing Gone Wild is showing up as price inflation, and will continue to do so.

Batten down the hatches! Stagflation and then runaway inflation are coming!

[May 30, 2021] US March Oil Production Rebounds Strongly From Winter Storm Low

May 30, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

RON PATTERSON IGNORED OVI IGNORED 05/30/2021 at 9:16 am

Ron

Great find.

For me that article was behind a paywall. Yahoo has it here.

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/time-different-outside-opec-oil-040000053.html

05/30/2021 at 7:49 am

Well, I'm not one to say "I told you so", but I did, didn't I. 🙂 Bold mine.

This Time Is Different: Outside OPEC+, Oil Growth Stalls

"This time is different" may be the most dangerous words in business: billions of dollars have been lost betting that history won't repeat itself. And yet now, in the oil world, it looks like this time really will be.

For the first time in decades, oil companies aren't rushing to increase production to chase rising oil prices as Brent crude approaches $70. Even in the Permian, the prolific shale basin at the center of the U.S. energy boom, drillers are resisting their traditional boom-and-bust cycle of spending.

The oil industry is on the ropes, constrained by Wall Street investors demanding that companies spend less on drilling and instead return more money to shareholders, and climate change activists pushing against fossil fuels. Exxon Mobil Corp. is paradigmatic of the trend, after its humiliating defeat at the hands of a tiny activist elbowing itself onto the board.

And what they don't realize is that the two largest producers in OPEC+, Russia and Saudi Arabia, are on the ropes also. Russia has admitted it but Saudi is still trying to deny the fact.

[May 30, 2021] This Time Is Different- Outside OPEC+, Oil Growth Stalls by Javier Blas

May 30, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

"This time is different" may be the most dangerous words in business: billions of dollars have been lost betting that history won't repeat itself. And yet now, in the oil world, it looks like this time really will be.

For the first time in decades, oil companies aren't rushing to increase production to chase rising oil prices as Brent crude approaches $70. Even in the Permian, the prolific shale basin at the center of the U.S. energy boom, drillers are resisting their traditional boom-and-bust cycle of spending.

The oil industry is on the ropes, constrained by Wall Street investors demanding that companies spend less on drilling and instead return more money to shareholders, and climate change activists pushing against fossil fuels. Exxon Mobil Corp. is paradigmatic of the trend, after its humiliating defeat at the hands of a tiny activist elbowing itself onto the board.

The dramatic events in the industry last week only add to what is emerging as an opportunity for the producers of OPEC+, giving the coalition led by Saudi Arabia and Russia more room for maneuver to bring back their own production. As non-OPEC output fails to rebound as fast as many expected -- or feared based on past experience -- the cartel is likely to continue adding more supply when it meets on June 1.

'Criminalization'

Shareholders are asking Exxon to drill less and focus on returning money to investors. "They have been throwing money down the drill hole like crazy," Christopher Ailman, chief investment officer for CalSTRS. "We really saw that company just heading down the hole, not surviving into the future, unless they change and adapt. And now they have to."

Exxon is unlikely to be alone. Royal Dutch Shell Plc lost a landmark legal battle last week when a Dutch court told it to cut emissions significantly by 2030 -- something that would require less oil production. Many in the industry fear a wave of lawsuits elsewhere, with western oil majors more immediate targets than the state-owned oil companies that make up much of OPEC production.

"We see a shift from stigmatization toward criminalization of investing in higher oil production," said Bob McNally, president of consultant Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House official.

While it's true that non-OPEC+ output is creeping back from the crash of 2020 -- and the ultra-depressed levels of April and May last year -- it's far from a full recovery. Overall, non-OPEC+ output will grow this year by 620,000 barrels a day, less than half the 1.3 million barrels a day it fell in 2020. The supply growth forecast through the rest of this year "comes nowhere close to matching" the expected increase in demand, according to the International Energy Agency.

Beyond 2021, oil output is likely to rise in a handful of nations, including the U.S., Brazil, Canada and new oil-producer Guyana. But production will decline elsewhere, from the U.K. to Colombia, Malaysia and Argentina.

As non-OPEC+ production increases less than global oil demand, the cartel will be in control of the market, executives and traders said. It's a major break with the past, when oil companies responded to higher prices by rushing to invest again, boosting non-OPEC output and leaving the ministers led by Saudi Arabia's Abdulaziz bin Salman with a much more difficult balancing act.

Drilling Down

So far, the lack of non-OPEC+ oil production growth isn't registering much in the market. After all, the coronavirus pandemic continues to constrain global oil demand. It may be more noticeable later this year and into 2022 . By then, vaccination campaigns against Covid-19 are likely to be bearing fruit, and the world will need more oil. The expected return of Iran into the market will provide some of that, but there will likely be a need for more.

When that happens, it will be largely up to OPEC to plug the gap. One signal of how the recovery will be different this time is the U.S. drilling count: It is gradually increasing, but the recovery is slower than it was after the last big oil price crash in 2008-09. Shale companies are sticking to their commitment to return more money to shareholders via dividends. While before the pandemic shale companies re-used 70-90% of their cash flow into further drilling, they are now keeping that metric at around 50%.

The result is that U.S. crude production has flat-lined at around 11 million barrels a day since July 2020. Outside the U.S. and Canada, the outlook is even more somber: at the end of April, the ex-North America oil rig count stood at 523, lower than it was a year ago, and nearly 40% below the same month two years earlier, according to data from Baker Hughes Co.

When Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz predicted earlier this year that "'drill, baby, drill' is gone for ever," it sounded like a bold call. As ministers meet this week, they may dare to hope he's right.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

[May 30, 2021] Andrew Yang: The War on Normal People The Truth About America s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

Looks like this guys somewhat understands the problems with neoliberalism, but still is captured by neoliberal ideology.
Notable quotes:
"... That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent. ..."
"... Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent. ..."
"... Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick. ..."
"... Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between 1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007. ..."
Apr 27, 2019 | www.amazon.com

The logic of the meritocracy is leading us to ruin, because we arc collectively primed to ignore the voices of the millions getting pushed into economic distress by the grinding wheels of automation and innovation. We figure they're complaining or suffering because they're losers.

We need to break free of this logic of the marketplace before it's too late.

[Neoliberalism] had decimated the economies and cultures of these regions and were set to do the same to many others.

In response, American lives and families are falling apart. Ram- pant financial stress is the new normal. We are in the third or fourth inning of the greatest economic shift in the history of mankind, and no one seems to be talking about it or doing anything in response.

The Great Displacement didn't arrive overnight. It has been building for decades as the economy and labor market changed in response to improving technology, financialization, changing corporate norms, and globalization. In the 1970s, when my parents worked at GE and Blue Cross Blue Shield in upstate New York, their companies provided generous pensions and expected them to stay for decades. Community banks were boring businesses that lent money to local companies for a modest return. Over 20 percent of workers were unionized. Some economic problems existed -- growth was uneven and infla- tion periodically high. But income inequality was low, jobs provided benefits, and Main Street businesses were the drivers of the economy. There were only three television networks, and in my house we watched them on a TV with an antenna that we fiddled with to make the picture clearer.

That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent.

Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent.

Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick.

Hostile takeovers, shareholder lawsuits, and later activist hedge funds served as prompts to ensure that managers were committed to profitability at all costs. On the flip side, CF.Os were granted stock options for the first time that wedded their individual gain to the company's share price. The ratio of CF.O to worker pay rose from 20 to 1 in 1965 to 271 to 1 in 2016. Benefits were streamlined and reduced and the relationship between company and employee weakened to become more transactional.

Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between 1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007.

Nolia Nessa , April 5, 2018

profound and urgent work of social criticism

It's hard to be in the year 2018 and not hear about the endless studies alarming the general public about coming labor automation. But what Yang provides in this book is two key things: automation has already been ravaging the country which has led to the great political polarization of today, and second, an actual vision into what happens when people lose jobs, and it definitely is a lightning strike of "oh crap"

I found this book relatively impressive and frightening. Yang, a former lawyer, entrepreneur, and non-profit leader, writes showing with inarguable data that when companies automate work and use new software, communities die, drug use increases, suicide increases, and crime skyrockets. The new jobs created go to big cities, the surviving talent leaves, and the remaining people lose hope and descend into madness. (as a student of psychology, this is not surprising)

He starts by painting the picture of the average American and how fragile they are economically. He deconstructs the labor predictions and how technology is going to ravage it. He discusses the future of work. He explains what has happened in technology and why it's suddenly a huge threat. He shows what this means: economic inequality rises, the people have less power, the voice of democracy is diminished, no one owns stocks, people get poorer etc. He shows that talent is leaving small towns, money is concentrating to big cities faster. He shows what happens when those other cities die (bad things), and then how the people react when they have no income (really bad things). He shows how retraining doesn't work and college is failing us. We don't invest in vocational skills, and our youth is underemployed pushed into freelance work making minimal pay. He shows how no one trusts the institutions anymore.

Then he discusses solutions with a focus on Universal Basic Income. I was a skeptic of the idea until I read this book. You literally walk away with this burning desire to prevent a Mad Max esque civil war, and its hard to argue with him. We don't have much time and our bloated micromanaged welfare programs cannot sustain.

[May 29, 2021] Peter Schiff -- Inflation Crashes The Party

The read question is when this will happen. So far this year the yield of 10 year bond fluctuate in a rather narrow band. It does not steadily increases...
May 28, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

The latest clue that trouble is brewing has come from the sudden and dramatic arrival of inflation. On May 12, it was revealed that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) had risen 4.2% year-over-year , the fastest pace since 2008.

Some tried to downplay concern by pointing out that the gains resulted from the "base effect" of comparing current prices with the artificially depressed "Covid lockdown" prices of March and April of last year. But that ignores the more alarming trend of near-term price acceleration.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in every month this year, the month-over-month change in prices has been greater than the change in the previous month.

In April prices jumped .8% from March, versus an expected gain of just .2%. Clearly, if this trend continues, or even fails to dramatically reverse, we could be looking at inflation well north of 5 or 6 percent for the calendar year. That would create a big problem.

Despite Federal Reserve officials' recent assurances that the inflation problem is "transitory," many investors are concluding that the central bank will have to deal with this problem by tightening monetary policy far sooner than had been expected. This would make sense if the Fed cared about restraining inflation or, more importantly, had the power to do anything to stop it. In truth, we are sailing into these waters with little ability to alter speed or course, and we will be wholly at the mercy of the waves we have spent a generation creating.

[May 29, 2021] Inflation Takes Its Cut - WSJ

May 28, 2021 | www.wsj.com

The Commerce Department on Friday reported that consumer spending rose 0.5% in April from a month earlier, which, coming after March's government stimulus-check-fueled surge, was impressive. The gain was driven by a 1.1% increase in spending on services""an indication of how, with Covid-19 cases dropping and vaccination rates rising , consumers are shifting their behavior. Spending on goods actually declined, with the weakness concentrated in spending on nondurable goods such as groceries and cleaning products.

But a closer look at April's overall gain indicates it was mainly driven by price increases. By the Commerce Department's measure, which is the Federal Reserve's preferred gauge of inflation, consumer prices rose 0.6% in April from March, putting them 3.6% above their year-earlier level. As a result, real, or inflation-adjusted spending declined. Core prices, which exclude the often volatile food and energy categories to better capture inflation's underlying trend, were up 0.7% from March, and 3.1% on the year. The Fed's inflation goal is 2%, though it has said it will tolerate higher readings than that for some time.

[May 29, 2021] Peter Schiff- Inflation Crashes The Party - ZeroHedge

May 28, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

The latest clue that trouble is brewing has come from the sudden and dramatic arrival of inflation. On May 12, it was revealed that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) had risen 4.2% year-over-year , the fastest pace since 2008.

Some tried to downplay concern by pointing out that the gains resulted from the "base effect" of comparing current prices with the artificially depressed "Covid lockdown" prices of March and April of last year. But that ignores the more alarming trend of near-term price acceleration.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in every month this year, the month-over-month change in prices has been greater than the change in the previous month.

In April prices jumped .8% from March, versus an expected gain of just .2%. Clearly, if this trend continues, or even fails to dramatically reverse, we could be looking at inflation well north of 5 or 6 percent for the calendar year. That would create a big problem.

Despite Federal Reserve officials' recent assurances that the inflation problem is "transitory," many investors are concluding that the central bank will have to deal with this problem by tightening monetary policy far sooner than had been expected. This would make sense if the Fed cared about restraining inflation or, more importantly, had the power to do anything to stop it. In truth, we are sailing into these waters with little ability to alter speed or course, and we will be wholly at the mercy of the waves we have spent a generation creating.

[May 28, 2021] What Commodities Prices Are Saying About Inflation by Ryan Dezember, Joe Wallace and Andrew Barnett

May 20, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Prices for the building blocks of the economy have surged over the past year. Oil, copper, corn and gasoline futures all cost about twice what they did a year ago, when much of the world was locked down to fight the spread of the deadly coronavirus. Lumber has more than tripled.

... ... ...

N

Nidge M

Not sure its adding anything which hasn't been said already but to look at the same thing in a different way:
2, or if you look at it 'sideways' 3, main interwoven factors drive inflation:
Access to money to spend - That can be wage/earnings increases or access to cheap debt. That ups demand & prices follow.
Devaluation of the currency - Pushes up raw material imports & prices follow.

What curbs inflation?:
High taxation
High interest rates
High unemployment

And if anyone can point to any Western Democracy currently willing to implement any one, never mind all three, of those controls a lot of folk will probably be pretty surprised.

Michael Matus
Commodities prices are not the problem. They are high now because of a short-term surge in demand and supply chain issues. All should be worked out by this time next year.

The long-term structural problem could be wages. If inflation shows up in wages through wage increases through a multitude of industries then there will be a problem,....... a major one.

Having all these people on the Dole from the government didn't help things Joe!

But like all Presidents that came after HW Bush all you care about is getting re-elected. Doling out is a great way even if its at the cost of the country.

The FED as been intervening in the markets for so long that they have no tools left for the next crisis.

The FED painted themselves into a corner and the Stimulus that was not needed left them no Escape.

Michael Brown
"Having all these people on the Dole from the government didn't help things Joe!"

What about raising the minimum wage, and Joe commanding that all workers for federal contractors be paid $15 per hour or more? You think that could be inflationary?

Michael Matus
I would have to agree with yoiu Michael. I should have mentioned that, thank you for reminding me. However, the main problem with all the sources trhat I have out on the street and their are mnay. Is WAGE growth. As far as a national mimum wage there is none. Altough there probably will be now. Most states pay as high or higher than what the Federal Government was proposing.

90% of government contractors make at least $15.00 an hour anyway. The VAST majority of the problem is enhanced unemployment insurance. The 3 month averge of wage groth ending in March was 3.4%. If it hits > 4.0% that will be bad.

Michael Brown
Excellent points, Michael. The list of government actions instigating inflation would be long indeed.
Michael Matus
Unfortunately, Michael, I would have to Wholeheartedly agree with you, Have a Good Weekend!
JOSEPH MICHAEL
Serious, severe inflationary problems are here, they are just starting, and they are going to get much worse.
Brian Kearns
eh.
best to give corporations a large tax cut

so the can buy back stock

Bill Hestir
I will interested to see if new car prices, lumber prices, new home prices, gasoline prices, and food prices will ever go back down to pre-pandemic levels.

If not, with all the new anti-business taxes and reluctance of out-of-work laborers to go back to work, how will businesses not be forced to raise their wages and increase the price of their products even higher than they are today?

At what point, therefore, will the Fed end their "inflation is transitory" farce and raise interest rates?

Deirdre Hood
Food prices, regardless of when inflation ends, will not go down/return to 'normal'.

Supply lines are squeezed (NO ONE can hire reliable transport drivers), low supply of workers, plus factor in a bad year for wheat, and it turns into the perfect storm for commercial bakers.

Judy Neuwirth
Inflation is just getting started. Cho Bi-Den's hyper-regulated economy is only three months old and already it's 1976 all over again!
Jim Chapman
Now Judy, it's just "transitory" inflation as per Yellen, Powell and Buyden. You really must stick with the narrative, and remember, Adam Smith's scurrilous "Invisible Hand" is a ultra-right wing conservative myth. So we are not supposed to believe our lying eyes.

[May 28, 2021] Inflation Forces Investors to Scramble for Solutions - WSJ

May 24, 2021 | www.wsj.com

The price of the benchmark 10-year Treasury inflation-protected security logged its biggest one-day decline in a month. Shares of real-estate investment trusts slid the most since January. Commodities were generally flat but dropped the following day.

The three asset classes have vacillated since, but their initial moves showed the unexpected ways that markets can behave when inflation is rising, especially when many are already expensive by historical measures.

This week, investors will gain greater insight into the inflation picture when the Commerce Department updates the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge, the personal-consumption-expenditures price index. They will also track earnings from the likes of Dollar General Corp. , Costco Wholesale Corp. and Salesforce.com Inc.

The stakes are high for investors. Inflation dents the value of traditional government and corporate bonds because it reduces the purchasing power of their fixed interest payments. But it can also hurt stocks, analysts say, by pushing up interest rates and increasing input costs for companies.

From early 1973 through last December, stocks have delivered positive inflation-adjusted returns in 90% of rolling 12-month periods that occurred when inflation""as measured by the consumer-price index""was below 3% and rising, according to research by Sean Markowicz, a strategist at Schroders, the U.K. asset-management firm. But that fell to only 48% of the periods when inflation was above 3% and rising.

A recent report from the Labor Department showed that the consumer-price index jumped 4.2% in April from a year earlier, up from 2.6% in March. Even excluding volatile food and energy prices, it was up 3% from a year earlier, blowing past analysts' expectations for a 2.3% gain.

Analysts say that there are plenty of reasons why inflation won't be able to maintain that pace for long. The latest year-over-year numbers were inflated by comparisons to deeply depressed prices from the early days of the pandemic. They were also supported by supply bottlenecks that many view as fixable and robust consumer demand that could dissipate once households have spent government stimulus checks.

... ... ...

By comparison, the S&P GSCI Commodity Total Return Index delivered positive inflation-adjusted returns in 83% of the high and rising inflation periods. "Commodities are a source of input costs for companies and they're also a key component of the inflation index, which by definition you're trying to hedge," said Mr. Markowicz.

At the same time, commodities are among the most volatile of all asset classes and can be influenced by an array of idiosyncratic factors.

T

Tracy Harris

Charles Goodhart, the economist from the Bank of England, has just written an important book arguing that worldwide demographic changes are going to result in a couple of decades of high inflation. See Charles Goodhart, The Great Democratic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival. Maybe the Journal could find someone to review it. Maybe Ms. Yellen should read it.

(Douglas Levene)

Bruce Fegley
This article is naive, if not ridiculous, for several reasons. I name a few.

1st - the stock market is the best hedge against inflation over a long time period - years, not daily, weekly, or quarterly. Especially with dividend reinvesting and with an automatic buying plan like the DRIP plans offered by many companies at no or very low cost.

2nd - Individuals can buy US government I-series savings bonds at NO COST directly from the US Treasury, and while they do not completely hedge against inflation, they offer good interest rates that beat bank interest and are completely insured.

3rd - Toyota and perhaps other car companies offer notes with higher interest than banks but not FDIC insured. About 1.5% now.

One does not have to blow money away on bitcoin or hold gold, which is taxed as a collectible and has assay fees on the front and back ends of any buy/sell transaction unless one is buying coins which have a markup to begin with.

Theo Walker
Started buying I-bonds this month. The rates are great! Easily the best safe investment right now.
Bryson Marsh
... why would you buy TIPS? The spread is a farce after all.
PHILIP NICHOLAS
Inflation is always sticky . In other words all the prices do not go down . Wages that are increased , usually stay . Companies sense a new level they can pass on to consumers . And the Government damage to energy prices will influence prices .
Bryson Marsh
Memory costs, data plans, and televisions are all examples that clearly demonstrate secular price declines despite periodic increases.
Charles D
"Inflation Forces Investors to Scramble for Solutions"
Hundreds of millions of Americans are going to suffer as the Federal Government inflates the national debt away over the next 10 to 15 years. Investors will figure it out, but the little guy will get crushed once again. Oh well, we get the government we deserve.
A Eichler
CME futures contracts ...

OIL - NAT GAS - PROPYLENE - COPPER - LUMBER - STEEL - SOYBEAN - 2 yr. and 5 yr. T-Note

They are all substantially down, one year from now; except Copper and financials which are flat.

What does that say about the economy & inflation in one year?

Paul Smith
I am under the impression that the Social Security COLA is based on a September to September comparison of the CPI-U. That is to say, for example, September 2020 CPI-U vs. September 2021 CPI-U. Is this not correct?

We have had inflation over over the past decade or so. As measured by the CPI-U, it has hovered around 2 percent. Not a big deal to the Fed's economists. Cumulatively, however, it adds up.

I have been retired for 16 years. Inflation has eroded the purchasing power of my fixed pension by 25.5. Mercifully, I have other resources to make up the loss, but for people on a fixed pension, so-called mild inflation can wreck it over time.

James Webb
Paul, one of the lower estimates for 2022:

"The Kiplinger Letter is forecasting that the annual cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits for 2022 will be 4.5%, the biggest jump since 2008, when benefits rose 5.8%. That would also be higher than the 3% adjustment The Kiplinger Letter predicted earlier this year."

From SocialSecurity dot gov:

"To determine the COLA, the average CPI-W for the third calendar quarter of the most recent year a COLA was determined is compared to the average CPI-W for the third calendar quarter of the current year. The resulting percentage increase, if any, represents the percentage that will be used to increase Social Security benefits beginning for December of the current year. "

So the predicted 4.5-4.7% increase for 2022 will take effect December 31 this year.

Of course the calculation is not completed yet....

James Robertson
The Fed's inflation calculations have become increasingly "fuzzy" since the Boskin Commission in 1995. The CPI ignores housing, food, and energy. Healthcare gets weighted at 3 percent, though it accounts for 18 percent of expenditures. "Hedonic quality adjustment" is another knob the Fed turns to "control" inflation. Inflation calculated by comparing the price of a basket of goods this year to a basket of goods last year runs quite a bit higher than the CPI; even higher if you include food, shelter, and energy in that basket.
James Webb
What's in the CPI?

-Food and Beverages (breakfast cereal, milk, coffee, chicken, wine, full service meals, snacks)
-Housing (rent of primary residence, owners' equivalent rent, fuel oil, bedroom furniture)
-Clothes (men's shirts and sweaters, women's dresses, jewelry)
-Transportation (new vehicles, airline fares, gasoline, motor vehicle insurance)
-Medical Care (prescription drugs and medical supplies, physicians' services, eyeglasses and eye care, hospital services)
-Recreation (televisions, toys, pets and pet products, sports equipment, admissions)
-Education and Communication (college tuition, postage, telephone services, computer software and accessories)
-Other Goods and Services (tobacco and smoking products, haircuts and other personal services, funeral expenses)

Tim Adams
The core CPI which the Fed uses excludes food and energy. The Consumer price index which is used for things like social security adjustments does not. These very similar but different uses of the same acronym just adds to the confusion.

[May 28, 2021] Liz Cheney Faces Chopping Block As GOP Braces For Chaotic Week

It is always good when neocons are demoted. Warmongering neocon pigs should be removed.
May 09, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

"She's done as a member of leadership. I don't understand what she's doing," one former House GOP lawmaker told The Hill of Cheney's ongoing attacks on former President Trump. " It's like political self-immolation. You can't cancel Trump from the Republican Party; all she's done is cancel herself. "

Cheney has repeatedly attacked Trump for 'inciting' the Jan. 6 'insurrection' despite telling supporters to protest peacefully and then go home following the breach of the Capitol.

GOP leaders hope that purging Cheney from the leadership ranks will move Republicans beyond their civil war over Trump" one that's raged publicly since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol" and allow the party to unite behind a midterm campaign message that President Biden and the Democrats are too liberal for the country. - The Hill

"There are still a few members that are talking about things that happened in the past, not really focused on what we need to do to move forward and win the majority back next year," according to Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the minority whip. "We're going to have to be unified if we defeat the socialist agenda you're seeing in Washington."

A victory by Stefanik would mark a symbolic shift back towards Trump by leading Republicans - as the former president remains highly engaged this election cycle and has threatened to politically obliterate any remaining GOP opposition.

"By ousting her, what we're saying is: We are repudiating your repudiation of the Trump policies and the Trump agenda and her attacks on the president," according to Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), adding " President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. And when she's out there attacking him, she's attacking the leader of the Republican Party ."

Cheney has already survived one challenge to her leadership post, in February, after she infuriated conservatives by voting to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol rampage on Jan. 6. With the backing of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), she easily kept her seat as conference chair, 145 to 61 by secret ballot.

With McCarthy and Scalise fed up with Cheney and now backing Stefanik, the 36-year-old New Yorker is expected to prevail in Wednesday's contest" a would-be victory for leaders who have failed to unite the conference behind a post-Trump strategy in the early months of the Biden administration. - The Hill

... ... ...

Cheney isn't the only House Republican facing backlash for taking on Trump. Earlier in the week, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), one of seven Republican senators who voted this year to convict Trump, was booed and called a traitor at the Utah GOP state convention, where he narrowly beat back an effort to censure him.

On Friday, the Ohio Republican Party Central Committee voted to censure Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio), Cheney and the eight other House Republicans who backed Trump's impeachment in January. The Ohio GOP also formally called for Gonzalez's resignation.

... ... ...


Catullus 51 minutes ago

I don't care if Trump runs again just as long as these gross establishment Republicans are thrown out on their asses

JoeyChernenko PREMIUM 39 minutes ago (Edited)

Romney is a real traitorous worm. Did you hear him say Biden is a good man with good intentions when the Utah crowd was booing his worthless hide? And we need to make sure the Bush dynasty remains out of power.

Anath 51 minutes ago remove link

the cheney family is pure evil. that is all.

chinese.sniffles 52 minutes ago

Why Would Wyoming choose Chenney, after all that evil that **** brought upon America. If there was no ****, Obama would never get elected.

chunga 47 minutes ago remove link

Cynics suspect primaries are also rigged.

Basecamp3 PREMIUM 50 minutes ago

Comstock is a traitor that never read the Navarro Report which goes into detail of how the election was stolen. Also, ousting Cheney has zero risk. She is stupid, weak, and her own constituents hate her.

overbet 50 minutes ago

which has caused some GOP leaders to fear alienating female Republican voters, particularly educated suburbanites who will be key votes in the 2022 elections.

The female republicans I know are smarter than that. All of them

Grave Dancer 22 38 minutes ago remove link

Liz's sociopath dad **** got hundreds of thousands killed based on a total fraud lie of a war. And Liz has a problem with Trump because he tweets some unfiltered stuff once in a while? Freaking kidding me? ay_arrow

GhostOLaz 37 minutes ago

Don't blame Liz, she has a legacy of treason to protect, Daddy removed the only secular anti Communist govt in the middle East which protected Christains and religious minorities...

gaaasp 20 minutes ago (Edited)

Women could wear pants and not be burkahed up in Syria and Libya and Iraq before Bush/Clinton/Obama/Trump sent troops.

chunga 49 minutes ago

I don't want to give up on the process but the GOP has a lot of work to do.

nmewn 39 minutes ago

The thing about "us" is, when we find them we jettison them. Cantor was another one. She voted to impeach an outgoing President who's trial she knew would be held AFTER he was out of office and again just an average American citizen holding no federal office at all.

She is either incompetent, stupid (or both) or a cancer the GOP can live with excised from the body.

Make_Mine_A_Double 40 minutes ago

Peggy Noonan really came out the closet in this weekend's WSJ with editorial of Liz Chaney against the House of Cowards.

They are 2 of the same. We've had these demsheviks in the ranks for decades. Noonan takes it in the anoose at dem cocktail parties and is Team Mascot for the RINOs.

Tucker finally exposed that filth Luntz. McCathry is actually living with him in one of his apartments - I assume it's not platonic in nature.

This is why Trump could never even the bottom of the swamp....g.d. RINOs need to purged with the extreme prejudice.

the Mysterians 40 minutes ago

War pig.

in deditionem acceptos 48 minutes ago

Liz will survive the vote. Too much graff from the MIC to get her out. McCarthey could of got her out in Feb if he wanted. Wonder what honey pot he's dipping into?

A Girl In Flyover Country 43 minutes ago

She won't survive the Wyoming voters, though.

Cogito_ergosum 52 minutes ago (Edited)

She is protecting her dad who was part of the inside gang that carried out the... demolition of the twin towers on 911...

Flying Monkees 37 minutes ago (Edited)

BS. The tribe's fingerprints were all over 9/11 as documented in extensive detail by Christopher Bollyn.

JoeyChernenko PREMIUM 53 minutes ago

Don't any of these evil families ever just fade into oblivion? Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Obama, etc.

beavertails 50 minutes ago

Extending and pretending there are choices when there aren't any. The MIC got this. The "Prez" is just show to sell ads and steal, I mean raise fiat from the gullible.

[May 28, 2021] Inflation Debate Hits Emerging Markets

Notable quotes:
"... there's a growing sense that the forces behind the recovery will eventually feed through to higher prices if left unchecked. One harbinger could be the rally in commodities, with a key index of raw materials this month jumping to a five-year high. ..."
"... "If the stimulus continues, at some point it will become inflationary," said Sanjiv Bhatia, the chief investment officer at Pembroke Emerging Markets in London. "At some point, we believe it will become a problem." ..."
May 09, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

The prospect of tighter monetary conditions in emerging markets still hasn't changed the overall calculus for many investors, with behemoths including Pacific Investment Management Co. and BlackRock Inc. focusing on the growth story instead. Developing-nation inflation remains near a record low, with the economic rebound making assets look "increasingly interesting," according to Dan Ivascyn, Pimco's group chief investment officer in Newport Beach, California.

Yet there's a growing sense that the forces behind the recovery will eventually feed through to higher prices if left unchecked. One harbinger could be the rally in commodities, with a key index of raw materials this month jumping to a five-year high.

"If the stimulus continues, at some point it will become inflationary," said Sanjiv Bhatia, the chief investment officer at Pembroke Emerging Markets in London. "At some point, we believe it will become a problem."

For now, assurances from the Federal Reserve that inflation in the U.S. is unlikely to get out of control have supported the bulls. The Fed appears in no rush to raise interest rates, a move that would siphon capital out of emerging economies currently enjoying the windfall from U.S. stimulus.

That major central banks currently view inflation as transitory should boost developing-nation currencies as a whole, according to Henrik Gullberg, a London-based macro strategist at Coex Partners Ltd.

MSCI Inc.'s emerging-market currency index has climbed to a record high, while the benchmark equity gauge just posted its biggest two-day rally in almost two weeks amid a rally in energy and technology shares. On Friday, risk assets got further support when U.S. job growth data significantly undershot forecasts.

"On the one hand, the valuations of growth stocks look meaningfully less demanding after recent underperformance coupled with earnings upgrades," said Kate Moore, the head of thematic strategy at BlackRock in New York. "On the other, rising inflationary pressures from the broad economic restart and low inventories should be supportive of cyclicals and commodity producers."

[May 28, 2021] Treasury yields to rise in the second half of the year, pushed higher by rises in yields on inflation-protected Treasurys

Notable quotes:
"... Mark Carbana, U.S. rates strategist at Bank of America, still expects U.S. rates to rise further especially if there is a strong reading for the Fed's preferred measure of inflation, personal consumption expenditures, due out next Friday. ..."
"... He expects Treasury yields to rise in the second half of the year ..."
May 21, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Originally from Government Bond Yields Fall as Investors Grapple With Muddied Economic Picture by By Paul J. Davies

In the U.S., inflation readings have been strong and the minutes of the last Fed meeting released Wednesday showed there had been some discussion about slowing bond purchases -- also known as taper talk.

... Mark Carbana, U.S. rates strategist at Bank of America, still expects U.S. rates to rise further especially if there is a strong reading for the Fed's preferred measure of inflation, personal consumption expenditures, due out next Friday. "Uncertainty around inflation is the highest it has been in decades," he said, particularly around whether recent high readings are temporary or due to changes in the underlying economy. He expects Treasury yields to rise in the second half of the year , pushed higher by rises in yields on inflation-protected Treasurys as the Fed starts to talk more seriously about tapering its bond purchases.

Write to Paul J. Davies at [email protected]

[May 28, 2021] Despite Initial Claims Drop, Almost 16 Million Americans Remain On Government Dole

For April 2021 the official Current Unadjusted U-6 unemployment rate was 9.9% down from 10.9% in March, and 11.6% in February, January was 12.0%. It was also 11.6% October "" December 2020. But It was 18.3% in June, 20.7% in May, and 22.4% in April. It is still well above the 8.9% of March 2020 when unemployment rates started jumping drastically due to massive shutdowns due to the Coronavirus.
May 27, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Initial Jobless Claims tumbled (positively) to their lowest since the pandemic lockdowns began, adding just 406k Americans last week (well below the 425k expected). This is still double the pre-pandemic norms

y_arrow 1
Truthtellers 11 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Companies laid off an additional 400K people last week and they actually think we are dumb enough to believe there is a labor shortage? That line of crap is obviously just a ploy to get employee's to accept lower salaries.

I'll believe there is a labor shortage after 16 million jobs have been added and the weekly initial claims number is zero.

Until then, I guess if you have a "labor shortage" you better get that pay up.

AJAX-2 13 hours ago (Edited)

Another 400K+ applying for 1st time unemployment benefits and yet they piss on my leg, tell me it's raining, while proclaiming there is a labor shortage. Bu!!****.

PerilouseTimes 9 hours ago

Close to a million people a week were signing up for unemployment for a year and unemployment has been extended. Wouldn't that mean at least 40 million Americans are on unemployment not to mention all the people on welfare and disability? I think the number is closer to 100 million Americans on the government dole and that doesn't count all the worthless government jobs out there.

Normal 12 hours ago remove link

I'm on unemployment except California seems to have quit paying people on unemployment. I tried every-which-way to contact them but there is no way in hell to get through to a live person. I went and typed in how to speak with a real person at the EDD, and hundreds of people have posted that they haven't been paid in 12 weeks. I spoke with their Cal-Jobs representative and she said that many people haven't been paid since March of last year. I think they are forcing the so-called unemployed to their Cal-Jobs site by not paying them.

ay_arrow
NEOSERF 13 hours ago

Worst month during the GFC appears to be about 650K...we are only 50% below that....with 21 states preparing to end the extension, things will be fantastic in these numbers shortly if not the real world...waiting for all the cold/flu season coughing and cold weather in November...

[May 28, 2021] How transitory is transitory inflation?

May 27, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

As the credit strategist continues, "while it is easy to blame transitory factors, these were surely all known about before the last several data prints and could have been factored into forecasts. That they weren't suggests that the transitory forces are more powerful than economists imagined or that there is more widespread inflation than they previously believed. "

To be sure, all such "˜surprise' indices always mean revert so the inflation one will as well. However as Reid concludes, "the fact that we're seeing an overwhelming positive beat on US inflation surprises in recent times must surely reduce the confidence to some degree of those expecting it to be transitory. "

[May 28, 2021] Electricity usage in the USA will take " until 2022 to get back to 2019 levels': Duke Energy CEO

Highly recommended!
That means there there was no industrial recovery at all: stagnation continues unabated. Claims that the the U.S. economy surges in this sense are fraudulent.
But the fact is that stock market casino is now is completely detached from real economy and lives with its own life and dynamics. Of cource, this will not end well, but nobody knows when the bubble will burst or will be deflated by FED.
Apr 30, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer' to disccuss the pandemic's long-term impact on the energy industry.

Duke observed 10-15% deline in some months of 2020 and 3% for 2020 as a whole.

[May 28, 2021] Stocks could drop 20% when Fed fights inflation: hedge fund founder

May 25, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Inflation fears already roiled the market this week with the Nasdaq falling nearly 2%, but one hedge fund founder is sounding the alarm over a potential 20% collapse that could be sparked by the Federal Reserve signaling an end to accommodative pandemic-era monetary policy later this year.

Satori Fund founder Dan Niles recently told Yahoo Finance that this week's hotter-than-anticipated inflation data coupled with other central banks around the world already coming off their easy money policies will likely corner the Fed into tapering its accommodative policies sooner than expected.

"If you've got food prices, energy prices, shelter prices moving up as rapidly as they are, the Fed's not going to have any choice," he said, predicting that the Fed could signal the beginning of a move to wind down its monthly $120 billion a month pace of asset purchases by this summer. "They can say what they want, but this reminds me to some degree of them saying back in 2007 that the subprime crisis was well contained. Obviously it wasn't."

[May 28, 2021] Bond Traders See a Path to 2% Yields Lurking in US

Can it be wage driven inflation, when there is mass unemployment of the scale that we observer. That's a stupid idea. Commodites driven inflation is possible as oil if probably past its peak, but for now production continued at plato level and cars are getting slightly more economical, espcially passenger car, where hybrids reached 40 miles er gallon.
Notable quotes:
"... The prospect of a rebound to 2% yields on the world's benchmark bond is alive and well. ..."
May 09, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

The prospect of a rebound to 2% yields on the world's benchmark bond is alive and well.

Treasury-market bears found a deeper message within Friday's weak employment report that's emboldened a view that inflationary pressures are on the rise, and could boost rates to levels not seen since 2019. For Mark Holman at TwentyFour Asset Management, the sub-par April labor reading indicated companies will need to lift wages to entice people back into the labor force; he's expecting a break of 2% on the 10-year this year.

That level has come to symbolize a return to pre-pandemic normalcy in both markets and the economy. The wild ride in markets on Friday suggests Holman likely has company in his views. Ten-year yields initially plunged to a more than two-month low of 1.46%, then reversed to end the day at 1.58%. Meanwhile, a key market proxy of inflation expectations surged to a level last seen in 2013.

[May 28, 2021] US jobs numbers " so bad' media thought it was an " error'

May 14, 2021 | www.youtube.com

David James , 3 days ago

The MSM always covers for Sleepy Joe! This is the bull sh-t we have to put up with here in the USA now. It is very sad our News outlets are unable and unwilling to tell the truth and be journalists like you are here! Thank you Sky News Australia for telling it real!


Noodle Hat
, 2 days ago

We're going to have Jimmy Carter 1970's stagflation.


dewwed1965
, 5 days ago

I'm a trucker in Nebraska. I went to Wendy's they were closed, no staff. Went to Taco Bell they were closed to restock because only 2 people showed up to work


Tenderfoot Prepper
, 4 days ago

"Google's algorithms might be covering for Sleepy Joe." GEE, YA THINK???

[May 28, 2021] More Hacks, More Baseless Accusations Against Russia

May 11, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

More Hacks, More Baseless Accusations Against Russia

In January police in various countries took down the Emotet bot-network that was at that time the basic platform for some 25% of all cybercrimes.

Based on hearsay Wikipedia and other had falsely attributed Emotet to Russian actors. The real people behind it were actually Ukrainians :

The operating center of Emotet was found in the Ukraine. Today the Ukrainian national police took control of it during a raid (video). The police found dozens of computers, some hundred hard drives, about 50 kilogram of gold bars (current price ~$60,000/kg) and large amounts of money in multiple currencies.

bigger

Emotet had nothing to do with Russia.

Now the U.S. is accusing Russia of somehow having part in another cybercrime :

President Joe Biden said Monday that a Russia-based group was behind the ransomware attack that forced the shutdown of the largest oil pipeline in the eastern United States.

The FBI identified the group behind the hack of Colonial Pipeline as DarkSide, a shadowy operation that surfaced last year and attempts to lock up corporate computer systems and force companies to pay to unfreeze them.

"So far there is no evidence ... from our intelligence people that Russia is involved, although there is evidence that actors, ransomware is in Russia," Biden told reporters.

"They have some responsibility to deal with this," he said.

Three days after being forced to halt operations, Colonial said Monday it was moving toward a partial reopening of its 5,500 miles (8,850 kilometers) of pipeline" the largest fuel network between Texas and New York.

Biden however is badly informed. There is no evidence that DarkSide has anything to do with Russia. It is, like Emotet, a commercial 'ransomware-as-a-service' criminal entity that wants to make money and does not care about geopolitics.

Yes, a version of the DarkNet software does exclude itself from running on system with specific language settings :

The DarkSide malware is even built to conduct language checks on targets and to shut down if it detects Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Armenian, Georgian, Kazakh, Turkmen, Romanian, and other languages ...

That is a quite long list of east European languages and Russian is only one of it. Why the authors of DarkNet do not want their software to run on machines with those language settings is unknown. But why would a Russian actor protect machines with Ukrainian or Romanian language settings? Both countries are hostile towards Russia. To claim that this somehow points to Russian actors is therefore baseless.

Russia strongly rejected Biden's accusation:

The Kremlin has once again pointed out the importance of cooperation between Moscow and Washington in tackling cyberthreats amid a cyber-attack on Colonial Pipeline, a US company. "Russia has nothing to do with these hacker attacks, nor with the previous hacker attacks," Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Preskov assured reporters on Tuesday.

"We categorically reject any accusation against us, and we can only regret that the US is refusing to cooperate with us in any way to counter cyber-threats. We believe that such cooperation - both international and bilateral - could indeed contribute to the common struggle against this scourge [known as] cyber-crime," Peskov said.

The U.S. seems notoriously bad at attributing computer hacks. It claims that the recent SolarWinds attack which intruded several government branches was also done by Russia. But that attack required deep insider knowledge and access to SolarWinds' computers and processes :

The recently discovered deep intrusion into U.S. companies and government networks used a manipulated version of the SolarWinds Orion network management software. The Washington borg immediately attributed the hack to Russia. Then President Trump attributed it to China. But none of those claims were backed up by facts or known evidence.

The hack was extremely complex, well managed and resourced, and likely required insider knowledge. To this IT professional it 'felt' neither Russian nor Chinese. It is far more likely, as Whitney Webb finds, that Israel was behind it .

Indeed - the programmers of an Israeli company, recently bought up by SolarWinds, had all the necessary access for such a hack. However the U.S. sanctioned Russia over the SolarWinds hack without providing any evidence of its involvement.

If the U.S. continues to blame Russia without any evidence for each and every hack there may come a time when Russia stops caring and really starts to hack into or destroy important U.S. systems. The U.S. should fear that day.

Posted by b on May 11, 2021 at 17:31 UTC | Permalink


David G Horsman , May 11 2021 17:48 utc | 1

Thanks b. I don't think Russia is going to escalate destructive attacks any time soon. There's no upside.
They might even be reluctant to reveal their capabilities in the Ukraine.
For the moment, mockery is the best remedy while they up their game.
psychohistorian , May 11 2021 17:56 utc | 2
@ b who ended with
"
If the U.S. continues to blame Russia without any evidence for each and every hack there may come a time when Russia stops caring and really starts to hack into or destroy important U.S. systems.
"

How can you write such assertions that vary from the approach that both Russia and China are taking?....strong defense but no offense.

Now if empire tried to hack into a Russian or Chinese system/network then appropriate takedowns of malicious systems/networks would seem logical....and I expect they know how...but will not do it on the basis of another avenue of empire lies and deceit.

anon48 , May 11 2021 18:20 utc | 3
You should have titled the post "Killing Two Birds With One Stone".
This pipeline is huge, running from Texas through the Southeast and all the way up to New England. It's condition is beyond awful with multiple leaks along the route some of which lose more than a million gallons per month and much more than can be determined since some of the gasoline / jet fuel went into the aquifers. These faults have been well known for decades and although some of the areas are heavily populated no remediation was done. The local outcry recently caught the attention of the press when kids reported a gasoline smell along the pipeline route to the police. The locals demanded the pipeline be closed for repairs and sought answers from state officials and Federal authorities as to why this situation was allowed. To blame the Russians for the closure of the pipeline which results in a surge in prices and limited availability of gas for the summer is an absolute stroke of genius.
https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/ncdeq-colonial-pipeline-spill-huntersville/275-70e16fb6-c945-4634-b933-3975d0573f2e
Ike , May 11 2021 18:27 utc | 4
Great article. Russia must be getting so pissed off with the idiots in Washington.The uninformed and easily manipulated Western people surely get the governments they deserve.
Paul Craig Roberts highlights this with another bit of truth telling from Tucker Carlson
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/05/11/the-proof-is-in-tony-fauci-is-responsible-for-the-creation-of-the-covid-19-virus/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_proof_is_in_tony_fauci_is_responsible_for_the_creation_of_the_covid_19_virus&utm_term=2021-05-11
DG , May 11 2021 18:43 utc | 5
@all

I need to ask this: What do you think about the vaccination of children?

...

Josh , May 11 2021 18:44 utc | 6
It is odd that certain elements of the us intelligence community, along with negative factions within the us political establishment, continue to absolutely refuse to enter into verifiable and mutually binding international agreements on cyber security with exactly the nation states that they accuse (without evidence) of malicious activity in the same sphere, while at the same time operating in this field in an openly declared hostile manner under the secrecy deemed necessary for 'national security'.

[May 25, 2021] Watch- Tucker Carlson Blasts Fauci, WHO, Media For Lying About COVID Lab Leak For A Year

May 25, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

After Russiagate the credibility of CIA is below zero. So this looks like a part of propaganda compaign against China.

"Yet somehow Tony Fauci didn't know this Can we really believe that? No, of course, we can't," Carlson continued, adding "right around the time those Chinese researchers became the world's first COVID patients, the government of Thailand contacted the CDC and Tony Fauci's office to say its intelligence service had picked up 'biological anomalies' around the lab in Wuhan. In other words, there had been a leak."

ay_arrow

AUS-AUD 8 hours ago (Edited)

If fauci funded the wuhan lab then the US funded the wuhan lab.

popeye 6 hours ago

There has been no new credible information released in the past two months pertaining to the origin of SARS-Cov-2. US Intelligence is not a credible source (lying & deception are the tradecraft of espionage). All I see is media narrative spin based on conjecture that you can guarantee has political origins.

Yet Americans, who complain incessantly about the dishonesty of their media, credulously swallow the narrative fed to them without analysis or critique. Stupid. You think you are independent rebels, when you are in reality manipulated sheep, and oh so easily manipulated.

Lets be clear - ZH is now a part of the narrative machine.

SurfingUSA 4 hours ago (Edited)

Can't make inferences????

The Wuhan lab is just the fall guy here.

  • The virus,
  • the lab (or Army games) release,
  • the election impact ...

ALL either Made in the (((USA))) or close to it.

Justin Timberbieber 8 hours ago

Yep, just the CCP. No western involvement whatsoever.

E5 8 hours ago

Until you trace the scientists back to UNC. Then you see that the actual virus they accelerated came from the US.

Heimdall - Torwart von Assguard 6 hours ago

AND Canada

Ted K. 6 hours ago

The Winnipeg lab of the fully infiltrated Canada is indeed a piece of the puzzle.

Herdee 5 hours ago

And Ft. Detrick

RedNemesis 6 hours ago (Edited)

Okay. They accelerated and released a virus obtained from the US. So is the US responsible for a country turning yellow cake uranium mined in Nevada into a nuclear weapon?

truth or go home 5 hours ago

Yes, if the US gives them the recipe and then pays them to develop it.

And if the US did that to get around a law that makes it illegal to do makes it even worse - which is exactly what happened.

SteveNYC 7 hours ago

I'm going with the "populism" route. Stopping populist governments in their tracks has always proven reason enough for panic and overkill from TPTB:

- USA

- Brazil

- India

<< Primary targets.

Heimdall - Torwart von Assguard 6 hours ago

Poland

Hungary

Venezuela

Brazil

popeye 6 hours ago

Most Americans have never left their country, many have never left their state, and few seem to have an education. You can't expect them to know much about anything outside the US. Basically a flat earth mentality - "the world consists only of what I can see".

junction 8 hours ago

The only certainty is that all the major facts are lies.

Jolt 5 hours ago

You're on the right track, "junction", but be aware that the virus is just an ordinary flu/corona virus that isn't deadly for the vast majority of humans. The real culprit, the biggest tool for creating the worldwide "emergency" is the PCR test, which is 100% fraudulent. This is by design, thanks to the pharmaceuticals.

williambanzai7 PREMIUM 8 hours ago remove link

No Tucker, if you just want to blame the whole thing on China you are missing the punchline: Fauci

tion PREMIUM 8 hours ago (Edited) remove link

It's all an assortment of narratives and partial truths. Tucker points the finger at China without mentioning how Fauci was funding Gain of Function work at the Wuhan lab. Here is just one example of people from that lab using an HIV splice to increase transmissibility of a pathogen to humans.

https://jvi.asm.org/content/jvi/82/4/1899.full.pdf

In this study, we investigated the receptor usage of the SL-CoV S by combining a human immunodeficiency virus-based pseudovirus system with cell lines expressing the ACE2 molecules of human, civet, or horseshoe bat. In addition to full-length S of SL-CoV and SARS-CoV, a series of S chimeras was constructed by inserting different sequences of the SARS-CoV S into the SL-CoV S backbone. Several important observations were made from this study. First, the SL-CoV S was unable to use any of the three ACE2 molecules as its receptor. Second, the SARS-CoV S failed to enter cells expressing the bat ACE2. Third, the chimeric S covering the previously defined receptor-binding domain gained its ability to enter cells via human ACE2, albeit with different efficiencies for different constructs. Fourth, a minimal insert region (amino acids 310 to 518) was found to be sufficient to convert the SL-CoV S from non-ACE2 binding to human ACE2 binding , indicating that the SL-CoV S is largely compatible with SARS-CoV S protein both in structure and in function.

Journal of Virology, February 2008

And by the way let's not pretend that dear Donald aka President Kushner's FIL didn't also know about Fauci's questionable involvement with unethical gain of function research at this lab before appointing him and the PEPFAR mafia to head the Covid taskforce, putting the foxes in charge of guarding the hen house so to speak.

TheAlmightyCorndawg 8 hours ago

Which is precisely why Tucker is Operation Mockingbird.

Billy the Poet 7 hours ago (Edited)

Then show me solid evidence that what you say is true. You do have film of Tucker working with the CIA, right?

2+2 ≠ 5 8 hours ago remove link

Huh?

Tucker has NEVER "supported the election hoax".

In fact, Tucker is one of the very few on MSM to continually call for proper voting audits of the 2020 election, and he repeatedly highlights the obvious fraud that took place.

ay_arrow
GoodyGumdrops 8 hours ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Election fraud has been happening in the US for decades.

The only thing new this time around is they decided to mock the American people openly, so that they can never claim ignorance again about the corruption.

The plandemic is the real worldwide atrocity being played out right now before our eyes.

asteroids 8 hours ago

The heads of the NIH and the CDC have been caught lying. Therefore both agencies have NO credibility and have lost the trust of the people. ...

Flying Monkees 8 hours ago

Imagine being a total POS like Fauci who would destroy the freedom and liberties of his fellow Americans just so he can line his own pockets...

[May 24, 2021] The Fed Has Lost Control -- John Williams Warns Of Hyperinflation In 2022

I agree that Fed might lose the control: much depends on the continuation of the status of the dollar as the main reserve currency. If this position continue to weaken all beta are off.
May 24, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

What would happen to the financial system if the Fed stopped printing massive amounts of money for stimulus and debt service? Williams explains,

" You could see financial implosion by preventing liquidity being put into the system. The system needs liquidity (freshly created dollars) to function. Without that liquidity, you would see more of an economic implosion than you have already seen. In fact, I will contend that the headline pandemic numbers have actually been a lot worse than they have been reporting. It also means we are not recovering quite as quickly. The Fed needs to keep the banking system afloat. They want to keep the economy afloat. All that requires a tremendous influx of liquidity in these difficult times."

So, is the choice inflation or implosion? Williams says, "That's the choice, and I think we are going to have a combination of both of them. .."

" I think we are eventually headed into a hyperinflationary economic collapse. It's not that we haven't been in an economic collapse already, we are coming back some now. . . . The Fed has been creating money at a pace that has never been seen before. You are basically up 75% (in money creation) year over year. This is unprecedented. Normally, it might be up 1% or 2% year over year. The exploding money supply will lead to inflation. I am not saying we are going to get to 75% inflation -- yet, but you are getting up to the 4% or 5% range, and you are soon going to be seeing 10% range year over year. . . . The Fed has lost control of inflation. "

And remember, when the Fed has to admit the official inflation rate is 10%, John Williams says, "When they have to admit the inflation rate is 10%, my number is going to be up to around 15% or higher. My number rides on top of their number."

Right now, the Shadowstat.com inflation rate is above 11%. That's if it were calculated the way it was before 1980 when the government started using accounting gimmicks to make inflation look less than it really is. The Shadowstats.com number cuts out all the accounting gimmicks and is the true inflation rate that most Americans are seeing right now, not the "official" 4.25% recently reported.

Williams says the best way to fight the inflation that is already here is to buy tangible assets. Williams says,

"Canned food is a tangible asset, and you can use it for barter if you have to. . . . Physical gold and silver is the best way to protect your buying power over time."

Gold may be a bit expensive for most, but silver is still relatively cheap. Williams says, "Everything is going to go up in price."

When will the worst inflation be hitting America? Williams predicts,

"I am looking down the road, and in early 2022, I am looking for something close to a hyperinflationary circumstance and effectively a collapsed economy."

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with John Williams, founder of ShadowStats.com.


2 play_arrow 1

Nikki Alexis 7 minutes ago

John Williams warning about hyperinflation is like Peter Schitt telling me stocks are going to crash. It's coming, it's coming! Boy crying wolf.

Cautiously Pessimistic 59 minutes ago

Accounting Gimmicks. Election Gimmicks. Gender Gimmicks. Science Gimmicks. Rule of Law Gimmicks.

America has become one big fun house of gimmicks.

Time for a RESET.

NoDebt 54 minutes ago remove link

Yeah, the Reset Gimmick. Where they fundamentally transform themselves into a permanent position of power. Never mind that they'll kill millions to achieve it.

Samual Vimes 47 minutes ago (Edited)

What about gutting primary dealers by buying T bills directly ?

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/fed-prepares-go-direct-liquidity

[May 18, 2021] Who Bought the $4.7 Trillion of Treasury Securities Added Since March 2020 to the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt-

May 18, 2021 | wolfstreet.com

Who Bought the $4.7 Trillion of Treasury Securities Added Since March 2020 to the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt? by Wolf Richter • May 17, 2021 • 119 Comments The Fed did. Nearly everyone did. Even China nibbled again. Here's who holds that monstrous $28.1 trillion US National Debt. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET .

The US national debt has been decades in the making, was then further fired up when the tax cuts took effect in 2018 during the Good Times. But starting in March 2020, it became the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt. Since that moment 15 months ago, it spiked by $4.7 trillion, to $28.14 trillion, amounting to 128% of GDP in current dollars:

But who bought this $4.7 trillion in new debt?

We can piece this together through the first quarter in terms of the categories of holders: Foreign buyers as per the Treasury International Capital data, released this afternoon by the Treasury Department; the purchases by the Fed as per its weekly balance sheet; the purchases by the US banks as per the Federal Reserve Board of Governors bank balance-sheet data; and the purchases by US government entities, such as US government pension funds, as per the Treasury Department's data on Treasury securities.

Foreign creditors of the US.

Japan , the largest foreign creditor of the US, dumped $18 billion of US Treasuries in March, reducing its stash to $1.24 trillion. Since March 2020, its holdings dropped by $32 billion.

https://664e3285974f21e0f93cbda833cec3c8.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

China had been gradually reducing its holdings over the past few years, but then late last year started adding to them again. In March, its holdings ticked down for the first time in months, by $4 billion, bringing its holdings to $1.1 trillion. Since March 2020, it added $9 billion:

But Japan's and China's importance as creditors to the US has been diminishing because the US debt has ballooned. In March, their combined share (green line) fell to 8.3%, the lowest in many years:

All foreign holders combined dumped $70 billion in Treasury securities in March, bringing their holdings to $7.028 trillion (blue line, left scale). But this was still up by $79 billion from March 2020.

These foreign holders include foreign central banks, foreign government entities, and foreign private-sector entities such as companies, banks, bond funds, and individuals. Despite the increase of their holdings since March 2020, their share of the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt fell to 25.0%, the lowest since 2007 (red line, right scale):

After Japan & China, the 10 biggest foreign holders include tax havens where US corporations have mailbox entities where some of their Treasury holdings are registered. But Germany and Mexico, with which the US has massive trade deficits, are in 17th and 24th place. The percentages indicate the change from March 2020. Note the percentage increase of India's holdings:

US government funds hit record, but share of total debt drops further.

US government pension funds for federal civilian employees, pension funds for the US military, the US Social Security Trust Fund , and other federal government funds bought on net $5 billion of Treasury securities in Q1 and $98 billion since March 2020, bringing their holdings to a record of $6.11 trillion (blue line, left scale).

But that increase was outrun by the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt, and their share of total US debt dropped to 21.8%, the lowest since dirt was young, and down from a share of 45% in 2008 (red line, right scale):

Federal Reserve goes hog-wild: monetization of the US debt.

The Fed bought on net $243 billion of Treasury securities in Q1 and $2.44 trillion since it began the bailouts of the financial markets in March 2020. Over this period through March 31, it has more than doubled its holdings of Treasuries to $4.94 trillion (blue line, left scale). It now holds a record of 17.6% of the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt (red line, right scale):

US Banks pile them up.

US commercial banks bought on net $28 billion in Treasury securities in Q1 and $267 billion since March 2020, bringing the total to a record $1.24 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data on bank balance sheets. They now hold 4.4% of the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt:

Other US entities & individuals

So far, we covered the net purchases by all foreign-registered holders, by the Fed, by US government funds, and by US banks. What's unaccounted for: US individuals and institutions other than the Fed, the banks, and the government. These include bond funds, private-sector, state, and municipal pension funds, insurers, US corporations, hedge funds (they use Treasuries in complex leveraged trades), private equity firms that need to park billions in "dry powder," etc.

These US entities hold the remainder of Incredibly Spiking US National Debt. Their holdings surged by $149 billion in Q4 and by $2.35 trillion since March 2020, to a record $8.76 trillion (blue line, left scale). This raised their share of the total debt to 31.2% (red line, right scale), making these US individuals and institutions combined the largest holder of that monstrous mountain of debt:

The Incredibly Spiking US National Debt and who holds it, all in one monstrous pile:

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[May 17, 2021] Stocks could drop 20% when Fed fights inflation- hedge fund founder

May 17, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Guzman

May 17, 2021

Inflation fears already roiled the market this week with the Nasdaq falling nearly 2%, but one hedge fund founder is sounding the alarm over a potential 20% collapse that could be sparked by the Federal Reserve signaling an end to accommodative pandemic-era monetary policy later this year.

Satori Fund founder Dan Niles recently told Yahoo Finance that this week's hotter-than-anticipated inflation data coupled with other central banks around the world already coming off their easy money policies will likely corner the Fed into tapering its accommodative policies sooner than expected.

"If you've got food prices, energy prices, shelter prices moving up as rapidly as they are, the Fed's not going to have any choice," he said, predicting that the Fed could signal the beginning of a move to wind down its monthly $120 billion a month pace of asset purchases by this summer. "They can say what they want, but this reminds me to some degree of them saying back in 2007 that the subprime crisis was well contained. Obviously it wasn't."

For their part, Fed officials have remained adamant that a rise in inflation is to be expected as a transitory reality of the economy reopening from the pandemic lockdown. The latest print from the Bureau of Labor Statistics out this week , however, may have spooked investors when it showed consumer prices for the month of April rose at their fastest annual pace since 2008. That inflation metric, which is different than the Fed's preferred Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index , jumped to a 4.2% rise over the last 12 months. The Fed has already signaled it would be comfortable staying accommodative even if inflation in the recovery shoots past 2% as measured by its preferred metric.

[May 16, 2021] Morgan Stanley- This Is The Biggest Threat To The Red-Hot Global Recovery - ZeroHedge

May 16, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

In the US, this translates to a growth environment where GDP will be 3pp above its pre-COVID-19 path by end-2022 and underlying core PCE inflation (adjusted for base effects) rises above 2%Y from March 2022. The Fed, which is now aiming for inflation averaging 2%Y and maximum employment, should remain accommodative. Our chief US economist Ellen Zentner expects the Fed to signal its intention to taper asset purchases at the September FOMC meeting, to announce it in March 2022 and to start tapering from April 2022 . On our forecasts, rate hikes begin in 3Q23, after inflation remains at or above 2%Y for some time and the labour market reaches maximum employment.

What are the risks to this story? Most obvious is the emergence of new COVID-19 variants that resist vaccines. However, I have argued that the biggest threat to this cycle is an overshoot in US core PCE inflation beyond the Fed's implicit 2.5%Y threshold – a serious concern, in my view, which could emerge from mid-2022 onwards .


Portal 4 hours ago

LMFAO!!!

You sent manufacturing and industry to China.

There is no "red hot recovery.". Just a long descent into fascism and communist poverty.

Newpuritan 4 hours ago

The "red hot recovery." they are hoping for is replacing all efficient energy production with inefficient "green" energy. The costs will be astronomical but are hoped to offset the Boomer generation retirement period.

Iskiab 2 hours ago (Edited)

Yea, all these forecasting models are garbage. They're all based on a faulty assumption that trends continue so the growth we see now will continue, plus things will revert back to the trend line. Junk in, junk out.

A more realistic assessment would be there was a bump from reopening, but costs have increased. It will be impossible to get back to the old growth trend line, and expect the low growth of the last 20 years to continue from hereon out. The stimulus will help a bit but not much, most of the stimulus was misallocated.

JH2020 3 hours ago (Edited)

It's the sycophants of the Wall Street/government confidence game, dropping words that, hopefully, lead to buying securities, not selling, though, perversely, any negative truths result in the assumption there will be a new flood of free money, from the Fed, driving margin debt even more vertical, such that one needs a second page for the chart, or a more drastic log scale. (In this economy so red hot interests rates need to be kept near zero, for the remainder of the century, and near daily reassurance the Fed will accommodate anything and everything, whatsoever, anytime a sector gets some heartburn, or a red candlestick gets too large.)

Red hot = FOMO bait.

The "red not" verbiage is comical, reminds me of Hollywood sycophants, that write reviews of some pretend person, some degenerate nobody, "In an unparalleled display of performing brilliance, in this worthy sequel to A Couple Hours of Brains Splattered All Over the Wall, and which only proves his sheer genius, the way he flared his nostrils, while driving in the chase scene, that went two times around the entire city perimeter, in the ongoing lanes...".

ebworthen 4 hours ago

"Red hot global recovery"? ROFLMAO!

That isn't recovery, it is money printing, inflation, and rabid speculation.

hugin-o-munin 4 hours ago (Edited)

Who do these people think they can fool?

This was about the dumbest article by a bank in a long while. Pushing a contrarian lie too hard reveals it quicker than keeping quiet. Someone should remind Morgan Stanley of this age old truth. Real inflation is destroying the USD right now. Ignoring it and pretending otherwise will only accelerate the fall into hyper inflation.

J J Pettigrew 3 hours ago

A little inflation is good for you.

What's a little? 2.5%? For ten years....a flat chart of 2.5% each year... .looks like nothing happened....just 28% off the value of the dollar...thats all.

Sound of the Suburbs 2 hours ago

How does anything really work?

I don't know, I use neoclassical economics.

Everyone tries to kill growth by making the same mistakes as Japan.

Japan led the way and everyone followed.

At 25.30 mins you can see the super imposed private debt-to-GDP ratios.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6

What Japan does in the 1980s; the US, the UK and Euro-zone do leading up to 2008 and China has done more recently.

The PBoC saw the financial crisis coming unlike the BoJ, ECB, BoE and the FED.

Oh dear, we did what you did in Japan.

Now we've had a financial crisis and are facing a Great Depression just like you.

Japan could study the Great Depression to avoid this fate.

(The US had done the same thing in the 1920s (see graph above), it always seems to happen with neoclassical economics)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk

How did Japan avoid a Great Depression?

They saved the banks

How did Japan kill growth and inflation for the next thirty years?

They left the debt in place and the repayments on that debt killed growth and inflation (Japanification)

The Chinese did see the financial crisis coming, but they have reached the end of the line on the debt fuelled growth model of globalisation.

They just need to find out how an economy really works.

As if anyone has got the slightest idea what they are doing.

How does anything really work?

I don't know, I use neoclassical economics.

Sound of the Suburbs 2 hours ago

Everyone tries to kill growth by making the same mistakes as Japan.

European policymakers were successful.

What does Japanification look like?

https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp

(Set scale to max. to get the full picture)

The EU economy hasn't been going anywhere since 2008.

https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/gdp

(Set scale to max. to get the full picture)

It's Japanification

The UK economy has hasn't been going anywhere since 2008.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp

(Set scale to max. to get the full picture)

It's Japanification

Well done, you dimwits.

How does anything really work?

I don't know, I use neoclassical economics.

Sound of the Suburbs 2 hours ago

Why did they think private debt wouldn't be a problem after 2008?

Probably the same reason they didn't notice it building up before 2008.

The economics of globalisation has always had an Achilles' heel.

The 1920s roared with debt based consumption and speculation until it all tipped over into the debt deflation of the Great Depression. No one realised the problems that were building up in the economy as they used an economics that doesn't look at debt, neoclassical economics.

Not considering private debt is the Achilles' heel of neoclassical economics.

That explains it.

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein.

Who do you think you are?

This is what we are going to do, whether you like it or not.

He must be one of those populists.

Einstein was right of course, but you know what neoliberals are like.

Anyone that doesn't go along with their ideas must be a populist.

Sound of the Suburbs 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Not considering private debt is the Achilles' heel of neoclassical economics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6

At 18 mins.

1929 and 2008 stick out like sore thumbs.

No one realised the problems that were building up in the economy as they used an economics that doesn't look at debt, neoclassical economics.

Einstein's definition of madness "Doing the same thing again and again and expecting to get a different result"

Einstein was right again.

He was a clever bloke.

[May 15, 2021] Which organization OPEC or IEA has the most credibility?

May 15, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

RON PATTERSON IGNORED 05/14/2021 at 7:23 am

The OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report said the world oil supply fell by 150,000 barrels per day in April.

World oil supply
Preliminary data indicates that global liquids production in April decreased by 0.15 mb/d to average
93.06 mb/d compared with the previous month, and was lower by 6.45 mb/d y-o-y.

While the IEA Oil Market Report – May 2021 sais the world oil supply rose by 330,000 barrels per day.

World oil supply rose 330 kb/d to 93.4 mb/d in April and will increase further in May as the OPEC+ alliance continues to ease output cuts. Based on the current agreement, global oil production is set to grow by 3.8 mb/d from April to December. For 2021 as a whole, world oil production expands by 1.4 mb/d year-on-year versus a collapse of 6.6 mb/d in 2020. Canada leads non-OPEC+ with growth of 340 kb/d while the US is set to contract by a further 160 kb/d.

That's a difference of just under half a million barrels per day, (480,000 bpd). That's a huge difference. Which one should we believe? Which organization has the most credibility?

[May 13, 2021] Investors brace for test of nerves as inflation worries mount

Weak analysis. The fundamental factor is the price for energy, not some trivia like used cars and trucks. Teh second dot com bubble will deflate but it is unclear when and whether this is a crash or gradual deplation of worthless junk stocks which enjoyed "profitless" IPOs.
With rising energy prices it is more difficult to keep interpreting high CPI numbers as temporary. But like in the past the USA will fight the rise in energy prices tools and nail. With the full power of their global neoliberal empire.
May 13, 2021 | www.ft.com

... prices for used cars and trucks jumped 10 per cent in April alone, accounting for a large slice of the gains in the overall index.

"It looks like Wall Street is climbing the wall of worry," said Gregory Perdon, co-chief investment officer at private bank Arbuthnot Latham. "The bears are constantly looking for signs that the world is going to end. They come up with all the potential excuses. The reality is that the only question that matters is whether the reopening is going OK or not.

... Notably, while 10-year US yields did rise on Wednesday after the inflation data release, they did not hit new highs.

[May 13, 2021] Inflation Doesn't Have to Mean High Interest Rates - WSJ

May 13, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Inflation is back. The U.S. consumer-price index surged to a 13-year high of 4.2% in April, official data showed Wednesday. The eurozone's figure is a weaker 1.6%, but still a two-year high. The global bond market isn't panicking yet. The pandemic led many distressed companies to slash prices in 2020. Investors always knew that, as the economy reopened, some year-over-year increases would be huge.

The prices of most products haven't changed much . CPI gyrations are mostly down to a few items particularly affected by lockdowns and travel restrictions, such as airfares and restaurant prices, as well as commodities. Excluding food and energy, U.S. inflation in April was just 3%.

... Over the past few decades, for example, CPI figures have mostly been the results of a concatenation of "temporary" trends in different sectors -- the costs of education and healthcare rose nonstop, while the prices of many goods continuously fell. It was different in the 1970s, when an idiosyncratic squeeze in the supply of oil fueled an inflationary spiral that pushed all costs up.

[May 12, 2021] What is the nature of current round of inflation in the USA; after all wages are stagnant

May 12, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

paulmeli , May 12 2021 18:50 utc | 21

"Inflation" in the US is mostly profit-taking and speculation (scalping)

[May 12, 2021] The Energy Crisis That No One Is Talking About - OilPrice.com

May 12, 2021 | oilprice.com

GAIL TVERBERG

Gail Tverberg is a writer and speaker about energy issues. She is especially known for her work with financial issues associated with peak oil. Prior

More Info SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Reddit PREMIUM CONTENT Russia Withdraws Troops From The Ukrainian Border Why The Outlook For Oil Prices Shifted This Week Fighting Continues In Yemen Amid Secret Ceasefire Talks U.S. Natural Gas Production Poised To Soar By Gail Tverberg - May 06, 2021, 5:00 PM CDT Trade Oil Futures Now

We live in a world of half-truth where words are very carefully chosen. Companies hire public relations firms to give just the right "spin" to what they are saying. CEO make statements that suggest that everything is going well. Newspapers would like their advertisers to be happy. Still is at the limit of Moore's law and fither shriking of dier is impossible due to physical limits. One of the key challenges of CPU engineering is the design of transistors gates. As device dimension shrinks, controlling the current flow in the thin channel becomes more difficult. So callled 8mn process (not that this is a marketing not technological term) is possible and now used in production, 5mn is problematic but used for example by Apple in A14 CPU ( iPhone 12) / According to some sources, the A14 processor has the transistor density of 134 million transistors per mm2. 3mn is probably the current technological limit (TSMC is on track for production first 3 nm chips at the end of 2022 Anton Shilov, Anandtech April 26, 2021 ). It is unclear, if 2mn process will be technologically viable or not. So the only way for CPU manufactures to increase the processing power of CPUs is to increase the number of cores.

I We live in a finite world; we are rapidly approaching limits of many kinds. Which creates problem, in some ways, somewhat similar to the world of the 1920s.

[May 11, 2021] Sen. Paul Shreds Fauci Over 'Gain-Of-Function' Funding

May 11, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Paul alleged that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had used a middle-man to funnel money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance - which worked with the lab on bat coronavirus projects.

Paul specifically referenced so-called "gain-of-function" research which in this case has been focused on how to make animal viruses more transmissible to humans - specifically bat coronaviruses .

"Government scientists like yourself who favor gain of function research," Paul began...

...only to have Fauci interject "I don't favor gain of function research in China," adding "You are saying things that are not correct."

Paul pushed back - continuing:

"[Those who favor gain of function] say that COVID-19 mutations were random and not designed by man."

"I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done," Fauci shot back, adding that he's in favor of further investigation, but that the NIH had nothing to do with the origins of COVID-19.

"We have not funded gain of function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology," he added.

"No matter how many times you say it, it didn't happen."

More from Sen. Paul via Twitter:


Senator Rand Paul @RandPaul · May 11, 2021 Dr Fauci dissembled or tried to hide his long time support for 'gain-of-function' research which creates super-viruses that jump from animals to humans.

ohm 4 hours ago (Edited) remove link

You can't sit on your thumbs and run year long investigations and background checks while thousands are dying .

But that's just the point, thousands were not dying . Instead of seeking out opposing viewpoints, he relied on the bogus Ferguson model that predicted 2 million deaths presented by Fauci and Birx. Plenty of qualified opposing voices were out there - John Ionnides of Stanford for instance. Trump needs to own up to his mistakes and vow not to repeat them.

nodhannum 3 hours ago

How many renminbi do they pay you comrade...as in be "han" or be gone. I've been to a number of seminars given by Fauci back in his HIV days but he is a lying sob now. It's getting hard for the fellow to cover hisw *** now even with the Maserati marxists in power here.

Plus Size Model 1 hour ago

https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/nih-lifts-funding-pause-gain-function-research

smallblockchevy350 3 hours ago

Rand 2024. I wanted Rand over Trump in 2016 too, but the MSM memed Trump into being the GOP candidate somehow.

replaceme 5 hours ago

So now fauci is on record lying about it, nice.

HRH of Aquitaine 2.0 5 hours ago

Yeah. Classic psychopath. He can't help himself at this point.

win95o PREMIUM 5 hours ago remove link

Why would Fauci say the following in 2017:

"There will be a surprise outbreak"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=puqaaeLnEww

YesitsTrue98 4 hours ago

"We are not prepared for a pandemic," Biden tweeted on Oct. 25, 2019, saying the country needs leadership that "mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores."

this_circus_is_no_fun 4 hours ago

At first Fauxi denied the allegation. Then, after Paul cornered him with facts, Fauxi said something like "this is why we did that". So, he admitted that he did what he was denying just a few seconds before . He is literally incapable of telling the truth. I guess he's not called Fauxi for nothing.

adonisdemilo 5 hours ago

Fauci has known from day one what's going on and going wrong. He's up to his neck in it and taking a good look at his body language under questions from Rand Paul, HE'S CONTINUING TO LIE.

chinese.sniffles 5 hours ago

Dr. Fauci:

Have you or your team send or granted permission for work projects to Wuhan or China?

What were those projects?

Why did you send them?

Why did you not do these projects in the USA?

Were any of these projects illegal in the USA?

etc. simple line of questioning, let him perjure himself.

thezone 5 hours ago

Fauci (the politician) knew to not write a check out to the lab directly. It was great to hear Dr Paul bring up EcoHealth. A shell company to facilitate.

surfer4444 5 hours ago

Exactly, blame it on the sub contractor....an old game and the elite are using it well

radical-extremist 5 hours ago remove link

Fauci knows full well the story in the Democrat State News media will be about how he was ATTACKED by Rand Paul, and not about him lying under oath about funding the Wuhan Lab.

chiquita 5 hours ago

This information has been out for a while if you follow War Room, Steve Hilton, and some other sources. Peter Navarro has been hammering at Fauci relentlessly for the last few months and now the MSM is going after Navarro, trying to discredit him. Gee, I wonder why when it looks like the truth about Fauci is falling apart.

What a mess_man 4 hours ago (Edited)

Tucker blew this wide open last night. Of course lots of us here knew all this many months ago. Fauci is lying through his teeth here, and both he and Daszak are deep in the Chicom's pockets. As Tucker said, in a functioning world there would be a criminal investigation. Instead Biden and Co. kiss his *ss and make him our foremost authority on Covid and vaccines. Clown world for sure.

Meatballs 3 hours ago (Edited)

Actually, Saagar beat Tucker to the punch. Either way, the unraveling has begun.

https://youtu.be/6Pk0wLN5uuU

vic and blood PREMIUM 2 hours ago remove link

Don't let the bioweapon profiteer, Daszak, off the hook.

Both greedy psychopaths should hang for their crimes against humanity.

Furthermore, we have no business sharing infectious disease technology with China, even if they could run a lab properly.

Itinerant 4 hours ago

This story is about 14 months old, though not for the MSM.

Actual documentation of the grants from the NIH via the Eco Alliance have been circulating in the public domain for all that time. In it they exactly describe the gain-of-function research that is being outsourced to China, the viruses involved, the methods, the type of experiments, and the aims of the research ... exactly and technically.

There is no room for caveats, or 'allege' or interpretation or anything like that.
The evidence is rock hard and crystal clear.

toady 4 hours ago

Yet there are no prosecutions.

dogbert8 5 hours ago remove link

Finally, the unmasking (pun intended) of Fauci has started.

bsdetector 5 hours ago

Just listened to the questions and answers. Fauci qualifies his answers with information that was not sought in the questions. His answers change the character of his denials... "we did not fund GOF research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

OK Dr. Fauci, please identify the viruses that you did fund for GOF research at the Institute.

Jack Mayorhaufer 5 hours ago

master gaslighters once they reach certain status and paygrade on the Hill

novictim 2 hours ago remove link

"I don't know how many times I can say it? We did not fund gain of function research to be done in the Wuhan Institute of Virology ...(under his breath) because we funded Eco Health Alliance/Peter Daszak which granted the research funding to do gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

CleeTorres 2 hours ago

A simple internet search shows Fauci is lying about funding for this research. But he knows the media won't do their jobs.

Onthebeach6 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Let me assist Dr Fauci with the truth.

Why US outsourced bat virus research to Wuhan

Dr Christina Lin

April 2020

"A U.S. NIH-funded $3.7 million project was approved by Trump's Covid-19 advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci in 2015, after the Obama White House imposed a ban on 'monster-germ' research. In October 2014, the federal government declared a moratorium on gain-of-function research to weaponize viruses related to influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). As a result, the research was outsourced to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is currently at the center of scrutiny for the Covid-19 pandemic."

https://www.ispsw.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/689_Lin.pdf

boyplunger7777 4 hours ago remove link

Fauci looks very nervous . Perhaps why he has been so adamant about constantly moving the goalposts? If you were guilty of something wouldn't you keep changing the focus and appear to be very helpful and concerned?

Max21c 3 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Which people in & around the National Security Council, CIA, and Pentagon are involved in this attempt to gain access, penetrate and spy on the PLA Biological Weapons/Warfare programs via funding mechanisms route? Which people had contact with this institute and programs and what if anything did the spy games produce?

When are they in Washington going to establish civilian rule over the US military and CIA and National Security Council?

When are they going to knock off these silly spy games and spy world operations off and stop this nonsense which produces zero positive results?

What did the gangsters on the Intelligence/Spy Committees in Congress know? What did the gangsters atop the Pentagon, CIA, National Security Council know?

Which Washingtonian assholes are going to go to prison for this boomerang disaster?

How many other groups similar to "EcoHealth Alliance" operate as part of the US/UK intelligence "community" and what other stupid stuff are the idiots mixed up in?

TheRapture 3 hours ago remove link

There is a great deal of evidence (NIH, State Dept grants to offshore USA bioweapons research, Bat Lady was the protege of Dr. Ralph Baric at UNC who has been doing coronavirus bioweapon research for more then twenty years, initial and simultaneous infections in Wuhan at different locations suggesting an intentional release, etc., etc., etc.) And of course, Trump had motive, opportunity and means to stage a false flag to destroy China's economy and damage China's political relations with other countries.

It is likely the USA, no doubt using a CIA proxy, released SARS-CoV-2 in simultaneously in multiple locations in Wuhan. The evidence is substantial. But most Americans can't bring themselves to stare down that particular rabbit hole.

WorkingClassMan 3 hours ago

I'd rather an honest CCP commie ruling the roost than those traitors anyway.

"If I had but one bullet and were faced by both an enemy and a traitor, I would let the traitor have it."
― Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, For My Legionaries

sarret PREMIUM 3 hours ago

Fauci is such a liar, pulling school kid mentality out of a hat to answer serious questions. Likely in his mind he knows it all to be true but since the correct name is 中国科学院武汉病毒研究所 then unless you say that name, or the exact name of the exact subsidiary that was funding or was being funded, then it is not correct and therefore he can answer the question incorrectly without calling himself a liar internally and without saying what the error was in the question that led him to be able to this.

In all respects he just disregards the spirit of the question when he knows full well that he is in the wrong, but denies it every single time based on some concocted fabrication in his mind that the question is not precise enough to nail him to the cross.

Completely disingenuous, can't trust a word he says.

Fish Gone Bad 4 hours ago

Lawyer speak:

We have not funded gain of function research on this virus

They funded all kinds of gain of function on all kinds of permutations of the virus, just not THIS virus.

radical-extremist 5 hours ago remove link

Fauci is also responsible for the deaths of hundreds of men in San Francisco by covering up Bath Houses as the origin of the spread of AIDS...for Mayor Diane Feinstein's political career. No one dares talk about this today.

the Mysterians 5 hours ago

"I did not have sex with that woman!"

Flying Monkees 5 hours ago (Edited)

What could possibly be the reason for gain-of-function research if not bio-warfare?

These evil, irresponsible, arrogant a-holes need to pay.

Posa 5 hours ago

The Eco-Alliance grant from Fauci's NIAID states

We will use S [ie the Spike Protein that makes the SC-2 virus highly infectious] protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.

That has been interpreted as a commitment to Gain of Function research on the Spike Protein which is the key to turning SARS into a virulently transmissible pathogen.

surfer4444 5 hours ago remove link

Exactly...im just baffled how this PoS can blatantly lie to a Senate committee and get away with it...there is zero accountability in our government...end times

Posa 5 hours ago

Fauci can lie because his audience is a convention of lazy, cowardly , illiterate dunces. If Rand Paul were serious he would have had the damn grant in front of him and read the same quotes as I provided in this post. PAul would have held these hearings last year when his Party controlled the Senate.

Posa 4 hours ago

NOTE: This post was censored by The Hill. Typical free speech in America.

George Bayou 5 hours ago

"11 labs in the US create these super-viruses in the US and one of them collaborated with Wuhan Virology Inst -- Fauci has supported NIH funds for all these labs!"

Why is this a-hole still working?

notfeelinthebern 4 hours ago (Edited)

Yap, yap,. yap. Another dog and pony show and the show is painfully old. They parade personage after personage before congress and ask lots of questions. The swamp rats in the hot seat lie by omission and with sleight of hand answers and when done with the act walk away with smug faces....The show must go on.

George Bayou 5 hours ago

Here's an interesting article on Dr. Baric and what he was doing, mutating virus using serial passaging so that the virus are able to infect a completely different species:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html

Take, for instance, this paper from 1995: "High Recombination and Mutation Rates in Mouse Hepatitis Viruses Suggest That Coronaviruses May Be Potentially Important Emerging Viruses." It was written by Dr. Ralph Baric and his bench scientist, Boyd Yount, at the University of North Carolina. Baric, a gravelly voiced former swim champion, described in this early paper how his lab was able to train a coronavirus, MHV, which causes hepatitis in mice, to jump species, so that it could reliably infect BHK (baby-hamster kidney) cell cultures. They did it using serial passaging: repeatedly dosing a mixed solution of mouse cells and hamster cells with mouse-hepatitis virus, while each time decreasing the number of mouse cells and upping the concentration of hamster cells. At first, predictably, the mouse-hepatitis virus couldn't do much with the hamster cells, which were left almost free of infection, floating in their world of fetal-calf serum. But by the end of the experiment, after dozens of passages through cell cultures, the virus had mutated: It had mastered the trick of parasitizing an unfamiliar rodent. A scourge of mice was transformed into a scourge of hamsters. And there was more: "It is clear that MHV can rapidly alter its species specificity and infect rats and primates," Baric said. "The resulting virus variants are associated with demyelinating diseases in these alternative species." (A demyelinating disease is a disease that damages nerve sheaths.) With steady prodding from laboratory science, along with some rhetorical exaggeration, a lowly mouse ailment was morphed into an emergent threat that might potentially cause nerve damage in primates.

GeneKelly 5 hours ago remove link

"We have not funded gain of function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,"

Sociopaths can lie without registering on a detector by simply defining terms differently in their cerebral cortex and then answering -- from their perspective truthfully -- "no" because the question doesn't match their internal definition.

So Fauci wasn't funding "gain of function". He was actually funding "increasing the virulence of pathogens" or "enhancing the pathogens' ability to infect different species".

Rand and others will have to ask the question a hundred ways to force Fauci to spill the beans.

DeeDeeTwo 1 hour ago remove link

Tucker finally called Fauci a "criminal" at least twice and said, "In any functioning society Fauci would be investigated."

Txjac 5 hours ago

Fauci also owns the patents on the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines

Everybody All American 5 hours ago remove link

How is it that only one Congressman dare questions Dr. Fauci? One tough questioner. These cowards all need to hang for the crimes they are allowing. If they think we are just going to sit back and watch this man for much longer lead us they are sadly mistaken.

Downhill from here 5 hours ago

Being an MD, Paul has some credibility on the topic. At least educationally and by training, Fauci and Paul are peers.. More than likely other R's are letting him take point.

replaceme 5 hours ago (Edited)

I forgot, that's the same dr daszak that sent the letter to the lancet saying that covid didn't come from Wuhan, and that he had no reason to falsely say this. THAT Dr daszak. Got it.

Wilde1 2 hours ago remove link

https://vaccineimpact.com/2020/anthony-fauci-40-years-of-lies-from-azt-to-remdesivir/

Totally_Disillusioned 2 hours ago (Edited)

"We [NIH/Fauci] did not fund gain of function research to be done in Wuhan." What the weasel didn't say is that the NIH did in deed fund Dr Baric who was working in collaboration with Wuhan with gain of function experiments on the SARS virus. Baric worked with Ft Dettrick and Univ NC researchers who in turn were collaborating with Canada and Wuhan.

Fauci can parse words but he's a traitor and ought to be held responsible along with all others involved with this.

scraping_by 5 hours ago (Edited) remove link

One amendment to the story --

Carlson was quoting a story by Nicholas Wade, former science editor to the NYT. Published in Medium. So it's not just a talking head repeating newsroom copy, as in CNN.

zorrosgato 14 minutes ago remove link

Fauci is part of a flawed system and don't be fooled in believing he is part of any solution. His endorsing of impractical mask mandates along with mandatory vaccinations of the population, using unproven genetically engineered drugs is proof enough.

https://medium.com/swlh/mrna-therapy-a-new-form-of-gene-medicine-5d859dadd1e

Looking4 6 hours ago

wonder which university in North Carolina could possibly be involved in this ???? :) to be sure they would not have a "bat lab"...would they?

[May 11, 2021] Neoliberalism taken to the limit

May 11, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

ay_arrow

Make_Mine_A_Double 6 hours ago (Edited)

But China can do our bio-chemical warfare research cheaper than we can - it only makes sense to use the theory of 'comparative advantage'.

I think outsourcing our bio-chemical weapons program to our existential enemy is really brilliant and saves the taxpayers money...

replaceme 6 hours ago

Did the NIH give that work special oversight, eg no oversight? Yes, yes they did...

[May 11, 2021] Jim Grant- The Fed Can't Control Inflation

May 11, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

...As Peter Schiff put it, CPI is a lie . Grant used the evolution of the toothbrush into its electric form as an example. How do you measure the clear quality improvements in the toothbrush? The government uses hedonics to measure these changes, but as Grant pointed out, this is "inexact and not really a science."

Grant believes that the economy can only tolerate 2.5% real rates. If that is breached, he thinks the Fed will have to resort to yield-curve control. If it does actually try to shrink its balance sheet and sell bonds, it will drive bond yields even higher. Fed bond-buying is the only thing propping up the bond market right now.

In fact, the Fed is propping up the entire economy. There is a sense that the Fed will always step in and save the markets. As a result, we have bubbles everywhere, from the stock market, to real estate, to cryptocurrency.

"These are strange and oppressive markers of financial markets that have lost moorings of valuation," Grant said.

I think the astounding complacency toward, or indifference of, the evident excesses in our monetary and fiscal affairs I think the lack of concern about those things is perhaps the most striking inflationary augur I know of."

Meanwhile, the Fed continues to create money. M1 annual growth is 350%; M2 is growing at approximately 28%.

"Never before have we had monetary peacetime growth this fast," Grant said.

"Tell me who cares."

Grant said central bankers like Powell are guilty of hubris. They suffer from the delusion that they can actually control everything. Grant called the Fed "un-self-aware."

Despite Jay Powell's credentials, he knows nothing about the past and believes he knows everything about the future."

Grant talked about gold , saying it is an investment in "monetary disorder."

To me, gold isn't a hedge against monetary disorder. It's an investment in monetary disorder, which is what we have. We have floating-rate currencies. We have manipulated exchange rates. We have manipulated interest rates. When the cycle turns, people will want gold and silver, and they will want something tangible ."

[May 11, 2021] January Non-OPEC Oil Production Climbs Again

May 11, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

HHH IGNORED 05/09/2021 at 9:35 am

Yields on the US 10 year formed a bullish hammer within consolidation on Friday. Suggests that yields are headed to 2% or above. It suggests that the move higher is now. Higher yields will lead to stronger dollar. Might be the beginning of where price inflation becomes a drag on economy as yields rise on debt. And as long as price inflation continues yields will rise.

Might put a cap on oil price in near future. Maybe we get another $5-$15 rise in oil price before credit blows up due to rise in yields.

As the cost of credit rises due to price inflation. If you borrowed money at rock bottom interest rates and you now have to rollover debt at a higher interest rate that is a problem for corporate USA.

Anyone that doesn't believe that there will be a huge price to pay for the policy response of Covid-19 is kidding themselves.

Even just on a relative basis. When you expand monetary and fiscal policy by that much in one year. Things tighten on a relative basis as what comes next in the years after is less support.

[May 11, 2021] Consumers Expect Surging Inflation to Crush the Purchasing Power of their Labor- Fed's Survey - Wolf Street

May 11, 2021 | wolfstreet.com

Consumers are picking up on the rise of inflation, and the Fed, which has been trying to heat up inflation, is pleased. The Fed watches "inflation expectations" carefully. The minutes from the March FOMC meeting mention "inflation expectations" 12 times.

The New York Fed's Survey of Consumer Expectations for April, released today, showed that median inflation expectations for one year from now rose to 3.4%, matching the prior highs in 2013 (the surveys began in June 2013).

But wait the median earnings growth expectations 12 months from now was only 2.1%, and remains near the low end of the spectrum, a sign that consumers are grappling with consumer price inflation outrunning earnings growth. The whoppers were in the major specific categories.

[May 10, 2021] The Feds history of jawboning and deceiving the market players, except large banks

History repeats and the repetition is coming with some minor variations.
Notable quotes:
"... "Corporate bond rates have been rising steadily since May. Yellen is not doing what Greenspan did in 2004." ..."
"... There isn't much of a difference between signaling tighter money to a market that is skeptical of Fed forecasts and actually tightening. ..."
"... While at 5.0 percent, the unemployment rate is not extraordinarily high, most other measures of the labor market are near recession levels. The percentage of the workforce that is involuntarily working part-time is near the highs reached following the 2001 recession. The average and median duration of unemployment spells are also near recession highs. And the percentage of workers who feel confident enough to quit their jobs without another job lined up remains near the low points reached in 2002. ..."
"... While wage growth has edged up somewhat in recent months by some measures, it is still well below a rate that is consistent with the Fed's inflation target. Hourly wages have risen at a 2.7 percent rate over the last year. If there is just 1.5 percent productivity growth, this would be consistent with a rate of inflation of 1.2 percent. ..."
"... One positive point in today's action is the Fed's commitment in its statement to allow future rate hikes to be guided by the data, rather than locking in a path towards "normalization" as was effectively done in 2004. ..."
Dec 17, 2015 | economistsview.typepad.com
Peter K. -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... December 17, 2015 at 10:12 AM
"Corporate bond rates have been rising steadily since May. Yellen is not doing what Greenspan did in 2004."

There isn't much of a difference between signaling tighter money to a market that is skeptical of Fed forecasts and actually tightening.

http://cepr.net/press-center/press-releases/statement-on-fed-and-interest-rates

Washington, D.C.- Dean Baker, economist and a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) issued the following statement in response to the Federal Reserve's decision regarding interest rates:

"The Fed's decision to raise interest rates today is an unfortunate move in the wrong direction. In setting interest rate policy the Fed must decide whether the economy is at risk of having too few or too many jobs, with the latter being determined by the extent to which its current rate of job creation may lead to inflation. It is difficult to see how the evidence would lead the Fed to conclude that the greater risk at the moment is too many jobs.

"While at 5.0 percent, the unemployment rate is not extraordinarily high, most other measures of the labor market are near recession levels. The percentage of the workforce that is involuntarily working part-time is near the highs reached following the 2001 recession. The average and median duration of unemployment spells are also near recession highs. And the percentage of workers who feel confident enough to quit their jobs without another job lined up remains near the low points reached in 2002.

"If we look at employment rates rather than unemployment, the percentage of prime-age workers (ages 25-54) with jobs is still down by almost three full percentage points from the pre-recession peak and by more than four full percentage points from the peak hit in 2000. This does not look like a strong labor market.

"On the other side, there is virtually no basis for concerns about the risk of inflation in the current data. The most recent data show that the core personal consumption expenditure deflator targeted by the Fed increased at just a 1.2 percent annual rate over the last three months, down slightly from the 1.3 percent rate over the last year. This means that the Fed should be concerned about being below its inflation target, not above it.

"While wage growth has edged up somewhat in recent months by some measures, it is still well below a rate that is consistent with the Fed's inflation target. Hourly wages have risen at a 2.7 percent rate over the last year. If there is just 1.5 percent productivity growth, this would be consistent with a rate of inflation of 1.2 percent.

"Furthermore, it is important to recognize that workers took a large hit to their wages in the downturn, with a shift of more than four percentage points of national income from wages to profits. In principle, workers can restore their share of national income (the equivalent of an 8 percent wage gain), but the Fed would have to be prepared to allow wage growth to substantially outpace prices for a period of time. If the Fed acts to prevent workers from getting this bargaining power, it will effectively lock in place this upward redistribution. Needless to say, workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution can expect to see the biggest hit in this scenario.

"One positive point in today's action is the Fed's commitment in its statement to allow future rate hikes to be guided by the data, rather than locking in a path towards "normalization" as was effectively done in 2004. If it is the case that the economy is not strong enough to justify rate hikes, then the hike today may be the last one for some period of time. It will be important for the Fed to carefully assess the data as it makes its decision on interest rates at future meetings.

"Recent economic data suggest that today's move was a mistake. Hopefully the Fed will not compound this mistake with more unwarranted rate hikes in the future."

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Peter K....

I like Dean Baker. Unlike the Fed, Dean Baker is a class warrior on the side of the wage class. He makes the point about the path to normalization being critical that I have been discussing for quite a while. Let's hope this Fed knows better than Greenspan/Bernanke in 2004-2006. THANKS!

likbez said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

Very true !

pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

"Longer-term bond rates barely moved, showing that there was very little news." This interest rate rose from 4.45% to 5.46% already. So the damage was already done:

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BAA

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to pgl...

"... This interest rate rose from 4.45% to 5.46% already..."

Exactly! Corporate bond rates have been rising steadily since May. Yellen is not doing what Greenspan did in 2004. Yellen's Fed waited until the bond rate lifted off on its own (and maybe with some help from policy communications) before they raised the FFR.

So far, there is no sign of their making a fatal error. They are not fighting class warfare for wage class either, but they seem intent on not screwing the pooch in the way that Greenspan and Bernanke did. No double dip thank you and hold the nuts.

[May 10, 2021] Many layers of leverage stacked on top of each other increase the probability of dollar collapse

Notable quotes:
"... "It's just unbelievable that central banks are actively encouraging this." ..."
"... Good point. Many times we look at charts and say WTF but once you normalize to inflation, maybe this is not as bad as originally it appeared ..."
"... reminds me of an abusive husband telling his beaten wife, "See what you made me do!" ..."
"... Hussman says the right way to do that is to look at margin debt to GDP ration, which is a record. GDP is doubling rate is about every 20 years now at nominal 3.5% ..."
"... That description applies to most Wall Streeters and banksters, whose titanic egos are amazing given the fact that most are parasites that contribute less than a woodlouse to society. Still, I dread the coming US debt collapse discussed in this website, which I would term a debt explosion as all of the bubbles start to pop and so many debtors and former creditors (like lessors, banks, etc.) become publicly known to be legally insolvent. ..."
"... I have invested carefully but we will all lose much or most of our savings. ..."
"... It is very irritating to think of the trillions that the banksters' deceptively named, "Federal" Reserve has been transferring to its ultra-rich owners for decades. They will probably even avoid most taxation again. ..."
Apr 26, 2021 | wolfstreet.com

YuShan Apr 18, 2021 at 3:13 am

Exactly. It is way more scary than even Wolf's charts suggest because there are so many layers of leverage stacked on top of each other.

People taking out margin debt on stock portfolios that they bought by re-mortgaging their bubbled houses to buy stocks with record corporate debt, collaterised (if at all) with bubble assets, at record valuations driven itself by leverage etc etc

It's just unbelievable that central banks are actively encouraging this.

historicus Apr 18, 2021 at 5:06 am

"It's just unbelievable that central banks are actively encouraging this."

Indeed. It's QUITE believable that the politicians love the free money and would never be bold enough to say .

"Hey Fed. Your mandates say you are to FIGHT inflation (stable prices) NOT PROMOTE inflation."

Moosy Apr 17, 2021 at 6:13 pm

The amount of margin debt is not a WTF amount if you use the prices-double each 11 year rule of thumb.

This 11 year period is strikingly accurate if you take the price of the New York Times since 1900 (I have a booklet with frontpages of each year and discovered this when looking at the selling prices). Having said that, the current 800B is the same as the previous inflation corrected peaks of 2009 and around 1999.

So yes, Wolf is 100% correct with the prediction on what is coming. It is just not a WTF amount but a history-repeats-itself moment

ru82 Apr 17, 2021 at 11:45 pm

Good point. Many times we look at charts and say WTF but once you normalize to inflation, maybe this is not as bad as originally it appeared

cas127 Apr 18, 2021 at 5:06 am

"normalize to inflationary, maybe not as bad as originally it appeared"

I know what you mean, but then the (major) problem is that the inflation itself shouldn't be viewed as "normal". Kinda reminds me of a gvt program defending doubled budget over 8 yrs because of "inflation" when in point of fact it is likely that G printing/policy has *created* the inflation in the first place (to help fund the program now pointing at inflation).

Also, reminds me of an abusive husband telling his beaten wife, "See what you made me do!"

Old School Apr 19, 2021 at 6:08 am

Hussman says the right way to do that is to look at margin debt to GDP ration, which is a record. GDP is doubling rate is about every 20 years now at nominal 3.5%

K Apr 17, 2021 at 9:10 pm

That description applies to most Wall Streeters and banksters, whose titanic egos are amazing given the fact that most are parasites that contribute less than a woodlouse to society. Still, I dread the coming US debt collapse discussed in this website, which I would term a debt explosion as all of the bubbles start to pop and so many debtors and former creditors (like lessors, banks, etc.) become publicly known to be legally insolvent.

It is unfortunate that it may happen at the worst possible time, when we face an adversary worse and more powerful than the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany ever was. I have invested carefully but we will all lose much or most of our savings.

It is very irritating to think of the trillions that the banksters' deceptively named, "Federal" Reserve has been transferring to its ultra-rich owners for decades. They will probably even avoid most taxation again.

I do not like to even think how many Americans will wind up. Remember the saying "There but for the grace of god, go I." Many of us will be saying that a lot in the coming years if we are very fortunate.

[May 09, 2021] CPI Is A Lie! We can't trust CPI to tell us the truth about inflation by Peter Schiff

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The CPI is calculated by analyzing the price of a "basket of goods." The makeup of that basket has a big impact on the final CPI number. According to WolfStreet , 10.9% of the CPI is based on durable goods (computers, automobiles, appliances, etc.). Nondurable goods (primarily food and energy) make up 26.6% of CPI. Services account for the remaining 62.5% of the basket. This includes rent, healthcare, cellphone service etc.) ..."
"... The things the government includes and excludes from the basket can make a profound difference in that final CPI number. Back in 1998, the government significantly revised the CPI metrics. Even the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) admitted the changes were "sweeping." ..."
"... In 1998, the BLS followed the recommendations of the Boskin Commission. It was appointed by the Senate in 1995. Initially called the "Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index," its job was to study possible bias in the computation of the CPI. Unsurprisingly, it determined that the index overstated inflation " by about 1.1% per year in 1996 and about 1.3% prior to 1996. The 1998 changes to CPI were meant to address this "issue." ..."
"... As Peter pointed out, there is a lot of geometric weighting, substitution and hedonics built into the calculation. The government can basically create an index that outputs whatever it wants. ..."
"... Peter said there is a bit of irony in government officials and central bankers constantly complaining about "not enough inflation." ..."
"... They're the ones that are cooking the books to pretend that inflation is lower than it really is. Because what they're really trying to do is get the go-ahead to produce more inflation, which is printing money." ..."
"... And there are other things that hide inflation. For instance, shrinking packaging so there is less product sold at the same price, or substituting lower quality ingredients, or requiring consumers to assemble items themselves. ..."
"... They find different ways to lower the quality and not increase the price, and I'm sure that the government is not picking up on any of that. If the quality improves, yeah, yeah, they calculate that. But they probably ignore all the circumstances where the quality is diminished." ..."
"... The bottom line is we can't trust CPI to tell us the truth about inflation. ..."
May 04, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Via SchiffGold.com,

We've been talking a lot about the specter of inflation. Despite the Fed's assurances not to worry because any price increases we're seeing are transitory, some people are indeed worried. A former JP Morgan managing director warned about inflation and echoed Peter Schiff's view that the central bank is powerless to fight it.

And we're seeing rising prices all over the place, from the grocery store to the gas station. Even the government numbers flash warning signs . But as Peter Schiff explains in this clip from an interview with Jay Martin, it's probably even worse than we realize because the government cooks the numbers when it calculates CPI.

The monthly rises in CPI through the first quarter show an upward trend. The CPI in January was up 0.3%. It was up 0.4% in February. And now it's up 0.6% in March. That totals a 1.013% increase in Q1 alone. The question is does this really reflect the truth about inflation? Peter doesn't think it does.

The government always makes changes to their methods of measuring things, whether it's GDP, or inflation, or unemployment. And they always tweak the numbers to produce a better result as a report card. "

https://www.youtube.com/embed/lnPrsBzIZsw

Imagine if students in a school had the ability to change the metrics by which they were graded or the methodology the teacher used to calculate their grades.

Would it surprise anybody that all of a sudden they started getting more As and Bs and fewer Cs and Ds? The government always wants to make the good stuff better, like economic growth, and the bad stuff better, like unemployment or inflation. So, they want to find ways to make those numbers little and the good numbers big."

The CPI is calculated by analyzing the price of a "basket of goods." The makeup of that basket has a big impact on the final CPI number. According to WolfStreet , 10.9% of the CPI is based on durable goods (computers, automobiles, appliances, etc.). Nondurable goods (primarily food and energy) make up 26.6% of CPI. Services account for the remaining 62.5% of the basket. This includes rent, healthcare, cellphone service etc.)

The things the government includes and excludes from the basket can make a profound difference in that final CPI number. Back in 1998, the government significantly revised the CPI metrics. Even the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) admitted the changes were "sweeping."

According to the BLS, periodic changes to the CPI calculation are necessary because "consumers change their preferences or new products and services emerge. During these occasions, the Bureau reexamines the CPI item structure, which is the classification scheme of the CPI market basket. The item structure is a central feature of the CPI program and many CPI processes depend on it."

In 1998, the BLS followed the recommendations of the Boskin Commission. It was appointed by the Senate in 1995. Initially called the "Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index," its job was to study possible bias in the computation of the CPI. Unsurprisingly, it determined that the index overstated inflation " by about 1.1% per year in 1996 and about 1.3% prior to 1996. The 1998 changes to CPI were meant to address this "issue."

As Peter pointed out, there is a lot of geometric weighting, substitution and hedonics built into the calculation. The government can basically create an index that outputs whatever it wants.

I think this period of "˜Oh wow! We have low inflation!' It's not a coincidence that it followed this major revision into how we calculate it."

Peter said there is a bit of irony in government officials and central bankers constantly complaining about "not enough inflation."

They're the ones that are cooking the books to pretend that inflation is lower than it really is. Because what they're really trying to do is get the go-ahead to produce more inflation, which is printing money."

Peter said the CPI will never reveal the true extent of rising prices.

And there are other things that hide inflation. For instance, shrinking packaging so there is less product sold at the same price, or substituting lower quality ingredients, or requiring consumers to assemble items themselves.

They find different ways to lower the quality and not increase the price, and I'm sure that the government is not picking up on any of that. If the quality improves, yeah, yeah, they calculate that. But they probably ignore all the circumstances where the quality is diminished."

The bottom line is we can't trust CPI to tell us the truth about inflation.

[May 09, 2021] 4 surprising stocks Goldman Sachs thinks could triumph over inflation by Brian Sozzi

Notable quotes:
"... "In a highly inflationary environment, we like the auto parts space with its unique ability to pass-through higher costs to customers given the non-discretionary nature of the category," says Goldman Sachs analyst Kate McShane. "For instance, in 2019, telegraphed prices increases to offset cost pressures arising from tariffs provided an incremental benefit to same-store sales growth and most auto parts retailers cited between 150-300 basis points of tariff-related inflation." ..."
May 05, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

If you are seeking stocks that could perform well during the inflationary environment the U.S. looks to be headed into as it recovers from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic , Goldman Sachs suggests parking some money in auto parts retailers.

Yes, auto parts retailers.

The investment thesis is pretty straightforward. With mobility across the country picking up (see chart below) as people get vaccinated, cars will likely need more maintenance. That leaves auto parts retailers such as O'Reilly ( ORLY ), Genuine Parts Company ( GPC ), AutoZone ( AZO ) and Advance Auto Parts ( AAP ) in the enviable position of being able to pass inflation in everything from tires to car wax on to consumers and then post strong profits.

"In a highly inflationary environment, we like the auto parts space with its unique ability to pass-through higher costs to customers given the non-discretionary nature of the category," says Goldman Sachs analyst Kate McShane. "For instance, in 2019, telegraphed prices increases to offset cost pressures arising from tariffs provided an incremental benefit to same-store sales growth and most auto parts retailers cited between 150-300 basis points of tariff-related inflation."

McShane rounds out her bullish thesis on auto parts retailers by noting the main sector plays sport price-to-earnings multiples below historical averages. Of the four aforementioned auto parts retailers, AutoZone has the lowest forward price-to-earnings multiple of 18.7 times, according to Yahoo Finance Plus data .

Mobility is back on the move higher as people get vaccinated for COVID-19.

As for which name McShane is most bullish on, that award goes to Advance Auto Parts in the wake of a recent analyst day. McShane made the rare Wall Street move of upgrading her rating on Advance Auto Parts to Buy from Sell.

"Our double tier upgrade " from Sell to Buy " is predicated upon

McShane says.

[May 09, 2021] Inflation Risk Intensifies With Supply Shortages Multiplying

May 09, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Signs of inflation are picking up, with a mounting number of consumer-facing companies warning in recent days that supply shortages and logistical logjams may force them to raise prices.

Tight inventories of materials as varied as semiconductors, steel, lumber and cotton are showing up in survey data, with manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. this week flagging record backlogs and higher input prices as they scramble to replenish stockpiles and keep up with accelerating consumer demand.

As commodities become increasingly expensive, whether faster inflation proves transitory -- or not -- is the biggest question for policy makers and markets. Rising prices and the potential for a response from central banks topped the list of concerns for money managers surveyed by Bank of America Corp.

Many economists and central bankers, from the Federal Reserve on down, maintain that price gains are temporary and will be curbed by forces such as virus worries and unemployment. Investors remain skeptical, with businesses including Nestle SA and Colgate-Palmolive Co. already announcing they’ll need to raise prices.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a former Fed chair, entered the debate on Tuesday when she ruffled markets with the observation that rates will likely rise as government spending ramps up. She later clarified she was neither predicting nor recommending an increase.

The Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index, which tracks 23 raw materials, has risen to its highest level in almost a decade. That has pushed a gauge of global manufacturing output prices to its highest point since 2009, and U.S. producer prices to levels not seen since 2008, according to data from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and IHS Markit. JPMorgan analysts also estimate non-food and energy import prices in the biggest economies rose almost 4% in the first quarter, the most in three years.

“Risk clearly leans to the upside in the current environment,†said John Mothersole, pricing and purchasing research director at IHS Markit. “The surge in commodity prices over the past year now guarantees higher goods-price inflation this summer.â€

[May 09, 2021] Kolanovic Warns Most Money Managers at Risk of Inflation Shock

May 09, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Money managers who’ve spent the bulk of their careers profiting from deflationary trends need to quickly switch gears or risk an “inflation shock†to their portfolios, warns JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief global markets strategist Marko Kolanovic.

“Many of today’s investment managers have never experienced a rise in yields, commodities, value stocks, or inflation in any meaningful way,†Kolanovic wrote in a report Wednesday. “A significant shift of allocations towards growth, ESG and low volatility styles over the past decade, all of which have negative correlation to inflation, left most portfolios vulnerable.â€

After staging a powerful rally since November amid vaccine rollouts and government stimulus, bets tied to inflation -- rising Treasury yields, cyclical stocks and small-caps, to name a few -- have taken pause in recent weeks. While that has sparked debate over how long the trend will persist, Kolanovic urged clients to adjust to the new regime amid the reopening of the global economy.

“Given the still high unemployment, and a decade of inflation undershoot, central banks will likely tolerate higher inflation and see it as temporary,†he wrote. “The question that matters the most is if asset managers will make a significant change in allocations to express an increased probability of a more persistent inflation.â€

The way Kolanovic sees it, as data continue to point to higher prices of goods and services, investors will be forced to shift from low-volatility plays to value stocks, while increasing allocations to direct inflation hedges such as commodities. That trend is likely to persist in the second half of the year, he wrote.

Based on JPMorgan’s data, professional investors have yet to fully embrace the reflation trade. Take equities, for instance. Both computer-driven traders and hedge funds now hold stocks at levels below historical averages.

“Portfolio managers likely will not take chances and will reposition portfolios,†Kolanovic wrote. “The interplay of low market liquidity, systematic and macro/fundamental flows, the sheer size of financial assets that need to be rotated or hedges for inflation put on, may cause outsized impact on inflationary and reflationary themes over the next year.â€

Story

[May 08, 2021] What's Behind the WTF Spike in Used-Vehicle Prices- My Gut Says, it Can't Last. But if it Lasts, It's Scary-Crazy Inflation -

May 08, 2021 | wolfstreet.com

And if it doesn't last after the stimmies are gone, dealers will sit on massively overpriced collateral, which could get messy.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET .

This has been going on for months: Used-vehicle prices spiking from jaw-dropper to jaw-dropper, and just when I thought prices couldn't possibly spike further, they do.

Prices of used vehicles that were sold at auctions around the US in April spiked by 8.3% from March, by 20% year-to-date, by 54% from April 2020, and by 40% from April 2019, according to the Used Vehicle Value Index released today by Manheim, the largest auto auction operator in the US and a unit of Cox Automotive. All heck has broken loose in the used vehicle market:

The price spike has now completely blown by the prior record spike over the 13-month period through September 2009, which included the cash-for-clunkers program that removed a whole generation of serviceable older vehicles from the market.


makruger May 8, 2021 at 1:31 am

Curiously, the St. Louis Fed says used car prices have been pretty much flat for the last 25 years. While the last year of data shows a notable jump in prices, it's apparently been bludgeoned a little with some old fashioned hedonic quality adjustments.

Wolf Richter May 8, 2021 at 8:55 am

makruger,

I'll help you out since I've been covering this for years. So here is the correct link that explains it all, new vehicle CPI and used vehicle CPI (which is what you cited), plus "hedonic quality adjustments."

https://wolfstreet.com/2021/04/13/yup-dollars-purchasing-power-dropped-to-record-low-again-but-more-sharply-and-its-worse-than-cpi-shows/

And some relevant charts from that article:

Reply
Scott May 8, 2021 at 1:34 am

I can see how the supply for these auctions will be tight for some time given that business travel and the resulting car rental usage is way down. In addition, I would expect a lot of corporate car purchasing is down considerably as many sales reps have worked remotely which stalled corporate car purchasing schedules.

[May 08, 2021] Inflation Is More of a Threat Than the Fed Says - WSJ

May 08, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Naples, Fla.

Messrs. Levy and Bordo allude to the sharp drop in the velocity of M2 after the 2007-09 crisis. The actual decline is startling. In the first quarter of 2007 M2 velocity was 1.99, by the first quarter of 2020 it had fallen almost continually to 1.38. In other words, the money stock went from turning over twice a year to under 1.4 times a year. This is the primary reason for the very low inflation over the period.

me title=

Because of the Covid lockdowns, M2 fell even further to 1.13 by the fourth quarter of 2020. As the authors point out, conditions are much different today than in 2007-20 because of boosted bank reserves, households with substantial savings ready to spend and commercial banks in good shape and eager to lend. Unless an economy-wide lockdown occurs, these are very good reasons to believe the velocity of money will increase significantly, just as the 27% surge in M2 since the outbreak of the pandemic works its way through the economy.

This is a prescription for major inflation, perhaps 4%-5% in the next two years. When people say "no way," I remind them that in the early 1980s hardly anyone believed that interest rates would ever return to 1950s levels. While many individuals prefer to trend forecast, never underestimate how inflation (and interest rates) can swing back and forth in ways that amaze.

Em. Prof. Stephen Happel

Arizona State University

Tempe, Ariz.

Messrs. Levy and Bordo might have made an equally compelling case about the Fed being in total denial about the more troubling risk: that its policies have been contributing to a global asset-price and credit-market bubble.

By maintaining ultralow interest rates and by continuing to expand its balance by $120 billion a month, even when the economy could soon be overheating and U.S. equity valuations are close to their all-time highs, the Fed risks further inflating the asset-price bubble. By so doing, it is heightening the chances of a hard economic landing when the Fed is eventually forced to slam on the monetary-policy brakes to meet its inflation objective.

Desmond Lachman

American Enterprise Institute

Washington

Why did the money supply hardly budge in 2008, whereas now it's steadily increasing? The answer is that during the financial crisis the Fed conducted a radical experiment: It paid banks not to lend. By design, quantitative easing shored up banks' balance sheets while interest on excess reserves prevented the newly created money from circulating.

In March 2020, the Fed slashed interest on excess reserves from 1.60% to 0.10%. The benefits of sitting on funds is much smaller, which is why lending has increased.

me title=

Messrs. Levy and Bordo emphasize structural factors in the U.S. economy, such as housing and trade. These matter, but not nearly so much as policy. Inflationary pressures will continue if the Fed's asset purchases increase the broader money supply. But this depends on whether the Fed raises interest on excess reserves to prepandemic levels.

For better or worse, interest on excess reserves is now a crucial policy tool. We can't understand inflation without it.

Assoc. Prof. Alexander William Salter

Texas Tech University

Lubbock, Texas

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the May 5, 2021, print edition as 'Inflation Is More of a Threat Than Fed Says.'

[May 08, 2021] Yellen and the Fed are currently repeating one of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. economic history. It happened during the 1940s following the conclusion of WWII

May 08, 2021 | www.wsj.com

SUBSCRIBER 3 hours ago Yellen and the Fed are currently repeating one of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. economic history. It happened during the 1940s following the conclusion of WWII.

The Fed is riding a tiger by the tail and will likely have great difficulty extricating itself from a torrid monetary experiment that is reaching its limits. The U.S. M4 money supply rose an alarming 24% in March alone from a year earlier whereas M1 rose 37%. Notwithstanding these shocking numbers the Fed continues to buy $120bn of bonds each month and the total amount of money in circulation is exploding at an unprecedented 40% rate.

Professor William Barnett of the Center for Financial Stability in New York explained that today's financial collusion between the Fed and the Treasury is much like the 1940s when the Fed served as a fiscal agent for Democratic administrations. The chaotic aftermath? By mid-1947 the rate of inflation exceeded 17% per year - destroying low income households.

(Cont.)
Like thumb_up 5 Reply Share link Report D


Yellen and the Fed are currently repeating one of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. economic history. It happened during the 1940s following the conclusion of WWII

SUBSCRIBER 3 hours ago
Yellen and the Fed are currently repeating one of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. economic history. It happened during the 1940s following the conclusion of WWII.

The Fed is riding a tiger by the tail and will likely have great difficulty extricating itself from a torrid monetary experiment that is reaching its limits. The U.S. M4 money supply rose an alarming 24% in March alone from a year earlier whereas M1 rose 37%. Notwithstanding these shocking numbers the Fed continues to buy $120bn of bonds each month and the total amount of money in circulation is exploding at an unprecedented 40% rate.

Professor William Barnett of the Center for Financial Stability in New York explained that today's financial collusion between the Fed and the Treasury is much like the 1940s when the Fed served as a fiscal agent for Democratic administrations. The chaotic aftermath? By mid-1947 the rate of inflation exceeded 17% per year - destroying low income households.

(Cont.)

Yellen and the Fed are currently repeating one of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. economic history. It happened during the 1940s following the conclusion of WWII SUBSCRIBER 3 hours ago
Yellen and the Fed are currently repeating one of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. economic history. It happened during the 1940s following the conclusion of WWII.

The Fed is riding a tiger by the tail and will likely have great difficulty extricating itself from a torrid monetary experiment that is reaching its limits. The U.S. M4 money supply rose an alarming 24% in March alone from a year earlier whereas M1 rose 37%. Notwithstanding these shocking numbers the Fed continues to buy $120bn of bonds each month and the total amount of money in circulation is exploding at an unprecedented 40% rate.

Professor William Barnett of the Center for Financial Stability in New York explained that today's financial collusion between the Fed and the Treasury is much like the 1940s when the Fed served as a fiscal agent for Democratic administrations. The chaotic aftermath? By mid-1947 the rate of inflation exceeded 17% per year - destroying low income households.

(Cont.)

Yellen and the Fed are currently repeating one of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. economic history. It happened during the 1940s following the conclusion of WWII
Yellen and the Fed are currently repeating one of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. economic history. It happened during the 1940s following the conclusion of WWII.

The Fed is riding a tiger by the tail and will likely have great difficulty extricating itself from a torrid monetary experiment that is reaching its limits. The U.S. M4 money supply rose an alarming 24% in March alone from a year earlier whereas M1 rose 37%. Notwithstanding these shocking numbers the Fed continues to buy $120bn of bonds each month and the total amount of money in circulation is exploding at an unprecedented 40% rate.

Professor William Barnett of the Center for Financial Stability in New York explained that today's financial collusion between the Fed and the Treasury is much like the 1940s when the Fed served as a fiscal agent for Democratic administrations. The chaotic aftermath? By mid-1947 the rate of inflation exceeded 17% per year - destroying low income households.

(Cont.)

Yellen and the Fed are currently repeating one of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. economic history. It happened during the 1940s following the conclusion of WWII
Yellen and the Fed are currently repeating one of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. economic history. It happened during the 1940s following the conclusion of WWII.

The Fed is riding a tiger by the tail and will likely have great difficulty extricating itself from a torrid monetary experiment that is reaching its limits. The U.S. M4 money supply rose an alarming 24% in March alone from a year earlier whereas M1 rose 37%. Notwithstanding these shocking numbers the Fed continues to buy $120bn of bonds each month and the total amount of money in circulation is exploding at an unprecedented 40% rate.

Professor William Barnett of the Center for Financial Stability in New York explained that today's financial collusion between the Fed and the Treasury is much like the 1940s when the Fed served as a fiscal agent for Democratic administrations. The chaotic aftermath? By mid-1947 the rate of inflation exceeded 17% per year - destroying low income households.

(Cont.)

[May 08, 2021] President Biden and Secretary Yellen said this week there is no significant inflation

May 08, 2021 | www.wsj.com

President Biden and Secretary Yellen said this week there is no significant inflation

Carlos Lumpuy
President Biden and Secretary Yellen said this week there is no significant inflation.
On May 7 of last year, the metric standard of lumber, 1,000 board feet was $360 . Today it's $1,702 a record high. It broke $1,000 first time ever a month ago on April 7.
That's a 70% increase in lumber in just the last 30 days.
Copper was $2.33 on May 7 of last year. Today, $4.76 a record high.
Steel Rebar was $3,768 on May 7 of last year. Today: $5,483 , record high.
President Biden and Secretary Yellen said this week there is no significant inflation .
Tell that to a builder, his subcontractors, and the buyer of a newly built home this summer.
Food prices for Corn, Wheat, Soybeans, Rice, Milk, Coffee, Cocoa are up double digits in just the last two months.
Vice President Harris ignored a question about inflation with her regular everyday cackle laughing as she walked away.
We are in month four of this administration that prioritizes its war on the wind and the weather.
Figures are from Yahoo Finance
President Biden and Secretary Yellen said this week there is no significant inflation Carlos Lumpuy
President Biden and Secretary Yellen said this week there is no significant inflation.
On May 7 of last year, the metric standard of lumber, 1,000 board feet was $360 . Today it's $1,702 a record high. It broke $1,000 first time ever a month ago on April 7.
That's a 70% increase in lumber in just the last 30 days.
Copper was $2.33 on May 7 of last year. Today, $4.76 a record high.
Steel Rebar was $3,768 on May 7 of last year. Today: $5,483 , record high.
President Biden and Secretary Yellen said this week there is no significant inflation .
Tell that to a builder, his subcontractors, and the buyer of a newly built home this summer.
Food prices for Corn, Wheat, Soybeans, Rice, Milk, Coffee, Cocoa are up double digits in just the last two months.
Vice President Harris ignored a question about inflation with her regular everyday cackle laughing as she walked away.
We are in month four of this administration that prioritizes its war on the wind and the weather.
Figures are from Yahoo Finance

[May 07, 2021] U.S. job growth disappoints in challenge to economic recovery - BNN Bloomberg

May 07, 2021 | www.bnnbloomberg.ca

6h ago

U.S. job growth disappoints in challenge to economic recovery

Olivia Rockeman , Bloomberg News

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.455.0_en.html#goog_688272017 U.S. jobs data in April disappoints

U.S. job growth significantly undershot forecasts in April, suggesting that difficulty attracting workers is slowing momentum in the labor market and challenging the economic recovery.

Payrolls rose 266,000 from a month earlier, according to a Labor Department report Friday that represented one of the largest downside misses on record. Economists in a Bloomberg survey projected a 1 million hiring surge in April.

The unemployment rate edged up to 6.1 per cent, though the labor-force participation rate also increased.

... The disappointing payrolls print leaves overall employment more than 8 million short of its pre-pandemic level and is consistent with recent comments from company officials highlighting challenges in filling open positions.

... While job gains accelerated in leisure and hospitality, employment at temporary-help agencies and transportation and warehousing declined sharply.

...

Labor force participation, a measure of the percentage of Americans either working or looking for work, rose to 61.7 per cent in April from 61.5 per cent, likely supported by increased vaccinations that helped fuel the reopenings of many retail establishments, restaurants and leisure-facing businesses.

Average weekly hours increased to match the highest in records dating back to 2006. The gain in the workweek, increased pay and the improvement in hiring helped boost aggregate weekly payrolls 1.2 per cent in April after a 1.3 per cent gain a month earlier.

Workforce participation for men age 25 to 54 increased last month, while edging lower for women.

[May 07, 2021] Goldman, Pimco Detect Irrational Inflation Mania in Bonds

May 07, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and bond titan Pacific Investment Management Co. have a simple message for Treasuries traders fretting over inflation: Relax.

The firms estimate that bond traders who are pricing in annual inflation approaching 3% over the next handful of years are overstating the pressures bubbling up as the U.S. economy rebounds from the pandemic.

...the overshoot could be as large as 0.2-to-0.3 percentage point. That gap makes a difference with key market proxies of inflation expectations for the coming few years surging this week to the highest in more than a decade. The 10-year measure, perhaps the most closely followed, eclipsed 2.5% Friday for the first time since 2013, even after unexpectedly weak U.S. jobs data.

There's at least one market metric that backs up the view that the pressures, which have been building for months, aren't about to get out of hand and may even prove temporary. A swaps instrument that reflects the annual inflation rate for the second half of the next decade has been relatively stable in recent months.

...The Federal Reserve has been hammering home that it sees any spike in price pressures as likely short-lived, and that it's willing to let inflation run above target for a period as the economy revives.

... ... ...

... Inflation worries have been mounting against a backdrop of soaring commodities prices -- copper, for example, set a record high Friday. It's all happening as lawmakers in Washington debate another massive fiscal-stimulus package.

...

Korapaty calls the outlook for inflation "benign." His view is that the market is overly optimistic with its inflation assumptions, with the greatest mismatch to be found on the three- and five-year horizon. At roughly 2.75% and 2.7%, respectively, those rates are around 20 to 30 basis points higher than they should be, in his estimate.

... ... ...

...Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stirred markets by saying interest rates will likely rise as government spending swells and the economy achieves faster growth. She walked back the remarks hours later.

... "Because we think front-end rates are pricing in a more aggressive Fed path than we believe, we do like shorter-dated nominal bonds, and think there's value there," she said.

[May 06, 2021] Aldous Huxley Foresaw Our Despots - Fauci, Gates, The Vaccine Crusaders

This is starting to look really like staging of "Brave new world..." Today's society is closer to Huxley's "Brave New World" than to Orwell's "1984". But there are clear elements of both. If you will, the worst of both worlds has come true today.
May 06, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Patricia McCarthy via AmericanThinker.com,

In 1949, sometime after the publication of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four , Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World (1931), who was then living in California, wrote to Orwell. Huxley had briefly taught French to Orwell as a student in high school at Eton.

Huxley generally praises Orwell's novel, which to many seemed very similar to Brave New World in its dystopian view of a possible future. Huxley politely voices his opinion that his own version of what might come to pass would be truer than Orwell's. Huxley observed that the philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is sadism, whereas his own version is more likely, that controlling an ignorant and unsuspecting public would be less arduous, less wasteful by other means. Huxley's masses are seduced by a mind-numbing drug, Orwell's with sadism and fear.

The most powerful quote In Huxley's letter to Orwell is this:

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.


Aldous Huxley.

Could Huxley have more prescient? What do we see around us?

Masses of people dependent upon drugs, legal and illegal. The majority of advertisements that air on television seem to be for prescription drugs, some of them miraculous but most of them unnecessary. Then comes COVID, a quite possibly weaponized virus from the Fauci-funded-with-taxpayer-dollars lab in Wuhan, China. The powers that be tragically deferred to the malevolent Fauci who had long been hoping for just such an opportunity. Suddenly, there was an opportunity to test the mRNA vaccines that had been in the works for nearly twenty years. They could be authorized as an emergency measure but were still highly experimental. These jabs are not really vaccines at all, but a form of gene therapy . There are potential disastrous consequences down the road. Government experiments on the public are nothing new .

Since there have been no actual, long-term trials, no one who contributed to this massive drug experiment knows what the long-term consequences might be. There have been countless adverse injuries and deaths already for which the government-funded vaccine producers will suffer no liability. With each passing day, new side-effects have begun to appear: blood clots, seizures, heart failure.

As new adverse reactions become known despite the censorship employed by most media outlets, the more the Biden administration is pushing the vaccine, urging private corporations to make it mandatory for all employees. Colleges are making them mandatory for all students returning to campus.

The leftmedia are advocating the "shunning" of the unvaccinated. The self-appointed virtue-signaling Democrats are furious at anyone and everyone who declines the jab. Why? If they are protected, why do they care? That is the question. Same goes for the ridiculous mask requirements . They protect no one but for those in operating rooms with their insides exposed, yet even the vaccinated are supposed to wear them!

Months ago, herd immunity was near. Now Fauci and the CDC say it will never be achieved? Now the Pfizer shot will necessitate yearly booster shots. Pfizer expects to make $21B this year from its COVID vaccine! Anyone who thinks this isn't about money is a fool. It is all about money, which is why Fauci, Gates, et al. were so determined to convince the public that HCQ and ivermectin, both of which are effective, prophylactically and as treatment, were not only useless, but dangerous. Both of those drugs are tried, true, and inexpensive. Many of those thousands of N.Y. nursing home fatalities might have been prevented with the use of one or both of those drugs. Those deaths are on the hands of Cuomo and his like-minded tyrants drunk on power.

Months ago, Fauci, et al. agreed that children were at little or no risk of getting COVID, of transmitting it, least of all dying from it. Now Fauci is demanding that all teens be vaccinated by the end of the year! Why? They are no more in danger of contracting it now than they were a year ago. Why are parents around this country not standing up to prevent their kids from being guinea pigs in this monstrous medical experiment? And now they are " experimenting " on infants. Needless to say, some have died. There is no reason on Earth for teens, children, and infants to be vaccinated. Not one.

Huxley also wrote this:

"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' -- this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats ."

- Crome Yellow

Perhaps this explains the left's hysterical impulse to force these untested shots on those of us who have made the decision to go without it. If they've decided that it is the thing to do, then all of us must submit to their whims. If we decide otherwise, it gives them the righteous right to smear all of us whom they already deplore.

As C.J. Hopkins has written , the left means to criminalize dissent. Those of us who are vaccine-resistant are soon to be outcasts, deprived of jobs and entry into everyday businesses. This kind of discrimination should remind everyone of ...oh, Germany three quarters of a century ago. Huxley also wrote, "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." That is precisely what the left is up to, what BLM is planning, what Critical Race Theory is all about.

Tal Zaks, Moderna's chief medical officer, said these new vaccines are "hacking the software of life." Vaccine-promoters claim he never said this, but he did. Bill Gates called the vaccines " an operating system " to the horror of those promoting it, a Kinsley gaffe. Whether it is or isn't hardly matters at this point, but these statements by those behind the vaccines are a clue to what they have in mind.

There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears , so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.

This is exactly what the left is working so hard to effect: a pharmacologically compromised population happy to be taken care of by a massive state machine. And while millions of people around the world have surrendered to the vaccine and mask hysteria, millions more, about 1.3 billion, want no part of this government vaccine mania.

In his letter to Orwell, Huxley ended with the quote cited above and again here because it is so profound:

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.

Huxley nailed the left more than seventy years ago, perhaps because leftists have never changed throughout the ages. 61,497 173


Fat Beaver 14 hours ago (Edited)

If i am to be treated as an outcast or an undesirable because i refuse the vax, i will immediately become someone that has zero reverence for the law, and i can only imagine 10's of millions will be right there with me.

strych10 14 hours ago

Welcome to the club.

We have coffee in the corner and occasional meetings at various bars.

Dr. Chihuahua-González 13 hours ago

I'm a doctor, you could contact me anytime and receive your injection.

Fat Beaver 13 hours ago (Edited)

I've gotta feeling the normie world you think you live in is about to change drastically for the worse...

sparky139 PREMIUM 10 hours ago

You mean you'll sign papers that you injected us *wink *wink? And toss it away?

bothneither 2 hours ago

Oh geez how uncommon, another useless doctor with no Scruples who sold out to big Pharma. Please have my Gates sponsored secret sauce.

Unknown 6 hours ago (Edited)

Both Huxley and Orwell are wrong. Neoliberalism (the use of once office for personal gains) is by far the most powerful force that subjugates the inept population. Neoliberalism demolished the mighty USSR, now destroying the USA, and will do the same to China. And this poison dribbles from the top to bottom creating self-centered population that is unable to unite, much less resist.

Deathrips 15 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Tylers.
You gonna cover Tucker Carlsons show earlier today on FOX news about vaxxx deaths? almost 4k reported so far this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIJQuk-qK2o

19331510 14 hours ago (Edited)

https://www.openvaers.com/covid-data/death-stats

AGE Deaths

0-24 23

25-50 184

51-65 506

66-80 1164

81-100 1346

U 321

R.I.P.

Joe Joe Depends 13 hours ago

India up in arms about mere 1%

spanish flu was 3%

JimmyJones 9 hours ago

Is the population of india up in arms or is the MSM?

Nelbev 10 hours ago

Facebook just flagged/censored it, must sign into see vid, Tuck also failed to mention mRNA and adenovirus vaxes were experimental and not FDA approved nor gone through stage III trials. Beside deaths, have blood clot issues. Good he mentioned how naturally immune if get covid and recovered, better than vaccine, but not covered for bogus passports. Me personally, I would rather catch covid and get natural immunity than be vaccinated with an untested experimental vaccine.

19331510 14 hours ago

Covid19 links.

Websites:

https://www.americasfrontlinedocs.com/media/

https://covid19criticalcare.com/

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/

https://www.constitutionalrightscentre.ca/category/news/

https://doctors4covidethics.medium.com/

https://www.flemingmethod.com/

https://gbdeclaration.org/

https://www.lifesitenews.com/

https://healthimpactnews.com/

https://www.mercola.com/

https://drleemerritt.com/

https://www.drtenpenny.com/

https://principia-scientific.com/

https://standupcanada.solutions/canadian-doctors-speak

https://thehighwire.com/

https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/ https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/links/general-links/

Video Sharing : https://www.bitchute.com/ ; https://brandnewtube.com/ ; https://odysee.com/ ; https://rumble.com/ https://superu.net

Healthcare Professionals :

Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr. Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff; Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits; Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;

A list of Canadian doctors: https://standupcanada.solutions/canadian-doctors-speak

Lawyers : Dr. Reiner Fuellmich; Rocco Galati;

Drug Adverse Reaction Databases:

http://www.adrreports.eu/en/index.html (Search; Suspected Drug Reactions Reports for Substances) COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE MODERNA (CX-024414); COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE PFIZER-BIONTECH; COVID-19 VACCINE ASTRAZENECA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19); COVID-19 VACCINE JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S)

https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html

Research papers :

https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/ (pcr tests)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/ (face masks)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13484 (lock downs)

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2026670 (child/teacher morbidity)

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.01.20222315v1 (transmission by children)

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm (masks/restaurants)

https://www.mdpi.com/1648-9144/57/3/199 (biased trial reporting)

Covid19 links.

Websites:

https://www.americasfrontlinedocs.com/media/

https://covid19criticalcare.com/

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/

https://www.constitutionalrightscentre.ca/category/news/

https://doctors4covidethics.medium.com/

https://www.flemingmethod.com/

https://gbdeclaration.org/

https://www.lifesitenews.com/

https://healthimpactnews.com/

https://www.mercola.com/

https://drleemerritt.com/

https://www.drtenpenny.com/

https://principia-scientific.com/

https://standupcanada.solutions/canadian-doctors-speak

https://thehighwire.com/

https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/ https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/links/general-links/

Video Sharing : https://www.bitchute.com/ ; https://brandnewtube.com/ ; https://odysee.com/ ; https://rumble.com/ https://superu.net

Healthcare Professionals :

Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr. Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff; Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits; Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;

A list of Canadian doctors: https://standupcanada.solutions/canadian-doctors-speak

Lawyers : Dr. Reiner Fuellmich; Rocco Galati;

Drug Adverse Reaction Databases:

http://www.adrreports.eu/en/index.html (Search; Suspected Drug Reactions Reports for Substances) COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE MODERNA (CX-024414); COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE PFIZER-BIONTECH; COVID-19 VACCINE ASTRAZENECA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19); COVID-19 VACCINE JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S)

https://www.openvaers.com/

Research papers :

https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/ (pcr tests)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/ (face masks)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13484 (lock downs)

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2026670 (child/teacher morbidity)

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.01.20222315v1 (transmission by children)

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm (masks/restaurants)

https://www.mdpi.com/1648-9144/57/3/199 (biased trial reporting)

Ultramarines 15 hours ago (Edited)

His making of the gamma and delta workforce was quite prescient. We are seeing it play out now, we all know gammas and delta. There was a really good ABC tv movie made in 1980 Brave New World. Excellent show, it shows the Alphas and names them Rothchild and so on. Shows what these people specifically want to do to the world. I wonder if the ruling psychopaths actually wait for science fiction authors to plan the future and then follow their script.

Mineshaft Gap 10 hours ago

If Huxley were starting out today no major publisher would touch him.

They'd tell him Brave New World doesn't have a diverse enough of cast. Even the mostly likable totalitarian guy named Mustapha turns out to be white! A white Mustapha. It's soooo triggering. Also, what's wrong with a little electronic fun and drug taking, anyway? Lighten up , Aldous.

Meanwhile his portrait of shrieking medieval Catholic nuns who think they're possessed in The Devils of Loudun might remind the leftist editors too uncomfortably of their own recent bleating performances at "White Fragility" struggle sessions.

Sorry, Aldous. Just...too...problematic.

[May 05, 2021] Mark Blyth " An Inflated Fear of Inflation ?

May 01, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Yves here. Mark Blyth is such a treat. How can you not be a fan of the man who coined "The Hamptons are not a defensible position"? Even though he's not always right, he's so incisive and has such a strong point of view that his occasional questionable notions serve as fodder for thought. And I suspect he'll be proven correct on his topic today, the inflation bugaboo. Yves here. Mark Blyth is such a treat. How can you not be a fan of the man who coined "The Hamptons are not a defensible position"? Even though he's not always right, he's so incisive and has such a strong point of view that his occasional questionable notions serve as fodder for thought. And I suspect he'll be proven correct on his topic today, the inflation bugaboo. Even though he's not always right, he's so incisive and has such a strong point of view that his occasional questionable notions serve as fodder for thought. And I suspect he'll be proven correct on his topic today, the inflation bugaboo. Even though he's not always right, he's so incisive and has such a strong point of view that his occasional questionable notions serve as fodder for thought. And I suspect he'll be proven correct on his topic today, the inflation bugaboo. By Paul Jay.

... ... ...

Paul Jay
And is the idea that inflation is about to come roaring back one of the stupid ideas that you're talking about? And is the idea that inflation is about to come roaring back one of the stupid ideas that you're talking about?
Mark Blyth
I hope that it is, but I'm going to go with Larry on this one. He says it's about one third chance that it's going to do this. I'd probably give it about one in ten, so it's not impossible.

So, let's unpack why we're going to see this. Can you generate inflation? Yeah. I mean, dead easy. Imagine your Turkey. Why not be a kind of Turkish pseudo dictator?

Why not fire the head of your central bank in an economy that's basically dependent on other people valuing your assets and giving you money through capital flows? And then why don't you fire the central bank head and put in charge your brother-in-law? I think it was his brother-in-law. And then insist that low interest rates cure inflation. And then watch as the value of your currency, the lira collapses, which means all the stuff you import is massively expensive, which means that people will pay more, and the general level of all prices will go up, which is an inflation. So, can you generate an inflation in the modern world? Sure, yeah. Easy. Just be an idiot, right? Now, does this apply to the United States? No. That's where it gets entirely different. So, a couple of things to think about (first). So, you mentioned that huge number of 20 trillion dollars. Well, that's more or less about two thirds of what we threw into the global economy after the global financial crisis, and inflation singularly failed to show up. All those people in 2010 screaming about inflation and China dumping bonds and all that. Totally wrong. Completely wrong. No central bank that's got a brass nameplate worth a damn has managed to hit its inflation target of two percent in over a decade. All that would imply that there is a huge amount of what we call "˜slack' in the economy. (Also) think about the fact that we've had, since the 1990s, across the OECD, by any measure, full employment. That is to say, most people who want a job can actually find one, and at the same time, despite that, there has been almost no price pressure coming from wages, pushing on into prices, to push up inflation. So rather than the so-called vertical Phillips curve, which most of modern macro is based upon, whereby there's a kind of speed bump for the economy, and if the government spends money, it can't push this curve out, all it can do is push it up in terms of prices. What we seem to actually have is one whereby you can have a constant level of inflation, which is very low, and any amount of unemployment you want from 2 percent to 12 percent, depending on where you look and in which time-period.

All of which suggests that at least for big developed, open, globalized economies, where you've destroyed trade unions, busted up national product cartels, globally integrated your markets, and added 600 million people to the global labor supply, you just can't generate inflation very easily. Now, we're running, depending on how much actually passes, a two to five trillion-dollar experiment on which theory of inflation is right. This one, or is it this one? That's basically what we're doing just now. Larry's given it one in three that it's his one. I'd give it one in ten his one's right. Now, if I may just go on just for a seconds longer. This is where the politics of this gets interesting. Most people don't understand what inflation is. You get all this stuff talked by economists and central bankers about inflation and expectations and all that, but you go out and survey people and they have no idea what the damn thing is. Think about the fact that most people talk about house price inflation.

There is no such thing as house price inflation. Inflation is a general rise in the level of all prices. A sustained rise in the level of prices. The fact that house prices in Toronto have gone up is because Canada stopped building public housing in the 1980s and turned it into an asset class and let the 10 percent top earners buy it all and swap it with each other. That is singularly not an inflation. So, what's going to happen coming out of Covid is there will be a big pickup in spending, a pickup in employment. I think it's (going to be) less than people expect because the people with the money are not going to go out and spend it because they have all they want already. There are only so many Sub-Zero fridges you can buy. Meanwhile, the bottom 60 percent of the income distribution are too busy paying back debt from the past year to go on a spending spree, but there definitely will be a pickup. Now, does that mean that there's going to be what we used to call bottlenecks? Yeah, because basically firms run down inventory because they're in the middle of a bloody recession. Does it mean that there are going to be supply chain problems? Yes, we see this with computer chips. So, what's going to happen is that computer chips are going to go up in price.

So, lots of individual things are going to go up in price, and what's going to happen is people are going to go "there's the inflation, there's that terrible inflation," and it's not. It's just basically short-term factors that will dissipate after 18 months. That is my bet. For Larry to be right what would have to be true?

That we would have to have the institutions, agreements, labor markets and product markets of the 1970s. We don't.

... ... ...

So, I just don't actually see what the generator of inflation would be. We are not Turkey dependent on capital imports for our survival with a currency that's falling off a cliff. That is entirely different. That import mechanism, which is the way that most countries these days get a bit of inflation. That simply doesn't apply in the U.S. So, with my money on it, if I had to bet, it's one in 10 Larry's right, rather one in 3.

Paul Jay
The other point he raises, and we talked a little bit about this in a previous interview, but let's revisit it, is that the size of the American debt, even if it isn't inflationary at some point, creates some kind of crisis of confidence in the dollar being the reserve currency of the world, and so this big infrastructure spending is a problem because of that. That's part of, I believe, one of his arguments. The other point he raises, and we talked a little bit about this in a previous interview, but let's revisit it, is that the size of the American debt, even if it isn't inflationary at some point, creates some kind of crisis of confidence in the dollar being the reserve currency of the world, and so this big infrastructure spending is a problem because of that. That's part of, I believe, one of his arguments.
Mark Blyth
The way political economists look at the financial plumbing, I think, is different to the way that macro economists do. We see it rather differently. The first thing is, what's your alternative to the dollar unless you're basically going to go all-in on gold or bitcoin? And good luck with those. If we go into a crushing recession and our bond market collapses, don't think that Europe's going to be a safe haven given that they've got half the US growth rate. And we could talk about what Europe's got going on post-pandemic because it's not that good. So what's your alternative (to the Dollar)? Buy yen? No, not really. You're going to buy Chinese assets? Well, good luck, and given the way that their country is being run at the moment, if you ever want to take your capital out. I'm not sure that's going to work for you, even if you could. So you're kind of stuck with it. Mechanically there's another problem. All of the countries that make surpluses in the world make surpluses because we run deficits. One has to balance the other. So, when you're a Chinese firm selling to the United States, which is probably an American firm in China with Chinese subcontractors selling to the United States, what happens is they get paid in dollars. When they receive those dollars in China, they don't let them into the domestic banking system. They sterilize them and they turn them into the local currency, which is why China has all these (dollar) reserves. That's their national savings. Would you like to burn your reserves in a giant pile? Well, one way to do that would be to dump American debt, which would be equivalent to burning your national savings. If you're a firm, what do you do? Well, you basically have to use dollars for your invoicing. You have to use dollars for your purchasing, and you keep accumulating dollars, which you hand back to your central bank, which then hands you the domestic currency. The central bank then has a problem because it's got a liability " (foreign) cash rather than an asset. So, what's the easiest asset to buy? Buy another 10-year Treasury bill, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. So, if we were to actually have that type of crisis of confidence, the people who would actually suffer would be the Germans and the Chinese, because their export-driven models only makes sense in terms of the deficits that we run. Think of it as kind of monetarily assured destruction because the plumbing works this way. I just don't see how you can have that crisis of confidence because you've got nowhere else to take your confidence.
Paul Jay
If I understand it correctly, the majority of American government debt is held by Americans, so it's actually really the wealth is still inside the United States. I saw a number, this was done three or four years ago, maybe, but I think it was Brookings Institute, that assets after liabilities in private hands in the United States is something like 98 trillion dollars. So I don't get where this crisis of confidence is going to come any time soon. If I understand it correctly, the majority of American government debt is held by Americans, so it's actually really the wealth is still inside the United States. I saw a number, this was done three or four years ago, maybe, but I think it was Brookings Institute, that assets after liabilities in private hands in the United States is something like 98 trillion dollars. So I don't get where this crisis of confidence is going to come any time soon.
Mark Blyth
Basically, if your economy grows faster (than the rest of the world because you are) the technological leader, your stock markets grows faster than the others. If you're an international investor, you want access to that. (That ends) only if there were actual real deep economic problems (for the US), like, for example, China invents fusion energy and gives it free to the world. That would definitely screw up Texas. But short of that, it's hard to see exactly what would be these game-changers that would result in this. And of course, this is where the Bitcoin people come in. It's all about crypto, and nobody has any faith in the dollar, and all this sort of stuff. Well, I don't see why we have faith in something (like that instead . I think it was just last week. There wasn't much reporting on this, I don't know if you caught this, but there were some twenty-nine-year-old dude ran a crypto exchange. I can't remember where it was. Maybe somewhere like Turkey. But basically he had two billion in crypto and he just walked off with the cash. You don't walk off with the Fed, but you could walk off with a crypto exchange. So until those problems are basically sorted out, the notion that we can all jump into a digital currency, which at the end of the day, to buy anything, you need to turn back into a physical currency because you don't buy your coffee with crypto, we're back to that (old) problem. How do you get out of the dollar? That structural feature is incredibly important.
Paul Jay
So there's some critique of the Biden infrastructure plan and some of the other stimulus, coming from the left, because, one, the left more or less agrees with what you said about inflation, and the critique is that it's actually not big enough, and let me add to that. I'm kind of a little bit surprised, maybe not anymore, but Wall Street on the whole, not Larry Summers and a few others, but most of them actually seem quite in support of the Biden plan. You don't hear a lot of screaming about inflation from Wall Street. Maybe from the Republicans, but not from listening to Bloomberg Radio. So there's some critique of the Biden infrastructure plan and some of the other stimulus, coming from the left, because, one, the left more or less agrees with what you said about inflation, and the critique is that it's actually not big enough, and let me add to that. I'm kind of a little bit surprised, maybe not anymore, but Wall Street on the whole, not Larry Summers and a few others, but most of them actually seem quite in support of the Biden plan. You don't hear a lot of screaming about inflation from Wall Street. Maybe from the Republicans, but not from listening to Bloomberg Radio.
Mark Blyth
You don't even hear a lot of screaming about corporate taxes, which is fascinating, right? You'd think they'd be up in arms about this? I actually spoke to a business audience recently about this, and I kind of did an informal survey and I said, "why are you guys not up in arms about this?" And someone that was on the call said, "well, you know, the Warren Buffet line about you find out who's swimming naked when the tide goes out? What if a lot of firms that we think are great firms are just really good at tax optimization? What if those profits are really just contingent on that? That would be really nice to know this because then we could stop investing in them and invest in better stuff that actually does things." You don't even hear a lot of screaming about corporate taxes, which is fascinating, right? You'd think they'd be up in arms about this? I actually spoke to a business audience recently about this, and I kind of did an informal survey and I said, "why are you guys not up in arms about this?" And someone that was on the call said, "well, you know, the Warren Buffet line about you find out who's swimming naked when the tide goes out? What if a lot of firms that we think are great firms are just really good at tax optimization? What if those profits are really just contingent on that? That would be really nice to know this because then we could stop investing in them and invest in better stuff that actually does things."
Paul Jay
And pick up the pieces of what's left of them for a penny if they have to go down. And pick up the pieces of what's left of them for a penny if they have to go down.
Mark Blyth
Absolutely. Just one thought that we'll circle back, to the left does not think it's big enough, etc. Well, yes, of course they wouldn't, and this is one of those things whereby you kind of have to check yourself. I give the inflation problem a one in ten. But what I'm really dispassionately trying to do is to look at this as just a problem. My political preferences lie on the side of "˜the state should do more.' They lie on the side of "˜I think we should have higher real wages.' They lay on the side that says that "˜populism is something that can be fixed if the bottom 60 percent actually had some kind of growth.' So, therefore, I like programs that do that. Psychologically, I am predisposed therefore to discount inflation. I'm totally discounting that because that's my priors and I'm really deeply trying to check this. In this debate, it's always worth bearing in mind, no one's doing that. The Republicans and the right are absolutely going to be hell bent on inflation, not because they necessarily really believe in (inevitable) inflation, (but) because it's a useful way to stop things happening. And then for the left to turn around and say, well, it isn't big enough, (is because you might as well play double or quits because, you know, you've got Biden and that's the best that's going to get. So there's a way in which when we really are trying to figure out these things, we kind of have to check our partisan preferences because they basically multiply the errors in our thinking, I think.
Paul Jay
Now, earlier you said that one of the main factors why inflation is structurally low now, I don't know if you said exactly those words. Now, earlier you said that one of the main factors why inflation is structurally low now, I don't know if you said exactly those words.
Mark Blyth
I would say that yes. I would say that yes.
Paul Jay
Is the weakness of the unions, the weakness of workers in virtually all countries, but particularly in the U.S., because it matters so much. That organizing of workers is just, they're so unable to raise their wages over decades of essentially wages that barely keep up with inflation and don't grow in any way, certainly not in any relationship to the way productivity has grown. So we as progressives, well, we want workers to get better organized. We want stronger unions. We want higher wages, but we want it without inflation. Is the weakness of the unions, the weakness of workers in virtually all countries, but particularly in the U.S., because it matters so much. That organizing of workers is just, they're so unable to raise their wages over decades of essentially wages that barely keep up with inflation and don't grow in any way, certainly not in any relationship to the way productivity has grown. So we as progressives, well, we want workers to get better organized. We want stronger unions. We want higher wages, but we want it without inflation.
Mark Blyth
And it's a question of how much room you have to do that. I mean, essentially, if you quintuple the money supply, eventually prices will have to rise"¦but that depends upon the velocity of money which has actually been collapsing. So maybe you'd have to do it 10 times. There's interesting research out of London, which I saw a couple of weeks ago, that basically says you really can't correlate inflation with increases in the money supply. It's just not true. It's not the money that's doing it. It's the expectations. That then begs the question, well, who's actually paying attention if we all don't really understand what inflation is? So I tend to think of this as basically a kind of a physical process. It's very easy to understand if your currency goes down by 50 percent and you're heavily dependent on imports. You're import (prices) go up. All the prices in the shops are going to go up. That's a mechanism that I can clearly identify that will generate rising prices. If you have big unions, if you have kind of cartel-like vertically integrated firms that control the national market, if you have COLA contracts. If you have labor able to do what we used to call leapfrogging wage claims against other unions, if this is all institutionally and legally protected, I can see how that generates inflation, that is a mechanism I can point to. That doesn't exist just now. Let's unpack this for a minute. The sort of fundamental theoretical assumption on this is based is some kind of "˜marginal productivity theory of wages.' In a perfectly free market with free exchange, in which we don't live, what would happen is you would hire me up to the point that my marginal product is basically paying off for you, and once it produces zero profits, that's kind of where my wages end. I'm paid up to the point that my marginal product is useful to the firm. This is not really a useful way of thinking about it because if you're the employer and I'm the worker, and I walk up to you and say, hey, my marginal productivity is seven, so how about you pay me seven bucks? You just say, shut up or I'll fire you and get someone else. Now, the way that we used to deal with this was a kind of "˜higher than your outside option,' on wages. The way we used to think about this was "why would you pay somebody ten bucks at McDonald's?" Because then you might actually get them to and flip the burgers because they're outside option is probably seven bucks, and if you pay them seven bucks, they just won't show up. So we used to have to pay workers a bit more. So that was, in a sense, (workers) claiming (a bit of the surplus) from productivity. But now what we've done, Suresh Naidu the economist was talking about this the other day, is we have all these technologies for surveilling workers (instead of paying them more). So now what we can do is take that difference between seven and ten and just pocket it because we can actually pay workers at your outside option, because I monitor everything you do, and if you don't do exactly what I say I'll fire you, and get somebody else for seven bucks. So all the mechanisms for the sharing of sharing productivity, unions, technology, now lies in the hands of employers. It's all going against labor. So (as a result) we have this fiction that somehow when the economy grows, our productivity goes up, and workers share in that. Again, what's the mechanism? Once you take out unions and once you weaponize the ability of employers to extract surplus through mechanisms like technology, franchising, all the rest of it, then it just tilts the playing field so much that we just don't see any increase in wages. (Now) let's bring this back to inflation. Unless you see systematic (and sustained) increases in the real wage that increases costs for firms to the point that they need to push on prices, I just don't see the mechanism for generating inflation. It just isn't there. And we've underpaid the bottom 60 percent of the U.S. labor market so long it would take a hell of a lot of wage inflation to get there, with or without unions.
Paul Jay
Yeah, what's that number, that if the minimum wage was adjusted for inflation and it was what the minimum wage was, what, 30 years ago, the minimum wage would be somewhere between 25 and 30 bucks, and that wasn't causing raging inflation. Yeah, what's that number, that if the minimum wage was adjusted for inflation and it was what the minimum wage was, what, 30 years ago, the minimum wage would be somewhere between 25 and 30 bucks, and that wasn't causing raging inflation.
Mark Blyth
And there is that RAND study from November 2020 that was adeninely entitled, "˜Trends in Income 1979 to 2020,' and they calculated, and I think this is the number, but even if I'm off, the order of magnitude is there, that transfers, because of tax and regulatory changes, from the 90th percentile of the distribution to the 10 percentile, totalled something in the order of $34 trillion. That's how much was vacuumed up and practically nothing trickled down. So when you consider that as a mechanism of extraction, why are worrying about inflation (from wages)? The best story on inflation is actually Charles Goodhart's book that came out last year. We got a long period of low inflation because of global supply chains, and because of demographic trends. It's a combination of global supply chains, Chinese labor, and demographics all coming together to basically push down labor costs, and that's why you get this long period of deflation, which leads to rising profits and zero inflation. A perfectly reasonable way of explaining it. And his point is that, well, that's coming to an end. The demographics are shifting, or shrinking. We're going back to more closed economies. You're going to create this inflation problem again. OK, what's the timeline on that? About 20 years? A few years ago, we were told we had 12 years to fix the climate problem or we're in deep shit. If we have to face the climate problem versus single to double-digit inflation, I'm left wondering what is the real problem here? And there is that RAND study from November 2020 that was adeninely entitled, "˜Trends in Income 1979 to 2020,' and they calculated, and I think this is the number, but even if I'm off, the order of magnitude is there, that transfers, because of tax and regulatory changes, from the 90th percentile of the distribution to the 10 percentile, totalled something in the order of $34 trillion. That's how much was vacuumed up and practically nothing trickled down. So when you consider that as a mechanism of extraction, why are worrying about inflation (from wages)? The best story on inflation is actually Charles Goodhart's book that came out last year. We got a long period of low inflation because of global supply chains, and because of demographic trends. It's a combination of global supply chains, Chinese labor, and demographics all coming together to basically push down labor costs, and that's why you get this long period of deflation, which leads to rising profits and zero inflation. A perfectly reasonable way of explaining it. And his point is that, well, that's coming to an end. The demographics are shifting, or shrinking. We're going back to more closed economies. You're going to create this inflation problem again. OK, what's the timeline on that? About 20 years? A few years ago, we were told we had 12 years to fix the climate problem or we're in deep shit. If we have to face the climate problem versus single to double-digit inflation, I'm left wondering what is the real problem here? The best story on inflation is actually Charles Goodhart's book that came out last year. We got a long period of low inflation because of global supply chains, and because of demographic trends. It's a combination of global supply chains, Chinese labor, and demographics all coming together to basically push down labor costs, and that's why you get this long period of deflation, which leads to rising profits and zero inflation. A perfectly reasonable way of explaining it. And his point is that, well, that's coming to an end. The demographics are shifting, or shrinking. We're going back to more closed economies. You're going to create this inflation problem again. OK, what's the timeline on that? About 20 years? A few years ago, we were told we had 12 years to fix the climate problem or we're in deep shit. If we have to face the climate problem versus single to double-digit inflation, I'm left wondering what is the real problem here? The best story on inflation is actually Charles Goodhart's book that came out last year. We got a long period of low inflation because of global supply chains, and because of demographic trends. It's a combination of global supply chains, Chinese labor, and demographics all coming together to basically push down labor costs, and that's why you get this long period of deflation, which leads to rising profits and zero inflation. A perfectly reasonable way of explaining it. And his point is that, well, that's coming to an end. The demographics are shifting, or shrinking. We're going back to more closed economies. You're going to create this inflation problem again. OK, what's the timeline on that? About 20 years? A few years ago, we were told we had 12 years to fix the climate problem or we're in deep shit. If we have to face the climate problem versus single to double-digit inflation, I'm left wondering what is the real problem here? OK, what's the timeline on that? About 20 years? A few years ago, we were told we had 12 years to fix the climate problem or we're in deep shit. If we have to face the climate problem versus single to double-digit inflation, I'm left wondering what is the real problem here? OK, what's the timeline on that? About 20 years? A few years ago, we were told we had 12 years to fix the climate problem or we're in deep shit. If we have to face the climate problem versus single to double-digit inflation, I'm left wondering what is the real problem here? A few years ago, we were told we had 12 years to fix the climate problem or we're in deep shit. If we have to face the climate problem versus single to double-digit inflation, I'm left wondering what is the real problem here? A few years ago, we were told we had 12 years to fix the climate problem or we're in deep shit. If we have to face the climate problem versus single to double-digit inflation, I'm left wondering what is the real problem here?

cocomaan , , May 1, 2021 at 7:24 am

Great piece. He put to words something I've thought about but couldn't articulate: if wages are stagnant, how could you possibly get broad based inflation?

There is no upward pressure on labor costs anywhere in the economy. The pressures are all downward.

You would need government spending in the order of magnitudes to drive up wages. Or release from a lot of debt, like student loan forgiveness or what have you.

Left in Wisconsin , , May 1, 2021 at 2:06 pm

I'm not sure you need wage growth to get inflation. As Blyth notes, most of the time inflation is a currency or a monetary issue. In the 70s, it was initially an oil thing " and oil flows through a lot of products " and then really went crazy only when Volker started raising interest rates. I don't think there is an episode of "wage-push" inflation in history. (The union cost-of-living clauses don't "cause" inflation, they only adjust for past inflation. If unions can cause wage-push inflation, someone needs to explain how they did this in the late 70s, when they were much less powerful and unemployment was substantially higher, than in the 1950s.) One could argue that expansive fiscal policy might drive inflation but, even then, the mechanism is through price increases, not wage increases. You do need consumption but that can always come from the wealthy and further debt immiseration of the rest of us.

Adam Eran , , May 1, 2021 at 2:51 pm

Blythe is one of those guys who is *almost* correct. For example he declares that expectations drive inflation. What about genuine shortages? The most recent U.S. big inflation stemmed from OPEC withholding oil"a shortage we answered by increasing the price ($1.75/bbl in 1971 -> $42/bbl in 1982). In Germany, the hyperinflation was driven by the French invading the Ruhr, something roughly like shutting down Ohio in the U.S. A shortage of goods resulted. Inflation! In Zimbabwe, the Rhodesian (white) farmers left, and the natives who took over their farms were not producing enough food. A shortage of food, requiring imports, resulted. Inflation!

I guess you could say people in Zimbabwe "expected" food"¦but that's not standard English.

JFYI, Blythe is not a fan of MMT. He calls it "annoying." Yep, that's his well-reasoned argument about how to think about it.

As a *political* economist, he may have a point in saying MMT is a difficult political sell, but otherwise, I'd say the guy is clueless about it.

CH , , May 1, 2021 at 9:13 am

Inflation isn't caused by the amount of money in the economy but by the amount of *spending*.

Like the other commenter, I've wondered this too"if wages have been stagnant for a generation, then how are we going to get inflation? By what mechanism? It seems like almost all of the new money just adds a few zeros to the end of the bank account balances of the already rich (or else disappears offshore).

Still, you just cannot people to understand this because of houses, health care and education. One might even argue that inflated house and education prices are helping keep inflation down. If more and more of our meager income is going to pay for these fixed expenditures, then there's no money left over to pay increased prices for goods and services. So there's no room to increase the prices of those things. As Michael Hudson would point out, it's all sucked away for debt service, meaning a lot of the "money printing" is just subsidizing Wall Street.

But if you pay attention to the internet, for years there have been conspiracy theories all across the political spectrum that we were really in hyperinflation and the government just secretly "cooked the books" and manipulated the statistics to convince us all it wasn't happening. Of course, these conspiracy theories all pointed to the cost of housing, medicine and education as "proof" of this theory (three things which, ironically, didn't go up spectacularly during the Great Inflation of the 1970's). Or else they'd point to gas prices, but that strategy lost it's potency after 2012. Or else they'd complain that their peanut butter was secretly getting smaller, hiding the inflation (shrinkflation is real, or course, but it's not a vast conspiracy to hide price increases from the public).

I'm convinced that this was the ground zero for the kind of anti-government conspiratorial thinking that's taken over our politics today. These ideas was heavy promoted by libertarians like Ron Paul starting in the nineties, helped by tracts like "The Creature from Jekyll Island," which argued that the Fed itself was one big conspiracy. I've seen plenty of people across the political spectrum"including on the far Left"take all of this stuff as gospel.

So if the government is secretly hiding inflation and the Fed itself is a grand conspiracy to convince us that paper is money (rather than "real" money, aka gold), then is it that hard to believe they're manipulating Covid statistics and plotting to control us all by forcing us all to wear masks and get vaccinated? In my view, it all started with inflation paranoia.

Blyth explains why housing inflation isn't really a sign of hyperinflation. But the average "man on the street" just doesn't get it. To Joe Sixpack, not counting some of the things he has to pay for is cheating. So are "substitutions" like ground beef when steak gets too pricey, or a Honda Civic for a Toyota Camry, for example. The complexity of counting inflation is totally lost on them, making them vulnerable to conspiratorial thinking. Since Biden was elected, the ZOMG HyPeRiNfLaTiOn!!&%! articles are ubiquitous.

Does anyone have a good way of explaining this to ordinary (i.e. non-economically literate) people? I'd love to hear it! Thanks.

TomDority , , May 1, 2021 at 9:41 am

"There is no such thing as house price inflation. Inflation is a general rise in the level of all prices. A sustained rise in the level of prices. The fact that house prices in Toronto have gone up is because Canada stopped building public housing in the 1980s and turned it into an asset class and let the 10 percent top earners buy it all and swap it with each other. That is singularly not an inflation."
Maybe I am totally off but, I would say"¦. By your definition, inflation does not exist in the economic terminology as inflation only exists if generally all prices go up and a singularity of soaring house prices and education and healthcare do not constitute an inflation because the number of things inflating do not meet some unknown number of items needed for a general rise in all prices to create an inflation.
What I read you to say is that if Labor prices go up " that could lead to inflation " but if house prices go up (as they have) that is not inflation.
Hypothetically " if labor prices do not go up and the "˜nessesities of living' prices go up (Housing and Med) " would you not have an inflation in the cost of living? " I am convinced that economists and market experts try to claim that the economy and markets are seperate and distinct from humans as a science " and that Political science has nothing to do with what they present. Yet, humans are the only species to have formed the markets and money we all participate and, the only species, therefore, to have an exclusive asset ownership, indifferent to any other species " IE " if you can't pay you can't play and have no say.
I submit that one or a few asset price increases that are combined with labor price stasis(the actual money outlayed for those asset price increased products not moving up) " especially one that is a basic to living (shelter) and not mobile (like money) is inflation " Land prices going up will generally increase the prices of all products created thereon.

Chris , , May 1, 2021 at 9:55 am

Exactly my interpretation.

The "transitory" "food inflation" (but it's not inflation since TVs went down!) is no issue. Just eat 2 years from now or a TV instead.

Objective Ace , , May 1, 2021 at 10:23 am

I think there's two things going on here. There's different inflation indicators, and asset prices are by definition never a part of inflation

The main indicator of CPI has so many different things in it that the inflation of any one item is going to have little effect on it. But you can look up BEA's detailed GDP deflator to see inflation for more specific things like housing expenses (rent) or transportation.

So back to real estate/land: real estate and land are like the stock market. They aren't subject to inflation. They are subject to appreciation. There is somewhat of a feedback effect for sure though: Increased real estate prices can drive up inflation. Rent for sure gets driven up, but also any other good that's built domestically if the owners of capital need to pay more to rent their factories/farms etc.

As noted in the article though, capitalists can simply move their production overseas so there's a limit to how much US land appreciation can filter into inflation. Its definitely happening with rent as housing can't be outsourced. But rent is only one part of overall inflation

jsn , , May 1, 2021 at 10:23 am

The point he was making is that the price change in housing is the result of a policy restructuring of the market: no new public housing and financial deregulation.

The price of food is similarly a response to policy changes: industry consolidation and resulting price setting to juice financial profits.

The point is distinguishing between political forces and market forces. The former is socially/politically determined while the latter has to do with material realities within a more or less static market structure.

This is a distinction essential to making good policy but useless from a cost of living perspective.

Starry Gordon , , May 1, 2021 at 11:26 am

One could prevent crossover for awhile, but eventually certain policies are going to affect certain markets. The policy of giving the rich money drives up asset prices, real estate is a kind of asset, eventually rising real estate costs affect the market the proles enter when they have to buy or rent real estate.

If state institutions tell them there is no inflation, the proles learn that the state institutions lie because they know better from direct experience. Once that gap develops, it's as with personal relationships: when trust is broken, it is very hard to replace. Once belief in state institutions is lost, significant political effects ensue. Often they are rather unpleasant.

jsn , , May 1, 2021 at 1:06 pm

Yes. Discussing complexity in a low trust society makes definitions of terms within a discussion necessary.

The same words are used in different contexts to mean different things making a true statement in one place a lie in another.

Skip Intro , , May 1, 2021 at 2:22 pm

Blyth pointed to the lack of systemic drivers of price increases, and how the traditional ones have disappeared. I think one that he missed, that results in a disconnect with the evidence of price increases across multiple sectors, is the neoliberal infestation. Rent-sucking intermediaries have imposed themselves into growing swaths of the mechanisms of survival, hollowed out productive capacity, and crapified artifacts to the extent that their value is irredeemably reduced. This is a systemic cause for reduced buying power, i.e. inflation, but it is not a result of monetary or fiscal policy, but political and ideological power.

cnchal , , May 1, 2021 at 3:23 pm

> . . . The fact that house prices in Toronto have gone up is because Canada stopped building public housing in the 1980s and turned it into an asset class and let the 10 percent top earners buy it all and swap it with each other.

That is a total load of baloney. The eighties were a time when the Conservative government came up with the foreign investor program and it was people from Hong Kong getting out before the British hand over to China in 1997.

I was there, trying to save for a house and for every buck saved the houses went up twenty. I finally pulled the plug in 89 when someone subdivided a one car garage from their house and sold it for a small fortune. The stories of Hong Kongers coming up to people raking their yard and offering cash well above supposed market rates and the homeowner dropping their rakes and handing over the keys were legendary.

It's still that way except now they come from mainland China, CCP members laundering their loot.

Any government that makes domestic labor compete with foreign richies for housing is mendacious.

When a Canadian drug dealer "saves up" a million to buy a house and the RCMP get wind of it, they lose the house. When a foreigner show up at the border with a million, it's all clean.

Robert Hahl , , May 1, 2021 at 9:49 am

Many people who talk about avoiding inflation are speaking euphemistically about preventing wage growth, and only that; dog whistles, clearly heard by the intended audience. Yet they are rarely confronted directly on this point. Instead we hear that they don't understand what the word inflation means, and Mark seems to be saying these euphamists (eupahmites?) needn't be so concerned because wages will not go up anyway. If so, what we are talking about here is merely helping workers stay afloat without making any fundamental changes. Well, both sides can agree to that as usual. Guess I'm just worn out by this kind of thing.

Basil Pesto , , May 1, 2021 at 10:02 am

this is only related insofar as Mark Blyth is a treat, and I shared it last week, but icymi, an excellent interview with him on the European Super League debacle last week , which really was a huge story.

The Rev Kev , , May 1, 2021 at 10:28 am

The thing that I like about Mark Blyth is how he cuts to the chase and does not waffle. Must be his upbringing in Scotland I would say. The revelation that the US minimum wage should be about $25-30 is just mind-boggling in itself. But in that talk he unintentionally put a value on how much is at stake in making a fairer economic system and it works out to be about $34 trillion. That is how much has been stolen by the upper percentile and why workers have gone from having a job, car, family & annual vacation to crushing student debt, a job at an Amazon fulfillment center and a second job being an Uber driver while living out of car.

Skip Intro , , May 1, 2021 at 1:24 pm

That $25-30 wage was keeping up with inflation , if it were keeping up with productivity it would be, IIRC, nearly twice that. It is interesting to see a dollar figure put on the amount you can reap after a generation or two of growing a middle class, by impoverishing it.

cnchal , , May 1, 2021 at 3:41 pm

This is key.

But now what we've done, Suresh Naidu the economist was talking about this the other day, is we have all these technologies for surveilling workers (instead of paying them more) . So now what we can do is take that difference between seven and ten and just pocket it because we can actually pay workers at your outside option, because I monitor everything you do, and if you don't do exactly what I say I'll fire you, and get somebody else for seven bucks.

Praise be the STEM workers. Without them where would the criminal corporate class be?

Every time I listen to the news (without barfing) the story is, we need moar STEM workers, and I ask myself, what do they do for a living?

howard in nyc , , May 1, 2021 at 10:37 am

Blyth is a bass guitar player! The things you learn about people.

eg , , May 1, 2021 at 11:32 am

I think he also plays guitar and drums, in addition to the bass guitar.

Mikel , , May 1, 2021 at 2:02 pm

If that kind of tidbit excites you:
Before going into economics, Alan Greenspan was a sax and clarinet player who played with the likes of Stan Getz and Quincy Jones.

Go figure"¦.

The Rev Kev , , May 1, 2021 at 7:42 pm

Mark Blyth has a remarkable history as well as, well, I will let you read this article about him-

https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2006/10/things-ive-learned-prof-mark-blyth-26651

As a tidbit, he has released five or six albums when younger and is into gourmet Indian cuisine.

HotFlash , , May 1, 2021 at 9:04 pm

And Michael Hudson studied piano and conducting . Do failed musicians gravitate to economics? Perhaps for the same reason as my bank manager, a failed bass player (honors graduate from Classy Cdn U in double bass), they see the handwriting on the wall. He told me his epiphany came when he and his band-mates were trying to make cup-o-noodles with tap water in a room over the pub in Thunder Bay where they were playing.

Tex , , May 1, 2021 at 10:39 am

The mental gymnastics to get to "everything needed to survive costs more but wages have not gone up in decades so therefore its all transitory and inflation does not exist" must be painful. How high does the price for cat food have to get before we stop eating?

freebird , , May 1, 2021 at 10:11 pm

Thank you. Most things I buy or am forced to pay for are rising in price. The economists may enjoy the article, but here in Topeka, it's not flying.

KLG , , May 1, 2021 at 10:49 am

Yes! "The Hamptons are not a defensible position" ranks right up there with "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of (neoliberal) capitalism" by Mark Fisher (and F. Jameson?).

Jeff W , , May 1, 2021 at 5:03 pm

"The Hamptons are not a defensible position"

From Mark Blyth's 2016 interview with AthensLive here .

Return of the Bride of Joe Biden , , May 1, 2021 at 12:12 pm

Does anybody here have knowledge of how much hedonic adjustments influence our official measures of inflation?

chuck roast , , May 1, 2021 at 12:30 pm

Very good, Mark. This leads to the next Q. How do we maintain aggregate demand? The rich guys increasingly Hoover everything up and pay no taxes. So, there is no T. Is the only way to get cash and avoid deflation deficit spending by the G? There is no I worth a damn. (X-M) is a total drain on everything since it's all M in the US and no X. The deficits will have to go out of sight in the future.

You say that there is no velocity of money. Is this because the more money pored into the economy by the G, the more money the rich guys steal? So, there is a general collapse in C. Maybe the work around for the rich guy theft is a $2,000 (sorry, $1,400) check every now and then to the great unwashed. The poors can circulate it a couple of times before the rich guys steal it. Seems like the macro-economists have a lot of "˜splainin' to do. Oh, right, they are busy right now measuring the output gap.

eg , , May 1, 2021 at 2:17 pm

Can someone please define the variables in this comment?

T
G
X
M
C

Also, is there an equation that goes with them?

chuck roast , , May 1, 2021 at 3:29 pm

GNP = Consumption + Investment + Government + (Exports " Imports)

I'd like to see Mark go into a discussion on the velocity of money. I remember the old timey Keynesians lecturing about it, and that's all I remember. I'm guessing that it's related to the marginal propensity to consume.

Ed S. , , May 1, 2021 at 4:35 pm

Chuck,

I may be getting a bit out over my skis, but the St. Louis Fed calculates the velocity of money ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V ). It is defined as

The velocity of money is the frequency at which one unit of currency is used to purchase domestically- produced goods and services within a given time period. In other words, it is the number of times one dollar is spent to buy goods and services per unit of time. If the velocity of money is increasing, then more transactions are occurring between individuals in an economy.

So as velocity slows, fewer transactions happen. Based on the linked chart, the peak velocity was 2.2 in mid-1997. In Q1 2021, it was 1.12. By my understanding, although the money supply continues to increase, the money isn't flowing through the economy in the way it was over the last 30 years (or even 10 years ago).

It's beyond my level of understanding to say with any certainty as to why the slowdown in velocity has occurred, but I speculate it's directly related to the ever-growing inequality in the US economy and the ongoing rentier-ism that Dr. Hudson discusses. [simplistically, if Jeff Bezos has $1.3 billion more on Monday than on Friday, that money will flow virtually nowhere. If each of Amazon's employees equally shared that $1.3 billion (about $1,000 each), the preponderance of the money would flow into the economy in short order].

I've always speculated that money velocity is one of the key indicators of the stagnant economy since 2008. It certainly has coincided with the dramatic increase in wealth in the top fraction (not the 1% but the 0.001%) of the US population.

flora , , May 1, 2021 at 1:03 pm

Thanks for this post. Blyth is always good at explaining in a way I can understand.

Mikel , , May 1, 2021 at 1:04 pm

What Blythe has laid out is not a tale about inflation or money, but a tale about power.

If money goes to the non-elite, you get inflation. If it goes to the elite, you don't get inflation.
If you are a country with little control of your resources (not lack of resources, but control) and/or loans (think IMF)/debt (think war reparations) that give people with little interest in whether you live or die control over your countries' finances, you can be prone to inflation or even hyperinflation.

Yeah, I figured out a long time ago that none of this is any "natural economic law" because there is no such thing as "nature" in economics. Inflation is all about political decisions and perceptions.

And I saw this on YouTube a couple of days ago"¦and I still can't think of anything around me that hasn't gone up on price.

politicaleconomist , , May 1, 2021 at 2:37 pm

This is a good response to Summers. But I have a quibble and a concern.
My quibble is that he offers no theory of inflation except implicitly aggregate supply exceeding aggregate demand and there is nothing but hand-waving regarding what he is referring to that he feels has a one chance in ten of happening versus Summers one in three. A second part of this quibble is: what does it mean for inflation to "come roaring back." I assume it means more than just a short-term adjustment to a shot of government spending and gifting. I believe if he thought this through he would have to conclude that without changes in the current structure of the global economy there is no way for this to happen. That really is the case he has made. With labor beaten down not only in the US but worldwide inflation will not come roaring back, period. That is unless there is a chance either that a labor renewal is a near-term possibility. I doubt he believes this. Or does he believe there is another way for inflation to roar back? If so, what is that way, what is the theory behind it?

A more fundamental concern is the part where he relies on marginal productivity theory when discussing employment and exploitation. Conceptually that far from Marx's fundamental distinction between labor and labor power.

Wukchumni , , May 1, 2021 at 2:45 pm

Hyperinflation doesn't seem to be possible in this age of digital money no matter how much you conjure up because nobody notices the extreme amount of monies around all of the sudden as the average joe isn't in the know.

Used houses are always appreciating in value, but none dare call it inflationary, more of a desired outcome in income advancement if you own a domicile.

There were no shortages of anything in the aftermath of the GFC, and now for want of a semiconductor, a car sale was lost. Everything got way too complex, and we'll be paying the price for that.

I think the inflation to come won't be caused by a lack of faith in a given country's money, but the products and services it enabled us to purchase.

Mikel , , May 1, 2021 at 3:47 pm

""¦and now for want of a semiconductor, a car sale was lost"¦."
Sometimes car sales are lost because the price of cars has gone up (new and used)"¦just don't call it inflation"¦

I'm going to let some more time pass, but stimulus or not, we went from all economic problems being laid at the feet of Covid to now moving on to "shortages" everywhere"¦

Just enought to make you go"¦hmmmm"¦.unti more time passes.

Ed S. , , May 1, 2021 at 8:34 pm

Used houses always appreciate " or is it that they appreciate due to a combination of inflation in income over time and the dramatic decrease in interest rates over the last 20 years?

A very quick back of the envelope calc (literally " and all number are approximate):

In June 2000, median US income was $40,500; 30 yr mortgage rate was 8.25%. 28% of monthly income = $945. That supports a mortgage (30 yr fixed, P&I only " no tax, insurance, etc) of roughly $125,000.

In June 2005, median US income was $44,000; 30 yr mortgage rate was 5.5%. 28% of monthly income = $1026. That supports a mortgage (30 yr fixed, P&I only " no tax, insurance, etc) of roughly $180,000.

In June 2010, median US income was $49,500; 30 yr mortgage rate was 4.69%. 28% of monthly income = $1155. That supports a mortgage (30 yr fixed, P&I only " no tax, insurance, etc) of roughly $225,000.

In June 2015, median US income was $53,600; 30 yr mortgage rate was 4.00%. 28% of monthly income = $1250. That supports a mortgage (30 yr fixed, P&I only " no tax, insurance, etc) of roughly $260,000.

Finally, In June 2020, median US income was $63,000; 30 yr mortgage rate was 3.25%. 28% of monthly income = $1470. That supports a mortgage (30 yr fixed, P&I only " no tax, insurance, etc) of roughly $340,000.

And for fun, if you went to 40% of income in 2020 (payment only), a $2100 monthly payment will cover nearly a $500,000 mortgage in 2020.

For the vast majority of home buyers, the price isn't the main consideration " it's how much will it cost per month. So a small increase in median income (roughly 2% per year) combined with dramatically lower interest rates can drive a HUGE increase in a mortgage " and ultimately the price that can be paid for a house.

Michael Ismoe , , May 1, 2021 at 3:24 pm

I find it amazing that when you give poor people money, it creates inflation. If you give rich people money, it creates jobs (LOL. Sure it does.).

As long as billionaires pay as little as possible, the world is fine.

Tom Bradford , , May 1, 2021 at 3:49 pm

Can't say I really understand this sort of thing but saying rocketing house-prices is "˜a singularity' rather than "˜house-price inflation' has to me echoes of the Bourbon's "Bread too expensive? Let them eat cake." And Versailles wasn't a defensive position either.

In my version of economics-for-the-under-tens you get inflation in two situations. First is where enough folk have enough cash in their pockets for producers/manufacturers/retailers to hike their prices without hitting their sales too much and secondly where there's a shortage of stuff people want and/or need which leads to a bidding war. However I'd agree with Blyth that neither condition exists now or seems likely to arise for a while, making a "˜spike' in inflation unlikely.

ArvidMartensen , , May 1, 2021 at 4:17 pm

I am a non-economist, and so my thoughts below may be wrong. However, here goes.
I would say we have had inflation. Roaring inflation. For the past 20 years of so.

Inflation in wages and ordinary costs of living? No, wages have been stagnant. Health care has led the charge in cost of living increases, but most other living expense increases have been low.

Inflation in asset prices? We have had massive inflation in the costs of residential housing where I live.
20 years ago I could buy a 5 br, 3 bath home on a decent block in a good area close to everything for $270,000 dollars. Sure it needed some renovation, but still"¦. Now to buy that home it would cost me around $1,250,000. So that home has gone up in value by 500%. Man, that is inflation.

As I understand it, asset inflation is not counted by governments in the GDP or CPI. It appears that those who have most of the assets don't want this to be counted, by the very fact that they control the politicians who control what is counted, and asset inflation isn't counted in the economic data that the politicians rely upon to prove how prudent they are.

So if you want a day to day example of where all this free money is going, look at housing. And also have a quick look at the insane increases in the worth of billionaires. They love all this government spending which magically? seems to end up, via asset purchase and asset price inflation, in their pockets.

cnchal , , May 1, 2021 at 7:02 pm

That home has gone up in price by 500%

Price is what one pays, value is what one gets. That house is roughly the same, so the value has not changed, but the price has gone up by a factor of 5

Same with stawks. One share of Amazon stawk is $3,467.42 as of yesterday.

What is its value? If Bezos can work his tools ever harder, monitor them down to the nanosecond and wring ever moar productivity out of them before throwing them in the tool dumpster behind every Amazon warehouse, the value proposition is that someone else will believe the stawk price should be even higher, at which point one can sell it at greater price for a profit.

Susan the other , , May 1, 2021 at 5:07 pm

What is inflation? Good question. I'd say inflation is fear of monetary devaluation. Not devaluation, just the fear of it. We'll never overcome this unease if we always deal in numbers. Dollars, digits, whatever. We need to deal in commodities " let's call just about everything we live with and use a "commodity". Including unpaid family help/care; and the more obvious things like transportation. If we simply took a summary of all the necessary things we need to live decent lives " but not translated into dollars because dollars have no sense " and then provided these necessities via some government agency so that they were not "inflated" in the process and thereby provided a stable society, then government could MMT this very easily. Our current approach is so audaciously stupid it will never make sense let alone balance any balance sheets. That's a feature, not a bug because it's the best way to steal a profit. The best way to stop demand inflation or some fake scarcity or whatever is to provide the necessary availability. That's where uncle Joe is gonna run headlong into a brick wall. He has spent his entire life doing the exact opposite.

William Neil , , May 1, 2021 at 6:59 pm

The figure for the upward transfer of wealth from the Rand Study was $50 trillion between 1975-2018. It was adjusted up by the authors from $47 trillion to bring it up to 2020 trends.

Here are the authors explaining what they found and their methodology: https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/

Now the interesting thing to me is this " look at the date of the publication in Time magazine: Sept. 14, 2020, so right in the heart of campaign fever, and it never came up in the debates, in the press"¦I didn't hear about it until Blyth made one of his appearances on Jay's show with Rana Foroohar. Long after the election.

VietnamVet , , May 1, 2021 at 9:47 pm

As long as 80% of Americans are head over heels in debt and 52% of 18-to-29-year-olds are currently living with their parents, there never will be the wage inflation of the 1970s. A majority of the people arrested for the Capitol riot had a history of financial trouble. The elite blue zones in Washington State and Oregon that prospered from globalism are seeing a spike in coronavirus cases. North American neoliberal governments have failed dismally. It is intentional in order to exploit more wealth for the rich from the natural resources and workers. If the mRNA vaccines do not control coronavirus variants, and a workable national public health system is not implemented; succession and chaos will bring on Zimbabwe type inflation.

There is a reason why Portland Oregon has been a center of unrest for the past year. The Elite just do not want to see it. How can Janet Yellen deal with this? She can't. She is an Insider. She was paid 7.2 million dollars in speaker and seminar fees in the last two years not to.

[May 05, 2021] Flip flop: Yellen Says She Isn't Predicting Higher Interest Rates

Treasury as a PR operation ;-) Trying to stem inflating by talking it down.
May 05, 2021 | www.wsj.com
Treasury Secretary walks backs comments she made earlier suggesting that rates might rise

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Tuesday she is neither predicting nor recommending that the Federal Reserve raise interest rates as a result of President Biden's spending plans, walking back her comments earlier in the day that rates might need to rise to keep the economy from overheating.

"I don't think there's going to be an inflationary problem, but if there is, the Fed can be counted on to address it," Ms. Yellen, a former Fed chairwoman, said Tuesday at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Summit.

Ms. Yellen suggested earlier Tuesday that the central bank might have to raise rates to keep the economy from overheating, if the Biden administration's roughly $4 trillion spending plans are enacted.

[May 03, 2021] Tucker Carlson Says People Who Wear Masks Outside Should Be Mocked by Paul Joseph Watson

Apr 27, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Leftists reacted with fury after Fox News host Tucker Carlson said people who wear masks outside should be mocked and that parents who made their kids wear them were engaging in "child abuse."

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https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.453.0_en.html#goog_1043494571

Carlson noted that masks were "purely a sign of political obedience like Kim Il-Sung pins in Pyongyang" and that the only people who voluntarily wear masks outside are "zealots and neurotics."

He then asserted that the tables should be turned on Biden voters who have been harassing conservatives for almost a year for not wearing a mask in public.

"The rest of us should be snorting at them first, they're the aggressors – it's our job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in," said Carlson.

"So the next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate. Ask politely but firmly, ' Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable, " he added.

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"We should do that and we should keep doing it until wearing a mask outside is roughly as socially accepted as lighting a Marlboro on an elevator."

The Fox News host went on to call mask wearing "repulsive" while asserting that forcing children to wear masks outside should be illegal.

"Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact Child Protective Services. Keep calling until someone arrives," Carlson said.

"What you're looking at is abuse, it's child abuse, and you are morally obligated to attempt to prevent it," he added.

As expected, Carlson immediately began trending on Twitter, with hysterical leftists hyperventilating over Tucker once again challenging their cult. Many called for the Fox News host to be fired while others ludicrously described him as a "national security threat."

As we highlighted yesterday , even Dr. Fauci now admits that the risk of vaccinated people spreading COVID outside is "minuscule," and yet some health professionals are pushing for the mask mandates to be made permanent.

The transmission of COVID-19 outdoors is almost non-existent, making mask mandates merely a political tool of population control.

In a recent open letter to the German government and state premiers, five leading members of the Association for Aerosol Research (GAeF) wrote, "The transmission of SARS-CoV-2 viruses takes place indoors almost without exception. Transmission outdoors is extremely rare and never leads to cluster infections as can be observed indoors."

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Fiscal.Enema 8 hours ago (Edited)

In all fairness... Tucker should have pointed out that SOME MASKS do filter out the virus most of the time.

Wearing a mask outdoors in most situations is ridiculous, stupid, and dangerous.

3M N95's 1860 which are electrostatically charged have good filtration protection against most virus.

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/3M-Health-Care-Particulate-Respirator-and-Surgical-Mask-1860-N95-120-EA-Case/?N=5002385+3294795990&rt=rud

Why the us government did not fund this type of mask for all is telling what the overall strategy is.

Controlling you, your neighbor, and others that think for themselves.

Its not about the virus

Robert Neville 7 hours ago

Actually, M95 masks filter out 95% of particles over 4 microns in diameter in perfect conditions. In the real world it is much less effective than that. Viruses are generally less than one micron in size so they are ineffective for most viruses. Also, the masks are so hard to breath through that some version have an exhale valve so they do nothing to protect others if you are infected. Most masks don't protect your eyes. The only thing that works is a space suit that is decontaminated before you remove it. The rest is virtue siganling.

Fiscal.Enema 6 hours ago

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2012/04/lab-study-supports-use-n95-respirators-flu-protection

PUT THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE IT!

Properly fitted n95's do protect against virus and the science proves it.

Dickweed Wang 10 hours ago (Edited)

This is an excerpt from the "Stanford Study" from November 2020 (that's been making the rounds in the alternative media and conservative media space recently) about the uselessness of masks in preventing "the virus":

A meta -analysis among health care workers found that compared to no masks, surgical mask and N95 respirators were not effective against transmission of viral infections or influenza-like illness based on six RCTs [28] . Using separate analysis of 23 observational studies, this meta -analysis found no protective effect of medical mask or N95 respirators against SARS virus [28] . A recent systematic review of 39 studies including 33,867 participants in community settings (self-report illness), found no difference between N95 respirators versus surgical masks and surgical mask versus no masks in the risk for developing influenza or influenza-like illness, suggesting their ineffectiveness of blocking viral transmissions in community settings [29] .

It's predictable that the usual suspects have come out of the woodwork to "fact check" and disparage the entire paper (do an internet search for 'Stanford Mask Paper' and you'll see what I'm talking about). Their main criticism is 'that wasn't published by Stanford', while they totally ignore the claims made in the paper. When you look at the people and organizations doing the fact checking it really shows that the entire mask issue is a political/control ploy. Here's the link to the entire paper if anyone is interested:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/

[May 03, 2021] He who wear mask while alone in car should also wear condom while alone in bed. The power of propaganda about wearing masks outdoor coming from TV truly rots your brain

From comments: " Tucker is right on this one. If you wear a mask outside you truly are a moron. You may as well add goggles and a butt plug." ... "Don't forget about those solo drivers with masks on!", "Maskers are stupid scared virtue signalers"
May 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Dickweed Wang 10 hours ago (Edited)

As an anti-mask militant for quite a while now I've been going out of my way to ask people with masks on outdoors why they're wearing one (I've really tried to be polite but it's getting increasingly hard to do that). In literally hundreds of instances I haven't gotten a straight answer yet. It's stunning that people are so gullible but it shows what the power of propaganda really is. 99% of that is coming from teevee, which truly rots your brain.

Capt Tripps 10 hours ago remove link

They are signaling the submission to a tyrannical state. That submission makes us all less free.

safelyG 10 hours ago

mister tucker is wrongeddy wrong wrong.

we must all wear multiple masks. indoors. outdoors. at work. at play. while we sleep. while we bathe. while we eat. while we sing praises unto the most high.

and we must remain 8 feet apart, one from the other. at all times.

and report our whereabouts and our contacts and our body temperature. to the authorities.

get your vacines!

lovingly,
bill n melinda

radical-extremist 10 hours ago

When Tucker Carlson says to tell people to take off their masks and call CPS on parents who mask their children he's trolling the Left. And because the Left has no sense of humor or irony or hypocrisy...they're of course OUTRAGED, which was his point.

Realism 10 hours ago remove link

I like it best when hiking outside, in 75 degree weather with a nice breeze, you see people put up their mask as they walk by

Pure comedy, it's hard to understand the stupidity if you think you'll get any disease much less Covid walking by someone

And importantly, would you really be hiking if you had Covid LOL

aztrader 10 hours ago

Mask wears see it as a badge of honor because they "care" about other people. In reality, it's a badge of Stupidity and ignorance.

Prince Velveeta 10 hours ago (Edited) remove link

California is an open-air mental ward. I was just out there and the collective idiocy is astounding. People jogging with masks on , exaggerating their breathing as they pass you in some competitive virtue signaling event. I witnessed some idiot jogging up the hill past my family member's house, with a bandana on his face, being sucked into his mouth as he's gasping for air.....

[May 03, 2021] The CIA Used To Infiltrate The Media... Now The CIA Is The Media by Caitlin Johnstone,

Apr 16, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,

Back in the good old days, when things were more innocent and simple, the psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency had to covertly infiltrate the news media to manipulate the information Americans were consuming about their nation and the world. Nowadays, there is no meaningful separation between the news media and the CIA at all.

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Analysis: US blinks first on Russia-Ukraine tensions

Journalist Glenn Greenwald just highlighted an interesting point about the reporting by The New York Times on the so-called “Bountygate†story the outlet broke in June of last year about the Russian government trying to pay Taliban-linked fighters to attack US soldiers in Afghanistan.

“One of the NYT reporters who originally broke the Russia bounty story (originally attributed to unnamed ‘intelligence officials’) say today that it was a CIA claim,†Greenwald tweeted .

“So media outlets - again - repeated CIA stories with no questioning: congrats to all.â€

Indeed, NYT’s original story made no mention of CIA involvement in the narrative, citing only “officials,†yet this latest article speaks as though it had been informing its readers of the story’s roots in the lying, torturing , drug-running , warmongering Central Intelligence Agency from the very beginning. The author even writes “The New York Times first reported last summer the existence of the C.I.A.’s assessment,†with the hyperlink leading to the initial article which made no mention of the CIA. It wasn’t until later that The New York Times began reporting that the CIA was looking into the Russian bounties allegations at all.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfX0%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1382793565714153472&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fcia-used-infiltrate-media-now-cia-media&sessionId=77ef0dadbd05c9f3bcb1de7857a624713a43f3d8&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ff2e7cf%3A1618526400629&width=550px

This would be the same “Russian bounties†narrative which was discredited all the way back in September when the top US military official in Afghanistan said no satisfactory evidence had surfaced for the allegations, which was further discredited today with a new article by The Daily Beast titled “ U.S. Intel Walks Back Claim Russians Put Bounties on American Troops â€.

The Daily Beast , which has itself uncritically published many articles promoting the CIA “Bountygate†narrative, reports the following:

It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game†in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.

But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate†confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven â€" and possibly untrue.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfX0%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1382769897420296194&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fcia-used-infiltrate-media-now-cia-media&sessionId=77ef0dadbd05c9f3bcb1de7857a624713a43f3d8&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ff2e7cf%3A1618526400629&width=550px

So the mass media aggressively promoted a CIA narrative that none of them ever saw proof of, because there was no proof, because it was an entirely unfounded claim from the very beginning. They quite literally ran a CIA press release and disguised it as a news story.

This allowed the CIA to throw shade and inertia on Trump’s proposed troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Germany, and to continue ramping up anti-Russia sentiments on the world stage , and may well have contributed to the fact that the agency will officially be among those who are exempt from Biden’s performative Afghanistan “withdrawal†.

In totalitarian dictatorships, the government spy agency tells the news media what stories to run, and the news media unquestioningly publish it. In free democracies, the government spy agency says “Hoo buddy, have I got a scoop for you!†and the news media unquestioningly publish it.

In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “ The CIA and the Media †reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird . It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media is meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits . The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor , and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-2&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfX0%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1382777804014641152&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fcia-used-infiltrate-media-now-cia-media&sessionId=77ef0dadbd05c9f3bcb1de7857a624713a43f3d8&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ff2e7cf%3A1618526400629&width=550px

This isn’t Operation Mockingbird. It’s so much worse. Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something to the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting as the media. Any separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even any pretence of separation, has been dropped.

This is bad. This is very, very bad. Democracy has no meaningful existence if people’s votes aren’t being cast with a clear understanding of what’s happening in their nation and their world, and if their understanding is being shaped to suit the agendas of the very government they’re meant to be influencing with their votes, what you have is the most powerful military and economic force in the history of civilization with no accountability to the electorate whatsoever. It’s just an immense globe-spanning power structure, doing whatever it wants to whoever it wants. A totalitarian dictatorship in disguise.

And the CIA is the very worst institution that could possibly be spearheading the movements of that dictatorship. A little research into the many, many horrific things the CIA has done over the years will quickly show you that this is true; hell, just a glance at what the CIA was up to with the Phoenix Program in Vietnam will.

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There’s a common delusion in our society that depraved government agencies who are known to have done evil things in the past have simply stopped doing evil things for some reason. This belief is backed by zero evidence, and is contradicted by mountains of evidence to the contrary. It’s believed because it is comfortable, and for literally no other reason.

The CIA should not exist at all, let alone control the news media, much less the movements of the US empire. May we one day know a humanity that is entirely free from the rule of psychopaths, from our total planetary behavior as a collective, all the way down to the thoughts we think in our own heads.

May we extract their horrible fingers from every aspect of our being.

* * *

New book: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix .

The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported , so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi , Patreon or Paypal . If you want to read more you can buy my books . For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here . Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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[May 03, 2021] The Price of the Stuff That Makes Everything Is Surging

May 03, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

The prices of raw materials used to make almost everything are skyrocketing, and the upward trajectory looks set to continue as the world economy roars back to life.

From steel and copper to corn and lumber, commodities started 2021 with a bang, surging to levels not seen for years. The rally threatens to raise the cost of goods from the lunchtime sandwich to gleaming skyscrapers. It’s also lit the fuse on the massive reflation trade that’s gripped markets this year and pushed up inflation expectations. With the U.S. economy pumped up on fiscal stimulus, and Europe’s economy starting to reopen as its vaccination rollout gets into gear, there’s little reason to expect a change in direction.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said this week it sees a continued rally in commodities and that the “reflation and reopening trade will continue.†On top of that, the Federal Reserve and other central banks seem calm about inflation, meaning economies could be left to run hot, which will rev up demand even more.

“The most important drivers supporting commodity prices are the global economic recovery and acceleration in the reopening phase,†said Giovanni Staunovo, commodity analyst at UBS Group AG. The bank expects commodities as a whole to rise about 10% in the next year.


[May 03, 2021] Bond Market's Inflation Bulls Get Powell Go-Ahead to Double Down

May 03, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

The Treasury market's inflation bulls seem to have gotten a green light from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to double down on wagers that price pressures will only intensify in the months ahead.

The renewed mojo for the reflation trade follows Powell's reaffirmation this week of the central bank's intention to let the world's biggest economy run hot for some time as it recovers from the pandemic. The Fed's unwavering commitment to ultra-loose policy in the face of robust economic data is what caught traders' attention. It took on added significance as it coincided with signs infections are ebbing again in the U.S., and as President Joe Biden unveiled plans for trillions more in fiscal spending.

Investors eying all this aren't ready to give the Fed the benefit of the doubt in its assessment that inflationary pressures will prove temporary. A key bond-market proxy of inflation expectations for the next decade just hit the highest since 2013, and cash has been pouring into the largest exchange-traded fund for Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities. Globally, there's been a net inflow into mutual and exchange-traded inflation-linked debt funds for 23 straight weeks, EPFR Global data show.

The Fed is stressing that inflation's upswing "is transitory, but we likely won't have better clarity on this assertion until this initial economic wave from reopening has subsided," said Jake Remley, a senior portfolio manager at Income Research + Management, which oversees $89.5 billion. "Inflation is a very difficult macro-economic phenomenon to predict in normal times. The uncertainty of a global pandemic and a dramatic economic rebound" has made it even harder.

Ten-year TIPS provide a reasonably priced insurance policy against inflation risk over the coming decade, Remley said. The securities show traders are wagering annual consumer price inflation will average about 2.4% through April 2031. The measure has roared back from the depths of last year, when it dipped below 0.5% at one point in March.


[May 03, 2021] Warren Buffett- We are seeing substantial inflation and are raising prices

May 03, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Brian Sozzi · Editor-at-Large Sat, May 1, 2021, 6:05 PM

Billionaire Warren Buffett is joining the long list of executives saying serious levels of inflation are starting to take hold as the U.S. economy roars back from the COVID-19 downturn.

"We are seeing substantial inflation," Buffett said at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting broadcast exclusively by Yahoo Finance . "We are raising prices. People are raising prices to us, and it's being accepted."

Buffett called out much higher steel costs impacting Berkshire's housing and furniture businesses.

"People have money in their pocket, and they pay higher prices... it's almost a buying frenzy," Buffett said, noting that the economy is "red hot."

The Oracle of Omaha isn't alone in battling inflation at the moment from everything to higher steel prices to runaway copper prices.

The number of mentions of "inflation" during first quarter earnings calls this month have tripled year-over-year, the biggest jump dating back to 2004, according to fresh research from Bank of America strategist Savita Subramanian . Raw materials, transportation, and labor were cited as the main drivers of inflation .

Subramanian's research found that the number of inflation mentions has historically led the consumer price index by a quarter, with 52% correlation. In other words, Subramanian thinks investors could see a "robust" rebound in inflation in coming months in the wake of the latest round of C-suite commentary.

"Inflation is arguably the biggest topic during this earnings season, with a broad array of sectors (Consumer/Industrials/Materials, etc.) citing inflation pressures," Subramanian notes.

The world's biggest companies are taking action, just like Buffett at Berkshire.

Proctor & Gamble said recently it would begin to hike prices on baby care , feminine care and adult incontinence products in the United States. Price increases will range from mid- to high-single digit percentages. The hikes will go into effect in mid-September.


Whirlpool CFO Jim Peters recently told Yahoo Finance Live the appliance maker just jacked up prices by 5% to 12% to counteract rising steel costs.

Kleenex maker Kimberly-Clark said it will increase prices in the U.S. and Canada on the majority of its consumer products due to "significant" commodity cost inflation. The percentage increases will range from mid- to high-single digits and go into effect in June.

[May 03, 2021] The Fed's -Base-Effect- Inflation Argument Is Nonsense - ZeroHedge

May 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

By Joseph Carson , former chief economist of Alliance Bernstein

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has played down the current runup in inflation, arguing it is associated with the reopening of the economy. And as the low inflation readings of one year ago drop out, the twelve-month calculation (i.e., the so-called base effect) of reported inflation is likely to move up in the coming months.

Yet, Mr. Powell's "base effect" inflation argument is nonsense. For the "base effect" argument to be correct, the twelve-month reading of reported inflation should be markedly lower when the economy was closed than what occurred before the pandemic. But that's not the case.

Last week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the twelve-month change ending in March 2021 in the core personal consumption index (the Fed's preferred price index) was 1.83%. That compares to the 1.87% reading for the year ending in February 2020 and 1.7% for the year before that.

The 1.83% reading for twelve months ending March 2021 essentially matches the average inflation rate of the two prior years. And that 12 month period includes the three months (April to June) when the economy was closed, and GDP plunged a record 31% annualized. How could there be a "base effect" on reported inflation when the base year has the same inflation rate as it did before the pandemic?

Mr. Powell's "base effect" inflation argument has not been questioned or challenged by analysts or reporters. Regardless of that, investors need to ignore the Fed's rhetoric and treat upcoming price increases as "new" inflation.

As nonsensical as the explanation for the uptick in inflation, so too is the remedy. Demand has always been the primary force behind broad inflation cycles. Yet, Mr. Powell argues that product price inflation will ease once manufacturers increase output and eliminate "supply bottlenecks," and home inflation will slow once builders build more homes.

It's hard to see how more supply (or growth) will slow inflation anytime soon. Federal Home Loan Mortgage Company (Freddie Mac) estimates that the US needs almost 4 million new homes to meet demand. That could take two to three years. Also, it's hard to see how increasing product output will solve the inflation problem. The supply-side argument solution; fight inflation with more demand and more commodity inflation.

The Fed's mantra has always been "inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon." But nowhere in Mr. Powell's statements or comments do you find any monetary policy role for increased inflation or any responsibility for containment. Investors forewarned.

[Apr 29, 2021] After thirteen months, the BLS still cannot count the Unemployed

Apr 29, 2021 | www.shadowstats.com

After thirteen months, the BLS still cannot count the Unemployed. Headline U.3 Unemployment also remained deep in non-recovery territory. The BLS acknowledged continuing misclassification of some "unemployed" persons as "employed," in the Household Survey. Where the count of the understated unemployed had an "upside limit" of 636,000 persons in March 2021, the February 2021 upside estimate of understated unemployed was 756,000. The difference would be a potential headline U.3 of 6.44% instead of today's headline 6.05%, which was down from a headline 6.22% in February. Fully adjusted for COVID-19 disruptions, based on BLS side-surveys of Pandemic impact, and with more than six million people missing from the headline U.S. labor force, actual headline U.3 unemployment still should be well above 10%, the highest unemployment rate since before World War II, outside of the Pandemic and possibly at the trough of the 1982-1983 recession. Broader March 2021 headline U.6 unemployment [including some decline in short-term discouraged workers and those employed part-time for economic reasons] eased to 10.71% from 11.07% in February. Including long-term discouraged/ displaced workers, the March 2021 ShadowStats Alternate Measure –- moving on top of the decline in U.6 –- notched minimally lower to 25.7%, from 25.8% in February 2021, reflecting some modeled transition of "short-term" to "long-term" discouraged workers, with the Pandemic having passed its 12-month anniversary. The latest Unemployment Rates are posted on the ALTERNATE DATA tab (above).

[Apr 29, 2021] Federal Reserve isn't fooling anybody on inflation

Apr 29, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Apr 29 2021 15:19 utc | 7

Food for thought:

Federal Reserve isn't fooling anybody on inflation

I don't share David P. Goldman's ideology and convictions. They are almost the polar opposite of mine's.

But he has something I don't have, something that only a bourgeois specialist can give: insider information.

I once hypothesized here that, if the USA were to collapse suddenly (which I don't think it ever will, but if it do happen), then it would surely involve an uncontrolled growing spiral of inflation/hyperinflation. That's the logical conclusion of an hypothetical collapse of the USD standard.

So far, I can only see a mild rise in inflation. I don't think the USA will ever experience hyperinflation (four-digit) or even true high inflation (two-digit). Goldman is a rabid neoliberal, and anything above 2% is hyperinflation for him, so we should take these kind of analyses with a grain of salt.

--//--

Sugar rush:

US real GDP rose 6.4 per cent on an annualised basis in the first quarter

Fed Chair Jay Powell said that the Fed was not going to tighten monetary policy any time soon. So the US stock market hit yet another all-time high.

[Apr 27, 2021] We Can t Police These People by Gregory Hood

Apr 27, 2021 | www.unz.com
We Can’t Police These People GREGORY HOOD • APRIL 21, 2021 • 2,300 WORDS • 16 COMMENTS • REPLY Tweet Reddit Share Share Email Print More RSS Share to Gab After a jury found Derek Chauvin guilty on all three counts, people celebrated outside of the Hennepin County Government Center and marched downtown in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on April 20, 2021. (Credit Image: © Dominick Sokotoff / ZUMA Wire)

“Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.†â€" Thomas Jefferson

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The trial was pointless . We knew the outcome . We knew the threat. Convict Derek Chauvin of murder, or cities will burn . Jurors surely knew they would be doxxed if they didn’t vote to convict; one potential juror was dismissed after he dared mention this fear.

There is a debate to be had about police conduct. I’m not going to back the blue unconditionally after Charlottesville , Ashli Babbit , and the ruthless manhunt for January 6 rioters. Derek Chauvin would have carried out the same orders against us. However, what Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd isn’t even close to what happened to white man Daniel Shaver , gunned down in a hotel hallway by a police officer who was later acquitted and was paid for his mental suffering . This is about race, not police. I expect police will crack down further on law-abiding whites while ignoring black crime .

The howls for Derek Chauvin’s head were primal. I haven’t heard such cries of triumph since O.J. Simpson was acquitted .

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Of course, Derek Chauvin was hardly a champion of white identity . In 2018, the Twin Cities Pioneer Press gave a fawning profile to his then-wife, Hmong refugee Kellie Chauvin. She called her husband a “gentleman†and “just a softie.†Less than two years later, just three days after George Floyd’s death , she divorced him. Her lawyer told journalists about her “utmost sympathy†for Floyd’s family.

What’s so striking about the Derek Chauvin case is that it could have happened anywhere. Every police officer (or white person who lives in a black neighborhood) knows about the sob stories, the wailing, the lying, and the sudden switch from threats to begging and back again when blacks face cops. Floyd himself had tried this soft-shoe routine when he was arrested in 2019. Derek Chauvin and his three colleagues had probably seen far worse.

Yet it was Derek Chauvin’s blasé attitude during the arrest, his business-like nature, that doomed him. If he had acted less professional, by panicking or begging Floyd to remain calm, it would have been different. The other officers were just as relaxed. They must feel dumbfounded that their attempts to subdue a raving man on drugs led to something close to a revolution. The prosecutor’s closing argument was something out of a nursery rhyme, denying that George Floyd’s heart problems and drug-taking caused his death, but rather that Derek Chauvin’s “heart was too small.†(The media loved it.)

Whether a routine arrest like this becomes a cause depends on countless factors. If the teenager Darnella Frazier had not taken a video , nothing would have happened. Even with body cam footage, I suspect there would have been no case. Without a simple image to rouse the simple masses, no one would have cared.

The sanctification of George Floyd makes this even more surreal. The #MeToo movement took down powerful men who had made inappropriate jokes or crude gestures decades ago, but a criminal who spent his last moments on earth trying to rip-off shopkeepers and lying to police has become a holy figure , complete with literal claims of miracles. George Floyd’s life and death were practically a caricature of what the crudest “racist†would conjure out of a hateful imagination. A white man with his record would have been treated exactly the same , but because Floyd was black, journalists made him a saint. Most people let others build their reality . Post-white America has a new faith .

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, author of The Bible of Unspeakable Truths and The Joy of Hate , said that even if Derek Chauvin wasn’t guilty of all charges, he thought the verdict was a good thing. “I want a verdict that keeps this country from going up in flames,†he explained. That’s the bravery of American conservatives for you. While the country didn’t “go up in flames,†there were some troubling signs last night that worse is to come.

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The guilty verdict didn’t calm the streets. It didn’t even calm the politicians. The President of the United States said that “this can be a moment of significant change.†Kamala Harris , whose parents are immigrants, intones that this won’t “heal the pain that existed for generations.†Barack and Michelle Obama want “true justice,†which requires “that we come to terms with the fact that Black Americans are treated differently, every day.†(I don’t think they mean affirmative action.) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the verdict wasn’t justice and doesn’t want people to think the system works. Empty-headed celebrities demand that more be done.

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The guilty verdicts didn’t douse the fire; it fed the flames. It’s yet more proof: rioting works.

And now, we’ve already had a member of Congress demanding that policing be abolished because it can’t be reformed:

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Rep. Tlaib represents Detroit , where the already-ruined city saw a huge increase in homicides and shootings in 2020, just another part of what was undoubtedly the largest single-year increase in the murder rate in American history. Almost all the added victims were black. “The community†doesn’t seem to care, so there’s no reason politicians should.

Let’s hear no wailing about “black lives.†The main victims of the crime wave are black, with victims including children , partygoers , and funeral guests . Voters who elect progressive prosecutors don’t seem to care any more than the “community†does. Do they prefer bloodshed to good police work?

Vox tells us BLM has led to a reduction in “police homicides†in areas where there were protests. Of course, at least some of these homicides would have been justified use of force. Yet the very same research Vox cites says that between 2014 and 2019, there were “somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 more homicides than would have been expected [absent protests]†in those places. Even if we accept the unhinged premise that police suddenly stopped gunning down blacks for no reasons, the result of BLM was thousands of dead blacks â€" and nice houses for the movement’s co-founder .

Still, it’s not about blacks. It’s about us. Rudyard Kipling, a poet who wouldn’t get far in our affirmative action world , wrote :

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,

To puff and look important and to say: â€"

“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.

We will therefore pay you cash to go away.â€

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

But we’ve proved it again and again,

That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld

You never get rid of the Dane.

We paid the Dane-geld. We’ve shamefully paid it to people with far less nobility and courage than the Vikings. The Minnesota protester screaming that riots worked is right. They worked because they had media backing. If others ran the press, the Cannon Hinnant case alone could have changed everything. Instead, most whites haven’t heard of it, nor about the others of our race butchered every year .

Our loss of identity leaves us vulnerable to moral blackmail. Whites seem to be in a permanent state of shellshock. White conservatives want to be left alone, with Tucker Carlson saying that what the nation needs “more than anything†is “a moment to catch our national breath.†Really? Conservatives know something is wrong, but don’t dare recognize the real problem. Republicans who collaborate with this rotten system have shut down even halting steps towards white identity .

Meanwhile, over the last decade, white liberals have radically changed their views on race and actively discriminate against whites . It’s more correct to say that new views were inserted into their brains through hysterical media coverage of police shootings. Those who call themselves “very liberal†are hopelessly deluded. A majority think that police gun down over 1,000 unarmed black men a year â€" almost 100 times the actual number.

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/5Bf07CnmFidD/

Statistics can’t compete with sob-stories, and stories give people meaning. I believe many Americans get their moral purpose for life from them.

There are also specific benefits in keeping the system going. Activists and politicians build careers. Blacks get a chance of hitting the “ ghetto lottery †(assumed they aren’t killed) and becoming heroes. It’s a strong incentive to turn a petty scam into an epic showdown. Journalists who want to lead a social revolution or just get clicks (or both) fall right in line.

Even as this is written, there is a case in Columbus, Ohio that could be our next George Floyd-style passion play. Officers arrived at a chaotic brawl and shot a black girl. Body cam footage shows the girl trying to stab someone before she was shot. Nonetheless, the image the Associated Press uses for the story is a Black Lives Matter protest. It looks like yet another case of a degenerate “community†causing chaos, attracting the police, and causing a racial confrontation.

This is what the dead girl’s aunt told The Daily Beast:

The police are going to lie. I’m so thankful that someone from the family was actually on the scene,†[Aunt] Bryant said . . . . “The police are going to lie. The police are going to cover up for themselves. They don’t care. At this point, I feel like they’re just out to kill Black people. They’re not here to protect and serve. That isn’t happening. That’s been over a long time ago. They’re not here to protect and serve. They’re here to kill Black folks.

Like many other whites, I’m exhausted. Unlike Tucker Carlson , I don’t think we need a chance to catch our breath or pursue change more slowly. We need radical change.

Every confrontation between a white officer and a non-white criminal is a potential riot . The process is corrupt because judges, jurors, and politicians know that the mob has a veto over the verdict. The rule of law is dead.

The answer is separation . Without it, this will never stop.

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/2vb9uMyWhLuW/

The strange reality is that there is almost no difference now between being a notorious white advocate or any white guy. Derek Chauvin went, in just one day, from a heartwarming “softie†who married a Hmong refugee to the embodiment of white supremacy. A few days ago, it was a soldier who stopped a black guy from accosting women. He had to be chased from his home. Tomorrow it could be you.

You could try to stop a crime. You could fight back against an assault. Maybe you just look at someone the wrong way. Maybe you do nothing at all. But if you donated $10 to a cause the media don’t like â€" or even if you didn’t â€" you could be the mark for the next great hate hoax.

I write this reluctantly. Many of us become white advocates kicking and screaming, afraid to see the truth. We all get here through experience , usually painful.

However, no matter how far you run, how earnestly you plead, what you say, or even whom you marry, you will always be white to those with power. That means many despise you. At some point, you must decide to stand or kneel, and a society that kneels before the memory of a George Floyd is not one worth serving or saving.

Credit Image: © Matthew Hatcher/SOPA Images via ZUMA Wire

Whites created this country. They sustain it. Without whites, there is no America. America is an extension of Western Civilization, white civilization, on this continent. Whites pay to support people who hate, curse, and sometimes kill us. We gain nothing. They owe everything. What they have, we gave them, through weakness, folly, and good intensions .

People celebrated outside of the Hennepin County Government Center after a jury found Derek Chauvin guilty on April 20, 2021. (Credit Image: © Dominick Sokotoff / ZUMA Wire)

We deserve reparations for trillions wasted in a 60-year effort to babysit a population that pays us back with violence and hatred. Most importantly, we deserve liberation from this albatross that prevents any kind of real national life. Almost any price would be worth paying if we could be sovereign and free, something our ancestors took for granted.

All the quasi-theological abstractions about “privilege†and “critical theory†melt away before one immutable truth: They need us; we don’t need them. Until we have the will to say so, all of us â€" including you â€" are just one “viral†incident away from ruin.


Dr. Charles Fhandrich , says: April 21, 2021 at 6:10 pm GMT • 10.8 hours ago

Don’t know who Gregory Hood is but I do know after reading all of his essays, that he is the most erudite writer on race issues. I find him fair and balanced basically sticking to the relevant issue of what ever he is writing about.

SafeNow , says: April 21, 2021 at 7:14 pm GMT • 9.7 hours ago

“Almost any price would be worth paying if we could be sovereign and free…â€

This essay is superb…but worryingly, only as far as it goes. What, very specifically, is the separation plan, and what is the price that might have to be paid and IS worth paying, and what is the price that is NOT worth paying? The action-plan cannot be safely specified, because we have already come too far for one to safely specify it. Already. And worse is to come.

Besides individual ramifications, there is this. In Trump vs. Hawaii, Justice Roberts declined to overrule Korematsu (the Japanese-internment case). He wrote that Korematsu had been “overruled by history.†Group internment remains the law of the land.

And yes, I am too cowardly to speak-out. Again. I was an undergraduate at an elite University exactly when (late 60s) and where this all started. I (and my friends, and like-minded faculty members and administrators) were all too cowardly to speak out, and take action, then. Too much to lose. I apologize to the younger generations.

Jimmy le Blanc , says: April 21, 2021 at 7:23 pm GMT • 9.5 hours ago

American Renaissance is a joke. No mention of the (((real problem))) at all. Until we can discuss and point to the (((instigators))) of our present day horror, we will achieve nothing. The funny and ironic thing about all of this is, (((they))) will suffer as much as any White at the hands of the Frankenstein’s monster they created. I guess Whites can take some small comfort in those just desserts.

Katrinka , says: April 21, 2021 at 7:37 pm GMT • 9.3 hours ago

The U.S. had a good run while it lasted. My plan is to move on. Whites really should consider leaving. Problem is when we establish a new area they will just come to move in on us all over again.

Chris Moore , says: • Website April 21, 2021 at 7:41 pm GMT • 9.2 hours ago

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, author of The Bible of Unspeakable Truths and The Joy of Hate, said that even if Derek Chauvin wasn’t guilty of all charges, he thought the verdict was a good thing. “I want a verdict that keeps this country from going up in flames,†he explained. That’s the bravery of American conservatives for you.

This is how greed-driven “Jews†(Gutfeld is a partially Hebrew, greed-driven Globalist and stooge for Conservatism Inc) have destroyed the neoconned American right, and ultimately the nation. Having no soul or backbone, brushing it all under the carpet in deference to the Golden Calf markets, Satanic Hebrews like Gutfeld will appease the irrational mob all day long, and then just prior to collapse, invoke their “Jewish†heritage and flee to Israel.

This us why they are known as Judenrats , and have always been.

And “liberal†Judenrats are even worse, but had trouble penetrating the GOP until the ((neocons)) came along and sold it on easy-money wars.

Anything for a buck, no matter how Satanic. Morality never enters into the equation. They’re only destroying animal goyim nations, after all.

steinbergfeldwitzcohen , says: April 21, 2021 at 9:29 pm GMT • 7.4 hours ago

Whites don’t need blacks, browns or Jewish parasites.
The day we refuse to be intimidated and believe the lies is the day we get our countries back.
Demand that Congress exercise their constitutional power over money creation.
National strike.
Something.
We need to turn this cancer around rather than waiting for the ship to hit the iceberg. That will be the financial collapse lurking. It is the perfect opportunity for radical reform including constitutional admendments. It will be a blessing in disguise: angry masses looking for soneone to blame. Tptb will try to throw US to the angry masses but we throw them.

Paulbe , says: April 21, 2021 at 10:49 pm GMT • 6.1 hours ago
@Katrinka

The comment above yours expresses well why “moving on†may not be possible. Its not just America they want.

Ultrafart the Brave , says: • Website April 22, 2021 at 12:52 am GMT • 4.1 hours ago
@steinbergfeldwitzcohen y intractable endemic racial frictions in the USA are being systematically nurtured and nourished by malign agents embedded in the American governmental and media frameworks.

The behaviour and loyalties of your Senator Maxine Waters makes this abundantly clear, beyond any ambiguity or doubt.

So there is a cancer, for sure, eating away at the American Republic.

To extend the analogy, the danger with any cancer is permitting it to get past the point of no return, after which the host cannot possibly recover and is inevitably consumed.

So you better find a cure soon, preferably something holistic which feeds the healthy constituents and promotes healing at the same time as extinguishing the poisonous infections.

Otherwise Team America may suffer a tragic and permanent demise.

Phibbs , says: April 22, 2021 at 12:56 am GMT • 4.0 hours ago

Don’t forget that Jews own the media and the politicians. The culture of vicitmhood, cancel culture, “wokeness,†race-baiting and multi-racialism all either originate in the Jewish community or are strongly supported by Jews. Jews brought down white, Christian Russia in 1917 and they are in the process of doing that here. Jews hate us Christian whites and that fact is reflected in their media.

ThreeCranes , says: April 22, 2021 at 1:03 am GMT • 3.9 hours ago

Mighty fine piece of writing.

unwoke , says: April 22, 2021 at 2:34 am GMT • 2.4 hours ago

“All the quasi-theological abstractions about “privilege†and “critical theory†melt away before one immutable truth: They need us; we don’t need them. Until we have the will to say so, all of us…â€

Us who? White liberals don’t want you & don’t need you & never will accept you, let alone agree any hare-brained scheme to ‘separate’ or have a racial homeland. And they’re using Blacks to tell you that.
And until we have the will to say so, nothing will result from DOA dreams about a separate state for “usâ€. A separate quasi-theological state abstraction based on race will melt away in immutable reality as quickly as the communist belief in a dictatorship of the proletariat abstraction. You have to make it here; there is no “us†anymore. Get ready for 2022 or civil war as you will, but there’s no escape to la-la land.

ruralguy , says: April 22, 2021 at 2:46 am GMT • 2.2 hours ago

In the 1960 census, Minnesota was 98.8% white. In 1973, Time magazine ran an article on the “Good Life in Minnesota.†It really was. We led the nation in education. In 1960, there were 1,400 violent crimes in the State. Now, it is 13,000 to 14,000. What happened? We had mass migration from Chicago. Our Minnesota socialists offered generous welfare benefits that attracted Chicago’s blacks and resettled many refugees from failed countries, like Somalia, to the State. The State went from low crime, highly educated, to much crime, much disorder, and a feeling we now live in a 3rd world country. Today, we have armed soldiers with machine guns on the corners of the streets in Minneapolis. You’d think the woke monsters that censure our news and who form the Chauvin jury would awake from their idiocy, but instead, they censure the facts, portray cops as the bad guys, portray drug abusing criminal degenerates like George Floyd as saints.

RoatanBill , says: April 22, 2021 at 3:07 am GMT • 1.8 hours ago

It looks like blacks are now untouchable. This can only cause them to increase their savage ways.

Realistically, wouldn’t it be better if every white person that wanted to be armed could do so, and do so without a gov’t permission slip? The reason we can’t pack a piece is because the gov’t says the police will protect us. I know that’s a lie, do you?

Get rid of street cops like Chauvin because they are the ones that aren’t there to protect us and end up in Floyd type situations. We should be demanding our Constitutional rights to carry a weapon if we want to AND have the laws changed so if we take out some POS there’s nothing to worry about.

Just think if a shop keepers in Portland put a shotgun round through their window through the same hole made by the brick some antifa or blm POS threw. All the rioting and destruction would have been cut off in seconds as these miscreants scatter. That’s the only way to handle the low life trash that currently has immunity via a justice system that is broken.

Eliminate street cops. Demand our Constitutional rights. Tell the gov’t to change the laws that allow for deadly force when attacked by some miscreant.

Robert Dolan , says: April 22, 2021 at 3:38 am GMT • 1.3 hours ago

It was a show trial.

A witch hunt.

And the Pollards were behind it.

Watch as cops refuse to police black areas….and black communities that are already under siege will EXPLODE in mayhem.

Magic Dirt , says: April 22, 2021 at 3:40 am GMT • 1.3 hours ago

Intentions. Not “intensionsâ€. Weird error.

Ray Caruso , says: April 22, 2021 at 4:09 am GMT • 47 minutes ago

No, Whites cannot police them, just like we cannot educate them. That’s why the only acceptable solution is to expel them from White countries. Any other course of action will mean the end of civilization because their presence is incompatible with civilized life. Fuck them all and their cuckservative fans.

[Apr 27, 2021] What Happens to Stocks When HOT Inflation Hits- - ZeroHedge

Apr 27, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

We've been outlining how the Fed and other central banks have unleashed an inflationary bubble in all assets truly an Everything Bubble.

We've already assessed the impact this is having on commodities, bonds and other asset classes. Today I want to assess the impact this will have on stocks.

To do that, we need to look at emerging markets.

Inflation is a common occurrence for emerging markets, primarily because more often than not they devalue their currencies, whether by choice or because the markets lose faith in their ability to pay off their debts.

Because of this, emerging markets can provide a glimpse into how inflation affects stocks. So, let's dig in.

Here is a chart of South Africa's stock market since 2003. As you can see, the stock market rallied significantly until 2010, but has effectively gone nowhere ever since then.

The reason this chart looks so lackluster is because it is priced in U.S. dollars. The $USD has been strengthening against the South African currency (the Rand) since 2010.

Watch what happens we price the South Africa stock market in its domestic currency (blue line). Suddenly, this stock market has been ROARING, rising some 750% since 2003. That means average annual gains of 41%!!!

Let's use another example.

Below is a chart of the Mexican stock market priced in $USD. Once again, we see a stock market that has done nothing of note for years.

Now let's price it in pesos (actually the exchange rate of pesos to $USD, but close enough).

You get the general idea. So if hot inflation is in the U.S. financial system, it would make perfect sense for stocks (denominated in the $USD which is losing value due to inflation) to ERUPT higher.

Something like I don't know what's happened since mid-2020?

Look, we all know what's going on here. The stock market is erupting higher as inflation rips into the financial system based on Fed NUCLEAR money printing. And we all know what comes when this bubble bursts.

On that note, we just published a Special Investment Report concerning FIVE secret investments you can use to make inflation pay you as it rips through the financial system in the months ahead.

The report is titled Survive the Inflationary Storm. And it explains in very simply terms how to make inflation PAY YOU.

We are making just 100 copies available to the public.

To pick up yours, swing by:

https://phoenixcapitalmarketing.com/inflationstorm.html

Best Regards

Graham Summers

Chief Market Strategist

Phoenix Capital Research

[Apr 27, 2021] -They're Guessing- - Gundlach Rejects The Fed's -Inflation Is Transitory- Narrative - ZeroHedge

Apr 27, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Don't believe your lying eyes, will be the message tomorrow from The Fed's Jay Powell as he hypnotizes investors to believe that "inflation is transitory" and they have "the tools" to manage it.

'Bond King' Jeff Gundlach is not buying that line and told BNN Bloomberg in an interview this morning.

"...more importantly, I'm not sure why they think they know it's transitory... how do they know that?"

"...there's plenty of money-printing that's been going on, and we've seen commodity prices going up massively... home prices in the US are inflating very substantially... so there's a lot of inflation that's already baked in to input prices ."

Gundlach does admit that Powell has a point in the very near term as the prints were about to see "which could be as high as 4% [for CPI]" are off of year-ago, very depressed levels. "...what he means by transitory is that the base effect will lead to problems in the next few months but then the base effect will become less problematic."

But, Gundlach adds, "it's not clear to me that inflation is going to go back down to around 2 to 2.5%... we don't know, nobody knows... but we're most concerned with the fact that The Fed thinks they know."

This is worrisome because The Fed's track record is anything but inspiring...

"when I go back to the global financial crisis, when we almost had a complete meltdown of the financial system, Ben Bernanke completely missed all of the problems that led to the crisis."

Bernanke's infamous "contained to subprime... and subprime is only a sliver of the market" comments could be about to be trumped by Powell's "inflation is transitory" comments as Gundlach warns "there's plenty of indicators that suggest inflation is going to go higher and not just on a transitory basis."

The Fed is "trying to paint the picture" of control, but Gundlach tries to make clear: "they're guessing."

So, what does that mean for markets?

While some fear "we ain't seen nothing yet" in terms of yields rising (and multiple contraction), Gundlach notes that "it really depends on just how much manipulation the authorities are willing to do."

The billionaire fund manager notes that yields are "still very low... well below the current inflation rate... so we have negative yields everywhere on the yield curve."

It's also "hard to figure out who's going to buy the bonds," he notes, "as we are about to see issuance like we have never seen before." Foreigners have been selling bonds for years and domestically there is little demand, so Gundlach notes the only one left to soak up all this extra supply is The Federal Reserve, which has already expanded its balance sheet massively in the last 12 months.

"Who's going to buy all these many trillions of dollars of bonds? Foreigners have been selling for years and they've accelerated their selling in the last several quarters, domestic buyers are not exactly selling, but they're not adding to their holdings. So what's left to absorb all of the spawn supply is the Federal Reserve ."

"Left to true, free markets, bond yields at the long-end would obviously be higher than they are now."

And so who will buy all these bonds with negative real yields - The Fed... "and they have been transparent about their willingness and ability to buy bonds and expand their balance sheet with no ceiling."

Gundlach is talking about Yield Curve Control, reminding viewers that "The Fed can set the long-end wherever they want it... there's a precedent for this from back in the 1940s into the 50s," in order to ease the pain of the debt from World War II.

Of course, Gundlach warns ominously, "once they stopped the yield curve control, we went into a 27 year massive bear market in bonds, because of 'guns-n'butter' policies... which look like our policies today."

Simply put, he sees "an echo [in current markets and policies] of what happened in the late 1970s into the early 1980s."

His forecast is that "The Fed will allow the market forces to take yields to higher levels [10Y 2.25%] before stepping in."

The Bond King also note that the US stock market is very overvalued by virtually every important metric , and especially so versus foreign markets such as Asia and even Europe.

"I bought European equities a couple of weeks ago, literally for the first time in many years. I can't remember the last time I did it. And that's largely because I think the U.S. dollar is almost certain to decline over the intermediate to long term."

There's a lot more in the interview on the impact of Biden's stimmies and potential tax hikes...

https://webapps.9c9media.com/vidi-player/1.9.19/share/iframe.html?currentId=2189621&config=bnn/share.json&kruxId=&rsid=bellmediabnnbprod,bellmediaglobalprod&siteName=bnnb&cid=%5B%7B%22contentId%22%3A2189621%2C%22ad%22%3A%7B%22adsite%22%3A%22ctv.bnn%22%2C%22adzone%22%3A%22ctv.bnn%22%7D%7D%5D 10,571 48 NEVER


Sound of the Suburbs 26 minutes ago

We are going to train you in this Mickey Mouse economics that doesn't consider private debt and put you in charge of financial stability at the FED.

They don't stand a chance.

Financial stability arrived in the Keynesian era and was locked into the regulations of the time.

https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/banking-crises.png

"This Time is Different" by Reinhart and Rogoff has a graph showing the same thing (Figure 13.1 - The proportion of countries with banking crises, 1900-2008).

Neoclassical economics came back and so did the financial crises.

The neoliberals removed the regulations that created financial stability in the Keynesian era and put independent central banks in charge of financial stability.

Why does it go so wrong?

Richard Vague had noticed real estate lending balloon from 5 trillion to 10 trillion from 2001 – 2007 and knew there was going to be a financial crisis.

Richard Vague has looked at the data for financial crises going back 200 years and found the cause was nearly always runaway bank lending.

We put central bankers in charge of financial stability, but they use an economics that ignores the main cause of financial crises, private debt.

Most of the problems are coming from private debt.

The technocrats use an economics that ignores private debt.

The poor old technocrats don't stand a chance.

WITCH PELOSI 39 minutes ago

42" entry level lawnmower @ Home Depot, spring 2014, $999. Spring 2021 $1549. That's what I call inflation! And maybe a little greed to boot!

atomp 34 minutes ago

$30 is the new $10.

Sound of the Suburbs 25 minutes ago remove link

In 2008 the Queen visited the revered economists of the LSE and said "If these things were so large, how come everyone missed it?"

It's that neoclassical economics they use Ma'am, it doesn't consider private debt.

Here it is Ma'am, look it's obvious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6

At 18 mins.

Let's get our experts in neoclassical economics to have a look.

"It was a black swan"

Not considering private debt is the Achilles' heel of neoclassical economics.

It is a black swan to them.

That's the problem.

[Apr 24, 2021] Gold The Coming Oil Shortage Part I - ZeroHedge

Apr 24, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

The important part for future production is that we make a clear distinction between those three supply sources (counting OPEC and the + states as one source). There are very different reasons for why production is down from each source and more importantly, what the long term prospects are.

In the second part of this report, we will discuss the prospects of each source in detail and show that the pandemic, and the ensuing price crash, have accelerate a process where global production will hardly be able to grow. At the same time, demand will not peak as quickly as people believe. This has the potential for a massive supply shortfall in the medium term.


smellmyfingers 2 hours ago

The only real shortage we have is truth.

We're all being fed a huge steaming pile of BS on everything. Oil build/draw. Crypto currencies based upon what? Fiat money, paper.

All these lying politicians and banksters just jockeying for positions to steal as much as they can as they push the human family to genocide.

wick7 38 minutes ago

Either way oil is going over the Seneca cliff and then Mad max here we come.

wick7 35 minutes ago

Every oil well that has ever existed has followed a bell curve. Pretending oil is infinite is like believing in a flat earth.

Galtmandu 1 hour ago (Edited)

This is some weak sauce analysis on the relationship between gold and energy prices. Here is a summary:

Energy prices and gold prices tend to correlate.

I have simplified,

Galtmandu

PS, your model is basically, interest rate policy, fed reserves of gold supply, and inflation - not groundbreaking stuff. You have created an algorithm that uses these three inputs to overlay on gold prices. Simple stuff. In fact, a basic polynomial exercise gets you your best fit.

Now, predict the movements of fed gold reserves, inflation, and interest rate policy. You can't. Therefore, your model has no predictive capability beyond your opinion. Otherwise, you would be spending your days sipping umbrella drinks.

If I seem aggressive about this stuff its because I hate this kind of faux-analytical b@llsh&t that is just sales propaganda.

Thrashed10 2 hours ago

I'm sitting mostly in cash right now. I do have a little exposure to oil. And food.

The oil market is so manipulated. Probably a smart move long term. But I have to trade so my kids get ice cream. I already know my trade for Monday if I feel motivated. I trade commodities and industrials. The boring stuff that is not sexy.

hanekhw 1 hour ago

Oil prices linked to the worthless dollar won't continue and this Administration is working hard to make our dollars even more worthless.

[Apr 19, 2021] Tucker- Elites pushed false narrative to get what they want - YouTube

Apr 19, 2021 | www.youtube.com


Gavriel Akhadu , 2 days ago

When Trump said that we are up against "The Invisible Enemy", this is the enemy he was talking about.

Dichroic Sounds , 22 hours ago (edited)

They've been doing this forever, we're just now becoming aware of it. The false narrative goes much deeper than stealing an election.

Jonathan Sterling , 1 day ago

The politician most responsible for pitting ordinary men and women against each other, ruining marriage among ordinary people, then accusing someone else of "having no soul" is ironic.

remigiusz wójcik , 1 day ago

The biggest problem of it is that media cannot be prosecuted for it and they definitely should be

Robert Jackson , 1 day ago

No war in the last 50 years was started without the support of the press. Julian Assange Truths like this are why they can't let him surface.

KyleHboc , 2 days ago

They knew the bounties story was fake and they all ran with it anyway.

Rogue Agent , 1 day ago

It's the Orwellian narrative: "We have enemies overseas." Enemies that aren't real enemies because we really don't actually want to start a war with them but we need to put on a show to keep the people distracted from looking at who are the real enemies inside their own country.

Cui Bono , 1 day ago

Biden is so full of it, as if he would dare say anything to Putin, then he really would find out how hot things can get behind the gym.

Mari Olsdatter , 1 day ago

These self-appointed "elites" should exchange their lives for the slain lives of the military victims of their lies.

CARRIE REGAN , 1 day ago

All of their dirty tricks are played out and predictable now. These demons will lie about anything and everything.

Das Karnickel , 2 days ago

I remember when journalists had to show their proof and quote their sources. It's now all propaganda.

[Apr 14, 2021] Energy Price Surge Continues to Drive Everyday Prices Higher - Seeking Alpha

Apr 14, 2021 | seekingalpha.com

Summary

[Apr 14, 2021] How To Estimate -Rational- Market Expectations Of Future Inflation

Apr 14, 2021 | angrybearblog.com

For a given time-horizon, it has been conventional for those estimating such a "rational" market forecast of expected inflation to take the appropriate Treasury security nominal yield of that time horizon (say 5 years) and simply subtract from it the yield on the same time horizon TIPS, which covers security holders for inflation. So it has long looked like this difference is a pretty good estimate of this market expectation of inflation, given that TIPS covers for it while the same time horizon Treasury security does not.

Well, it turns out that there are some other things involved here that need to be taken account, one for each of these securities. On the Treasury side, it turns out that the proper measure of the expected real yield must take into account the expected time path of shorter term yields up to that time horizon. This time path has associated with it a risk regarding the path of interest rates throughout the time period. This is called the Treasury risk premium, or trp. It can be either positive or negative, with it apparently having been quite high during the inflationary 1979s.

The element that needs to be taken into account with respect to the TIPS is that these securities are apparently not as liquid in general as regular Treasury securities, and the measure of this gap is the Liquidity premium, or lp. This was apparently quite high when these were first issues and also saw a surge during the 2008-09 financial crisis. In principle this can also be of either sign, although has apparently been positive.

Anyway, the difference between the nominal T security yield and the appropriate TIPS yield is called the "inflation breakeven," the number that used to be focused on as the measure of market inflation expectations. But the new view is that this must be adjusted by adding (tpr – lp).

In a post just put up on Econbrowser by Menzie the current inflation breakeven for five years out is 2.52%. But according to Menzie the current (tpr – lp) adjustment factor is -0.64%. So adding these two together gives as the market expected inflation rate five years from now of 1.88%, although Menzie rounded it out to 1.9%.

If indeed this is what we should be looking at it says the market is not expecting all that much of an increase in the rate of inflation from its current 1.7% five years from now. The Fed and others are looking at a short term spike in prices this year, but the market seems to agree with their apparent nonchalance (shared by Janet Yellen) that this will wain later on, with that expected 5 year rate of inflation still below the Fed's target of 2%.

Certainly this contrasts with the scary talk coming from Larry Summers and Olivier Blanchard, not to mention most GOP commentators, regarding what the impact of current fiscal policies passed and proposed by Biden will do to the future rate of inflation. Not a whole lot, although, of course, rational expectations is not something that always forecasts all that well, so the pessimists might still prove to be right.

Barkley Rosser

Likbez , April 14, 2021 6:27 pm

Larry Summers is a puppet of financial oligarchy. Everything that he writes should be viewed via this prism. He also is highly overrated.
IMHO rates are no longer are determined by only domestic factors.

I think that the size of foreign holdings of the USA debt and their dynamics is another important factor. FED will do everything to keep inflation less then 2% but this is possible only as long as they can export inflation.

BTW realistically inflation in the USA is probably 30%-60% higher than the official figure. Look at http://www.shadowstats.com/ :

March 2021 annual Consumer Price Index inflation hit an unadjusted three-year high of 2.62%, as gasoline prices soared to multi-year highs, not seen since well before the 2020 Oil Price War. -- March Producer Price Index exploded, with respective record annualized First-Quarter PPI inflation levels of 9.0% in Aggregate, 16.0% in Goods and 5.6% in Services.

L A T E S T .. N U M B E R S .. March 2021 unadjusted year-to-year March 2021 CPI-U Inflation jumped 2.62% -- a one-year high -- as gasoline prices soared, not only fully recovering pre-Oil Price War levels of a year ago, but also hitting the highest unadjusted levels since May of 2019 (April 13th, Bureau of Labor Statistics – BLS). Headline March 2021 CPI-U gained 0.62% in the month, 2.62% year-to-year, against monthly and annual gains of 0.35% and 1.68% in February.

That inflation pickup reflected more than a full recovery in gasoline prices, which had been severely depressed by the Oil Price War of one year ago. Such had had the effect of depressing headline U.S. inflation up through February 2021, including suppressing the 2021 Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for Social Security by about one-percentage point to the headline 1.3%. By major sector, March Food prices gained 0.11% in the month, 3.47% year-to-year (vs. 0.17% and 3.62% in February); "Core" (ex-Food and Energy) prices gained 0.34% in March, 1.65% year-to-year (vs. 0.35% and 1.28% in February); Energy prices gained 5.00% in March, 13.17% year-to-year (vs. 3.85% and 2.36% in February), with underlying Gasoline prices gaining 9.10% in the month, 22.48% year-to-year (vs. 6.41% and 1.52% in February).

The March 2021 ShadowStats Alternate CPI (1980 Base) rose to 10.4% year-to-year, up from 9.4% in February 2021 and against 9.1% in January 2021. The ShadowStats Alternate CPI-U estimate restates current headline inflation so as to reverse the government's inflation-reducing gimmicks of the last four decades, which were designed specifically to reduce/ understate COLAs.

Related graphs and methodology are available to all on the updated ALTERNATE DATA tab above. Subscriber-only data downloads and an Inflation Calculator are available there, with extended details in pending No. 1460 .

In this sense China and Japanese policies will influence the USA rates. If they cut buying the US debt the writing for higher rates is on the wall. In a way, recent events might signal that FED can lose the control over rate if and when foreign actors cut holding of the USA debt.

Behavior of foreign actors is probably the key factor that will determine the rates in the future.

[Apr 13, 2021] U.S. Treasury yields slip despite surge in inflation to 2½-year high by very small number of companies.

Treasury yields slipped Tuesday after bond investors shrugged off an increase in U.S. consumer prices in March that sent yearly inflation measures to the highest level in two and a half years. Treasury yields slipped Tuesday after bond investors shrugged off an increase in U.S. consumer prices in March that sent yearly inflation measures to the highest level in two and a half years.
economistsview.typepad.com

The 10-year Treasury note yield TMUBMUSD10Y, 1.653% fell to 1.659%, down from 1.675% at the end of Monday, while the 2-year note TMUBMUSD02Y, 0.168% was steady at 0.169%. The 30-year bond yield TMUBMUSD30Y, 2.339% slid 0.9 basis point to 2.336%.

What's driving Treasurys?

The U.S. consumer price index rose 0.6% in March, while the core gauge that strips out for energy and food prices came in at an 0.3% increase.

The annual rate of inflation climbed to 2.6% from 1.7% in the prior month, marking the highest level since the fall of 2018.

[Apr 11, 2021] Another professional outrage group wants Fox News host Tucker Carlson FIRED: This time it's the ADL

Apr 11, 2021 | www.rt.com

Ms No PREMIUM 2 hours ago

The Jewish Anti-defamation league is after Tucker Carlson. That's as bad as it gets. They have more money than God.

Anti-Defamation League chief Jonathan Greenblatt "Tucker must go"...."white supremacist tenet that the white race is in danger by a rising tide of non-whites" that is "anti-Semitic, racist and toxic."

https://www.sott.net/article/451245-Another-professional-outrage-group-wants-Fox-News-host-Tucker-Carlson-FIRED-This-time-its-the-ADL 1 odb 2 hours ago

"To find out who really rules you, find out who it is that you can't criticize". Voltaire. play_arrow

[Apr 09, 2021] Inflation is different for different income stratas of the US population with poor hit much harder then the rich

Apr 09, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

For low-income Americans, it has been a double-whammy of job losses (the total number of Americans receiving jobless benefits from the government has basically stagnated for the last four months)...

Source: Bloomberg

...and significant increases in the costs of living.

As Bloomberg reports , while the headline consumer inflation rate in the U.S. remains subdued, at 1.7% - but it masks large differences in what people actually buy .

If you like to eat, food-price inflation is running at more than double the headline rate , and staples like household cleaning products have also climbed.

Source: Bloomberg

if you drive a car, gas prices have soared in recent months...

Source: Bloomberg

All of which might explain why confidence among the lowest income Americans is lagging significantly (because groceries or gas take up a bigger share of their monthly shopping basket than is the case for wealthier households, and they're items that can't easily be deferred or substituted )...

Source: Bloomberg

An analysis by Bloomberg Economics , which reweighted consumer-price baskets based on the spending habits of different income groups, found that the richest Americans are experiencing the lowest level of inflation .

As Bloomberg 's Andrew Husby points out:

"On average, higher-income households spend a smaller fraction of their budgets on food, medical care, and rent, all categories that have seen faster inflation than the headline in recent years, and 2020 in particular."

The question of who exactly gets hurt most by higher prices could become more urgently concerning as most economists - and even The Fed itself - expect inflation to accelerate in the next 12 months.

"The food price story and inflation story are important to the issue of equality," says Carmen Reinhart, the World Bank's chief economist.

"It's a shock that has very uneven effects."

So, in summary, The Fed is telling Americans - ignore "transitory" spikes in non-core inflation (such as food and energy), it's just temporary and base-effect-driven (oh and we have the "tools" to manage it). However, despite all The Fed's pandering and virtue-signaling about "equity" and "fairness", it is precisely this segment of the costs of living that is crushing most of the long-suffering low-income population ($1400 checks or not) .

And now all eyes will be on this morning's PPI print which is expected to surge to +3.8% YoY.

[Apr 09, 2021] Inflation might be the way out of the debt crisis

Highly recommended!
An interesting headline from Financial Times
Apr 09, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com
Pascal Blanqué Wed, April 7, 2021, 8:00 PM

Bond markets are firmly in the driving seat. For too long, inflation has disappeared from investors' radar. The key ones include a hostile environment for trade and globalisation, business and labour support public programmes and the extraordinary debt burden fuelled by the pandemic. These are set to create a turning point in the current market regime before long.

[Apr 03, 2021] Inflation Is Coming. Why it Could Be Here to Stay by Jacob Sonenshine

Apr 01, 2021 | www.marketwatch.com

...Economists do expect inflation to rise to above 2% as more states reopen and then stay there. And the St. Louis Fed is forecasting a 2.35% rate for the next 10 years.

...China's economy has dynamics that could raise the U.S. inflation rate over time. Key to the argument are China's aging population and the value of the country's currency, the Yuan. First, age. Today, the average age in China is 38, the same as in the U.S. By 2040, though, the number skyrockets to 47 in China and dips to 37 here.

The shift means fewer Chinese workers and upward pressure on pay. Higher wages probably would cause Chinese manufacturers to raise prices of exports, which could be passed onto American consumers.

Now, the Yuan. The currency bottomed at 7.12 per dollar in late 2019 after a more than five-year down-trend. China wants a weaker currency so its exports are more competitive -- cheaper -- for global buyers. Since the end of 2019, the Yuan has risen to 6.50 per dollar. If the trend continues, U.S. importers might raise prices because the cost of their imports are higher.

"Over the next decade, Asia's growth will slow dramatically, its wages will rise, its factories will close, its surpluses will melt and its currencies will rise sharply," wrote Vincent Deluard, global macro strategist at StoneX in a note. "For the rest of the world, this will be a massive and unexpected inflationary shock."

[Apr 02, 2021] Who's Hiring And Who's Firing

Apr 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Not only was the March payrolls report a blockbuster, golidlocks number, much higher than expected but not too high to spark immediate reflation/hike fears thanks to subdued wage inflation, job growth in March was also widespread unlike February, where 75% of all new jobs were waiters and bartenders . By contrast, in March the largest gains occurring across most industries with the bulk taking place in leisure and hospitality, public and private education, and construction.

Here is a full breakdown:

It's hardly a surprise that with the US reopening, the one industry seeing the biggest hiring remains leisure and hospitality where jobs rose by 280,000, as pandemic-related restrictions eased in many parts of the country, with nearly two-thirds of the increase in "food services and drinking places", i.e., waiters and bartenders, which added +176,000 jobs in March.

And another notable change was in the total number of government workers, which surged by 136K in March, reversing the 90K drop in February, as a result of 49.6K state education workers and 76K local government education workers added thanks to the reopening of schools around the country.

Here is a visual breakdown of all the March job changes:

Finally, courtesy of Bloomberg , below are the industries with the highest and lowest rates of employment growth for the most recent month.


7 play_arrow


Jack Offelday 1 hour ago

The "V" recovery. Where Food Service jobs are the new "Golden Age".

Creamaster 47 minutes ago (Edited)

My wife is a nurse in an outpatient office under a large hospital umbrella here. Normally these outpatient spots go within days to a week.

Currently they have 2 openings they have been trying to fill for a few months now. Combine that with the fact my wife got 3 years worth of raises in a single shot, recently and out of the blue for no reason, tells me the hospitla is really screwed trying to fill nursing spots.

After this pandemic crap, it has likely scared alot of people away from entering healthcare, and if a nurse was on the fence about retirement , likely decided to call it quits after all this BS.

newworldorder 45 minutes ago

There are an estimated, 30 million illegals currently in the USA waiting legalization.

WHEN legalization happens, they will bring into the USA (by historical averages,) another 60 to 90 million of their family members in 10 years.

And all of them US Minority workers, by current US Diversity Laws, - same as all Black Americans.

[Mar 28, 2021] Medicaid Enrollment Grew -30% Year-Over-Year

Mar 28, 2021 | angrybearblog.com

run75441 | March 27, 2021 7:55 pm

HEALTHCARE

Medicaid expansion enrollment grew nearly 30% year-over-year in 19-state sample, Andrew Sprung, XPOSTFACTOID, March 17, 2021

An update on Medicaid expansion enrollment growth since the pandemic struck. Below is a sampling of 19 expansion states through January of this year, and 14 states through February.

Maintaining the assumption, explained here , "relatively slow growth in California would push the national total down by about 2.5 percentage points." These tallies still point to year-over-year enrollment growth of approximately 30% from February 2020 to February 2021.

If that's right, then Medicaid enrollment among those rendered eligible by ACA expansion criteria (adults with income up to 138% FPL) may exceed 19 million nationally and may be pushing 20 million. Assuming the sampling of a bit more than a third of total expansion enrollment represents all expansion states more or less and again accounting for slower growth in California.

[Mar 28, 2021] One year later, unemployment insurance claims remain sky-high

Notable quotes:
"... Last week was the 53rd straight week total initial claims were greater than the second-worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims -- because we didn't have PUA in the Great Recession -- initial claims are still greater than the 14th worst week of the Great Recession.) ..."
Mar 28, 2021 | www.epi.org

One year ago this week, when the first sky-high unemployment insurance (UI) claims data of the pandemic were released, I said " I have been a labor economist for a very long time and have never seen anything like this ." But in the weeks that followed, things got worse before they got better -- and we are not out of the woods yet. Last week -- the week ending March 20, 2021 -- another 926,000 people applied for UI. This included 684,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 242,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers.

Last week was the 53rd straight week total initial claims were greater than the second-worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims -- because we didn't have PUA in the Great Recession -- initial claims are still greater than the 14th worst week of the Great Recession.)

Figure A shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data for this are for March 6). Continuing claims are currently nearly 17 million above where they were a year ago, just before the virus hit.

FIGURE A Continuing unemployment claims in all programs, March 23, 2019–March 6, 2021 *Use caution interpreting trends over time because of reporting issues (see below)*
Date Regular state UI PEUC PUA Other programs (mostly EB and STC)
2019-03-23 1,905,627 31,510
2019-03-30 1,858,954 31,446
2019-04-06 1,727,261 30,454
2019-04-13 1,700,689 30,404
2019-04-20 1,645,387 28,281
2019-04-27 1,630,382 29,795
2019-05-04 1,536,652 27,937
2019-05-11 1,540,486 28,727
2019-05-18 1,506,501 27,949
2019-05-25 1,519,345 26,263
2019-06-01 1,535,572 26,905
2019-06-08 1,520,520 25,694
2019-06-15 1,556,252 26,057
2019-06-22 1,586,714 25,409
2019-06-29 1,608,769 23,926
2019-07-06 1,700,329 25,630
2019-07-13 1,694,876 27,169
2019-07-20 1,676,883 30,390
2019-07-27 1,662,427 28,319
2019-08-03 1,676,979 27,403
2019-08-10 1,616,985 27,330
2019-08-17 1,613,394 26,234
2019-08-24 1,564,203 27,253
2019-08-31 1,473,997 25,003
2019-09-07 1,462,776 25,909
2019-09-14 1,397,267 26,699
2019-09-21 1,380,668 26,641
2019-09-28 1,390,061 25,460
2019-10-05 1,366,978 26,977
2019-10-12 1,384,208 27,501
2019-10-19 1,416,816 28,088
2019-10-26 1,420,918 28,576
2019-11-02 1,447,411 29,080
2019-11-09 1,457,789 30,024
2019-11-16 1,541,860 31,593
2019-11-23 1,505,742 29,499
2019-11-30 1,752,141 30,315
2019-12-07 1,725,237 32,895
2019-12-14 1,796,247 31,893
2019-12-21 1,773,949 29,888
2019-12-28 2,143,802 32,517
2020-01-04 2,245,684 32,520
2020-01-11 2,137,910 33,882
2020-01-18 2,075,857 32,625
2020-01-25 2,148,764 35,828
2020-02-01 2,084,204 33,884
2020-02-08 2,095,001 35,605
2020-02-15 2,057,774 34,683
2020-02-22 2,101,301 35,440
2020-02-29 2,054,129 33,053
2020-03-07 1,973,560 32,803
2020-03-14 2,071,070 34,149
2020-03-21 3,410,969 36,758
2020-03-28 8,158,043 0 52,494 48,963
2020-04-04 12,444,309 3,802 69,537 64,201
2020-04-11 16,249,334 31,426 216,481 89,915
2020-04-18 17,756,054 63,720 1,172,238 116,162
2020-04-25 21,723,230 91,724 3,629,986 158,031
2020-05-02 20,823,294 173,760 6,361,532 175,289
2020-05-09 22,725,217 252,257 8,120,137 216,576
2020-05-16 18,791,926 252,952 11,281,930 226,164
2020-05-23 19,022,578 546,065 10,010,509 247,595
2020-05-30 18,548,442 1,121,306 9,597,884 259,499
2020-06-06 18,330,293 885,802 11,359,389 325,282
2020-06-13 17,552,371 783,999 13,093,382 336,537
2020-06-20 17,316,689 867,675 14,203,555 392,042
2020-06-27 16,410,059 956,849 12,308,450 373,841
2020-07-04 17,188,908 964,744 13,549,797 495,296
2020-07-11 16,221,070 1,016,882 13,326,206 513,141
2020-07-18 16,691,210 1,122,677 13,259,954 518,584
2020-07-25 15,700,971 1,193,198 10,984,864 609,328
2020-08-01 15,112,240 1,262,021 11,504,089 433,416
2020-08-08 14,098,536 1,376,738 11,221,790 549,603
2020-08-15 13,792,016 1,381,317 13,841,939 469,028
2020-08-22 13,067,660 1,434,638 15,164,498 523,430
2020-08-29 13,283,721 1,547,611 14,786,785 490,514
2020-09-05 12,373,201 1,630,711 11,808,368 529,220
2020-09-12 12,363,489 1,832,754 12,153,925 510,610
2020-09-19 11,561,158 1,989,499 10,686,922 589,652
2020-09-26 10,172,332 2,824,685 10,978,217 579,582
2020-10-03 8,952,580 3,334,878 10,450,384 668,691
2020-10-10 8,038,175 3,711,089 10,622,725 615,066
2020-10-17 7,436,321 3,983,613 9,332,610 778,746
2020-10-24 6,837,941 4,143,389 9,433,127 746,403
2020-10-31 6,452,002 4,376,847 8,681,647 806,430
2020-11-07 6,037,690 4,509,284 9,147,753 757,496
2020-11-14 5,890,220 4,569,016 8,869,502 834,740
2020-11-21 5,213,781 4,532,876 8,555,763 741,078
2020-11-28 5,766,130 4,801,408 9,244,556 834,685
2020-12-05 5,457,941 4,793,230 9,271,112 841,463
2020-12-12 5,393,839 4,810,334 8,453,940 937,972
2020-12-19 5,205,841 4,491,413 8,383,387 1,070,810
2020-12-26 5,347,440 4,166,261 7,442,888 1,450,438
2021-01-02 5,727,359 3,026,952 5,707,397 1,526,887
2021-01-09 5,446,993 3,863,008 7,334,682 1,638,247
2021-01-16 5,188,211 3,604,894 7,218,801 1,826,573
2021-01-23 5,156,985 4,779,341 7,943,448 1,785,954
2021-01-30 5,003,178 4,062,189 7,685,857 1,590,360
2021-02-06 4,934,269 5,067,523 7,520,114 1,523,394
2021-02-13 4,794,195 4,468,389 7,329,172 1,437,170
2021-02-20 4,808,623 5,456,080 8,387,696 1,465,769
2021-02-27 4,457,888 4,816,523 7,616,593 1,237,929
2021-03-06 4,458,888 5,551,215 7,735,491 1,207,201

Other programs (mostly EB and STC) PUA PEUC Regular state UI Jul 2019 Jan 2020 Jul 2020 Jan 2021 0 10,000,000 20,000,000 30,000,000 40,000,000 Chart Data Caution: Trends over time in PUA claims may be distorted because when an individual is owed retroactive payments, some states report all retroactive PUA claims during the week the individual received their payment.

Click here for notes.

Source: U.S. Employment and Training Administration, Initial Claims [ICSA], retrieved from Department of Labor (DOL), https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/docs/persons.xls and https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf , March 25, 2021. Share Tweet Embed Download image

The good news in all of this is Congress's passage of the sweeping $1.9 trillion relief and recovery package. It is both providing crucial support to millions of working families and setting the stage for a robust recovery. One big concern, however, is that the bill's UI provisions are set to expire the first week in September, when, even in the best–case scenario, they will still be needed. By then, Congress needs to have put in place long-run UI reforms that include automatic triggers based on economic conditions.

[Mar 28, 2021] Seconding Paul Krugman- inflationary pressures will be a transient phenomenon in 2021 (will they cause a recession in 2022)

Krugman is is barking on the wrong tree. The question right now is not wage inflation but the inflation due to weakening dollar as purchases of Treasuries by foreign buyers weakened. That what probably caused the spike on 10 year Treasuries yield.
Without foreign buyers of the US debt the deficit spending does not work. So it is quite possible that this time inflationary pressures will come from the weakening of the status of the dollar as the world reserve currency. As along the this status is unchallenged the USA will be OK. If dollar is challenged the USA will experience the Seneca cliff.
Paul Krugman argues once's again this morning that any increase in inflation this year as part of a post-pandemic boom will be transitory:
Mar 28, 2021 | angrybearblog.com

Paul Krugman

A few months of rising prices won't mean the 70s are back

I agree. I want to elaborate on one point he hasn't emphasized; namely, you can't have a wage-price inflationary spiral if wages don't participate!

To make my point, let me show you three graphs below, covering wages and prices in three different periods: (l) the inflationary 1960s and '70's, (2) the disinflationary
Reagan-era 1980s and early '90's, and (3) the low inflation period of the late 1990s to the present.

In addition to the YoY% change in CPI, I also show CPI less energy (gold), better to show oil shocks, and also that it takes about a year for inflation in energy prices to filter through to inflation in other items.

Also, hourly wages were greatly affected (depressed) by the entry of 10,000,000's of women into the workforce between the 1960s and mid-1990s. This increased median household income, which would be the better metric, but since that statistic is only released once a year, I've approximated its impact by adding 1% to the YoY% change in average hourly wages (light blue).

Here are the three graphs:

... ... ...

[Mar 28, 2021] Krugman Dismisses 1970s-Style Inflation, With Faith in Fed by Julia Fanzeres

Are FED pushing on the string?
Mar 19, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

"It took really more than a decade of screwing things up -- year after year -- to get to that pass, and I don't think we're going to do that again," Krugman said of the inflation scourge of the 1970s to early 1980s. He spoke in an interview with David Westin for Bloomberg Television's "Wall Street Week" to be broadcast Friday.

...The worst-case scenario out of the fiscal stimulus package would be a transitory spike in consumer prices as was seen early in the Korean War, Krugman said. The relief bill is "definitely significant stimulus but not wildly inflationary stimulus," he said.

...Economists predict that the core inflation measure tied to consumer spending that the Fed uses in its forecasts will remain under 2% this year and next, a Bloomberg survey shows. A different gauge, the consumer price index is seen at 2.4% in 2021 and 2.2% next year. The CPI peaked at over 13% in 1980.

The risk is that policy makers are "fighting the last war" -- countering the undershooting of the 2% inflation target and limited fiscal measures taken after the 2007-09 financial crisis, the economists said.

Even so, he argued that "redistributionist" aspects of the pandemic-relief package will reduce the need for the Fed to keep monetary stimulus too strong for too long in order to address pockets of high unemployment. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly said the central bank wants to see very broad strengthening in the labor market, not just a drop in the national jobless rate.

"It's not silly to think that there might be some inflationary pressure" from the fiscal package, Krugman said. But it was designed less as stimulus than as a relief plan, he said.

[Mar 28, 2021] RON PATTERSON

Mar 28, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

IGNORED 03/28/2021 at 10:22 am

The 12 nation group might not see annual C plus C output increases of 1400 kbo/d in the future, but it will take time for the rate of increase to fall to 455 kbo/d (where a plateau in World output would occur) especially if oil prices rise to $80/bo or more.

No, it will not take time. Why would you think production would graduallly fall off? Yes, decline slops are usually gradual as well as increasing slopes. But the change from increase to plateau or increase to decline is seldom, if ever gradual. USA+Saudi+Russia has already plateaued. Their decline is very likely to be sudden, well, it has actually already happened.

However, in the two charts below, I have used your method of stopping the chart just before the Covid induced decline. The charts speak for themselves.

REPLY RON PATTERSON IGNORED 03/28/2021 at 10:26 am

The second chart. The rest of the world is in serious decline.

[Mar 28, 2021] Unless investment increases, I don't expect extraction rates to achieve 2018 levels soon.

Mar 28, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

SCHINZY IGNORED 03/28/2021 at 2:26 am

I think it instructive to recall oil and gas investment history. Unregulated oil and gas markets have always yielded boom bust cycles. There was a bust cycle from 1986 to 2000. A boom cycle started in 2001 with investment in oil and gas rising on average 11% per year to $780 billion in 2014 (this was from a Kopits talk in 2014, but the link I have no longer works).

There is a lag between increased or decreased investment and the response in extraction rates. The lag is longer offshore than onshore. For example, in spite of the investment boom from 2001 to 2014, extraction rates were stagnant between 2005 and 2010.

A bust began in 2015 with investment dropping 25% in 2015 and a further 20% in 2016. The drop was more pronounced offshore than onshore. Investment stayed essentially flat through 2019. Extraction rates continued to climb through 2018 but were flat in 2019.

The IEA began warning in 2016 that investment was not sufficient to meet demand in the early 2020s. In their 2019 WEO they stated that $650 to $750 billion was needed annually to attain 106 mb/d in 2030. I am assuming this sum referred to oil AND gas investment. In 2019 oil and gas investment was $483 billion. In 2020 it was $313 billion (close to 2009 levels).

As Dennis noted in response to my comment above, the relationship between a drop in investment and the corresponding drop in supply is not linear. But unless investment increases, I don't expect extraction rates to achieve 2018 levels soon. REPLY SHALLOW SAND IGNORED 03/28/2021 at 6:08 am

Ovi. I appreciate your posts. Thanks.

Schinzy. Look at what the integrated oil companies are forecasting. BP, RDS and TOT are shrinking production. CVX and XOM are greatly reducing CAPEX. So is COP, the largest independent. So is PXD, one of the largest shale players. Of course, these companies can change strategy quickly, likely next year if any do.

For the first time I can recall, the government of the United States is not supportive of it increasing production. Contrary to popular belief, this matters.

To keep a lid on oil prices, on the supply side, either the USA needs to keep adding barrels or some other country that does not benefit as a whole from high oil prices will need to step up. The CAPEX currently isn't budgeted to do that.

Of course, decreased demand due to the continued spikes in COVID cases will continue to put a lid on demand. Hopefully by fall this won't be much of an issue, not for oils sake, but for public health sake.

The other demand side lids I see could be Western EV adoption offsetting developing world oil demand growth. Worried here about both the needed upgrades to the grids, plus the lack of rare earth metals. The other could be another big economic issue. Don't want that, but seems economy issues are also going to be with us given the high debt levels. The stimulus in response to COVID isn't cheap. REPLY SCHINZY IGNORED 03/28/2021 at 7:41 am

All very true Shallow. I suspect these companies are reducing CAPEX because of increasing debt. The more conservative CAPEX spending seems to be helping their share prices. SHALLOW SAND IGNORED 03/28/2021 at 7:55 am

Schinzy.

IHS Markit doesn't see US CAPEX spending at the 2018-19 levels returning until 2024-25. Probably too far out in the future to be accurate. However, it's 2021 forecast is for lower CAPEX in all years since 2010 except for 2020.

I will add another big player to my list above, EOG also lowered CAPEX guidance for 2021 from where it had been pre-pandemic. Will seek to hold production flat in 2021.

[Mar 28, 2021] Looks like the world's three greatest oil producers(The USA, Saudi Arabia, and Russia), have peaked

Mar 28, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

OVI IGNORED 03/25/2021 at 5:47 pm

Dennis

Here is the C Plus C chart to to December 2022. In the original chart in the post above, I only took it out to March 2021.

The March STEO report along with the International Energy Statistics are used to make the projection. It projects that world crude production December 2022 will be 81,759 kb/d, 2,735 kb/d lower than November 2018

REPLY RON PATTERSON IGNORED 03/25/2021 at 6:44 pm

Ovi, thanks for a great chart. And even this, 2,735 kb/d below the previous peak, I think is overly optimistic.

I think, at least two of the world's three greatest oil producers have peaked, (The USA, Saudi Arabia, and Russia), have peaked, and the rest of the world has clearly peaked, there is no way we can possibly surpass that 2018 peak. Actually, I think all three have peaked. I was just being conservative.

World less USA, Saudi Arabia, and Russia peaked in 2017. All three peaked, yearly average, in 2019. Of course you can argue that this is just the peak "so far". But I do not believe any of the three will ever surpass their 2019 yearly average peak.

RON PATTERSON IGNORED 03/26/2021 at 8:57 am

Dennis, you wrote: Below I use the trend in the ratio of World C plus C to World petroleum liquids from Jan 2017 to Dec 2019 to estimate World C+C from Jan 2021 to Dec 2022.

Okay, you use past trend lines to estimate future production. Well, I guess there is also how the EIA does it and the IEA does it. I just don't have confidence in that type of analysis.

Above I have charted past World oil production less the USA, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. There is clearly a trend there. Do you think this trend will continue?

World C+C production in 2018 averaged 82,897,000 barrels per day. In 2019 that average was 82,306,000 barrels per day. I have little doubt that future world oil production can come close to those averages. But I would bet my SS check that the 2018 peak will never be surpassed. (I like annual averages but if you like centered 12-month averages, then go with that.)

At any rate here are four possible sources for a surge in World oil production:

1. THE USA
2. Russia
3. Saudi Arabia
4. The World less USA, Russia, and Saudi Arabia

If World oil production is yet to peak, which one, or ones, of these four sources, will it come from? RON PATTERSON IGNORED 03/26/2021 at 12:00 pm

I believe I have seen reports that suggest a plateau near the recent 12 month peak output can be maintained for 5 to 10 years.

No Dennis, you have not seen that. I posted that myself some time ago. Russia stated that they hoped to hold production at about 11.2 million barrels per day for the next four years, 2021 through 2024. I have since lost the link but it was posted right here on this list. However, I think that was wishful thinking on Russia's part. I don't think they will hold that level, ever again.

The drop in World minus KSA, US, and Russia C plus C output since 2018 has mostly been due to a combination of lower oil prices and OPEC reducing output to try to bring oil prices back up,

I am not talking about the drop since 2018, I am talking about the peak and decline before 2018. The peak month in my chart above was November of 2016 at 52,206,000. The peak 12-month average was September of 2017 at 51,161,000 barrels per day. At that point, in September of 2017, the World less USA, Russia, and Saudi produced 63% of all World production. 63% of World oil production peaked in September of 2017.

While World oil production was peaking in 2018, due to increased production by the USA, Saudi, and Russia, the World less these big three was declining to 50,737,000 barrels per day, the average for 2018. A decline of almost half a million barrels per day.

Dennis, regardless of what happens in Canada, Brazil, and Norway over the next 5 to 10 years, the World less the big three peaked in 2016 monthly and 2017 annually. Any increase in World production must come from one or more of the big three. HOLE IN HEAD IGNORED 03/26/2021 at 1:22 pm

Dennis , your post on the last thread .
"I stand by my estimate, in 2020 World C plus C output dropped by 5.5 Mbo/d due to a lack of oil demand and the resulting drop in oil prices from the 2019 annual average, so a 10 Mbo/d increase from the 2020 level (annual average) of C plus C output requires a return to the 2019 average level (roughly 82.3 Mb/d) requiring a 5.6 Mbo/d increase and then a further 4.4 Mbo/d increase in output to reach 87 Mbo/d.

If World demand for C plus C warrants such an increase by 2028, I believe it can be produced, and yes the model accounts for depletion, which has been ongoing since the first barrel of oil was produced. The basis for the estimate is likely World resources of 3400 Gb of C plus C (this includes the 1428 Gb of crude plus condensate that was produced from 1860 to 2020), remaining resources (this includes conventional and unconventional C plus C) are about 1972 Gb (this includes future discoveries and reserve growth).

It is possible less will be produced due to lack of demand, if a rapid transition to non-fossil fuel energy sources occurs, I hope that is the case, but I am skeptical"
Well, 2020 production came in at an average of 75.93 mbpd . Decline rate was 7.5% compared to 2019. How will you achieve additional 10 mbpd by 2028 ? Ron is correct . Igor Sechin boss at Rosneft confirms what Ron has stated , shale party is over , KSA is going to cut domestic consumption by 1mbpd so that it can export that oil . Sorry, Brazil , Norway ,Tom Dick and Harry are in no position to cover this lag in production .In the future decline rates will increase as horizontal wells reach their limits of extraction . You must rethink your models with the new facts . Your statement "If World demand for C plus C warrants such an increase by 2028, I believe it can be produced " does not hold water . Your belief or mine is irrelevant . Geology prevails . RON PATTERSON IGNORED 03/27/2021 at 8:55 am

OPEC has been holding back production since 2017 in order to get oil prices up, how much different nations produce depends on their cost of production relative to price,

I don't see any evidence to support that statement. Average OPEC production in 2018 was only 170,000 barrels per day below the average for 2017. If they were holding back, they weren't doing a very good job of it. I think they were producing flat out all three years, 2016 through 2018.

Average 2016 – 31,701 (Peak)
Average 2017 – 31,507
Average 2018 – 31,336 RON PATTERSON IGNORED 03/27/2021 at 4:49 pm

I remembered incorrectly, OPEC likely started cutting back on output in the middle of 2016 to get oil prices higher,

You remember very incorrectly. OPEC, in the last months of 2016 was emptying their storage tanks in order to produce as much oil as they could. They would set their quotas on the amount produced in November and December of 2016, so they were making heroic attempts to produce every barrel possible in order to get a higher quota. (November 2016 was the OPEC all-time peak. And in my opinion, will remain so forever.)

They started cutting in January of 2017. But by June everyone was cheating and they were all, by July 2017, producing flat out.

Why does OPEC exist?

OPEC was formally constituted in January 1961 by five countries: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Venezuela. They existed then for the sole reason of trying to drive oil prices higher. They would like to do that today but squabbling among members has made them somewhat of a joke. They are a disorganized bunch of buffoons. Yes, they have dramatically cut production during the pandemic. But so has everyone else in the world. The bottom dropped out of demand so everyone cut production trying to save money.

A decline in output for the World has occurred since 2018 because oil prices dropped due to oversupply of oil relative to demand.

Okay, but what about 2017 and 2018? OPEC could not keep their members in line and by June of 2017 everyone was again producing flat out, causing that oversupply. And their cut was a pittance anyway, not enough to make much difference. For most of 2017 and all of 2018, every OPEC member was producing every barrel they could. (With the exception of Iran and Venezuela of course, but that is another story for another thread.)

Just look at the chart Dennis, that is just so damn obvious it cannot be denied.


RON PATTERSON IGNORED 03/27/2021 at 6:04 pm

For OPEC minus Iran, Libya, and Venezuela the centered 12 month average peak was 26759 kbo/d in January 2019.

Okay, you need to update your nations here. Libya is already back, producing at maximum possible capacity for the last 4 months. Venezuela will never be back, not in the next decade anyway, long after peak oil is history. That leaves only Iran. Iran, if sanctions were lifted today, could possibly increase production by approximately 1.6 million barrels per day in the next six months or so. That would not be nearly enough to make up for the natural decline in OPEC, especially Saudi Arabia, since the peak in 2016.

Iran is the only nation on earth that can possibly increase production in any significant amount. So you should only deal with Iran when talking about possible OPEC production increases.

Dennis, OPEC has done nothing but basically tread water since 2005. Why do you think they will now save the world?

(In the chart below 2021 is only two months, January and February.


RON PATTERSON IGNORED 03/27/2021 at 8:42 pm

OPEC does not produce at maximum output, except when fighting for quotas.

Dennis, OPEC is not an oil company, they are a cartel. The only ones that increased when battling for quota were Saudi, the UAE, and Kuwait. The rest just produced flat out all the time. Check the charts.

Yes, they were all producing flat out most of the time. Only in a few instances did they actually cut production. Of course, the pandemic hit everyone. But as you can see by the yearly chart I posted their total share of the market has shrunk dramatically since 2005.

Dennis, OPEC peaked in 2016. Saudi Arabia is in decline. End of story. ALIMBIQUATED IGNORED 03/27/2021 at 7:47 am

Ron,
Good point about past trends lines being a dubious predictor of future trends. This is testable too. In this case three years of past data was used to predict the future.

If there is 40 years of data, you could run the algorithm on 35 three-year data sets and check the accuracy of the prediction. That would give you some idea of how likely the latest prediction is to be accurate.

My guess is that the accuracy is fairly low, but checking would reveal the truth. POLLUX IGNORED 03/26/2021 at 3:30 am

In November, Saudi Arabia's domestic crude stockpiles fell to 17-year low:
"Saudi Arabia's domestic crude stockpiles fell by 1.2 million barrels in November to 143.43 million barrels, the lowest since November 2003." ( source )

This trend continues and in January, stockpiles fell to 137.207 million barrels:
"The country's domestic refinery crude throughput rose to 2.343 million bpd while crude stocks fell to 137.207 million barrels in January." ( source ) HOLE IN HEAD IGNORED 03/26/2021 at 11:19 am

We will apply sanctions and abuse you but please give us your oil .
https://www.rt.com/business/519108-us-import-record-oil-russia/
Also Saudi facility is under drone attack as per Saudi govt .
https://www.spa.gov.sa/viewfullstory.php?lang=en&newsid=2207999#2207999 HOLE IN HEAD IGNORED 03/26/2021 at 2:32 pm

In an article Steven Kopits wrote "In its February Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the EIA forecasts this month's world oil consumption at 96.7 million barrels per day (mbpd). The oil supply, however, is much lower, only 93.6 mbpd, with the difference of 3.1 mbpd of necessity being drawn from crude oil and refined product inventories. This is a shortfall of 3.5% "
Is he correct ? if yes ,then are we in trouble ?

[Mar 27, 2021] I have been surprised by the explosion in the numbers of people locally living in cars and vans lately

Notable quotes:
"... freedom is material: a human being must be free from material privation, here and now, in life (and not in the mythical afterlife of reincarnation) in order to be really free. In other words, freedom from need is true freedom. ..."
Mar 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Mar 24 2021 17:07 utc | 3

Health is primary indicator of people's happy life: Xi

Marx's concept of freedom is completely different from the liberal or pre-liberal concepts of freedom. For Marx, freedom is material: a human being must be free from material privation, here and now, in life (and not in the mythical afterlife of reincarnation) in order to be really free. In other words, freedom from need is true freedom.

Human beings can only be materially free. Don't fall for the moral victories of liberalism, the snake oil salesmen's promise of a spot in Paradise from the Abrahamics or the nihilist bullshittery from the Buddhists et al.


William Gruff , Mar 24 2021 17:47 utc | 6

vk @3

Excellent point by vk here. Despite sometimes pretending to myself that I am a Buddhist (I am really good at meditating!), real freedom is being free from need. Abstract and metaphysical "freedoms" are luxuries of the wealthy that few under the thumb of the empire can afford.

I have been surprised by the explosion in the numbers of people locally living in cars and vans lately. I guess from my Buddhist perspective they have been freed from the attachment to a residence. Who could have guessed that capitalism would be such a good teacher of the path to enlightenment?

karlof1 , Mar 24 2021 21:30 utc | 50

John @44--

It's freedom from Want. The Four Freedoms as articulated by FDR in 1941 were:

1.Freedom of speech
2.Freedom of worship
3.Freedom from want
4.Freedom from fear

Earlier this year on the 80th anniversary of FDR's speech, I wrote a series of comments on the topic. They remain the four main tasks needing to be accomplished for the Common Man to be genuinely free. At the time, they were to be the main goals of WW2; goals that were further articulated by Henry Wallace in 1942 & '43 in his speeches and writings. Currently, several nations have accomplished those four goals; none of them is a NATO/Neoliberal nation however.

[Mar 26, 2021] S P 500 And US Economy Face Seismic Shifts From Joe Biden And The Federal Reserve

The UBS economics team holds the out-of-consensus view that annual core PCE inflation won't exceed the Fed's 2% target until 2024. And what will happen with S&P500 if inflation brakes 3% barrier in late 2021 or 2022. Pumping money into stock market is a Ponzi scheme by definition so at one point mistki moment might arrive.
Mar 26, 2021 | www.investors.com

Biden hailed the new law's focus on growing the economy "from the bottom up and the middle out," after decades of supply-side, or "trickle down" tax policies. It "changes the paradigm" for the first time since President Johnson's Great Society programs, he said.

But the last time free-spending, inflation-permissive "regime shifts for fiscal and monetary policymakers" coincided, wrote Deutsche Bank economists David Folkerts-Landau and Peter Hooper, "such shifts touched off a sustained surge in inflation in the U.S.," beginning in 1966.

Growth in core prices, which exclude food and energy, jumped from well under 2% in 1965 to nearly 3.5% in 1966 and approached 5% by late 1968, Deutsche Bank noted. Inflation remained elevated into the early 1970s, even before an oil shock hit in 1973. The pickup was broad-based, but health care inflation played a key role, going from less than 3% to nearly 7% by early 1967.

The S&P 500 suffered through a bear market in 1966. Another 19-month bear market began in late 1968. The Dow Jones made a major top in January 1966. It would take the Dow Jones until 1982 to finally break through that ceiling for good.


What Is Inflation And Why Does It Matter To The Fed -- And You?


Outlook For Inflation, Federal Reserve Policy

Almost everyone expects a notable pickup in inflation this year -- including the Fed. Monetary policymakers expect the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index to rise 2.4% this year. That's vs. 1.5% in the 12 months through January.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said March 17 that the Fed will discount this year's jump in prices as a transitory bounce from pandemic-induced weakness. What happens in 2022 will be key. Fed projections show inflation easing back to 2%. But if pressures don't ease, the Fed will have to reassess its 2024 timetable for the cycle's first rate hike.

It's easy to see how Fed projections might understate next year's inflation. Policymakers likely are not factoring in any impact from the Democrats' next massive spending package.

Subdued health care prices might help keep inflation in check, depending on what Congress does. A 2% hike in Medicare reimbursements is scheduled to lapse in April, but lawmakers appear set to extend it. A 3.75% increase in Medicare fees for physicians could end in January, Deutsche Bank said.

Democrats also are eyeing spending curbs to help pay for their infrastructure package. Letting Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices is high on the list of options.

Longer term, the inflation outlook may depend on whether a post-pandemic productivity boom offsets upward price pressure as globalization backslides.

10-Year Treasury Yield Surges On U.S. Economy Growth Outlook

This week, the 10-year Treasury yield has eased to 1.66%, after hitting 1.75% last week, the highest of the Covid era. Still, the 10-year yield is up 66 basis points since Jan. 5.

Financial market pricing now indicates an expectation that inflation will average 2.35% over the coming decade. That's the difference between the 10-year Treasury yield and the -0.69% yield on 10-year Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPS.

"Negative real yields seem highly incongruous with the robust economic growth in train," Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi wrote. As real yields rebound, Zandi sees the 10-year Treasury yield reaching 2% by year end, 2.5% in 2022 and 3% by late 2023.

What Do Taxes, Interest Rates Mean For S&P 500?

As the new fiscal and monetary policy regime takes hold, investors will have a lot to process. If the era of too-little inflation and ultralow interest rates is drawing to an end, but earnings growth surges as the economy catches fire, what will that mean for the S&P 500? And how might tax hikes affect stock prices?

... ... ...

The UBS economics team holds the out-of-consensus view that annual core PCE inflation won't exceed the Fed's 2% target until 2024. Chief U.S. economist Seth Carpenter expects the new stimulus checks to be largely saved. The next fiscal package might likewise have a "muted" bang for the buck, while adding just $600 billion to the federal deficit.

... ... ...

Interest Rates: Parker finds that a 50-basis-point rise in the 10-year Treasury yield compresses price-earnings multiples by six-tenths of a point. Based on the S&P 500's current forward earnings multiple of about 21.5, that would equate to about a 3% decline in the S&P 500.

Capital Gains Taxes: Biden has proposed hiking the capital gains tax rate from 20% to 39.6% for high earners. Parker figures that could slice 1.5 points off the S&P 500 P/E multiple, potentially a 7% hit. However, UBS expects that not quite half the tax plan will become law.

Parker arrives at a 19.5 forward earnings multiple for the S&P 500. That also factors in some compression because the fiscal boost to earnings is bound to slacken...

[Mar 24, 2021] VTIP - Vanguard Short-Term Inflation-Protected Securities Index Fund ETF Shares

Mar 24, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

The investment seeks to track the performance of the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) 0-5 Year Index. The index is a market-capitalization-weighted index that includes all inflation-protected public obligations issued by the U.S. Treasury with remaining maturities of less than 5 years. The manager attempts to replicate the target index by investing all, or substantially all, of its assets in the securities that make up the index, holding each security in approximately the same proportion as its weighting in the index.

Vanguard Short-Term Inflation-Protected Securities Index Fund ETF Shares (VTIP) NasdaqGS - NasdaqGS Real Time Price. Currency in USD Add to watchlist
51.69 +0.13 (+0.25%) At close: 4:00PM EDT

51.66 -0.03 (-0.06%)

After hours: 4:21PM EDT

[Mar 24, 2021] Fed's Bullard sees inflation at 2.5% this year, easing only slightly in 2022

Mar 24, 2021 | www.reuters.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Inflation will hit 2.5% this year and not fall much in 2022, which the Federal Reserve should welcome as a way to reaffirm the central bank's inflation target, St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard said on Tuesday.

" I am not seeing the inflation rate come down very much in 2022 ... maybe just slightly, " Bullard said in comments that placed him among the more aggressive Fed officials in terms of willingness to see inflation move higher this year and remain there without raising interest rates.

"Part of the goal is to take the increase in inflation that we have this year penciled in and allow some of that to move through to inflation expectations," and keep them cemented at the Fed's 2% inflation target.

[Mar 24, 2021] US Inflation Rate by Year- 1929 - 2023

The real inflation for the past 20 years was probably around 5%: that buypoer of$100 dinimisnes by 50% in 20 years. In some areas like education and healthcare much faster that that. In some areas slower then that. Official inflation was around half of that (and this discrepancy is systemic -- due to the desire of any regime based of fiat currency to underestimate inflation and thus diminish additional payment to Social Security and other linked to inflation budget items) . Thanks to a massive federal deficit inflation might pick up.
Higher inflation in 2021-2023 is now the consensus,
Mar 24, 2021 | www.thebalance.com
Year Inflation Rate YOY Fed Funds Rate* Business Cycle (GDP Growth) Events Affecting Inflation
... ... ... ... ...
2000 3.4% 6.50% Expansion (4.1%) Tech bubble burst
2001 1.6% 1.75% March peak, Nov. trough (1.0%) Bush tax cut, 9/11 attacks
2002 2.4% 1.25% Expansion (1.7%) War on Terror
2003 1.9% 1.00% Expansion (2.9%) JGTRRA
2004 3.3% 2.25% Expansion (3.8%)
2005 3.4% 4.25% Expansion (3.5%) Katrina, Bankruptcy Act
2006 2.5% 5.25% Expansion (2.9%) Bernanke became Fed Chair
2007 4.1% 4.25% Dec peak (1.9%) Bank crisis
2008 0.1% 0.25% Contraction (-0.1%) Financial crisis
2009 2.7% 0.25% June trough (-2.5%) ARRA
2010 1.5% 0.25% Expansion (2.6%) ACA, Dodd-Frank Act
2011 3.0% 0.25% Expansion (1.6%) Debt ceiling crisis
2012 1.7% 0.25% Expansion (2.2%)
2013 1.5% 0.25% Expansion (1.8%) Government shutdown. Sequestration
2014 0.8% 0.25% Expansion (2.5%) QE ends
2015 0.7% 0.50% Expansion (3.1%) Deflation in oil and gas prices
2016 2.1% 0.75% Expansion (1.7%)
2017 2.1% 1.50% Expansion (2.3%) Core inflation rate 1.7%
2018 1.9% 2.50% Expansion (3.0%) Core rate 2.2%
2019 2.3% 1.75% Expansion (2.2%) Core rate 2.3%
2020 1.2% 0.25% Contraction (-2.4%) Forecast: Core rate 1.4%
Impact of COVID
2021 1.8% 0.25% Expansion (4.2%) Forecast: Core rate is 1.8%
2022 1.9% 0.25% Expansion
(3.2%)
Forecast: Core rate is 1.9%
2023 2.0% 0.25% Expansion (2.4%) Forecast: Core rate is 2.0%

[Mar 24, 2021] Powell Says Rise in Long-Term Bond Yields Reflects Economic Optimism

Higher interest rates means higher interest payment of the new government debt. The USA can't afford this so FED probably will try to suppress rate.
Mar 24, 2021 | www.wsj.com

"The Fed has signaled that its dovish monetary policy is here indefinitely," Mr. Toomey said, noting a recent uptick in commodity prices and a brightening outlook for economic growth. "I worry that the Fed will be behind the curve when inflation picks up."

Mr. Powell, however, reiterated that he doesn't expect supply-chain bottlenecks or an expected surge in consumer demand later this year as the economy reopens to change in long-term price trends. The Fed generally doesn't alter its policies in response to temporary price pressures.

"In the near term, we do expect, as many forecasters do, that there will be some upward pressure on prices," Mr. Powell said. "Long term we think that the inflation dynamics that we've seen around the world for a quarter of a century are essentially intact. We've got a world that's short of demand with very low inflation and we think that those dynamics haven't gone away overnight and won't."

Sen. Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) pressed Ms. Yellen on her changing views on the risks of high and rising federal debt. Government red ink has swelled over the past year as economic activity stalled and Congress ramped up spending to combat the pandemic.

[Mar 24, 2021] No Inflation Panic Yet, but There Is Concern

Mar 24, 2021 | www.wsj.com

John Gimmy Chesapeake City, Md

. Alan S. Blinder is correct that with the slack in the economy and high unemployment there is no risk of wage inflation (" There's No Need to Panic About a Little Inflation ," op-ed, March 16).

... ... ...

Lloyd B. Thomas, Ph.D. University of Missouri Columbia, Mo.

The Federal Reserve is capable of nipping any surge of inflation, but it has made clear it will be behind the curve as inflation rises. It has announced that it will not boost interest rates until it is confident we have reached full employment and until inflation substantially exceeds 2% annually for a considerable period.

Ed Kah, l Woodside , Calif,

The Fed's "foresight" in the 1970s sleepwalked us over 10 years into 14.5% inflation, 18.5% mortgage rates, 7.5% unemployment and a severe recession in 1980. The Fed's repression of interest rates has already inflated asset prices. It is now favoring spending that will move the national debt held by the public toward 150% of GDP if the Democrats keep passing multitrillion-dollar stimulus spending bills in a fast recovering economy.

The big risk comes when interest rates regress to higher historic averages that increase the cost of government debt. Even a very small rise in short-term rates shook the markets recently. The Fed should at the very least hedge this risk by lengthening the maturity of most government debt. They should also caution Congress about the sorry history of countries whose debt exceeds GDP.

Jacob R. Borden , P.E. Trine University, Angola, Ind.

Prof. Blinder uses macroeconomic anecdotes to argue that upward of 4% inflation is no big deal. But it is a big deal when you recognize that inflation is a tax on the accumulation of wealth. Sen. Elizabeth Warren must be smiling.

Even worse, inflation is a regressive tax on wealth. The professional class is already shifting assets to protect against inflationary headwinds. Mary B. Flyover, on the other hand, has few such assets and instead spends relatively more of her money on fuel and groceries, the very elements missing from Mr. Blinder's preferred measure of inflation.

Every year, inflation saps the spending power of a dollar earned, putting future savings further out of reach for people already being left behind. What little savings is available is largely in checking and savings accounts that don't even keep up with current inflation, let alone just a little more. Then add the compounding impact of inflated incomes on inflated tax bills. Once 4% inflation is baked in, Ms. Flyover's tax bill will be forever higher, while her purchasing power will trend ever lower.

Thomas Porth, Hockessin, Del.

The facts that Prof. Blinder doesn't cite are what worry me. When I studied economics at Princeton in 1981 (using Prof. Blinder's textbook), the yield on the 10-year Treasury stood at 14% as of the end of December, while the CPI-U inflation rate stood at 8.9%. The real risk-free rate of return was therefore a positive 5.1% or so. In contrast, today the CPI-U stands at 1.7% (March 10), while the yield on the 10-year Treasury stands at 1.71% (March 18), for a real risk-free rate of return of what is effectively zero.

me title=

Even relying on current measures of inflation, the real rate of return has dropped from positive 5.1% in 1981 to zero or, let's be serious, less than zero today (when I am retired). Sorry, Prof. Blinder, but I'm starting to panic.

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the March 23, 2021, print edition.

[Mar 22, 2021] Biden sleepwalks into a stagflation nightmare: US economy simply doesn't have the productive capacity to meet the demand created by Biden's stimulus package

Mar 22, 2021 | asiatimes.com

The sub-headline is true, but the headline not necessarily. The USA still is the financial superpower, therefore its fiat currency is the universal fiat currency (Dollar Standard). Stagflation will only happen if the Dollar Standard is to be severely weakened in a very short period of time; otherwise, what will happen is some form of partial reverse-stagflation: low unemployment (officially), low inflation (even to the point of zero inflation or even deflation) and low economic growth.

This situation will go on until the Dollar Standard disappears. After that, the American Empire will quickly and inexorably collapse through a spiral of hyperinflation and economic recession. At this phase, it will probably go all-in with WWIII, with military invasions of Latin American, the Middle East and China, while preparing for a delusional strike-first nuclear attack on Russia. By this time, the American people will be completely hallucinated and fuming with anger in a fascist frenesi against the rest of the world (China in particular), so popular support for a global invasion would not be a problem.

[Mar 19, 2021] Fossil fuels are the basis of industrial civilization. Thier disapperiance portends our extinction as a species. We might as well accept as the fact that as soon as the Western civilization experience Seneca cliff it will be severaly damaged

Mar 19, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

norecovery , Mar 19 2021 0:05 utc | 42

One more observation from my seat in the gallery: FOSSIL ENERGY is the basis of industrial civilization, and our complete dependence on it portends our extinction as a species. We might as well accept the fact that we are done.

[Mar 15, 2021] A worry for retirees- Inflation forecasts hit 8-year high

Mar 15, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

A worry for retirees: Inflation forecasts hit 8-year high

A worry for retirees: Inflation forecasts hit 8-year high
Brett Arends Mon, March 15, 2021, 10:01 AM

Nobody suffers more from high inflation than retirees. Back in the 1970s, it was those in retirement living on fixed income that got hit the hardest as prices rose year after year. The investment returns from their bonds and cash fell way behind.

[Mar 14, 2021] Inflation Isn't Happening, and It Likely Won't. Here Are 7 Charts Showing This. - Barron's

Real inflation in the USA is probably close to 3-4% a year judging from the dynamic of rental payments and prices on on food. Annual Food inflation was between 3.93%, to 3.78% in December to February timeframe.
The February 2021 ShadowStats Alternate CPI (1980 Base) increased 9.4% year-to-year, up from 9.1% in January 2021, 9.0% in December 2020 and against 8.8% in November. The ShadowStats Alternate CPI-U estimate restates current headline inflation so as to reverse the government's inflation-reducing gimmicks of the last four decades, which were designed specifically to reduce/ understate COLAs.
Mar 14, 2021 | www.barrons.com

Inflation may be on many investors' minds, but it has yet to show up in the numbers. Moreover, a close reading of the data suggests that inflation won't be a problem for some time, if ever.

The latest reading of the consumer price index shows that Americans' cost of living was only 1.7% higher in February 2021 than a year earlier. That's the fastest inflation reading since the pandemic began, but still substantially slower than the pre-pandemic average. Exclude volatile food and energy prices, and inflation is running at 1.3%...

[Mar 14, 2021] Fact vs. Fiction: Understatement Of Housing Inflation Exceeds Bubble Levels

Mar 14, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Submitted by Joseph Carson, former chief economist of AllianceBernstein

The understatement of housing inflation in the consumer price index has reached a new milestone. As reported, the gap between the actual change in house prices and owners' rent, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), exceeds the "bubble" levels.

In February, BLS reported owner's rent increased 2% over the last 12 months. House price inflation, as reported by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), increased 11.4%. That gap over 900 basis points exceeds the 800 basis point gap recorded during the housing bubble peak.

The consumer price index was created and designed to measure prices paid for purchases of specific goods and services by consumers. The CPI was often referred to as a buyers' index since it only measured prices "paid" by consumers.

The CPI has lost that designation. It is no longer measures actual prices. For the past two decades, BLS imputes the owners' rent series, using data from the rental market, no longer using price data from the larger single-family market.

Imputing prices for the cost of housing services make the CPI a hybrid index or a cross between a price index and a cost of living index. A hybrid index is not appropriate as a gauge to ascertain price stability, especially when the hypothetical measure of owner's rent accounts for 30% of the core CPI.

The CPI missed the price "bubble" of the mid-2000s, and the economic and financial fallout was historic. History sometimes repeats itself in economics and finance. Policymakers forewarned.

[Mar 14, 2021] Some thought on the current money bubble from ZeroHedge crowd

Mar 14, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

USAllDay 3 hours ago

The FED has been inflating a cheap money bubble for 40 years. The response to every recession is to cut rates. But the Fed never returns rates to pre-recession levels so the economy ultimately enters one recession after the next at lower and lower rates. Now at near zero, the gig is up. Dropping rates by nearly 50 basis points per year for four decades has created the mother of all bubbles.

Greed is King 1 hour ago remove link

USA, the new Roman Empire and just like the old Roman Empire was, the scourge of the planet.

A Sovereign debt ridden nation, that only survives due to its enormous military that enables the USA to pillage the resources of other countries via a foreign policy of threat, intimidation, invasion and occupation; exactly the same tactics used by the original Roman Empire.

Unfortunately for the USA, the MIC and American armed forces, are the biggest consumer of all of the income and resources obtained from pillaging and debt, they are a greedy insatiable monster that continues to grow and demands more and more to be fed.

We`re now in the ludicrous, unsustainable and unacceptable situation of, all of the countries who are having their resources stolen by the USA, and all of the American tax payers who are underwriting the debt incurred by the USA are in fact paying for the MIC and armed forces to repress them.

Here`s a radical idea; why not stop borrowing to feed the MIC monster, and try treating the rest of planet Earth with respect and cooperation.

Make peace, not war.

Utopia Planitia 2 hours ago

It's a positive feedback loop...

[Mar 14, 2021] CPI Rose 0.4% in February on Higher Prices for Energy and Medical Services

Mar 14, 2021 | angrybearblog.com

CPI Rose 0.4% in February on Higher Prices for Energy and Medical Services

run75441 | March 10, 2021 9:59 pm

US ECONOMICS

Commenter R.J.S. Discuses CPI Rising led by Food, Energy, and Medical

The consumer price index rose 0.4% in February , as higher prices for fuel, groceries, utilities, and medical services were only partly offset by lower prices for clothing, used vehicles, and airline fares the Consumer Price Index Summary from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that seasonally adjusted prices averaged 0.4% higher in February, after rising by 0.3% in January, 0.2% in December, 0.2% in November, 0.1% in October, 0.2% in September, 0.4% in August, by 0.5% in July and by 0.5% in June, after falling by 0.1% in May, falling by 0.7% in April and by 0.3% in March, but after rising by 0.1% in February of last year .the unadjusted CPI-U index, which was set with prices of the 1982 to 1984 period equal to 100, rose from 261.582 in January to 263.014 in February , which left it statistically 1.6762% higher than the 258.678 reading of February of last year, which is reported as a 1.7% year over year increase, up from the 1.4% year over year increase reported a month ago .with higher prices for energy and foods both factors in the overall index increase, seasonally adjusted core prices, which exclude food and energy, were up just 0.1% for the month, as the unadjusted core price index rose from 269.755 to 270.696, which left the core index 1.2826% ahead of its year ago reading of 267.268, which is reported as a 1.3% year over year increase, down from the 1.4% year over year core price increase that was reported for January and the 1.6% the year over year core price increase that was reported for December

The volatile seasonally adjusted energy price index rose 3.9% in February , after rising by 3.5% in January, 2.6% in December, 0.7% in November, 0.6% in October, 1.4% in September, 0.9% in August, 2.1% in July, and by 4.4% in June, but after falling by 2.3% in May, by 9.5% in April, 5.8% in March, and by 2.5% last February, and hence is only 2.4% higher than in February a year ago the price index for energy commodities was 6.6% higher in February, while the index for energy services was 0.9% higher, after falling 0.3% in January .the energy commodity index was up 6.6% on a 6.4% increase in the price of gasoline and a 9.9% increase in the index for fuel oil, while prices for other energy commodities, including propane, kerosene, and firewood, were on average 7.3% higher within energy services, the price index for utility gas service rose 1.6% after falling 0.4% in January and is now 6.7% higher than it was a year ago, while the electricity price index rose 0.7% after falling 0.2% in January .energy commodities are now averaging 1.6% higher than their year ago levels, with gasoline price averaging 1.5% higher than they were a year ago, while the energy services price index is now up 3.2% from last February, as electricity prices are also 2.3% higher than a year ago

The seasonally adjusted food price index rose 0.2% in February, after rising by 0.1% in January and 0.3% in December, after being unchanged in November, rising 0.2% in October, rising 0.1% in August and in September, after falling 0.3% in July, rising 0.5% in June, 0.7% in May, 1.4% in April, 0.3% in March, and by 0.3% last February, as the price index for food purchased for use at home was 0.3% higher in January, after falling 0.1% in January, while the index for food bought to eat away from home was 0.1% higher, as average prices at fast food outlets rose 0.4% and prices at full service restaurants rose 0.3%, while food prices at employee sites and schools averaged 12.2% lower notably, the price index for food at elementary and secondary schools was down 13.7% and is now down 32.5% from a year ago

[Mar 14, 2021] Fact vs. Fiction: Understatement Of Housing Inflation Exceeds Bubble Levels

Mar 14, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Submitted by Joseph Carson, former chief economist of AllianceBernstein

The understatement of housing inflation in the consumer price index has reached a new milestone. As reported, the gap between the actual change in house prices and owners' rent, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), exceeds the "bubble" levels.

In February, BLS reported owner's rent increased 2% over the last 12 months. House price inflation, as reported by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), increased 11.4%. That gap over 900 basis points exceeds the 800 basis point gap recorded during the housing bubble peak.

The consumer price index was created and designed to measure prices paid for purchases of specific goods and services by consumers. The CPI was often referred to as a buyers' index since it only measured prices "paid" by consumers.

The CPI has lost that designation. It is no longer measures actual prices. For the past two decades, BLS imputes the owners' rent series, using data from the rental market, no longer using price data from the larger single-family market.

Imputing prices for the cost of housing services make the CPI a hybrid index or a cross between a price index and a cost of living index. A hybrid index is not appropriate as a gauge to ascertain price stability, especially when the hypothetical measure of owner's rent accounts for 30% of the core CPI.

The CPI missed the price "bubble" of the mid-2000s, and the economic and financial fallout was historic. History sometimes repeats itself in economics and finance. Policymakers forewarned.

[Mar 12, 2021] Higher Gas, Energy Prices Boost Consumer Inflation

Mar 12, 2021 | www.wsj.com

The consumer-price index rose 0.4% in February from the prior month, as the pace of the economic recovery increased following a winter lull, buoyed by higher gasoline and energy costs.

[Mar 12, 2021] The US economy still has almost 10 million fewer jobs than it did before the coronavirus pandemic took hold

Mar 12, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

The jobs picture overall has been improving with 379,000 workers added in February , although the U.S. economy still has almost 10 million fewer jobs than it did before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Economists have been revising their employment and GDP forecasts are higher.

Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius, for example, wrote in a report this week that the jobless rate would fall to 4.1% by the end of 2021, from 6.2% last month.

Hyams has been seeing similar encouraging signs on Indeed, with postings on the site already lapping where they were pre-pandemic. "On Indeed, when we look at new job postings and our benchmark pre-pandemic of February 1, 2020, at the end of this February we were up 5% year-over-year. That's still with entire sectors completely shut down," he said.

As for where the hottest demand lies for new jobs, Hyams pointed to e-commerce-related occupations including logistics, warehousing and delivery, as well as jobs in health care and pharmacy.

While some of those openings may require showing up regularly in-person, many will not, which again feeds into Hyams' thesis that interviews will remain virtual.

"If you're going to be a remote worker, interviewing over video actually makes a whole lot more sense. It's more convenient. It will cut down on travel," he said.

That means many interviewees can continue to pull their blazers and ties out of the closet -- along with their sweatpants.

[Mar 12, 2021] The pandemic 'will change how hiring is done forever,' says CEO of jobs website Indeed

Mar 12, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Remember job interviews pre-pandemic? The jitters, the choosing of just the right suit, the race to get there early, maybe even the drive across town or flight across the country for a shot at a new opportunity?

Like most everything else, the pandemic changed that dynamic. The jitters may remain, but in-person meetings are largely off the table, interviews among them. The CEO of one of the most-trafficked jobs websites says it's likely to stay that way even after people get back to the office.

"People being able to conduct an interview from the safety and convenience of their own home is going to change hiring forever," said Chris Hyams, Indeed CEO, in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live. "We believe this is the beginning of a massive secular shift."

"In April, we saw the number of requests for interviews to happen over video shoot up by 1,000%. Even as things have started to stabilize and the economy has opened up over the last 11 months, we've seen that continue to grow," Hyams said.

The jobs picture overall has been improving with 379,000 workers added in February , although the U.S. economy still has almost 10 million fewer jobs than it did before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Economists have been revising their employment and GDP forecasts are higher. Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius, for example, wrote in a report this week that the jobless rate would fall to 4.1% by the end of 2021, from 6.2% last month.

Hyams has been seeing similar encouraging signs on Indeed, with postings on the site already lapping where they were pre-pandemic. "On Indeed, when we look at new job postings and our benchmark pre-pandemic of February 1, 2020, at the end of this February we were up 5% year-over-year. That's still with entire sectors completely shut down," he said.

As for where the hottest demand lies for new jobs, Hyams pointed to e-commerce-related occupations including logistics, warehousing and delivery, as well as jobs in health care and pharmacy.

While some of those openings may require showing up regularly in-person, many will not, which again feeds into Hyams' thesis that interviews will remain virtual.

"If you're going to be a remote worker, interviewing over video actually makes a whole lot more sense. It's more convenient. It will cut down on travel," he said.

That means many interviewees can continue to pull their blazers and ties out of the closet -- along with their sweatpants.

[Mar 06, 2021] Pointless Pain Is What We're Enduring. And All for the Sake of Accepting That Money is Not a Constraint on Our Potential

Mar 06, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

I worry that people cannot survive this. Real, warm blooded, caring, loving people can be broken by this. And that's what makes me angry. Because this is unnecessary. The money to deliver a decent society exists.

All that we need to make the lives of the vast majority of people in this country is a real understanding of economics, of money, of how it interacts with tax, and how we can use that for the common good.

But no political party seems to get that as yet. And until they do, this unnecessary suffering will continue. And that makes me very angry. Pointless pain is what we're enduring. And all for the sake of accepting that money is not a constraint on our potential, and never will be.


DTK , March 6, 2021 at 8:28 am

Hey Steve K,
Please explain why MMT is a bad joke.
Thank You

dummy , March 6, 2021 at 2:59 pm

Let me have a go.
If prosperity and wealth can be created by printing more money, why there is still poverty in the world?
After all, isn't every country equipped with a central bank that can print as much money as they want?

eg , March 6, 2021 at 5:37 pm

Depends upon what the additional money is used for -- if it's to employ the currently unemployed productively, then everyone is better off.

dummy , March 6, 2021 at 6:59 pm

Real wealth is not denominated in dollars, only in what those dollars can buy. Devaluing the dollar doesn't hurt the wealthy, most of their wealth is in the form of equity and real assets, not dollars.
The average person's wealth is measured mostly in his future labor, how much he is going to earn. He will earn less because the Fed devalues his labor through its manipulation of the dollar. He will see this in the rising cost of living without an increase in his pay. Sure perhaps the value of labor will at some point catch up to the devalued dollar, but in the interim he will earn less and will never catch up to what he would have earned otherwise. It doesn't hurt the wealthy, it hurts the middle class, and will for years to come.

occasional anonymous , March 6, 2021 at 5:43 pm

That isn't what MMT says. You're arguing against a strawman.

eg , March 6, 2021 at 10:14 am

Your macroeconomic ignorance is duly noted, featuring as it does the usual "commodity money" and mercantilist shibboleths.

MMT describes fiat monetary operations which have been in effect since the Nixon shock and the abandonment of Bretton Woods almost 50 years ago . Do catch up.

Louis Fyne , March 6, 2021 at 7:53 am

honest question, wouldn't MMT (in a hypothetical universe run by committed MMTers) in the UK likely will produce vastly different results than MMT in relatively autarkic economics like the USA or Russia?

The UK relies on imports to one degree or another for virtually every physical good necessary for a first-world living standard (food -- even basic foodstuffs like wheat, medicine, spare parts, petrol, apparel, even steel, etc).

While the UK's economy tilts to exporting services education, finance, media, medicinal/technological intellectual property, tourism, etc.

Would a weaker UK pound encourage more service exports? Or merely increase inflation, particularly for the bottom 50%?

honest question.

PlutoniumKun , March 6, 2021 at 8:03 am

Because MMT analysts tend to be mostly US or Australian, the applicability of it to smaller, more open economies has not, I think, had the attention thats needed (although to be fair, Richard Murphy has done quite a lot of writing on this). While the UK is a large economy, its also very open (although increasingly less so, thanks to Brexit). So it clearly has much less room to manoeuvre in terms of monetary or fiscal policy than a more autarkical nation. Its not just with MMT and inflation – things like Keynesian multipliers tend to be lower in more open economies as the benefits of fiscal expansion get exported out. The Labour party under Corbyn did put together some very interesting and well thought through MMT-influenced policies, but of course that all got thrown out with Corbyn.

As Yves has pointed out before, the UK has a particular problem in that it has little spare physical capacity in its economy to take advantage of a weaker currency. In the past, it has been unable to increase output when the pound has been weaker. So a weakening pound is likely to be more inflationary than in many other economies.

I think that in a general sense, MMT makes sense in all economies in a Covid scenario of a massive drop in output thanks to a black swan event. As Murphy points out, you just need to shove the cash into the economy through monetary means and forget about having to repay it. Inflation just isn't a problem in those circumstances, and it has the benefit of maintaining productive capacity within the economy. But in more 'normal' times, MMT needs to be applied with far more care in an economy like the UK than in a US or China or Russia or EU.

Susan the other , March 6, 2021 at 1:16 pm

Kind of wondering here what would happen if all the poor and unemployed/welfare recipients and even the precarious middle class also decided to offshore their money. Why not? Say in every country; say it became a global movement. The neoliberal nightmare should inform us all. Just because a small country doesn't have spare capacity or idle resources is not really a contraindication for MMT. It is more a factor of having an intrinsic imbalance due to decades if not centuries of grift and graft by those in a position to help themselves. And it creates confused politics. As you mentioned above – the Tories in the UK seem to have also usurped the opposition. Well, to my thinking, that is exactly what Trump did. And it is almost a crazy hope of "If you can't beat them, join them." And just exactly where does that leave a functional economy? My first image is a junkyard.

James E Keenan , March 6, 2021 at 9:55 am

Two points:

First, apropos the applicability of Modern Money Theory to relatively open economies like that of the U.K., see the discussion of the prerequisites for monetary sovereignty as outlined by Robert Hockett and Aaron James in their 2020 book, Money for Nothing . In addition to the well-known requirements (nation must issue its own currency; currency not pegged to metal or any other currency; no borrowing in foreign currencies), Hockett and James add others, including "limited trade dependence in essential goods such as food or energy sources, in order to mitigate foreign exchange and inflation risk ." (274)

Second, apropos the applicability of MMT to smaller economies, I am pleased to note that Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla's 2018 book, L'Arme Invisible de la Françafrique: Une Histoire du Franc CFA , has at last been published in English as Africa's Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story . (Your search engine will take you either to the publisher or to an internet behemoth where you can order it.)

Pigeaud and Sylla's book is a history and analysis of the political economy of the CFA zone: the countries of central and west Africa which were French colonies and which continue to use a common currency imposed on them by the French imperialists in 1945.

This book is, in my estimation, the best book we have so far in applying the insights of Modern Money Theory to non-monetarily sovereign economies. You have to love any book that starts out by translating Hyman Minsky's most famous aphorism into French: Tout un chacun peut creér de la monnaie: le problème est de la faire accepter.

HotFlash , March 6, 2021 at 11:42 am

"limited trade dependence in essential goods such as food or energy sources, in order to mitigate foreign exchange and inflation risk ."

Again, we/they have choices based on resource constraints. But, as usual, they are political. Most of these choices seem impossible now, but remember Victory Gardens ? Alas, such things are not looked upon favourably by Big Ag and the supermarket chains, but my depression-era grandparents grew most of their own food for their very large (by our standards) families. Maternal side, farmers -- my mother, born 1923, said that she never even knew there was a depression until she read about it later in high school. Grandpa paid his property taxes by driving snowplow for the county in the winter. Father's side -- my father, born 1922, grew up in a village (5-bedroom two story house built by his father, a shoemaker, and friends/relatives/contractors) on a biggish, maybe 1-2 acre? lot, which was part of a grant to the family for Civil War service. Grandma still had apple, peach, cherry and walnut trees, raspberry and currant bushes when I knew her, and had grown beans, tomatoes, potatoes and all that stuff before the 7 kids got married. Obviously, the kids did a lot of the work, too. Sewing room -- made most of the clothes for family, Dad says the kids' diapers were made of sugar sacks.

IOW, this is not rocket science. We did this sort of thing for millions of years, omitting the last 200 or so, and can very likely do it again. People explored the whole round world, and conquered a lot of it, without electricity or the internal combustion engine. We're not all gonna die!

Unless we as a species continue to act on maximizing shareholder value rather than surviving.

fwe'theewell , March 6, 2021 at 1:01 pm

Michelle Obama, izzat you? Gorgeous designer bootstraps.

The Rev Kev , March 6, 2021 at 5:53 pm

I think that you might be onto something here. I suspect that the lives of our grandchildren as they grow older will resemble the lives of our grandparents from your description. Of course that may mean a lot off decentralization from out of big cities but it can be done – especially if there is no other choice. And it's not like in the US that there is not the land to do this with.

RODGER MITCHELL , March 6, 2021 at 8:21 am

It is an excellent article, with one small exception, the words, "I accept that creating money this way is inflationary."

Contrary to popular wisdom, inflation is not caused by money creation . All inflations are caused by shortages , most often shortages of food or energy.

That includes hyperinflations. Consider, for one, the Zimbabwe hyperinflation. The government took farmland from farmers and gave it to non-farmers. The inevitable food shortages caused inflation. The government's "money-printing" was merely the wrongheaded response to the inflation, not the cause.

In fact, the hyperinflation could have been cured by more money creation, had that money been used to cure the food shortage, by purchasing food from abroad and distributing it, or by teaching the non-farmers how to farm.

In the past year, the U.S. has spent an astounding $4 trillion, and soon it will spend another $2 trillion, Yet, there will be no inflation so long as there are no shortages of food, oil, or labor.

Bottom line: Scarcity, not money creation, causes inflation.

Economists: Revise your economics textbooks.

Gengiskahn , March 6, 2021 at 3:55 pm

How do you define inflation?

DTK , March 6, 2021 at 8:36 am

In the US, as in the UK, planned inequality and (managed) unequal access to the benefits of the money system are two of the most salient activities of our (US) three government branches.

Patrick , March 6, 2021 at 9:02 am

So are ye telling me the reason conservatives don't (for example) want to raise the minimum wage is not because of some economic or monetary reason or law but instead just to keep people in their place, i.e. preserve the status quo? Amazing! And I guess them conservatives that "havenot" go along because of that "relative advantage" thing – they are so fixated on keeping those below in their place that they are blind to the upside of a more democratic and social monetary policy. Well I'll be. Now I git it!

Patrick ,

Patrick , March 6, 2021 at 9:21 am

Adding that yes, "fear of inflation" is an applicable "economic or monetary reason or law" that may explain the conservative position.

Anonapet , March 6, 2021 at 11:42 am

Then the MMT School are conservatives since they'd use taxation to curb inflation (by some undisclosed means that does not curb consumption).

But why should price inflation be a problem so long as:
1) It does not exceed income gains for ALL citizens;
2) the means that produce it do not violate equal protection under the law;
and
3) it is not extreme?

The only reason I can think of, and it's a contemptible one, is that large fiat hoarders* would see their hoards diminish in value in real terms.

*not to disparage those saving for a home, initial capital formation, legitimate liquidity needs, etc.

Adam Eran , March 6, 2021 at 1:50 pm

One point of inflation is to restrain creditors (rhymes with "predators").

Meanwhile, "printing" money does not initiate inflation. Most inflation–even hyperinflation–is "cost push," i.e. related to shortages of goods. In Zimbabwe, the Rhodesian farmers left, and the people to whom Mugabe gave their land were not as productive. Result: a shortage of food requiring imports (balance of payments problem).

In Weimar Germany, the French army invaded the Ruhr, shutting down Germany's industrial heartland, making a shortage of goods. They already had a balance of payments problems with WWI reparations.

Patrick , March 6, 2021 at 1:50 pm

"Then the MMT School are conservative"

In my example, no. The MMT School does not invoke inflation FEAR to deny nurses a meaningful wage raise.

Fear. Of change. Of "others". Of a level playing field? These pesky conservatives.

(For the record I did not excel in Father Brennan's freshman year logic class. And that was fifty years ago!)

Amfortas the hippie , March 6, 2021 at 2:23 pm

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

it was always thus.
the real Burkean Conservatives behind it all, who yes want to keep everyone in their place.
as i've lamented many times, it's hard to get a read on who the real Bosses are, since they don't go on TV and brag, generally(various rightwing billionaires in the last 15 years, notwithstanding)
C.Wright Mills and Domhoff are the only taxonomists of that cohort that i'm aware of Diannah Johnstone, perhaps.
Maybe Pepe Escobar when they hide the rum.
otherwise, every attempt i've seen in the last 30 years has had elements of tinfoil and illuminatii/NWO scattered throughout.
I reckon this is by design, at some level.
whatever there exists a demographic cohort of humanity that is exceedingly wealthy, thinks it's in charge and mostly really is and that is truly cosmopolitiain citizens of the world.
their most defining feature is that they pretend real hard not to exist and most of us little people give them no mind, and pretend right along.
This cohort is not monolithic, nor all powerful they each are as prone to tunnel vision and stupidity as any of us but they have better connected steering wheels, and cleaner windshields, and mirrors that work.
One hopes that, like in FDR Times, they will feel threatened enough by the results of their long term policy preferences to allow a few larger crumbs to fall from the table, so as to mollify the ravening hordes .ere those hordes notice who the real Hostis Humani Generis are.
But it looks like they're more likely to double down on the diversionary division of the Bewildered Herd hence, Cancel Seuss! and Sinema's little antoinette dance .and an hundred other mostly unimportant things that happened just yesterday to keep us'n's riled up about the wrong things.

see: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-06-16-me-4587-story.html

for an enlightening memento mori of being right here before .Time is, indeed, cyclical, like the Ancients insisted.

Patrick , March 6, 2021 at 6:39 pm

"Maybe Pepe Escobar when they hide the rum". LOL! Needed that.

[Mar 01, 2021] Art Berman on Twitter

Mar 01, 2021 | twitter.com

In the past decade, capital employed in Exxon's upstream business has risen by a third -- and...production fell 17% & proved reserves by 39%.

"In the past decade, capital employed in Exxon's upstream business has risen by a third -- and...production fell 17% & proved reserves by 39%. This...has trashed Exxon's return on capital." https:// bloomberg.com/opinion/articl es/2021-02-25/exxon-reserves-debooking-of-6-billion-barrels-matters?sref=866aH6XX #OOTT #oilandgas #oil #WTI #CrudeOil #fintwit #OPEC #Commodities

[Feb 28, 2021] Neoliberalism on ventilator

Feb 28, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Canadian Cents , Feb 28 2021 17:21 utc | 9

Danny Haiphong on "Capitalism on a Ventilator" , a book that has apparently been banned by Amazon:
Capitalism on a Ventilator: A new book analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. and China

" The COVID-19 pandemic has placed China and the United States on the opposite ends of human progress."

steven t johnson , Feb 28 2021 18:03 utc | 17

Canadian Cents@9 The book Capitalism on a Ventilator is a collection of essays or articles produced by the Workers World Party, one of the Communist Parties in the US.

Amazon lists the book as currently unavailable (and asks if you want an email if it becomes more available.)

It is indeed possible this is a surreptitious way of censoring the book, especially if the unavailability means WWP (which operates the International Action Center) simply hasn't complied with technical requirements imposed by Amazon.

Such as guaranteeing delivery within a limited number of days. Amazon has, apparently, tightened up a lot to make it difficult for independents to sell on Amazon.

But it is also possible that the limited budgets and other resources led to limited numbers of copies which are now sold out. When the new press run is complete, the book becomes available again.

[Feb 28, 2021] Possible end of "plato oil": Increase in countries that shtill have unpapped reserves now is unable to make up for the decline of production of the rest of the world

Feb 28, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

The natural annual deline from exiting wells is around 800 kb/d/yr.

Originally from: US December Oil Production Drops – Peak Oil Barrel

RON PATTERSON IGNORED 02/27/2021 at 5:25 pm

Dennis, I must disagree with your assessment. OPEC peaked in 2016. Yes, Iran can come back and increase production by about 1.5 million barrels per day. But that still will not make up for the decline in the rest of OPEC. No need to mention Venezuela, they may come back around 2030 or so, long after the peak has passed.

Russia said they had peaked in early 2020. I see no reason to think they were lying.

That leaves Brazil, Norway, and Canada. They all three may increase production but nothing spectacular. Not nearly enough to make up for the rest of the world in decline. REPLY STEPHEN HREN IGNORED 02/27/2021 at 5:58 pm

I'm inclined to agree with Ron. So much investment deferred because of 2014 and 2020 price crashes. LTO can come back quickly if the price stays consistently high (a big if) but it won't be enough to save the day. Investors are expecting cash from LTO these days, not production increases. I imagine most other countries are just coasting after the turmoil of the last year. Also still plenty of wildcards in the collapse department over the next 5-10 years: Iraq, Nigeria, Libya, etc. WATCHER IGNORED 02/28/2021 at 1:12 am

Factions in the administration are on record as wanting sharply higher oil prices. Seems difficult to see how this would get through the Senate, but it is a green priority. RON PATTERSON IGNORED 02/28/2021 at 8:48 am

Does Occidental know what they are talking about? They are saying that the investors are just not there for a massive increase in production. And they are one of the two largest producers in the Permian Basin.

U.S. Oil Production Has Already Passed Its Peak, Occidental Says Bold Mine
By Kevin Crowley
October 14, 2020, 1:49 PM CDT

America's oil production will never again reach the record 13 million barrels a day set earlier this year, just before the pandemic devastated global demand, according to Occidental Petroleum Corp.

"It's just going to be too difficult to replace the 2 million barrels a day of production that we've lost, and then to further grow beyond that," Chief Executive Officer Vicki Hollub said Wednesday at the Energy Intelligence Forum. "Over the next three to four years there's going to be moderate restoration of production, but not at high growth."

Occidental is one of the biggest producers in the U.S. shale industry, which added wells at such a rate prior to the spread of Covid-19 that the country became the world's top crude producer, overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia, ushering in an era that President Donald Trump called "American energy dominance."

U.S. oil production is stuck below it's pre-pandemic high
Shale's debt-fueled expansion came to a juddering halt due to lower gasoline demand and oil prices, but also because of Wall Street's increasing reluctance to fund growth at any cost. Shale operators are increasingly prioritizing cash flow and returns to investors over production growth.

Occidental, which vies with Chevron Corp. to be the biggest producer in the Permian Basin, has been forced to throttle back capital spending, lower growth targets and cut its dividend in a bid to save cash during the downturn. Its finances were already severely challenged by the debt taken on through its $37 billion purchase of rival Anadarko Petroleum Corp. last year.

Hollub said global consumption stands at about 94 billion barrels a day, and it will take a Covid-19 vaccine before it returns to 100 million barrels. Due to cutbacks around the world, supply and demand for oil will likely balance again by the end of 2021, she said.

Unlike some of her European peers, Hollub sees strong long-term demand for oil. "I expect we'll get to peak supply before we get to peak demand," she said. HICKORY IGNORED 02/28/2021 at 11:31 am

"Unlike some of her European peers, Hollub sees strong long-term demand for oil. "I expect we'll get to peak supply before we get to peak demand," she said."

Thanks Ron.
I wonder if she is referring to the balance in the USA, or the world.

It will be a horse-race finish for the whole decade- "and here comes Demand up the backstretch " RON PATTERSON IGNORED 02/28/2021 at 11:26 am

Figure this one out. The EIA's AEO2021 In the past they have always given scenarios based on "Low Price" and "High Price". But now it is "Low Supply" and "High Supply".

They are not making a prediction, they are just saying: "Here is what low supply looks like", and "Here is what high supply looks like". Hell, we already knew that.

Anyway, it is all about tight oil. Everything depends on tight oil. Occidental says tight oil has peaked. But the EIA is taking no chances. They are saying in effect: "Here is what it looks like if tight oil has peaked and here is what it looks like if it has not."

REPLY

[Feb 14, 2021] Tucker Carlson Says Show Is Being Targeted for Cancelation

Feb 14, 2021 | www.theepochtimes.com

Fox News ' Tucker Carlson said on the Thursday night episode of his program that his show has been targeted for cancellation.

Carlson said that "in the last several weeks, and particularly in the last 24 hours, the call to take this show off the air by groups funded -- for real -- by the Ford Foundation, or by George Soros, by Michael Bloomberg, by Jeff Bezos, has become deafening, going after our advertisers, going after the companies that carry our signal into your home."

What's more, he added, there has been a "cowardice and complicity" on behalf of the "entire media class in all of this," suggesting that eventually, reporters at legacy news outlets will be targeted as well.

Writing for Fox News' website, Carlson added that it may be part of a larger campaign to silence Fox News and other media, noting that some legacy news outlets have dedicated resources calling for the channel to be taken down. One columnist for The New York Times, he added, "has written three separate columns demanding that someone yank this news channel off the air immediately" and on Wednesday, "suggested that 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' was somehow guilty of terrorism and violence, something that we've opposed consistently for four years."

"Fox is the last big organization in the American news media that differs in even the smallest ways from the other big news organizations. At this point, everyone else in the media is standing in crisp formation, in their starched matching uniforms and their little caps, patiently awaiting orders from the billionaire class. And then there's Fox News off by itself, occasionally saying things that are slightly different from everyone else," Carlson wrote .

He added: "These are craven servants of the Democratic Party. They are feline, not canine. All of their aggression is passive aggression."


[Jan 26, 2021] When guys like Michael Saylor put a half a billion into bitcoin they have done their homework. Seems to me a scam is an operation containing a lot of lies

Jan 26, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

uncle tungsten , Jan 26 2021 1:11 utc | 172

c1ue #118
I actually talked about this with Kuppy last week.

He considers HFT a problem but not crippling; he says they cost him $10K to $25K a day but apparently this isn't enough to deter his hedge fund activities. He said that up to 70% of trading volume activity in any stock is HFT (!).
As for scam: well - the value of the front running exists only so long as the herd is in the market. Every single market crash - whether bitcoin or the stock market or whatever - sees the vast majority of players exit (or bankrupt). At that point, the trading volumes and numbers of people participating plummet dramatically.
How valuable do you think RH's model is then?

Sounds to me that HFT is a scam in itself. Am I to believe that algorithms trading against each other repetitively at high speed is anything other than machine driven gambling on one algorithm's interpretation of the behaviour of another algorithm, mostly outside of the human buy and sell in the market place. Are the humans just strapped on for the ride through a cabal of trading companies?


psychohistorian , Jan 26 2021 1:29 utc | 173

@ uncle t # 168 who wrote
"
I was looking back at some earlier reports to gain an insight into the means by which the USA gave the game away and the means that might restore its place in the economic world. It has allowed itself to be completely captive to global private finance AND ownership of the keys to its salvation. If it does not nationalize its key industries then it can rest assured of its doom.
"

I continue to posit that the key industry that needs to be "nationalized/made totally sovereign" is finance. If humanity can follow China's lead, the motivations in the other industries will revert to doing what is right, rather than what is profitable.


In regards to your HFT comment in # 172, you have calling HFT a scam correct. It is programmed/manufactured theft under the guise of AI.

Thanks for your comments.

uncle tungsten , Jan 26 2021 1:32 utc | 174
arby #110
When guys like Michael Saylor put a half a billion into bitcoin they have done their homework. Seems to me a scam is an operation containing a lot of lies. I don't see how bitcoin falls into that category.

As far as a Ponzi scheme I also do not see the connection. It is nothing like a Ponzi. There are no promises of big returns or large dividends.


When people follow 'guys like Michael Saylor [and see him] put a half a billion into bitcoin they [think] have done their homework [and follow like fish chasing a lure] THEN they have been sucked into a ponzi scheme where the lure is a fast buck if they follow the (smart?) leader. Then the smart leader progressively sells out at a sweet peak and the chumps watch it dip for a month or two. Unless of course there are lots of paid journalists and bloggers and facebook praise singers pumping the lure of the endless profit of bitcoin.

Sounds like rumours of gold in them thar hills.

There are a large number of lies (or exaggeration?) in bitcoin and all spun within a sheath of mystery and complexity and even 'mining' to smear some credible lipstick on the scheme.

There is a sucker born every minute and they invest in BS and love a veneer of mystique and bitcoin falls squarely into the category of lies and scams and fancy imaginings and the lure that suckers are forever chasing. Yes, people buy and sell and some make a profit - same as any ponzi scheme.

While the BS is pumped the ponzi is inflated.

[Jan 22, 2021] Structural Crisis- Senate Threatens to Usurp Presidency, Constitution, and Will of the People by Leonard R. Jaffee

Jan 22, 2021 | www.unz.com

By 8 January 2021, Mitch McConnell had determined he would not permit the Senate to try Trump until 19 January 2021 or later. He ruled that the Senate could not convene for special session unless all 100 Senators formally agreed; he maintained that ruling consistently, through 19 January 2021. By 10 January 2021, House majority Whip James Clyburn suggested the House may not deliver articles of impeachment to the Senate until after Biden has been in Office 100 days.

Not until today, 20 January 2021, did Pelosi deliver articles of impeachment to the Senate. The same day, McConnell said: (a) the Senate will receive the House managers at noon ET Thursday, 21 January, when the managers will present and exhibit the articles; (b) at 2:00 PM 21 January, Chief Justice John Roberts will be escorted into the Senate chamber and swear in all senators; (c) the impeachment articles' trial will begin Tuesday, 26 January.

Until 20 or 21 January, the Senate majority would remain Republican; and a GOP-majority Senate would not only acquit Trump but also impeach, strongly, the articles of impeachment. So, why did Mitch McConnell block early Senate trial? Two possible intersecting reasons:

has said Trump fed the "mob" lies to provoke the mob to use violence to prevent Congress's certification of Biden's election.] (b) If trial occurs (as it will) when the Democrats control the Senate, a conviction might seem a Democrat-framed lynching -- not the GOP's traitorous assassination of Trump's "populism" and his political career.

I do not suggest such reasons are wise, logical, or even rational, but possibly real. McConnell is a crafty, dissembling, unscrupulous pseudo-aristocrat, but no Socrates or Aristotle.

"Liberal" and "moderate" Democrats, never-Trump Republicans,"The Squad, " the "Deep State" -- the nation's whole jumble of psychopathic and otherwise-psychically-ill "Elite," "woke," anti-"White"/anti-male/anti-meritocracy/sexually-deviant members -- all share one mantra : Trump and populism are evil, inimical to "Democracy" and the "culture," "morality," and "public interests" of the U.S. Populism must be extinguished. Never again may Trump "hold and enjoy any Office or honor, Trust or Profit under the United States" [U.S. Constitution Article I § 3 clause 7].

Why ought anyone care?

I voted twice for Trump, the second time (2020) merely because he was the lesser evil. In 2016, Trump promised more than a few moves that would have bettered the nation, e.g. ,

Trump meant and honored some promises -- at least partly. But others -- (a), (b), (f), (h), (i), and (k) -- were bad jokes. His Israel policy was evil. He railed against growing impairment of free speech. But his concern was mostly his own freedom of expression; and he failed to do anything substantial toward restoring the general public's freedom of speech. He continued, and worsened, Obama's persecution of Julian Assange and Bradley ["Chelsea"] Manning. Edward Snowden remains exiled. Trump has pardoned or commuted sentence of tens of nefarious criminals, but not Assange, Manning, or Snowden.

Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, George W Bush, and Obama supported the illegal "state" called Israel. But Trump lifted Israel-support, and, concomitantly, anti-Iran policy to insane levels. Trump's Israel-related domestic policy included design of blocking or impeding first-amendment-protected speech and assembly that opposes Israel's genocidal persecution of Palestinians. Trump rendered formal equation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and sought to outlaw the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement.

So, why ought we care whether, after Trump is not President, the Senate tries the articles of impeachment of Trump and rules that Trump shall not "hold and enjoy any Office or honor, Trust or Profit under the United States"? Why ought we care even whether simply the Senate tries the articles of impeachment but acquits Trump?

Trump's 2016 election suggested a true populist might become President -- not a closet "Elite," but one who would resist the Elites and the Deep State, not surround himself with snakes of the swamp. If the Senate tries Trump and rules that Trump shall not "hold and enjoy any Office or honor, Trust or Profit under the United States" because Trump and his supporters exercised their First Amendment freedom of speaking and assembling to support populism and protest a corrupt election, speech and assembly freedoms will cease and near-certainly no capable, electable populist will run for the Presidency.

But that consideration is subsumed in another, greater, more vital, fundamental concern. We have a federal Constitution. Every federal legislator and judge promises, by oath, not to act contrary to that Constitution. Every federal judge must promise this: "I solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me under the Constitution and laws of the United States."

... ... ...


anonymous [305] Disclaimer , says: January 21, 2021 at 3:44 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago

...You live in a totalitarian state with arbitrary power.

Your government has three branches: CIA, CIA, and CIA. They infest every other corner of your government with spies. Until you can accept this you will be an irrelevant muppet writing bullshit.

Just another serf , says: January 22, 2021 at 5:40 am GMT • 18.2 hours ago

Trump pardoned the following:

... ... ...
4. Every jew ever involved in health care fraud over the past 100 years

If you might be a Trump supporter, just stop. Trump was an incompetent fraud. And Biden (well his handlers really), will be very competent and will soon make you feel the sting of systemic punishment.

Everyone can claim some African ancestry. Suggest you get familiar with the process real quick

Dr. X , says: January 22, 2021 at 5:57 am GMT • 18.0 hours ago

Back in 1987, as a young political science major, my constitutional law professor made us attend a lecture by a visiting scholar on the 200th anniversary of the Constitutional Convention. I cannot remember who the lecturer was, but I do recall one phrase he used that has stuck in my mind ever since: the Constitution only works if we have a "constitutional frame of mind." In other words, the Constitution reflected the culture and the attitudes of its authors. Today, elites in both parties could give a damn about the Constitution. They simply ignore the Constitution when it suits them -- or, conversely, use it as a club to bludgeon their enemies when it suits them.

Today we are reduced to parsing the language of the Constitution because nobody is really committed to the upholding the culture and the attitudes that informed it when it was written. Therefore it has become meaningless.

stevennonemaker88 , says: January 22, 2021 at 5:58 am GMT • 17.9 hours ago

The president must dance to the tune of the bankers and assorted oligarchs who actually control the US. They enjoy confusing the common people with changing rhetoric and theater, but at the end of the day, the president is little more than a figurehead, and the policies remain largely the same. Many do not realize that the Obama administration deported some 2,750,000 illegals.. Under Trump it was only 935,000. Foreign wars? Police brutality? the rich getting richer? Prison industrial complex? decimation of the middle class? endless currency debasement? these things are consistent regardless, because they represent the interests of the actual rulers. The red candidate throws a bone to the "conservatives", the blue candidate throws a bone to the socialists, but the policy makers continue from one administration to the next. The last president who tried to stand up to the powers that be was JFK . and look what they did to him.

Thomasina , says: January 22, 2021 at 7:22 am GMT • 16.5 hours ago

Excellent article. Very well done.

Tucker Carlson said Monday or Tuesday night on his show that McConnell warned Trump not to pardon Assange, and he held the impeachment over Trump's head.

Swampington has gone rogue. I have a feeling that during much of Trump's presidency the threat of impeachment loomed large, and maybe worse.

Look at Sessions, recusing himself and cowering in the corner. Barr comes in and does diddly squat. The Durham investigation was a very long joke.

Two years of the Mueller Commission (when everybody in the know knew it was a pack of lies), spying, leaking, abuse of the FISA Court, Kavanaugh, impeachment over Ukraine, Covid, Antifa, BLM, stolen election ..never-ending chaos.

These corrupt clowns will do whatever the hell they please. They are the law now. If they do end up following the law, it will only be because the destruction they've caused already will be deemed to be enough.

Many of them should be behind bars.

Miro23 , says: January 22, 2021 at 11:27 am GMT • 12.5 hours ago

With the federal judiciary's corrupt or cowardly treatment of legitimate election-result challenges, the federal judiciary has shown it has abnegated its constitutional duty and will incline to commit impeachable offenses to avoid resisting the Elites' and the Deep State's subjugation of the People. The Supreme Court has shown that five or more pseudo-aristocrat judges (two Democrats, three or more Republicans) align with the Elites and the Deep State. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is correct. The People are suffering a revolution wrought by the "Establishment" (of the Elites and the Deep State).

I would say that they are more cowardly than corrupt.

They know that if they supported Trump's legitimate (good evidence) questioning of the election result, they would personally be in big trouble, so the Supreme Court is really not a Supreme Court at all – it's a piece of establishment window dressing – same as the rest of the hollowed out US Democratic institutions.

Real power in the US lies with the ZioGlob deep state and their MSM, the military (whichever way they turn), and the 72 million US gun owners (whatever they decide to do). There's also the aspect of real military power outside the US (Russia and China) that could be brought to bear, and would be potentially decisive. Accepted that some of these are TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) scenarios but that seems to be how it is. Genuine Democracy isn't coming back to the US any time soon.

Avery , says: January 22, 2021 at 2:23 pm GMT • 9.5 hours ago
@Beavertales at, do you really think Trump will discuss anything that went on in private? He is not the type to write a memoir.

And some of the most bizarre decisions he made while POTUS were as a result of "advice" from his favourite daughter Ivanka and her repellant husband. Ann Coulter has an article where she lists the boneheaded decisions Trump made on "advice" from the two incompetent rich-kids..

This short video is very indicative of the stupidity of Ivanka: she is so stupid, that she can't even see the contempt these politicians have for her, and sticks around like a bad smell:

[French Government Posts Video Of Ivanka Trump At G-20 Summit | NBC News]

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7yUko1YCuxY?feature=oembed

Dr. Charles Fhandrich , says: January 22, 2021 at 3:43 pm GMT • 8.2 hours ago

McConnell must, not maybe, must be the first person to go if the Republican Senate has any chance of surviving in a way that serves conservative interests. He has been positively of Zero support to president Trumps four years in office, only giving lip service to the interests of the issues the presidents supporters wanted addressed.. For four long years, McConnell was an expert at bringing every advance, or potential advance in conservative interests to naught. He however, had no problemo at all in taking advantage of President Trumps popularity with conservative voters, when his re-election was in doubt. Maybe his middle name should be Mitt.

Getaclue , says: January 22, 2021 at 5:13 pm GMT • 6.7 hours ago
@anonymous ChiComs -- from whence In Laws $ all arises . McConnell shows the country is totally sold out to the ChiComs and in fact "governed" by them -- the rest of Congrassholes are about the same with various "spies" working them, having sex with them, and screwing us -- the USA is an occupied country via IsraHell and the Chinese Communists -- very, very bad days are ahead and most in the USA are moron mask wearers who actually believe the filthy pieces of cloth do something for their "health" contrary to all actual 41 Medical Studies to date which state the opposite -- truly Maskholing was an IQ test and the country failed to reach even the level of "Moron". Easy to steal an election when dealing with Maskhole Morons. Sad all are being pulled down by them .
Getaclue , says: January 22, 2021 at 5:18 pm GMT • 6.6 hours ago
@Aardvark you are charged by the Feds you will be railroaded, innocence means zero once you are charged and all the "Judge" cares about is getting you to plead guilty and move the case, you will be grossly overcharged to force this to happen and the Judge will glare at you and let you know he hates you if you go forward -- unless you are a Leftist Political hack or "activist" then you will be cut loose and probably never even charged ."justice" Roberts is the "model" -- his rulings in Obamacare etc. show he has no care for the actual "law" at all -- all the other Federal "judges" follow his example .The best thing that could happen to the USA is for the end of the Federal Courts, DOJ, and FBI -- all are Enemies Of The People -- get involved with them and find out.
waw , says: January 22, 2021 at 5:46 pm GMT • 6.1 hours ago

The Trumpster is a phony. He folded like a cheap suit, as he had done the bidding of the Khazar Satanists like a judas goat.

Peripatetic Itch , says: January 22, 2021 at 5:52 pm GMT • 6.0 hours ago
@FoSquare The works of Plato and Aristotle have had much influence on the modern view of the "sophist" as a greedy instructor who uses rhetorical sleight-of-hand and ambiguities of language in order to deceive, or to support fallacious reasoning. In this view, the sophist is not concerned with truth and justice, but instead seeks power.

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

Societies that value truth but recognize the difficulties involved in discovering it also put value on freedom of expression. Those interested in power for its own sake, not so much. Unfortunately the power mongers always have the advantage of moral certainty. For them Alinsky and the Protocols are the only bibles.

Majority of One , says: January 22, 2021 at 7:12 pm GMT • 4.7 hours ago
@Anon olling 90% of the mass media of mindfuckery, mesmerization and mass megalomania and finally, the CIA financed and directed "Social Media", the greatest enemy of our First Amendment rights;;; those nefarious forces nearing absolute control over the federal regime in the Di$trict of Corruption have now fully succeeded in driving the last nail into the coffin of the Constitution AND the Bill of Rights, the enabling precondition for establishment of the federal system.

Behind the scenes, roaring and howling with fits of schadenfreude laughter; the ultimate shotcallers, those OWNER$ of the Federal Reserve and most other major international banking institutions, are rubbing their greasy palm$ with total glee by having pulled off the greatest heist in world history.

Johnny Walker Read , says: January 22, 2021 at 7:35 pm GMT • 4.3 hours ago

Former President Trump is playing his final scene today, making ready to hand over the lead part of a government like reality show to the mentally infirm Joe Biden. Biden, with history of pathological lying and a trail of crimes and associations with other crimes had no actual chance of winning a real election, but real elections are now only part of America's history.
Trumped & Dumped: The Psychological Operation Scrambles to Survive | Jack Mullen
https://blog.thegovernmentrag.com/2021/01/21/trumped-dumped-psychological-operation-enters-phase-two/

Majority of One , says: January 22, 2021 at 8:09 pm GMT • 3.8 hours ago
@Old and Grumpy wn individual of blackmail able importance -- was discovered in one of Ep$tein's logs).

Anyone notice how the Joint Chiefs of $taff for the U$ armed forces put out a notice to all military personnel that they must not participate in acts of sedition prior to the coronation of the Kamal's Foote/Biding administration.? Since the days of their attempted Operation Northwoods false flag scheme to attack Cuba, which was vetoed by JFK (among his other sins against the Deepe$t $tate); the proof was already in the pudding that the JC$ is dirty and our military is compromised by their chains of command from the top-down -- which is the way the enemies of We The People choose to employ their nefarious control system over one and all -- excepting, of course, the Elite$ themselves.

Spanky , says: January 22, 2021 at 8:51 pm GMT • 3.1 hours ago
@Mefobills of savvy self-promoter and foil for Hillary. That would explain a lot, especially Hillary's (and the Democrats) absolute hatred of Trump and his supporters. That his shtick worked is testament to both his talent for self-promotion and our dislike of Hillary. Guess she miscalculated

In any case, it became obvious that either the fix was in, when he refused to back Flynn and appointed swamp creatures to fill his administrations' posts, or Trump was a fool. But that's not to say he wasn't useful in exposing the media and deep state's contempt, hatred and fear of us -- deplorables all -- by personifying it in their attacks on him.

The question that matters now, for populists, is how do we avoid the leadership trap?

gotmituns , says: January 22, 2021 at 9:10 pm GMT • 2.7 hours ago
@FoSquare

For the most part, our entire legal profession has been taken over by an overeducated, inexperienced crowd of people who are not able to deal in "Letter" and "Spirit" of law. They're prisoners of the letter of the law because their only background is of the spoken and written word.

[Jan 20, 2021] Biden Administration's 'New' Foreign Policy Is The 'More Of The Same' Old One

Jan 20, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Jan 20 2021 14:03 utc | 10

The USA is now the proverbial Whale in a Swimming Pool: it is big, powerful and impressive - but can't hide its moves anymore and has little to none margin for any maneuver.

The American Center-wing is ossifying, or, in Cold Warrior terminology (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.), is losing its "vitality". It is entering a stage where it must "burn the village in order to save it".


mrm , Jan 20 2021 14:11 utc | 11

... it seems the answer is that Germany plays the role in Europe that the US plays in the world and both are satisfied with that role even though neo-liberalism, austerity and war-mongering are leading us to inhumanity and disaster.
Lucci , Jan 20 2021 14:18 utc | 13
Like i said before elsewhere Biden would capitalize on what Trump has put forth and take the infamy and blame for instead of moving in the opposite directions of whatever Trump criticized for in foreign policy. That means be it trade war with China, renege on climate deals, strong arming NATO and EU countries, or giving everything Israel wants nothing stop Biden from maintaining what has been put in place.
At most they'll just make excuse on why they had to maintain the policies they themselves criticized Trump for without changing direction.
Norwegian , Jan 20 2021 14:43 utc | 15
There will be absolutely no change in policy towards Israel

That is obviously correct: Joe Biden: "I Am A Zionist. You Don't Have To A Jew To Be A Zionist" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo-UXZ-1ups

Zanon , Jan 20 2021 14:44 utc | 16
Extreme leftist madness goes on: Washington Post : Blacklist Fox News 'as We Do with Foreign Terrorist Groups' https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2021/01/18/wapo-pushes-to-bar-fox-news-as-we-do-with-foreign-terrorist-groups/
Norwegian , Jan 20 2021 14:45 utc | 17
He said Joe Biden's strong conviction was that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is a "bad idea" and that the administration would use "every persuasive tool" to convince partners, including Germany, to discard the project.
That is pretty much a declaration of war against countries in Europe. Stay away,
vk , Jan 20 2021 14:50 utc | 18
America's disarray is its own woes, not other countries' opportunity The Financial Times lives in a world where the USA doesn't have more than 2,000 operational nukes, doesn't control the financial system (SWIFT), doesn't issue the universal fiat currency (Dollar Standard), doesn't have a big fucking navy, doesn't enjoy absolute ideological hegemony etc. etc.

Trump's 4-year effort to contain China was unwise, unrealistic: Global Times editorial Well, that's what happens when you hire a right-wing ideologue as your main advisor (Steve Bannon): you do policy based on a delirious utopia and get smacked by reality.

pnyx , Jan 20 2021 15:07 utc | 19
...Tronald's foreign policy has been a disaster, even if he has supposedly not sparked a new war. Let's not talk about all the secret operations, multiplied drone attacks, state terrorist assassinations, etc. And the new administration is now continuing this...
bevin , Jan 20 2021 15:07 utc | 20
"How exactly are they "ossifying"?" Jackrabbit@14

They've stopped thinking, become utterly predictable.

They just go through the motions. They know that they can't win-achieve their long held objectives-but they can't stop repeating themselves, including their past errors. They are not allowed to. The US ruling caste-servants of the ruling class- are only allowed to operate within very narrow boundaries. They aren't allowed to take radical measures when faced with new crises- they are confined within ever diminishing political circles. The duopoly has become an obvious One Party system. And its politics are those of the Gilded Age-150 years old and still going strong.

The only solution to America's problems is defeat so complete that it cannot be denied even by the least perceptive. Anyone with money to spare should be buying popcorn futures.

Eighthman , Jan 20 2021 15:08 utc | 21
...Biden is an elderly figurehead. Trump's mistake was being openly bullying and vulgar instead of underhanded. Already, the EU ( as cowardly vassals ) are falling into line on Iran and Russia.
Larry Paul Johnson , Jan 20 2021 15:11 utc | 22
...Paul Craig Roberts is correct. There has not been a regime change, there has been a revolution and treating policies of this "president" as if he is more than a figurehead being run by oligarchs is foolish in the extreme.
Jackrabbit , Jan 20 2021 15:39 utc | 24
bevin @Jan20 15:07 #20
They've stopped thinking, become utterly predictable.

One could say this about the American people who have been herded into two camps so that the Center can rule. Here's an example: One of Biden's first executive actions is to include undocumented residents in the Census. This will please the Left immensely and outrage the Right. But the Census is conducted every 10 years and it was completed in 2020. So Biden's action is actually meaningless. How many people will actual notice this? Very few.

dh , Jan 20 2021 16:04 utc | 25
@24 Some people in Central America have noticed.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/honduran-migrants-us-guatemala-crackdown-1.5877244

William Gruff , Jan 20 2021 16:16 utc | 26
It is funny/sad to see the Post Trump Stress Disorder victims are already rationalizing and making excuses for the war that the establishment drones they voted for will be starting, and those drones are not even sworn in to office yet. They know that they voted for war yet their plastic, Hollywood "identities" are so intertwined with their assumed self-evident moral superiority that they are compelled to defend the evil they are responsible for even before it is committed. For them, doing nothing crudely is far worse than murdering millions accompanied by lofty and emotive platitudes.
AntiSpin , Jan 20 2021 16:49 utc | 27
Joe Biden's Cabinet Is on Loan From Corporate America An interview with David Dayen 12/8/20 https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/12/david-dayen-american-prospect-joe-biden-cabinet

Beware of the Hawk: What to Expect from the Biden Administration on Foreign Policy
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/11/08/beware-of-the-hawk-what-to-expect-from-the-biden-administration-on-foreign-policy/

Biden Administration Betrayals of Working Americans
By Leonard C. Goodman
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/democrats-and-ruling-by-fear/Content?oid=85065430 -

Why They're Denying You Healthcare And Financial Support During A Pandemic
by Caitlin Johnstone
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/12/20/why-theyre-denying-you-healthcare-and-financial-support-during-a-pandemic/

Biden Goes To Bat For BlackRock, Stays Vague On Direct Aid To Struggling Americans
https://www.dailyposter.com/p/biden-goes-to-bat-for-blackrock-stays

Biden and the Democrats Could Change Everything. But They Won't Try
by Ted Rall | January 7, 2021
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/ted-rall/94642/biden-and-the-democrats-could-change-everything-but-they-won-t-try

The Biden Democrats Already Show They Learned Little from Trump's Loss
by Richard Wolff | December 24, 2020
https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/biden-democrats/

Biden's Foreign Policy History and What it Portends for his Presidency
By Jeremy Kuzmarov January 11, 2021
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/01/11/exclusive-series-bidens-foreign-policy-history-and-what-it-portends-for-his-presidency/

Biden's Transition Team is Filled With War Profiteers, Beltway Chickenhawks, and Corporate Consultants
by Kevin Gosztola 11/14/20
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/11/14/bidens-transition-team-war-profiteers-chickenhawks-corporate-consultants/

Biden's Pentagon Transition Team Members Funded by the Arms Industry
by Dave DeCamp – 11/11/2020
https://news.antiwar.com/2020/11/11/bidens-pentagon-transition-team-members-funded-by-the-arms-industry/

Biden's Victory Does Not Guarantee a Progressive Agenda. We Must Fight for It.
by Marjorie Cohn 11-23-20
https://truthout.org/articles/bidens-victory-does-not-guarantee-a-progressive-agenda-we-must-fight-for-it/

Meet the Filthy Rich War Hawks That Make up Biden's New Foreign Policy Team
"I expect the prevailing direction of U.S. foreign policy over these last decades to continue: more lawless bombing and killing multiple countries under the cover of "limited engagement," – Biden Biographer Branko Marcetic
by Alan Macleod November 13th, 2020
https://www.mintpressnews.com/filthy-rich-war-hawks-make-joe-biden-foreign-policy-team/273039/

More Humane Cages? Prospects for Immigration Justice Under Biden Appear Dim
by Adrienne Pine | November 18, 2020
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/adrienne-pine/93930/more-humane-cages-prospects-for-immigration-justice-under-biden-appear-dim

Neera Tanden – Reduce US Deficits by Raiding the Economies of Countries We Have Destroyed:
Neera Tanden, Biden's Pick for Budget Office: Now Is Not the Time To 'Worry About Raising Deficits and Debt'
by Robby Soave
https://reason.com/2020/11/30/neera-tanden-biden-omb-debt-deficit/
She once suggested that if Americans care about the deficit so much, maybe we should make Libya pay for it.
| 11/30/2020
( Ariana Ruiz/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom )

Neera Tanden and Antony Blinken Personify the 'Moderate' Rot at the Top of the Democratic Party
by Norman Solomon 12/29/20
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/norman-solomon/94514/neera-tanden-and-antony-blinken-personify-the-moderate-rot-at-the-top-of-the-democratic-party

Obama & the Democrats Sending Mixed Messages about the Catfood Commission
By Carl Bloice 10-14-12
https://www.laprogressive.com/catfood-commission/

Progressives Made Trump's Defeat Possible -- Now It's Time to Challenge Biden and Other Corporate Democrats
by Norman Soloman 11/7/20
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/norman-solomon/93753/progressives-made-trumps-defeat-possible-now-its-time-to-challenge-biden-and-other-corporate-democra

Someone Should Ask Ursula Burns If She Supports Child Labor in Africa
by Thomas Neuburger | 12/30/20
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thomas-neuburger/94527/someone-should-ask-ursula-burns-if-she-supports-child-labor-in-africa

The Dark Past of Biden's Nominee for National Intelligence Director
by John Kiriakou 12/31/20
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/29/john-kiriakou-the-dark-past-of-bidens-nominee-for-national-intelligence-director/

The REAL Joe Biden
"The Chinese Uyghur Dark Legend and Washington's Campaign to Counter Chinese Economic Rivalry"
by Stephen Gowans 10/25/20
https://gowans.blog/2020/10/25/the-chinese-uyghur-dark-legend-and-washingtons-campaign-to-counter-chinese-economic-rivalry/

Top 10 Reasons to Reject Blinken
by David Swanson
https://davidswanson.org/top-10-reasons-to-reject-blinken/

Who Is Michèle Flournoy, Biden's Rumored Pick for Pentagon Chief
by Thomas Neuberger 11/11/20
https://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2020/11/who-is-michele-flournoy-bidens-rumored.html

Why Biden Will Keep the U.S.-Imposed Cold War Rolling
by Vijay Prashad| 11/19/20
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/vijay-prashad/93949/why-biden-will-keep-the-u-s-imposed-cold-war-rolling

Why Progressives Should Care About Biden's Pick for Commerce Secretary
by Zena Wolf 1/7/21
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/zena-wolf/94644/why-progressives-should-care-about-bidens-pick-for-commerce-secretary

Why Senators Must Reject Avril Haines for Intelligence
by Medea Benjamin | 12/30/20
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/medea-benjamin/94528/why-senators-must-reject-avril-haines-for-intelligence

Will the Senate Confirm Coup Plotter Victoria Nuland?
by Medea Benjamin 1/15/21
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/medea-benjamin/94817/will-the-senate-confirm-coup-plotter-victoria-nuland

No, Joe, Don't Roll out the Red Carpet for Torture Enablers
by Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd 12/22/20
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/medea-benjamin/94425/no-joe-don-t-roll-out-the-red-carpet-for-torture-enablers#comment

Norwegian , Jan 20 2021 16:55 utc | 28
'This Is What 80 Million Votes Looks Like': Biden Inauguration EMPTY (PICS)
Down South , Jan 20 2021 17:05 utc | 29
Zanon @ 16

I'm not surprised. You only have to watch this segment from Tucker Carlson to understand why. https://youtu.be/M0l7xH5zbIg

Paul , Jan 20 2021 17:06 utc | 30
Trump ripped the mask off US foreign policy and exposed it for what it is - ugly Zionism and outrageous Jewish supremacy. Trump did many foreign policy changes previous incumbents and their handlers wanted to do but were constrained by the optics and international opinion.

I agree the Biden administration will continue the same tired old foreign policy, only with the mask back on. Of course the media won't notice the similarities, but the public will. No matter how fervently the managers tinker with the edges it is events that drive changes and change people.

lex talionis , Jan 20 2021 17:08 utc | 31
Blue is the new red! All hail the Bidet administration! Dermocracy (депмократия) dies in the dark!
juliania , Jan 20 2021 17:32 utc | 32
I just listened to President Biden's speech. It was a good one, even a great one. Thinking about what Plato means by the 'noble lie' it was a noble speech, and there wasn't much of a lie about it.

I just wish he were a younger man.

psychohistorian , Jan 20 2021 17:33 utc | 33
b finished the posting with
"
While Trump had continued the wars the U.S. waged when he came into office he did not start any new ones. Since Joe Biden first entered the Senate 47 years ago he has cheered on every war the U.S. has since waged. It would be astonishing to find four years from now that he did not start any new ones.
"

Prepare to be astonished. Biden isn't going to start any new wars for the same reason that Trump didn't......MAD

Humanity has been in the MAD phase of the civilization war we are in since the Obama era push back in Syria.

Biden's chest beating will not be as "impressive" as Trump's but the trajectory is the same.

karlof1 , Jan 20 2021 17:34 utc | 34
The new chief says to tighten the circle of wagons, but those accused of besieging the Outlaw US Empire's wagon train stopped attacking and moved on long ago. Meanwhile, supplying the wagon train continues to take resources away from dealing with very real domestic problems. The upshot is China will continue to pull away and increase its lead geoeconomically, and together with Russia will continue to solidify and strengthen the Eurasian Bloc. Very soon, the EU is going to be faced with a very stark choice--to join the Eurasian Bloc and thus stave-off economic atrophy or continue to allow its brand of Neoliberal Parasites to eat and risk rupture, perhaps not in 2021 but before 2030.

The key is that the false narrative that was initiated in 1945 and bolstered in 1979 continues to be treated as gospel despite its path to certain ruin. I noted there were no questions asked about the international call for a Bretton Woods 2.0 that would end dollar hegemony and Petrodollar recycling, while removing the one source of coercion behind its illegal sanctions.

The only possible target of opportunity I see is Venezuela as the frack-patch is about to fold-up shop and fuel prices cause domestic inflation to soar -- Here in Oregon, gas prices have gone up 50cents/gal since the first of the year--25%. The oil being the obvious target now the the lower-48 has definitely peaked.

Lucci , Jan 20 2021 17:38 utc | 35
@Jackrabit 24

|One could say this about the American people who have been herded into two camps so that the Center can rule.|

There's no center or centrist in USA there's only elite capitalist oligarchs who is neocons through and through at the core.

james , Jan 20 2021 17:40 utc | 36
@ 32 juliania... you are the eternal optimist! there is something admirable about that!.. however you have to contend with a lot of cynical people who think like it's business as well, as b's post notes..... you might not like to hear this, but nothing is going to change under biden... big wheels set in motion and biden is not interested in the least in changing any of it... neither was trump as some of his fanbots are coming to see too... political speeches are just so much b.s... juliania - as the saying goes, talk is cheap, it is actions that count.... watch peoples actions, not their talk... biden can talk a good line, but that has nothing to do with his actions... top of the day to you!
dh , Jan 20 2021 17:42 utc | 37
@34 Invading Venezuela and 'taking the oil' won't be easy though there is a possibility Colombia will help out. Which means the total disruption of South America. More economical to just buy the stuff.
Per/Norway , Jan 20 2021 18:00 utc | 38
"It is funny/sad to see the Post Trump Stress Disorder victims are already rationalizing and making excuses for the war that the establishment drones they voted for will be starting, and those drones are not even sworn in to office yet. They know that they voted for war yet their plastic, Hollywood "identities" are so intertwined with their assumed self-evident moral superiority that they are compelled to defend the evil they are responsible for even before it is committed. For them, doing nothing crudely is far worse than murdering millions accompanied by lofty and emotive platitudes."

Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 20 2021 16:16 utc | 26

Tnx for expressing this in a much nicer and polite way then i would have written. And yes, yes it is sad/amusing to watch NPC`s turn into pretzels to explain away their cognitive dissonans ,utter foolishness and stupidity.

dh , Jan 20 2021 18:03 utc | 39
@37 On the subject of gas prices perhaps it might be a bad time to cut off Canadian supply?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/keystone-xl-may-sold-scrap-203840567.html

[Jan 15, 2021] All pure d j vu this is exactly how the color revolutions work it is the art of winning elections by fraudulent means. The US bombers arrive only if the peaceful transition of power (aka the stealing of election) fails

For anybody who listened to state hearings in one or more state if is clear that there was widespread fraud. And its importance is much larger then the question who won the elections
Notable quotes:
"... Multiple methods of attack on the election outcome have been prepared, all methods well planned, tried and perfected in the string of color revolutions around the World. Because those attacking Trump are the same as those who have been doing the "regime changes" in the vulnerable countries over the past 30 years. ..."
"... The playbook/manual is fully symmetrical – it always addresses both possible outcomes – if their side does not manage to steal the election then they incite an insurrection and oust the winner (the Viktor Yanukovych outcome). ..."
"... It is funny how few people appear to understand that Hunter's laptop was not just a suppressed election decider then an important reason for Biden's suitability – the insurance of ensurance, the media ready Kompromat. ..."
"... Finally, it is very important to keep in mind that none of what transpired would have been possible in a healthy country ..."
"... Maybe it was hostility towards Trump's supporters rather than hostility towards Trump. Trump is a reliable pro-immigration ultra-Zionist rabidly pro-LGBT liberal. The views of a large proportion of Trump's supporters are diametrically opposed to Trump's own views, but his supporters aren't smart enough to figure that out. ..."
"... whatever else Trump may be, he's no white nationalist. But again his supporters can't figure stuff like that out. ..."
"... In extreme situations, it's more important to win than to play by the rules. – This is the moral reasoning **** of the fraudsters. The basic equation they applied is so simple that it hurts (and therefore: worked perfectly well – in all of the West) ..."
"... In the Art of Winning Elections it did not take a genius to develop this solution – the lowest number of night-suitcases (filled with ballots) for the highest number of elector votes . ..."
"... In my mind the election was already unfair when you have the entire MSM and the Internet social media companies rooting for one candidate while attacking the other and banning/censoring the voices of his supporters under various pretexts. Both candidates and their supporters, should have been given equal exposure but I don't know how that could be achieved in practice. ..."
"... At a minimum the circumstantial evidence of vote counts being stopped in swing states along with gerrymandered rules was highly suspicious. To claim a mandate on such a close election while losing house seats is absurd but the Republicans bungling the Georgia Senate run off over $2K checks and a sycophantic MSM ensures they will. ..."
"... We are to believe Biden won 507 counties, the least EVER, but won the most votes ever. Trump won 74 million votes, beating Obama's 69 million in 2008, the previous all-time high. Trump won over 2500 counties. ..."
"... Strange that all these presidential elections are always neck and neck. Just because there are two parties does not mean that election after election the vote will boil down to one or two "swing states" and a few thousand votes. Statistically, it just doesn't make sense. ..."
"... This is strong evidence, if not proof, that these elections are scripted from beginning to end ..."
"... The convenient thing about postal votes is that they make it possible to wait until the opponent's votes are all in and counted – then send in just enough postal votes to tip the balance. It's rather like an auction in which one bidder gets only the one bid, and then a rival can offer $1 more. ..."
"... Well said. I'm sure that it's no coincidence that DJT has been involved with televised wrestling over the years. Every great contest requires a memorable "heel" to engage the spectators. In televised snooker in the UK, final matches often are over best of 35 frames. It's unusual for them not to go to the last ball of the final frame. Got to have a little drama. ..."
"... The point is, it is the average intellect, moral and civic weight of the involved constituencies that allows or doesn't allow what shouldn't be allowed in a real democracy. You don't have actual democracy below a lower threshold of intellect and moral and civic worth of all the main involved parties. ..."
"... When you consider Donald Trump's grotesque antics, his entirely unpresidential behavior, evident falsehoods and blatantly corrupt actions – together with the systematic media blitz taking every opportunity to show him in the worst possible light; it is quite astounding that he received as many votes as he did. Far, far more than could be accounted for by simply ascribing them to his 'deplorables'. ..."
"... I think Trump's greatest legacy will be that he ripped away the curtain and the masks fell and we all got to see just how nefarious and rigged the system is, from federal judges to our intelligence community to the FBI/DOJ to Congress to the media ..."
"... Dominion machines can do anything! They can assign a weight of 1.5 per single vote to one candidate, and .75 per vote to the other, and can adjust as necessary. They can assign batches of "adjudicated" ballots to the candidate of your choice. They can just switch votes from one candidate to the other in increments of several thousand, let's subtract 29,000 votes from candidate a and add them to b's column. They can allow access by a third party to the administrator's identity and password so the third party can enter and participate directly in tabulation of the votes. ..."
"... They won the election the old way: they stole it fair and square. ..."
"... If you like your bourgeois job and want to keep it, you will support the narrative. ..."
"... All of the comments on here that analyze DJT's strengths and weaknesses miss the point. I personally think he made some very poor choices; but, to inappropriately paraphrase Carville, it's the fraud, stupid. ..."
"... Occam's Razor should be applied- instead of the nonsense of Chavez having an interest in voting software; voting machines being manipulated; truckloads of paper ballots being moved across state lines- my favorite; etc. ..."
"... t would be very easy to have individuals in a nursing home or even an adult day care center for mentally (dementia) incapacitated adults sign ballots. There are numerous day care centers in New York City, federally funded, where individuals could be coaxed to sign ballots. Just say Trump will close the day care center -- especially where interpreters must be provided because the individuals cannot understand English due to varying stages of mental incapacity. ..."
"... I wonder how many people have watched the twenty hours or so of state legislature hearings related to the election. Can people just not be bothered? These were historic hearings of huge importance, but I assume they didn't get much coverage in the MSM. I think most of them were livestreamed only by small right-wing networks. ..."
"... What were the results of the 2016 election? Billary received 65 million to Trumps 62 million. Gotcha. So we have roughly 127 million who showed up to vote that time. (Wonder how many of those were legit.) So ONLY 4 years later, Joe "I Look Like I'm Drugged" Biden ALLEGEDLY received 80 million and Trump received 74 million. Okay, that is a turnout of 154 million votes. So if I believe in this fairy tale, I was supposed to believe that in ONLY 4 years the vote count increased by an alleged 27 million. Hell, a lot of our most populous states do not even have that many people. ..."
"... Laws don't say a little bit of fraud is OK, because the fraud committed on or by a business didn't cause bankruptcy. Either there was fraud, or there wasn't. ..."
"... That several courts refused to hear cases for lack of standing, is patently ridiculous. If a candidate has no standing, who does? In an election, everybody has standing because they are affected by the result, and by virtue of Citizens United , corporations do as well. ..."
"... Watch this recent interview of Chris Hedges by Jimmy Dore about the root causes of our current woes. Hedges speaks off the cuff in words that sound as polished, powerful and precise as the language in tracts considered to be classics. His Pulitzer clearly was not found in a Cracker Jack box. ..."
Jan 15, 2021 | www.unz.com

Kiza , says: January 15, 2021 at 7:51 am GMT • 10.2 hours ago

Before the election I polled all my friends who would win. The majority of both left and right oriented said that it would be Trump. I said, yes Trump would win a fair election, but he will lose on who is counting. Multiple methods of attack on the election outcome have been prepared, all methods well planned, tried and perfected in the string of color revolutions around the World. Because those attacking Trump are the same as those who have been doing the "regime changes" in the vulnerable countries over the past 30 years. Trump never had a grain of chance against this mighty machinery. Corrupt local governors and blackmailed and co-opted all levels of judiciary, targeted lawlessness, threats and examples of violence and future civil war if the other side wins, censorship, eviction of election observers, night-time suitcases of ballots, one-sided main sewerage media.

All pure déjà vu – this is exactly how the color revolutions work – the art of winning elections. The US bombers arrive only if the "peaceful transition of power" (aka the stealing of election and post-election) fails. In the color revolution manual, there is also a chapter on prevention of resistance to the stolen election – thus the msm and congress screeching like castrated pigs against Trump's imaginary incitement of insurrection (pure psychological projection). I was always sure that Trump is too much of a cheap demagogue and hot air filled balloon to be able to initiate a real insurrection.

The playbook/manual is fully symmetrical – it always addresses both possible outcomes – if their side does not manage to steal the election then they incite an insurrection and oust the winner (the Viktor Yanukovych outcome).

... ... ...

In political terms, in the 2016 election a quasi-populist candidate slipped through. This will never happen again because state laws will be enacted with built-in mail voting and electronic voting machines. Competent or incompetent populists will never get through again. This will ensure that the choice will always be only between the approved, controllable candidates with plenty of skeletons in wardrobes and dirty laptops in their closets. It is funny how few people appear to understand that Hunter's laptop was not just a suppressed election decider then an important reason for Biden's suitability – the insurance of ensurance, the media ready Kompromat.

Finally, it is very important to keep in mind that none of what transpired would have been possible in a healthy country : election of Trump without enough Kompromat to have to invent the dumbest Putin's puppet meme and the consequent exposure of the manipulative Deep State, the sulfuric acid for the brain MSM and the high-techs fakers. These are all the Hegels' seeds of destruction in action.

dfordoom , says: Website January 15, 2021 at 8:04 am GMT • 10.0 hours ago
@anonymous

One thing to ask is why was this huge effort made to oust Trump?

Maybe it was hostility towards Trump's supporters rather than hostility towards Trump. Trump is a reliable pro-immigration ultra-Zionist rabidly pro-LGBT liberal. The views of a large proportion of Trump's supporters are diametrically opposed to Trump's own views, but his supporters aren't smart enough to figure that out.

dfordoom , says: Website January 15, 2021 at 8:07 am GMT • 10.0 hours ago
@anon

Because Trump inflames white nationalism

Which is hilarious because whatever else Trump may be, he's no white nationalist. But again his supporters can't figure stuff like that out.

Dieter Kief , says: January 15, 2021 at 8:11 am GMT • 9.9 hours ago
@A123

In extreme situations, it's more important to win than to play by the rules. – This is the moral reasoning **** of the fraudsters. The basic equation they applied is so simple that it hurts (and therefore: worked perfectly well – in all of the West): Trump = Hitler.

**** If I might go with Sigmund Freud here, I'd say: – Their rationalizations instead of "their moral reasoning".

Cthulu Smith , says: January 15, 2021 at 8:11 am GMT • 9.9 hours ago
@anon

I prefer this model, and it's not being discussed: Someone was making BIG money off of those programs and policies leftover from Obama. Trade with China? Care to mention one BIG company who peddles Chinese wares? Maybe two or three of them, perhaps?

"Follow the money", is what Deep Throat told Woodward. If we do that with our darling Deep State? Just ask yourself, who stood to benefit from four years of Hillary, pray tell? There's your answer.

Kiza , says: January 15, 2021 at 8:14 am GMT • 9.9 hours ago
@A123

The Deep State regime stole this election in exactly the same states where Trump successfully campaigned in 2016 to win against Clinton. In the Art of Winning Elections it did not take a genius to develop this solution – the lowest number of night-suitcases (filled with ballots) for the highest number of elector votes .

Commentator Mike , says: January 15, 2021 at 8:32 am GMT • 9.6 hours ago

Thanks for a balanced assessment. In my mind the election was already unfair when you have the entire MSM and the Internet social media companies rooting for one candidate while attacking the other and banning/censoring the voices of his supporters under various pretexts. Both candidates and their supporters, should have been given equal exposure but I don't know how that could be achieved in practice.

Trump was severely hamstrung by the role played by the MSM and the social media. In a real democracy this state of affairs should not be allowed: where the rich and powerful who control the media have an unequal say and overwhelming influence compared to the ordinary voters.

SurfingUSA , says: January 15, 2021 at 8:48 am GMT • 9.3 hours ago

Now we have Ruby Freeman, heretofore only on video rolling out suitcases in Fulton County, now on AUDIO discussing her $100 an hour election heist gig and the "Secretary of State" is mentioned at 2:02 by her boss Ralph Jones:

https://thedonald.win/p/11S0bp78qW/georgia–ruby-caught-on-video-wi/c/

Sirius , says: January 15, 2021 at 8:54 am GMT • 9.2 hours ago

There is a small element of illogic in the numbers part of the argument, namely in using 2 different metrics to make that argument. (I agree with the corruption part of the argument covered by Glenn Greenwald. It's censorship in action).

As I've done before, I'll reiterate, I'm no fan of Biden or Trump. In fact I'm worried about the war cabinet Biden already seems to be assembling just as I still worry about the crazed maniac Pompeo for the next few days left in the current administration.

But here's the point and it is a very subtle one: to say it was a tight race and only 1 in 7,000 Americans had to change their vote is a bit misleading. In the absurd Electoral College, winner take all the state system (which is far more scandalous in my view), we take one state at a time. If we accept the vote count, Biden won over 7,000,000 more votes more than Trump, a margin of victory of 4.4%. Not very close.

Therefore, if it were a one person one vote nationwide system, 2.2% would have to change their minds, meaning 1 out of every 45 Americans.

But it's a state by state margin that we're after. Thus more to the point would be to take each individual state and its margin. So if we took Georgia as one example, the margin of Biden's lead was 11,779 votes out of 4,935,487 votes cast for Biden and Trump (we disregard all the third party votes in this argument). 5,890 voters would have to "change their minds". Out of the Biden/Trump overall vote, that's 1 out of 838 Georgian voters.

To apply a different system, overall US vote count, to one state, Georgia, is using which system you prefer to come up with an illusionary 1 out of 7000 Americans, not applying the same metric down the line. It's a separate state by state system, not a nationwide vote. You have to stay consistent to be accurate in this method of argumentation.

Very technical, yes. What about mail-in voting? What is the evidence that this is by definition rigged or manipulated? Mailed ballots have a paper trail like in-person ballots. Presumably someone could steal your ballot from your home and vote on your behalf, but this can be traced and found out. At least one state, Washington, doesn't even have in-person voting at all. Does that mean all of their votes are fraudulent?

What about voter suppression? Shouldn't that be factored in? That seems to happen a lot more often in red states than blue states. What about Trumps attempts to sabotage the US Postal System? Doesn't that bother anybody who supports him? What about his refusal to commit to the results prior to Election Day? (He did the same in 2016 by the way). This only added to his opponents concern about his dictatorial tendencies.

Finally, in all the arguments I've seen anywhere, I haven't seen anyone lay out which states use those ridiculous electronic voting machines which leave no paper trail. That should be the other real scandal and those should be immediately banned in every state. Get rid of those and the Electoral College and we might have a fair system.

Oh, and get rid of a system that is eternally dominated by 2 parties as well, whether through run off elections or even better, proportional representation. The latter that would be truly more democratic.

fatmanscoop , says: January 15, 2021 at 9:06 am GMT • 9.0 hours ago
@anonymous

why was this huge effort made to oust Trump? What did they want him to do that he wouldn't do? Was he an impediment to the increase of control over the average person? Did not want to start up another action against Syria? Would not attack Iran without having a coalition of NATO countries lined up? Was against total outsourcing to China? Not confrontational enough against Russia? Perhaps he gave the deplorables dangerous ideas about them having some rights. If that question could be answered then we'd know what is coming.

He humiliated the upper echelons of society so thoroughly via his 2016 campaign and victory.

sarz , says: January 15, 2021 at 9:10 am GMT • 8.9 hours ago
@anon Because Trump inflames white nationalism, which is anathema to the Jews.

There is evidence that Trump himself is a Jew, and a fanatic Zionist at that, so his self-serving incitement of white nationalism (whose causes he did little to implement, unlike his steady support for every imaginable Israeli cause, tbe more outrageous the better, short of war with the "usable" nukes he had had developed for the purpose, that Russia warned him away from) was especially galling to the top Jews such as the Rothschilds for whom Israel is nothing sentimental, just one more piece in their chess game for world power.

Hamilcar , says: January 15, 2021 at 9:15 am GMT • 8.8 hours ago

Thank you Ron.

And thank you for this site which is a beacon of free speech and dissent against our vile, corrupt, incompetent ruling class.

In all the post election rancor little attention has been brought to how razor thin the margin actually was. And with you being a vociferous critic of Trumps boorish antics and insane foreign policy the candor on this issue is appreciated.

At a minimum the circumstantial evidence of vote counts being stopped in swing states along with gerrymandered rules was highly suspicious. To claim a mandate on such a close election while losing house seats is absurd but the Republicans bungling the Georgia Senate run off over $2K checks and a sycophantic MSM ensures they will.

And after abetting barbaric violence and anarchy for months the Democrats will now use trespassing in their "Sacred Temple" to unleash a crackdown by the national security state and unprecedented censorship and social-credit run by woke-corporate oligarchs.

Interestingly (And as many predicted) it appears they will reopen the economy and declare "victory" over Covid shortly after Bidens inauguration. Clearly the bizarre excesses of the lockdowns and dynamiting of the economy were calculated to undermine Trump and consolidate wealth and power from the start.

The question is what exactly this "new normal" will be and how far they're willing to go in order to purge the Trumpists and populist right. It will be easy to garner support for the latter but if the daily disruptions and financial shocks continue the system will collapse.

A new, large scale war would be a useful distraction but it's hard to imagine the U.S sustaining one in its current state much less against capable adversaries like China and Russia.

Then again, arrogant, idiotic, catastrophic policy blunders are the defining feature of this ruling class for the last 30 years so I wouldn't put it past them given the madness we've seen already.

sulu , says: January 15, 2021 at 9:21 am GMT • 8.7 hours ago

In effect, America's media and tech giants formed a united front to steal the election and somehow drag the crippled Biden/Harris ticket across the finish line.

And what ethnic group owns America's media?

thotmonger , says: January 15, 2021 at 9:51 am GMT • 8.2 hours ago
@ruralguy

adjustment via a plastic bag put over their heads. If they were lucky.

There was no real contest. Because? A. Control of the mainstream media was so one sided. And that is where we are at now here in USA. Imagine, a standing President of the USA has been banned and censored by all the "American" mainstream media giants. Actually, you do not have to imagine. It just happened: Big Tech and MSM has openly torpedoed the First Amendment and US Constitution. So we know where they are coming from. It's also kind of disappointing how most of our "representatives" are dealing with this.

Sirius , says: January 15, 2021 at 10:30 am GMT • 7.6 hours ago
@John Gruskos

The only cause other than himself on which Trump has been consistent is serving Israel. One of the only two major policies of Obama's that he didn't reverse was support of Israel, though he took it to yet another level. The other one was increasing military spendings. Obama never cut military spending. My money is on Biden never doing it either, and also that he will take support of Israel to yet another level. I hope I'm wrong.

Contraviews , says: January 15, 2021 at 10:39 am GMT • 7.4 hours ago

On the election night I was listening to two of our New Zealand reporters who were reporting the incoming results. I remember quite clearly after results had been coming in for a while they remarked: "well that's it another four years of the same". That were their exact words. That must have been before the postal votes came in, which suddenly changed the picture completely to Biden's advantage. Postal votes I believe were introduced for the first time in 2020 because of the Corona pandemic. It's believed that postal votes can be more easily tampered with. Postal votes are expected to remain during future elections I believe.

Anon [254] Disclaimer , says: January 15, 2021 at 10:44 am GMT • 7.4 hours ago

We are to believe Biden won 507 counties, the least EVER, but won the most votes ever. Trump won 74 million votes, beating Obama's 69 million in 2008, the previous all-time high. Trump won over 2500 counties.

Clarice Feldman at the Americanthinker.com noted that many residences had multiple votes from the current occupants plus previous occupants (apartment complexes) in this election, because old voter rolls aren't purged in a timely manner. The same addy might have 3 previous residents voting, plus the same individual voters legitimately voting at their new addresses.

My advice for whites is this .we will probably be getting in new wars for neocons now, so you might wanna think twice before signing up for the military. You may find your twenties being used up in multiple deployments in foreign miserable places.

noname27 , says: Website January 15, 2021 at 11:00 am GMT • 7.1 hours ago

A very interesting interview by Brian Ruhe with Dennis Fetcho: https://www.bitchute.com/embed/a9AtcoEyDaPh

noname27 , says: Website January 15, 2021 at 11:05 am GMT • 7.0 hours ago
@shylockcracy

Only if the American people don't adopt the MAGA phenomenon and run with it as their own = The People's MAGA MOVEMENT – who needs Trumpstein?

Schuetze , says: January 15, 2021 at 11:16 am GMT • 6.8 hours ago

@nsa

Strange that all these presidential elections are always neck and neck. Just because there are two parties does not mean that election after election the vote will boil down to one or two "swing states" and a few thousand votes. Statistically, it just doesn't make sense.

Of course the media loves these nail-biter elections because it drives up their viewership. Every election we get the same old farcical "debates", scandals and continual ridiculous sound bites. This is strong evidence, if not proof, that these elections are scripted from beginning to end, even up to and including the "march to the Capitol" and the ensuing "insurrection".

onebornfree , says: Website January 15, 2021 at 11:32 am GMT • 6.6 hours ago
@Ash Williams

"Ron put a "I'm a reasonable man" spin on this"

Exactly. "Spin". He also appears to be entirely ignorant of the fact that the constitution states that each states electors, and the procedure for choosing them, must be accomplished via the state[s] legislatures, and that in all 6[?] swing states that recorded early morning, miraculous turn-around votes from Trump to Biden, that that particular constitutional procedure had been entirely , and very conveniently, ignored:

U.S constitution. Article 2 section 1:

[MORE]
annamaria , says: January 15, 2021 at 11:57 am GMT • 6.1 hours ago
@Rational

https://thesaker.is/israel-united-states-unite-efforts-in-large-scale-strikes-on-iranian-infrastructure-in-syria/

The Lobby wants Syria by any means, up to a direct confrontation with the Russian Federation. The Jewish hatred for Iran is boundless (same for Russia – take note, Americans). Zionists care not about human lives.

Tom Welsh , says: January 15, 2021 at 12:08 pm GMT • 6.0 hours ago

"I don't know or care anything about Dominion voting machines, whether they are controlled by Venezuelan Marxists, Chinese Communists, or Martians. But the most blatant election-theft was accomplished in absolutely plain sight".

Cui bono? Obviously the main group profiting from the fraudulent election was the Democratic Party and its supporters. So why drag in foreign governments? Most of them are all too well aware that it's very dangerous to attract the attention of the USA for good or bad. Like trying to save a drowning whale.

So their sensible strategy is to stand back at a safe distance and watch the monster perish in its own poisons, hoping it doesn't lash out and harm them in its dying struggles.

Tom Welsh , says: January 15, 2021 at 12:13 pm GMT • 5.9 hours ago
@Contraviews

The convenient thing about postal votes is that they make it possible to wait until the opponent's votes are all in and counted – then send in just enough postal votes to tip the balance. It's rather like an auction in which one bidder gets only the one bid, and then a rival can offer $1 more.

Ridiculous if you want a fair election. But nobody who matters wants or expects anything of that kind. A proper political machine gets everything cut and dried well in advance.

Trump was unpredictable and, to a degree, uncontrollable. He had to go.

Cortes , says: January 15, 2021 at 12:17 pm GMT • 5.8 hours ago
@Schuetze

Well said. I'm sure that it's no coincidence that DJT has been involved with televised wrestling over the years. Every great contest requires a memorable "heel" to engage the spectators. In televised snooker in the UK, final matches often are over best of 35 frames. It's unusual for them not to go to the last ball of the final frame. Got to have a little drama.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch the rancher counts the silver dollars.

Timur The Lame , says: January 15, 2021 at 12:40 pm GMT • 5.4 hours ago

...If ego or narcissism can explain it, so be it. I'll go with insane or suffering from dementia. Any 'drain the swamp' or 'fix the system', MAGA or "build back better" argument would appeal only to retards. Re-visit Carroll Quigly's succinct description of political parties in the USA in Tragedy and Hope, pages 1247-1248 (hardcover) or Google same.

I'm beginning to believe that a different species is holding sway and we are the proverbial Eloi.

atlantis_dweller , says: January 15, 2021 at 12:41 pm GMT • 5.4 hours ago
@Commentator Mike

The point is, it is the average intellect, moral and civic weight of the involved constituencies that allows or doesn't allow what shouldn't be allowed in a real democracy. You don't have actual democracy below a lower threshold of intellect and moral and civic worth of all the main involved parties.

We could in other words say: there will be as much real democracy as is desired by the average citizen, where to desire it is not to blandly say "I agree with democracy".

atlantis_dweller , says: January 15, 2021 at 12:49 pm GMT • 5.3 hours ago
@Kiza

It is funny how few people appear to understand that Hunter's laptop was not just a suppressed election decider then an important reason for Biden's suitability

Yes, few people understand that all regime-approved candidates are people able to be blackmailed for a precise reason, and not at all by chance. What about Hegel though?

Getaclue , says: January 15, 2021 at 1:31 pm GMT • 4.6 hours ago
@obvious Globalist NWO creeps stole the election, they spent 4 years trying to overthrow the 2016 election by coups aided and abetted by the Globalist Mainslime Media, FBI etc. -- you missed all that of course? .

They also PUBlICLY previewed, as they did the COVID Agenda, stealing the election a couple months before, gamed and planned it in various outcomes .Anyone who can't see what is up is either willfully ignorant, lying, or "stupid" as you say.

No decent person is in favor of the Agenda of Harris/Biden serving the NWO "Great Reset" to crush the Peons -- you must see yourself as above the coming carnage -- I have news for you -- your not.

Johnny Smoggins , says: January 15, 2021 at 1:46 pm GMT • 4.3 hours ago
@ruralguy

We'll know we're in an actual civil war when different branches of the military, or units within a branch are fighting each other or when the police are fighting the military. Don't hold your breath of course because every cop and soldier in America is a traitor and they're all on the same team.

Garliv , says: January 15, 2021 at 1:51 pm GMT • 4.2 hours ago
@atlantis_dweller

What I still find unfathomable is the fact that the steal was so obvious: so in your face but yet the big media, big tech, federal and state law enforcements, spooks, judges, big GOP politicians etc still behave like nothing ever happened. Trump and his supporters are now labeled domestic terrorists and lawfare is about to be unleashed on them. It's surreal.

Sick of Orcs , says: January 15, 2021 at 2:09 pm GMT • 3.9 hours ago

Had the Orange heeded his MAGA base rather than his (((rat-in-law))) he'd still be President. There was certainly election fraud; enough of the betrayed base stayed home to make it effective. Trump was a p -- y all four years and got what he deserved. He was always a stop-gap time-buying non-solution...

Emslander , says: January 15, 2021 at 2:20 pm GMT • 3.8 hours ago
@Reg Cæsar

...issues can no longer be discussed openly, the reliability of elections in the USA is the most important issue that faces us. The people will accept an honest winner in a serious election. Nothing is as cleansing to our natural divisions as the result of a well-contested election, in the knowledge that, in a reasonable interval, the same offices will be up for new contests.

Nothing is as damaging to our peace of mind as knowing that one side won fairly, but was robbed of governing. I thank Ron Unz for writing and publishing such a reasonably argued essay on the matter. It is the gold standard for 2020 election analyses.

Trinity , says: January 15, 2021 at 2:25 pm GMT • 3.7 hours ago

This is sad people. Was talking to a friend and even his 80 something year old mother commented on how decrepit Sleazy Joe looks and walks. I was watching him deliver "his speech" last night and the guy had a hard time reading a few sentences off the teleprompter without stammering and stuttering.

After an embarrassing and truly cringe worthy "speech" Biden is seen walking off. The dude can barely walk...

Temporary Insanity , says: January 15, 2021 at 2:36 pm GMT • 3.5 hours ago

For eighty million who cast their ballots for the old geezer, it's mostly out of economic necessity; however, for the seventy plus million people who are Trump supporters, it's a fight for their country and more importantly, culture.

anon [263] Disclaimer , says: January 15, 2021 at 2:42 pm GMT • 3.4 hours ago

Weimerica!!!

Brought to you by the same people who gave us the Weimar Republic, only twice as vicious and vindictive this time because they know what they did wrong last time -- they weren't vicious and vindictive enough.

Albertde , says: January 15, 2021 at 2:44 pm GMT • 3.4 hours ago

In a healthy country, there would have been no need for Trump.

macilrae , says: January 15, 2021 at 2:59 pm GMT • 3.1 hours ago

When you consider Donald Trump's grotesque antics, his entirely unpresidential behavior, evident falsehoods and blatantly corrupt actions – together with the systematic media blitz taking every opportunity to show him in the worst possible light; it is quite astounding that he received as many votes as he did. Far, far more than could be accounted for by simply ascribing them to his 'deplorables'.

And, even if Biden did, in fact, just manage to win – presenting himself as a force of reason, stability and sanity – a great mass of voters sensed something in him that they distrusted even more than in Trump. That was a stunning rejection – of almost the same magnitude as Hillary's in 2016!

Old and Grumpy , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:05 pm GMT • 3.0 hours ago
@John Gruskos

You're right, and Ron Unz is right. Had Trump retained his white male voters of 2016, the Democrats likely couldn't have pulled off the steal. But in the end Donald Trump was a mere salesmen selling a con.

Ashley H , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:16 pm GMT • 2.8 hours ago

...If you had told people in France in 1785 or Russia in 1913 that within a few short years about a quarter of their population would be slaughtered in revolutionary turmoil and many more displaced, they would have dismissively laughed in your face believing – as do we – that their civilizations were far too advanced for such nonsense.

Let us hope such a horrific fate is not in store for all of us as the Great Reset is imposed on us all given how western civilization has clearly failed to the point where some sort of profound, substantive reform is inevitable.

Given that the foundation of this Reset comprises so much ill-will, deception, theft and coercion, it is unlikely that this new paradigm will benefit the millions of people it will soon dominate.

lysias , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:19 pm GMT • 2.8 hours ago

...Interesting book on Brit intelligence in the U.S. in 1940: Thomas Mahl's "Desperate Deception."

Anonymous [164] Disclaimer , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:20 pm GMT • 2.8 hours ago
@John Gruskos

Another can of worms, there would be additional Congressional hearings over it, etc. At the time Trump was still in the middle of the Muller investigation. That special prosecutor investigation tied up Trump until March 2019.

I firmly believe that no man in human history could have taken on and fought Deep State, the Swamp, the Establishment, media, GOPe, et al., as valiantly as Trump. Even in his 70's the man has superhuman energy, fortitude, and strategizing. I think Trump's greatest legacy will be that he ripped away the curtain and the masks fell and we all got to see just how nefarious and rigged the system is, from federal judges to our intelligence community to the FBI/DOJ to Congress to the media

sayless , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:21 pm GMT • 2.7 hours ago

"I don't know or care anything about Dominion voting machines"

Why not? Take a look at Patrick Byrne's summary of evidence for massive election fraud involving the Dominion machines, on his blog over at DeepCapture.

It will explain how a man who sheltered in his house, did not campaign, drew no more than six or seven or twenty-five people to his events, got seven million more votes than a man who drew up to thirty thousand people at his rallies.

...An expert witness in Georgia was able to hack into Dominion in front of the legislative committee in less than a minute. "We're in." In Dominion, and on the internet.

Dominion machines can do anything! They can assign a weight of 1.5 per single vote to one candidate, and .75 per vote to the other, and can adjust as necessary. They can assign batches of "adjudicated" ballots to the candidate of your choice. They can just switch votes from one candidate to the other in increments of several thousand, let's subtract 29,000 votes from candidate a and add them to b's column. They can allow access by a third party to the administrator's identity and password so the third party can enter and participate directly in tabulation of the votes.

And more. If your disfavored candidate is winning by a landslide and your 1.5/.75 ratio isn't working, you can put in a USB card and adjust accordingly.

If you're desperate you can upload tens of thousands of votes in a single drop which all, every one, go to your preferred candidate. And you can do it in one hour on a machine which can only handle a few thousand votes per hour, fed in manually.

If things get out of control you can call a halt to the vote count, send the observers home, and haul out the extra ballots stashed under the table skirt. But it's best to be mindful of the video cameras. Which they were not.

Really, read about it: Patrick Byrne, DeepCapture, "Evidence That The 2020 Election Was Rigged." Lays out the various ways by which it was done, then appends evidence using graphs, memos from election administrators, and statistical analysis.

He's no Trump supporter either, is a committed libertarian, and has never voted for either a Democrat or Republican presidential candidate in his life. He thinks Barack Obama graced the presidency and that Michelle Obama was a class act as First Lady.

Also: The Chinese government acquired Dominion for $400 million in the fall of 2020.

The King is a Fink , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:26 pm GMT • 2.7 hours ago
@A123

I found this interesting (posted by another commenter back in Nov):

https://votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/voting-anomalies-2020

Finally, does anyone think the Dominion case against Sydney Powell potentially offers an opportunity for the evidence of electoral fraud to be aired in public?

Jeff Davis , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:31 pm GMT • 2.6 hours ago
@utu

They won the election the old way: they stole it fair and square.

anon [954] Disclaimer , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:35 pm GMT • 2.5 hours ago

While it's an effective rhetorical tactic by our fearless leader Unz, there's no reason to be agnostic about CIA ballot-stuffing. That's as blindingly obvious as their censorship.

https://votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/voting-anomalies-2020

The ballot-stuffing shows only the most cursory measures to conceal it, consistent with a command structure that exercises precision control over media attention. CIA can censor adverse information on their candidate's trading in influence and abuse of function. So naturally CIA dumped votes in statistically absurd proportions, trusting to their Mockingbird media to short-circuit public inquiry. When you have arbitrary Nazi-grade life-and-death power, as CIA does, it's hard not to get sloppy. They don't give a fuck that you saw what they did there, cause shut up.

Jeff Albertson , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:37 pm GMT • 2.5 hours ago
@Tom Welsh ent-text">

Spot on about postal votes; it's my only slight disagreement with Ron's take on the affair. These votes were being received for days, if not weeks before the deadline and could have been (and probably were) counted as they came in. The gross imbalance between Trump and Biden votes in these after-hours counts, along with the sudden spikes obvious on many graphs, is proof, imo, of the cheat. In order to get ahead of the narrative, the 'rats said it would happen, and, lo, it did.
If the regime can't provide for trustworthy elections, it can't expect to be regarded as legitimate. Probably by design; they don't need us.

Ashley H , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:49 pm GMT • 2.3 hours ago
@The King is a Fink

Navarro's three reports do a good job of summarizing most of the possible vote fraud. He's a Harvard PhD so more than qualified to pull all the date together etc. They use many graphics and are easy and fast to read.

Ashley H , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:51 pm GMT • 2.2 hours ago
@The King is a Fink

In this post-Republic new reality, no Court will take a case in which Discovery reveals any sort of election fraud. The election is over and it's now verboten to revisit it. Don't be surprised if archive.org is forced to delete thousands of articles about it. Orwellian times

utu , says: January 15, 2021 at 3:57 pm GMT • 2.1 hours ago

Incumbent Donald Trump lost Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by such extremely narrow margins that a swing of less than 22,000 votes in those crucial states would have gotten him reelected. With a record 158 million votes cast, this amounted to a victory margin of around 0.01% . So if just one American voter in 7,000 had changed his mind, Trump might have received another four years in office. One American voter in 7,000

Margins of general vote do not matter. Biden won Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by much higher margins than 0.01%. In Arizona Biden won by 0.3% of all votes in Arizona and in Georgia by 0.2%. These are small margins but probably comparable to margins in swing states in 2016 where Trump won.

Scut Farkus , says: January 15, 2021 at 4:05 pm GMT • 2.0 hours ago
@Garliv It's for your own good, of course. I once read an article written by someone who had a chance to hang out with the rich, powerful, famous, etc. and gain some perspective on their thinking. They really do believe that it's their role to shape the future for the proles. I know someone who's just like that.

If you like your bourgeois job and want to keep it, you will support the narrative.

All of the comments on here that analyze DJT's strengths and weaknesses miss the point. I personally think he made some very poor choices; but, to inappropriately paraphrase Carville, it's the fraud, stupid.

edward manfredonia , says: January 15, 2021 at 4:19 pm GMT • 1.8 hours ago

Ron,

Occam's Razor should be applied- instead of the nonsense of Chavez having an interest in voting software; voting machines being manipulated; truckloads of paper ballots being moved across state lines- my favorite; etc.

The mail in ballots could be sent to a nursing home or to individuals, who are very old, and these individuals could be instructed by a relative to sign their name.

I frequently explain to individuals, whose first language is not English, the papers, which they are signing. I explain their 401K and retirement plan withdrawals.

It would be very easy to have individuals in a nursing home or even an adult day care center for mentally (dementia) incapacitated adults sign ballots. There are numerous day care centers in New York City, federally funded, where individuals could be coaxed to sign ballots. Just say Trump will close the day care center -- especially where interpreters must be provided because the individuals cannot understand English due to varying stages of mental incapacity.

The day care center is a racket. I believe the reimbursement rate under Medicaid-Medicare is $120 per day. Plus, the transportation fee - approximately $40 per person each way. These centers flourish in cities, such as New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, etc. I have yet to hear anyone mention that Nancy Pelosi's father was Mayor of Baltimore, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. And Baltimore is one city that it totally devastated by drugs, prostitution, crime, etc.

Now for the important question. Did Nancy Pelosi have $12 pints of ice cream in her office?

Thank you.

Edward Manfredonia

RudyM , says: January 15, 2021 at 4:30 pm GMT • 1.6 hours ago
@Ash Williams

The Navarro report is a useful summary.

But I wonder how many people have watched the twenty hours or so of state legislature hearings related to the election. Can people just not be bothered? These were historic hearings of huge importance, but I assume they didn't get much coverage in the MSM. I think most of them were livestreamed only by small right-wing networks.

anon [437] Disclaimer , says: January 15, 2021 at 4:31 pm GMT • 1.6 hours ago

Servant of Gla'aki 39, Hapalong 101 anent Willke: Willke sold a million books in less than two months. He was more of a media phenom than Trump, much hotter at the time of the election. They were going to make a movie of One World. And his message was more populist, too – basically, fuck your US national interest, we want peace and freedom. He just came out and said what everybody thought, Oh boy, now that we won the war, we'll get the peace and freedom that we fought for! So he didn't need a Sheldon or a Gina to rig elections and install him.

Dulles was squirming around under rocks at that time (he cut his teeth at the League of Nations founding,) even before he and his ultras got their Gestapo in Foggy Bottom, and they arranged Hillary-style party machinations to push Willke aside.

Now of course there's a second line of defense, the CIA proprietaries that steal the election directly:

https://www.madcowprod.com/2020/11/15/short-history-election-fraud/

Diebold and its brass-plate acquirers. CIA set them up to ratfuck Kerry and Maduro and sheep-dipped them to ratfuck Trump.

The whole world knows the USA is a ridiculous fake democracy, a totalitarian CIA pariah state voting alone against peace, development and human rights. (Just look at the 2nd Committee vote on A/C.2/75/L.4/Rev.1) The USA is North Korea with an ugly leisure squad. It's the beltway that deserves our fire and fury. Just wipe it out with WMD and start again.

https://www.rt.com/usa/364288-us-election-international-standards-osce/

Trinity , says: January 15, 2021 at 4:42 pm GMT • 1.4 hours ago

What were the results of the 2016 election? Billary received 65 million to Trumps 62 million. Gotcha. So we have roughly 127 million who showed up to vote that time. (Wonder how many of those were legit.) So ONLY 4 years later, Joe "I Look Like I'm Drugged" Biden ALLEGEDLY received 80 million and Trump received 74 million. Okay, that is a turnout of 154 million votes. So if I believe in this fairy tale, I was supposed to believe that in ONLY 4 years the vote count increased by an alleged 27 million. Hell, a lot of our most populous states do not even have that many people.

Like I say, I concede that Biden might have had about 60-65 million LEGIT votes to Trump's MINIMUM of 74 million. Hmm, so that means that total vote count would be 134-139 million. Hmm, sounds more reasonable to me. Numbers are not adding up folks.

Robert Dolan , says: January 15, 2021 at 4:45 pm GMT • 1.3 hours ago

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/huge-despite-total-media-blackout-78-trump-voters-believe-election-rigged-stolen/

A123 , says: January 15, 2021 at 4:48 pm GMT • 1.3 hours ago
@The King is a Fink

There is a considerable amount of crowd sourced reporting on electoral fraud collected here: https://hereistheevidence.com

They also have a special section for issues related to the Capitol Protest (not riot): https://hereistheevidence.com/capitol-protest-1-6-21/

PEACE

Curmudgeon , says: January 15, 2021 at 5:02 pm GMT • 1.1 hours ago
@A123

...Laws don't say a little bit of fraud is OK, because the fraud committed on or by a business didn't cause bankruptcy. Either there was fraud, or there wasn't. If there was, then the results of the election in those areas are null and void. The certification of those results expands the fraud to the state level.

That several courts refused to hear cases for lack of standing, is patently ridiculous. If a candidate has no standing, who does? In an election, everybody has standing because they are affected by the result, and by virtue of Citizens United , corporations do as well.

David Martin , says: Website January 15, 2021 at 5:22 pm GMT • 43 minutes ago

https://dcdave.heresycentral.is/2021/01/07/the-big-guy-address/

Turk 152 , says: January 15, 2021 at 5:26 pm GMT • 39 minutes ago

In an ideal world, we would be discussing how we can ensure the integrity of our elections, so that both substantively and the appearance of integrity is upheld. Instead, we are trying to get citizens jailed (right & left) for protesting the sanctity of a system in which both sides know is corrupt. There is no question in Dems mind that Bush stole the election in 2000, so why is it any different now that the shoe is on the other foot.

Our oligarch rulers know very well that they rig elections, it has been documented under LBJ, not to mention the long list of coups all over the world organized by the intelligence agencies over the past 50 years, these are historical facts. But rather than citizens being able to focus on the real problem, we are beating the crap out of our fellow citizens for something we know all know is real; and pointing to the other side as the source of the corruption. This is exactly why the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.

Anon [432] Disclaimer , says: January 15, 2021 at 5:29 pm GMT • 36 minutes ago

Mr. Unz, who is always well informed, highly organized and impeccably lucid, gives a credible and succinct analysis of the dumpster fire that is American politics, indeed of this country's leadership across the board. It creates mostly chaos and suffering every time it meddles in our affairs these days, certainly over the long run but especially in its current crash program to impose tyranny over the many so the few can take whatever they want whether they require it or not.

Watch this recent interview of Chris Hedges by Jimmy Dore about the root causes of our current woes. Hedges speaks off the cuff in words that sound as polished, powerful and precise as the language in tracts considered to be classics. His Pulitzer clearly was not found in a Cracker Jack box.

He ain't buying that Trump alone was the fount of all our sorrows or that a deceiving sycophantic grifter like Joe Biden is the fix for anything. There were many bad actors, both GOPers and Dems, both office holders and offstage string-pullers, who have contributed to the coming collapse of this country, which decapitating Trump will not prevent. Joe just happens to be the useful idiot who will be left holding the bag when the end comes, which won't be long now. Factoring in Kamala's possible ascension to the throne will change nothing. Like Joe, she's just a cluck there to take the same orders.

Schuetze , says: January 15, 2021 at 5:31 pm GMT • 34 minutes ago
@Carroll Price ...Trump also flew on the Lolita express. If after all the broken promises that Trump made to his Maga followers anyone still thinks that he is an outsider is, frankly, an idiot.

Trump is a lifetime actor and the entire election was just one big show.

One way we will know if Trump really was a threat to the swamp and an outsider will be what happens after Jan 20. If Trump ends up dead or impoverished and in prison then we will know that he was a real threat. If he flies off into the sunset, perhaps even starting a media company, then we will know that it was all one big vaudeville act.

[Jan 15, 2021] I'm not deep in the mechanics of this, but I've always assumed that the need for continual growth, after an economy could and should have turned steady-state, is a disease that can be laid squarely at the door of compound interest

Jan 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

psychohistorian , Jan 15 2021 5:07 utc | 69

@ Grieved | Jan 14 2021 23:05 utc | 47 who wrote
"
I'm not deep in the mechanics of this, but I've always assumed that the need for continual growth, after an economy could and should have turned steady-state, is a disease that can be laid squarely at the door of compound interest.
"
@ karlof1 | Jan 15 2021 0:39 utc | 57 who wrote
"
Yes, compound interest is part of that problem, but so is an expanding population or a shrinking resource base. Yes, we face all three of those problems and are certainly in an Overshoot situation few genuinely appreciate.
"

I think humanity needs a frontier more than growth. We need to keep chasing our ignorance.

We lack the common will to regulate our social interactions at a structural level that guarantees some level of equality and justice. Having the will I believe we have the ability.

[Jan 14, 2021] Echo of Ukranian Maidan: expanstion of the definition of a Domestic Terrorist to the opponents of the regime, by Jared Taylor

This is about the consolidation of power after questionable election; Capitol ransacking is just a pretext for represssions. If it did not occur they would find another one.
Notable quotes:
"... (5) the term "domestic terrorism" means activities that -- (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended -- (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. ..."
"... Why all the talk about "domestic terrorism"? I suspect it's because people can't stand the idea that the Trump mob could be guilty of nothing more than trespassing. Time reports sadly that there are no laws against domestic terrorism, but lists the charges it wants brought: seditious conspiracy, which carries a 20-year maximum sentence, homicide, assault, interstate travel in aid of racketeering, restricted-area violations, vandalism, and trespassing. ..."
"... The authorities promise to hunt the rioters -- many of whom just walked through an open door -- to the ends of the earth as if they were Osama bin Laden. The contrast with the handling of BLM and antifa rioters is stark. ..."
Jan 13, 2021 | www.unz.com

Joe Biden has the people who took over the Capitol on Jan. 6 figured out. In just two days, he had them pegged for "a bunch of thugs, insurrectionists, white supremacists, and anti-Semites, and it's not enough." Not enough? He also said they were "domestic terrorists."

Senators Charles Schumer and Lindsay Graham , Gov. Gretchen Whitmer , "Squad" leader Cori Bush and plenty of others agreed that they were domestic terrorists. Even the mayor of Orlando says so, and DC mayor Muriel Bowser called the occupation " textbook terrorism " so that clinches it.

Curiously, there is a federal definition of domestic terrorism, but it isn't a crime. There is now tremendous pressure to change that, and depending on what kind of law takes shape, there could be huge implications for dissidents.

For now, this definition from 18 U.S. Code § 2331 is worth studying:

(5) the term "domestic terrorism" means activities that -- (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended -- (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

Does this apply to the Capitol takeover? Domestic terrorism must be an illegal act "dangerous to human life" and meant to influence policy. The Trump supporters wanted to influence policy alright, but what does "dangerous to human life" mean? The Michigan Penal Code says it is "that which causes a substantial likelihood of death or serious injury."

That wouldn't include trespassing, breaking and entering, or even scuffling with the police. Anyone who may have killed Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick would meet the definition of a "domestic terrorist," but the circumstances of his death are still not clear. It may be there wasn't a single "textbook" domestic terrorist at the Capitol that day. Lefties are gloating over the death of Ashli Babbitt, but the only thing she did that was "dangerous to human life" was stop a bullet.

Why all the talk about "domestic terrorism"? I suspect it's because people can't stand the idea that the Trump mob could be guilty of nothing more than trespassing. Time reports sadly that there are no laws against domestic terrorism, but lists the charges it wants brought: seditious conspiracy, which carries a 20-year maximum sentence, homicide, assault, interstate travel in aid of racketeering, restricted-area violations, vandalism, and trespassing.

Sure enough, the Justice Department has set up a task force to file sedition and conspiracy charges . The investigation is said to be "one of the most expansive criminal investigations in the history of the Justice Department." The authorities promise to hunt the rioters -- many of whom just walked through an open door -- to the ends of the earth as if they were Osama bin Laden. The contrast with the handling of BLM and antifa rioters is stark.

Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, has another idea . "Given the heinous domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol," he wants everyone involved put on the No-Fly List. Rep. Jason Crow, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, wants the US Army Secretary to track down and court martial every soldier who entered the Capitol. A court martial requires a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, usually for a serious felony. Police departments in Virginia , Washington , and Pennsylvania are scouring their rosters , looking for officers who went to the rally, whether they entered the Capitol or not. Will they be fired?

Wikipedia describes John McCain's daughter Meghan as a "columnist, author, and television personality." She wants the rioters sent to Guantanamo : "They should be treated the same way we treat Al-Qaeda" -- yet another American frustrated by the lack of a law against domestic terrorism.

... ... ...

... [neoliberal] Lefties were of course pleased that "white supremacists" can now officially be "terrorists." This is very important for any potential new law because the occupation of the Capitol has unleashed a wave of vitriol against "white supremacy," even though there is no evidence the Trump supporters had the slightest racial motivation. NBC News ran this headline : "'Vintage white rage': Why the riots were about the perceived loss of white power." Politico tells us "there's a term for what happened at the Capitol this week: 'whitelash'." The Atlantic explained that "the Capitol riot was an attack on multiracial democracy." The Guardian 's headline was "Insurrection Day: When White Supremacist Terror Came to the US Capitol."

Black Congressman Hank Johnson told Al Sharpton that the black Capitol policeman who killed Ashli Babbitt had singlehandedly put down a lynch mob: If he hadn't shot her, "I have no doubt that some of us who look like me would've been hanging from the railings of the 3rd floor, onto the House floor, swinging like . . . strange fruit." Nancy Pelosi said that the people who entered the Capitol "have chosen their whiteness over democracy," whatever that means.

This perfectly matches the views of Richard Durbin, ranking member on the Senate Subcommittees for Defense and for the Constitution. In 2019, he introduced the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act , which called white supremacy "the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States." The act was only about 3,000 words but used "white supremacist" 12 times, "neo-Nazi" six times, "far-right" eight times, and "hate crime" 10 times. It was silent on any other kind of domestic terrorism. Sen. Durbin says he will reintroduce the bill right away in light of the Capitol takeover.

There is no telling what laws could pass in this fevered environment, but it's important to note what Mr. Durbin's 2019 bill did and did not do. It did not make domestic terrorism a crime or authorize the designation of "domestic terrorism organizations," which would mean jailing Americans as if they were Al-Qaeda members and seizing assets without notice. What it did do was set up special offices in the FBI, Justice Department, and Homeland Security "to analyze and monitor domestic terrorist activity and . . . take steps to prevent domestic terrorism." It's anyone's guess what those "steps" were supposed to be.

The bill also required the three agencies to "review each hate crime incident reported during the preceding year to determine whether the incident also constitutes a domestic terrorism-related incident," though it didn't say to what end.

Sen. Durbin loves to quote FBI Director Christopher A. Wray's testimony before Congress in 2019: "A majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we've investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacy . . . ."

However, the bill used the definition of "domestic terrorism" from 18 U.S. Code § 2331 cited above, which is ideologically neutral. That means Black Lives Matter and antifa commit vastly more "domestic terrorism" than all the "white supremacists," "neo-Nazis," and "far-right extremists" combined. Anyone who shouts "Defund the police," "Justice for Breonna Taylor," "Black lives matter," or even "I can't breathe" is trying to "influence the policy of a government." If, in that context, someone commits an illegal act "dangerous to human life," he is a domestic terrorist. Since the death of George Floyd , there have been countless dangerous-to-human-life acts of arson and aggravated assault; even attempts to stop ambulances from bringing wounded officers to emergency rooms. If "white supremacists" were organizing freeway shutdowns, they would surely count as "dangerous to human life."


Majority of One , says: January 14, 2021 at 5:31 am GMT • 9.2 hours ago

The levels of hypocritical hysteria dominating the corporate airwaves and most electronic media, together with an even more amplified level among the pro$titicians in the Di$trict of Corruption means they are scared.

They suddenly feel vulnerable. Are they as vulnerable as the people of Yemen who are being bombed daily and starvation blockaded by the $audi crime clan with the full. assistance of those D.C. Pro$titician$? Are they as vulnerable as those half million!!! deliberately starved Iraqi children whom Madelein Albrietstein declared to be "worth it" in forwarding the I$raeli agenda?

Could it just simply be that they are themselves guilty of crimes against humanity and in violation of their oaths to protect the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and DOMESTIC? The little gal under the streetlight with high heels, short skirt and low-hanging purse in the midnight hour at least provides a desired service. Can the same be said for the Pro$titicians on the Hill overlooking Urination'$ Capitol?

As for the media whores and pre$$titute$, being myself a recovering journalist; there is good reason to believe that I have correctly identified them.

The Real World , says: January 14, 2021 at 5:33 am GMT • 9.2 hours ago

I don't see how it can't be recognized that Trump set-up his own supporters by luring them to DC.

Going to Wash DC to protest wasn't going to change the vote outcome in Congress and any fool could anticipate Antifa types would show up (apparently Pelosi, Schumer, McConnell and DC Mayor were advised they were planning to come and riot. So Trump had to have known too.)

Now, neither POTUS or Congress members will publicly identify the organized Antifa thug element. So, Trump supporters, and by extension Repubs, are being widely labeled as "domestic terrorists'. While Trump releases another video today lecturing about violence which implicates HIS supporters by no mention of the other elements there.

Despicable! He threw them under a bus.

Lee , says: January 14, 2021 at 5:44 am GMT • 9.0 hours ago

From the article:

Congressman Hank Johnson told Al Sharpton that the black Capitol policeman who killed Ashli Babbitt had singlehandedly put down a lynch mob: If he hadn't shot her, "I have no doubt that some of us who look like me would've been hanging from the railings of the 3rd floor, onto the House floor, swinging like . . . strange fruit.

This statement is quite stupid but Johnson has said worse in the past:

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on March 25, 2010[40] concerning the U.S. military installation on the island of Guam, Johnson said to Admiral Robert F. Willard, Commander of U.S. Pacific Command, "My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize", to which Admiral Willard replied, "We don't anticipate that."

Wikipedia

Just another serf , says: January 14, 2021 at 5:51 am GMT • 8.9 hours ago

If there are any grounds for optimism

There are no ""grounds for optimism". These people have the upper hand and they want their political/racial opponents absolutely crushed...

niceland , says: January 14, 2021 at 6:18 am GMT • 8.4 hours ago

The most interesting article I read in past years is Ron Unz;
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-our-great-purge-of-the-1940s/

I feel this is happening again, before our very eyes.

stevennonemaker88 , says: January 14, 2021 at 6:22 am GMT • 8.3 hours ago

The great thing about language in the 21st century is it means whatever you want it to mean, sort of like Alice in wonderland. A terrorist is whatever they deem to be a terrorist; anyone who does not go along with their agenda. "building back better" means repression and censorship. "the new normal" means global corporate government and the great reset agenda. "global pandemic" means a plandemic that kills one in a million healthy young people. etc. Facts and information do not matter to these people; it is 1984. This struggle will be decided by force, as logical arguments are useless to those who deny the basic axioms of reality and existence (almost all libtards and most rinos). I think in a way it is a good thing that things are getting worse for the average middle american. Things will need to get much worse before they get better as more than half the people are still totally asleep. Of the minority that are awake, most of us have too much to lose right now . But we need to organize and prepare to take action soon or we will be bled to death by a thousand cuts as they have been doing for a while now. What kind of a world will our children inherit if we stay silent and apathetic?

Wally , says: January 14, 2021 at 6:59 am GMT • 7.7 hours ago
@Colin Wright ten Clarke, who believes that blacks are superior in all ways because they have more melanin.

Seriously, she said it.


https://www.bitchute.com/embed/plWXcxOJQqfe/

recommended:
Tucker Carlson brings up Holocaust Denial, the IHR, and Tony Martin, trying to discredit a Biden nominee : https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13746

more on this: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=carlson+kristen+clarke&t=h_&ia=web

Abdul Alhazred , says: January 14, 2021 at 7:40 am GMT • 7.0 hours ago
@The Real World

'Set up like a bowling pin' and from the traitor who pardoned Jonathan Pollard!

idealogus , says: Website January 14, 2021 at 7:47 am GMT • 6.9 hours ago

O MY GOD!
All the discussions around Trump reminded me of Hitler after Stalingrad.
After the defeat at Stalingrad, the Germans waited 2 years for Hitler to use the secret weapon and win the war. The German army suffered defeat after defeat, the Russian communists were searching for Hitler's body through Bunkers and the Germans still waited for the super-secret weapon to save them.

Two months after the election, Trump's team suffered defeat after defeat. Trump is waiting for jail, but his supporters are convinced that Trump still has a secret weapon with which will win the election.When you wake up to reality. Trump is a false Messiah and he he doesn't have a super-secret-weapon.
You have to fight your self for justice and truth and not wait for someoneelse to fight for you while you button porn, tiktok or chat smalltalk on Facebook.
I can't forget what Mother Teresa said 30 years ago: "Don't wait for a leader because he won't come. Be your own leaders."

Ray Caruso , says: January 14, 2021 at 7:53 am GMT • 6.8 hours ago

Are We All 'Domestic Terrorists'?

You all are for sure. I just changed my party registration and I'm now a proud Democrat. I don't want to be denied jobs, loans, transportation, and possibly freedom and life itself for the sake of a country that has collectively decided to destroy itself.

[Jan 13, 2021] Lessons from the Trumpistan Coup, by Thomas Dalton

The main less is not be so stupid: Trump and Trumpists got in a trap and now will be eliminated from the political scene.
Jan 13, 2021 | www.unz.com

Mass protests generally have two distinct but intertwined goals: 1) to "make a statement," and 2) to inflict a cost. To state the obvious, mass protests occur because a group of people are unhappy about something, and they want something to change. Change only occurs, in a large bureaucratic nation like ours, if a loud "message" is conveyed, or if the price of non-change becomes too high. If thousands of Trump voters are mad as hell because they believe the election was stolen, and if they want to protest, they can either make their message heard and then hope for the best (not much hope there), or they can attempt to punish the thieves -- that is, make them incur some cost for their malfeasance.

What did the mob achieve on Wednesday? We already knew their message -- Trump won the election, and it was stolen. We know they have support across the country; even our biased media admit to some 74 million Trump voters, of whom 70% to 80% (depending on the poll) think the election was stolen. But then what? "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it." And then what? The message is impotent. It has no consequence.

If 'the message' was doomed to impotence, inflicting 'a cost' was much more tangible, and much more achievable. By forcing their way into the Capitol building, a motivated and reasonably prepared mob could have caused tremendous damage. If -- and I stress the conditional here -- if they wanted to inflict damage, they had a golden opportunity. They had guns, presumably hidden, and far outnumbered the handful of guards. Any firefight would have been over quickly, with the mob victorious. Security guards, staffers, even congressmen would have been easy prey, for kidnapping, injury, or worse. But this did not happen.

... ... ...

Notice how congressmen, left and right, responded to the event. All were indignant. All were outraged. All condemned the "senseless violence" of the crazed mob and the "attempted overthrow" of American democracy. All of them: left, right, and center; Democrat and Republican; Trump supporter or not. All of them condemned it.

Again: Why? The answer here is clear: All congressmen, of all stripes, have a vested interest in sustaining the system, more or less in its current form . This is obvious. They are all 'winners' in the system. It has made them all rich, famous, and powerful. Yes, they fight for relative power and relative influence, but this is largely a sham. The Republican-Democrat battles are only there to give the impression of real competition. Instead, in reality, we have a deep and radical monopoly -- a monopoly of pro-corporate, pro-capitalist, pro-war, pro-Israel, and pro-Jewish individuals. On these things, they all agree. I've been saying as much for many years: We should focus not on what divides the two parties, but on what unites them . This is far more revealing.

... More than anything, Trump was a symbol: a symbol of resistance, of defiance, and of an 'in your face' attitude. But nothing more. The Trump presidency was all show, no substance. It was, and is, hardly worth dying over.

And by 'media,' I mean all media. Consider what our beloved Tucker Carlson had to say , speaking at the beginning of his show on the very first day after the protest:

Political violence begets political violence. That is an iron law that never changes. We have to be against that, no matter who commits the violence or under what pretext, no matter how many self-interested demagogues assure us the violence is justified or necessary. We have a duty to oppose all of this, not simply because political violence kills other people's children, but because in the end it doesn't work.

No good person will live a happier life because [Ashli Babbitt] was killed in a hallway of the Capitol today. So our only option, as a practical matter, is to fix what is causing this in the first place. You may have nothing in common with the people on the other side of the country -- increasingly, you probably don't -- but you're stuck with them. The idea that groups of Americans will somehow break off into separate peaceful nations of like-minded citizens is a fantasy. That will not happen. There is no such thing as 'peaceful separation'; there never has been, and there won't be.

The two hemispheres of this country are inseparably intertwined, like conjoined twins. Neither can leave without killing the other. As horrifying as this moment is, we have no option but to make it better, to gut it out.


Beavertales , says: January 12, 2021 at 10:00 pm GMT • 23.9 hours ago

The entry of the Capitol building was spontaneous. Nobody saw it coming.

In the immediate aftermath, the media didn't know whether to promote it or bury it. It took hours and days for the narrative to coalesce on orders from the top.

As it was happening, the media was gob-smacked. The 'insurrection' narrative didn't truly get going until the protest was long over.

stevennonemaker88 , says: January 13, 2021 at 5:45 am GMT • 16.1 hours ago

I thought this was a pretty good article. Virtually no politician is on the side of the people (maybe Ron Paul is the exception)...

shylockcracy , says: January 13, 2021 at 5:51 am GMT • 16.0 hours ago

It's real tiresome to do this but people need to be reminded that Ziocorporate conman fraud Trump and his MAGA brand are a product of the same lot that governs the Democrats, and that he was never on his constituency's side:

"Donald Trump endorses Benjamin Netanyahu for PM"

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_l0N8ru6wII?feature=oembed

And it's necessary because if there's a chance to unite even a small group of people after realising how they're being had, then there's a chance for a small change to snowball into something larger. And it should not stay on the white side of the divide, it's not like the plandemic's been killing the economy for whites only. No "populist anti-Deep State patriot" or national leader goes around endorsing other countries' politicians, much less Israel's, the purest manifestation of corporate bankster power acting in unison with neocolonial globalism, a trait shared by Biden and Trump.

Actions should be peaceful, because entities like the Pentagon and CIA have an absolute monopoly on violent repression...

Thomasina , says: January 13, 2021 at 5:58 am GMT • 15.9 hours ago

One Christian fellow I listened to said that Antifa were definitely there. He took video of them walking down the street. That just proves to me that even Antifa knew they were no threat, otherwise they wouldn't have been mingling among thousands and thousands of Trump supporters.

The fellow said that from what he could see, the Trump protesters were unarmed, well behaved, smiling, and content with waving their flags. He said they are proud patriots and would never think of destroying art work or smashing up the Capitol Building.

He said on the 15 to 20 previous trips he's made to the Capitol Building, the pop-up metal barriers have always been up, but no barriers were up on January 6th. He said on a previous trip he had stepped onto the grass to take a picture and was quickly told by an officer to "get off the grass". But on January 6th, the sidewalks were blocked off, forcing people onto the grass.

We've seen the video of what looks to be an Antifa member breaking a window, only to be stopped by a Trump supporter.

No, these were salt of the earth people who were no threat to Antifa OR the spineless politicians. They knew this, but they've played it up for all it's worth.

And where was the police presence? Nowhere.

SwedeMan , says: January 13, 2021 at 6:59 am GMT • 14.9 hours ago

The main physical damage was the supposed theft of Pelosis laptop. Can I take a look at it?

Franz , says: January 13, 2021 at 7:13 am GMT • 14.6 hours ago
@James Speaks andbook by Edward N. Luttwak

Amazon includes a couple accurate blurbs on the product description page:

This short book is wicked, truthful, and entertaining. The author, after outlining a step-by-step procedure for bringing about a coup, analyzes modern (post–Second World War) coups, and points out why some succeeded and others failed. ( New Yorker )

An extraordinarily competent and well-written work, displaying very wide knowledge of the ways in which coups, both successful and unsuccessful, have actually been organized. ( Times Literary Supplement )

El Dato , says: January 13, 2021 at 7:16 am GMT • 14.6 hours ago

You don't do a "coup" by invading the congressional discussion bunker in a nominal democracy. You do a "coup" by ordering up CIA-organized troops to take over communication centers as checkpoints secured by APCs go up everywhere as congresscritters are frogmarched to a nearby stadium. The CEOs and salaried Wokers of the social meedja companies would swear enthusiastic allegiance to the new powers. Antifa would be issued clean shirts, ties and government-approved truncheons. Then a grand proclamation that there will be a convention to work towards national unity. Ooops, that last part actually happened.

If there had been a coup, it would 100% evident.

If there had been fair elections, it would 100% evident.

El Dato , says:
Whitewolf , says: January 13, 2021 at 10:03 am GMT • 11.8 hours ago

The event was, variously, a "coup," an "insurrection," or at minimum, "a riot." Protesters were "right-wing extremists" and even "domestic terrorists" who were attacking "the very basis of American democracy."

A coup?
An insurrection?
Attacking the very basis of American democracy?

The only reason the crowd was there in the first place was to protest against the people committing those crimes through election fraud. Hopefully at least the crowd has figured out that the Republicans and Trump are not on their side...

Forze , says: January 13, 2021 at 12:11 pm GMT • 9.7 hours ago

http://dissident-mag.com/2021/01/11/trumps-post-election-pentagon-shakeup-ensured-trap-was-sprung-for-patriots-at-the-capitol/

Jazzhand McFeels of https://therightstuff.biz/ has written a very interesting article on Dissident Mag about some sudden changes in the administration that could explain this thing.

There's also a podcast with even more facts: https://fash-the-nation.libsyn.com/ftn-372-rage-against-the-regime

Johnny Walker Read , says: January 13, 2021 at 3:01 pm GMT • 6.8 hours ago

Then things got ugly. Around 3:15, Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed, evidently by a security guard.

I don't know how this hoax could be exposed any better. WTFU people, you are being played.
https://153news.net/watch_video.php?v=6NMK57Y5A924

Twodees Partain , says: January 13, 2021 at 3:16 pm GMT • 6.6 hours ago
@Franklin Ryckaert

If the attack on the Capitol was already so clumsy and ineffective, how could those same people succeed in the much more difficult task of seccession?

You're assuming that the phony attack was planned by the people who would be involved in a secession movement. I haven't seen any evidence that it was.

Anonymous [144] Disclaimer , says: January 13, 2021 at 3:54 pm GMT • 6.0 hours ago

Cui Bono? The Key to 6 January is what did NOT happen. The two houses of congress had gone off to hear, separately, in public broadcast, evidence from objecting congressmen that there was massive electoral fraud to criminally deliver the election to Biden. MSM transmitted the opening statements to the debate by McConnell and Schumer. These two said that there was no election fraud. MSM then pulled away when the other congressmen started presenting the view that there WAS fraud. Although MSM was not going to carry what the people are not supposed to know, and filled in instead with their own propagandists and the Party Line, the proceedings examining election fraud would have been seen by some of the public through the internet streams and C-Span. This was clear evidence which the courts should have heard, but refused to hear. BUT, instead of Congress publicly hearing evidence, the hearings abruptly STOPPED. Why? The Capitol police, following instructions, opened the barricades and waved the demonstrators to come in. The demonstrators were guided to the spot where the Deep State assassin was waiting. A person was shot. After that, there were NO MORE discussions of election fraud. Biden was confirmed without the airing of evidence of fraud. 6 January was a simple, but elegant, Deep State SETUP. A psyop. The American people have been, once again, deceived. Once everybody submits to vaccination there will never again be disputed elections, just like in the third world.

anastasia , says: January 13, 2021 at 5:01 pm GMT • 4.8 hours ago

Correction: The media said that the policeman "collapsed when he got back to the Precinct. .that he MAY have been hit with a fire extinguisher." It was not reported as fact. No other subsequent report abouthow he died albeit it should have been established by now.

The second poilce officer who the media says was "killed" by the "riots" was a man who we heard nothing about on the date of the event, but who, five days later, committed suicide. The suicide story is not speculation. It was given as a fact. They call this suicide a "killing" because of the riots. It is more likely a police officer shooting his mouth off about these lies,who, five days later was suicided.

This summer and fall at least a dozen police officers were killed. Many more were injured. One got his eye knocked out. Many were very gravely injured. The government officials applauded their killers, posted bail for them, and every step of the way government officials "incited the violence".

Trump made a speech in front of his supporters laying out the evidence of the election fraud. He was complaining about the election fraud, a fraud that was never scutinized or investigated by anyone except his own lawyers and a few other lawyers, like Sidney Powell. They want to impeach him for publicly complaining about their stealing the election from him. It's like someone getting their home stolen, and when the victim publicly complains, he is threatened with arrest.

Again, they fundament their impeachment grounds on the "insurrection" of January 6, but again, like the election fraud, no one has scrutinized or conducted the most cursory investigation of it The fact that we still don't know how that policeman died is telling. The speculations made about him getting hit by a fire extinguisher are still floating around when at this point, it should be an established fact how he died. The dopiest doctor in this country would be able to diagnose a trauma to the head or body, if there were any physical trauma of that kind.

Two people died from natural causes. Yet, no details are given. One woman, age 34 and overweight was said to have been "trampled by the mob." Minutes after her death her family and closest friends were bad mouthing her, saying that she was mentally unstable, a conspiracy theorist, and "had problems in the past." She just died shortly before, and that was their public statements about their dearest friend and family member.

Ashli Babbits death was a provocative act that would have encouraged Trump supporters to turn on the police. It is no coincidence that those around her breaking windows, and screaming that she was dead when she was not, also provoked the crowds of Trump supporters. They are seen clearly on the video near Ashli not only breaking windows but changing their clothes after they had done so to hide their identification. This is clearly seen on the video. One guy provoking the crowds, breaking windows and screaming that Ashli was dead when she was not, was clearly Antifa, proven to be Antifa by video evidence. Yet, after January 6, he was interviewed by CNN. Clearly, the Antifa provocateur was not arrested by the Washington police or the FBI, but at least 6 Trump supporters were arrested for breaking curfew after 6 p.m. when all that happened at the Capitol was over. Those six were the first arrested – for breaking curfew. I do not find it a coincidence that both Ashli Babbitt and those breaking the windows around her, and screaming that she was dead when she was not, all acted to provoke the crowds and were all proven to be Antifa members. Was it coincidence that Ashli Babbitt's getting shot also acted as an unwitting provocateur, along with the Antifa members around her in the Capitol that day? Or was both Ashli and Antifa working for our security agencies that day, all playing their roles as agents provocateurs.

Why wouldn't the DOJ and FBI investigate the election fraud? Was it because the government did it? That would be a good reason not to investigate. Sidney Powell has produced an affidavit from a Serb who said it was the CIA who oversaw the manipulation of the US voting machines from Serbia, a country completely taken over by the CIA. He also writes about Hunter Biden's clandestine trip there in August 2020 to meet with these people.

Ugetit , says: January 13, 2021 at 5:13 pm GMT • 4.6 hours ago
@shylockcracy

Whoever didn't develop a sense of humor with your Ziocorporate fraud reality TV show president posing as patriot anti-deep maverick ain't gonna do it now.

Quite right. Unfortunately.

Thomasina , says: January 13, 2021 at 5:30 pm GMT • 4.4 hours ago
@Whitewolf

Yes, the coup and insurrection had ALREADY happened.

The coup and insurrection happened when the Democrats AND Republicans rigged the election. Democratic state courts and election officials changed voting laws, and Republican state legislatures looked the other way.

NOVEMBER 3, 2020 COUP.

gleongelpi , says: January 13, 2021 at 6:46 pm GMT • 3.1 hours ago

You are wrong on so many counts. The event was not spontaneous, that is quite clear when the guards let the protesters in and they mostly went inside peacefully while a handful of rioters did minimal damage. Some Antifas, yeah, for sure. But someone stole Pelosi's computer or did they? That smacks of a plan. It achieved the objectives of the groups on the inside. The marchers that went inside had to have been, for the most part, surprised that they were welcomed. Did you see how they walked in between the purple ropes? Took photographs and selfies, some of these with the guards? Did you see the videos of some of the protesters stopping the people trying to break the glass windows? ...

Curmudgeon , says: January 13, 2021 at 6:47 pm GMT • 3.1 hours ago
@Thomasina

This is a very interesting video.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5nvqvvsqJ_s?feature=oembed

Trinity , says: Next New Comment January 13, 2021 at 7:58 pm GMT • 1.9 hours ago

I see "anti-Semitism" has made it to the floor during these impeachment hearings. LMAO. I would guess that 97% of Trump's base is the muh Israel crowd and Trump is as pro-Israel, pro-Jewish as it gets.

Even more laughable is Maxine Waters standing up and decrying violence. I guess Maxine has a very selective memory. All these demsheviks and the gay guys over at CNN who had no problem with Antifa/BLM are now staunch advocates for the Constitution and have a problem with riots. How in the hell do these cretins live with themselves? Have these hypocrites no shame? It can't be said enuff that Antifa/BLM's and (((the leftoids))) fingerprints are all over these riots. This is the new 9-11, folks, don't believe your lying eyes. Look at some of those scraggly people busting windows and attacking cops? Do they look like the average Trump voter? Do these young punks scaling the walls look like the average Trump voter?

Dr. Charles Fhandrich , says: Next New Comment January 13, 2021 at 8:15 pm GMT • 1.6 hours ago

The democratic party is now pretending to "call out" the "white supremacists" in Congress. Even if there were "white supremacists" in Congress, they would be not one bit different from "brown supremacists", "black supremacists","yellow supremaicsts", if by "supremacists" is meant politicians that belong to the Hispanic caucus, Black caucus or Asian caucus , ALL of whom claim to be looking out for the welfare of their respective group.

This is of course what is going on here. The democratic party politicians, Pelosi, Schumer, Biden and the whole left has been race baiting against white people as a default manner of doing politics for over sixty years now. It is the fault of the FAUX REPUBLICAN PARTY, that has been posing as conservatives who many whites believe "have their backs", against the hate and shenanigans the anti-white left perpetrates. THEY ARE WRONG. We see plainly now, that what the U.S. has is a uni-party, that is left and far left and includes good old Republican RINO's, but the left and far left is used by the elite to keep and gain control of the U.S. for their own agenda. The idea now operating is to belittle, denigrate and cow white folks as never before, because many of the protesters at the recent "event", scared the living bleep out of the politicians who have simply not been representing them. The corporations and tech moguls,etc. are not taking the side of the left because they are "better" citizens or politicians than people on the right side of the political spectrum. They take the side of the left because that is where these corporations know that the radical Americans are, the ones that burn, loot and murder and therefore can be used to divide the nation for the big corporations and tech moguls,etc. Any honest person that considers what happened at the so called violent demonstration in D.C. knows that compared to the violence that ANTIFA, BLM and other groups perpertrated on innocent Americans last summer, knows perfectly well that there is no comparison. The anti-white left, enabled by the democratic party and the news media, IN SERVICE OF THE U.S. ELITE. BURNED, LOOTED AND MURDERED THE CITIZENS OF AMERICA for months, WITHOUT A SINGLE WORD FROM PELOSI, SCHUMER, BIDEN HARRIS, ETC.

The simple fact is that these D.C. politicians were scared shitless by some plain American citizens, who finally felt they needed to meet these representatives that keep ignoring and abusing them. The wrong people are being blamed here.

Dr. Charles Fhandrich , says: Next New Comment January 13, 2021 at 8:26 pm GMT • 1.4 hours ago

"Lessons from the Trumpistan Coup"

Before reading this article, the reader might consider the fact that there was NO COUP, by the accepted meaning that the word "coup" denotes. Now, if the fake news media and the democratic party want to explain the event by bending the facts and actual events to fit their own interpretation of it, that's a problem due to their dishonesty.

[Jan 13, 2021] Tucker obsession with china

Jan 13, 2021 | www.unz.com

Realist , says: January 12, 2021 at 3:36 pm GMT • 12.7 hours ago

FoxNews finally showed its true face during the election steal when it declared that Trump had lost the election long before any evidence in support of this thesis materialized.

For those that paid attention to Fox News, especially daytime and weekend Fox News its true face has been obvious for some time.

It is now abundantly clear that with a few exceptions (notably Tucker Carlson), FoxNews is very much on the same page as CNN and the rest of them.

While Carlson is not the worst on Fox News he is not a friend. His obsession with the China bad narrative is over the top. He is playing the GOP Inc side of the Deep State coin.

The A block last night was Carlson reiterating over and over, that he and Fox News were against violence like that at the Capitol. He stated that violence from the left was also wrong but that violence from the right was not the answer of course like most articles on this blog, he didn't say what the answer was.

[Jan 13, 2021] The Mob Did Not Win!, by The Saker

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... I have, for some time, been mis-naming the Nomenklatura as the Politburo, with the commune being the many tentacled international banking cartel. ..."
Jan 13, 2021 | www.unz.com

FoxNews finally showed its true face during the election steal when it declared that Trump had lost the election long before any evidence in support of this thesis materialized. It is now abundantly clear that with a few exceptions (notably Tucker Carlson), FoxNews is very much on the same page as CNN and the rest of them. So what just happened and what is taking place now?

Americans have been brainwashed into calling things they don't like, or don't understand, as "Socialist" or even "Marxist". The sad reality is that most Americans sincerely believe that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are "socialists", and when they see modern movies ridiculously filled with "minorities" and gender fluid freaks – this is a case of "cultural Marxism" (a totally meaningless term, by the way!). This is all utter nonsense, neither Marxism nor Socialism have anything to do with BLM, Antifa, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer (in fact, Marxism places a premium on real law and order!). I can't take the time and space here to discuss Marxism, but I do believe that there is one analytical tool which we can borrow from Marxist thought to try to make sense of what just happened in the USA. Let's begin by asking a simple question:

If "the mob" did not win, who did?

Most certainly not the abstract concept of "law and order". For one thing, it is now abundantly clear that some cops deliberately let a (rather small) subset of protestors not only across police lines but even inside the Capitol Building itself. That is not exactly law and order, now is it? Furthermore, it is now also clear that Ashli Babbitt was very deliberately shot by an (apparently black) cop who was then quickly hidden away from sight by the authorities. Not exactly law and order either.

Neither did the abstract concept of "democracy" win anything that day. Many protesters were recorded saying that the Capitol building belonged to the people, not to the people working in it on behalf of the people. They are right. But even if we accept the notion that those who entered the building were trespassing, the massive crackdown on free speech which immediately followed the events at the Capitol is a clear sign that "democracy" did not win that day. More about that later.

So who won?

Well, look who is celebrating and who is now demanding that punitive and even repressive measures be taken against Trump supporters:

here and here ) The Russia-hating Lobby Antifa/BLM/etc The many freaks of nature leading various "minorities" Big Tech megacorporations a la Google and Amazon

The list is longer, of course, and it includes pretty much all the folks afflicted with the now famous Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

Our list looks like a cocktail of very different actors, but is that really the case?

I submit that if we look closely at this list of possible "winners" we can quickly see that we are dealing with a single social category /group whose "diversity" is only apparent. Here is what all these groups have in common:

They are numerically small, definitely a minority They are very wealthy They are very close to the real centers of power They share the same narcissistic (Neocon) ideology of self-worship They are driven by the same hate-based ideology of revenge They don't care about the people of the USA They want to dismantle the US Constitutional order

On the basis of these common characteristics, I believe that we can speak about a social class united by a common ideology .

Now, of course, in the plutocratic oligarchy (which the United States in reality is), the notion of "class" has been declared heretical and it has been replaced by identity politics – the best way for a ruling class to (a) hide behind a fake illusion of pluralism and (b) to divide the people and rule over them.

I have already written about what I consider to be a US version of the Soviet Nomenklatura , a special ruling class which was official in the (comparatively much more honest) Soviet system but which is always hidden from sight by the rulers of the United States.

The actual word we use are not that important: Nomenklatura , class, caste, establishment, powers that be, deep state, etc. – they all approximate the reality of a small gang of self-declared "elites" (as opposed to the "deplorables") ruling with total impunity and no checks and balances mitigating their de facto dictatorship. Some well-intentioned people began speaking about the "1%" – which is not bad, even if the actual figure is even smaller than just one percent. Others used "Wall Street" (as in the "occupy WS" movement), again – not a bad attempt to describe the problem. Whatever the terms you chose, what is certain is that this entity has what Marx would call a " class consciousness " which produces a single " class ideology " characterized by an extremely strong sense of "us versus them" .

By the way, while I disagree with any notion that the US Nomenklatura is Marxist or Socialist in any way, I very much agree that these "elites" are displaying an ideological zeal very similar to what Trotskysts or Nazis typically exhibit, especially when confronted with the "deplorables" or, like FoxNews says, the "mob" (the Polish word " bydło " – cattle – very accurately renders this contempt for the masses).

In fact, they see us all as their "class enemy" . And they are quite correct, by the way.

Their ideology is messianic, racist, violent and hate filled while the members of this US Nomenklatura see themselves as the cream of the crop, the "chosen people", whose "destiny" is to rule over the "dark and primitive" "mob".

This contempt for the "mob" is something which self-described "liberals" always try to conceal, but which always comes out, be it in 1917 Russia or in 2021 USA. There is a weird logic to this, by the way. It goes something like this: " we are clearly superior to the plebes, yet these plebes seem to reject that notion, these plebes are therefore a "dark mob" which absolutely needs to be strictly ruled by us ". The underlying assumption is that plebes are dangerous, they can always riot and threaten "us". Hence the need for a police state. QED.

We all remember how the Clinton gang was mega-super-sure that Hillary would easily defeat Trump. And just to make darn sure that the US "plebes" don't do anything stupid, the US legacy corporate ziomedia engaged in probably the most hysterical candidate bashing propaganda operation in history only to find out that the "deplorables" did not vote as they were told to, they voted for "Trump The New Hitler" instead.

What a truly unforgivable affront of these serfs against the masters which God, or Manifest Destiny, placed above them!

And just as their pseudo-liberal colleagues from the past, the US liberals decided that this vote was a slap in their face which, of course, is quite correct (I still believe that most votes for Trump where not votes for Trump, but votes against Hillary); it was, so to speak, a gigantic "f**k you!" from the revolting serfs against their masters. And class consciousness told the US Nomenklatura that this was an anti-masters pogrom , a US " Jacquerie " if you wish. This "revolt of the serfs" had to be put down, immediately, and it was: Trump caved to the Neocons in less than a month (when he betrayed General Flynn) and ever since the US Nomenklatura has been using Trump as a disposable President who would do all the crazy nonsense imaginable to please Israel, and who would then be disposed off. And yet it is now quite clear that the US "deplorables" voted for the "wrong" candidate again! Hence the need for a (very poorly concealed) "election steal" followed by a "test of loyalty" (you better side with us, or else ) which eventually resulted in the situation we have today.

What is that situation exactly?

Simply put, this time the US Nomenklatura has truly achieved total power. Not only do they control all three of the official branches of government, they now also fully control the 4th one, the "media space", courtesy of the US tech giants which now are openly silencing anybody who disagrees with the One And Only Official Truth As Represented By The Propaganda Outlets. This is the very first time in recent US history that a small cabal of "deep insiders" have achieved such total control of all the real instruments of power. The bad news is that they know that they are a small minority and they realize that they need to act fast to secure their hold on power. But for that they needed a pretext.

It is hardly surprising that after successfully pulling off the 9/11 false flag operation, the US Nomenklatura had no problems whatsoever pulling off the "Capitol" false flag.

Think about it: the legally organized and scheduled protest of Trump supporters was announced at least a week before it had to take place. How hard was it for those in charge of security to make sure that the protesters stay in one specific location? At the very least, those in charge of security could have done what Lukashenko eventually did in Mink: place military and police forces around all the important symbolic buildings and monuments and say "you are welcome to protest, but don't even think of trying to take over any government property" (that approach worked much better than beating up protesters, which Lukashenko initially had tried). Yet what we saw was the exact opposite: in DC protesters were invited across police lines by cops. Not only that, but even those protesters which did enter the Capitol were, apparently, not violent enough, so it had to be one of the cops to shoot an unarmed and clearly non-dangerous woman, thereby providing the "sacrificial victim" needed to justify the hysterics about "violence" and "rule of law".

And the worst part is that it worked, even Trump ended up condemning the "violence" and denouncing those who, according to Trump, did not represent the people.

The hard truth is much simpler: the "stop the steal" protestors did not commit any real violence! Yes, they broke some furniture, had some fights with cops (who initially were inviting people in, only to then violently turn against them with batons, pepper sprays and flash-bang grenades). Some reports say that one cop was hit by a fire extinguisher. If true, that would be a case of assault with a deadly weapon (under US law any object capable of being used to kill can be considered a deadly weapon when used for that purpose). But considering the nonstop hysteria about guns, the NRA and "armed militias", this was clearly not a planned murder. Finally, a few people died, apparently from natural causes, possibly made worse by the people trampling over each other. In other words, the Trump supporters did not kill anybody deliberately, at most they can be accused of creating the circumstances which resulted in manslaughter. That was not murder. Not even close. Want to see what a planned murder looks like? Just look at the footage of the Ashli Babbitt murder by some kind of armed official. That is real murder, and it was committed by a armed official. So which side is most guilty of violating laws and regulations?

Furthermore, no moral value can be respected unless it is universally and equally applied. Which, considering that the US deep state has engaged in a full year of wanton mass violence against hundreds of innocent US citizens makes it unbelievably hypocritical for the US liberals to denounce "the mob" now. Frankly, the way I see it, all the US liberals should now "take a knee" before the pro-Trump protestors and declare that this was a "mostly peaceful" event which, objectively speaking, it was .

Won't happen. I know.

What will happen next is going to be a vicious crackdown on free speech in all its forms . In fact, and just to use a Marxist notion, what comes next is class warfare .

We have all seen Pelosi and the rest of them demanding that Trump either be removed by Pence and the Cabinet (25th A.), or they will unleash another impeachment. First, if impeached, Trump won't be able to run in 2024 (which the liberals fully realize is a major risk for them). But even more important, is to humiliate him, make him pay, show him once and for all "who is boss"! These people thrive on revenge and victory is never enough to appease them, they simply hate anybody who dares oppose them and they want to make an example of any and every serf who dares to disobey them. That is why they always send "messages", no matter how inchoate: they want to bully all the deplorables on the planet into total subservience.

But they won't stop with just Trump. Oh no! They will also go after all those serfs who dared defy this Nomenklatura and who objected to the wholesale repudiation of the US Constitution. For example, in a truly Orwellian move, the NY State Bar now wants to disbar Giuliani for acting as Trump's lawyer (not a joke, check here ). Which, considering that Trump already lost several lawyers to such tactics should not come as a surprise to anybody: apparently, in the "new 2021 Woke-USA", some are more entitled to legal representation than others.

Don't expect the ACLU to protest, by the way – equal protection under the law is not a topic of interest to them. Here are a few screenshots take off their website , so see for yourself.

Clearly, the priority for the folks at the ACLU is to destroy Trump and anybody daring to take up his defense.

One one hand, this is truly an absolute disaster, because when the US ruling Nomenklatura agrees to drop any past pretenses of objectivity, or even decency, things will definitely get ugly. On the other hand, however, this immense "coming out" of the US Nomenklatura is, of course, unsustainable (just look at history, every time these folks thought that they had crushed the "plebes", the latter ended up rising and showing their supposed "masters" to the door; this will happen here too).

Last, but not least, let's keep another crucial thing in mind: even if you absolutely hate Trump, you really should realize that it is not just "the vote" which was stolen, it was the entire US Constitutional order . While we often focus on the SCOTUS, we should not remember the many lower courts which showed a total absence of courage or dignity and which caved in to the hysterical demands of the US Nomenklatura . It is impossible to have a country under the rule of law when the courts shy away from their obligation to uphold the said rule of law and, instead, place political expediency above the letter and spirit of the law.

Furthermore, when concepts such as "legal" and "illegal" lose any objective meaning, how can any action be considered illegal or punishable?

Here is, just as an example, the Oath of Office taken by all Supreme Court Justices: (emphasis added)

"I, [NAME], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich , and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [TITLE] under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."

And this is what each member of the US Armed Forces swears: (emphasis added)

"I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic ; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God)."

It does not take a genius to figure out that the SCOTUS is now in the hands of a small cabal of people who clearly are "domestic enemies" of the US Constitution.

Finally, here is what the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence states: (emphasis added)

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it , and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

I don't think that there is any need to further beat this dead horse and I will simply summarize it as so:

The regime which will soon replace the Trump Administration is an illegal occupation government, with strong ties to foreign interests (and I don't mean China or Russia here!), which all those who served in the US military have taken an oath to oppose; this is precisely the kind of occupation regime which the Founding Fathers foresaw in their Declaration of Independence . Furthermore, the rule of law has clearly collapsed, at least on the federal level, this should give the states more freedom of movement to resist the decrees of this new regime (at least those states still willing and able to resist, I think of TX and FL here). The leaders of this US Nomenklatura understand this, at least on some level, and we should expect no decency from them; neither should we expect any mercy. Revenge is what fuels these ideology- and hate-filled people who loathe and fear all the rest of humanity because nobody is willing to worship them as our "lords and masters ". But this is also the beginning of their end.

Conclusion: now we are all Palestinians!

True, no "mob" won on the Capitol, unless we refer to the (disgraced, hated and useless) Congress as "the mob". And, of course, neither did "the people" or the protesters. The only real winner in this entire operation was the US deep state and the US Nomenklatura . But they did not win any war, only the opening battle of a war which will be much longer than what they imagine in their ignorance.

I have said it many times, Trump really destroyed the USA externally, in terms of world politics. The Dems have done the same thing, only internally. For example, Trump is the one who most arrogantly ignored the rule of law in international affairs, but it was the Dems who destroyed the rule of law inside the USA. It was Trump who with his antics and narcissistic threats urbi et orbi who destroyed any credibility left for the USA as a country (or even of the the AngloZionist Empire as a whole), but it was the Dems who really decided to sabotage the very political system which allowed them to seize power in the first place.

What comes next is the illegal rule of an illegitimate regime which came to power by violence (BLM, Antifa, Capitol false flag). This will be a Soviet-style gerontocracy with senile figureheads pretending to be in power (think Biden vs Chernenko here). Looking at the old, Obama-era, names which are circulated now for future Cabinet positions, we can bet on two things: the new rulers will be as evil as they will be grossly incompetent, mostly due to their crass lack of education (even Nuland and Psaki are back, it appears!). The Biden admin will be similar to the rule of Kerensky in "democratic" Russia: chaos, violence, lots and lots of speeches and total social and economic chaos. The next crucial, and even frightening, question now is: what will replace this US version of a Kerensky regime?

It is way too early to reply to this question, but we should at least begin to think about it, lest we be completely caught off guard.

But until then, "domestic terrorism" will, once again, become the boogeyman we will be told to fear. And, as all good boys and girls know, the best way to deal with such a horrible "domestic terrorism" threat is to dismantle the First and Second Amendments of the Constitution. Having corrupt kangaroo courts on all levels, from the small claims level to the Supreme court, will greatly help in this endeavor. Of course, there will be resistance from the deplorables who still love their country and their Constitution.

But no matter how long this takes (might be decades) and how violent this confrontation becomes (and, it will, if only because the regime vitally needs more false flags to survive!), what will happen with this occupation regime is what happened to all of them throughout history (could that be the reason why history is not taught anymore?).

As the Russian poet and bard, Vladimir Vissotski, wrote " it is impossible to trample upon souls with boots " (сапогами не вытоптать душу). Now we are all Palestinians. And we, like they, will win!


obwandiyag , says: January 12, 2021 at 3:36 am GMT • 1.0 days ago

Read this again, boneheads:

"Americans have been brainwashed into calling things they don't like, or don't understand, as "Socialist" or even "Marxist". The sad reality is that most Americans sincerely believe that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are "socialists", and when they see modern movies ridiculously filled with "minorities" and gender fluid freaks – this is a case of "cultural Marxism" (a totally meaningless term, by the way!). This is all utter nonsense, neither Marxism nor Socialism have anything to do with BLM, Antifa, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer (in fact, Marxism places a premium on real law and order!)."

anonymous [400] Disclaimer , says: January 12, 2021 at 5:11 am GMT • 23.1 hours ago

"class" has been declared heretical and it has been replaced by identity politics – the best way for a ruling class to (a) hide behind a fake illusion of pluralism and (b) to divide the people and rule over them

It's a neat bait and switch scheme, identity being substituted for class. Billionaires can now be hailed as people's champions by instituting 'gender-fluid' toilets and forcing their peons to kneel. Who knows how much force they'll be willing to use against the deplorables but probably it would know no limit. The shock and awe unleashed against foreign countries could now be instituted domestically with things like the Phoenix Program being tried here, among other things. Anything but relinquish power.

The old war-lovers are coming back in. Although he was considered belligerent the new regime will be worse. War is probably part of the future agenda. Solidifying it's grip upon the domestic population may be the precursor to embarking upon an unpopular and certain to be costly war against Iran or perhaps even some clash with Russia.

Faihtful , says: January 12, 2021 at 5:28 am GMT • 22.8 hours ago

The mob never wins. It is always led by the nose by well organised agents provocateur. See Epoch time video:


https://www.bitchute.com/embed/FrE27FTf11Q/

Old Man Turtle , says: January 12, 2021 at 5:40 am GMT • 22.6 hours ago

From the I Ching: "Large ambitions coupled with meager talent will seldom escape disaster."

The fervid machinations of the current crop of "self"-glorifying wannabes will not, as The Saker reminds us here, be any exception to the rule, either. They're hardly the first bunch of feckless opportunists to take a run at "full spectrum dominance" .aiming to trap Life Herownself within the suffocating CONfines of their own little nut'shell.

The rampant insanity symptomatic of their virulent "self"-sickness, as it runs its inevitable course, looks like being somewhat more than usually trying for the rest of us, though .given all the electro-mechanical and institutional enhancement available to them, for intensifying the degenerative effects of their folly. At the same time, our best response will be just what we all know is always organically and in all Ways imperative for our Kind, anyhow. All our precious attention is best devoted to taking care of the Earth and each other. Our unconditional affection is best lavished on this Living Creation, all our Relations, and The Great Spirit whose gift it is.

Mefobills , says: January 12, 2021 at 4:25 pm GMT • 11.9 hours ago

Nomenklatura is a bad analogy.

It is an Oligarchy of bond holders. I'm using the word bond as an stand-in for debt instruments, or any sort of claim on productivity. Bond/Bondage/Debt are all closely related concepts.

The entire Western World is inter-connected double-entry balance sheets.

One side of the balance sheet is "assets" and the other is "liabilities." One person's liability is another persons asset.

It is best to view the western world as a balance sheet, especially as private bank credit is the dominant money type of the west. Private banking and debt spreading has metastasized like a cancer, and is now consuming the host. Debt instruments and finance paper are being serviced in the finance sector with QE and 'CARES' act shenanigan's, which pays these finance "assets."

If you want to call the bond holders in finance and elsewhere as a nomenklatura, go ahead – but it obscures reality. These people are a class, a class of usurers, who are "taking" wealth in sordid ways by gaming the system.

All through history, plutocracy has arisen out of the population because debts were not annulled, or land was enclosed.

Oligarchs of various types are harvesting the world through various means, including the growth of debt claims. These claims grow exponentially, and outside of nature's ability to pay. The derivative bubble wants to be paid. What cannot go on, will not.

The balance sheet is not really balanced, one side (the debt instrument holder) is making exponential claims on debtors.

https://michael-hudson.com/2016/07/socrates-debt-and-the-cyclical-rise-and-fall-of-societies/

Moritz Hinsch from Berlin collected what Socrates (470-399 BC) and other Athenians wrote about debt, and the conference's organizer, Prof. John Weisweiler, presented the new view of late imperial Rome as being still a long way from outright serfdom. The 99 Percent were squeezed, but "the economy" grew – in a way that concentrated growth in the hands of the One Percent . In due course this bred popular resentment that spread in the form of debtor revolts, not only in the Roman Empire but that of Iran as well, leading to religious reforms to limit the charging of interest and self-indulgent greed in general.

By now Nazi references are getting thread-bare. We actually need to examine how the national socialists operated because their situation is analogous to today.

I very much agree that these "elites" are displaying an ideological zeal very similar to what Trotskysts or Nazis typically exhibit

National Socialism arose as a reaction to finance capitalism's excesses. The very things we are seeing today, were present in Weimar Germany. The country was being bought up, and the people were being denied their birthright. Self-indulgent greed of an arising Oligarchy was smashed by the National Socialists to then re-balance German civilization.

Nazi zeal restoring civilizational balance is quite something different than leftist bolshevism.

Curmudgeon , says: January 12, 2021 at 5:04 pm GMT • 11.2 hours ago
@Biff

I have, for some time, been mis-naming the Nomenklatura as the Politburo, with the commune being the many tentacled international banking cartel. It's the same crowd that funded the original Bolsheviks.
IMO they are only "Neo" by virtue of the old ones having died, but I'm not going to split hairs. We all know it is those whose loyalty is to a shitty little country on the Mediterranean.

Mefobills , says: January 12, 2021 at 5:47 pm GMT • 10.5 hours ago
@Anonymous ties extract, which makes politicians whores for their donor class. The donor class is the "holders of debt instruments" as I explained earlier. Or, they can be part of the military industrial complex, to then whore for more taxpayer dollars. In all cases it is for self aggrandizement. By the same reasoning, press-titutes are whores for their paymasters.

The easy money is taken in by usury or other sordid schemes; then donated/recycled into politicians, to then keep the game going. Average laboring people don't have this surplus wealth to donate.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/fD6wxH5gIk8?start=2&feature=oembed

[Jan 10, 2021] "It's the height of hypocrisy for people who claim to be the champions of rights for women to deny the very biological existence of women," former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who just might be the last Democrat in DC with a functioning brain, told Tucker Carlson

Jan 10, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Down South , Jan 10 2021 14:43 utc | 1

"It's the height of hypocrisy for people who claim to be the champions of rights for women to deny the very biological existence of women," former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who just might be the last Democrat in DC with a functioning brain, told Tucker Carlson. "Instead of doing something that could actually help save people's lives, they are choosing instead to say 'You can't say mother or father.'"

I would ask for an 'Amen!' at this point, but, thanks to the clown work of lawmaker Emanuel Cleaver, who ended his congressional prayer opening of the very unsexy 117th Congress with the words "amen and awoman," even that simple gender-free term (which simply means 'so be it') is now tainted with foul political intrigue.

With these sort of unforgivable stunts under the belt, the Democrats should be very grateful they have perfected the art of 'winning' elections, otherwise they would probably vanish from the political landscape simply out of lack of doing anything positive for the nation. Indeed, the term 'Democrat' may be on the way out faster than that of 'male' and 'female.'


Oh Brother! Who Will Fight for Women's Rights Now That the Democrats Have Scrapped Gendered Terms?

[Jan 09, 2021] Actually Tucker Carlson is one of those people and props to the guy for telling us working class Whites what "our elite white leader trash" have always thought about us.

Jan 09, 2021 | www.unz.com

Trinity , says: January 8, 2021 at 8:26 pm GMT • 3.0 hours ago

@Kronos

Actually Tucker Carlson is one of those people and props to the guy for telling us working class Whites what "our elite white leader trash" have always thought about us. Of course Tucker won't dare mention the Jew, but at least he clues us in on white traitor trash that claim to be superior by avoid being seen near chain restaurants and hotels.

Of course we KNOW that the Jew and his elite shabbos goy only think of the common Black and Brown foot soldiers as pets as well, these cats are the real Supremacists. These (((elitists))) will dump the Black and Brown grunts for the Yellow ones, believe that as well.

[Jan 06, 2021] 'Out of touch with reality'- Tulsi Gabbard rips fellow Democrats after Congress imposes new rules on gendered language

Jan 06, 2021 | www.rt.com

US Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is calling out her party for pushing through a new code of conduct that essentially denies women exist by requiring gender-neutral language in Congressional rules.

"It's the height of hypocrisy for people who claim to be the champions of rights for women to deny the very biological existence of women," Gabbard said on Monday night in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

//www.youtube.com/embed/y74xmzlvbJ8

New guidelines introduced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday and passed Monday by Congress in a party-line vote endeavor to "honor all gender identities" by making all pronouns and references to familial relationships gender-neutral. For instance, "seamen" has been changed to "seafarers," and House rules have been scrubbed of such words as "father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister.""Aunt" and "uncle" will be replaced by "parent's sibling." Lawmakers also must inculcate such words as "parent-in-law,""stepsibling" and "sibling's child" to replace "mother-in-law,""stepsister" and "niece.""He" or "she" references to House members are instead "such member,""delegate" or "resident commissioner."

"It's mind-blowing because it shows just how out of touch with reality and the struggles of everyday Americans people in Congress are," Gabbard said. "Also, their first act as this new Congress could have been to make sure that elderly Americans are able to get the COVID vaccine now , but instead of doing something that could actually help save people's lives, they're choosing instead to say, 'Well, you can't say mother of father in any of this congressional language.' It's astounding."

Amid crises and pandemic, Pelosi chooses to focus on new Congress rules that ELIMINATE 'gendered terms'

Congress also has made permanent its Office of Diversity and now requires all committees to discuss in their oversight plans how they will address "inequities on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age or national origin." Committees also must "survey the diversity of witness panels at committee hearings to ensure we are hearing from diverse groups of experts as we craft legislation."

Gabbard has run afoul of Democratic Party orthodoxy repeatedly in the past two years, opposing the impeachment of President Donald Trump, speaking out against election fraud, opposing regime-change wars and blasting the controversial Netflix movie 'Cuties' as " child porn ." She embarrassed party favorite Kamala Harris, now vice president-elect, in a Democrat presidential debate in 2019, and the Iraq War veteran called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the " queen of warmongers " after Clinton suggested that she's a Russian asset.

Gabbard, who didn't seek a new term in Congress, was attacked as a "transphobe" and "bigot" after introducing a bill last month to limit participation in women's sports to biological females. The movement to "deny the existence of biological women – it defies common sense, it defies basic, established science, it just doesn't make any sense," she told Carlson on Monday.

Tulsi Gabbard branded 'transphobe' after introducing bill to limit women's sport to biological females

"No wonder they called you a Russian spy," Carlson replied. "It's dangerous to have you in the Democratic Party. I'm sorry you're leaving [Congress]."

Republicans praised Gabbard's latest contradiction of Democrat talking points. "Can we please trade Mitt Romney for her?" one Twitter user asked. Brazilian entrepreneur Daniel Gonzalez called her "the best Democrat since JFK."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) was among the many Republicans who opposed Pelosi's rules changes. "This is stupid," he said. "Signed, a father, son and brother."

[Jan 05, 2021] The Democrats Have Stolen the Presidential Election by Paul Craig Roberts

Notable quotes:
"... It is difficult to know or to ensure that the ballots are actual ballots from registered voters. For example in the early hours of the morning of November 4 large ballot drops occurred in Michigan and Wisconsin that wiped out Trump's lead. State officials have reported that people not registered -- probably illegals -- were permitted to vote. Postal service workers have reported being ordered to backdate ballots that suddenly appeared in the middle of the night after the deadline. These techniques were used to erase Trump's substantial leads in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. ..."
"... Digital technology has also made it easy to alter vote counts. US Air Force General Thomas McInerney is familiar with this technology. He says it was developed by the National Security Agency in order to interfere in foreign elections, but now is in the hands of the CIA and was used to defeat Trump. Trump is considered to be an enemy of the military/security complex because of his wish to normalize relations with Russia, thus taking away the enemy that justifies the CIA's budget and power. ..."
"... The military/security complex favors the disunity that the Democrat Party and media have fostered with their ideology of Identity Politics. ..."
"... I would take it a little further and say that voting by mail is a method of vote fraud. The supposed safeguards are easily circumvented, as some whistleblowers have illustrated with ballots being brought forth in large numbers after election day without postmarks and postal workers being ordered to stamp them with acceptable postmarks. ..."
"... Eisenhower is always lauded for his MIC warning. Frankly he ticks me off. Thanks for the warning AFTER you were in some position to mitigate. ..."
"... the most likely source of fraud that is hard to detect, is ballot harvesting. This should be outlawed as it violates the idea of a secret ballot. Somebody comes to the home of a disinterested voter and makes sure he votes (of course they will never admit to hounding the person) and "helps" them with the ballot. If the voter cannot be cajoled into voting the correct way, you merely throw his ballot in the trash. ..."
"... Living in an urban setting I often had to visit apartment buildings. Without fail, there was always a pile of undeliverable mail in the lobby under the mailboxes. ..."
"... His farewell address was just flapdoodle; it wasn't really dredged up till the 70s. Eisenhower spent eight years spreading tripwires and mines and then said "Watch out." Thanks buddy. ..."
"... As the German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte revealed in his book, Bought Journalism, the European and US media speak with one voice -- the voice of the CIA. The very profitable and powerful US military/security complex needs foreign enemies. ..."
"... inventive creative new ways to deceive.. first it was election machines, then mail in votes. ..."
"... The phrase "there's no evidence" is just a public commitment to ignore any evidence, no matter how blatant or obvious. ..."
"... Paper ballots as ascribed by Tulsi Gabbard legislation is the only safe option for elections. Kudos to Tulsi! ..."
"... Everyone knew about the potential for voter fraud to occur, but the entire system is corrupt, including Trump who has allowed the massive corruption within the system that was present when he entered office to persist and grow because he is a wimpy, spineless, coward, that was too afraid to make any waves and take the heat that he promised his voters. ..."
"... Why anyone voted for Trump in 2020 confounds me. I voted for him in 2016 and he has turned out to be one of the worst presidents in history. ..."
"... Trump in his cowardess and dishonesty knew that the ailing economy would harm his chances of being re-elected, so he allowed the health scare scamdemic to occur and destroy the livelihoods, lives, and businesses of hundreds of millions of Americans because he is a psychopath. Trump did not do what he promised. Trump made America worse than it has ever been since the end of slavery. ..."
"... Trump has also demanded the extradition of Assange after telling his voters that he loved wikileaks. Trump is a two-faced, lying, fraud. It has been his pattern. He consistently supports various groups and people like Wikileaks, Proud Boys, and others and panders to them and voters and tells people that he loves them, and then every time without fail when the heat is on, Trump says," I really don't know anything about them." ..."
"... "I know nothing." Trump saying "I know nothing." defines his presidency and who he is as a person, a spineless, pandering, corrupt, two-faced, narcissist, loser, and wimp! ..."
Nov 12, 2020 | www.unz.com

139 COMMENTS

Paul Craig Roberts' Interview with the European magazine Zur Zeit ( In This Time ):

https://zurzeit.at/index.php/die-demokraten-haben-die-praesidentenwahl-gestohlen/

English Translation:

A few months ago it looked like the re-election of Trump was almost certain, but now there was a close race between Trump and Biden? What happen during the last months?

In the months before the election, the Democrats used the "Covid pandemic" to put in place voting by mail. The argument was used that people who safely go to supermarkets and restaurants could catch Covid if they stood in voting lines. Never before used on a large scale, voting by mail is subject to massive vote fraud.

There are many credible reports of organized vote fraud committed by Democrats. The only question is whether the Republican establishment will support challenging the documented fraud or whether Trump will be pressured to concede in order to protect the reputation of American Democracy.

For those influenced by a partisan media that is denying the massive fraud that occurred, here is an overview of the elements of the fraud and the legal remedies. https://www.unz.com/article/of-color-revolutions-foreign-and-domestic-the-first-72-hours/

It is difficult to know or to ensure that the ballots are actual ballots from registered voters. For example in the early hours of the morning of November 4 large ballot drops occurred in Michigan and Wisconsin that wiped out Trump's lead. State officials have reported that people not registered -- probably illegals -- were permitted to vote. Postal service workers have reported being ordered to backdate ballots that suddenly appeared in the middle of the night after the deadline. These techniques were used to erase Trump's substantial leads in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Digital technology has also made it easy to alter vote counts. US Air Force General Thomas McInerney is familiar with this technology. He says it was developed by the National Security Agency in order to interfere in foreign elections, but now is in the hands of the CIA and was used to defeat Trump. Trump is considered to be an enemy of the military/security complex because of his wish to normalize relations with Russia, thus taking away the enemy that justifies the CIA's budget and power.

People do not understand. They think an election has been held when in fact what has occurred is that massive vote fraud has been used to effect a revolution against red state white America. Leaders of the revolution, such as Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are demanding a list of Trump supporters who are "to be held accountable." Calls are being made for the arrest of Tucker Carlson, the only mainstream journalist who supported President Trump.

In a recent column I wrote:

"Think what it means that the entirety of the US media, allegedly the 'watchdogs of democracy,' are openly involved in participating in the theft of a presidential election.

"Think what it means that a large number of Democrat public and election officials are openly involved in the theft of a presidential election.

"It means that the United States is split irredeemably. The hatred for white people that has been cultivated for many years, portraying white Americans as "systemic racists," together with the Democrats' lust for power and money, has destroyed national unity. The consequence will be the replacement of rules with force."

Mainstream media in Europe claim, that Trump had "divided" the United States. But isn`t it actually the other way around, that his opponents have divided the country?

As the German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte revealed in his book, Bought Journalism , the European and US media speak with one voice -- the voice of the CIA. The very profitable and powerful US military/security complex needs foreign enemies. Russiagate was a CIA/FBI successful effort to block Trump from reducing tensions with Russia. In 1961 in his last address to the American people President Dwight Eisenhower warned that the growing power of the military/industrial complex was a threat to American democracy. We ignored his warning and now have security agencies more powerful than the President.

The military/security complex favors the disunity that the Democrat Party and media have fostered with their ideology of Identity Politics. Identity politics replaced Marxist class war with race and gender war. White people, and especially white heterosexual males, are the new oppressor class. This ideology causes race and gender disunity and prevents any unified opposition to the security agencies ability to impose its agendas by controlling explanations. Opposition to Trump cemented the alliance between Democrats, media, and the Deep State.

It is possible that the courts will decide who will be sworn into office at January 20, 2021. Do you except a phase of uncertainty or even a constitutional crisis?

There is no doubt that numerous irregularities indicate that the election was stolen and that the ground was well laid in advance. Trump intends to challenge the obvious theft. However, his challenges will be rejected in Democrat ruled states, as they were part of the theft and will not indict themselves. This means Trump and his attorneys will have to have constitutional grounds for taking their cases to the federal Supreme Court. The Republicans have a majority on the Court, but the Court is not always partisan.

Republicans tend to be more patriotic than Democrats, who denounce America as racist, fascist, sexist, imperialist. This patriotism makes Republicans impotent when it comes to political warfare that could adversely affect America's reputation. The inclination of Republicans is for Trump to protect America's reputation by conceding the election. Republicans fear the impact on America's reputation of having it revealed that America's other major party plotted to steal a presidental election.

Red state Americans, on the other hand, have no such fear. They understand that they are the targets of the Democrats, having been defined by Democrats as "racist white supremacist Trump deplorables."

The introduction of a report of the Heritage Foundation states that "the United States has a long and unfortunate history of election fraud". Are the 2020 presidential elections another inglorious chapter in this long history?

This time the fraud is not local as in the past. It is the result of a well organized national effort to get rid of a president that the Establishment does not accept.

Somehow you get the impression that in the USA – as in many European countries democracy is just a facade – or am I wrong?

You are correct. Trump is the first non-establishment president who became President without being vetted by the Establishment since Ronald Reagan. Trump was able to be elected only because the Establishment thought he had no chance and took no measures to prevent his election. A number of studies have concluded that in the US the people, despite democracy and voting, have zero input into public policy.

Democracy cannot work in America because the money of the elite prevails. American democracy is organized in order to prevent the people from having a voice. A political campaign is expensive. The money for candidates comes from interest groups, such as defense contractors, Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the Israel Lobby. Consequently, the winning candidate is indebted to his funders, and these are the people whom he serves.

European mainstream media are portraying Biden as a luminous figure. Should Biden become president, what can be expected in terms of foreign and security policy, especially in regard to China, Russia and the Middle East? I mean, the deep state and the military-industrial complex remain surely nearly unchanged.

Biden will be a puppet, one unlikely to be long in office. His obvious mental confusion will be used either to rule through him or to remove him on grounds of mental incompetence. No one wants the nuclear button in the hands of a president who doesn't know which day of the week it is or where he is.

The military/security complex needs enemies for its power and profit and will be certain to retain the list of desirable foreign enemies -- Russia, Iran, China, and any independent-inclined country in Latin America. Being at war is also a way of distracting the people of the war against their liberties.

What the military/security complex might not appreciate is that among its Democrat allies there are some, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are ideological revolutionaries. Having demonized red state America and got rid of Trump (assuming the electoral fraud is not overturned by the courts), Ocasio-Cortez and her allies intend to revolutionize the Democrat Party and make it a non-establishment force. In her mind white people are the Establishment, which we already see from her demands for a list of Trump supporters to be punished.

I think I'm not wrong in assuming that a Biden-presidency would mean more identity politics, more political correctness etc. for the USA. How do you see this?

Identity politics turns races and genders against one another. As white people -- "systemic racists" -- are defined as the oppressor class, white people are not protected from hate speech and hate crimes. Anything can be said or done to a white American and it is not considered politically incorrect.

With Trump and his supporters demonized, under Democrat rule the transition of white Americans into second or third class citizens will be completed.

How do you access Trump's first term in office? Where was he successful and where he failed?

Trump spent his entire term in office fighting off fake accusations -- Russiagate, Impeachgate, failure to bomb Russia for paying Taliban to kill American occupiers of Afghanistan, causing Covid by not wearing a mask, and so on and on.

That Trump survived all the false charges shows that he is a real person, a powerful character. Who else could have survived what Trump has been subjected to by the Establishment and their media prostitutes. In the United States the media is known as "presstitutes" -- press prostitutes. That is what Udo Ulfkotte says they are in Europe. As a former Wall Street Journal editor, I say with complete confidence that there is no one in the American media today I would have hired. The total absence of integrity in the Western media is sufficient indication that the West is doomed.


Twodees Partain , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:21 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago

Never before used on a large scale, voting by mail is subject to massive vote fraud.

I would take it a little further and say that voting by mail is a method of vote fraud. The supposed safeguards are easily circumvented, as some whistleblowers have illustrated with ballots being brought forth in large numbers after election day without postmarks and postal workers being ordered to stamp them with acceptable postmarks.

It really seems to me that there would be no democrat majorities in Congress or in so many state legislatures without vote fraud.

Ann Nonny Mouse , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 7:42 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago

So fraud is needed to protect the reputation of American democracy. Only fraud can! Thanks, PCR!

endthefed , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:53 pm GMT • 24.0 hours ago
@Notsofast

Eisenhower is always lauded for his MIC warning. Frankly he ticks me off. Thanks for the warning AFTER you were in some position to mitigate.

MarkinLA , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:37 pm GMT • 22.2 hours ago

Worse than the fraud available with vote by mail is the voting of people normally who don't bother to vote. Think of how stupid and uninformed that average American voter is. Now realize how much more stupid and uninformed the non-voter is, only now he votes.

However, the most likely source of fraud that is hard to detect, is ballot harvesting. This should be outlawed as it violates the idea of a secret ballot. Somebody comes to the home of a disinterested voter and makes sure he votes (of course they will never admit to hounding the person) and "helps" them with the ballot. If the voter cannot be cajoled into voting the correct way, you merely throw his ballot in the trash.

Curmudgeon , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:43 pm GMT • 22.1 hours ago

I have little doubt that there have been massive "irregularities", particularly in the so-called battleground states, that are at play in "stealing" the election.

...The favourite phrase these days is "no evidence of wide spread voter fraud". Let's break that down. Only 6 states have been challenged for vote fraud. In the big scheme of things, 6 states is not wide spread, even if there is massive vote fraud within those 6 states. That the vote fraud is not widespread, implies that some vote fraud is acceptable, and that the listener should ignore it. Last and most importantly, in the narrowest of legalistic terms, testimony or affidavits are not evidence. Testimony and affidavits become evidence when supported by physical evidence. An affidavit with a photograph demonstrating the statement would be evidence.

Another phrase is something like "election officials say they have seen no evidence of voter fraud". I have yet to hear a reporter challenge the "seen no evidence of " part of the statement, regardless of the subject, by asking if the speaker had looked for any evidence. They won't, because they know damn well no one has.

That is how the liars operate. Not so different from Rumsfeld's "plausible deniability".

Beavertales , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:21 pm GMT • 21.5 hours ago

Living in an urban setting I often had to visit apartment buildings. Without fail, there was always a pile of undeliverable mail in the lobby under the mailboxes.

The envelopes were mostly addressed to people who had moved out or died. If ballots were sent to these people based on incorrect voter rolls, then these too would likely have been left sitting on the floor or on a ledge for anyone to take.

It doesn't take a leap of faith to know what a Trump-hating leftist would do when no one is looking. This moral hazard was intentionally created by Dems, who know that urban dwellers are transient and lean left politically.

Franz , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:54 pm GMT • 21.0 hours ago
@endthefed

Eisenhower is always lauded for his MIC warning. Frankly he ticks me off. Thanks for the warning AFTER you were in some position to mitigate.

Ike's a mystery. Why did he NOT question Harry Truman's commitments to NATO, the UN, and all that rubbish? Ike was a WWII guy. He knew Americans hated the UN in 1953 as much as they hated the League of Nations after WWI. But he let it all slide and get bigger.

His farewell address was just flapdoodle; it wasn't really dredged up till the 70s. Eisenhower spent eight years spreading tripwires and mines and then said "Watch out." Thanks buddy.

endthefed , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:08 pm GMT • 20.7 hours ago
@Bragadocious

Well, agree on your points however, on the other side of the ledger, he never understood the stupidity of the Korean war (that he could have ended) and majorly up-ramped CIA activities in all manner of regime change (bay of pigs anyone?). Almost a direct path to our foreign policy now (and now domestic policy)

Notsofast , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:28 pm GMT • 20.4 hours ago
@Bragadocious

He did deploy the military assistance advisory group to Vietnam in 1955. This is considered the beginning of U.S. involvement in the war. This allowed the French to moonwalk out the back door leaving us holding the bag. In fairness this was Johnson's war however. Eisenhower did cut the military budget as a peace dividend to fund interstate system and other domestic projects. In today political spectrum he would be considered a flaming liberal.

Louis Hissink , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:30 am GMT • 14.4 hours ago

Hi PCR

As the German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte revealed in his book, Bought Journalism, the European and US media speak with one voice -- the voice of the CIA. The very profitable and powerful US military/security complex needs foreign enemies.

What intrigues me is the ultimate political goal of the UN and the WEF when they anticipate a single global government centered at the UN and the absence of nation-states.

So what is the MIC going to do when there are no existential threats of competing nation-states? Or will the MIC re-engineer religious wars between the various religious groups, secular and theological? It seems the aspirations of the WEF and its fellow travellers preclude the occurrence of future armed conflicts.

Of course one needs capitalistic economies to produce the ordnance and materiels for the engineered social factions to war with each other. Yet if the Greens have their way, there will be no mining period.

More likely is the possibility that none of them actually understand what they are doing. As Nassim Taleb is alleged to have remarked, 99% of humans are stupid.

anonymous [284] Disclaimer , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:35 am GMT • 14.3 hours ago

The total absence of integrity in the Western media is sufficient indication that the West is doomed.

It's because Western media is completely under the control of Jews, the world's foremost End Justifies Means people. The Fourth Estate has become the world's most powerful Bully Pulpit. There are still a few good ones though, brave souls they are: Kim Strassel of WSJ, Daniel Larison of The American Conservative , Neil Munro of Breitbart.

The rest are more or less lying scums, including everyone on NYTimes, WSJ, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, MSNBC, Fox News (minus Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo), The Economist , and let's not forget the new media: Google, Facebook, Twitter. The world would be a much better place without any of them.

The Real World , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:44 am GMT • 14.1 hours ago
@Beavertales -- with either vote flipping on machines or having the totals that paper ballot scanners tabulate adjust via a pre-programmed algorithm. Many elections have already been stolen this way.

But, in the vein of what you mention is this fascinating article. I urge everyone to read it. He spills the beans in detail. https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud-with-mail-in-ballots/

Imagine hundreds of those people around the country over decades. There must be scads of illegitimate office holders all over. It's horrendous

Alfred , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:51 am GMT • 14.0 hours ago

Nancy Pelosi claims that Biden's victory gives the Democrats a "MANDATE" to alter the economy as they see fit with 50.5%. This proves that Biden will NOT represent everyone – only the left! I have warned that this has been their agenda from day one. Now, three whistleblowers from the Democratic software company Dominion Voting Systems, alleging that the company's software stole 38 million votes from Trump. There are people claiming that Dominion Voting Systems is linked to Soros, Dianae Finesteing, Clintons, and Pelosi's husband. I cannot verify any of these allegations so far.

We are at the Rubicon. Civil War is on the other side. There should NEVER be this type of drastic change to the economy from Capitalism to Marxism on 50.5% of the popular vote. NOBODY should be able to restructure the government and the economy on less than 2/3rds of the majority. That would be a mandate. Trying to change everything with a claim of 50.5% of the vote will only signal, like the Dread Scot decision, that there is no solution by rule of law. This is the end of civilization and it will turn ugly from here because there is no middle ground anymore. As I have warned, historically the left will never tolerate opposition.

Democrats Claim Mandate to Alter the Economy & 3 Whistleblowers from Software Company Allege they stole 38 million votes from Trump | Armstrong Economics

Priss Factor , says: Website November 13, 2020 at 5:56 am GMT • 13.9 hours ago

DEMOCRATS TURN MENACING AS FRAUD FALLS APART

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/WMA7DXLDgzBy/

Just another serf , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:18 am GMT • 13.6 hours ago

Yes, the theft is blatant. But what are you, us, going to do about it? We really can't do much as the Office of the President Elect requires us to wear masks. For our safety.

animalogic , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:35 am GMT • 13.3 hours ago
@Curmudgeon

"in the narrowest of legalistic terms, testimony or affidavits are not evidence. Testimony and affidavits become evidence when supported by physical evidence. " Correct – but they also can become evidence by verbal testimony. ie "I saw the defendant hit the victim with a rock"

Anon [115] Disclaimer , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:55 am GMT • 12.9 hours ago

Not only have they stolen the election but when Joe Biden and other democrats claim that President Trump caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans because of his handling of Covid 19, they are in sane. No world leader could stop the spread of this respiratory virus. However, Joe Biden and democrats have caused the deaths of hundreds of white people, while whipping up weak minded people to kill many whites. Biden and the democrats are criminals. Any one who is white, man or woman, that supports the democratic party is enabling a criminal organization to perpetrate violence on white people, including murder.

chet roman , says: November 13, 2020 at 7:05 am GMT • 12.8 hours ago

Since the article was from a German magazine it's understandable that there is no mention of "the one who shall not be named". No mention of the people behind the Lawfare group, the same people behind the impeachment, the same people providing financial and ideological support for the BLM/Antifa, the same people that own the media that spewed lies for 5 years and censored any mention of the Biden family corruption, no mention of the people behind this Color Revolution, the same people who promoted the mail in voting and those that managed the narrative for the media on election night to stop Trump's momentum.

For the public consumption the election will be described in vague terms, like this article, blaming special interests and institutions like the FBI, CIA and MIC without naming names as if an institution, not the oligarchs and chosen pulling the strings, are somehow Marxist, anti-white or anti-Christian.

Clay Alexander , says: November 13, 2020 at 7:18 am GMT • 12.6 hours ago

The interviewer quotes the Heritage Foundation does anyone even care what they say? The English Tavistock Institute by way of the CIA which the British molded from the OSS created programs for the Heritage Foundation as well as the Hoover Institute, MIT, Stanford University, Wharton, Rand etc. These "rightwing think tanks" were created to counter the CIA's "leftwing think tanks" at Columbia, Berkeley etc. Thank you British Intelligence.

Priss Factor , says: Website November 13, 2020 at 7:24 am GMT • 12.5 hours ago

Bloat the Vote: https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/2020-wisconsin-election-fraud/

Thomasina , says: November 13, 2020 at 7:31 am GMT • 12.3 hours ago

Steve Bannon was just interviewing someone (can't remember his name). Apparently there are about 200 to 300 IT professionals/engineers working on these so-called "glitches" (not glitches at all) which mysteriously "disappeared" thousands of Trump votes. Then they'd dump phony Biden votes into the mix. These IT professionals are going to follow the trail.

I've also heard that Dominion Voting Systems played a big part in this scam by using algorithms. One Trump lawyer said that big revelations are coming.

We're going to have to be patient and just wait.

"The inclination of Republicans is for Trump to protect America's reputation by conceding the election."

I honestly think it's more like the old established Republicans (corporate bought) want Trump to lose because that is what their campaign donors want (Big Pharma, Wall Street, etc.) They are part of the elite, and the elite (both the Democrats AND Republicans) want Trump gone so they can continue their crony capitalist looting. They've got to appear like they're behind Trump, but I don't think they are. Of course, that's not all Republican representatives.

Sounds like they've been rigging elections for awhile now. I bet they just messed up with Hillary. I think that's why she was so upset. She had it, but they screwed up and didn't supply enough ballots.

Biff , says: November 13, 2020 at 7:39 am GMT • 12.2 hours ago

My conclusion is: They are probably going to get away with it.

My advice: Make them suffer.

sally , says: November 13, 2020 at 7:45 am GMT • 12.1 hours ago
@KenH inventive creative new ways to deceive.. first it was election machines, then mail in votes. next it will be magic carpet voting. But the votes don't count, cause it is the electoral college that elects the President.

Trump also lost a significant number who did not understand Trump was an Israeli at heart, they thought he was a uncoothed NYC red blooded American.

As far as white, black or pokadot color or any of the religions ganging up against Trump I don't think that happened, the fall out into statistically discoverable categories is just that, fall out, not those categories conspiring to vote or not vote one way or the other.

Wizard of Oz , says: November 13, 2020 at 7:46 am GMT • 12.1 hours ago

PCR seems to have trouble seeing a difference between the counting of perfectly proper votes which Pres Trump's post office delivered late which may or may not be allowed by law which can be determined in court, and fraud like the dead voting or votes being forged.

Anonymous [272] Disclaimer , says: November 13, 2020 at 7:54 am GMT • 12.0 hours ago

The fraud is all so transparent but no one in the power elite seems to give a crap whether the public catches on or not these days. They know that the entire media which creates the false matrix of contrived "truth" that we all live in will back them to the hilt because they are actually just one more working part in the grand conspiracy. We all know that when "O'Brian" says 2 + 2 equals 5 we must all believe it, or at least say we do. We interface with "O'Brian's" minions on a daily basis but we don't know the ultimate identity of "O'Brian" (in the singular or multiple). Many guesses are made, but they hide that from us fairly well with the aid of their militaries and "intelligence" agencies (aka secret police in other times and places).

Wally , says: November 13, 2020 at 8:08 am GMT • 11.7 hours ago
@MarkinLA s://amgreatness.com/2020/11/09/on-electoral-fraud-in-2020/"> https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/09/on-electoral-fraud-in-2020/
Why Did Six Battleground States with Democrat Governors (Except One) ALL Pause Counting on Election Night? And How Was This Coordinated?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/six-battleground-states-democrat-governors-pause-counting-election-night-coordinated/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=websitesharingbuttons
Biff , says: November 13, 2020 at 8:57 am GMT • 10.9 hours ago

For example in the early hours of the morning of November 4 large ballot drops occurred in Michigan and Wisconsin that wiped out Trump's lead.

In a very similar vein, it is the same thing that happened to Bernie Sanders during the primary's. Joe was down and out, and Bernie was enjoying the lead and then "Bam!" Overnight Joe is back on top.

Well, fool me once,,,,,, .,and blah, blah whatever Bush said .

Verymuchalive , says: November 13, 2020 at 9:48 am GMT • 10.1 hours ago
@Stephen Allen

Dr Roberts has referenced in the interview a UR article that goes into considerable detail about the massive electoral fraud by the Democrats and their partners. You've obviously not bothered to read it.

You're like one of those MSM hacks who denies electoral fraud without making any attempt to look at the evidence.

Sollipsist , says: November 13, 2020 at 10:17 am GMT • 9.6 hours ago
@Begemot And it's almost always a closer race than anyone would have guessed beforehand -- which I also find suspicious. How likely is it that the majority of presidential elections over the last century were decided by more or less even numbers of voters from each party, between more or less evenly matched candidates?

Really seems like they've perfected the art of putting on rigged political shows that you can't quite believe in, but don't have anything really solid to back up your suspicions. It's like the "no evidence of fraud" canard -- anything solid enough to show obvious manipulation is explained away as the exception, rather than the tip of a very deep iceberg

James Speaks , says: November 13, 2020 at 10:40 am GMT • 9.2 hours ago
@S Martini

Like the false accusations about Russia, delegitimizing the presidential election as fraud is turning out to be much ado about nothing.

Let's review. The Democrats perpetrated the phony 2016 Russian influence fraud, and now the Democrats are perpetrating the phony 2020 election victory.

The common elements are Democrats perpetrate fraud.

Do try to keep up.

Lee , says: November 13, 2020 at 11:48 am GMT • 8.1 hours ago

IMO this is a simple remedy to settle the election fraud mess or we will be arguing about this 20 years from now .from the American Thinker.

The candidates on the ballot must have an opportunity to have observers whom they choose to oversee the entire process so the candidates are satisfied that they won or lost a free and fair election.

That is not what happened in the 2020 election. That is the single most important and simple fact that needs to be understood and communicated. The 2020 election was not a free and fair election, because poll-watchers were not allowed to do their essential job. The 2020 election can still be a free and fair election with a clear winner, whoever that may be, but time is running out.

In every instance where poll-watchers were not allowed to observe the process, those votes must be recounted. They must be recounted with poll-watchers from both sides present. If there are votes that cannot be recounted because the envelops were discarded, those votes must be discarded. Put the blame for this on the officials who decided to count the votes in secret. Consider it a way to discourage secret vote counts in the future.

The pandemic has not been fearful enough to close liquor stores, and it in should not be used as excuse to remove the poll-watchers who are essential to a free and fair election. If we must have social distancing, then use cameras.

Certainly, there are other issues with the 2020 election. There may be problems with software, and there are issues like signature verification and dead people voting. Everything should be considered and examined, but no other issue should distract from the simple fact that both sides must be able to view the entire process. If one side is not allowed to view the vote-counting, then that side should be calling it a fraud. We should all be calling it a fraud.

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/the_simplest_most_important_issue_regarding_the_2020_election.html#ixzz6dfsChU00

TomGregg , says: November 13, 2020 at 12:23 pm GMT • 7.5 hours ago
@Anon

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

The Spirit of Enoch Powell , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:02 pm GMT • 6.8 hours ago

...Trump had control of the Senate, the House and of course the Executive between his inauguration in January of 2017 and the Midterm Elections of 2018, a total time period of 1 year and 10 months. What did he do during this time? He deregulated financial services and passed corporate tax cuts.

At the end of the day, being emotionally invested in US elections is no different to being emotionally invested in Keeping up with the Kardashians , that is to say your life wouldn't be that different if your don't follow either.

Realist , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:04 pm GMT • 6.8 hours ago

The Democrats Have Stolen the Presidential Election

The Deep State Has Stolen the Presidential Election. FIFY. But they have been in control for decades they just don't care who knows now. They are taking final steps to make their control impervious to attack.

anon [434] Disclaimer , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:06 pm GMT • 6.8 hours ago
@Notsofast nd protect the actual elephant in the Oval Office: CIA.

Trumman did speak up one month after JFK was killed by the unmentionable "I" of M.(I).I.C.

https://archive.org/stream/LimitCIARoleToIntelligenceByHarrySTruman/Limit%20CIA%20Role%20To%20Intelligence%20by%20Harry%20S%20Truman_djvu.txt

This is the reason that the establishment latched on to the Eisenhowerian bon mot but entirely memory hole Trumman's far more explicit warning a freaking month after a sitting president is shot like a turkey in Dallas: it white washes CIA and NSC .

Priss Factor , says: Website November 13, 2020 at 1:31 pm GMT • 6.3 hours ago

Why are CIA goons like Anderson Pooper serving as journalists? CIA is a criminal organization that subverts other nations.

MLK , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:32 pm GMT • 6.3 hours ago

The place to begin, and it's mind-blowing when you think about it this way, is that nothing was resolved on election night. Not who will take the oath on January 20th. Nor which party will control the Senate. Nor even who will be Speaker and which party will control the House.

Suffice it to say, a still raging factional struggle has simply moved to a greater degree behind the curtain.

I noted this movie reference on another thread here:

If your father dies, you'll make the deal, Sonny.

-- "The Godfather"

My point being, you're foolish if you ascribe certainty as to outcome at this point.

Being rid of Trump has been as close to a dues ex machina for the establishment as imaginable since he took the oath. This ineluctable observation elicits no end of foot-stomping by those who assume it necessarily says anything positive about the man.

With every persistent revision of the script they wrote for him, all ending with his political demise at least, Trump has not just survived but grown stronger. While the Democrats turned our elections into something only seen in a third-world shit hole, Trump legitimately drew 71M votes from Americans.

That's a lot of air in the balloon. Believe me, filth like Russian mole Brennan may think everything is finished once they get rid of terrible, awful Trump, but those above his pay grade know better.

Like him or hate him, Trump is the only principal not wholly or largely discredited. He was saved from destruction during his first term by the Republican base moving to protect him. That was the import of his 90-95% approval among them, destroy him and you destroy the Republican Party.

Now, despite -- or perhaps, because of -- everything they've done, that base now includes a significant number of Democrats and independents. Trump is merely a vessel for an American majority attached to this constitutional republic thingie we've got going.

Don't get lost in the details. This isn't a puzzle you can solve by internet sleuthing. The plan they executed -- to steal sufficiently to make the outcome inevitable by the morning after the election at the latest -- failed. This was evident early on Election Day (e.g. fake water main breaks in Atlanta) and necessitated their playing their Fox/AZ card and shutting down the count at least until they had removed Republican monitors.

BannedHipster , says: Website November 13, 2020 at 2:57 pm GMT • 4.9 hours ago

People need to stop falling for Republican bullshit.

The Republicans control:

1. The Senate

2. The Supreme Court with a 6 to 3 majority.

3. The majority of state governments by a huge margin:

https://bannedhipster.home.blog/2020/11/12/bidens-first-cabinet-pick-israel-first-zionist-jew-ron-klain/

"In 22 states, Republicans will hold unified control over the governor's office and both houses of the legislature, giving the party wide political latitude -- including in states like Florida and Georgia."

"Eleven states will have divided governments in 2021, unchanged from this year: Democratic governors will need to work with Republican legislators in eight states, and Republican governors will contend with Democratic lawmakers in three."

The Democrats have: Joe Biden, and a slim majority in the House of Representatives which they are almost certain to lose in two years.

What the Republicans are going to do is everything we hate, but they will pretend they were "forced" to do it by the Democrats – the Democrats being the minority party.

Amnesty? Democrats made us do it.

More immigration? Democrats made us do it.

The Republican party is the greater of two evils.

Rurik , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:59 pm GMT • 4.9 hours ago

Who else could have survived what Trump has been subjected to by the Establishment and their media prostitutes. In the United States the media is known as "presstitutes" -- press prostitutes. That is what Udo Ulfkotte says they are in Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/-sYUmnLnoz8?feature=oembed

Mr. Ulfkotte died of a "heart attack" in January, 2017

Rest in Peace Udo.

Zarathustra , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:00 pm GMT • 4.9 hours ago

Left and right.
(What you small brains do not understand is this.)
Democrats enabling the elite to invest in far east (lower wage costs, higher profits) did abandon the working class in America. Democrats by this act did throw away the working class as a dirty rug.
Democrats with their TPP exporting most of the production to far east would totally destroy working class in USA. Trump's first act was to cancel this insanity. Democrats are insanely delusional.
Democrats were left. Left is a party that supports the working people.
So here switch occurred. Democratic party now represent the elite, and Republicans now represent the working people.
(The irony of the fate)

Robert Dolan , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:26 pm GMT • 4.4 hours ago

https://www.bitchute.com/video/hxrVAGuE7Oo1/

Robert Snefjella , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:30 pm GMT • 4.4 hours ago

The headline for PCR's article is a prediction, not yet established, and incomplete.

There is an ongoing massive attempt to steal the Presidential election as well as to steal an unknown number of House and Senate seats, and who knows what else.

The 'game' is still on. Many tens of millions of citizens – actual total unknown but possibly in numbers unprecedented in American history – voted for Trump. Republican candidates for office generally had strong support, but again, the actual percentage of support is unknown but presumably larger than now 'recorded'.

There are also the many millions who ardently supported Trump, know that Biden is illegitimate, deeply corrupt, and the precursor to perils unknown. Their determination and backbone and intelligence will now be tested.

There is the electoral college process; there are the state legislators that have a say in the process; there is the Supreme Court.

There is also the possibility of pertinent executive orders that mandate transparent processes in the face of, say, apprehended insurrection via fraudulent voting processes.

There is also the matter of how millions of 'deplorables' with trucks and tractors and firearms and other means to make their point will react to obvious massive election travesty.

The conjunction of the COVID global scamdemic/plandemic, with crazed Bill Gates and kin lurking in the background with needles, 'peaceful' protesters in many cities setting fires and looting with near impunity, and a mass media that is clearly comprehensively committed to a demonic degree of dishonesty and manipulation, and lunatic levels of 'identity politics' ideology, are among the elements setting the stage for what may be an historical watershed.

The American Revolution in the 18th century, against the British Crown's authority, came about after years of simmering anger and sporadic resistance against British injustice. At some point there was a 'tipping point'. When Germany invaded and occupied Norway early in the 2nd WW, an effective resistance quickly formed in reaction, where death and torture were the known willing risk. Two years before, those forming the resistance would have been just going on with their lives.

No one knows today how this plays out.

Agent76 , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:45 pm GMT • 4.1 hours ago

Who's Afraid of an Open Debate? The Truth About the Commission on Presidential Debates. The CPD is a duopoly which allows the major party candidates to draft secret agreements about debate arrangements including moderators, debate format and even participants.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1NXhoP5bQ2M?feature=oembed

Mar 6, 2014 Truth in Media "End Partisanship"

Ben Swann explains how the new coalition of EndPartisanship org is working to break the 2 party hold on primary elections, which currently lock around 50% of voters out of the process.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/h1zRfXkOmPI?feature=oembed

Sep 5, 2012 DNC Platform Changes on God, Jerusalem Spur Contentious Floor Vote

Democratic National Convention 2012: Delegates opposed to adding language on God, Israel's capital to platform shout, 'No!' in floor vote.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/t8BwqzzqcDs?feature=oembed

anon [287] Disclaimer , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:21 pm GMT • 3.5 hours ago

For those who are sick of Fake News CNN or FoxNews, watch this new channel that many Trump voters are flocking to:

https://www.newsmaxtv.com/

I am currently watching an interview with SD Governor Kristi Noem, who went on ABC to challenge George Stenopolosus' claim that there is no fraud in this election. She pointed out that there has been many allegations, including dead people voting in PA and GA, she says we don't know how widespread this is, but we owe it to the 70+ million people who voted for Trump to investigate and ensure a clean and fair election. She said we gave Al Gore 37 days to investigate the result in 2000, why aren't we giving the same to Trump?

She is extremely articulate and sounds intelligent and honest, and what's more courageous to come forward like this. I hope she runs for president in 2024, I'd vote for her.

Anonymous [721] Disclaimer , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:21 pm GMT • 3.5 hours ago
@Chris in Cackalacky

Am I the only one who sees something profoundly spiritual happening in front of our eyes?

Yes. In reality, 5% of White men sent Trump packing. That doesn't match the GOP negrophile narrative where "based" Hindustanis join the emerging conservative coalition to make sure White people can't get affordable healthcare in their own countries, though. So we'll have to watch you parasites spool up this pedantic "fraud" nonsense until the fat orange zioclown gracelessly gets dragged out.

OutsideMan , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:30 pm GMT • 3.4 hours ago
@Drew

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups and Average Citizens
by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Agent76 , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:31 pm GMT • 3.3 hours ago
@TomGregg

Good post. You will gain more insight from this background on the speech and drafting.

Jan 19, 2011 Eisenhower's "Military-Industrial Complex" Speech Origins and Significance US National Archives

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address, known for its warnings about the growing power of the "military-industrial complex," was nearly two years in the making. This Inside the Vaults video short follows newly discovered papers revealing that Eisenhower was deeply involved in crafting the speech.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gg-jvHynP9Y?feature=oembed

Thomasina , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:42 pm GMT • 3.2 hours ago
@The Real World

Great article. Thanks. Agree with you about the big stealing being electronic. Trump tweeted out yesterday that over 2 million votes were stolen this way. For him to say this, they must have evidence.

Dinesh D'Souza said he hopes that when this matter comes before the Supreme Court that they will tackle once and for all what constitutes a legal vote.

Some pretty big names are involved with this Dominion Voting. It will be interesting to see what Trump's team of IT experts discover re the use of algorithms to swing the vote.

Cyrano , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:03 pm GMT • 2.8 hours ago

Why (Oh, why) did Trump had to go? Because Trump is an enema to the Deep State. He was threatening to expose the biggest lie of the last 100 years – the supposed "liberalism" of US...

Genrick Yagoda , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:07 pm GMT • 2.7 hours ago
@Wizard of Oz

It has already been determined by the court. Pennsylvania ruled that late ballots are not to be counted.

https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2020/11/602-MD-2020-Order-Nov.-12.pdf

DanFromCT , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:15 pm GMT • 2.6 hours ago
@Stephen Allen

The author refers to a body of overwhelmingly persuasive evidence of voter fraud that can be specified and quantified to provide proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases, not to mention hands down proof in civil cases requiring only a preponderance of the evidence to establish guilt. Furthermore, the Democrats' easily documented, elaborate efforts at concealing the vote counting process by shutting down the counting prior to sneaking truckloads of ballots in the back door is by itself powerful circumstantial evidence of their guilt. You have no idea what "evidence" means, either in general usage or in its strictly legal sense.

fatmanscoop , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:15 pm GMT • 2.6 hours ago

The election cannot be trusted at all, just based on the insane entitled emotional state of the Globalist establishment alone. The system as-a-whole cannot be trusted, for the same reason. They are actively corrupting it in every way they can, and fully believe (as a matter of religious conviction) that they are right to do so.

fatmanscoop , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:38 pm GMT • 2.2 hours ago
@Curmudgeon

"no evidence of wide spread voter fraud"

That's one of the Jew/Anglo Puritan Establishment's new catch-phrases. There's also "no evidence" that Joe Biden acted in a corrupt manner in Ukraine, even though he admitted to it on tape. There's "no evidence" that Big Tech is biased against conservative plebians, despite their removing conservative plebians' published content arbitrarily and with no State compulsion to do so. The phrase "there's no evidence" is just a public commitment to ignore any evidence, no matter how blatant or obvious.

Robert Dolan , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:39 pm GMT • 2.2 hours ago

https://www.trunews.com/stream/michigan-republican-governor-candidate-saw-voter-machines-connected-to-internet

Peripatetic Itch , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:41 pm GMT • 2.2 hours ago
@DanFromCT

This newly discovered legal standard goes beyond "preponderance of the evidence" or even "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt" to establish absolute certainty as the standard.

Just the obvious and necessary complement of the Bob Mueller standard for Russian collusion, don't you think -- "could not (quite) exonerate"? /s

Don't you dare call this hypocrisy.

Orville H. Larson , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:57 pm GMT • 1.9 hours ago
@Rogue

When it comes to protecting the integrity of elections, "low-tech" might be best!

anon [771] Disclaimer , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:05 pm GMT • 1.8 hours ago
@endthefed

His impotence makes a lot more sense when you know the full version was supposed to be Military-Industrial Congressional Complex.

The Real World , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:42 pm GMT • 1.2 hours ago
@TheTrumanShow as the reason why.

They went for a softer approach in KY in 2019. The first-term Repub Gov had a Yankee's forthrightness so they just latched onto comments he made regarding the underfunded teachers pension program and amped-it to high heaven getting teachers all in a frightful frenzy.

In that solidly Red state, with all other prominent offices on the ballot (AG, SoS, etc.) going overwhelmingly Repub , somehow the Repub Gov loses to the Dem by around 5000 votes. The "teachers pension" narrative was rolled-out as the reason. (Btw, it seems that Dominion, or another type, software was used to switch the votes in that race. I've seen video about it.)

Art , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:47 pm GMT • 1.1 hours ago
@Orville H. Larson

When it comes to protecting the integrity of elections, "low-tech" might be best!

Paper ballots as ascribed by Tulsi Gabbard legislation is the only safe option for elections. Kudos to Tulsi!

The Real World , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:55 pm GMT • 56 minutes ago
@Orville H. Larson out how the winds are blowing. There is nothing good about it.

Why not this:
-- ONLY in-person voting over a 2-day period, a Sat and Sun, with polls being open from 6AM to 9PM both days.
-- Exceptions are the traditional requested absentee ballot where the voter can be authenticated.
-- Paper ballots must be used at the polls and no single box of 'Straight Vote by Party' is offered.
-- Some kind of SIMPLE scanning tabulator could be used of the ballots and with it NOT being connected to the internet.

There is far too much cheating opportunity built into our current system. That's intended, of course.
It needs to end!

Priss Factor , says: Website November 13, 2020 at 7:02 pm GMT • 49 minutes ago

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/exclusive-based-reports-auditors-specialists-data-analysts-statisticians-number-illegitimate-votes-identified-four-swing-states-enough-overturn-election/

... ... ...

No Friend Of The Devil , says: November 13, 2020 at 7:09 pm GMT • 42 minutes ago

Because you don't get it. You are missing the big picture. It was well known that these systems had the ability to be hacked as soon as they were implemented. It is also a well known fact that massive mail in ballots increases the likelihood that corrupt individuals are more likely to get away with election fraud.

Everyone knew about the potential for voter fraud to occur, but the entire system is corrupt, including Trump who has allowed the massive corruption within the system that was present when he entered office to persist and grow because he is a wimpy, spineless, coward, that was too afraid to make any waves and take the heat that he promised his voters.

Why anyone voted for Trump in 2020 confounds me. I voted for him in 2016 and he has turned out to be one of the worst presidents in history.

Trump in his cowardess and dishonesty knew that the ailing economy would harm his chances of being re-elected, so he allowed the health scare scamdemic to occur and destroy the livelihoods, lives, and businesses of hundreds of millions of Americans because he is a psychopath. Trump did not do what he promised. Trump made America worse than it has ever been since the end of slavery. Jeremy Powell said today that the economy is dead and will never recover.

The only injustices that Trump gave a damn about were the injustices against himself and his family, and has committed countless injustices against the entire country and world during his term. Trump is a corrupt narcissist. The facts prove it. Trump is such a corrupt narcissist that he was willing to destroy the entire economy based on scientific fraud, high crimes, and treason to use as political cover for his own incompetency which is the most offensive and disgusting diabolical act ever perpetrated on the entire country.

Trump has also demanded the extradition of Assange after telling his voters that he loved wikileaks. Trump is a two-faced, lying, fraud. It has been his pattern. He consistently supports various groups and people like Wikileaks, Proud Boys, and others and panders to them and voters and tells people that he loves them, and then every time without fail when the heat is on, Trump says," I really don't know anything about them."

"I know nothing." Trump saying "I know nothing." defines his presidency and who he is as a person, a spineless, pandering, corrupt, two-faced, narcissist, loser, and wimp!

Why would anyone vote for him the second time around after a record of pathological incompetency and pathological corruption? What's to approve of about him? Go ahead, investigate voter fraud it if is permitted, and if it isn't then ask yourselves why it is that a system that enables election fraud is in place, and ask yourselves who had the ability to change it and, who had the ability to benefit from it!

Andrea Iravani

[Jan 02, 2021] Increasing Exposure of Color Revolution Against Trump

Sep 16, 2020 | larouchepub.com

On Sept. 15, Tucker Carlson brought onto his show Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter. Beattie explained to viewers that the same networks promoting color revolutions overseas are now training their sights on President Donald Trump: "What's unfolding before our eyes is a very specific type of coup called the 'color revolution.' "

Similarly, Revolver website posted a multi-part series on the color revolution against Trump, with its Sept. 9 installment taking up Norm Eisen, one of the participants in the Transition Integrity Project's war gaming of the 2020 election. Eisen was Obama's White House ethics czar and was hired by the Democratic leadership of the House Judiciary Committee in 2019, where he prepared ten articles of impeachment against Trump a month before Pelosi announced an official impeachment inquiry. He himself took part in the impeachment proceedings.

But his involvement in ousting Trump began even before the nomination. Eisen ran Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), financed amongst others by George Soros's Open Society, which partnered with David Brock to put forward a blueprint -- issued before the inauguration -- for attacking Trump through such means as policing social media, getting tech companies to censor content (media platforms ... will no longer uncritically and without consequence host and enrich fake news), impeachment itself, fake news (a steady flow of damaging information, new revelations), and other techniques.

Eisen co-authored "The Democracy Playbook: Preventing and Reversing Democratic Backsliding," a Brookings guide to the perplexed seeking to institute policies through frankly undemocratic means. Eisen named Gene Sharp's From Dictatorship to Democracy as an inspiration for his document.

Consider another color revolutionary. Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and a supporter of the Ukraine color revolution, realized that "color revolution" was taking on a negative connotation. In August he tweeted a revised nomenclature: "Autocrats have demonized the phrase, 'color revolutions.' (& revolution generally has a negative connotation for many.) Instead, I use the term 'democratic breakthroughs.' "

What kind of democratic breakthrough? Consider McFaul's Sept. 4 tweet:

"Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief?"

Astute readers will note that neither the IC, State Department, or military appoint the President, who takes that office by means that are actually democratic -- an election!

Eisen also heads the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group, whose website announces that it is "a bipartisan and transatlantic platform for discourse and coordination to address democratic backsliding in Europe." What is "democratic backsliding"? Naturally, it's when the plebes get uppity and vote for their favored candidates, as in, you know, elections.

[Jan 01, 2021] Five Times This Year The New York Times Accidentally Told The Truth

Only five ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... I'm still stunned that the paper did a study that confirmed what people have suspected, namely that a high cycle threshold used on PCR testing was creating the appearance of a pandemic that might have long receded. The testing mania was generating wild illusions of millions of "asymptomatic" carriers and spreaders. How severe was the problem? Read this and weep ..."
"... up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found. ..."
"... A major reason for the ongoing lockdowns are due to the pouring in of positive case numbers from massive testing. If 90% of these positive tests are false, we have a major problem. The whole basis of the panic disappears. All credit to the Times for running the article but why no follow up and why no change in its editorial stance? ..."
"... I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life -- schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned -- will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. ..."
"... During the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is unwittingly conducting what amounts to the largest immunological experiment in history on our own children. We have been keeping children inside, relentlessly sanitizing their living spaces and their hands and largely isolating them ..."
"... in the course of social distancing to mitigate the spread, we may also be unintentionally inhibiting the proper development of children's immune systems. ..."
"... The psychological effects of loneliness are a health risk comparable with risk obesity or smoking. Anxiety and depression have spiked since lockdown orders went into effect. ..."
Jan 01, 2021 | zerohedge.com

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic Research,

The paper of record in 2020 shifted dramatically to the most illiberal stance possible on the virus, pushing for full lockdowns, and ignoring or burying any information that might contradict the case for this unprecedented experiment in social and economic control. This article highlights the exceptions.

...

Even within the blatant and aggressive pro-lockdown bias, and consistent with the way the New York Times does its work, the paper has not been entirely barren of truth about Covid and lockdowns. Below I list five times that the news section of the paper, however inadvertently and however buried deep within the paper, actually told the truth.

1. Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn't Be.

I'm still stunned that the paper did a study that confirmed what people have suspected, namely that a high cycle threshold used on PCR testing was creating the appearance of a pandemic that might have long receded. The testing mania was generating wild illusions of millions of "asymptomatic" carriers and spreaders. How severe was the problem? Read this and weep:

In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.

On Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases, according to a database maintained by The Times . If the rates of contagiousness in Massachusetts and New York were to apply nationwide, then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to isolate and submit to contact tracing.

The implications of this revelation are incredible. A major reason for the ongoing lockdowns are due to the pouring in of positive case numbers from massive testing. If 90% of these positive tests are false, we have a major problem. The whole basis of the panic disappears. All credit to the Times for running the article but why no follow up and why no change in its editorial stance?

2. Scientists See Signs of Lasting Immunity to Covid-19, Even After Mild Infections .

Byline By Katherine J. Wu

Gone missing this year in public commentary has been much at all about naturally acquired immunities from the virus, even though the immune system deserves credit for why human kind has lasted this long even in the presence of pathogens. That the Times ran this piece was another exception in otherwise exceptionally bad coverage. It said in part:

Scientists who have been monitoring immune responses to the virus are now starting to see encouraging signs of strong, lasting immunity, even in people who developed only mild symptoms of Covid-19, a flurry of new studies suggests. Disease-fighting antibodies, as well as immune cells called B cells and T cells that are capable of recognizing the virus, appear to persist months after infections have resolved -- an encouraging echo of the body's enduring response to other viruses .

Researchers have yet to find unambiguous evidence that coronavirus reinfections are occurring, especially within the few months that the virus has been rippling through the human population. The prospect of immune memory "helps to explain that," Dr. Pepper said.

3. Why You Shouldn't Worry About Studies Showing Waning Coronavirus Antibodies .

Byline Apoorva Mandavilli

Reinforcing the solid point above:

Data from monkeys suggests that even low levels of antibodies can prevent serious illness from the virus, if not a re-infection. Even if circulating antibody levels are undetectable, the body retains the memory of the pathogen. If it crosses paths with the virus again, balloon-like cells that live in the bone marrow can mass-produce antibodies within hours.

4. Schoolchildren Seem Unlikely to Fuel Coronavirus Surges, Scientists Say .

Byline: Apoorva Mandavilli

It's still a shock that so many schools closed their doors this year, partly from disease panic but also from compliance with orders from public health officials. Nothing like this has happened, and the kids have been brutalized as a result, not to mention the families who found themselves unable to cope at home. For millions of students, a whole year of schooling is gone. And they have been taught to treat their fellow human beings as nothing more than disease vectors. So it was amazing to read this story in the Times :

So far, schools do not seem to be stoking community transmission of the coronavirus, according to data emerging from random testing in the United States and Britain. Elementary schools especially seem to seed remarkably few infections.

5. One-Third of All U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Are Nursing Home Residents or Workers .

Byline Karen Yourish, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Danielle Ivory and Mitch Smith

Another strangely missing part of mainstream coverage has been honesty about the risk gradient in the population. It is admitted even by the World Health Organization that the case fatality rate for Covid-19 from people under the age of 70 is 0.05%. The serious danger is for people with low life expectancy and broken immune systems. Knowing that, as we have since February, we should have expected the need for special protection for nursing homes. It was incredibly obvious. Instead of doing that, some governors shoved Covid patients into nursing homes. Astonishing. In any case, the above article (and this one too) was one of the few times this year that the Times actually spelled out the many thousands times risk to the aged and sick as versus the young and healthy.

Notable Opinion columns

The op-ed page of the paper mirrored the news coverage, with only a handful of exceptions. Those are noted below.

Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?

Op-ed by David Katz

I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life -- schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned -- will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will. The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order.

Worse, I fear our efforts will do little to contain the virus, because we have a resource-constrained, fragmented, perennially underfunded public health system. Distributing such limited resources so widely, so shallowly and so haphazardly is a formula for failure. How certain are you of the best ways to protect your most vulnerable loved ones? How readily can you get tested?

Quarantine May Negatively Affect Kids' Immune Systems .

Op-ed by Donna L. Farber and Thomas Connors

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is unwittingly conducting what amounts to the largest immunological experiment in history on our own children. We have been keeping children inside, relentlessly sanitizing their living spaces and their hands and largely isolating them. In doing so, we have prevented large numbers of them from becoming infected or transmitting the virus. But in the course of social distancing to mitigate the spread, we may also be unintentionally inhibiting the proper development of children's immune systems.

What Has Lockdown Done to Us? .

Op-ed by By Drew Holden

Our mental health suffers, too. The psychological effects of loneliness are a health risk comparable with risk obesity or smoking. Anxiety and depression have spiked since lockdown orders went into effect. The weeks immediately following them saw nearly an 18 percent jump in overdose deaths and, as of last month, more than 40 states had reported increases. One in four young adults age 18 to 25 reported seriously considering suicide within the 30-day window of a recent study. Experts fear that suicides may increase; for young Americans, these concerns are even more acute. Calls to domestic violence hotlines have soared. America's elderly are dying from the isolation that was meant to keep them safe.


[Dec 30, 2020] Slavoj Zizek's 'brutal, dark' formula for saving the world

Notable quotes:
"... "We are more and more disoriented. There is a little good news, but at the same time there are new dimensions to the virus, and new variations that might turn out to be more dangerous. We now have this fake return to normal. The really frustrating thing is this lack of basic orientation. It's the absence of what [the philosopher and literary critic] Fredric Jameson calls 'cognitive mapping' – having a general idea of the situation, where it is moving and so on. Our desire to function requires some kind of clear coordinates, but we simply, to a large extent, don't know where we are." ..."
"... In his book, Zizek recalls the warnings of scientists after the SARS and Ebola epidemics. Persistently, we were told that the outbreak of a new epidemic was only a matter of time, but instead of preparing for the various scenarios we escaped into apocalypse movies. Zizek enumerates different scenarios of looming catastrophes, most of them consequences of the climate crisis, and calls for tough decisions to be made now. ..."
"... he coronavirus crisis is just a dress rehearsal for future problems that await us in the form of global warming, epidemics and other troubles. I don't think this is necessarily a pessimistic view, it's simply realistic. ..."
"... Now is a great time for politics, because the world in its current form is disappearing. Scientists will just tell us, 'If you want to play it safe, keep this level of quarantine,' or whatever. But we have a political decision to make, and we are offered different options." ..."
"... What if we will need another lockdown, even longer? Or multiple lockdowns? It's a sad prospect, but we should get ready to live in some kind of permanent state of emergency. ..."
"... The coronavirus epidemic is a universal crisis. In the long term, states cannot preserve themselves in a safe bubble while the epidemic rages all around ..."
"... It's tragic, I know, that all kinds of big companies are in deep shit, but are they worth saving? ..."
"... My formula is much more brutal, and darker. The state should simply guarantee that nobody actually starves, and perhaps this even needs to be done on an international scale, because otherwise you will get refugees. ..."
"... "I'm talking about what Naomi Klein calls the 'Screen New Deal.' The big technology companies like Google and Microsoft, which enjoy vast government support, will enable people to maintain Telexistence. You undergo a medical examination via the web, you do your job digitally from your apartment, your apartment becomes your world. I find this vision horrific." ..."
"... "First, it's class distinction at its purest. Maybe half the population, not even that, could live in this secluded way, but others will have to ensure that this digital machinery is functioning properly. Today, apart from the old working class, we have a 'welfare working class,' all those caregivers, educators, social workers, farmers. The dream of this program, the Screen New Deal, is that physically, at least, this class of caregivers disappears, they become as invisible as possible. Interaction with them will be increasingly reduced and be digital." ..."
"... "The irony here is that those who are privileged, those who, in this scenario, will be able to live in this perfect, secluded way, will also be totally controlled digitally. Their morning urine will be examined, and so on with every aspect of their life. Take the new analysis capabilities that can test you and provide results [for the coronavirus] in 10-15 minutes. I can imagine a new form of sexuality in this totally isolated world, in which I flirt with someone virtually, and then we say, 'Okay, let's meet in real life and test each other – if we're both negative, we can do it.'" ..."
"... As Julian Assange wrote, we will get a privately controlled combination of Google and something like the NSA ..."
"... Zizek divides workers during the crisis into those who encounter the virus and its consequences as part of their daily reality – medical staff, welfare-service people, farmers, the food industry – and those who are secluded in their homes, for whom the epidemic remains in the realm of the Lacanian spectral and omnipresent. ..."
Jun 04, 2020 | www.haaretz.com

Slavoj Zizek's 'Brutal, Dark' Formula for Saving the World

The pandemic is liable to worsen, ecological disasters loom and technological surveillance will terminate democracy. Salvation will come only by reorganizing human society. A conversation with the radical – and anxious – philosopher Slavoj Zizek Share in Facebook Share in Twitter Send in e-mail Send in e-mail Go to comments Print article Zen Read

Open gallery view Slavoj Zizek.

This is not an easy time for Slavoj Zizek. Quite the opposite, and he's the first to admit it. Reoccurring panic attacks incapacitate him for hours at a time and, unlike in the past, the nights have stopped providing him with an easy escape. His sleep is wracked by nightmares of what the future holds for humanity. There are days when he fantasizes about being infected by the coronavirus. At least, that way all of the uncertainty would come to an end, or so he imagines. Finally, he would be able to cope with the virus concretely, instead of continuously being haunted by it, as some sort of a spectral entity.

... ... ...

At age 71, Zizek is currently closeted in his home in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, with his fourth wife, the Slovene writer and journalist Jela Krecic, who is three decades younger than him. During the past couple of weeks the epidemic seems to have faded in his country, with only two or three new cases being reported daily. But Zizek, who spoke to Haaretz via Skype, is in no hurry to breathe a sigh of relief.

[Dec 24, 2020] Dominion voting systems demand letter to Sidney Powell

[PDF] (scanned with errors)
Looks like Sidney Powell overplayed her hand with her Hugo Chavez claims and might pay the price... They also attack her penchant for self-promotion.
This is a solid legal document that attack exaggerations and false claims and as such it puts Sydney Power on the defensive. But at the same time it opens the possibility to analyze Dominion machines and see to what extent votes can be manipulated, for example by lowest sensitivity of the scanner for mail-in ballots and then manually assigning votes to desirable candidate. This avenue is not excluded.
It also does not address the claim of inherent vulnerabilities of any Windows based computer used in election, irrespective whether they were produced by Dominion or any other company due to the known vulnerability of windows OS especially to the intelligence agencies attacks. As well as the most fundamental question: whether the use of computers in election represents step forward or the step back in election security? Especially Internet connected voting machines and centralized tabulation centers deployed in 2020 elections.
So the success here depends whether they can narrow the scope tot ht claims made and avid discovery of the voting machines themselves.
The weak point is that the letter references the testimony of Chris Krebs, who is a former Microsoft employee and as such has a conflict of interests in accessing the security of Windows based election machines produced by Dominion and other companies. Moreover he is now a computer science processional but a lawyer, who does not has any independent opinion on the subject matter due to the absence of fundamental CS knowledge required.
Notable quotes:
"... For example, you falsely claimed that Dominion and its software were created in Venezuela for the purpose of rigging elections for the now-deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, that Dominion paid kickbacks to Georgia officials in return for a "no-bid" contract to use Dominion systems in the 2020 election, and that Dominion rigged the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election by manipulating votes, shifting votes, installing and using an algorithm to modify or "weight" votes such that a vote for Biden counted more than a vote for Trump, trashing Trump votes, adding Biden votes, and training election workers to dispose of Trump votes and to add Biden votes. ..."
"... Fifth, you had a financial incentive in making the defamatory accusations. Your own conduct and statements at the press conference, media tour, and on your websites make it clear that you were publicizing your wild accusations as part of a fundraising scheme and in order to drum up additional business and notoriety for yourself. ..."
Dec 23, 2020 | assets.documentcloud.org

CLARE LOCKE THOMAS A. CLARE, P.C. L L P MEGAN L. MEIER

December 16, 2020 Via Email, Federal Express, & Hand Delivery

Sidney Powell, P.C.

2911 Turtle Creek Blvd, Suite 300 Dallas, Texas 75219

Email: [email protected]

Sidney Powell Defending the Republic 10130 Northlake Blvd. #214342 West Palm Beach, Florida 34412

Re: Defamatory Falsehoods About Dominion

Dear Ms. Powell:

We represent US Dominion Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiaries, Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. and Dominion Voting Systems Corporation (collectively, "Dominion"). We write regarding your wild, knowingly baseless, and false accusations about Dominion, which you made on behalf of the Trump Campaign as part of a coordinated media circus and fundraising scheme featuring your November 19 press conference in Washington, D.C. and including your "Stop the Steal" rally and numerous television and radio appearances on -- and statements to -- Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax, and the Rush Limbaugh Radio Show, among others.

... ... ...

I. Your reckless disinformation campaign is predicated on lies that have endangered Dominion's business and the lives of its employees.

Given the sheer volume and ever-expanding set of lies that you have told and are continuing to tell about Dominion as part of your multi-media disinformation "Kraken" fundraising campaign, it would be impractical to address every one of your falsehoods in this letter. Without conceding the truth of any of your claims about Dominion, we write to demand that you retract your most serious false accusations, which have put Dominion's employees' lives at risk and caused enormous harm to the company.

For example, you falsely claimed that Dominion and its software were created in Venezuela for the purpose of rigging elections for the now-deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, that Dominion paid kickbacks to Georgia officials in return for a "no-bid" contract to use Dominion systems in the 2020 election, and that Dominion rigged the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election by manipulating votes, shifting votes, installing and using an algorithm to modify or "weight" votes such that a vote for Biden counted more than a vote for Trump, trashing Trump votes, adding Biden votes, and training election workers to dispose of Trump votes and to add Biden votes.

By way of example only, just last week, you made the following false assertions about Dominion to Jan Jekielek at The Epoch Times:'

Effectively what they did with the machine fraud was to, they did everything from injecting massive quantities of votes into the system that they just made up, to running counterfeit ballots through multiple times in multiple batches to create the appearance of votes that weren't really there. They trashed votes.

These statements are just the tip of the iceberg, which includes similar and other false claims you made at your Washington, D.C. press conference and to other media outlets with global internet audiences. Your outlandish accusations are demonstrably fake. While soliciting people to send you "millions of dollars"2 and holding yourself out as a beacon of truth, you have purposefully avoided naming Dominion as a defendant in your sham litigations-effectively denying Dominion the opportunity to disprove your false accusations in court. Dominion values freedom of speech and respects the right of all Americans-of all political persuasions -- to exercise their First Amendment rights and to disagree with each other. But while you are entitled to your own opinions, Ms. Powell, you are not entitled to your own facts. Defamatory falsehoods are actionable in court and the U.S.

Supreme Court has made clear that "there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact." Gertz v. Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 340 (1974). Dominion welcomes transparency and a full investigation of the relevant facts in a court of law, where it is confident the truth will prevail. Here are the facts:

1. Dominion's vote counts have been repeatedly verified by paper ballot recounts and independent audits.

Dominion is a non-partisan company that has proudly partnered with public officials from both parties in accurately tabulating the votes of the American people in both "red" and "blue" states and counties. Far from being created to rig elections for a now-deceased Venezuelan dictator, Dominion's voting systems are certified under standards promulgated by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission ("EAC"), reviewed and tested by independent testing laboratories accredited by the EAC, and were designed to be auditable and include a paper ballot backup to verify results. Indeed, paper ballot recounts and independent audits have repeatedly and conclusively debunked your election-rigging claims, and on November 12, 2020, the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees released a joint statement confirming that there is "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised" and that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history.3 The Joint Statement was signed and endorsed by, among others, the National Association of State Election Directors, National Association of Secretaries of State, and the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency ("CISA") -- then led by a Trump appointee, Chris Krebs.

In addition, your false accusation that Dominion rigged the 2020 election is based on a demonstrably false premise that wildly overstates Dominion's very limited role in elections. Dominion provides tools such as voting machines that accurately tabulate votes for the bipartisan poll workers, poll watchers, and local election officials who work tirelessly to run elections and ensure accurate results. Dominion's machines count votes from county-verified voters using a durable paper ballot. Those paper ballots are the hard evidence proving the accuracy of the vote counts from Dominion's machines. If Dominion had manipulated the votes, the paper ballots would not match the machine totals. In fact, they do match. Recounts and audits have proven that Dominion did what it was designed and hired to do: accurately tabulate votes.

2. Dominion has no connection to Hugo Chavez. Venezuela, or China.

As you are well aware from documents in the public domain and attached to your court filings, Hugo Chavez's elections were not handled by Dominion, but by an entirely different company -- Smartmatic. This is a critical fact because you have premised your defamatory falsehoods on your intentionally false claim that Dominion and Smartmatic are the same company even though you know that they are entirely separate companies who compete with each other. Dominion was not created in or for Venezuela, has never been located there, and is not owned by Smartmatic or Venezuelan or Chinese investors. Dominion has never provided machines or any of its software or technology to Venezuela, nor has it ever participated in any elections in Venezuela. It did not receive $400 million from the Chinese in the weeks before the 2020 election or otherwise. It has no ties to the Chinese government, the Venezuelan government, Hugo Chavez, Malloch Brown, George Soros, Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster. Dominion does not use Smartmatic's software or machines, and there was no Smartmatic technology in any of Dominion's voting machines in the 2020 election.

3. You falsely claimed that Dominion's founder admitted he "can change a million votes, no problem at all" and that you would "tweet out the video later''-- but you never did so because no such video exists.

During at least one of your many media appearances, you promised to "tweet out [a] video" of Dominion's founder admitting that he "can change a million votes, no problem at all." Your assertion -- to a global internet audience -- that you had such damning video evidence bolstered your false accusations that Dominion had rigged the election. Yet you have never produced that video because, as you know, it does not exist. Dominion's founder never made such a claim because Dominion cannot change votes. Its machines simply tabulate the paper ballots that remain the custody of the local election officials -- nothing more, nothing less. 4. You falsely claimed that you have a Dominion employee "on tape" saving he "rigged the election for Biden''-- but you know that no such tape exists. In peddling your defamatory accusations, you also falsely told a national audience that you had a Dominion employee "on tape" saying that "he rigged the election for Biden." Your own court filings prove that no such tape exists. In them, you cited an interview of Joe Oltmann, a Twitter- banned "political activist" who -- far from claiming he had that shocking alleged confession "on tape"-claimed he took "notes" during a conference call he supposedly joined after "infiltrating Antifa." This is a facially ludicrous claim for a number of reasons, including the fact that he lives in Colorado, where it would have been perfectly legal to record such a call if it had actually happened. As a result of your false accusations, that Dominion employee received death threats.

II. Because there is no reliable evidence supporting your defamatory falsehoods, you actively manufactured and misrepresented evidence to support them.

Despite repeatedly touting the overwhelming "evidence" of your assertions during your media campaign, every court to which you submitted that socalled "evidence" has dismissed each of your sham litigations, and even Trump appointees and supporters have acknowledged -- including after you filed your "evidence" in court, posted it on your fundraising website, and touted it in the media -- that there is no evidence that actually supports your assertions about Dominion. Indeed:

... ... ...

Fifth, you had a financial incentive in making the defamatory accusations. Your own conduct and statements at the press conference, media tour, and on your websites make it clear that you were publicizing your wild accusations as part of a fundraising scheme and in order to drum up additional business and notoriety for yourself. Your financial incentive and motive to make the defamatory accusations is further evidence of actual malice. See Brown v. Petrolite Corp., 965 F.2d 38, 47 (5th Cir. 1992); Enigma Software Grp. USA, LLC v. Bleeping Computer LLC, 194 F. Supp. 3d 263, 288 (S.D.N.Y. 2016).

Sixth, you cannot simply claim ignorance of the facts. As a licensed attorney, you were obligated to investigate the factual basis for your claims before making them in court. 31 There is no factual basis for your defamatory accusations against Dominion and numerous reliable sources and documents in the public domain have repeatedly debunked your accusations. As such, you either conducted the inquiry required of you as a licensed attorney and violated your ethical obligations by knowingly making false assertions rebutted by the information you found, or you violated your ethical obligations by purposefully avoiding undertaking the reasonable inquiry required of you as a member of the bar. Either is additional evidence of actual malice.

Taken together, your deliberate misrepresentation and manufacturing of evidence, the inherent improbability of your accusations, your reliance on facially unreliable sources, your intentional disregard of reliable sources, your preconceived storyline, your financial incentive, and your ethical violations are clear and convincing evidence of actual malice. See Eramo v. Rolling Stone, 209 F. Supp. 3d 862,872 (W.D. Va. 2016) (denying defendant's motion for summary judgment and finding "[ajlthough failure to adequately investigate, a departure from journalistic standards, or ill

[Dec 21, 2020] Capitalism on ventilator and COVID-19 as a teachable moment

This is a review of the book Capitalism on a Ventilator- The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S.- Hin, Lee Siu, Flounders, Sara, Martinez, Carlos, Moor
We need to abstract from pro-China propaganda here. The critique of the USA handing of the epidemic is a better part of the article. It is true, that the US neoliberal elite was more conserved about the health on military-industrial complex then about the health and well-being of the American people.
Dec 18, 2020 | www.counterpunch.org

... ... ...

Writes Margaret Kimberley (in "Opposing War Propaganda Against China," Jan. 25, 2020):

"Now whenever we see a reference to China in the corporate media we always see the words communist party attached. This silly redundancy is war propaganda along with every other smear and slur. We are told that 1 million Uighurs are imprisoned when there is quite literally no proof of any such thing. China, the country which first experienced the COVID-19 virus, was the first to vanquish it, and has a low death rate of less than 5,000 people to prove it. We depend here in America on China to produce masks and other protective equipment but China is declared the villain. The country that within one month of realizing there was a new communicable disease gave the world the keys to conquering it.

"Instead the country which fails where China succeeds, in providing for the needs of its people and their health, is an international pariah, with most of the world barring Americans from travel and turning us into a giant leper colony. Trump speaks of the "kung flu" and the "Wuhan virus," but it is China which conquered the disease that has killed 130,000 Americans and forced a quarantine which has caused economic devastation to millions of people here.

"But Americans get nothing but war propaganda. Trump and Joe Biden outdo one another bragging about who will be tougher to China. This week we saw the U.S. government violate international law again and close the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas."

Writes Roxana Baspineiro in "Solidarity vs. Sanctions in Times of a Global Pandemic":

"Chinese and Cuban doctors have been providing support in Iran, Italy, Spain and have offered their services and expertise to the most vulnerable countries in Latin America, Africa, and Europe. They have developed medicines and medical treatments such as Interferon Alpha 2B in Cuba, one of the potential medicines to combat the virus, which reduces the mortality rate of people affected by COVID19. But above all, they have offered their interest in distributing them to the peoples of the world without any patent or benefit whatsoever."

Regardless of whether citizens of the US know about Chinese efforts, people in other nations have noticed, according to Stansfield Smith, who writes:

"From the responses to the coronavirus pandemic, the world has seen the model of public health efficiency China presented in controlling the problem at home. It has seen China's world leadership in offering international aid and care. It has seen the abdication of leadership by the US and even its obstruction in working to find solutions. Now the US still cannot control the virus, and remains mired in economic crisis, while China is rebounding. In sum, the pandemic has made the world look at both China and the US in a new light. And it has dealt a serious blow to the US rulers' two decade long effort to counter the rise of China."

... ... ...

The final section of the book, "Escalating anti-China campaign," is a diverse collection of essays on subjects such as: US accusations of Chinese repression of Uyghurs; NATO exercises that threatened to exacerbate COVID spread even while China was bringing aid to Europe; COVID in the US armed forces; US military belligerence toward China; the color revolution in Hong Kong; Vietnam's response to COVID; and a call from Margaret Flowers and the recently deceased Kevin Zeese to replace the US pivot to Asia with a "Pivot to Peace."

Ajamu Baraka writes:

"The psychopathology of white supremacy blinds U.S. policy- makers to the political, economic, and geopolitical reality that the U.S. is in irreversible decline as a global power. The deep structural contradictions of the U.S. economy and state was exposed by the weak and confused response to COVID-19 and the inability of the state to provide minimum protections for its citizens and residents.

"But even in decline, the U.S. has a vast military structure that it can use to threaten and cause massive death and destruction. This makes the U.S. a threat to the planet and collective humanity because U.S policy-makers appear to be in the grip of a deathwish in which they are prepared to destroy the world before voluntarily relinquishing power, especially to a non-European power like China.

"For example, when Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo declared in public that the United States and its Western European allies must put China in "its proper place," this represents a white supremacist mindset that inevitably will lead to monumental errors of judgment."

So COVID-19 is, to put it mildly, a teachable moment. Looking around the world right now, we can see who is learning and who isn't. As "Capitalism on a Ventilator" vividly illustrates, China is leading the way, and the United States is slipping into obsolescence. Those who hope to survive the coming travails can see who to follow and who to avoid.

Kollibri terre Sonnenblume is a writer living on the West Coast of the U.S.A. More of Kollibri's writing and photos can be found at Macska Moksha Press .

[Dec 20, 2020] I love America and its non-stop CIA psyop cyclops social media television.

Dec 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

JohnHellHood 3 hours ago

I love America and its non-stop CIA psyop cyclops social media television.

The New Year will bring renewed police crackdown on private assembly, people's homes, the continued destruction of employment, $40 checks from Uncle Joe to "tide you over," hysterical harpies physically assaulting anyone without a mask in blue states, and a full-out propaganda assault to destroy the defenseless minds of your friends and family.

You're going to lose a lot in the New Year. 2020 was just the beginning. Wait until summer 2021 and BLM/Antifa chaos. Conservative politicians like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul will be crying "insurrection act!" and Tucker Carlson will launch into Season Two of 30-minute cracking-voice monologues "this is your America!" while nothing and no one does a goddamn thing to protect you.

We are on our own. Doctors, schools, cops, families, people you work with -- all are slowly being sucked into the vortex of this simulacrum of hell being broadcast on their "smart" phones. Compared to what's being sold to them, your voice sounds positively insane...

[Dec 17, 2020] The Fall of the Republic - part1

Dec 17, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

" Correspondence between Hunter Biden and CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming from 2017 shows President-elect Joe Biden's son extending "best wishes from the entire Biden family ," and urging the chairman to "quickly" send a $10 million wire to "properly fund and operate" the Biden joint venture with the now-bankrupt Chinese energy company.

The $10 million transfer to the joint venture was never completed.

Fox News obtained an email Hunter Biden sent on June 18, 2017, to Zhao Run Long at CEFC, asking that they please "translate my letter to Chairman Ye, please extend my warmest best wishes and that I hope to see the Chairman soon.""

Biden went on to note that Bobulinski had "sent a request to Dong Gongwen [Gongwen Dong] and Director Zang for the funding of the $10 MM USD wire."

"I would appreciate if you will send that quickly so we can properly fund and operate Sinohawk," Biden wrote.

"I am sure you have been well briefed by our dear friend Director Zan g on the political and economic connections we have established in countries where you are interested in expanding during the coming months and years, " he continued. "I look forward to our next meeting."

"Fox News also obtained the response from Ye as part of an email, dated Sept. 6, 2017, from Biden business associate James Gilliar to Bobulinski. That email forwarded Ye's letter responding to Biden. The letter is dated July 10, 2017.

Ye stated that he had arranged for Zang and Dong to "expedite the charter capital input to SinoHawk."

"I am glad to hear from you! Time flies and it has been months since we met in the US. It seems that we were always on a rush when we were together," Ye wrote to Biden, adding that "the consensus we made last time has been materialized in a timely manner."

Ye also recommended Biden "arrange your people to coordinate with Director Zang and Gongwen Dong for specific work."

"I will continue to pay attention and give my support," Ye stated. "I have arranged Director Zang and Gongwen Dong to expedite the charter capital input to SinoHawk."

"I look forward to meeting you in the near future and discussing our joint undertaking. If there is anything I could do please do not hesitate to write to me," Ye wrote. "Please accept my best regards to you and your family."" foxnews

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

Well, pilgrims, the Ron Johnson hearing today was fun. The best part for me was former Director Krebs' (election security guy for DHS) repeated statements that the election was secure, "the most secure in history." Pilgrims, the distinction betwixt "secure" and "honest" seems to have escaped him as he ignored questions about actual evidence of fraud, a swampie to the end.

And then, there is Chairman Joe. He knows that nothing will be easier than to kill off prosecution of his creepy son, or to "suggest" to the Delaware federal prosecutor that a minor indictment would be appropriate, something resulting in a suspended sentence.

I have watched Tucker debrief Bobulinski twice about that payment. The way Bobulinski tells it (with documentation) the Bidens were loaned $5 million by MEFC to pay their side of the capitalization and then actually pocketed the other $5 million as a direct payment to La Familia from FEMC (Oh Danny Boy!) from - equal opportunity! That was too much for the Bobster (former naval Lt., man of world finance, patriot, self-abnegator, etc.) Besides, where was his share?

Pistols at dawn? Good! Tucker can act as his second. Where are my cased flintlock smoothbores? They are somewhere around here, the English 18th Century ones in the fitted blue velvet case. pl

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-letter-chinese-cefc-chairman-wire-request

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-says-im-confident-hunter-did-nothing-wrong-amid-federal-probe-into-tax-affairs

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-election-hearing-clash-johnson-peters

[Dec 06, 2020] COVID Is Exposing The Cancerous Underbelly Of US Healthcare -

Dec 06, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com


COVID Is Exposing The Cancerous Underbelly Of US Healthcare
by Tyler Durden Sat, 12/05/2020 - 12:20 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

If you still believe that America's Sickcare is "the finest in the world" and is endlessly sustainable, please study these three charts and extend the trendlines.

I've long been making the distinction between healthcare and sickcare : healthcare is the service provided by frontline operational caregivers (doctors, nurses, aides, technicians, etc.) and sickcare is the financialized system of Big Hospital Corporations, Big Insurers, Big Pharma, etc. and their lobbyists that keep the federal money spigots wide open.

This financialized sickcare system is being consumed by the cancer of greedy profiteering pursued by self-serving insiders. The delivery of healthcare is secondary to maximizing revenues and profits by any means available .

To believe such a corrupt system is sustainable is magical thinking at its most destructive.

Covid-19 is revealing this cancerous underbelly. Knowledge of the inner workings of corporate administration is not evenly distributed, so every participants' experience of the systemic dysfunction will vary.

Here is one MD's observations of the system's priorities. Others may have different views but the maxim follow the money is clearly the correct place to start any inquiry of how America's financialized sickcare functions in the real world.

From what I'm hearing from the front line, a not insignificant number of admissions are of folks who would not have been admitted in March when there was fear of both the unknown and systemic failure and, not coincidently, when COVID diagnoses didn't pay as much.

Today, the admission criteria for COVID is so much more flexible than for standard diagnoses like CHF, and pays so much better than other diagnoses that our 'healthcare' system is rapidly becoming a 'COVID care' system.

The surge in hospitalizations and subsequent COVID-identified deaths may be driven, in part, to health systems adapting to new COVID revenue streams.

This would seemingly be good news, after all if it's the hospital administrator's desire to fill empty beds that's driving admissions rather than infection rates, then systemic failure can be averted through moderating those admission rates based on system capacity.

If your hospital fills up, just start sending the marginal cases home--inpatient/outpatient; the outcome for the patient will be pretty much the same and you've made as much money as your capacity will allow.

Unfortunately, our healthcare 'system' doesn't work like that.

Health systems are in the business of generating revenue, not value. Recent COVID-related demand destruction has crushed that revenue so they're hungry for more.

Those in health-system operations and those in leadership live in two different worlds. Leadership will push COVID admissions far beyond any operational limits in their quest for short term performance. One cannot overstate their mendacity and drive for lucre.

Hospitals are becoming 'COVID factories' with all other admissions (which pay far less) relegated to second tier status.

Health systems are evolving into an 'all COVID, all the time' format with the emphasis on testing and (soon) vaccination, at the expense of all else.

Not a few systems of my acquaintance are laying off outpatient medical staff because their supporting personnel have quit and are not replaced--those resources are being re-directed to COVID testing and in preparation for mass vaccination.

For the health system in the business of generating revenue, it's an excellent tactic. They save themselves significant overhead by not paying the clinicians and they make up the revenue through high-margin COVID services and government bailout payments.

For patients who actually need healthcare, though, this tactic is deadly.

The perversion is end-stage, the health systems pretend to deliver healthcare and the government pays them to continue the pretense.

There is no long term thinking here, no empathy for the workforce, no thought to the mission beyond window-dressing--just a relentless, risk-adverse financialization machine.

Think of COVID as a new widget for which the customer will pay 2.5 times the going price with no quality control, but only for a limited amount of time. Add in talentless, rent-seeking leadership and all becomes clear.

Of course the real risk is that maxed out hospitals could find themselves in a situation where admissions suddenly become driven by demand rather than the business model, with a true non-linear path to failure laying beyond.

The longer daily national hospital occupancy stays above the approximate pre-COVID capacity of 100k, the more likely you'll see systemic breakdowns--local at first, then regional.

You won't see it in the press, the healthcare cartels have a pretty good lock on the local media. Once news starts getting censored on social media, though, then you know it's happening.

Hold me to that, And call me out in three months if I'm not right.

If you still believe that America's sickcare is "the finest in the world" and is endlessly sustainable, please study these three charts and extend the trendlines.

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[Dec 06, 2020] CNNgate- CNN chief Jeff Zucker offered Trump 'WEEKLY SHOW' gave 'the boss' tips for presidential debate in leaked 2016 audi

Dec 06, 2020 | www.rt.com

CNNgate? CNN chief Jeff Zucker offered Trump 'WEEKLY SHOW' & gave 'the boss' tips for presidential debate in leaked 2016 audio 9 Sep, 2020 03:37 / Updated 2 months ago Get short URL CNNgate? CNN chief Jeff Zucker offered Trump 'WEEKLY SHOW' & gave 'the boss' tips for presidential debate in leaked 2016 audio FILE PHOTOS. © Reuters / Kevin Lamarque ; Reuters / Christian Hartmann 88 Follow RT on RT CNN head Jeff Zucker appears to have offered Donald Trump a "weekly show" on the network in 2016, also giving tips for a presidential debate, arguing Trump could not win the race without his outlet's support, leaked audio reveals.

Zucker – who now presides over one of the most fervently anti-Trump media outlets in the American corporate press – hatched the idea to give then-candidate Trump a weekly slot on CNN during a March 2016 phone call with Micheal Cohen, a lawyer for Trump at the time, according to audio obtained by Fox News' Tucker Carlson.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1303497111472877570&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F500213-zucker-offers-trump-show%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Speaking with Cohen hours before the final Republican primary debate in the 2016 race, Zucker said that while the Trump campaign had shown "great instincts, great guts and great understanding of everything," he insisted victory would be impossible without CNN's backing.

"Here's the thing you cannot be elected president of the United States without CNN," Zucker boasted. "Fox and MSNBC are irrelevant – irrelevant – in electing a general election candidate."

ALSO ON RT.COM As obsession with Trump tanks CNN ratings, network doubles down

When Cohen suggested the CNN chief relay his thoughts to Trump himself, Zucker demurred, saying he is "very conscious of not putting too much in email," as Trump – "the boss" – might go blabbing about it on the campaign trail.

You know, as fond as I am of the boss, he also has a tendency if I call him or I email him, he then is capable of going out at his next rally and saying that we just talked, and I can't have that, if you know what I'm saying.

Zucker soon talked himself back into contacting Trump, however, committing to "give him a call right now" to "wish him luck in the debate tonight" – hosted by none other than CNN – adding "I have all these proposals for him, like I want to do a weekly show with him and all this stuff."

He went on to lavish praise on Trump, saying he had "never lost a debate" and would do "great" during the CNN event later that night, even offering detailed advice for how the president-to-be could deflect allegations that he is a "con man" from other candidates.

ALSO ON RT.COM Trump campaign threatens to SUE CNN for 'unfair, unfounded, unethical & unlawful' attacks on president

While the source of the recording is unclear, the leak has made waves online, given that Zucker has since made himself into Trump's " cable news nemesis ." The network itself, meanwhile, has fielded an endless stream of negative coverage of the president, heavily pushing the discredited 'Russiagate' conspiracy theory for years and throwing full weight behind the Democrats' failed impeachment effort.

Some netizens have already suggested the "damning" revelation could soon result in Zucker's ouster from his high perch at CNN.

"You think Jeff Zucker will be fired? I actually think there's a decent chance he will be. Trying to kiss up to Trump is on par with murder in CNN world," wrote filmmaker and conservative pundit Robby Starbuck.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1303502000152285185&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F500213-zucker-offers-trump-show%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-2&frame=false&hideCard=true&hideThread=false&id=1303505884493107202&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F500213-zucker-offers-trump-show%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-3&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1303499949888462853&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F500213-zucker-offers-trump-show%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Others were less taken aback by the audio, as many pointed to the fact that Zucker and Trump have a lengthy history together, both working on 'The Apprentice,' the hit reality show that helped to solidify Trump's status as a pop culture icon. In 2012, Trump even hailed Zucker's takeover as CNN president, saying the network made a "great move," and that Zucker "was responsible for me and The Apprentice on NBC – became #1 show!"

"Everyone knows Zucker made Trump, it's 100% true," one user said . "Trump was down and out. Zucker pitched him a reality TV show called the Apprentice. Why? Because he likes his New Yorkers, he likes Trump."

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-4&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1303447621189730305&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F500213-zucker-offers-trump-show%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-5&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1303503002800730114&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F500213-zucker-offers-trump-show%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

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[Dec 05, 2020] I am 100% convinced that covid is a political conspiracy based on personal knowledge and other info. Tonight Tucker Carlson reports that blood samples taken in early Jan 2020 tested positive for covid - all of the samples.

Dec 05, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Eric Newhill , 02 December 2020 at 09:39 PM

Sir,
Pretty sure you're trolling us a little with this post. That said, it is 2020.

I am 100% convinced that covid is a political conspiracy based on personal knowledge and other info. Tonight Tucker Carlson reports that blood samples taken in early Jan 2020 tested positive for covid - all of the samples. In other countries there is evidence of covid in the population going back to Fall 2019; yet no overwhelmed hospitals and spiking death counts from those early months. The internet fact checkers are clearly arrayed against information seekers and forcing conformity to the state's message.

Clearly there was malfeasance in the election as well as a general Charlie Foxtrot created by implementing mail in voting without sufficient time and resources for infrastructure development; a no brainer that everyone should have foreseen and avoided - except for the covid hysteria.

We saw the the Russia collusion hoax, Steele Dossier nonsense, idiotic impeachment and slandering filthy lie campaign against of Justice Kavanaugh.

The list goes on. However, it stretches my credulity that the US military (Army SOF unit?) would be shooting it out with the CIA in Germany and that Haskel would be there to be wounded in the action; or was arrested and whisked off to some secret detention facility.

Would you please consider sharing what you really think?

[Dec 02, 2020] Saagar and Ryan- CUOMO Nominated For Time Person Of The Year

Cuomo already wrote a book about how he conquered coronavirus ;-)
Fauci and Quomo. Nice. Andrew Cuomo cut Medicaid in New York during a pandemic
Dec 02, 2020 | www.youtube.com


Our Lady
, 2 days ago

Fake news and fake awards.


John Tucker
, 2 days ago

Cuomo cut funding to Hospitals during first wave

Jan Fogle , 2 days ago

considering cuomo was responsible for spreading the virus exponentially in the early days, he probably has had more influence on all of our lives than the others


Pookie Wookie
, 2 days ago

Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize and dropped more bombs than any other President in history and took us from 3 to 7 wars.

Zeljko Dakic , 53 minutes ago

Story about Fauci, at least at the time was that it was so hospitals wouldn't be liable for deaths among medical staff. But I think it was completely bad what both Cuomo and Fauci


Kathleen McCormick
, 1 day ago

Fauci is complicit and not to be trusted. He's worse than Cuomo.

FryeKitFox , 2 days ago

Time is inconsequential. Neoliberal rag.

Techloid Tech , 2 days ago (edited)

Still can't believe people defend Fauci. Then again people defend Obama and Bush...


John Sutherland
, 18 hours ago

Dr. Fauci was the trusted expert who intentionally lied to the American people and made things far worse. Cuomo is directly responsible for why New York's response to the virus was so bad and cost many lives. Bullshit award.


airmark02
, 2 days ago

Fake Media Fake Heros Fake Awards

[Dec 01, 2020] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/27/google-facebook-and-twitter-fixed-the-election-for/

Dec 01, 2020 | www.washingtontimes.com

Google, Facebook and Twitter fixed the election for Biden over Trump Follow Us

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Print By Robert Knight - - Friday, November 27, 2020

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

While President Trump's attorneys continue to challenge the validity of bizarre tallying, anyone interested in free and fair elections should consider the role of Big Tech.

Regardless of the extent of vote fraud, Google , Facebook and Twitter fixed the election for Joe Biden over President Trump . There should be no doubt in any honest observer's mind.

Undercover operatives for Project Veritas caught a Google executive on camera last year boasting that only Google could prevent "the next Trump situation."


TOP STORIES
Trump issues warning to Arizona governor over siding with Biden
McConnell urges action on coronavirus relief as Congress returns from break
Report: Trump coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas resigns


Twitter blatantly kept the public from crucial information less than a month before the election by suspending The New York Post's entire site over its blockbuster articles exposing the Biden family's lucrative contracts in Ukraine and with Communist China.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted after the election that this probably wasn't the right thing to do. Surveys indicate that enough voters to easily make a difference would not have chosen Mr. Biden if they had known about the colossal corruption. Thanks, Jack. We expect the Biden team will offer you an appropriate form of gratitude.



But something even more powerful in Silicon Valley was afoot than straightforward censorship.

For years, behavioral psychologist Robert Epstein has warned that Google , which accounts for more than 90% of Internet searches, can easily determine elections by adjusting algorithms to favor one party over the other. Given that most people see only the first few entries on a search, the rest might as well be invisible.

" Google 's search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more -- up to 80 percent in some demographic groups -- with virtually no one knowing they are being manipulated," he wrote in 2015 in Politico Magazine, basing his calculations on experiments he conducted along with Ronald E. Robertson.

They showed how the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) works in a study published in the Aug. 4, 2015, edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

After five experiments conducted with more than 4,500 participants in the United States and India, they concluded that SEME "can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters and search ranking bias can be masked so that people show no awareness of the manipulation."

In July 2019, Mr. Epstein, a Democrat with a Harvard Ph.D., warned Congress that this was a real threat to election integrity and that Google may have shifted 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016. He said that in the 2020 election, SEME could shift as many as 15 million votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden .

On Nov. 24, Mr. Epstein told FOX News' Tucker Carlson that he believed the SEME technique had cost Mr. Trump this time a "bare minimum" of at least 6 million votes. He said he had 733 field agents in three swing states -- Arizona, Florida and North Carolina -- and that his team recorded more than 500,000 "experiences," such as voting reminders sent to some on Google but not to others.

"We found a period of days when the 'vote' reminder on Google 's home page was being sent only to liberals. Not one of our conservative field agents received a vote reminder during those days." After he blew the whistle on this, he said, Google began sending the "vote" reminder to everyone.

But, recall that we had an unprecedented amount of early voting, with more than 100 million ballots cast before Election Day out of 156.8 million. The damage could already have been done.

On Oct. 31, Mr. Epstein told Tucker Carlson that "just based on the first 150,000 searches that we've looked at, and that's about 1.5 million search results and over a million web pages, we're finding very substantial pro-liberal bias in all 10 or at least nine out of 10 search results on the first page of Google search results – not on Bing or Yahoo, though."

Vote manipulation using technology isn't new. Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, won the 1876 presidential election over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden at least in part because of support from Western Union. At the time, Western Union had a virtual monopoly on communications and "the company did its best to assure that only positive news stories about Hayes appeared in newspapers nationwide," Mr. Epstein wrote. "It also shared all the telegrams sent by his opponent's campaign staff with Hayes's staff."

The election dragged on for weeks, with both sides charging vote fraud or voter suppression. In a retrospective article, The Washington Post's Ronald G. Shafter wrote, "Much as President Trump is doing now, backers of Hayes, the governor of Ohio, charged the election was being stolen. The difference was that, unlike now, there was clear evidence of fraud and voter intimidation."

"Unlike now." Right.

One more thing. Not everyone responded to calls for unity after the divided Electoral Commission awarded the last 20 disputed votes, giving Hayes a 185-184 Electoral College victory four months after the election.

Angry Democrats, the forerunners of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, cried "Tilden or blood" and planned "to send a threatening and bellicose mob to the National Capital to see that the count is made according to their wishes," reported an unnamed Washington newspaper.

Given Mr. Epstein's calculations, the Election Night ballot dumps for Mr. Biden and the Democrats' collusion with Big Media and Big Tech, we're seeing the 21st-century equivalent of what Democrats in 1876 called the "stolen election."

• Robert Knight is a contributor to The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.

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C

[Dec 01, 2020] I will henceforth refer to the MSM as the regime [change] media

Dec 01, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

BillWade , 30 November 2020 at 09:12 AM

I will henceforth refer to the MSM as the regime media or RM.

We reluctantly turned off Tucker last week. I felt bad about it as after watching him for a few years my wife slowly left behind her liberal north eastern views and came around to the right side of things. I'll thank him for that.

Free State of Florida

[Nov 28, 2020] Corn Syrup vs Soy, by Eric Striker

Nov 28, 2020 | www.unz.com

... ... ...

Every 2020 issue polarizes through this prism.

On the issue of voter fraud, the right has sullied real concerns with ballot legitimacy in highly mismanaged black cities with Bircherist bufoonery. The last of the MAGA faithful -- Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, Q-Anon, Mike Cernovich, Dinesh D'Souza, Nick Fuentes, Ali Alexander, One America News, and the Zionist opportunists at Newsmax -- have been trying to cancel more sensible right-wing populists like Tucker Carlson, Ryan Gidursky, Pedro Gonzalez and others for expressing skepticism about some of the Trump campaign's narratives on the election.

Like him or not, Tucker is a serious political commentator that has tried and failed to provide coherence and principles to Trumpism for the last four years. When Tucker asked Sidney Powell for evidence regarding her claim that Castro, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro and the Chinese Communist Party stole millions of votes from Trump in an international Marxist coup, he was subjected to insults, boycotts and unhinged shrieking in response. "THANK YOU SEAN HANNITY FOR HOLDING THE LINE. THANK YOU TUCKER FOR THROWING US UNDER THE BUS," wrote Nick Fuentes.

Tucker was vindicated when Trump's team abruptly severed ties with Powell and shelved her circus act. But that hasn't stopped online Trumpistanis from speculating that Tucker's red bracelet is a sign that he is a secret kabbalah practitioner or that he's been a double agent for the satanic pedophile cartel led by Tom Hanks put in place just for this moment. For Jews concerned that Tucker has been promoting the potent combination of nationalism and economic populism to deplorables since 2016, it is a welcome amusement to see him being sacrificed on the alter of Orange Man Good and traded in for a harmless lapdog like Hannity.

30 of 31 voter fraud lawsuits filed by Team Trump have been tossed. The whole thing is starting to look like a Birther-style publicity stunt to help Trump monetize his following after January. The most recent defeat , a lawsuit demanding 7,000,000 votes be invalidated in Pennsylvania, did not provide any compelling evidence for fraud or malfeasance.

Four years ago, Bernie expressed skepticism about mass immigration while Trump's original campaign hinted at a public health care option and a war against Wall Street. These real world issues impact real world people, and it allowed for a cross-front alliance of ordinary citizens against the elite. The two candidates traded disenfranchised and largely white working class voters throughout the primary, then the general.

But now there are actors on both sides trying to drag things back to personalities, political tribalism and inanity. The COVID issue has drawn out the petty tyrants on the left but also the UN-world-government conspiracy theorists of the right, with actual state relief for desperate working people suffering from the lockdown being drowned out.

For Jewish gatekeepers of the phony right like Ezra Levant , "The Great Reset" is much more palatable and less dangerous than the real issue of the Great Replacement. Former Never Trumper Mark Levin has worked with Sean Hannity to scrub 2020 Trumpism of its anti-establishment and anti-globalist soul to try and transform it into another Tea Party style Reaganite collection point for false consciousness held together by fumes of Trump's personality cult.

There is a silver lining. As niches suffering from the two types of TDS -- Trump Derangement Syndrome and Trump Delusion Syndrome -- duke it out, the liberal kleptocracy is still having trouble restoring "normalcy."

The Biden Democrats are eager to betray and start purging the Bernie wing of their party on economic and foreign policy matters. The GOP, whose establishment has no organic support and never will, has decided to fake it until they make it and pretend like Trump was never born.

This forced reboot is bound to meet challenges in an era of high unemployment and social chaos. People are sick of voting for a "lesser of two evils."

There is lots of talk on the left and right about starting new parties to challenge the Wall Street uniparty. The Movement for a People's Party , an endeavor that has recruited big names like Jimmy Dore and Cornell West, is looking to establish itself and begin attacking the Democratic party from the left.

Meanwhile, right-populists who aren't hung up on Trump are beginning to talk of an "America First Party." The National Justice Party, a political construct that isn't afraid to appeal to white workers or transcend traditional ideas of left and right, is also starting to gain momentum.

In the battle of corn syrup vs soy, of stupid vs gay, we the people deserve better. The populi in populist can be described as being part of the radical center: left on economics and right on social issues. A white worker should not have to vote for the anti-white Democrats just to have a shot at affordable health care, nor should a rural family have to vote for the Paul Singer funded Zionist GOP in hopes of being treated with dignity. A grounded and united movement that explicitly rejects both parties and can obtain what we want must arise from the ashes of back-stabbed Trumpists and Bernie fans.

AnonStarter , says: November 24, 2020 at 5:43 am GMT • 4.6 days ago

The populi in populist can be described as being part of the radical center: left on economics and right on social issues. A white worker should not have to vote for the anti-white Democrats just to have a shot at affordable health care, nor should a rural family have to vote for the Paul Singer funded Zionist GOP in hopes of being treated with dignity. A grounded and united movement that explicitly rejects both parties and can obtain what we want must arise from the ashes of back-stabbed Trumpists and Bernie fans.

Sounds good, Mr. Striker.

May it come to fruition.

nsa , says: November 24, 2020 at 6:16 am GMT • 4.6 days ago

The median wage in the USA in 2019 was $34,000 / year. If Trumpstein had done even one tiny little, teensy weensy, itsy bitsy thing for the under $34k working poor .he would have easily retained enough votes to keep his job. Instead, his domestic policy goals centered around taking basic health insurance away from the working poor (even during a pandemic), while giving billions away to his wall street pals, his relatives, giant corporations, and of course his yid sponsors. Example: Fed Ex paid zero income tax in 2017, 2018, 2019. Let's see how long a modern society can function when the top 0.1% are worth more than the bottom 80%.

[Nov 28, 2020] Post-2008 First World capitalism: the zombification and then definitive death of the petite-bourgeoisie:

Nov 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Nov 27 2020 13:27 utc | 107

Pushed by Pandemic, Amazon Goes on a Hiring Spree Without Equal

The First World is leaving the "sweet spot" of its capitalist development stage, marked by a relatively inflated petit-bourgeois middle class, and is reentering a proletarianization phase. Call it the reproletarianization of the First World.

Looks like Marx was right all along.

[Nov 28, 2020] What happened to Tucker Carlson's philosophy of kindness towards one another?

Nov 28, 2020 | www.unz.com

Watching the Dying Light , says: November 24, 2020 at 5:25 pm GMT • 4.1 days ago

You seem quite convinced that it was Tucker Carlson's version of events that was true concerning this phone call to Sidney Powell. You know she disputes this version. Also I read that Carlson did not make the call himself, but rather had a staffer do it.

One might be a little suspicious that perhaps a staffer put a little too much effort into getting Ms. Powell to appear on the show, and perhaps embellished or 'interpreted' the phone call out of concern for their job.

One might also consider it a bit petty and unprofessional to immediately report a rude phone call on the Carlson news program, and not once but twice.

Are we to believe that Sidney Powell is the only source who has ever been rude on a phone call with a staffer from the news media? Is it good journalism to publicly attack potential sources because they said no the first time you asked?

In my opinion it seems a bit hard to believe that Ms. Powell had a meltdown with either Carlson or a staffer on a phone call. She seems much more the type to just politely say goodbye and hang up.

But let's assume that she did have a meltdown. Given the circumstances and time crunch she's under, wouldn't a reasonable person assume she was acting badly because of stress and she probably didn't mean it?

Carlson couldn't wait longer than the next morning before he planned to publicly shame her for it? And in the middle of what must be, for her, the biggest and most important thing she's ever done?

What happened to Tucker Carlson's philosophy of kindness towards one another? And do you put any stock in the fact that so many people who watch (or watched) Tucker Carlson on a regular basis were genuinely shocked by what he did? I know I was.

Everything about this seems very strange. If a normally reasonable person like Powell made crazy sounding claims, why respond with such hostility? Does anybody remember the guy who built his own rocket so he could prove the Earth was flat? All we had to do was wait.

And as for these voting machine companies having ties to Venezuela in the past, well that's true. None other than Lou Dobbs on CNN reported this and the whole thing ended up in congressional hearings iirc.

I have no opinion about Sidney Powell's claims. She seems respectable enough to withhold judgement until she shows us what she's got. And if even a part of what she claims is true, I for one will be pretty concerned.

[Nov 28, 2020] Deplorables, or Expendables

Notable quotes:
"... The Expendables: How the Middle Class got Screwed by Globalization ..."
"... The Innovation Illusion ..."
"... The Expendables ..."
"... Napoleon Linarthatos is a writer based in New York. ..."
Nov 28, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Home / Articles / Economy / Deplorables, Or Expendables? ECONOMY Deplorables, Or Expendables?

Rubin offers some valuable, albeit well-known, critiques of globalized trade, but doesn't go far beyond that. (By momente/Shutterstock)

NOVEMBER 26, 2020

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12:01 AM

NAPOLEON LINARTHATOS

Back in 2013 a group of Apple employees decided to sue the global behemoth. Every day, after they were clocking out, they were required to go through a corporate screening where their personal belongings were examined. It was a process required and administered by Apple. But Apple did not want to pay its employees for the time it had required them to spend. It could be anywhere from 40 to 80 hours a year that an employee spent going through that process. What made Apple so confident in brazenly nickel-and-diming its geniuses?

Jeff Rubin, author of The Expendables: How the Middle Class got Screwed by Globalization , has an answer to the above question that is easily deduced from the subtitle of his book. The socio-economic arrangements produced by globalization have made labor the most flexible and plentiful resource in the economic process. The pressure on the middle class, and all that falls below it, has been so persistent and powerful, that now " only 37 percent of Americans believe their children will be better off financially than they themselves are. Only 24 percent in Canada or Australia feel the same. And in France, that figure dips to only 9 percent." And "[i]n the mid-1980s it would have taken a typical middle-income family with two children less than seven years of income to save up to buy a home; it now takes more than ten years. At the same time, housing expenditures that accounted for a quarter of most middle-class household incomes in the 1990s now account for a third ."

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

The story of globalization is engraved in the " shuttered factories across North America, the boarded-up main streets, the empty union halls." Rubin does admit that there are benefits accrued from globalization, billions have been lifted up out of poverty in what was previously known as the third world, wealth has been created, certain efficiencies have been achieved. The question for someone in the western world is how much more of a price he's willing to pay to keep the whole thing going on, especially as we have entered a phase of diminishing returns for almost all involved.

As Joel Kotkin has written, "[e]ven in Asia, there are signs of social collapse. According to a recent survey by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, half of all Korean households have experienced some form of family crisis, many involving debt, job loss, or issues relating to child or elder care." And "[i]n "classless" China, a massive class of migrant workers -- over 280 million -- inhabit a netherworld of substandard housing, unsteady work, and miserable environmental conditions, all after leaving their offspring behind in villages. These new serfs vastly outnumber the Westernized, highly educated Chinese whom most Westerners encounter. " "Rather than replicating the middle-class growth of post–World War II America and Europe, notes researcher Nan Chen, 'China appears to have skipped that stage altogether and headed straight for a model of extraordinary productivity but disproportionately distributed wealth like the contemporary United States.'"

Although Rubin concedes to the globalist side higher GDP growth, even that does not seem to be so true for the western world in the last couple decades. Per Nicholas Eberstadt, in "Our Miserable 21st Century," "[b]etween late 2000 and late 2007, per capita GDP growth averaged less than 1.5 percent per annum." "With postwar, pre-21st-century rates for the years 2000–2016, per capita GDP in America would be more than 20 percent higher than it is today."

Stagnation seems to be a more apt characterization of the situation we are in. Fredrik Erixon in his superb The Innovation Illusion , argues that "[p]roductivity growth is going south, and has been doing so for several decades." "Between 1995 and 2009, Europe's labor productivity grew by just 1 percent annually." Noting that "[t]he four factors that have made Western capitalism dull and hidebound are gray capital, corporate managerialism, globalization, and complex regulation."

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Contrary to popular belief, globalization has functioned as a substitute for innovation and growth. With globalization on the march, the western ruling class could continue to indulge in its most preferred activities, regulation and taxation, in an environment where both of these political addictions appeared sustainable. Non-western elites could perpetuate their authoritarian regimes, garnering growth and legitimacy, from the access to the western markets. Their copy-and-paste method of "innovation" from western firms would fit well with an indigenous business class composed of mostly insiders and ex-regime apparatchiks.

There are plenty of criticisms that can be laid at the feet of globalization. The issue with Rubin's book is that is does not advance very much beyond some timeworn condemnations of it. One gets the sense that the value of this book is merely in its audacity to question the conventional wisdom on the issue at hand. Rubin, who is somewhat sympathetic to Donald Trump, seems to be much closer to someone like Bernie Sanders, especially an earlier version of Sanders that dared to talk about the debilitating effects of immigration on the working class.

Like Sanders, Rubin starts to get blurry as he goes from the condemnation phase to the programmatic offers available. What exactly would be his tariffs policy, how far he would go? What would be the tradeoffs of this policy? Where we could demarcate a reasonable fair environment for the worker and industry and where we would start to create another type of a stagnation trap for the whole economy? All these would be important questions for Rubin to grapple with and would give to his criticisms more gravitas.

It would have also been of value if he had dealt more deeply with the policies of the Trump administration. On the one hand, the Trump administration cracked down on illegal and legal immigration. It also started to use tariffs and other trade measures as a way to boost industry and employment. On the other hand, it reduced personal and corporate taxes and it deregulated to the utmost degree possible. It was a kind of 'walled' laisser-faire that seemed to work until Covid-19 hit. Real household income in the U.S. increased $4,379 in 2019 over 2018. It was "more income growth in one year than in the 8 years of Obama-Biden." And during Trump's time, the lowest paid workers started not to just be making gains, but making gains faster than the wealthy. "Low-wage workers are getting bigger raises than bosses" ran a CBS News headline .

Rubin seems to view tax cuts and deregulation as another giveaway to large corporations. But these large corporations are just fine with high taxation, since they have a choice as to when and where they get taxed. Regulation is also more of a tool than a burden for them. It's a very expedient means for eliminating competitors and competition, a useful barrier to entry for any upstart innovator that would upend the industry they are in. Besides, if high taxation and regulation were a kind of antidote to globalization, then France would be in a much better shape than it appears to be. But France seems to be doing worse than anybody else. In the aforementioned poll about if their "children will be better off financially than they themselves are" France was at the bottom in the group of countries that Rubin cited. The recent events with the yellow-vests movement indicate a very deep dissatisfaction and pessimism of its middle and working class.

Moreover, there does not seem to be much hostility or even much contention between government bureaucracies and the upper echelons of the corporate world. Something that Rubin's politics and economics would necessitate. And cultural and political like-mindedness between government bureaucracies and the managerial class of large corporations is not just limited to the mutual embrace of woke politics. It seems that there is a cross pollination of a much broader set of ideas and habits between bureaucrats and the managerial class. For instance, Erixon notes that "[c]orporate managers shy away from uncertainty but turn companies into bureaucratic entities free from entrepreneurial habits. They strive to make capitalism predictable." Striving for predictability is a very bureaucratic state of mind.

In Rubin's book, missed trends like that make his perspective to feel a bit dated. There is still valuable information in The Expendables . Rubin does know a lot about international trade deals. For instance, a point that is often ignored in the press about international trade agreements is that "[i]f you're designated a "developing" country, you get to protect your own industries with tariffs that are a multiple of those that developed economies are allowed to use to protect their workers." A rule that China exploits to the utmost.

Meanwhile, Apple, after its apparent lawsuit loss on the case with its employees in California, now seems committed to another fight with the expendables of another locale. The Washington Post reported that "Apple lobbyists are trying to weaken a bill aimed at preventing forced labor in China, according to two congressional staffers familiar with the matter, highlighting the clash between its business imperatives and its official stance on human rights." "The bill aims to end the use of forced Uighur labor in the Xinjiang region of China ." The war against the expendables never ends.

Napoleon Linarthatos is a writer based in New York.

[Nov 28, 2020] In Memory of Stephen Cohen - NYU Jordan Center

Nov 28, 2020 | jordanrussiacenter.org

In Memory of Stephen Cohen All the Russias


Earlier this year, our friend and colleague Stephen Cohen passed away. His contributions to the field of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies will be felt for years to come. Professor Cohen was a historian, but his legacy extends far beyond his scholarly work. Every year, the Stephen Cohen Fellowship -- established on Professor Cohen's initiative and supported by Katrina vanden Heuvel and the Kat Foundation -- funds the graduate education for master's students in the Department of Russian & Slavic Studies at NYU. Professor Cohen has also helped enable doctoral students to conduct dissertation research in Russia through the Cohen-Tucker Fellowship .

As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States, we give thanks to Stephen Cohen for not only his work in the REEES field but for the generosity he, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and the Kat Foundation have shown to budding Russia scholars. We honor him today by publishing the testimonials of some of current and former students who have benefitted from Cohen Fellowships.

Natasha Bluth (Cohen Fellowship)

The Stephen Cohen Fellowship enabled me to continue my studies of the former Soviet Union, not only easing the financial burden of graduate school, but also providing the opportunity to merge journalistic training with area studies, engage with a wide range of scholars and regional specialists, and conduct field research in Ukraine. The support and encouragement Stephen Cohen offered at our annual fellowship alumni dinners also inspired me to pursue a PhD in sociology in order to explore post-Soviet civil society, nationalism, and gender from a social-scientific perspective.

Michael Coates (Cohen-Tucker Fellowship)

During the 2018-19 academic year, I held a Cohen-Tucker Dissertation Fellowship, which I used to fund over a year of archival research in Russia on the history of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. The fellowship allowed me to visit more than a dozen archives in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and to copy thousands of pages of original documents. Had I not been able to carry out this archival work, I would not have been able to write my dissertation. The travel that the Fellowship enabled was also personally significant to me, because I had never been to Russia before I arrived in Moscow for my research year, even though I had already been studying the country and its language for several years. It is one thing to read books about a particular place, but actually experiencing life there first-hand is quite another, and has been essential to the development of my understanding of the region. I am extremely grateful to Prof. Cohen and Ms. vanden Heuvel for their generosity in funding the next generation of Russia specialists.

John V. Walsh • a day ago

Stephen F. Cohen performed a great service in the last four years as he relentlessly refuted the great Russiagate hoax which not only distorted our political life but seriously wounded US-Russia relations for years to come. That hoax is a threat to world peace and Prof. Cohen from the very first saw through it. Both in his writings for The Nation and his near weekly conversations with John Batchelor of ABC radio rebutted it clearly, eloquently and at times with good humor. How very much he is missed.

[Nov 25, 2020] What We Know About Sidney Powell by Jeremy W. Peters

Nov 25, 2020 | www.nytimes.com

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Ms. Powell did not have much of a reputation in conservative legal circles until last year when she took on the case of Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump's first national security adviser, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. but later sought to withdraw his plea. The case became something of a cause célèbre among many Trump loyalists, who have long insisted that the president and his allies were the target of nefarious "deep state" law enforcement and intelligence officials.

Ms. Powell, a native North Carolinian who began her legal career as an assistant federal prosecutor in Texas, certainly believed that. And through her aggressive defense of Mr. Flynn -- she often used incendiary rhetoric, accusing the F.B.I. of committing "atrocities" against her client -- she became an admired figure on the right and a frequent guest on conservative radio and television programs.

... ... ...

In a statement to The New York Times earlier this year, Ms. Powell said she had long considered "prosecutorial misconduct and overreach" a problem. Conspiracies within the American government have been a preoccupation of hers for some time: In 2014 she self-published a book that purports to be a seminal work in "exposing 'the Deep State.'"

The book arose from her work in private practice, where she spent years representing defendants in the Enron financial scandal, including the accounting firm Arthur Andersen and James A. Brown, a former executive at Merrill Lynch. During that time she began to impugn the motives of one of the federal prosecutors on the case, Andrew Weissmann, who went on to be a member of the special counsel team under Robert S. Mueller III, who led the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.

... ... ...

In an interview last week on the top-rated "Rush Limbaugh Show" -- in which she spoke for nearly 20 minutes and faced no skepticism from the guest host, Mark Steyn -- Ms. Powell claimed that the voting machines in question had been designed to rig elections for the former ruler of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013. They were "so hackable a 15-year-old could do it," she said. And she cited unnamed "math experts" she had supposedly consulted who told her how an algorithm added votes for President Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s totals.

In an interview the day before on Fox Business, Ms. Powell also said the conspiracy involved "dead people" who voted "in massive numbers" -- again offering no proof -- and described how fraudulent paper ballots were also part of the scheme.

Speaking early last week to the right-wing radio host Mark Levin, who has the fourth-largest audience in talk radio, Ms. Powell said she had obtained an affidavit from someone purportedly present when the scheme was hatched by pro-Chávez forces in Venezuela to rig his elections.

Because of her involvement in the Flynn case, the pro-Trump media often presented her as an expert with unimpeachable credentials.

"Sidney Powell is no joke," declared one Breitbart article published last week, which mentioned her early career as a federal prosecutor and her work for Mr. Flynn. Mr. Limbaugh, too, told his audience last week that he seriously doubts she would be putting her credibility on the line if she hadn't uncovered serious wrongdoing.

Other Trump allies were less convinced that her claims should be taken seriously. Tucker Carlson of Fox News said last week that when he pressed Ms. Powell, she failed to produce any evidence to support the elaborate conspiracy she purported to have uncovered. His dissent was not appreciated by the president's defenders, or by Ms. Powell, who said Mr. Carlson had been "very insulting, demanding and rude" to her.

Despite initial praise from the president, who announced less than two weeks ago that she had been added to his team of "wonderful lawyers," it was never clear during her brief time with the campaign what her job was supposed to be. Her efforts on behalf of the Trump campaign appeared to be largely limited to public relations She has defended the president and attacked the integrity of the vote solely on Twitter, on television and at news conferences, acting more as a publicity agent than a lawyer.

She has said she plans to file a suit in Georgia but hasn't yet. It is unclear whether that work will continue now that the Trump campaign has cut her loose.

Jeremy W. Peters covers national politics. His other assignments in his decade at The Times have included covering the financial markets, the media, New York politics and two presidential campaigns. He is also an MSNBC contributor.

[Nov 25, 2020] Trump's Legal Battle for the Election is a Mess by John Jalsevac

This is highly relevant critique of Trump legal team. But what the author misses is the systematic campaign of promoting mail-in ballots and enabling ballot harvesting fraud, which is quite provable and which violated constitutions os several states in which it was practiced. For example in Georgia the agreement was reached between the Secretary of State and Tracy Abrams, but the secretary of State has no legal authority to change the state election laws, COVID or no COVID.
Is not interruption in vote counting qualify as brazen interference? It was never explained. Just swiped under the carpet. Does neoliberal Dems manipulations with mail-in ballots quality as "brazen interference" ? i would say yes, it does, This is replica of Pendergast Political Machine methods. Please note that I am not a Trump supporter. I actually consider both Trump and Biden to be very similar abominations.
Nov 25, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

... ... ...

There is a lot of bad reporting in the media, but a lot of the blame rests on Trump, his legal team and the magnitude, complexity and implausibility of their claims

Trump's lawyers spent a lot of time at the podium lecturing the media on their "fake" reporting on the fraud claims. No doubt, after four years of mainstream media malpractice, they have reason for making this claim.

However, the moralistic lecturing was myopic and counterproductive, simply because even honest journalists (if there are any left) have been left with their heads spinning by the quantity and magnitude of the claims the Trump administration is putting out there right now.

Any honest person approaching the fraud claims without a pre-determined position on their validity (something that is, unfortunately, all too rare) has inevitably been left feeling overwhelmed and confused. There's just too much information. There are too many conflicting claims. There isn't enough time to adjudicate each one of them properly. Not only is some degree of media skepticism to be expected, it's actually the only responsible thing to do , given the complexity and magnitude of the fraud claims, and the stakes at play.

One of the central claims being made by Trump's legal team is that there exists a vast national and global conspiracy involving a network of shadowy electronic voting companies, communist regimes, foreign dictators, vote routing, switching and deleting involving complex algorithms, and the complicity of numerous Democratic governors and election officials. The evidence proffered so far to support this claim is a single affidavit by an unnamed Venezuelan official, and a number of non-specific allegations of data anomalies on election night.

Should we -- should the media -- simply assent to these claims, based solely upon the heat of Sidney Powell's rhetoric, and a single affidavit? How seriously should we even take them, given that the clock is ticking, and it is hard to imagine the Trump team actually proving these allegations by the safe harbor deadlines, whether they are true or not? How much effort should they expend chasing every new bone Sidney Powell and MAGA surrogates throw their way?

"Dianne Feinstein's husband! George Soros! Scytl! German servers! Raids by U.S. military! Spain! Hugo Chavez! Nancy Pelosi's chief of staff! Bill Gates! Cuba!" And so on and so forth.

It's exhausting just trying to keep up. However you look at it, much of it is extraordinarily confusing and, frankly, prima facie unbelievable. Of course, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Powell could be right. But how likely is it that all her increasingly wild allegations should come together just as she has laid them out? And how surprised should we be that people outside the MAGA camp are skeptical?

3) The whole thing feels like intellectual blackmail

Rudy Giuliani complained that his team is preparing and presenting cases that would normally take months, if not years to prepare and argue in normal circumstances. The media should give them time to make their case, and wait for the evidence, he said.

But who's fault is this? The Trump administration had four years to investigate Dominion, Smartmatic, and the dangers of electronic voting in general. They could have convened bipartisan committees to investigate voter fraud and the vulnerabilities of these voting machines.

In 2016, even after he won, Trump claimed that there were millions of fraudulent votes. If he really believed that, why didn't he do something meaningful about it while he was in office? Posting about it on Twitter doesn't count.

Sidney Powell has raised some good questions about electronic voting, if only that people will readily believe wild claims of fraud using it. These questions should be pursued, however, a few days ago, most of us had never even heard of Dominion, Smartmatic and Scytl, etc. Now we're being told that we must simply believe Powell's theory that these companies stole the election. Countless MAGA followers are posting that they are absolutely sure , without the slightest shadow of a doubt, that Dominion is behind the electoral theft. This feels mad.

"She's a competent lawyer!" her supporters say. "She's brilliant, she's honest! She's a patriot!" Maybe she is all of these things, but I'm not going to make a judgment about the outcome of a presidential election, or assent to a vast, complex, and highly implausible theory, based upon such thin gruel.

I need time. I need evidence. I need witnesses and counter-witnesses, examined and cross-examined. And being told by the MAGA crowd that I must assent to the theory, and to declare certainty that an election is invalid and that a coup has been perpetrated, without any of these, feels like intellectual blackmail.

The simple fact is, this process should not be happening under the gun like this. And that's on Trump, not the media.

4) Trump's legal team is making an amateur error in its approach to convincing the public

A thousand doubts does not constitute proof. Amateur debaters often fall into the trap of trying to win a debate by listing as many arguments as they can come up with. The mistake is in thinking that people are convinced by sheer quantities of evidence.

In reality, this almost always backfires. When you pound people over the head with argument after argument, they tend to become confused, bewildered, and, in the end, resentful. They resent not having the chance to really think through any one claim or argument in detail. Inevitably they begin to suspect that you're just trying to pull a fast one on them. Usually, they're right.

Trump and his legal team have fallen into this trap. At the press conference, they made repeated reference to the "hundreds" of sworn affidavits they have gathered, and the large number of their lawsuits. However, while hundreds of affidavits may be "evidence," in the legal sense of the term, they do not amount to proof.

A journalist for The Blaze reviewed the affidavits filed in Michigan and noted that many of them do not actually contain allegations of fraud. Instead, they often have to do with circumstantial things, such as how GOP challengers felt they were being "treated" by election officials, or described "fraudulent" behavior that could plausibly be interpreted as election officials following normal procedures that GOP challengers simply failed to understand.

Maybe some of the affidavits obtained by Trump's legal team contain slam-dunk proof of widespread fraud, but if they do, they are being lost in the noise.

Expert debaters know that the best way to win an argument is to select only the very best arguments, and to focus on those. If you go for quantity of evidence, inevitably you will include low quality evidence in your arguments. Your audience, which is not so much weighing each piece of evidence (an impossible task), as whether you are the sort of person who should be trusted, will often only remember your bad or weak arguments. The result is that they will write off everything else you say, as coming from a fundamentally unreliable source.

Trump and his surrogates have raised important questions about election integrity. Unfortunately, however, they have also repeated and promoted numerous false claims. Starting on election night, Trump began retweeting every claim of fraud that came across his Twitter feed, without any effort to fact check them. Many of them have subsequently been proven to be baseless.

It should come as no surprise that those who are not already on board the Trump Train are reacting to each new claim made by Trump with deep skepticism. The tragedy is that some of these claims may be valid. However, Trump's carelessness with the truth has fatally undercut his ability to lead a productive inquiry into voter fraud.

5) The fraud 'investigation' is being conducted ass-backwards

Trump, his legal team, and MAGA supporters all began with the conviction that the election was stolen. Then, they went in search of the proof.

People are skeptical of the effort, because that's the worst possible way to go about an investigation. The point of conducting an investigation is that you do not know the answer. You have a hypothesis or a suspicion, but not proof.

The Trump admin has, from the very beginning, claimed absolute certitude. Unfortunately, this isn't just bad epistemology, it's also insanely reckless, since, by definition, the very claim calls into doubt the very existence of democracy in America.

The word " coup " is being tossed around by MAGA followers carelessly. To say that's a loaded word is an understatement. But Trump and his team have left themselves no escape route. Even if incontrovertible evidence shows up at some point that the election was not stolen, a significant portion of the MAGA crowd will always believe that it was. At this point, there is nothing that could convince them otherwise.

Clearly, having a large body of citizens who believe that their government is illegitimate comes with potentially catastrophic unforeseen consequences. Nobody in the Trump administration or MAGA crowd seems to be giving any thought to this. Damn the torpedoes.

Given that it's Trump, we can expect him to throw out outrageous claims without making any real effort to determine if they're really true. However, it is our responsibility to prioritize truth over political expediency. Whatever our political affiliations, our duty is to investigate with indifference to the outcome, rather than seeking ways to substantiate our personal preferences. When faced with a choice between truth and winning, choose truth, every time.

6) The U.S. electoral system is a mess

Rudy Giuliani has at least this much right. The evidence Giuliani and his team have collected of conflicting processes and procedures around the country, the reports of irregularities, the evidence of actual fraud, and the ongoing efforts of Democrats to push less secure voting methods, may not be sufficient to actually overturn the result. But it absolutely is sufficient to suggest that the whole system is a mess, and vulnerable to exploitation.

While I believe the odds of Trump's fraud claims leading to the election being overturned are slim (although I am keeping an open mind on the question), we can at least hope that the whole sordid episode leads to some serious and much-needed bipartisan electoral reform, so that this does not happen again.

But in the end, that's only going to happen if cooler heads prevail, and reckless rhetoric only leads the country down a dark road of further division and strife.

John Jalsevac is currently working towards a PhD in philosophy. Prior to grad school, he worked for over a decade as a journalist, editor, and pro-life activist. His previous journalism and creative writing have appeared in The Public Discourse, Gilbert! Magazine, Dappled Thing, LifeSiteNews, and others.

muzan-e 4 days ago

The "conspiracy" gets more interesting the more deeply you look into it. For instance :

A government body exists that certifies voting machines and software as being 'okay to use' by individual states. There's a voluntary aspect to this, I believe -- states can choose to ignore the certification, yeah? But that doesn't matter, because the conspiracy is about Dominion , and Dominion was certified safe.

And this means that potentially complicit in the communist/globalist/Soros conspiracy to overthrow Trump are:

* Dominion, obvs.
* Those heads of state that okayed the use of Dominion machines (possibly)
* Those members of that government body most directly responsible for repeatedly certifying Dominion products
* The laboratory (Wyle, almost always) which repeatedly tested and cleared Dominion products

And if Wyle is itself on the take from communists/globalists/Soros, shouldn't we reasonably assume that every other voting product they've tested and cleared is therefore suspect?

And if that election commission is on the take from communists/globalists/Soros, mustn't we assume that they are only certifying voting products which serve their agenda?

And should we not question those most responsible for advancing the responsible parties in that commission to their present exalted state?

And what of Wyle's owners? (National Technical Systems) Should we not be particularly concerned by their voluntary acquisition of a laboratory group that exists as a tool of communists/globalists/Soros and sways elections on their behalf?

... ... ...

kalendjay muzan-e 4 days ago

We need a public hearing all right. Like Watergate. Reminds me of when Sam Ervin said the telephone is the instrument of the devil. Wiser words I cannot think of.

John Woodard muzan-e 2 days ago

Every precinct in the United States uses a paper trail to ensure results can be audited. Every single vote cast involves a piece of paper with voter selections on it. In Georgia, where Dominion systems were used, the hand audit produced virtually identical results. That was a full hand recount. If the tally machines were switching votes, even a partial audit would pick up on that immediately.

Aurelian 4 days ago

Very good article here, and does a good job explaining why so many of us have trouble taking the claims of fraud seriously. Especially given Trump's long estrangement with truth generally, and his tendency to promote conspiracy theories, especially those which stand to benefit him if believed (see QAnon.)

The issues with electronic voting machines have been known for years, and I've seen the case made convincingly by commentators left, right, and center. I'm certainly glad to have cast a paper ballot in the last election, as everyone in my state does. Hopefully a silver lining from this mess will be the adoption of more robust paper balloting systems nationwide.

John Woodard Aurelian 2 days ago

Everybody casts a paper ballot in one way or another. In the few places that have voting machines (and I think it's very few honestly), a paper ballot is generated for auditing purposes.

Aurelian John Woodard 2 days ago • edited

Per my understanding, electronic voting machines are fairly widespread and fall into several categories. While some states do require a paper ballot to be generated for auditing purposes, there are some states like Kentucky and Indiana that have direct electronic voting without that capability. It is worth noting that none of those states are the swing states now in contention though, and that they are invariably red states.

See here: https://ballotpedia.org/Vot...

Martha Smith John Woodard 13 hours ago

My jurisdiction briefly switched to all-electronic machines, then quickly returned to the paper ballots read by optical scanning device . . . a much better system.

EyeProvidence 4 days ago • edited

"The mistake is in thinking that people are convinced by sheer quantities of evidence."
It works for the democrats, that all they ever do is 'level charges without evidence' in the MSM, and where Tucker was attempting to take Ms. Powell and it seems your on board like all the other conservatives tell us, we have to accept Biden, while we look into voting irregularities and fraud, sometime in the future [post GA's Jan 5th 2nd electronic vote steal].

EliteCommInc. EyeProvidence 4 days ago

I am going to eschew the question about Mr. Carlson and Ms Powell ----

But your observations about what works is accurate. It's a tactic that does work. It works for prosecutors How do you get 50 million people to believe the Russians actually invaded election boards and their processes across the country.

And yet, here we have vast irregularities in differing parts of the country. I think there is a case for fraud, but whether or not that is demonstrated, there is clearly a case for an audit on both machines and mail in ballots. and there absolutely needs to be an audit of votes to registered voters and no one needs to a HS diploma to comprehend that it's near impossible for all mail in ballots to be for x candidate and less than a 6th grade education to know that if you have 2000 registered voters or even a population of 2000 that the total number of votes is never going to exceed 100% -- if it does, there's serious problem.

disqus_5GSc0nKbtM EyeProvidence a day ago

What, no comment forthcoming from you about the terrible, awful, totally crooked election that happened in 2016, with millions and millions of fraudulent votes--- that Trump never looked into? In 4 years? At all?

Until he lost this election? He's been whining about how this election was going to be rigged, couldn't he have skipped a few golf games to actually look into it before it reared its ugly head and kicked him out of the White House? Sure, sure.

Scott 4 days ago • edited

No They haven't ! This thing is just to show President Trump won. And the election was fix. Everyone knows there not going to change anything.

The deep state was never going to let this to happen again. In 2016 they got caught with there thump up there ***

this time they were ready.

President Trump biggest mistake was his picks. AG Barr and Wray both big time never trampers. We the people sound nice but it's 🐂

LgVt 4 days ago

One thing that seems to have gotten lost in the fog--and that definitely got lost by this author--is that Giuliani and Powell are working on effectively two separate cases. Both are working for Trump, and both are working against Biden et al with regards to this election, but there is a clear line of demarcation between the two. Powell's focus is primarily, if not solely, on Dominion and the electronic case, while Giuliani's primary focus is on alleged physical fraud.

It makes no sense to assume that Powell's investigation should have begun four years ago, and then use that as a basis to sneer, as this author does, at Giuliani--whose investigation could not possibly have begun before November 4--for complaining about having to compress a type of investigation that typically takes years into less than a month.

I'm not sure what Powell has. Some of the anomalies she has obliquely referred to are already out there, if you look for them, and they are indeed suspicious (e.g. successive batches of votes, often 10 or more in a row, all with the exact same ratio of Biden-to-Trump votes--a statistical, if not literal, impossibility). However, it doesn't look like those would be enough to swing the election, because even in her telling, if the race had been closer, the Dominion irregularities would not have been discovered at all. The electronic interference was significant, but it wasn't what made the difference.

The meat of this case, with the potential to flip the results, lies with old fashioned physical fraud--ballot-manufacturing and box-stuffing--and Giuliani's mad scramble to find enough evidence in time.

My gut says he won't make it.

There are very strong indications that what Giuliani and the Trump team suspect did indeed happen. Most notable is the Democrats' brazen interference with GOP poll-watchers in multiple states; it is inexplicable if they did not have something to hide. But by the same token, that very interference successfully hid whatever it was that they did, and because of that, they have already gotten away with it--the evidence that Giuliani needs is gone forever.

The room is filled with smoke, but the fire has already been extinguished--and without the fire, Trump can't win.

Kent 4 days ago

"The mistake is in thinking that people are convinced by sheer quantities of evidence."

Evidence, philosophically, is something that is true. If I have an apple in my hand and I reach out and drop it, I can truthfully tell you that it will fall towards the ground. It is evidence of the existence of gravity. I can't see gravity. But I can see the apple fall (and anything else I drop). So can everyone in the world.

An affidavit is not evidence. It is a statement that someone is claiming is true. The statement may or may not be true. So a lot of affidavits is not a "sheer quantity of evidence". It's not evidence at all. Trump supporters need to understand that. And this is why Trump continues to have these court cases thrown out: he is not presenting any real evidence of fraud. Why? Because there isn't any.

REM Kent 4 days ago

You've got this wrong because your definition of evidence is wrong. An affidavit IS evidence.The truthfullness or importance of it is something decided in court. It is evidence just much as a fingerprint at a crime scene is evidence. The relevance of the fingerprint evidence still has to be determined in court.

eddie parolini 4 days ago

What's most obvious to me is that the lawyers making these far-fetched claims didn't themselves believe the claims. The effort was geared to flood the zone, so to speak, to create confusion and doubt resulting in state legislatures stepping in to settle electoral vote allocations.
Sowing doubt this way might be acceptable in criminal court, where defense lawyers are trying to establish reasonable doubt, however, here the objective should be to determine what happened, and not inventing things that might have happened.

Soros, Chavez, Spain and communists? I believe the term is "jumping the shark."

Adriana Pena eddie parolini 3 days ago

Those lawyers risk being charged with barratry. And it could cost them their licenses.

Miles R. 4 days ago

Mr. Jalsevac confuses two different facts under heading no. 6, "The U.S. electoral system is a mess." (1) The US electoral system is not a genuine system at all but an aggregate of electoral systems that vary by state and even by county. (2) Some of these systems are untrustworthy. It is clear that the second fact is cause for concern and in need of remedy. It is not so clear that the first one is. The diversity of electoral systems is a feature that contributes to the difficulty of manipulating national electoral results. It is the chief reason why the Trump team has had to resort to grotesque conspiracistic fantasies to maintain its claim that Trump is the legitimate winner.

Carlo Cristofori 4 days ago

"Durable, hand marked paper ballots must be established as the national standard for democratic elections in the United States. While using paper may sound antiquated, the consensus among election security experts is that nothing else provides the needed reliability,security, and transparency. Durable, voter marked paper ballots are appropriate technology for public elections....Hand Counted Paper Ballots are considered the 'Gold Standard' of democratic elections" ~ National Election Defense Coalition https://www.electiondefense...

Feral Finster Yourcenar 4 days ago • edited

Are there any electronic voting machines in Team D-controlled states? How did they get there? Did they sneak in across the border? Which political party held the presidency from 2008-2016? Were they pushing relentlessly for paper ballots, hand counted in public? For that matter, following the 2016 election, I heard lots of conspiracy theory talk from Team D, but little in the way advocating for paper ballots, hand-counted in public.

The Senate report was long on words, light on specifics. Great, if continuing a new cold war is your objective. Note that the House did not impeach on that basis, after two years and change of promising russiagate bombshells that never came.

marku52 Feral Finster 4 days ago

Both parties are in favor of hackable machines when they can get their hands on them. Neither advocates for clearly transparent elections.

gnt Feral Finster 4 days ago

According to this article, there are 8 states still using voting machines that produce no paper trail. It's not a long article, but I extracted this list:

"eight states that will use some form of paperless voting in 2020: Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky and New Jersey. "

https://thehill.com/policy/...

gnt 4 days ago

There have been Democrats complaining about electronic voting machines for at least the last 20 years. You're a bit late to the party, but you're welcome to join. Our democracy works best when citizens are willing to work together toward goals on which they agree, regardless of whether or not they agree on all goals.

I would also be glad to see bipartisan electoral reform, but only if includes measures taken to protect votes before the actual voting starts. Some of the voter suppression measures we.ve seen in the last few years are:
- Purging of voter rolls near an election to keep voters from having a chance to vote
- Implementing postal procedures to reduce the speed of mail delivery to make it more difficult to vote by mail
- Removing mail sorting machines and post office drop boxes to make it more difficult to vote by mail
- Reducing the number of polling sites in areas populated by the other political party to complicate voting in person
- Rejecting mailed in ballots because trivial differences in the signature, such as a missing middle initial.

All of the Republican handwringing about "voter fraud" in the election seems to boil down to complaints that the judges stopped their efforts to steal the election. Some of that gets dressed up with pontification about the importance of the credibility of the election. The credibility of an election is supremely important, but voter suppression damages that credibility as much as voter fraud.

gnt 4 days ago

I noticed you did not mention the Ramsland affidavit in your discussion of the competence of Trump's legal team. The affidavit attempts to identify areas in Michigan in which more votes were cast than the number of registered voters. Unfortunately, all the examples provided were in Minnesota. That does not suggest thorough research. In addition, the areas listed in the affidavit tend to be in very Republican areas of Minnesota, suggesting that any voter fraud may be as likely to be Republican as it is to be Democratic.

Mark Thomason 3 days ago

"Keeping copies of the physical ballots does nothing to assuage these concerns"

I disagree. Here in Michigan we do regular hand checks of randomly chosen scanners, and of all of them if any problem arises. It has been remarkably accurate in my town.

The opposite of such scanning is prolonged counting, by fallible humans some of them partisan and fighting with other partisans. I don't see advantage there.

But yes, hacking of any electronic device is a monster problem, and must be addressed by regular and randomized physical confirmation, just as is done with any quality control issue.

Annie from Alaska Mark Thomason 3 days ago

To be effective against fraud the count needs to be compelled by law and done on a truly random sampling of ballots until statistical near-certainty of the result through hand-counting alone is achieved, falling back to a count of all ballots if the election is close.

Optional procedures executed in creative ways by goofy partisans is what "regular hand checks" sounds like to me, though I may be wrong.

I agree it's not worthless to save the ballots, and I'd even agree with you far enough to disagree with the author and say it's possible to design a good manual-check procedure. But I read what he said as a simplification of the truth: in 2016 there was so much sillyness in the law and the implementation of recount procedures that it'd be better if the machines weren't there at all, and I doubt that's changed.

Mark Thomason Annie from Alaska 3 days ago

When it is close, we by law have an automatic 100% recount of machine scanned ballots by hand. That is what was done in 2016. That was discontinued by agreement of both political parties after the initial round of those counts showed zero error. Zero. By agreement. Thus, it can be done. But you are correct about the sampling idea, and the need for uniform enforceable law on the matter.

Johnson 3 days ago

Now we're being told that we must simply believe Powell's theory that these companies stole the election.

No, you must either do your own investigating to try and ascertain the truth, (which NO media outlet seems to be doing) or keep an open mind that Powell will be able to prove what she says. Powell is not some two-bit lawyer. She's a seasoned federal prosecutor putting a lot on the line in making these claims. Grant her a modicum of respect in entertaining the possibility that she can back up what she says.

Also, the Trump campaign has filed exactly 3, and now 4 lawsuits - not 30-something as is continually and falsely reported and regurgitated by the media. The other lawsuits are by supporters and allies, but not Trump's lawyers. Yes, it's hard to keep up, but YOUR JOB is to at least try. Thank you.

John Seiler 3 days ago

I suggest young Master Jalsevac spend a couple of years living in one of our fine major cities to see how things really are run outside of political philosophy books.

Thomas Storck 3 days ago

One of the oddest things about this is that in the past, particularly in 2004, many Democrats charged that the Republicans had stolen the election, particularly in Ohio. Google: 2004 election stolen. You will find a lot of hits. Does anyone remember Diebold voting machines? Are they still in use? Were they manipulated on behalf of Republicans, then or later? I have no idea. But I want to make a few points: 1. Liberals have at times complained loudly about stolen elections and the ease of manipulating electronic results by various Republican-connected people. 2. Whether these were true or not have they ever been sufficiently investigated? 3. Why, now is it only a vast liberal conspiracy that is alleged to exist, and not perhaps the still existing conservative conspiracy from 2004? In November 2005 Mother Jones reviewed a book, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too

Woland Thomas Storck 3 days ago

The voting machine division of Diebold was taken over by Dominion Voting Systems. That's the easiest conspiracy theory in history. The real question, if you want to believe, is why the Republicans sold their election-stealer to the Democrats.

KevinS 3 days ago • edited

The Judge's decision in the PA case Rudy "argued." He is a absolute disgrace!

The full decision is here:

https://www.courtlistener.c...

This conclusion:

"In other words, Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens.

That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. At bottom, Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Therefore, I grant Defendants' motions and dismiss Plaintiffs' action with prejudice."

Robert Gardner 3 days ago

You know, this kind of reasonable and thoughtful writing is why, as a liberal, I like coming over here to the dark side of town to see what's going on. Even while struggling to present an open mind, he admits to being buried in the silliness of it all. A good read. Not surprised to see all these calls for crucifixion in the comments.

Hannibal Barca Robert Gardner 3 days ago

You know, this kind of reasonable and thoughtful writing .......

It is neither reasonable or thoughtful. It pretends to be condemning the defense while pretending that they would otherwise have a case. And he is refusing to acknowledge that the why Trump has to turn to Rudy - his last resort - is because the reputable lawyers he had on his team are refusing to make bogus claims in court; to be fair, so does Rudy, but he is willing to make them to the press and they are not.

Even while struggling to present an open mind, he admits to being buried in the silliness of it all.

You are doing what Liberals so often do. They are so hungry for a Republican who is not calling them names and willing to admit that Trump is at fault, that they completely miss the point that the "admission" is trying to make. When Comey admitted that Hillary Clinton omitted no indictable offense, they praised him for his "fairness". But he was not being fair at all. He would have to be an evil crook to indict the nominee of one of our major parties when he knew she could not be convicted. But he broke every rule of propriety and launched into a condemnation that handed Trump what he needed to win the election. So this writer admitted that Trump is making no case . So what? You seem to have missed the fact that he is falsely claiming that Trump does have case to make. And that claim is utterly baseless!

I am not a partisan. I detest political parties. But I also detest seeing partisans complimented for being non-partisan for simply not being on the raving extreme of their party. It lowers the standard of what it beings to be non-partisan. Non-partisan means to make judgements consistently on principle, applying the same standards to everyone. I expect that many Republicans will read my post and conclude that I am being partisan - because that is taken nowadays to mean "condemns my party". But I get accused just as often by Democrats to being a Republican, so that is alright with me. But in so far as this particular quarrel is concerned, President Trump has no case at all. The Pennsylvania elections were run be declared Republicans. Prominent Republicans, and they gave both Republican Senators more votes. They counted the legal votes as they were cast. They ran a fair, honest and honorable election!

Robert Gardner Hannibal Barca 3 days ago

Thanks for the magnificent reply, 414 words, all thoughtful. You may have me there in your sterner criticism of Rod's equivocation about Trump, but consider the audience, after all. As for being a liberal hungry for a conservative who is not an asshole, guilty as charged. You make a good point that Rod still seems still to yearn for Trump to have a case to make and that is true, but I think Rod is fairly conflicted in this and other conundrums conservatives must find themselves as the whole enterprise sinks into hopelessness and tawdry hopelessness at that. It is a hard row to hoe, after all. I never said he was non-partisan, just a poor conservative religious guy trying to make his way in the difficult world while continuing to try to be a decent man. It is what is endearing about his writing to me sometimes. But I thank you for this response, it shows both feeling and intelligence.

John Woodard Robert Gardner 2 days ago

This is not the dark side. There are way darker places than TAC.

[Nov 25, 2020] Mark Steyn Interviews Sidney Powell on Rush Limbaugh Show - The Last Refuge

Nov 25, 2020 | theconservativetreehouse.com

David Vicknair , November 18, 2020 at 12:12 am

Unfortunately IMHO, the Kraken was either a careless misspeak or a bluff to shake the trees to see if a whistleblower would fall out. If the later, it failed. If the former, I am inclined to give Sidney a break. She has done yeoman's work for Flynn. And so the Kraken seems destined to remain a creature of Scandinavian lore and Hollywood movies. I wish it were not so. The Dominion software apparently is easily hacked and allows votes to be directly manipulated without a trace. Hard to make a case without an audit trail. I wonder whether the outcry from MAGA supporters will be sufficient to encourage states to choose a more secure vendor or will Dominion still be in widespread use during the midterms? Kemp, Raffensberger and company should be ridden out of GA on a rail after a good tar and feathering. Other states have their own corrupt actors who should receive the same consideration. They all have sold us out -- if the Dems take the Senate, even to slavery under socialism -- for 30 pieces of silver. As for Kemp and Raffensberger, in a different age I might have suggested an appointment with a high, sturdy branch in one of GA's many 100 plus years old live oaks.

Maximus-Cassius , November 18, 2020 at 9:50 am

"Releasing the Kraken" would be Trump invoking BOTH the Insurrection Act AND his 2018 EO protecting against foreign intervention in our elections.

Will it happe? Who knows, but if Trump is to survive, IMO, that is his ONLY card left to play.

President-Elect TwoLaine , November 17, 2020 at 9:33 pm

It's going to be a bloodbath, on all levels.

President-Elect TwoLaine , November 17, 2020 at 10:23 pm

As I listened to Lin's interview today I tho't that there must be something in the Southern water. Both he and Sidney have that Southern drawl. Very genteel, polished and extremely intelligent.

I am a very brave soul, but I don't think I would want to go up against either of them in a court of law. 🙂

JustDoItNow , November 17, 2020 at 9:28 pm

I forget who it was, either Lou or Tucker, that ended their interview telling Sidney half jokingly to remember to lock her doors at night.
Please remember to PRAY God's protection for this wonderful woman!

Liked by 27 people

GB Bari , November 18, 2020 at 12:03 am

I have no doubt the President has put a very capable guard team around Sidney & family.

Liked by 1 person

Pvt. Idaho , November 18, 2020 at 1:37 am

It was Mark Levin who told her.

UniPartySlayer , November 17, 2020 at 9:37 pm

When are they going to lay out the case? Lin Wood and Sidney have been making serious statements. They have reputations beyond reproach. I believe them when they say they have the goods. It's like they have to get the election called for Trump or they will surely be political prisoners.

President-Elect TwoLaine , November 17, 2020 at 10:04 pm

Count on it! And DEFINITELY 2018.

IF you watch the movie "Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections"* you will see that a steal was supposed to happen in Florida that day and it got thwarted, before it got started,

PLUS, they didn't have the mail in ballot scheme in place yet to back up their theft back then. China Virus was their plandemic to make that happen, and to get the cash from the Care$ Act to get machines for everyone.

*"(2020)From voter registration to counting ballots, data security expert Harri Hursti examines how hackers can influence and disrupt the U.S. election system."

President-Elect TwoLaine , November 17, 2020 at 10:49 pm

This is the video I took it from. This is the Eric Coomer Whistleblower.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9tHeiYgErnw?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

Liked by 1 person

jessetmims , November 17, 2020 at 10:33 pm

@ Right to reply In my opinion, the Democrats SUCCESSFULLY stole JFK's election, at least one of Bill Clinton's, and BOTH of Obama's.

James Urso , November 17, 2020 at 11:03 pm

Love Sidney Powell but that interview did not give me a lot of confidence. I sure hope she has some solid evidence. Doesn't sound like she has much though. Don't have much time left.

Biggest heist in the history of the US and nothing can be done about it is sickening. Barr and Wray should be ashamed of themselves for letting something like this happen on their watch. They did nothing. Thanks to them the constitution is now worth nothing. The rights are gone. Law and order is gone. We are on our own.

How do Barr and Wray even look at themselves in the mirror?

Ospreyzone , November 18, 2020 at 6:46 am

Finally, I found out from this interview where I could send money to support this legal effort. I'm tired of the RNC doing nothing. Sidney Powell will get my direct support now.
DefendingtheRepublic.org – is the right place.

[Nov 25, 2020] Blaming It On the Billionaire - The American Conservative

Nov 25, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

According to Time : "in addressing the causes and consequences of this pandemic – and its cruelly uneven impact – the elephant in the room is extreme income inequality. How big is this elephant? A staggering $50 trillion. That is how much the upward redistribution of income has cost American workers over the past several decades." Economics as a zero sum game in other words

[Nov 23, 2020] If we assume that Venezuela is somehow connected to Dominion,that makes deploying these machines in the US a electoral crime.

Nov 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Featherless , Nov 22 2020 18:18 utc | 26

An idea just occurred to me that might explain the "Dominion machines/Venezuela" connection :

If Venezuela is widely (bipartisanly) considered "electoral fraudsters", that taints these machines.

That makes IMPLEMENTING these machines a few years later in the US a WILLFUL electoral crime.


Featherless , Nov 22 2020 19:17 utc | 35

bevin, you're missing my point.

Here's an analogy : imagine the blues and reds both agree that I am a notorious thief, even if it's only a false narrative. Then they hire me as a security guard. That would be willfully, knowingly hiring a criminal, which would be criminal, not because of the facts, but because of the logic.

Stonebird , Nov 22 2020 19:37 utc | 38

A couple of thoughts about the Venzuela gambit. Evidently Tucker Carson wanted Sydney to tell him all about the "Dominion" vote flipping in a public interview. Which would have been tantamount to giving away all the potential Republican case, and given the Democrats prior knowledge of what to expect. A no-go. Mentioning "Venezuela-Cuba" could have the effect of heading off a direct civil war if the US Dems and Repubs have a" common enemy" to blame. (Too late for Russia, China too touchy, not many other major targets). Note that Venezuela has a paper trail created at the same time as the electronic vote...

[Nov 23, 2020] Trump's legal team distances itself from Sidney Powell after she suggests that Georgia's GOP governor conspired to help Biden

Nov 23, 2020 | www.rt.com

Trump's legal team distances itself from Sidney Powell after she suggests that Georgia's GOP governor conspired to help Biden win 23 Nov, 2020 00:58 / Updated 46 minutes ago Get short URL Trump's legal team distances itself from Sidney Powell after she suggests that Georgia's GOP governor conspired to help Biden win FILE PHOTO © REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst 15 Follow RT on RT Donald Trump's top lawyers disavowed Sidney Powell just three days after she joined them at a presser to help outline the president's election-fraud allegations, and hours after she lobbed fraud allegations at Georgia's governor.

"Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own," senior Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said on Sunday in a joint statement. "She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity."

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1330638034619035655&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F507510-powell-trump-legal-team%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Giuliani and Ellis gave no explanation for the statement. Trump last week named Powell, a former federal prosecutor, among five well-known lawyers who would lead his legal team in challenging the results of this month's presidential election.

Powell was among three featured speakers when the Trump legal team held a press conference on Thursday to give an overview of its election-fraud cases in key states that the president apparently lost to Democrat rival Joe Biden.

ALSO ON RT.COM 'I'm going to RELEASE THE KRAKEN': Michael Flynn's attorney vows to expose Dem collusion behind prominent voting machine firm

Powell focused largely on accusations that Dominion voting machines and Smartmatic election software were fraudulently manipulated to award thousands of fake votes to Biden. Her allegations went deeper, involving allies of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez owning Dominion and having ties to Democrat billionaire donor George Soros.

But by Thursday night, Powell's story was being challenged by a conservative media superstar, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who said she had brushed off multiple requests to provide evidence of the Dominion-Smartmatic scheme for his show. She also was invited to be interviewed on his show, but "when we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her," Carlson said.

ALSO ON RT.COM Doubling down: Tucker claims other Trump legal team members yet to see evidence on rigged election software from Sidney Powell

Powell responded by saying she told Carlson not to contact her again because he was "very insulting, demanding and rude." She also provided him with an affidavit and referred him to a witness who could help him understand her statistical evidence. Carlson followed up the next night, saying he had heard from Trump sources, including other members of the president's legal team, who said that they hadn't seen Powell's evidence firsthand.

If Powell's allegations in the press conference seemed a little wild, her interview on Saturday night with conservative news outlet Newsmax took the case to another level. She accused Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and the state's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, of receiving financial benefits to help Biden win the state's 16 electoral votes.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1330534125997088768&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F507510-powell-trump-legal-team%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

"Georgia's probably going to be the first state I'm gonna blow up," Powell said of her planned fraud cases. "And Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it because they're in on the Dominion scam." She added that her Georgia lawsuit, which she hopes to file this week, "will be biblical."

ALSO ON RT.COM 'KrakenOnSteroids': Sydney Powell says she 'understands' Trump's lawyers distancing themselves from her, vows to fight on

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15


pogohere 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 08:17 PM

Some teams are harder to play on than others. Look at the Flynn case. The US Dep. of Justice surrendered to Powell et. al. and requested that its own case against Flynn be dismissed following the disclosure by Powell's efforts that the DOJ was withholding evidence-- a "Brady rule violation"-- of Flynn's innocence from the defense and the court. Flynn's prestigious Wa DC law firm earlier had Flynn plead guilty. The judge is holding up the dismissal of that case, against all precedent. Powell most likely isn't finished. Neither is The Donald.
GoldMorgsCom 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 08:31 PM
Giuliani and Ellis intimidated and gearing down? Powell least nervous at the presentation. Usually fraud by (voting)computers escapes the possibility of external proof. But a peculiarity in the Michigan-elections enabled it. See on the site vashiva (Shiva) MIT PhD Analysis of Michigan Votes Reveals Unfortunate Truth of U.S. Voting Systems. Its systematic fraud, save screenshots. Steven J. Miller Ph.D. published his testimony, that about 50'000 mail-in ballots of republicans have disapeared in Pensylvenia and 50'000 absentee ballots have been abused by others (in favor of Biden = +50000). It makes up about 150000 to the disadvantage of Trump in PA. Bidens surplus was about 75000. About Michigan and Pensylvenia it has been published that the number of fraud votes was sufficient for a fraud change of the outcome in favor of "the democrats". The signals are that the same happened in the other critical states . See also -- Trump lawyers allege 'MASSIVE' election fraud, point to sworn statements & efforts to threaten and silence them (VIDEO)-- 19 Nov, 2020 20:30 ( rt-search, on top at the right ) In the first ten minutes it is explained how the "democrat" bosses facilitated huge fraud with absentee ballots. In Pensylvenia 682'000 have been accepted without proper checks and with destroying the evidence of fraud. It is a federal offence not to store all election records (scans), even not collecting them, such as besiding mail-in envelopes and not checking them before opening them.
JingsGeordie 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 08:18 PM
Disavows? That's twisting the information (edit - they've now changed it to 'distances') From Gen. Flynn's twitter feed - ".@SidneyPowell1 has been suspended from Twitter for 12 hours. She understands the WH press release & agrees with it. She is staying the course to prove the massive deliberate election fraud that robbed #WeThePeople of our votes for President Trump & other Republican candidates."
Thesheperd666 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:02 PM
Trump fired Sidney Powell ? That is a huge mistake and might coast him the presidency. Trumps team looks weak now ! Sidney look more confident and much more calmer than Rudy Giuliani. I really don't trust Rudy as much as Sidney, wondering if they are afraid of spoiling the Republic party before the 12th amendment goes to the house for votes ? Either side your on this makes Trumps team look bad, and are starting to make up stories. I think Trump did win by a landslide and this years vote was stolen from the US citizens. Demarcates can breath a little more easier now that Sidney is gone, she was the strongest one on the team. Trump needs more Sidney Powell's not less, I don't trust Rudy nor do I think he has what it takes to win. Trump needs better Lawyers, Rudy is just a celebrity lawyer that will keep his image no matter what ! Trump needs tigers not mice !
anastasia265 3 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:27 PM
It's not true. She was never a part of that team and had her own funding site. Their strategy was to keep the two matters separate
J_P_Franklin 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 08:49 PM
Majority of Republicans are and have conspired against Trump since 2016. America First Trumpism is the opposite of Republican open borders/free trade treason.
GoldMorgsCom 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:03 PM
Peculiar is that the German chamber of commerce does not reveal any registration of the Dominions, neither of Smartmatic neither of Scytl neither of Amazone. These have not registrated or their registrations are being hidden on request. So who's prosecution by the German state prosecutors is to be requested?
Gerald Newton 2 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 10:56 PM
Sidney Powell has not released her evidence yet but it is coming. She has an impressive record and probably will crush much of the federal justice system. That is what she does. Read her book, Licensed to Lie. It is about the way federal prosecutors lie to prosecute like they did to Senator Stevens of Alaska.
Swanster6450 3 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:56 PM
I guess Sidney Powell is finding what happens to people from outside the political loop when they seek to stick their nose in and point out a few inconsistencies. Chucked under a bus is the usual outcome. Julian Assange is also finding out the same thing and, incidentally, so too is Donald Trump. All shafted and all chucked under a bus for pointing out a few inconsistencies.
RTreaderCaribb 3 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:56 PM
I have one question and one question only: why would Sydney Powell who seems to be very bright and a good lawyer say something of which she would know will be exposed only in less than 14 days to be totally untrue? This makes no sense at all. And so I think we all should pray that this woman does not end up like Jeffrey Epstein. We should take our time. 14 days are nothing in comparison to the endless work she has to put in . And if she cant show any fact for her allegations then we can maybe say something went wrong with her. But right now let this woman work. All this prejudgment in the public court is irritating to me. And if Sidney Powell did the same then yes, she would be irritating to me too. And for Trump: If he can prove voter fraud then he should go to the supreme court. If he cant then at some point he must concede. I guess the latest is December 14th and until then he should just figure out what it is. That is his legal right. And for the American people: if you were so stupid to vote for Biden then please bear the consequences thereof because you will go down the tubes. The man is not well in his head.
allan Kaplan 3 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:43 PM
Sidney Powell's stamina, her defiance and her antipathy is so real that those who have faced injustice by the hands of the powerful know what it takes to get such bullies sweating. The house of cards of the Democrat commies will come tumbling down once Powell gets to the podium of naming names, dates, places, and their coconspirators et al. I love her tenacity, determination, perseverance and her unflinching boldness that most of the dems are sweating about! Thank you Ms. Powell for a great American tradition and go full speed... the dissenting maverick you are!
GoldMorgsCom 3 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:27 PM
They are so scared that the president Trump will conduct the great cleansing, to start with removing the authority on the dollar from the Federal Reserve to the usa federal state of the people. They are already blocking the president Trump during four years to keep him from that. They know they can now only keep the president Trump from the great cleansing by removing him from office. They will do more than the high treason of the fraud against the federal elections, to remove the president Trump from office. Eventually they will detonate a smuggled-in nuclear bomb and allegate Russia or fire a missile with a nuclear bomb from an unindentified submarine and allegate Russia. You believe the spread of Covid-19 this year was a coincidense? If Russia is being attacked any more (with allegations) it is a good reason for conducting the great cleansing in Russia. Those probably sly covered Khodorovski-types who are pressing forward (exports of) GMM-injections "against Covid-19" are probably backstabbing Russia; catastrophic future compensation claims on Russia and confiscation of all export-incomes. This is a good reason for conducting the great cleansing out of Russia of all Khodorovski-types. We hope that the reorganized government of Russia will cleanse out all Khodorovski-types, no matter the president Trump will continue office and conduct the great cleansing in the usa or not.
Marlin1091 12 minutes ago 23 Nov, 2020 01:06 AM
Google did and is helping biden. That is why I don't use google any more, I use Yandex and for fackrok I use vk

[Nov 22, 2020] Sidney Powell has a tighrope to walk. Her opponent is not the opposing campaign of Dem hacks. Her opponent is CIA. CIA stuffed all those ballots.

Nov 22, 2020 | www.unz.com

Wally , says: Next New Comment November 22, 2020 at 12:04 am GMT • 18.6 hours ago

@Brett Redmayne-Titley dney-powell-staggering-evidence-of-vote-fraud-dominion-machines-engineered-by-china-venezuela-cuba/
Trump Lawyer Sidney Powell Responds to Tucker Carlson: 'He Was Insulting, Demanding and Rude' : https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/11/20/trump-lawyer-sidney-powell-responds-to-tucker-carlson-he-was-insulting-demanding-and-rude/#
includes:

and more Powell interviews:

https://youtu.be/F5vndAmMqAM

anonymous [379] Disclaimer , says: Next New Comment November 22, 2020 at 12:20 am GMT • 18.4 hours ago

BRT 207, agreed that the interview was less than cathartic, but Sidney has a tighrope to walk. Her opponent is not the opposing campaign of Dem hacks. Her opponent is CIA. CIA stuffed all those ballots. Unfortunately for Sidney, in US law and regulation, CIA crime is secret. The perps are secret under the IIPA. The facts are secret under the operational files exemption. The law is secret under COG procedures. Flynn explained the birds and bees to her. Remember DIA is JFK's creation.

Now Sidney has to find a way to puke up evidence of CIA crime in court.

CIA ratfucked Chavez with their electoral malware, albeit ineffectually.

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06CARACAS2063_a.html (per that cheeky monkey PCR)

CIA put their Venezuelan proprietary through a couple of sheepdippings and turned it on Trump. Just like they used it on Kerry. Just like they do whenever you vote for the wrong guy. Honnête homme Hopsicker, offered a lifetime of hookers and blow to shut up, has the most synoptic take:

https://www.madcowprod.com/2020/11/15/short-history-election-fraud/

This is transnational organized crime by CIA. Sidney has to call CIA agents under oath. She has to protect them from DO's murderers. She has to explode everything you think about your bullshit fake democracy. I don't know if she can do it but I hope she can.

[Nov 22, 2020] Government-Funded Scientists Laid the Groundwork for Billion-Dollar Vaccines -

Nov 22, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

By Arthur Allen, editor for California Healthline, joined Kaiser Health News in April 2020 after six years at Politico, where he created, edited and wrote for the first health IT-focused news team. Previously, he was a freelance writer for publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Lingua Franca magazine, The New Republic, Slate and Salon. Earlier in his career, he worked for The Associated Press for 13 years, including stints as a correspondent based in El Salvador, Mexico and Germany. He is the author of the books "V Kaiser Health News. accine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver" (W.W. Norton, 2007); "Ripe: The Search for the Perfect Tomato" (Counterpoint Press, 2010) and "The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl" (W.W. Norton, 2014). Originally published at Kaiser Health News Kaiser Health News .

When he started researching a troublesome childhood infection nearly four decades ago, virologist Dr. Barney Graham , then at Vanderbilt University, had no inkling his federally funded work might be key to deliverance from a global pandemic.

Yet nearly all the vaccines advancing toward possible FDA approval this fall or winter are based on a design developed by Graham and his colleagues, a concept that emerged from a scientific quest to understand a disastrous 1966 vaccine trial.

Basic research conducted by Graham and others at the National Institutes of Health, Defense Department and federally funded academic laboratories has been the essential ingredient in the rapid development of vaccines in response to COVID-19. The government has poured an additional $10.5 billion into vaccine companies since the pandemic began to accelerate the delivery of their products.

The Moderna vaccine, whose remarkable effectiveness in a late-stage trial was announced Monday morning, emerged directly out of a partnership between Moderna and Graham's NIH laboratory.

Coronavirus vaccines are likely to be worth billions to the drug industry if they prove safe and effective. As many as 14 billion vaccines would be required to immunize everyone in the world against COVID-19. If, as many scientists anticipate, vaccine-produced immunity wanes, billions more doses could be sold as booster shots in years to come. And the technology and production laboratories seeded with the help of all this federal largesse could give rise to other profitable vaccines and drugs.

The vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, which are likely to be the first to win FDA approval, in particular rely heavily on two fundamental discoveries that emerged from federally funded research: the viral protein designed by Graham and his colleagues, and the concept of RNA modification, first developed by Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania. In fact, Moderna's founders in 2010 named the company after this concept: "Modified" + "RNA" = Moderna, according to co-founder Robert Langer .

"This is the people's vaccine," said corporate critic Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines program. "Federal scientists helped invent it and taxpayers are funding its development. It should belong to humanity."

Moderna, through spokesperson Ray Jordan, acknowledged its partnership with NIH throughout the COVID-19 development process and earlier. Pfizer spokesperson Jerica Pitts noted the company had not received development and manufacturing support from the U.S. government, unlike Moderna and other companies.

The idea of creating a vaccine with messenger RNA, or mRNA -- the substance that converts DNA into proteins -- goes back decades. Early efforts to create mRNA vaccines failed, however, because the raw RNA was destroyed before it could generate the desired response. Our innate immune systems evolved to kill RNA strands because that's what many viruses are.

Karikó came up with the idea of modifying the elements of RNA to enable it to slip past the immune system undetected. The modifications she and Weissman developed allowed RNA to become a promising delivery system for both vaccines and drugs. To be sure, their work was enhanced by scientists at Moderna, BioNTech and other laboratories over the past decade.

Another key element in the mRNA vaccine is the lipid nanoparticle -- a tiny, ingeniously designed bit of fat that encloses the RNA in a sort of invisibility cloak, ferrying it safely through the blood and into cells and then dissolving, thereby allowing the RNA to do its work of coding a protein that will serve as the vaccine's main active ingredient. The idea of enclosing drugs or vaccines in lipid nanoparticles arose first in the 1960s and was developed by Langer and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and various academic and industry laboratories.

Karikó began investigating RNA in 1978 in her native Hungary and wrote her first NIH grant proposal to use mRNA as a therapeutic in 1989. She and Weissman achieved successes starting in 2004, but the path to recognition was often discouraging.

"I keep writing and doing experiments, things are getting better and better, but I never get any money for the work," she recalled in an interview. "The critics said it will never be a drug. When I did these discoveries, my salary was lower than the technicians working next to me."

Eventually, the University of Pennsylvania sublicensed the patent to Cellscript, a biotech company in Wisconsin, much to the dismay of Weissman and Karikó, who had started their own company to try to commercialize the discovery. Moderna and BioNTech later would each pay $75 million to Cellscript for the RNA modification patent, Karikó said. Though unhappy with her treatment at Penn, she remained there until 2013 -- partly because her daughter, Susan Francia, was making a name for herself on the school's rowing team. Francia would go on to win two Olympic gold medals in the sport. Karikó is now a senior officer at BioNTech.

In addition to RNA modification and the lipid nanoparticle, the third key contribution to the mRNA vaccines -- as well as those made by Novavax, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson -- - is the bioengineered protein developed by Graham and his collaborators . It has proved in tests so far to elicit an immune response that could prevent the virus from causing infections and disease.

The protein design was based on the observation that so-called fusion proteins -- the pieces of the virus that enable it to invade a cell -- are shape-shifters, presenting different surfaces to the immune system after the virus fuses with and infects cells. Graham and his colleagues learned that antibodies against the post-fusion protein are far less effective at stopping an infection.

The discovery arose in part through Graham's studies of a 54-year-old tragedy -- the failed 1966 trial of an NIH vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. In a clinical trial, not only did that vaccine fail to protect against the common childhood disease, but most of the 21 children who received it were hospitalized with acute allergic reactions, and two died .

About a decade ago, Graham, now deputy director of NIH's Vaccine Research Center, took a new stab at the RSV problem with a postdoctoral fellow, Jason McLellan. After isolating and obtaining three-dimensional models of the RSV's fusion protein, they worked with Chinese scientists to identify an appropriate neutralizing antibody against it.

"We were sitting in Xiamen, China, when Jason got the first image up on his laptop, and I was like, oh my God, it's coming together," Graham recalled. The prefusion antibodies they discovered were 16 times more potent than the post-fusion form contained in the faulty 1960s vaccine.

Two 2013 papers the team published in Science earned them a runner-up prize in the prestigious journal's Breakthrough of the Year award. Their papers, which showed it was possible to plan and create a vaccine at the microscopic structural level, set the NIH's Vaccine Research Center on a path toward creating a generalizable, rapid way to design vaccines against emerging pandemic viruses, Graham said.

In 2016, Graham, McLellan and other scientists, including Andrew Ward at the Scripps Research Institute, advanced their concept further by publishing the prefusion structure of a coronavirus that causes the common cold and a patent was filed for its design by NIH, Scripps and Dartmouth -- where McLellan had set up his own lab. NIH and the University of Texas -- where McLellan now works -- filed an additional patent this year for a similar design change in the virus that causes COVID-19.

Graham's NIH lab, meanwhile, had started working with Moderna in 2017 to design a rapid manufacturing system for vaccines. In January, they were preparing a demonstration project, a clinical trial to test whether Graham's protein design and Moderna's mRNA platform could be used to create a vaccine against Nipah, a deadly virus spread by bats in Asia.

Their plans changed rapidly when they learned on Jan. 7 that the epidemic of respiratory disease in China was being caused by a coronavirus.

"We agreed immediately that the demonstration project would focus on this virus" instead of Nipah, Graham said. Moderna produced a vaccine within six weeks. The first patient was vaccinated in an NIH-led clinical study on March 16; early results from Moderna's 30,000-volunteer late-stage trial showed it was nearly 95% effective at preventing COVID-19.

Although other scientists have advanced proposals for what may be even more potent vaccine antigens , Graham is confident that carefully designed vaccines using nucleic acids like RNA reflect the future of new vaccines. Already, two major drug companies are doing advanced clinical trials for RSV vaccines based on the designs his lab discovered, he said.

In a larger sense, the pandemic could be the event that paves the way for better, perhaps cheaper and more plentiful vaccines.

"It's a silver lining, but I think we are definitely pushing forward the way everyone is thinking about vaccines," said Michael Farzan , chair of the department of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research's Florida campus. "Certain techniques that have been waiting in the wings, under development but never achieving the kind of funding they needed for major tests, will finally get their chance to shine."

Under a 1980 law, the NIH will obtain no money from the coronavirus vaccine patent. How much money will eventually go to the discoverers or their institutions isn't clear. Any existing licensing agreements haven't been publicized; patent disputes among some of the companies will likely last years. HHS' big contracts with the vaccine companies are not transparent, and Freedom of Information Act requests have been slow-walked and heavily redacted, said Duke University law professor Arti Rai.

Some basic scientists involved in the enterprise seem to accept the potentially lopsided financial rewards.

"Having public-private partnerships is how things get done," Graham said. "During this crisis, everything is focused on how can we do the best we can as fast as we can for the public health. All this other stuff is going to have to be figured out later."

"It's not a good look to become extremely wealthy off a pandemic," McLellan said, noting the big stock sales by some vaccine company executives after they received hundreds of millions of dollars in government assistance. Still, "the companies should be able to make some money."

For Graham, the lesson of the coronavirus vaccine response is that a few billion dollars a year spent on additional basic research could prevent a thousand times as much loss in death, illness and economic destruction.

"Basic research informs what we do, and planning and preparedness can make such a difference in how we get ahead of these epidemics," he said.


Larry , November 18, 2020 at 7:21 am

I appreciate the recent re-look at the nexus of public investment funding private profit in the pharma space. I'm not old enough to recall how things were done prior to the 1980s with regards to promising academic discoveries getting commercialized in the United States. There is also a glaring omission here in that there are mechanisms for the Federal Government to take control of patents and price fix in an emergency, but it's clear that was never going to happen and was never whispered in the lead up to operation Warp Speed. Pfizer keeps pointing out they never took government money, which is a set up for them to set the price at whatever they want while executives line their pockets.

The second point, that is not a focus of the article, is that these technologies are still completely unproven. I am optimistic about the early results, though would feel better if they were published in quality journals and not press releases. We simply don't know anything about long term affects of dosing with this technology. These articles make it sound like we're out of the woods and these vaccines are here to stay, but what if there are high percentages of people that get major side effects? We still have no idea.

Code Name D , November 18, 2020 at 7:53 am

But Joe Biden is now president. So of course the vaccines will work.

John Hacker , November 18, 2020 at 10:51 am

I was just thinking about that this morning. I thought about the little boy who cried wolf. If Don had not tarnished his (??where-with-all??) by not leading. He still be the Prez.

WobblyTelomeres , November 18, 2020 at 7:54 am

So, Larry, what would it take to convince you? A million volunteers? A billion? 2 years? 5 years?

trhys , November 18, 2020 at 8:01 am

So, Wobbly, can I safely assume that you and your family have already volunteered for one of the trials?

WobblyTelomeres , November 18, 2020 at 8:31 am

As I have stated here, yes.

trhys , November 18, 2020 at 8:45 am

I applaud you for standing with power of your convictions. Not many have the integrity to do so. This is meant sincerely.

On the other hand I think Larry has a point. Hopefully his and my concerns will prove to be unfounded. I believe it is too soon to tell. Your question about the quantification of risk is a fair question and is difficult for the layman judge.

WobblyTelomeres , November 18, 2020 at 9:36 am

I share the concerns that have been and are voiced here. Still, there is a class aspect to it all. It seems as if this war is like every other war; the poors are sent in first. There are many, perhaps the majority of volunteers, that need the couple of hundred bucks the pharmas are offering the participants. They are the same people that line up to sell their blood plasma every week. Big business, that. So, I woke up, looked in the mirror, and told the old man there to "Suck it up, Buttercup."

And Lambert and others are right when they say our leaders should be first in line to roll up their sleeves. Just don't forget the many that have already done so.

Susan the other , November 18, 2020 at 11:21 am

It was a revelation to me that RNA vaccines had been in the works since the 60s. That makes me a little more in-favor of them. It is still frightening that this vaccine will be mandated for all medical personnel before the rest of the population. Also interesting that RNA gets greased up to slip past the enzymes(?) that destroy errant RNA I'm still trying to think how that might not be such a good thing. But you are right – it looks like it works. Extremely well in fact. But a timeline to prove it is safe? I'd say one or two generations. If this mRNA slips past the mechanisms to protect the cell from foreign RNA then it could hang around long enough to communicate itself back to the genetic DNA – it's just that they don't quite know how that process works yet. And that's scary as hell. (Lamarck's Signature). I'd say maybe we should not give this vaccine to anyone under the age of 35 until we know more about possible negatives involving inheritance. Instead we should produce good medicines to treat these infections.

John Hacker , November 18, 2020 at 10:58 am

Don't we have laws for price gouging in a crisis? As for untested. Check the thread for data started compiling 1966.

BillC , November 18, 2020 at 10:54 am

Yes, we need volunteers. And they need to be fully informed. I hope you noticed this remark in yesterday's Water Cooler. Of course, we don't know that the commentor's claimed bona fides are factual, but if so, his/her take seems appropriate to me.

WobblyTelomeres , November 18, 2020 at 11:55 am

I did, and I take them at their word as to background. Valid concerns, well expressed.

Larry , November 18, 2020 at 11:58 am

The publications and a full accounting of side effects are important for a new technology like this. Traditional vaccinations are in the billions of doses at this point and quite safe. For this new technology, it's quite hard to say. The publications might bowl me over and convince me, but press releases do not.

Wes , November 18, 2020 at 3:57 pm

The Moderna study (n=45) was published in NEJM. Haven't read beyond the abstract or looked for the Pfizer study yet.

href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2022483″>

KLG , November 18, 2020 at 7:48 am

It should be noted that, so far, we have proof of effectiveness in the form of press releases that are intended to goose stock prices.

Long story, but the neoliberalization of basic biomedical science is complete. This was foreseeable upon passage of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. I remember how such science was done way back then. Scientists did science. Those without the patience and essentially self-abnegation required for that, went to work at Ciba-Geigy or Burroughs-Welcome or Merck. The system worked, more or less. At the time I was a very junior lab member, and I told my labmates that Bayh-Dole meant only that we would pay for most science (at least) twice, the first time when NIH/NSF/ACS/AHA/March of Dimes funded it and the second time when Big Pharma "bought" it and charged what a false, not free, market in research and health care would bear. They just stared at me, with stars in their eyes.

Polar Donkey , November 18, 2020 at 9:18 am

Dolly Parton invested $1 m illion in the Moderna vaccine. I can't wait till Tennessee takes down all these Nathan Bedford Forrest statues and replaces them with Dolly Parton.

rd , November 18, 2020 at 12:44 pm

Dolly Parton is a great songwriter and performer but is also a shrewd businesswoman who is hyper-focused on helping "her people" in the region where she grew up dirt poor. "Coat of Many Colors" is one of the truly great autobiographical songs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_Many_Colors_(song)

Appreciation for Dolly shows up in many interesting corners in the region. Several years ago, a newly discovered lichen in southern Appalachia was named in her honor. I never heard a comment from her on this, but she probably thought it was great. https://www.nybg.org/blogs/science-talk/2015/05/honoring-a-musical-legend-of-the-southern-appalachians/

Replacing a Nathan Bedford Forest statue with her would be a great move.

Serfs Up! , November 18, 2020 at 10:38 am

1.So if there were to be no vaccine and the virus had it's way with us, killing 1% of us, that's what, -- 3 million souls?

2. Alternatively, if there is a vaccine and everyone is vaccinated and that brings an end to the pandemic, with deaths much curtailed, but 25,000 get Guillian Barre', that's still a win right?
(Though not if you are one of the 25,000.)

3. Lastly, given their penchant for maximizing clicks and eyeballs,
how do you think the media would handle situations 1 or 2?

Trust in Public Health is easier to knock down than to build back up, especially vaccines.

As Greg Brown says, "It's a long way up but it's a short way down."

Ford Prefect , November 18, 2020 at 12:48 pm

South Dakota will be very informative on this front. It appears to be trying to drag-race herd immunity through infection before a vaccine shows up. It will probably be the control group for the statistical study of the relative efficacy on lives saved by a vaccine vs. letting the disease take its natural course. Beer appears to be the placebo vaccine of choice in South Dakota.

BrianM , November 18, 2020 at 1:25 pm

My reading of this is that even if Pfizer didn't take government money as part of the Warp Speed initiative, as a mRNA vaccine it still likely builds on the earlier work. I have no problem with pharma companies making a profit of their later work – they did do the last critical developments – but nothing for the earlier work isn't right.

AGKaiser , November 18, 2020 at 1:25 pm

We pay for it but they profit from it. Why? Why is there for profit pharma and corporate medicine to begin with? Why is there competition instead of cooperation in the production of life saving/extending and other commonly needed goods and services? The provision of pharmaceuticals and medicine are a free market failure. We are not adequately provided with what we all must have at prices we all can afford. They've failed not because of the scientists and medical practitioners who do the real work. They've failed because of the capitalist parasites that own the corporations that employ the professionals who create the products and provide the services on the ground.

Socal Rhino , November 18, 2020 at 2:07 pm

One thought unsupported by any relevant technical expertise: the delivery mechanism sounds well suited for bio weaponry given it bypasses your immune reaction to RNA.

Kris Alman , November 18, 2020 at 3:57 pm

The protein design was based on the observation that so-called fusion proteins -- the pieces of the virus that enable it to invade a cell -- are shape-shifters, presenting different surfaces to the immune system after the virus fuses with and infects cells. Graham and his colleagues learned that antibodies against the post-fusion protein are far less effective at stopping an infection.

Reminds me of this other mysterious shape-shifter: From Wikipedia:
Prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. They characterize several fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold, but the abnormal three-dimensional structure is suspected of conferring infectious properties, collapsing nearby protein molecules into the same shape. The word prion derives from "proteinaceous infectious particle".

Long-term follow-up of individuals who have received this vaccine versus their placebo compatriots is essential!

KLG , November 18, 2020 at 5:37 pm

Not likely to be similar. The "shape shifting" of the viral fusion protein means that different epitopes (i.e., different constellations of 3-D structure that elicit immune/antibody responses) of the fusion protein, which is embedded in the viral membrane envelope, are presented pre- and post-fusion. Antibodies against "post-fusion" fusion protein are unlikely to work because fusion with the host cell is the key phase of infection. But, and this is a big consideration, rushing into this is foolish, despite the rise in Big Pharma stock prices.

Fumettibrutti , November 19, 2020 at 3:40 am

COVID vaccine revelation sinks like a stone; disappears

In major media, certain stories gain traction. The trumpets keep blaring for a time before they fade.

Other stories are one-offs. A few of them strike hard. Their implications -- if anyone stops to think about them -- are powerful. Then nothing.

"Wait, aren't you going to follow up on that? Don't you see what that MEANS?"

Apparently not, because dead silence. "In other news, the governor lost his pet parakeet for an hour. His chief of staff found it taking a nap in a desk drawer "

One-offs function like teasers. You definitely want to know more, but you never get more.

Over the years, I've tried to follow up on a few. The reporter or the editor has a set of standard replies: "We didn't get much feedback." "We covered it." "It's now old news." "There wasn't anything else to find out."

Oh, but there WAS.

A few weeks ago, I ran a one-off. The analysis and commentary were mine, but the story was an opinion piece in the New York Times. The Times called it an opinion piece to soften its blow. I suspected it would disappear, and it did.

Its meaning and implication were too strong. It would be a vast embarrassment for the White House, the Warp Speed COVID vaccine program, the vaccine manufacturers, the coronavirus task force, and vaccine researchers.

And embarrassment would be just the beginning of their problem.

So here it is again. The vanished one-off, back in business:

COVID vaccine clinical trials doomed to fail; fatal design flaw; NY Times opinion piece exposes all three major clinical trials.

Peter Doshi, associate editor of the medical journal BMJ, and Eric Topol, Scripps Research professor of molecular medicine, have written a devastating NY Times opinion piece about the ongoing COVID vaccine clinical trials.

They expose the fatal flaw in the large Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna trials.

September 22, the Times: "These Coronavirus Trials Don't Answer the One Question We Need to Know"

"If you were to approve a coronavirus vaccine, would you approve one that you only knew protected people only from the most mild form of Covid-19, or one that would prevent its serious complications?"

"The answer is obvious. You would want to protect against the worst cases."

"But that's not how the companies testing three of the leading coronavirus vaccine candidates, Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, whose U.S. trial is on hold, are approaching the problem."

"According to the protocols for their studies, which they released late last week, a vaccine could meet the companies' benchmark for success if it lowered the risk of mild Covid-19, but was never shown to reduce moderate or severe forms of the disease, or the risk of hospitalization, admissions to the intensive care unit or death."

"To say a vaccine works should mean that most people no longer run the risk of getting seriously sick. That's not what these trials will determine."

This means these clinical trials are dead in the water.

The trials are designed to show effectiveness in preventing mild cases of COVID, which nobody should care about, because mild cases naturally run their course and cause no harm. THERE IS NO NEED FOR A VACCINE THAT PREVENTS MILD CASES.

There. That's the NY Times one-off. My piece analyzing it went on much longer, but you get the main thrust:

The leading vaccine clinical trials are useless, irrelevant, misleading, and deceptive.

But now, it gets much worse. Because Pfizer has just announced their vaccine is almost ready. CNBC headline, November 9: "Pfizer, BioNTech say Covid vaccine is more than 90% effective -- 'great day for science and humanity'"

And not a peep about the NY Times one-off. That's gone, as if it never was.

Trump's coronavirus task force knows the truth. Biden's new task force, waiting in the wings, knows the truth. But they don't care. They're criminals. They'd sell a car with a gas tank ready to explode to a customer with cash.

But you care, because you can read and think.

You can raise hell.

Now, in case anyone is interested in knowing WHY the major clinical trials of the COVID vaccine are designed only to prevent mild cases of COVID, I'll explain.

A vaccine maker assumes that, during the course of the clinical trial, a few of the 30,000 volunteers are going to "catch COVID-19."

They assume this because "the virus is everywhere," as far as they're concerned. So it'll drop down from the clouds and infect a few of the volunteers.

The magic number is 150. When that number of volunteers "catch COVID," everything stops. The clinical trial stops.

At this point, the vaccine maker hopes that most of the volunteers who "got infected" are in the placebo group. They didn't receive the real vaccine; they received the saltwater placebo shot.

Then the vaccine maker can proudly say, "See? The volunteers who caught COVID-19? Most of them didn't receive the vaccine. They weren't protected. The volunteers who received the real vaccine didn't catch COVID. The vaccine protected them."

Actually, the number split the vaccine makers are looking for is 50 and 100. If 50 people in the vaccine group catch COVID, and 100 in the placebo group catch COVID, the vaccine is said to be 50% effective. And that's all the vaccine maker needs to win FDA approval for the vaccine.

But wait. Let's look closer at this idea of "catching COVID." What are they really talking about? How do they define that? Claiming a volunteer in the clinical trial caught COVID adds up to what?

Does it add up to a minimal definition of COVID-19 -- a cough, or chills and fever? Or does it mean a serious case -- severe pneumonia?

Now we come to the hidden factor, the secret, the source of the whole con game.

You see, the vaccine maker starts out with 30,000 HEALTHY volunteers. So, if they waited for 150 of them to come down with severe pneumonia, a serious case of COVID, how long do you think that would take? Five years? Ten years?

The vaccine maker can't possibly wait that long.

These 150 COVID cases the vaccine maker is looking for would be mild. Just a cough. Or chills and fever. That scenario would only take a few months to develop. And face it, chills, cough, and fever aren't unique to COVID. Anyone can come down with those symptoms.

THEREFORE, THE WHOLE CLINICAL TRIAL IS DESIGNED, UP FRONT, TO FIND 150 CASES OF MILD AND MEANINGLESS AND SELF-CURING "COVID."

About which, no one cares. No one should care.

But, as we see, Pfizer is trumpeting their clinical trial of the vaccine as a landmark in human history.

And THAT'S the story of the one-off the NY Times didn't think was worth a second glance.

Because they're so stupid? No. They're not that stupid.

They're criminals.

And the government wants you to take the experimental COVID vaccine, whose "effectiveness" was designed to prevent nothing worth losing a night's sleep over.

The only worry are the adverse effects of the vaccine, about which I've written extensively. These effects include, depending on what's in the vial, a permanent alteration of your genetic makeup, or an auto-immune cascade, in which the body attacks itself.

by Jon Rappoport

November 11, 2020

Lambert Strether , November 19, 2020 at 8:45 am

Hoo boy.

[Nov 21, 2020] Sidney Powell Claims That Dominion Is 'Shredding Documents' by Cortney O'Brien

Nov 21, 2020 | townhall.com

O'Connor pushed her about her claims that computer software used in the election, particularly Dominion Voting Systems, has been tainted, and he wondered how she would prove it. For starters, Powell said that her legal team has pictures of votes being manipulated in real-time.

"It is terrifying, and it is a huge national security issue," Powell said. "Why the Department of Justice and FBI have not done something, Dominion is closing its offices and moving. No doubt they're shredding documents. God only knows what else. More than 100 Dominion people have wiped any connection with Dominion off the internet."

She also claims that they have testimony from witnesses opening military ballots and trashing them if they were for Trump, and substitute ballots were put in for Biden.

"I'm essentially staking my personal and professional reputation on these allegations, and I have no hesitation from what I've seen in doing so," she noted. "In fact, I think it would be irresponsible if not criminal of me not to come forward with it."

She also says she would LOVE for Dominion to sue her over her allegations so she can conduct civil discovery. Powell also reacted to Fox News host Tucker Carlson's criticism of her on his program on Thursday night.

You can listen to their full interview below.

[skipped]

[Nov 19, 2020] Polls are a tool of voter supression

In a free society you need to convince citizens of the government legitimacy.
Nov 19, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Tucker: We heard you. It's hard to trust anything. Here's what we know.

[Nov 19, 2020] Tucker- Big Tech s coordinated suppression amounts to a censorship cartel

Nov 19, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Tucker Carlson exposes American corporations for teaming up to censor political opponents.

Clare Breanna , 8 hours ago

Seems like they want to isolate everyone. Makes us all vulnerable.

jim hall , 8 hours ago

Electing buying is like having a Trojan horse coming into this White House


Kirk Patrick
, 5 hours ago

Republican Senators to Big Tech: "Why are you censoring Americans?" Democrat Senators to Big Tech: "Why don't you censor Americans more?"

[Nov 18, 2020] In Nevada, A Corrupt Cash-For-Votes Scheme Is Hiding In Plain Sight

Nov 18, 2020 | thefederalist.com

The mass mailing of unsolicited ballots is of course a recipe for fraud, even more so in a state where the voter rolls contain tens of thousands of people who haven't voted or updated their records in more than a decade. This is how you get dead people voting, as we reported here at The Federalist and as Tucker Carlson noted last week .

But there's another, less sensational but perhaps more consequential election scandal in Nevada that hasn't yet made headlines, even though it's been hiding in plain sight for weeks now. Under the guise of supposedly nonprofit, nonpartisan get-out-the-vote campaigns, Native American voter advocacy groups in Nevada handed out gift cards, electronics, clothing, and other items to voters in tribal areas, in many cases documenting the exchange of ballots for "prizes" on their own Facebook pages, sometimes even while wearing official Joe Biden campaign gear.

Simply put, this is illegal. Offering voters anything of value in exchange for their vote is a violation of federal election law , and in some cases punishable by up to two years in prison and as much as $10,000 in fines . That includes raffles, free food, free T-shirts, and so on.

... ... ...

There are about 60,000 eligible Native American voters in Nevada who make up about 3 percent of the state's total voting population. That's almost twice the current margin of Biden's current lead over President Trump in Nevada. So the Native American vote really does matter, it could even be decisive. It therefore matters how many Native American votes were influenced by an illegal cash-for-votes scheme, especially if funding for it came from American taxpayers via the NCAI.

It also matters because this didn't just happen in Nevada. Organizers there might have been more obvious about what they were doing, but there's evidence that similar efforts, including gift card and electronics giveaways, were undertaken in Native communities in South Dakota , Arizona , Wisconsin , Washington , Michigan , Idaho , Minnesota , and Texas .

All of this coordinated illegal activity, clearly designed to churn out votes for Biden and Democrats in tribal areas all across the country, is completely out in the open. You don't need special access or some secret source to find out about it. You just have be curious, look around, and report it.

Unfortunately, mainstream media outlets are not curious and refuse to report on any of this stuff. What's described above is an egregious and totally transparent vote-buying scheme in Nevada that was likely undertaken on a similar scale across nearly a dozen other states, but you won't read about it in The New York Times, or hear about it on CNN.

That's not because the story is unimportant, but because, for the media establishment, it's inconvenient. No wonder these groups didn't try to hide what they were doing.

[Nov 18, 2020] For 40 years, we've all been bleating the mantras of neoliberalism which were promoted as The Natural Order of Things, but are in fact just a model, one of many. And which failed in 2008

Notable quotes:
"... And, objectively, how is the neoliberal model doing? For starters, there is so much money around that doesn't know what to do with itself, that the price of money (interest rates) has never been lower. Ever. Basic supply and demand. ..."
Nov 16, 2020 | off-guardian.org

XXX, Nov 16, 2020 8:28 AM Reply to Jacques

We really need to accept that we may not know what we think we know. For 40 years, we've all been bleating the mantras of neoliberalism which were promoted as The Natural Order of Things, but are in fact just a model, one of many.

And, objectively, how is the neoliberal model doing? For starters, there is so much money around that doesn't know what to do with itself, that the price of money (interest rates) has never been lower. Ever. Basic supply and demand.

At the same time, neoliberal governments, citing lack of money, have imposed austerity measures on the working class, cutting services and support to such an extent that serious social problems have arisen.

The reason the governments are short of cash is because they have continually reduced the share of GDP that goes into public coffers.

Blind Freddy can see the resultant inequality is a highly undesirable state of affairs, generating social unrest and unstable markets. Bizarrely, it is also contrary to the most basic of economic truisms: give poor people money and they spend it right away, generating a ripple of economic activity that reverberates through the real economy.

But according to neoliberalism, what we have here is perfectly fine because it accords with the model. And then the High Priests move in and blow smoke over the whole thing with incantations of why this must be so, again according to the model, which they themselves drew up to coordinate the way we do things. And of course, they believe their economic theory is the Natural Order of Things.

The pandemic has blown the lid off a few of those mantras. It'll take fifty years to decarbonise? We advanced decades in a few weeks. There is no magic money tree? Yes, there is and you just used it. Giving poor people money undermines the economy? No, it doesn't – you've just proved it. Government debt is a drain on the economy? Not if it stimulates activity. Tax is an expense that needs to be curtailed? No, it's an investment in the economy for everyone.

There are so many things we think we know and many of them are nonsense. We need to take the opportunity this disruption presents and design a society for humans, not for corporations.

Jacques , Nov 16, 2020 9:13 AM Reply to Andrew Thompson

Sure. Now, all we have to do is to figure out how to put that into practice. The making of society for humans, not for m-effers.

[Nov 17, 2020] November 14, 2020 at 5:03 am

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen." ..."
"... we can see that 2016 candidate Trump was relatively Trumpist but President Trump was less so. Salaries for the bottom 25% of workers did have the highest rate in increase during his term (through 2019). But in 2020, candidate Trump almost completely rejected Trumpism and ran as an ruling class establishment stooge. ..."
"... Trumpism is not a revolutionary ideology in the correct sense of the term. It is an incrementalist approach that seeks to better the material conditions of the working class but within the current capitalist power structure. ..."
"... The ruling class strategy in the US is to decorate with masks of "diversity" the ugly visages of class dominance. Thus Obama's and soon Kamala's pro-ruling class policies cannot be criticized for fear of being abused as a "racist". ..."
"... Trumpism relies on labor markets to improve the material conditions of the working class. A tight labor market necessarily transfers wealth from the rich to the poor in the form of decreased profits for the rich through increased salaries for the poor. ..."
"... Trump the ruler was presented with the greatest gift a border-loving Trumpist politician could ever ask for: Covid-19. But instead of exploiting this crisis like Viktor Orbán did in Hungary, Trump stabbed Trumpism in the back by turning himself into a useless libertarian during the crisis by refusing for example to push a law that requires home manufacturing of all critical supplies and in never closing the borders properly. He acted like a narcissistic clown in the early days of the crisis and deserves to lose just for that reason. ..."
"... So US racism is fully owned and perpetuated by the ruling class: wealthy oligarchs (including Trump), the media, Wall Street, CIA, FBI, the military industrial complex, multi-national corporations, Silicone Valley Tech, Hollywood, etc. Where there is power there is racism, where there is powerlessness there may be bigotry but not racism. The above lineup of ruling class racists, except for Trump, is the Biden coalition. The ruling class goal is to place an "enlightened person" mask over naked and rapacious ruling class greed and oppression. ..."
"... Under Biden, globalization will once again increase the pace and amplitude of the immiseration of the working class, resistance to the dominant economic paradigm will only grow on both the progressive left and the popular right. ..."
"... In a sense the Biden presidency will be a reactionary movement in that they will be trying to restore the pre-Trumpism political order. This will only further cement the soundness of Trumpism as an ideology. ..."
"... The bottom has no political or economic leverage, and isn't navigating to a position of strength. For example, the "bottom" is currently accepting placebo identity-politics as pacifier. The "bottom" is still searching for an "easy button" solution rather than taking a deeper look at oneself and the layout of the chess board at the macro level. ..."
"... Within an environment of worker scarcity, automation is a positive trend and helps lessen inflationary pressures. The problem with the US is that there is not enough automation because of cheap and docile labor. Compare a meat packing plant in Denmark which is highly automated compared to a US plant, which is packed to the brim with cheap imported labor. Much of the Covid crisis in the US and UK is brought about by sweatshop-style working conditions. ..."
"... It's grotesque to learn that Kamila Harris's relatives are connected to Uber/Lyft. Prop. 22 getting approved in California is another sign of propaganda/big money effectiveness ..."
"... Trumpism stands in opposition to globalization; whose goal is worker abundance which necessarily drives wages down and increases oligarchic wealth. US led imperialism, especially in the Middle East is also a necessary feature of globalization. ..."
"... Here too I would make a modification. Neo-liberalism and globalization aren't about worker "abundance" but rather worker "disposability." Again, if the idea is to create an abundance of workers, driving down market share, then why make finding work so complicated? Why be against strong education systems which would create new workers. Why shut down factories here in the US only to open them in Korea? Why lock up so many Americans for petty offensive, removing them from the willing work force. ..."
"... I would argue that the heart of neo-liberalism is a class structure that places "the establishment" as not just important in the grand scheme of things, but completely indispensable to an individual. And part of that self-aggrandizement is the subjection of every one else. "I am worth more than a thousand of you." Thus, why I must get 2-million-dollar bonus (even after bankrupting the company) and a post on the new re-org chart while everyone else gets a pink slip and watch their hard-earned pensions disappear in chapter 11 proceedings. ..."
"... But it does speak to how disposable workers are to upper management. You are hired for X, and when X is done you are automatically laid off. Why would you waste time giving such an employee training of any sort? Let alone benefits or perks. ..."
"... What is inexplicable is when unions attack Trumpist attempts at macro-scarcity through the use of national borders. A united Union/Trumpist front is required against ruling class interests. Struggling for worker scarcity does not mean one "hates" the workers the ruling class is importing in order to create worker abundance. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is Capitalism's attempt to remove the fetters on profits that exist within the power of a nation-state. Worker abundance is just one of many Neoliberal goals. Borders are a huge fetter to capitalism's basic mission of maximizing profit by producing commodifies with the cheapest labor and selling them to the wealthiest consumers. ..."
"... This is a very important aspect of precarity. Reducing work competition for jobs to increase wages is only half the job, stopping financial predators is the other half, imo ..."
"... Without immigration or outsourcing or even automation, the predators will find still other ways to break labor. We are seeing it with identity politics. ..."
"... I would argue that Bernie and Tulsi are "Trumpism adjacent" in the larger sense of Trumpism. ..."
"... If Trumpism as an ideology is going to flourish, Tulsi in particular will play a critical role in this. The simplest way to see this is that when the ruling class smears someone as a "Russian asset" what they are really doing is recognizing them as a Trumpist threat. ..."
"... precarious (adj.) 1640s, a legal word, "held through the favor of another," from Latin precarius "depending on favor, pertaining to entreaty, obtained by asking or praying," from prex (genitive precis) "entreaty, prayer" (from PIE root *prek- "to ask, entreat"). ..."
"... The notion of "dependent on the will of another" led to the extended sense "risky, dangerous, hazardous, uncertain" (1680s), but this was objected to. "No word is more unskillfully used than this with its derivatives. It is used for uncertain in all its senses; but it only means uncertain, as dependent on others " [Johnson]. Related: Precariously; precariousness. ..."
"... Questiones Disputatae ..."
"... contra, sed contra, ..."
"... When investigating the nature of anything, one should make the same kind of analysis as he makes when he reduces a proposition to certain self-evident principles." ..."
"... Vista Hermosa residents like Luna are troubled by a 2019 environmental rollback by the state, AB1197, that exempts homeless housing developments in the City of Los Angeles from the mandates of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Arguably California's broadest environmental law, CEQA requires builders to assess the environmental impacts of new development and find ways to avoid or mitigate them. ..."
"... The political will to rollback CEQA has continued into 2020. In January, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, who represents District 53 bordering Vista Hermosa, introduced a new piece of legislation, AB1907, to further expand CEQA exemptions to now include all affordable housing. ..."
"... "Trump WON! Trump WON! Trump WON! Trump WON! " ..."
"... primary-winning ..."
"... "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped" ..."
Nov 17, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

We have to carefully distinguish between two very different concepts, both based on the word "Trump". First there is "Trumpism" which is an ideology. The overarching idea behind Trumpism is to make the GOP a working-class oriented party. The key policy aims of Trumpism are worker scarcity and anti-imperialism. Worker scarcity is achieved through immigration restriction and protectionist trade policies. So together, we have the Trumpist Trinity, anti-immigration, trade restriction, and anti-imperialism. This is the ideology that Trump ran on and rode to victory in 2016. This is the idea. Unions exist to create micro-worker scarcity. Borders can be used to create macro-worker scarcity which is far more powerful. And E-verify can be far more effective than a bombastic wall.

Trumpism stands in opposition to globalization; whose goal is worker abundance which necessarily drives wages down and increases oligarchic wealth. US led imperialism, especially in the Middle East is also a necessary feature of globalization. Invade the World / Invite the World.

The US has always featured two political parties that serve ruling class interests; Huey Long described it thusly,

"They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen."

Trumpism attempts to force one group of waiters to get their grub from the working class' kitchen. This is obviously an ambitious goal.

Now comes a crucial distinction. In addition to the ideology of "Trumpism" there is "Trump", the man and his brand. At best there is an extremely tenuous relationship between Trumpism and Trump. Now to some extent this is natural as ideas never remain pure for long when poured into the cauldron of reality. With that in mind, we can see that 2016 candidate Trump was relatively Trumpist but President Trump was less so. Salaries for the bottom 25% of workers did have the highest rate in increase during his term (through 2019). But in 2020, candidate Trump almost completely rejected Trumpism and ran as an ruling class establishment stooge.

Now of course Trump is an oligarch and so he is a member of the ruling class. But within oligarchy, the only people who can challenge the existing order are oligarchs. He committed massive class treason in 2016 in order to serve his narcissistic need for recognition and power. In no way should Trump be idealized as altruistically caring about the working class. Trumpism was nothing more than a means to an end. Trump's end is and always will be Trump, not Trumpism per se. But none the less Trump exploited and brought to life Trumpism and his motives for doing so are irrelevant.

Trumpism is not a revolutionary ideology in the correct sense of the term. It is an incrementalist approach that seeks to better the material conditions of the working class but within the current capitalist power structure. It posits a class struggle ideological superstructure which is radical opposition to the globalist ruling classes insistence on an identitarian (politics of race, sex, etc) perspective. The ruling class strategy in the US is to decorate with masks of "diversity" the ugly visages of class dominance. Thus Obama's and soon Kamala's pro-ruling class policies cannot be criticized for fear of being abused as a "racist".

Trumpism's non-revolutionary aspect is similar to social democracy, as was championed by Bernie Sanders in 2016 (in 2020 Bernie unfortunately fell to the dark side of identitarian politics, which are necessarily the enemy of class politics and the most effective class warfare tool in the ruling class' tool box). The key difference is that Trumpism relies on labor markets to improve the material conditions of the working class. A tight labor market necessarily transfers wealth from the rich to the poor in the form of decreased profits for the rich through increased salaries for the poor.

In fact far from there being any contradiction between Trumpism and social democracy there is a mutual dependence between them. The public education, health, and support institutions of social democracy are can only be supported and revitalized by a prosperous working class. The key idea of Trumpism is that the state asserts its borders to create labor scarcity. The great problem of Trumpism is that the state is everywhere a tool of ruling class oppression. Borders are the battle lines of the struggle.

Trump the ruler was presented with the greatest gift a border-loving Trumpist politician could ever ask for: Covid-19. But instead of exploiting this crisis like Viktor Orbán did in Hungary, Trump stabbed Trumpism in the back by turning himself into a useless libertarian during the crisis by refusing for example to push a law that requires home manufacturing of all critical supplies and in never closing the borders properly. He acted like a narcissistic clown in the early days of the crisis and deserves to lose just for that reason.

The ruling class response to Trumpism is identitarian politics: noble ruling class lords screaming that the dirty peasants are racist. What the US ruling class must always do is project their racism onto the peasants, who white or black, both suffer economically from racial oppression. Mao Tse-Tung gave this astute analysis of US racism:

In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the Negro people . They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people. At present, it is the handful of imperialists headed by the United States, and their supporters, the reactionaries in different countries, who are oppressing, committing aggression against and menacing the overwhelming majority of the nations and peoples of the world. We are in the majority and they are in the minority.

So US racism is fully owned and perpetuated by the ruling class: wealthy oligarchs (including Trump), the media, Wall Street, CIA, FBI, the military industrial complex, multi-national corporations, Silicone Valley Tech, Hollywood, etc. Where there is power there is racism, where there is powerlessness there may be bigotry but not racism. The above lineup of ruling class racists, except for Trump, is the Biden coalition. The ruling class goal is to place an "enlightened person" mask over naked and rapacious ruling class greed and oppression.

Under Biden, globalization will once again increase the pace and amplitude of the immiseration of the working class, resistance to the dominant economic paradigm will only grow on both the progressive left and the popular right. Previously elections in the US were between center left and center right factions fighting for the right to serve the ruling class. Looking at 2020 from a bird's eye perspective, roughly speaking the Biden coalition is most progressives, the center left, and many elements of the center right (elements close to the Bush family). The Trump coalition is portions of the center right and the popular right. The ruling class was going to be fine whatever the result, but a Biden presidency constrained by a GOP Senate is ideal in some ways to the ruling class.

A key strategic objective of the ruling class is to keep the left and right at each other's throats. Trump helped them achieve this rigid politically binary goal despite occasionally flirting with political fluidity during the 2016 campaign where his similarities to Bernie Sanders were unmistakable. In contrast, anti-ruling class progressives and popularists have to find a way to combine their forces and energy in opposition to the ruling class and not in a pointless stalemate of playing "socialists" vs; "fascists", a battle whose only possible winner is the ruling class.

One of the most interesting outcomes of the 2020 election is the specter of Latinos embracing Trumpism. From an economic point of view this makes total sense. Immigration restriction will benefit first and foremost the material conditions of the Latino working class. Also Trump's macho populist persona works well within Latino culture. Not to mention many Latinos despise blacks and so the whole BLM phenomenon helped push Latinos onto the Trump train.

California is a now a de facto one-party state but that conditions are ripe for the rise of a popularist yet macho, Latino based, Trumpist style political faction to oppose the cosmopolitan urban Democratic hegemony. Back in the 60's, Cesar Chavez was endeavoring to increase the QUALITY of Hispanic life in the US by increasing the salaries of farm workers through a strategy of worker scarcity.

Ruling class institutions, threatened by the potential of having portions of their wealth transferred to poor peasants, created an organization called "La Raza" as an alternative to Chavez. La Raza wanted QUANTITY, they wanted more and more Latinos to build up their base of political power.

And all the better if these Latinos stayed poor: not only do their ruling class paymasters stay happy, this would also keep the Latino masses dependent on their identitarian political leaders. So one of the key outcomes of the 2020 election is that in ever larger numbers, Latinos are rejecting Quantity of Latinos and opting for Latino Quality of life.

And so in order to further Trumpism, Trump, who is acting as a fetter upon it, must go. In a sense the Biden presidency will be a reactionary movement in that they will be trying to restore the pre-Trumpism political order. This will only further cement the soundness of Trumpism as an ideology.

But Trump as a leader is a much more mixed bag. New Trumpists will arise, for example Tucker Carlson or podcaster Joe Rogan. 2024 will be a great year for Trumpism because this time Trump will not be running it; and that may allow many progressives to join the train, especially in light of how much hippy punching they are about to endure from the coming Biden synthesis of Neolibs and Neocons.


Tom Pfotzer , November 14, 2020 at 8:49 am

Nice essay. I especially liked the differentiation between Trump and Trumpism.

I'd be interested to hear what your vision of the platform (main objectives) might be for this new Trumpism party.

I still question whether top-down politics of any stripe is really going to address the underlying economic and biosphere issues we're facing. Why? Because:

  1. the top-down political economy is dedicated to maintaining status quo (with emphasis on status & wealth), and
  2. the bottom-up people who want things to change seem to want someone else to do all the changing
  3. most of our big problems arise from the disconnect between what we must do as a species in order to survive and what we're currently, actually doing as individuals

When a Zen-like party emerges, which encourages its adherents to understand themselves, seek "right" action (accurate situational analysis yielding a well-crafted strategy), and do right action, I'll get interested in politics again. For now, we're just treading water in a strong current that's headed to a bad place.

The Zen plan is no panacea, though. That path involves great risk (e.g. lots of failures) and hard work. Pay's not that good, either.

Kasia , November 14, 2020 at 10:02 am

Thank you for your comment!

Top-down vs. bottom-up are not necessarily contradictory and can in successive waves contribute to social change in an increasingly self-reinforcing manner. Bottom-up change influences top-down change (often through the opposition forces' malignant top-down overreaction) which intensifies bottom-down change: so on and so on.

I would describe the main objectives for Trumpist party as the development of "Green Trumpism". The moral imperatives associated with the climate crisis would be used as a catalyst for Trumpist labor scarcity through the means of a Green Reindustrialization. The process of globalization is one where production is severed from consumption. Production is moved to cheap labor countries with terrible environmental standards. Capitalists produce dirtier commodities while increasing their profits. This process must be reversed. If the first world wants to consume then they must produce.

First world population growth is a critical factor in exasperating the climate crisis. All of this growth can be linked to immigration, usually people from low consuming nations moving to high consumption nations. These migration flows must be reversed.

Globalization requires imperialist power to enforce the safe transport of commodities produced in far flung regions of the world. As globalization declines, so will necessarily US imperialism.

This article "Towards a Green Folkhem" influenced much of my thinking on Trumpism, although it is not framed that way in the article

Tom Pfotzer , November 14, 2020 at 11:56 am

yes, bottom-up and top-down would interact, if only the bottom-up was happening. It's not.

The bottom has no political or economic leverage, and isn't navigating to a position of strength. For example, the "bottom" is currently accepting placebo identity-politics as pacifier. The "bottom" is still searching for an "easy button" solution rather than taking a deeper look at oneself and the layout of the chess board at the macro level.

Using the climate crisis as driver for econ change is the Great Hope, and the top 1% is hip to the game. They have and will continue to block meaningful change. Keep in mind that just stopping the daily damage to the environment will render much (most) of our industrial and household infrastructure obsolete. Nobody's ready to take that on, and that's the implication of actually effective Green policy.

Right now, across the political spectrum, "green" consists of "what's convenient" instead of "what's necessary". This is the individual-ethic bankruptcy I've alluded to elsewhere: it's endemic from top 1% to bottom-est of the bottom.

You made a few statements I don't agree with:

"Capitalists have dirtier / more destructive production than (others)." 1st world production is cleaner than in other places, and that 2nd and 3rd world production often happens in non-capitalistic scenarios. Dirty production happens where dirty production is tolerated.

Another statement you made: "globalization has to stop / be reversed". Dunno about that one. Globalization has resulted in production moving to cheapest-input locations. Like China. Globalization will stop only when cost-of-inputs is leveled, and we're decades away from that, and a whole lot more pain for the Developed world. Slow barge, that one.

Your essay doesn't address the effect of automation on household or societal economics. Automation is not a reversible trend, and it's accelerating. The focus on the "where" of production might not yield the HH economic benefits you're hoping for.

Some fairly different strategies need to be developed at the household level in order to address the problems we face. Would you consider using the household as the pivot-point of your new econ strategy rather than using industry and government?

Kasia , November 14, 2020 at 2:50 pm

Americans can exert more power with their consumption choices than their choices at the ballot box. So certainly the household is a crucial pivot point.

Green tariffs can overnight level cost-of-inputs. Climate change provides a powerful moral incentive to co-locate US consumption and production.

Within an environment of worker scarcity, automation is a positive trend and helps lessen inflationary pressures. The problem with the US is that there is not enough automation because of cheap and docile labor. Compare a meat packing plant in Denmark which is highly automated compared to a US plant, which is packed to the brim with cheap imported labor. Much of the Covid crisis in the US and UK is brought about by sweatshop-style working conditions.

The question on automation is that somehow "the people" have to have a slice of the profits and thus benefit from the process. A Yang-style UBI would need to go hand in hand with increased automation.

I agree with the uselessness of the current Green movement. It is typically just used as a tool to attack perceived opponents. But a Green Trumpism would no doubt both address the climate crisis and help alleviate economic inequalities.

howseth , November 14, 2020 at 4:36 pm

"The ruling class was going to be fine whatever the result, but a Biden presidency constrained by a GOP Senate is ideal in some ways to the ruling class."

Yeah – there will be a lot of Biden disappointment amongst Us the majority – this Precariat. A true Green New Deal would offer lots of employment opportunities here in the USA – and would seem ideal for either party to embrace. Divided government won't achieve it – the ruling class – and both parties – with short sighted heads up their asses won't embrace it anyhow.

Regardless, Trumpism seems a fail except for a vast mob angry/scared/confused voters- and some tax break aficionados. It's not just Biden/Harris won't deliver – but Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Ted Cruz, or whichever clever one runs in 2024 , won't deliver either, and Trumps wall is a fiasco. If still effective propaganda..?

It's grotesque to learn that Kamila Harris's relatives are connected to Uber/Lyft. Prop. 22 getting approved in California is another sign of propaganda/big money effectiveness – and We the People being tricked once again. I got lot's of mail showing photos and quotes of regular working people embracing Prop 22 VOTE YES! save our jobs – it passed easily.

Overall: Still glad to see Trump himself out of the White House – the clever SOB.

Code Name D , November 14, 2020 at 7:33 pm

This is a good essay. But I still have a few issues with it.

The key policy aims of Trumpism are worker scarcity and anti-imperialism. Worker scarcity is achieved through immigration restriction and protectionist trade policies. So together, we have the Trumpist Trinity, anti-immigration, trade restriction, and anti-imperialism. This is the ideology that Trump ran on and rode to victory in 2016. This is the idea. Unions exist to create micro-worker scarcity. Borders can be used to create macro-worker scarcity which is far more powerful. And E-verify can be far more effective than a bombastic wall.

I would modify this to say "worker exclusivity", that only a narrow class of workers can be tapped for specific terms of employment. When discussing the subject with those on the rights, they are far more concerned about immigrants "taking their jobs" then they are of building a scarcity of workers to gain a market share over employers. Let's not forget that "Trumpian" is still fervently anti-union, even though this would be a good way of generating "micro scarcity" as you put it. Being anti-union would be counterproductive to worker scarcity.

Assuredly, "worker scarcity" makes a certain degree of sense. And I can easily see how you came to that conclusion. But I fear you still give "trumpisim" too much credit in that they have specific goals that they are attempting to achieve, and thus conceive of logical steps to that goal.

I would argue that the right doesn't have goals in the same perspective as we on the left may seem them. What we might think of as "goals" are better described as ideological commandments that must be obeyed at all cost, and ignoring all consequence. As you noted yourself. Trump's wall would do little to impede immigration. A better e-verify system would be far more effective. So why ignore e-verify while being completely for the wall? Because the wall is a visible simple of defiance against immigration that conservatives can march back and forth in front of brandishing their 2nd amendment right. You can't do that for a government policy.

Trumpism stands in opposition to globalization; whose goal is worker abundance which necessarily drives wages down and increases oligarchic wealth. US led imperialism, especially in the Middle East is also a necessary feature of globalization.

Here too I would make a modification. Neo-liberalism and globalization aren't about worker "abundance" but rather worker "disposability." Again, if the idea is to create an abundance of workers, driving down market share, then why make finding work so complicated? Why be against strong education systems which would create new workers. Why shut down factories here in the US only to open them in Korea? Why lock up so many Americans for petty offensive, removing them from the willing work force.

I would argue that the heart of neo-liberalism is a class structure that places "the establishment" as not just important in the grand scheme of things, but completely indispensable to an individual. And part of that self-aggrandizement is the subjection of every one else. "I am worth more than a thousand of you." Thus, why I must get 2-million-dollar bonus (even after bankrupting the company) and a post on the new re-org chart while everyone else gets a pink slip and watch their hard-earned pensions disappear in chapter 11 proceedings.

Of course, unlike much of the right, neo-liberalism does have a goal-oriented methodology. So, creating "worker abundance" to force down individual worker market share certainly makes sense. But is it true? It doesn't capture the full cynicism of typical neo-liberal thinking. For creating so much worker abundance, plenty of neo-liberal aligned employers still managed to complain about worker "allocations" (the idea that certain employment sectors face chronic worker scarcity.) Indeed, current "plug-n-play" employment patterns have made filling many positions nearly impossible because no one ever has the right qualifications for a specific job without training. I have seen engineering jobs go empty for years because they can't find "prior experience for proprietary development project." (face palm.).

But it does speak to how disposable workers are to upper management. You are hired for X, and when X is done you are automatically laid off. Why would you waste time giving such an employee training of any sort? Let alone benefits or perks.

Kasia , November 15, 2020 at 6:16 am

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I will attempt to respond to your points.

Ruling class elements of the GOP attack unions in order to minimize worker micro-scarcity.

What is inexplicable is when unions attack Trumpist attempts at macro-scarcity through the use of national borders. A united Union/Trumpist front is required against ruling class interests. Struggling for worker scarcity does not mean one "hates" the workers the ruling class is importing in order to create worker abundance.

This is to accept the ruling elite's identitarian frame, which boils down to: class struggle is racist. What this basically boils down to is that the ruling class is benevolent and kind and loves purely altruistically to import little brown workers while evil workers hate them because they are taking their jobs. Oligarchs + cheap labor immigrants = good. Workers militating for their class interests = bad. The key goal for Trumpism is to flip these equations.

Worker abundance necessarily means job scarcity from the worker's point of view. This makes workers desperate and willing to accept lower wages. This has been happening for the last 40 years at least since the end of the Cold War, if not a little sooner. Worker scarcity means job abundance, from the worker's point of view. This means plenty of options because management has to bid up salaries to attract workers.

Neoliberalism is Capitalism's attempt to remove the fetters on profits that exist within the power of a nation-state. Worker abundance is just one of many Neoliberal goals. Borders are a huge fetter to capitalism's basic mission of maximizing profit by producing commodifies with the cheapest labor and selling them to the wealthiest consumers.

Nation-states can also impose regulations (environmental, worker, etc) which also limit capitalist profit. Free trade allows corporations to relocate factories to nations with the lowest salaries, environmental and worker protections. For those jobs that cannot be transferred, Prop 22 is the thin edge of the neoliberal wedge that is constraining the nation-state from protecting workers.

flora , November 14, 2020 at 8:59 pm

I understand restricting immigration and anti-globalism as a means to increase US workers leverage in raising wages in jobs and in better political representation. This addresses the physical world of work.

Left unaddressed, and equally important imo, is the fact that US business and economy is now largely financialized; much of the greatest wealth comes from unregrulated or restrained predatory financial practices, from rentierism, from tolls and fines and fees.

This financialization is every bit as important as the physical conditions you list in the rise in precarity, maybe even more so at this time. How, for instance, would only physical restrictions have changed the financial outcomes of the 2008 mortgage bank frauds and financial crisis, the outcomes of ratings agencies giving bogus ratings to junk bonds, changed the exorbitant rise in medicine prices, etc?

This is a very important aspect of precarity. Reducing work competition for jobs to increase wages is only half the job, stopping financial predators is the other half, imo

O could have stopped the bank predators in 2009-10, but chose not to. In his own words:

https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1327776212492701697

fwe'zy , November 14, 2020 at 10:08 pm

+++
Without immigration or outsourcing or even automation, the predators will find still other ways to break labor. We are seeing it with identity politics.

Beware of the UBI: it simply greases the wheels for more privatization instead of public goods and infrastructure, similar to how vouchers and charters gut a public school system.

Kasia , November 15, 2020 at 7:37 am

Financialization is the necessary result of globalization's destruction of Fordism: which is the interdependent role of worker and consumer. In order to increase profits, Ford doubled his workers' salaries so that could serve him as consumers as well as workers.

Globalization seeks to increase profits even further by disassociating the worker and the consumer. Work is off-shored to low wage countries, whose leaders intentionally damp down local consumption. This paradoxically means the soon to be immiserated western worker is still called upon to play the role of global consumer of last resort.

At the same time, huge waves of profits are washing over Wall Street. And so temporary speculative bubbles are created that serve two purposes. First false wave of prosperity brought on for example by a real estate boom tamps down any worker resistance towards the new economic order. Secondly the seemingly "free money" created by speculation allow western consumption to continue.

So necessarily a Green Reindustrialization will force Wall Street to stop chasing speculative squirrels and to instead concentrate on financing the new clean plant that will help alleviate the climate crisis.

Reverb , November 14, 2020 at 9:44 pm

Rogan likes to do long form interviews across the political spectrum, but he has consistently been a fan of Bernie and Tulsi. Author is Confusing the medium with the message. Not the same.

Kasia , November 15, 2020 at 5:56 am

I would argue that Bernie and Tulsi are "Trumpism adjacent" in the larger sense of Trumpism.

If Trumpism as an ideology is going to flourish, Tulsi in particular will play a critical role in this. The simplest way to see this is that when the ruling class smears someone as a "Russian asset" what they are really doing is recognizing them as a Trumpist threat.

Trumpism in its highest form will mean a reconciliation of the non-identitarian left and right. For example, white identitarians like Richard Spencer have abandoned Trumpism.

Altandmain , November 15, 2020 at 6:03 am

Awesome comment!

I think that one of the most important considerations is that there needs to be a coalition of sorts – between the working class Trumpian base and the Left (primarily Generation Y and X). It shares one thing, they are both victims of the Establishment, neoliberals, and urgently need change.

One image has always been very important to me. Note the distribution of socially conservative, economically left wing voters.

https://www.voterstudygroup.org/assets/i/reports/Graphs-Charts/1101/figure2_drutman_73d3873f90a694512aeeb56e0ab92cfa.png

It comes from here: https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond

The other important issue is this one:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/10/marshall-auerback-democrats-globalization-dilemma.html

The major challenge facing Democrats today is that race, gender, identity politics, and religion appear to trump economics, at least as far as politically engaged primary voters go. The old-line Democrats were an economic liberal party with socially conservative and socially liberal wings (the social liberals, in fact, were in a minority). The new Democrats are a socially liberal party with an economic conservative wing (neoliberals) and a progressive economic wing. They all agree on social issues. They are loath to compromise on open borders (which is what the existing immigration dysfunction de facto gives us), transgender bathrooms, making room for pro-life members, or gay married couples' wedding cakesbecause those are the only issues that hold their economic right and economic left together.

I don't think that the Democratic Party in its current form is viable for the left.

So the price of a new New Deal majority would be to let Democrats welcome abortion critics and opponents of mass immigration, so long as they favored a higher minimum wage, less "synthetic immigration," and a pause on globalization (which facilitates international labor arbitrage). In the words of John Judis:

I think that we would end up with the following compromise.

1. The economically left, culturally right agrees to accept global warming, end the wars, and "socialism" like universal healthcare), and to offer legal immigrants along with minorities a shot at the middle class
2. The economically left, culturally left agrees to compromise on immigration, globalization (think put a strong emphasis on re-industrialization and de-financialization), and social issues (think abortion, guns, defend the police, etc).

Interestingly, the American Conservative has an article lambasting Trump as well.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/for-trumpism-but-skeptical-of-trump/

Maybe that's a good sign.

marym , November 15, 2020 at 7:39 am

"The ruling class goal is to place an "enlightened person" mask over naked and rapacious ruling class greed and oppression."

Maybe the same can be said of placing a "socially conservative" mask. We need to be cautious in positing the possiblility of a multi-ethnic, multi-racial conservative movement that somehow manages to be "nationalist, anti-cosmopolitan, anti-immigration" but still serves the interests of the multi-racial, multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, working class populace that's already here.

Kasa , November 15, 2020 at 9:51 am

Implementing worker scarcity will necessarily further the economic interests of the multi-racial, multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, working class populace that's already here.

Just as implementing worker abundance necessarily furthers the economic interests of the multi-racial, multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, RULING class populace that's already here.

fwe'zy , November 15, 2020 at 11:26 pm

Well put

rob , November 15, 2020 at 10:08 am

Great write up.
While I generally agree with your characterizations, I will also throw out there ..in no particular order..
1) luckily , trump and his "legion of doom" aren't competent enough to draw on the "larger picture" you've outlined here to maximize his effectiveness by using these natural advantages, in their plot of self aggrandizement luckily for us americans/ the trump is his own worst enemy.

2) ejecting trump from trumpism is a path to greater success for the right and fascism/corporatism, which some "smart" people will surely weave into their future plans and models. And the corporatists,be they from the republican side of the aisle, or the democratic side will surely carry forward with this opening in american politics.
because trump does have to go the professionals of deception can mold that wisp of smoke into any shape they want but it won't stay for long and doesn't hold up to any scrutiny . it isn't real..It isn't even a chunk of clay

3] the problem of trumpism, or "conservative republican politics", or "democratic party politics" is that they all necessarliy MUST be a lie in progress. NONE of the political duopoly can go into "truthland" . it is their kryptonite. So all have agreed to never enter and call it a no go zone
And the fact that everything about our political situation is "fact free",at least in the sense that any facts used are only used out of context to keep a truer understanding from happening; hasn't stopped anyone yet and isn't likely too any time soon so too bad for everyone. .we'll call that a draw.
The 30,000 foot description of yours not withstanding, that type of over arching layers of this onion, is something for planners to incorporate in "the con" as it needs to be.. but is above the paygrade of most political actors , who work at rousing the rabble

4) I don't see actual agency of the people . what people want to do has nothing to do with what is going to happen usually, if the elites want something to happen, they provide the opinions and the votes.. "deserve" has nothing to do with it.. and "our reality" is just an illusion.
So over layering a description of bigger forces, over the chaos that has been created to keep this "hegelian dialect" in place , is again for those at a higher pay grade in the process..
Too many chefs ruin the meal but hey ,it's our gruel and we have nothing else to eat , for the moment and maybe less later, if they get their way.

Palaver , November 14, 2020 at 6:24 am

"Post-truth" is dystopian. It's a luxury to live at a distance from unpleasant realities. If a society can sustain a population/segment so far up their own **** then you've "arrived" in a sense.

However, dystopia sounds better than the crises that lay ahead. It's the unavoidable hard landing that worries me.

Maybe truth works like wealth: The first generation discovers the truth. The second generation teaches the truth. And the third generation fakes news.

Altandmain , November 14, 2020 at 6:57 am

The Democratic Party doesn't want to come to terms with the fact that they deserve as much blame as the GOP for the predicament the working class finds itself in.

They chose under Clinton to repeal Glass Steagall, sign free trade agreements, and bring China into the WTO. Under Obama, those policies largely continued. Under Biden, all signs indicate that this will still continue.

I think the brutal reality is that the upper middle class is willfully ignorant of what the precariat faces. Public health authorities, while understandably trying to contain the pandemic, are not the ones who are going to see their lives destroyed. The working class was doomed either way, either by being disproportionately hurt by the coronavirus (they can't work from home) or from long-term unemployment (they've suffered more as a percentage of total jobs lost). In other words, they don't have a stake in keeping the lockdown and may see opening up as a lesser evil.

Likewise, the Liberals who are in secure upper middle class white collar jobs tended to act disdainfully when working class people protested the lockdowns. I'm not saying the protestors were right, but many are people who put their lives into their work, such as small business owners. Evidently, subsidies were needed at the very least.

In this regard, the GOP might have more hope than the Democrats, barring a Berniecrat takeover of the Democrats, which is looking less likely. That said the GOP still has a huge right wing apparatus that would have to be overcome for a "real populist" (ex: someone who actually cared about the well being of the working class) to take over.

One advantage might be that younger people are overwhelmingly left wing economically, so as Generation Y and Z become a bigger share of the electorate, things may change.

Louis , November 14, 2020 at 6:00 pm

Likewise, the Liberals who are in secure upper middle class white collar jobs tended to act disdainfully when working class people protested the lockdowns. I'm not saying the protestors were right, but many are people who put their lives into their work, such as small business owners. Evidently, subsidies were needed at the very least

To this day, they still get outraged for the same reasons. If you so much as point out what you just wrote–not being anti-science but simply the hardship lockdowns cause and how it needs to be properly addressed–at best you'll be called scientifically illiterate. At worst you'll be accused of being an evil rich person who wants to kill grandma to make the stock market go up.

While some of the protests may have been astroturf, not all of them were. If you're a small-business owner facing the prospect of losing everything you've worked for and basically being told "you're on own" of course you will be angry. Likewise, if you're an employee and can't work from home, of course you will be stressed out about losing your job. This is the real "economic anxiety" and it is no laughing matter.

rob , November 15, 2020 at 7:36 am

for the real small business owners, and the individuals who can't work .
they ought to feel pissed
after all . a fraction of the trillions that are earmarked for wall street, could have "paid their bills"..at least for a year . and then the "citizens" would be getting something tangible for the debt being incurred in their name by the duopoly.
All the people realizing "someone" is getting bailed out and it isn't them

is this 2009 or 2020?

Bob Hertz , November 14, 2020 at 7:02 am

I was puzzled by the victory of Prop. 22 in California. This is a state which has huge Democratic majorities, and normally rubber-stamps all union-sponsored legislation.

Uber and Lyft threatened that if Prop. 22 did not pass, they would either stop operations or would lay off 75% of their temp workers.
(not unlike an employer threatening to move to China if their workers form a union.)

They also threatened that ride prices would at least double, and wait times would greatly increase.

The average voter may have put their own self-interest ahead of any class loyalty.

Final note: the gig workers did get a few benefits out of AB 5, things granted by Uber and Lyft to buy some goodwill.

Comments welcome! I do not live in CA so I am just guessing on this. It was an important vote.

lyman alpha blob , November 14, 2020 at 11:01 am

Prop 22 is going to be the most important result of the 2020 election, not Trump v Biden or control of either legislature.

I've been very puzzled by the result too as it passed handily and wasn't really close. I don't live near CA either, but I did read that among other misleading tactics, the Prop 22 proponents gave delivery bags to restaurants that use these gig delivery services so that the delivery drivers would be dropping off meals to people in Yes on 22 bags, which made it seem like prop 22 would be beneficial to gig workers if you didn't look into it much.

So on the one hand there was the intent to deceive. But then I think that if I heard about these dirty tricks 3,000 miles away, surely CA voters must have known about them too.

The depressing thing is that maybe a lot of people did know exactly what Prop 22 was all about and decided they liked the idea of a permanent underclass always only minutes away at the touch of a button to do the things they can't be bothered with for a pittance.

The fact that so many of the gig company execs worked first in the Obama administration and are now heading back to the Biden administration with dreams of scaling up prop 22 is a very ominous portent.

John Wright , November 14, 2020 at 2:53 pm

I voted NO on prop 22, but a mailer I received from the YES side may show why it passed.

It has text with "by 4-to-1, app-based drivers overwhelmingly prefer to work as independent contractors".

The pictures of smiling workers on the mailer are all minorities (Asian, Hispanic, Black).

I'd suggest a small percentage of CA voters actually use Uber/Lyft, so am inclined to believe voters did not vote to preserve their own self-interest.

The "YES" mailer lists 5 advantages for the drivers, "guaranteed hourly earnings for app-based drivers", "per mile compensation toward vehicle expenses", "medical and disability coverage for injuries and illnesses", "new health benefits for drivers who work 15+ hours a week", and "additional safety protections for app-based drivers"

The mailer lists groups supporting it, NAACP, California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Consumer Choice Center, The Latin Business Association, Black Women Organized for Political Action, California Small Business Association, California Senior Advocates League.

I remember a prior YES on 22 mailer had support from Mothers Against Drunk Driving..

The "YES" group spent about 12x more than the No group (188 million vs 15million)

https://abc7.com/22-california-prop-2020-ca-what-is/7585005/

"Proposition 22 has become the most expensive measure in California history with over $204 million contributed to this single issue"

A side effect of this campaign is to show the value of political consultants/advertising to get something passed.

If Uber/Lyft eventually fail, as many dotcoms did years ago, Prop 22 may be a toxic legacy for them to pass on to other businesses.

To summarize, it is possible many of the voting public believed they were actually helping the pictured workers by voting "YES".

JBird4049 , November 14, 2020 at 8:47 pm

I saw a lot of pro Prop 22 advertising and nothing against it. The ads were all sleek, full of cheerful drivers with big smiles, and easily the best made ads of 2020. I knew that there was something bad about the proposition, but until just a few days before the election I couldn't tell you why. All my mental bandwidth was on the national elections and not on parsing the various state propositions like I normally would. This time it was all on something else.

If a poli-sci/poli-econ geek like me was having some problems with truly understanding this extremely effective, slickly made campaign of manufactured consent, what does that say about the many, often financially and/or socially overwhelmed, California voters who would be much like me? I think that the overlords had the perfect situation for getting the proposition passed.

James P. , November 14, 2020 at 7:14 am

"but the (GOP) party needs to reverse its positions on taxing the wealthiest, punishing and preventing the expansion of organized labor, reversing their position on outsourcing manufacturing, and addressing economic precarity"

And I need to become 6'4″, handsome, young and athletic.

edmondo , November 14, 2020 at 8:43 am

All they need to do is fake it. The Dems won't even bother to do that.

Who knows? AOC might be running against Chuck Schumer as a Republican in 10 years.

Carolinian , November 14, 2020 at 10:16 am

Indeed why would they reverse when the Dems agree with them on all of it. What the above article doesn't get is that the true ruling class response to precarity is simply to make sure voters have no options to address it. We are in a class war, not a battle between political parties. Any promises Biden made to the poor will blow away like smoke once in office. He is on the record saying that billionaires are swell folks.

Lambert linked an interesting article yesterday in Water Cooler that talked about cycles in history and the ingredients of high social unrest. The subject is historian Peter Turchin

He has been warning for a decade that a few key social and political trends portend an "age of discord," civil unrest and carnage worse than most Americans have experienced. In 2010, he predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn't let up until those social and political trends reversed. Havoc at the level of the late 1960s and early '70s is the best-case scenario; all-out civil war is the worst.

The fundamental problems, he says, are a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can't cover its financial positions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/

Turchin is saying that social instability is not just the result of high inequality but also of a bloated ruling class that is itself insecure because there aren't enough PMC jobs for all those college graduates and their credentials. Thus in our case the political parties have come to be dominated by these middle class concerns with the poor almost entirely out of the picture and dismissed as racist deplorables who probably deserve their fate. As the article says this sociological theory of history is controversial but at least worth considering.

JBird4049 , November 14, 2020 at 9:01 pm

A good, broad, liberal arts degree, or something like it, can be useful in many kinds of jobs, if the jobs exist . Much of the high skilled, high paying jobs have all been shipped overseas, and the remaining good paying jobs increasingly are office jobs requiring not only a masters degree, but good social connections, and at least saying only goodthoughts to get and keep.

It use to be that there was plenty of diverse work. If you failed at getting tenure or that job at the bank, or the government position you wanted, there was plenty of good work requiring only some education, intelligence, and drive. Having the kind of degree and connections that someone in the modern PMC would merely be very useful, not a requirement for a good life. Bur now we have too many people having the exact education needed to get the few remaining good jobs in the few safe fields, and unlike fifty years, failure means destitution, not disappointment.

Amfortas the hippie , November 15, 2020 at 11:52 am

"We are in a class war, not a battle between political parties."

the number one confusion in american politics.
i'ma paint it on my tailgate.

JBird4049 , November 15, 2020 at 10:07 pm

And yet claiming that this class war exist, which is supposedly immiserating increasing numbers of Americans ever higher up the class chain, is all deplorably racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic I am reliable informed. /s

It is unsettling to see writers who I have been reading for years, even decades, start saying that it is racism or bigotry, and only that, which explains the Bad Man. One doesn't have to be a Marxist to make a connection with the increasing poverty and corruption under both parties over the past forty or fifty years with President Trump. Yet, many refuse to.

It does make me wonder what it is that I am blind to.

rob , November 16, 2020 at 8:30 am

I agree,
the class war is a better way of seeing things.
all the symptoms and externalities the class war provides are the things the parties use as fodder issues for their respective bases but all the duopoly can provide is more of the same . "their way" their culture . their rules . their precedents their history..
this is how they seem to win they teach the children to think their" way".
Then what else will happen in the future
people continually adopting patterns that already exist.
They have created a culture . and we all know how people are treated by their neighbors who are "counter-culture"
It becomes a self reinforcing narrative, where the hive keeps the status quo because they want to .
We keep supporting systems that are there to control us rather than recreating systems that help .. like we are "supposed" to or something.

DJG , November 14, 2020 at 11:04 am

James P. Yep. That paragraph has some giant "ifs" in it that caught my eye as I was reading. The likelihood of Republicans sponsoring legislation to repeal "right to work" laws, which tend to be in Republican-dominated states, is almost nil. Further, a party that is opposed to any tax increases, no matter what need has to be addressed, isn't going to change course. Another "if" is relying on someone like the egregious Tom Cotton, as mentioned, for leadership about legislation.

I am sure, though, that you are already on your way to becoming a beefcake model and internet influencer.

zagonostra , November 14, 2020 at 7:56 am

It's going to take some time for this article to sink in. Words like precariat and precarity are fairly new concepts, at least for me and my automatic spell checker. What is the etymology of this word and what are it's conceptual dimensions. I know what precarious means and I can see how using it as an adjective works. But if it's going to be a key term I want to know more about it. Accordiing to a quick search, the etymology is:

precarious (adj.)
1640s, a legal word, "held through the favor of another," from Latin precarius "depending on favor, pertaining to entreaty, obtained by asking or praying," from prex (genitive precis) "entreaty, prayer" (from PIE root *prek- "to ask, entreat").

The notion of "dependent on the will of another" led to the extended sense "risky, dangerous, hazardous, uncertain" (1680s), but this was objected to. "No word is more unskillfully used than this with its derivatives. It is used for uncertain in all its senses; but it only means uncertain, as dependent on others " [Johnson]. Related: Precariously; precariousness.

So what is striking in reading it's etymology is that it is defined as something "dependent, uncertain, risky, dangerous, hazardous." This characterizes many areas of life. With respect to contemporary life in the area of economics, I certainly see it all around me and in the news headlines, in the instability of good long-term paying jobs with benefits. In politics, I certainly see the risks, dangers, and hazards, especially in the highly militarized nature of foreign relations. But looking at the term from the perspective of a "social scientist" does it explain the antecedents that lead to this condition and is it operational in the sense of breaking it down into more rudimentary terms and relationships.

I am reading St. Thomas Aquinas' book "On Truth" and although the style of Questiones Disputatae , with its contra, sed contra, and style is archaic and hard to follow, it provides a good way of centering dialogue. In Question one of Article 1, the formal reply to the stated Article of "What is Truth?" states:

When investigating the nature of anything, one should make the same kind of analysis as he makes when he reduces a proposition to certain self-evident principles."

Since this term "precarity" is new to me, I don't think I have a good handle on how to use it outside of a descriptor. Does it explain anything? And maybe I'm just asking too much of the word. Maybe it's just meant as that, a simple characterization whose underlying causal relationships are to yet be determined and examined.

Anyhow, great article.

thoughtful person , November 15, 2020 at 1:34 pm

I've seen precariate be described as a combination of precarious proletariat.

While one could argue the position of the proletariat is always precarious, I do think the are times in history which are more precarious than others, and what we see now is certainly one (climate change impacts, opioid/alcoholism, covid19 pandemic, ever increasing inequality, globalization of manufacturing, health care for profit in the US, increasing cost of housing and education, no doubt many more)

Terry Flynn , November 14, 2020 at 8:36 am

Nice piece generally and which kinda validates a feeling I've had generally that "uncertainty is increasing" which is often bad for people in so many ways – uncertainty among the "entitled" can be highly damaging to polling (in addition to all the points raised in the article). The elephant in the room is of course interpreting polling results. For example 70% Democrat at a precinct/state/national level is consistent with an infinite number of explanations: at one end we have "strong means" (meaning these are "solid" votes) and at the other we have "very weak means but big variances" (meaning these votes are subject to all sorts of factors like news items, real or manufactured, etc). We can't "know" which universe we're in .Unless we conduct a secondary survey to give a "second line in the x-y plane" to see where it intersects the main one ..then we know whether the 70% is driven by means or variances or some combination.

The likelihood function for all "limited dependent variable models" – discrete choices like voting – has a term that is multiplicative in means and variances. Thus "70%" could mean any of a HUGE number of things. Those of us experienced in interpreting these data can rule out the "dumb" explanations .but we are still left with a number of "possible explanations". If we don't actively talk to voters, do a lot of qualitative research etc, then we can't begin to limit the number of "possible solutions" further. I have had little experience in applying the methods to polling so I rely a lot on sites like NC to give "insights from the ground". It is a pity polling institutions don't. YouGov were on the right track in 2017 but bottled it due to collecting data for their "second line" in a poor way. It's a pity – if they collected data in better way they'd be far and away the best polling organisation. Though the downright lies told by Trumpites that Lambert has highlighted remain a problem – I do have ideas how to address this but they go way beyond the scope of the site and like I've said before, I think pushing MMT etc is a better use of resources (even though it pains me personally not to have my own "hobby horse" championed, hehe).

But I personally think increased variances are a fact of life and reflect the article's point that uncertainty in life is hurting everyone.

Tom Pfotzer , November 14, 2020 at 12:03 pm

Uncertainty and fear are increasing because the kick-the-can strategies are starting to look really wobbly, and the fights for survival and hail-marys (like MMT) are being trotted out.

The velocity of change has increased, and the rate of adaptation appears to have somehow actually slowed down. Just exactly the wrong response at the wrong time.

One commenter above poked fun at the term "precarity" – said it was a $10 gimmick for the word "poor".

A while back Mark Twain said a "cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education".

Precarity is a college-educated middle class "information worker" who is "feeling poor".

The effects of automation and globalization are moving up the class ladder. The ship's sinking and the water's already flooded 3rd class berths (rust belt and flyover), and is about 1/3 of the way into the 2nd class cabins.

Scott1 , November 14, 2020 at 3:54 pm

Hunger.

Louis , November 14, 2020 at 6:11 pm

Agree or disagree with Andrew's Yang's proposal for a universal basic income, I think he is definitely on to something when he talks about the ramifications of automation and machine learning, though he isn't the first person to point it out.

Some people are simply not aware–it's not that they necessarily don't care, they simply just don't know–while others are in denial or don't care.

Regardless of where a given person falls, I do agree that with Yang and others that say dealing with this economic reshaping will be of the key challenges–if not the most important challenge–of our time.

rob , November 15, 2020 at 7:57 am

reshaping our monetary system is one of the biggest hurdles in reshaping our economic present.
Monetary reform efforts like the modern day "chicago plan" as was described in the bill proposed in congress in 2011/2012 112th congress HR 2990
open the door to creating money debt free, and permanently which could pay off the national debt, and fund policies like single payer health care and even "citizen dividends", that are really just ways to inject money into the economy, rather than starting the injection of money into the economy on wall street , like now..
https://www.congress.gov/bill/112-thcongress/house-bill/2990/text

Bob Hertz , November 14, 2020 at 9:19 am

This was a very perceptive observation ..

In sharp contrast, Trump may have appeared indifferent to the gravity of the coronavirus, but his persistent calls to reopen the economy addressed the precarity issue, as they appealed to many workers whose livelihoods were being destroyed by the pandemically induced government restrictions placed on economic activity.

The average worker up through October does not have Covid and may not know anyone of working age who does have Covid ..but they do have a job, and if the job must be done in-person they know they were vulnerable.

"Keeping the economy open" is more urgent to them than defeating Covid through lockdowns.

This is a big reason why Trump even kept this election close.

In America, the authorities who order lockdowns cannot simultaneously order financial relief. This created a tragic class divide on fighting the pandemic.

Carolinian , November 14, 2020 at 10:31 am

These days the members of the media tend to be dominated by the upper middle class who attended elite colleges and probably don't even understand the meaning of precarity. Therefore to them it seems perverse to object to lockdowns and elaborate precautions that the work from home set can more easily deal with. In the old days newspaper reporters rose through the ranks and came from small town newspapers and were more in touch with the general society rather than journalism schools.

Socal Rhino , November 14, 2020 at 10:18 am

I live in California and was surprised to learn here that Harris opposed prop 22. While the Pro campaign carpet bombed the airwaves with ads, I never saw any CA leaders raise a voice in opposition or attempt to explain why this would be bad for working people. Never saw any mention, other than in the state election booklet, that the prop introduced a huge supermajority needed to repeal it, making it effectively impossible to remove once passed. Didn't see any out of state money funding ads despite it being obvious that success in California would lead to adoption in other states.

lyman alpha blob , November 14, 2020 at 11:05 am

Well Harris does all support and oppose M4A depending on who shes talking to and when she's saying it, so there's that. I suspect any disagreements she may express over prop 22's passage are crocodile tears at best.

lyman alpha blob , November 14, 2020 at 11:06 am

Ugh – meant as a reply to social rhino above.

Socal Rhino , November 14, 2020 at 2:06 pm

Her and every other leader who takes positions on many issues but not on this one. Perhaps they saw polling and thought it best instead to add to the strategic underground reserves of dry powder.

Person , November 14, 2020 at 11:15 am

Great piece. One effect of spreading precarity–and I will use the term more loosely to encompass not only economic precarity, but also the increasing sense of pervasive dread and fear experienced by so many across all walks of life–is that living in this state increases one's susceptibility to both totalitarian ideologies and to drives for war against some perceived enemy. To me this explains the shadow of "law and order" hard nationalism coming from the far right, the more extreme variants of identity politics on the left, and the terrified push for censorship and "full lockdown" coming from the neoliberal center. Unfortunately the billionaire class and their pets in the media see all of this as a potential cash cow rather than a serious danger. Given their stranglehold on the national discourse and their control of the most effective means of mass organizing (social media), I'm not sure it is possible to reverse the trend early enough to prevent some kind of major conflict. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try!

Person , November 14, 2020 at 11:24 am

P.S. To avoid any confusion, when I disparagingly refer to "full lockdown" I mean an authoritarian lockdown without accompanying benefits for workers and with "papers please" checkpoints and penalties. The worst kind of lockdown, where people are both unable to support themselves and are actively prevented from doing so. In my opinion people who push for a hard lockdown before benefits/compensation can be arranged are unintentionally advocating for such a position; the compensation will never come.

Louis , November 14, 2020 at 6:17 pm

Heck, I've seen comments (generally not on this site) admiring what China did and lamenting the fact that it can't be done here in the United States.

I sure hope these are troll accounts and not real people in this country, especially not real people on the left. If these are real people, we are in more trouble than I thought.

A government with the power to literally weld people's door shut, which is what China did, can do a lot of other scary things.

witters , November 14, 2020 at 10:17 pm

Yes, like get on top of a virus (and achieve the highest level of economic growth in human history, and produce incredible poetry, and so on). And as I'm not 'in this country,' I believe I'm not 'real people.'

fwe'zy , November 14, 2020 at 10:17 pm

You mean like droning hellfire onto children?

Person , November 14, 2020 at 10:43 pm

I have seen the same thing and have had the same concerns. I do think there is more dishonest disruption/manipulation and trolling going on than we are aware of. It's at the point where I automatically assume that most social media accounts are not taking an honest position. I hope I'm right, because if I'm wrong then humanity is absolutely terrifying.

fwe'zy , November 15, 2020 at 2:01 am

The corporate imperialism status quo isn't terrifying enough for you? Oil and gas seeping out through the land under and around "affordable housing" because CEQA doesn't count on those properties doesn't terrify you? Flint's water crisis doesn't terrify you?

The throngs of human beings thrown out onto the street by Upgrading slumlords and developers doesn't terrify you? Overlords talking with straight faces about excess and surplus humans and ramming Prop 22 through doesn't terrify you?

Person , November 15, 2020 at 10:26 am

There's a big difference between "humanity is OK, but the small slice that rules us is terrible" and "humanity is in deep shit because we're mostly terrible." The first implies a solution, the second what? Hope for a benevolent AI overlord to emerge?

fwe'zy , November 15, 2020 at 10:31 am

Humanity is mostly terrible because people online are glad that China used authority to stop the spread of a deadly virus? Shaking my head!

Person , November 15, 2020 at 6:20 pm

Read my post again. I said that I automatically assume that most accounts posting terrible stuff are bots. There are accounts that say awful things about almost any and every topic imaginable. The number of them is so huge that if these are real people and not bots, then people may indeed be largely terrible. But I assume they are bots.

fwe'zy , November 15, 2020 at 5:29 pm

https://popularresistance.org/affordable-housing-developers-set-their-sights-on-former-toxic-oil-fields/
DeSmog blog
Vista Hermosa residents like Luna are troubled by a 2019 environmental rollback by the state, AB1197, that exempts homeless housing developments in the City of Los Angeles from the mandates of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Arguably California's broadest environmental law, CEQA requires builders to assess the environmental impacts of new development and find ways to avoid or mitigate them.

The political will to rollback CEQA has continued into 2020. In January, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, who represents District 53 bordering Vista Hermosa, introduced a new piece of legislation, AB1907, to further expand CEQA exemptions to now include all affordable housing.

lobelia , November 14, 2020 at 11:41 am

I'm reminded of the excellent post by Anne Amnesia in May 2016, (yes, when Obama and Biden were still in office, and the White House was just a huge gleam in Kamala's way too sparkly eyes, given the massive poverty, incarceration and inequality in California, as she successfully ran for California Senator and will have not completed even one term) Unnecessariat https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

A very brief excerpt (it's long and meaty), emphasis mine:

In 2011, economist Guy Standing coined the term "precariat" to refer to workers whose jobs were insecure, underpaid, and mobile, who had to engage in substantial "work for labor" to remain employed, whose survival could, at any time, be compromised by employers (who, for instance held their visas) and who therefore could do nothing to improve their lot. The term found favor in the Occupy movement, and was colloquially expanded to include not just farmworkers, contract workers, "gig" workers, but also unpaid interns, adjunct faculty, etc. Looking back from 2016, one pertinent characteristic seems obvious: no matter how tenuous, the precariat had jobs. The new dying Americans, the ones killing themselves on purpose or with drugs, don't. Don't, won't, and know it.

Here's the thing: from where I live, the world has drifted away. We aren't precarious, we're unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what's worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. The new bright sparks, cheerfully referred to as "Young Gods" believe themselves to be the honest winners in a new invent-or-die economy, and are busily planning to escape into space or acquire superpowers, and instead of worrying about this, the talking heads on TV tell you its all a good thing- don't worry, the recession's over and everything's better now, and technology is TOTES AMAZEBALLS!

The Rent-Seeking Is Too Damn High

If there's no economic plan for the Unnecessariat, there's certainly an abundance for plans to extract value from them. No-one has the option to just make their own way and be left alone at it. It used to be that people were uninsured and if they got seriously sick they'd declare bankruptcy and lose the farm, but now they have a (mandatory) $1k/month plan with a $5k deductible: they'll still declare bankruptcy and lose the farm if they get sick, but in the meantime they pay a shit-ton to the shareholders of United Healthcare, or Aetna, or whoever. This, like shifting the chronically jobless from "unemployed" to "disabled" is seen as a major improvement in status, at least on television.

fwe'zy , November 14, 2020 at 10:23 pm

They're busy transhuman-ing so of course they see these people on the street as excess meat.

View from California , November 14, 2020 at 12:24 pm

I was surprised Prop 22 passed because it was not doing well in the polls for most of the pre-election period. It seemed Californians were solidly against it. Then, perhaps 4-6 weeks before the election, I noticed a dramatic change in messaging. Suddenly the ads were touting that if Prop 22 passed, Uber and Lyft drivers would receive health care benefits. I assumed that this was deceptive messaging designed to turn the vote around. Here is what Kaiser Health News says about the benefits: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201029/App-based-companies-pushing-Prop-22-say-drivers-will-get-health-benefits-Will-they.aspx Looks like it worked. I guess there's no penalty for this sort of deception, or at least, no enforcement of a penalty.

tegnost , November 14, 2020 at 4:05 pm

Tell me lies .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VVY5mqpE4g

Bobby Gladd , November 14, 2020 at 12:40 pm

So, I have CSPAN on at the moment. They're streaming the DC #MillionMAGAMarch #StopTheSteal SuperSpreader rally.

The over-the-top vitriol is rather breathtaking. The angry ignorance is depressing. They're "not gonna allow the Steal." They're gonna "be warriors." "Trump WON! Trump WON! Trump WON! Trump WON! "

The Occam's Chainsaw "logic" is on full display.

Meanwhile, yesterday's new U.S. Covid19 case count was more than 184k, 1.6m for Nov 1-13.

Carolinian , November 14, 2020 at 12:52 pm

Says here 58k which is quite a bit below US daily new cases over last couple of weeks.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Bobby Gladd , November 14, 2020 at 1:02 pm

I get my data from Hopkins.

Bobby Gladd , November 14, 2020 at 1:10 pm

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Carolinian , November 14, 2020 at 1:35 pm

And what was Hopkins' number for the day previous (which may be the case with Worldometer)? One day is only a snapshot.

Bobby Gladd , November 14, 2020 at 2:11 pm

"One day is only a snapshot"

No argument there. I started an Excel sheet, w/ transcribed JHU data commencing Oct 1st (thru yesterday). The exponential upward trendline in the graph has an R-sq of 0.91. (an iterative 7-day moving avg is also illuminating.)

Of course, it'll go up until it no longer does. And, "new cases" incidence rates comprise but one facet of interest.

Stay safe and well.

Person , November 14, 2020 at 3:53 pm

If you're struggling but aren't sick (yet), economic concerns win out. No big surprise there. 70 million people are fighting a return to austerity and a technocratic "Great Reset" that was devised without their input. They see it as literally fighting for their lives and livelihoods. The new admin can ignore this at their own peril. (Too bad Trump didn't actually solve any of their problems, but at least he gave them his attention, more than anyone else has done in decades.)

Louis , November 14, 2020 at 5:15 pm

Many people have to choose between the certainty of being unable to pay their bills, if they stay home, versus the unknown risk of contracting COVID if they work.

Staying home is luxury a lot of people just don't have–even pre-COVID it was very common for people in low-wage jobs that don't provide sick-leave to show up to work sick. It wasn't because these people are evil or wanted to get anyone sick but rather because if you don't work you don't get paid.

Person , November 14, 2020 at 5:27 pm

Precisely. The rent isn't going to pay itself, and people are scared about their future. Covid isn't an obvious terror like Ebola, so people weigh the risks and decide in favor of their economic security. If we were like some of the more advanced countries in the world, they wouldn't have to make this choice, but here we are.

fwe'zy , November 14, 2020 at 10:25 pm

+ to "more advanced countries"

jonhoops , November 14, 2020 at 9:16 pm

"at least he gave them his attention, more than anyone else has done in decades."

Hmmm last time I looked Bernie Sanders was paying attention and proposing solutions since at least 2015. Nice how you just erased him and the millions who voted for him.

Person , November 14, 2020 at 10:39 pm

You're right. Trump is the only primary-winning candidate who paid attention to the working class in recent memory. Bernie was obviously a million times better than Trump because he was sincere, he had a plan, and he would have followed through. But he got screwed.

David , November 14, 2020 at 12:46 pm

I'm becoming a bit weary of reading that politicians like Trump are "exploiting anxieties" about poverty and unemployment, as though such anxieties were unreasonable and the problems didn't really exist. The trouble is that "responding to voters' concerns about their lives" doesn't have quite the same dismissive overtones. The supercilious assumption that people who are afraid of losing their jobs are being "exploited", whereas people being urged to vote on gender lines aren't, seems very strange. Is anyone really surprised that people are more worried about how much money they have than about which gender they are?

Person , November 14, 2020 at 3:48 pm

Understand people's problems, devise reasonable solutions, communicate your plan to the voters, and follow through on your promises. It sounds so easy, doesn't it but good luck trying it with the media and parties working together against you at every turn. Pull up those bootstraps!

Scott1 , November 14, 2020 at 4:25 pm

Thanks. We are going to find out how the velocity of the vote is slower than the velocity of hunger.
"Civilization is about 3 meals thick." John Brockman, ex-con.
We are not together and the people in power don't want to give the people without, food money. Two more and 3 more months of disease as hunger and death knock at more and more doors. Evictions pick up apace.
Cormac McCarthy dystopia. No country for anybody.
The economic theory attributed to Warren Mosler and popularized by Stephanie Kelton is the last idea. If it is a Hail Mary then so be it. If it doesn't work, isn't put to work, mankind itself is doomed.

fwe'zy , November 15, 2020 at 2:08 am

Isn't it shocking that we're even saying these words in a time of hyperabundance?!

Louis , November 14, 2020 at 5:06 pm

Public health care authorities understandably directed their policy responses toward pandemic mitigation, and the Democrats largely embraced their recommendations. But they remained insensitive to the anxieties of tens of millions of Americans, whose jobs were being destroyed for good, whose household debts -- rent, mortgage, and utility arrears, as well as interest on education and car loans -- were rising inexorably, even allowing for the temporary expedient of stimulus checks from the government until this past August

I agree and worse this dynamic is playing itself out again–talk about whether President-elect Biden should institute a lockdown is bringing out the "lockdown now, worry about the consequences later" mentality again.

While I'm not sure Biden personally regards the millions of those who cannot work from home, but aren't considered essential, collateral damage, there are clearly a segment of Democrats who do–I've even seen it on Facebook among people I know. It provides further proof that the Democrats, as Thomas Frank and others have astutely noted, have become predominantly the party of the college-educated upper-middle class.

While I'm not denying the severity of the pandemic, the consequences of business shutdowns and subsequent layoffs are very real and not something to be laughed at or minimized, especially if Democrats want to have a future among those who are less affluent.

Sound of the Suburbs , November 15, 2020 at 4:55 am

The globalists found just the economics they were looking for.
The USP of neoclassical economics – It concentrates wealth.
Let's use it for globalisation.

Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48, observed what the capital accumulation of neoclassical economics did to the US economy in the 1920s.
"a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped"

This is what it's supposed to be like.
A few people have all the money and everyone else gets by on debt.

Most of today's problems come from the 1920s.

Financial stability had been locked into the regulations of the Keynesian era.
The neoliberals removed them and the financial crises came back.
https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/banking-crises.png
"This Time is Different" by Reinhart and Rogoff has a graph showing the same thing (Figure 13.1 – The proportion of countries with banking crises, 1900-2008).

After the 1930s, they wanted to ensure those times would never return and put things in place to ensure they didn't.
The neoliberals have been busy stripping them away.

What did the economists learn in the 1940s?
http://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf
In the paper from 1943 you can see ..
They knew Government debt and deficits weren't a problem as they had seen the massive Government debt and deficits of WW2.
They knew full employment was feasible as they had seen it in WW2.
After WW2 Governments aimed to create full employment as policymakers knew it could be done and actually maximised wealth creation in the economy.

Balancing the budget was just something they used to do before WW2, but it wasn't actually necessary.
Government debt and deficits weren't a problem.
They could now solve all those problems they had seen in the 1930s, which caused politics to swing to the extremes and populist leaders to rise.
They could eliminate unemployment and create a full employment economy.
They could put welfare states in place to ensure the economic hardship of the 1930s would never be seen again.
They didn't have to use austerity; they could fight recessions with fiscal stimulus.

The neoliberals started to remove the things that had created stable Western societies after WW2.

fwe'zy , November 15, 2020 at 1:29 pm

I learn a ton from your posts, thank you.

Amateur Socialist , November 15, 2020 at 8:07 am

"If I thought voters were racists who want basic economic security and the other party was offering them racism but not economic security, I would simply try offering economic security but not racism rather than offering them neither." -Ed Burmilla https://twitter.com/edburmila/status/1324420903409692673

Sound of the Suburbs , November 16, 2020 at 3:49 am

We stepped onto an old path that still leads to the same place.
1920s/2000s – neoclassical economics, high inequality, high banker pay, low regulation, low taxes for the wealthy, robber barons (CEOs), reckless bankers, globalisation phase
1929/2008 – Wall Street crash
1930s/2010s – Global recession, currency wars, trade wars, austerity, rising nationalism and extremism
1940s – World war.
We forgot we had been down that path before.

Right wing populist leaders are only to be expected at this stage.

Why is Western liberalism always such a disaster?
They did try and learn from past mistakes to create a new liberalism (neoliberalism), but the Mont Pelerin Society went round in a circle and got back to pretty much where they started.

It equates making money with creating wealth and people try and make money in the easiest way possible, which doesn't actually create any wealth.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned" income.
The American have lost sight of what real wealth creation is, and are just focussed on making money.
You might as well do that in the easiest way possible.
It looks like a parasitic rentier capitalism because that is what it is.

Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy into a financial crisis.
What they are doing is really an illusion; they are just pulling future spending power into today.
The 1920s roared at the expense of an impoverished 1930s.
Japan roared on the money creation of real estate lending in the 1980s, they spent the next 30 years repaying the debt they had built up in the 1980s and the economy flat-lined.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk

Bankers use bank credit to pump up asset prices, which doesn't actually create any wealth.
The money creation of bank credit flows into the economy making it boom, but you are heading towards a financial crisis and claims on future prosperity are building up in the financial system.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf
Early success comes at the expense of an impoverished future.

Sound of the Suburbs , November 16, 2020 at 5:23 am

Let's get the basics sorted.
When no one knows what real wealth creation is, you are in trouble.

We want economic success
Step one – Identify where wealth creation occurs in the economy.
Houston, we have a problem.

Economists do identify where real wealth creation in the economy occurs, but this is a most inconvenient truth as it reveals many at the top don't actually create any wealth.
This is the problem.
Much of their money comes from wealth extraction rather than wealth creation, and they need to get everyone thoroughly confused so we don't realise what they are really up to.

The Classical Economists had a quick look around and noticed the aristocracy were maintained in luxury and leisure by the hard work of everyone else.
They haven't done anything economically productive for centuries, they couldn't miss it.
The Classical economist, Adam Smith:
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money."
There was no benefits system in those days, and if those at the bottom didn't work they died.
They had to earn money to live.

Ricardo was an expert on the small state, unregulated capitalism he observed in the world around him. He was part of the new capitalist class, and the old landowning class were a huge problem with their rents that had to be paid both directly and through wages.
"The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community" Ricardo 1815 / Classical Economist.
They soon identified the constructive "earned" income and the parasitic "unearned" income.
This disappeared in neoclassical economics.

GDP was invented after they used neoclassical economics last time.
In the 1920s, the economy roared, the stock market soared and nearly everyone had been making lots of money.
In the 1930s, they were wondering what the hell had just happened as everything had appeared to be going so well in the 1920s and then it all just fell apart.
They needed a better measure to see what was really going on in the economy and came up with GDP.
In the 1930s, they pondered over where all that wealth had gone to in 1929 and realised inflating asset prices doesn't create real wealth, they came up with the GDP measure to track real wealth creation in the economy.
The transfer of existing assets, like stocks and real estate, doesn't create real wealth and therefore does not add to GDP. The real wealth creation in the economy is measured by GDP.
Real wealth creation involves real work producing new goods and services in the economy.

So all that transferring existing financial assets around doesn't create wealth?
No it doesn't, and now you are ready to start thinking about what is really going on there.

Economists do identify where real wealth creation in the economy occurs, but this is a most inconvenient truth as it reveals many at the top don't actually create any wealth.
Hide what real wealth creation is, and pretend it's making money, and this problem goes away.

techpioneer , November 16, 2020 at 7:25 pm

Irony:

The party of the New Deal can't muster a repeat performance.

Delusional:

Hoping that the party of "big business" will transform itself into the party of the working class.

[Nov 15, 2020] For weeks vs four years: Rep. Jordan -- Democrats Spent Four Years on Russia Hoax and Don't Want to Spend Four Weeks on 2020 Election

Nov 15, 2020 | www.breitbart.com

Saturday during an appearance on FNC's "Justice," Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) questioned why Democrats oppose any investigations into the integrity of the presidential election, despite their past efforts on the 2016 presidential election.

The Ohio Republican congressman reminded Fox News viewers that Democrats dedicated for years to the "Russia hoax" but do not want to allow four weeks for an investigation into this year's presidential election.

[Nov 14, 2020] Lost American

Highly recommended!
Nov 14, 2020 | www.unz.com

says: November 10, 2020 at 1:53 pm GMT • 4.1 days ago 100 Words

For the past three or four days I have been wondering why the NY Post made this very sudden turn to supporting Joe Biden. For months we have had brilliant articles by Miranda Devine , Michael Goodwin, and others all in support of Trump and the America we have known for many years. Replies: @Realist REPLY AGREE/DISAGREE/ETC. THIS COMMENTER THIS THREAD HIDE THREAD


Lost American , says: November 10, 2020 at 2:10 pm GMT • 4.1 days ago

For the past three or four days I have been wondering why the NY Post made this very sudden turn to supporting Joe Biden. For years we have had brilliant articles by Miranda Devine , Michael Goodwin, and others all in support of Trump and the America we have known for many years, and all of a sudden the NY Post changed its views, but these columnists have not changed. They are too knowledgable and are gifted with common sense. I look forward to reading their columns or will the Post cancel culture them?

Raoul , says: November 10, 2020 at 2:50 pm GMT • 4.1 days ago

Any discussion of how to "work with" the Marxists is well, it just shouldn't be discussed. You can't work with Marxists. Besides, Trump won the election. This will be proven over the next few weeks.

Realist , says: November 10, 2020 at 3:35 pm GMT • 4.0 days ago
@follyofwar >

Fox is merely a tool for the Deep State they don't need viewers their wealth will come from the Deep State control of the economy.

Given Fox's about face and support of Biden, how much longer will it be before Tucker Carlson gets his walking papers?

That presupposes that Carlson is not a Deep State minion.

Oh well, Tucker doesn't need Fox either. He has millions of loyal listeners who will follow him whatever he decides to do.

It will not be of television. If the Deep State wants to cancel Carlson it will on any platform.

Realist , says: November 10, 2020 at 3:38 pm GMT • 4.0 days ago
@Cutler

OAN and Newsmax are exploding in popularity and yes Tucker ought to leave Faux News He will have more reach when he does.

The Deep State can end them as well. The only possible solution is to end the Deep State that will require a revolution.

[Nov 14, 2020] Should Tucker leave Faux News ?

Nov 14, 2020 | www.unz.com

Cutler , says: November 10, 2020 at 11:28 am GMT • 4.2 days ago

@follyofwar

OAN and Newsmax are exploding in popularity and yes Tucker ought to leave Faux News He will have more reach when he does.

[Nov 13, 2020] The Stolen Election Will Red-Pill 70 Million Americans by Jef Costello

Nov 13, 2020 | www.unz.com

The Stolen Election Will Red-Pill 70 Million Americans JEF COSTELLO NOVEMBER 9, 2020 3,000 WORDS 377 COMMENTS REPLY Tweet Reddit Share Share Email Print More

At this point, it seems unlikely that Trump is going to prevail in his legal challenges. It's possible that he will, but what do you think is more likely? If he doesn't prevail, however, Biden's "win" can actually be a tremendous win for us.

Why? Well, first let's address the question of who "we" are. I hate to sound like Joe Biden, who seems not to know who he is or where he is or what he's talking about from moment to moment (get ready for four years of hilarity, folks). But it's useful to remind ourselves of who we are from time to time. We are White Nationalists.

A White Nationalist is someone who believes that white peoples have a right to their own homelands. So that, as a White Nationalist, I am a German nationalist, an English nationalist, a Scottish nationalist, a French nationalist, etc . Or, at least, I support all those nationalisms. To be a white nationalist in America is really to recognize that the core "American people" are the white people whose ancestors built the country and who continue to pay for it. Thus, American White Nationalism = American nationalism. To be an American nationalist is also to recognize that more recent, non-white arrivals don't belong here at all; and that while our blacks have been here a long time and some of them do sing, dance, and dribble well, they are mostly parasites who contribute almost nothing to the society except grief.

Since it now looks impossible to go back to the good old days when we had blacks in complete subjection, and since both blacks and browns out-breed us, American nationalists essentially face two possible courses of action. The first is to remove non-whites from the country, which seems impossible at this point, or to remove ourselves. This latter course would mean that we all go back to Europe, which the Europeans won't allow, or that we effectively secede from the USA and carve out our own white space (or spaces) within North America. It is this latter option that now seems like it may be our only option, and something we must work toward.

So, how does Trump's loss help advance us in that goal? To state the obvious, white Americans will never work toward a white American homeland unless they are aware of themselves as White Americans; unless they see themselves as a group with distinct interests, and the moral right to assert those interests. "Awakening" white people has always been our goal as White Nationalists -- awakening whites in America, and in Europe. This awakening is far more important than any political figure, or any short-term political goals. This awakening is and ought to be our top priority.

When I first got involved in this movement, almost exactly twenty years ago, there were two questions that were constantly raised in my local "hate group": (1) When are white people going to wake up? And (2) will it take some kind of societal collapse to get them to wake up? Most of us thought that it would take such a collapse, but that this wouldn't happen in our lifetimes. Well, my friends, now it has happened. The collapse has occurred, and Trump's loss has brought it about.

The country was already fractured along political lines. Now it is completely broken. Conservatives, the overwhelming majority of whom are white, have long known that the media are biased to the Left and that the political establishment does not have their interests at heart. But they still believed in "the system." They believed that it still might be possible to work within the system and get somebody elected who would actually be their guy . Somebody who could bring the jobs home, stop the tide of non-white immigration, clean up the streets ( i.e. , do something about black crime), combat the politically correct madness, and get us out of the forever wars. The election of Donald Trump seemed to confirm this optimism.

But all the voices on the far-Right who labeled Trump "a distraction" have now been proved correct. Trump actually wound up doing little for white people -- despite being continually vilified by the Left as a white supremacist! Still, millions of whites not only continued to support him, they carried on a love affair with the man. Trump was adored by his base like no other American political figure in memory. Not even Reagan got this much love. The more vicious and unhinged the attacks on Trump became, the more his base supported him. They knew that his reelection would be no cakewalk, but they believed it was still possible.

They knew that the media and the Democrats would play dirty -- very dirty. But they trusted the electoral process. Or, at least, they hoped for the best. For months there was talk about voter fraud, primarily focused on the issue of mail-in ballots. But conservative whites still had faith that the system would work for them, as it did in 2016.

Now their faith has been completely and irreparably shattered. And this is hugely significant for us.

The first step toward real secession is psychological secession: seeing that though I still live in it, this is no longer my country, and there is no longer any hope of making the system work for me and those like me. This is exactly what the 2020 election has accomplished. About 57% of white people voted for Trump in this election. And those many millions of whites are now choking down a gigantic red pill. As we all know, the red pill is the path to liberation.

Quoth Tyler Durden: "Losing all hope was freedom."

It seems that there is credible evidence that there was voter fraud in the election, benefitting Biden. As I write this, Trump's legal team is preparing to fight it -- but, as I have already said, I think that they will lose. Ultimately, it does not matter whether or not there was fraud, or whether the fraud was enough to swing the election to Biden (two separate issues). What matters is that white Trump voters believe that there was.

Trump voters are now, ironically, in sort of the same position as Democrats in the wake of 2016. No matter how much we would like to, none of us will ever forget the "Russian interference!" and "Russia collusion!" hysteria that went on for the better part of two and a half years, until the Mueller report more or less put the thing out of its misery (though not entirely). The difference, however, is that that was all bullshit. And a significant number of Democrats knew it. Trump voters actually have very good reasons to think that this election was stolen.

Regardless of what we eventually learn about whether sharpies can cause ballots to be misread, or whether a "glitch" flipped Trump votes to Biden votes, there is still ample reason for the 70 million Trump voters to think that this thing was rigged. In the months preceding the election, America saw a massive overreach of state and local government power in the form of COVID lockdowns, the net effect of which was to ruin far more lives than it saved. Is it paranoia to think that the intention here was to crash the economy and render Trump unelectable?Consider: Virtually the entire media was not only against Trump, but made it their personal mission to take him down by any means necessary. No lie, no distortion was too ridiculous or too scurrilous. Leftists in government, journalism, academia, and the entertainment industry openly declared that anything and everything was permissible in order to take down the "existential threat" posed by Orange Man. This was the fertile ground onto which were sowed the seeds of speculation about election fraud.

The lockdowns coincided with months of coordinated rioting billed as "protests" against non-existent "racial injustice." The rioters somehow weren't subject to the rules of the lockdowns, because apparently COVID takes a holiday when it is politically expedient. This double standard was so obscene and so blatant, it enraged Republican voters (as well as a few honest rank and file Democrats of my acquaintance).

The Left calculated, correctly, that Trump would do little or nothing to stop the rioting, out of fear of looking too dictatorial in an election year. Trump's own calculation was that allowing the riots to happen would give the Left plenty of rope with which to hang itself. Trump was wrong; his inaction made him seem weak. The basic hope of the Left was that months of economic and social chaos would fatally wound Trump, and that voters would be too stupid to see that it was actually the Left that was to blame for it. In the main, it looks like they were right about this.

But diehard Trump supporters correctly saw that the lockdowns and riots were an election year strategy hatched by the Left. If they were not wholly designed by the Left to damage Trump, they were at least manipulated for that purpose. The cherry on the cake came in the weeks leading up to the election, in the form of big tech's censorship of news damaging to Biden, including blocking the New York Post 's stories about Biden's involvement in his son's shady business deals. This classically Orwellian move finally reached an extreme few would ever have even thought possible, when at last social media began censoring the President himself.

Given all of this, it would be unreasonable not to think that this election was stolen. Trump's supporters believe this -- every last one of them. And they will never stop believing it. Mark my words: this is never, ever going away. Trump voters will go to their graves believing that the election was stolen, and feeling as passionately about it as they do right now, less than a week after polls closed. They will go to their graves hating Leftists (as they rightfully should), and believing that the system is broken beyond repair.

"But," so your objection will go, "the fact that these white Trump voters will become disillusioned with the system does not mean that they will become self-aware white advocates."

My contention, however, is that what begins as disillusionment with the system will, in many cases (a great many cases, I believe) lead to increasing racial consciousness, or open the door to it. Take it from me -- from my own personal experience: once you have accepted that one big thing is a total sham, you begin to wonder whether everything else is. And if you keep going this way, you eventually begin wondering whether wrong is right; whether everything we've ever been told is false and bad might be true and good.

And the fact is that white Trump voters are already far more racially aware than the naysayers in the comments section will give them credit for. Trumpism is an implicitly white phenomenon if ever there was one. And it is implicit only in the sense that its supporters are too tactful and too fearful to name it for what it is -- not in the sense that they are unaware of what it is. We all thought that the media and the Leftists had lost their minds when they damned Trump and his supporters as racists and white supremacists. But they weren't crazy. They grasped, much more clearly than Republicans, what the vector of the Trump movement was -- where it might be headed. They correctly saw that a movement that offered a home to millions of white Americans upset by non-white immigration (euphemistically called "illegal immigration") might eventually give birth to self-aware white advocacy. When they called the Trumpites "racists" it was like seeing the oak tree in the acorn.

As perceptive as the Left was on that particular score, they have, as we all know, been remarkably deaf, dumb, and blind in other ways. Biden's share of the popular vote (if legitimate) is by no means a landslide. There is no "mandate" for looney Leftism, and no "repudiation" of Trump (indeed, Trump did expand his base -- though in one crucial area, as I will shortly discuss, it shrank). But that won't stop Leftists like AOC, and many others, from imagining that they have a mandate for all their craziness.

Therefore, expect the anti-white rhetoric to pick up steam. And, needless to say, this will help the process along in a big way: white Trump voters will think for five minutes and realize that they are at the mercy of a system that is demonstrably rigged against them and wills their destruction. If they haven't realized it already. That image of the McCloskeys with their guns facing down the brown hoard is unlikely to fade anytime soon. And what happened to the McCloskeys has now happened to all white Americans: despised, cornered, and now disarmed. (The literal disarmament is right around the corner, if the runoff elections in Georgia deliver the Senate to the Democrats.)

We are nevertheless still at a point where whiteness remains implicit. Whites dare not speak out in their own defense -- not explicitly as whites, anyway. Populist journalists like Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, and Pat Buchanan, who are privately on our side, still speak in coded language, avoiding open advocacy for whites. However, the coded language (as the Left also correctly sees) is becoming easier to decode by the day. As many on our side have said, we will make no real and substantial progress until we are willing to openly stand up for ourselves -- in person, in broad daylight, and without sock puppets and noms de plume like "Jef Costello." Is that day imminent? I believe that it is.

What would it take? First, it would take white self-awareness -- and I have argued that this is already there, emerging from its cocoon. Second, it would take anger . It would take whites being pushed to a point where they are so angry they speak and behave imprudently , damning the consequences. If one does it, he will simply be squashed; fired, censored, canceled, deplatformed. If many do it, that's a different story. They can't fire us all. And if that anger is great enough, they will fear us. They should. As Don Jr. recently tweeted , "70 million pissed off Republicans and not one city burned to the ground." But this may not last. The election might just be the proverbial straw. The camel may be about to metamorphose into the lion.

Already there are signs of uncharacteristic self-assertion on the part of angry Trump voters. There have been large protests by Republicans in "swing states," including Michigan and Pennsylvania. There has been violence. Continuing the lockdowns will exacerbate this. Everybody, not just whites, has reached the breaking point with this COVID bullshit. Of course, now that Biden is elected, it would not be surprising if COVID suddenly became a non-issue.

Here are some more predictions:

Trump has now moved over to Gab , a free-speech platform that has embraced thought criminals of all kinds (so far). Trump's supporters will follow him to Gab -- millions of them. They will read the other stuff and become more red-pilled. You can almost predict this one with mathematical certainty.

Gun sales will increase as Trump voters scramble to arm themselves before Biden tries to disarm them. Gun sales have increased enormously since the BLM riots began, so much so that the stores cannot keep up with demand. Ammo sales have been so brisk it's now hard to find bullets for those guns. (Yes, I do believe we are headed for violent civil war .)

Conspiracy theories are going to be mainstreamed. This process was already underway, due partly to the influence of "QAnon." I tried reading the QAnon book , with the intention of writing something about it for this website. I stopped because the thing was so stupid I couldn't get through it. If this stuff can be influential among Trump voters, anything can. Alex Jones is all over Gab. The Trumpites who follow their leader over to that platform will get a big dose of him -- and about 60% of what he says is actually true. He was talking about Epstein's pedo island years ago.

One thing leads to another -- once, as I have said, a big lie is exposed, one begins to question everything else. Who really runs the world? Who controls US policy in the Middle East? What's Bohemian Grove all about? Exactly how long does it take to cremate a single body? Inquiring minds want to know. Let a thousand conspiracy theories bloom! Every one of them helps us, because every one of them undermines the system and the elites who run it.

White males are the only group Trump did not make gains with in 2020. Given his portrayal in the media, the irony here is rich, as Jim Goad has noted. Had Trump gotten more votes from white males, it looks like he would have outvoted even the dead and the fake voters. As Gregory Hood has pointed out, "the reason President Trump is in this position is because he didn't do enough for white working-class voters ." He continues: "White working-class voters are now the most important voting group in America. They will have decided two presidential elections in a row. They will decide more."

The Republican establishment cannot be unaware of this. They've seen the same numbers Hood has. If they did not realize it before, they realize it now. There will be absolutely no going back to the Republican party of John McCain and Mitt Romney. Those names are hard to pronounce now without gagging. That they were the Republican nominees in, respectively, 2008 and 2012 now seems downright surreal. That is how much Trump has changed the party. To save that party, Republicans will have to offer something to white voters. They will have to keep running the Trump train, without Trump. (Though Trump is not going away; he will remain a huge part of public life.)

Everyone thinks 2020 has been a terrible year. It is just the opposite. White nationalism has taken a giant step forward.

Thanks, Joe!


Priss Factor , says: Website November 10, 2020 at 5:39 am GMT • 3.6 days ago

White Liberationist is better.

For the time being, as long as Jews play the gane of Whites vs Diversity, whites should play a game of Jews vs Gentiles.

Go Palestinians.

And tell blacks that Jews exploit them for profits.

Tell Mexicans that Jews hog all the wealth.

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website November 10, 2020 at 7:46 am GMT • 3.5 days ago

To be an American nationalist is also to recognize that more recent, non-white arrivals don't belong here at all; and that while our blacks have been here a long time and some of them do sing, dance, and dribble well, they are mostly parasites who contribute almost nothing to the society except grief.

The author makes a lot of cogent and well-reasoned points, but his delivery lacks nuance and has a coarseness which suggests prejudice to the point of racism.

Not that I am accusing the author of being a racist at all – but in the field of persuasion, a biased narrative produces polarisation, either confirming or disputing one's preconceived beliefs.

I suggest adjusting the author's arguments to recognise the actual fundamental issue in play, which is not skin colour or race or language, but CULTURE. Yes, no doubt, the historical currents and ill-conceived government policies have herded different parcels of humanity into differing contexts on the basis of their racial backgrounds, but while the identifying characteristics (and idiotic government-enabled victim industries) may be numerically associated with skin colour, the actual behavioural differentiations are determined by the collective CULTURE adopted by each individual within their respective communities.

Allow me a simplistic example here. By government policy, an Australian is recognised as Koori (and entitled to all the government benefits, handouts, preferential treatment and other assistance that Koori status attracts) if he/she can demonstrate that they have at least 1/16 Koori blood. What a boon to the Australian "Aboriginal Industry", a government-spawned victim industry par-excellence, whose client-base and professional employment potential is thereby magically multiplied 10-fold compared a Koori threshold limited to just full and half-bloods (do the math).

As would be expected, a great many people are all too eager to pile onto this "victim" gravy train. Never mind that the bulk of them are white.

And the really warped thing about all of this, is that all those whiteys whose great great grandmother or grandfather may have been a Koori, baited by the siren-song of government entitlements and victim rights, all too often fall into the trap of government dependency and economic despondency that afflicts so many of the victim industry's clientelle.

It's not language or race or skin colour, its CULTURE. Egged along by idiotic government officials and vested interests.

Here in Australia, my view is that you're either Australian, or you're not. All other considerations are secondary. That applies equally to foreign and domestic policy, and equally to the native-born and immigrants. Until we come to understand and accept that proposition, the NATION will be hobbled.

So too with the USA. Mind you, it appears to me that the USA's CULTURAL issues are rather more entrenched and vulnerable to vested interests than in Australia (so far). If they can't be resolved, then we may be looking at eventual disintegration into several nations, irrespective of race.

Boomthorkell , says: November 10, 2020 at 8:14 am GMT • 3.5 days ago

Urrah!

Really, it's these exciting and dark times when real change happens. The Kali Yuga beckons us all onwards! I look forward to that future thing which American Nationalism will give birth to. I just hope it involves dragons, somehow, somewhere. Maybe on a flag.

Questioner , says: November 10, 2020 at 9:08 am GMT • 3.5 days ago

Your premise of a "white homeland" in North America is problematic at best, since the territory was already occupied by First Nations of indigenous peoples who clearly were the first to make such a claim on these lands, which stood until the continent was stolen from them by white people. A just reckoning of homelands begins with recognizing their prior rights here first, and then assessing where in the world it is best to park our itinerant white asses. But as you say, we've already forfeited our place in our actual white homelands in Europe and elsewhere in the Old World. So maybe we can negotiate paying rent, on these lands we occupy, to the poor survivors of the genocide we enacted to claim "our" home.

animalogic , says: November 10, 2020 at 9:31 am GMT • 3.4 days ago

"Most of us thought that it would take such a collapse, but that this wouldn't happen in our lifetimes. Well, my friends, now it has happened.'
Reminds me of Mr Twain & his comment that reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated .
The author's race nationalism is sad, to say the least. As if "white" comes with a label. (And never mind all the Legal/Property issues that would arise -- imagine sorting out an Olympic sized pool of cooked spaghetti .)
"that we effectively secede from the USA and carve out our own white space (or spaces) within North America. It is this latter option that now seems like it may be our only option, and something we must work toward."
But having sorted out the labels "White", citizens can play " India 1947 -- the Partion" : you know, that wonderful time when millions of Hindus moved south & millions of Muslims moved north. Death toll somewhere between a couple of hundred thousand to a couple of million. I wonder who will get the bulk of the Oligarchs ? Where will those tribal Oligarchs feel more comfortable ?
Mexicans & Asians -- wonder whether they'll be welcome ? Turn away the Asians especially, will go a long way to guaranteeing failure.
The saddest thing of all ? Assume all the race issues are settled -- & you still have 101 other political issues to deal with .Unless, of course, the author simply wants to transfer the status quo to his new racial Eden .Wow, what a triumph that would be.

Based Lad , says: November 10, 2020 at 10:11 am GMT • 3.4 days ago

Succinct analysis of the giddy optimistic feeling I've been having

Cutler , says: November 10, 2020 at 11:15 am GMT • 3.4 days ago

Of course Europeans and people outside of Europe of European descent are waking and beginning to take our own side This is the inevitable reaction to our ( mostly ) hostile elite, Politics as usual/ MSM etc are all in decline and no amount of censorship is changing these trends. Matthew Goodwin and Roger Eatwell in National Populism The revolt against liberal democracy are amongst many who see this happening. The trend is towards Nationalism away from the Multiculti cult and its champions on tv etc. The silent majority in all White nations are less silent with every passing year.

Good read.

RoatanBill , says: November 10, 2020 at 12:18 pm GMT • 3.3 days ago

Great article.

I've long considered myself a political exile. I left the US because I couldn't stand it any more. The insanity of the laws, the always increasing police state was something I saw but others apparently didn't.

If states start to secede and Texas is one of them, I'll move back. The Fed Gov is the main problem and needs to totally disappear. When the USA goes the way of the USSR, then you'll know there's a chance for freedom.

Etruscan Film Star , says: November 10, 2020 at 12:42 pm GMT • 3.3 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave accident? Rain falling here but not there?

The history of race relations in the past 60 years or so has been based on your assumption, that everyone is the same but environments create cultures that make them seem different. It's a claim that's impossible to disprove, because you can define any traits as cultural, and is therefore meaningless. Nevertheless, in practical real-life terms all you have to do is look at how various groups behave in many different locations and even different times, to see that something is at work besides culture.

And failing to acknowledge biodiversity leads to the absurd victimization industry that has brought us to the brink of race war.

Based Lad , says: November 10, 2020 at 5:15 pm GMT • 3.1 days ago
@Questioner

"warriors of the Powhatan "came unarmed into our houses with deer, turkeys, fish, fruits, and other provisions to sell us". The Powhatan then grabbed any tools or weapons available and killed all the English settlers they found, including men, women, and children of all ages. Chief Opechancanough led the Powhatan Confederacy in a coordinated series of surprise attacks; they killed a total of 347 people, a quarter of the population of the Virginia colony."

Oh no those poor natives. Maybe they should have avoided a fight they couldn't win. There's a reason we call them savages.

Questioner , says: November 10, 2020 at 5:46 pm GMT • 3.1 days ago
@Based Lad

Yours is a strange logic, on the subject of homelands. But I believe there's a term for it: "Blame the victim."

CCZ , says: November 10, 2020 at 6:37 pm GMT • 3.1 days ago

"The difference, however, is that that was all bullshit."

But, as the programmer Alberto Brandolini is reputed to have said: "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." This is the unbearable asymmetry of bullshit .

https://www.theifod.com/brandolinis-law-the-bullshit-asymmetry-principle/

Justvisiting , says: November 10, 2020 at 7:49 pm GMT • 3.0 days ago
@CCZ

asymmetry of bullshit

Good post.

There are so many massive lies out there that are still believed by many of the stupid masses brainwashed by mass media, the universities, and a variety of other large institutions.

You can't fix stupid.

So–my crystal ball is very foggy at this point.

(If you think about cultures in the history of the human race, all were based on a bunch of lies. As Terence McKenna liked to say–nowhere is it written that we apes are entitled to learn the truth about anything.)

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website November 10, 2020 at 8:47 pm GMT • 3.0 days ago
@Etruscan Film Star in parallel with the whole racial profiling paradigm is the same idea applied to religion, wherein George Dubya whipped up his "civilisational struggle" against the Muslim world to facilitate American games of Empire. To the extent that any problem actually exists, religion is a red herring. Here in Australia, Muslim people are amongst the most genuine and charitable people that one can meet. In my experience, the only tiny minority of Muslim people who have caused friction are invariably of Arab origin, and more specifically from Saudi Arabia – an inherently tribal & chauvinistic culture (and a key American ally in the Middle East – just sayin').

Race & religion are distractions. Compatible cultures can assimilate in a harmonious society, while incompatible cultures cannot.

Rosie , says: November 10, 2020 at 9:54 pm GMT • 2.9 days ago
@Priss Factor

For the time being, as long as Jews play the gane of Whites vs Diversity, whites should play a game of Jews vs Gentiles.

If Jews can lead a multicultural coalition against Whites, then Whites can lead a multicultural coalition against Jews. This is their worst nightmare, and almost everything they do is best understood as an attempt to prevent this.

Tulip , says: November 10, 2020 at 11:47 pm GMT • 2.8 days ago

This latter course would mean that we all go back to Europe, which the Europeans won't allow, or that we effectively secede from the USA and carve out our own white space (or spaces) within North America. It is this latter option that now seems like it may be our only option, and something we must work toward.

Jez, they say I am a dreamer, and all I want is a free pony and some government cheese.

Random Anonymous , says: November 11, 2020 at 3:21 am GMT • 2.7 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

I suspect that Australians are several decades behind Americans in discovering that your perspective, which basically is what we called civic nationalism, is largely false and has now largely failed. I don't have time to even sketch this, but you can look for critiques of civic nationalism and for concepts like regression to the mean. I hope you can learn from our experience.

Malla , says: November 11, 2020 at 4:19 am GMT • 2.7 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave and snotty racist Europeans and Japanese kept the revolutionary masses down. The opposite is the truth, it were the Europeans who were revolutionary folks (French revolution/Enlightenment anyone) trying to spread modernism over racist, parochial, reactionary, tribal darkie populations and the whole thing ended in tears and trumped up charges against Whitey dreamt up by Jews, marxists and third World Nationalists/ elites. Same with Japanese Empire which too was driven by the Pan Asian ideology. The Chinese too will be rejected by the darkie masses in the future, they too will face trumped up charges for "exploitation" and "oppression" in the future, it has already started right now.
TG , says: November 11, 2020 at 4:45 am GMT • 2.6 days ago

One comment:

"and since both blacks and browns out-breed us,"

I do not deny that there are differences between the races. However, breeding is not one of them.

Ever since the end of slavery, American blacks have had moderate numbers of children, essentially the same whites. Yes, really. Why do you think, after all these centuries, pre-1965 American blacks are still hardly more than 10% of the population?

Actually the fraction of blacks in the United States is lower than it used to be – the Grover-Cleveland cheap-labor immigration surge, that drove wages so low and profits so high, was all from (at the time) white third-world Europe, and increased the white fraction of the population. Because white europeans at the time bred more than black Americans!

So yes, during the 19th century and up through Mao, the Chinese bred like rabbits and lived lives of total misery. After Mao, the Chinese fertility rate was allowed to moderate, and now China is doing very well. Is there anything genetic in the Chinese people for either high or or low fertility rates? No. This at least, is entirely cultural.

Are there genetic differences between the races? Yes. Is excessive breeding one of them? No.

Malla , says: November 11, 2020 at 4:55 am GMT • 2.6 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave in Western societies on average than MENA and South Asians, even the African blacks, who have much more deeper cultures than New World blacks, they all integrate fast into Western cultures but they tend to ebonyify everything. But they bring with them some negative traits like tendency towards violence, crime, chip on the shoulder mentality, melanin power mentality, seeing racism everywhere etc So culturally they integrate faster but the skin colour difference creates resentments and temperament differences still exist. On the positive side blacks are not clannish as the darker Eurasian semi Caucasoids and have an individualistic tendency which does gel well with individualistic Northern Euros.
sb , says: November 11, 2020 at 10:00 am GMT • 2.4 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

I get the feeling that you think that "Koori "' is a synonym for "aboriginal "

It isn't . ( go and look it up yourself )

Ralph Seymour , says: November 11, 2020 at 4:53 pm GMT • 2.1 days ago
@RoatanBill

Agreed. That's the only way I'm coming back as well.

I was just in the US for a month and it appears things are deteriorating quickly.

Cauchemar du Singe , says: November 11, 2020 at 6:28 pm GMT • 2.1 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

Your wilful avoidance of race specific genetics in determination of behavior and capability is glaring.

Cauchemar du Singe , says: November 11, 2020 at 6:52 pm GMT • 2.1 days ago
@Ralph Seymour

I was away from Polaris Parkway, just North of Westerville and Worthington, Ohio, for a couple of months and things have deteriorated quickly.
This also happened to Epstein Best Bud, Les Wexner's pet project Easton Town Center, close to New Albany Wexner's British Village Fantasyland.
The common factor in deterioration is wait for it

Blacks and Browns, managed by jews.

Philadelphia Block Busting, 60 years later, same demographic players.

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website November 11, 2020 at 7:39 pm GMT • 2.0 days ago
@sb understand that the Australian aboriginals were not a uniform race across the Australian continent. The Tasmanian Aboriginals were quite different to their continental counterparts, but even the mainlanders were not racially homogenous. The racial makeup of the native peoples of Papua & New Guinea are completely different again.

A broad analogy can be drawn with the various black races occupying the African continent – their skin colour doesn't uniquely define their respective races. For an extreme example, compare the Congo Pygmies of central Africa with the Rwandan Tutsis.

I do take your point, however – rather than qualify the Kooris as Australian for a potentially global audience, perhaps it is simpler to just refer generically to native Australians..

Ultrafart the Brave , says: November 11, 2020 at 7:53 pm GMT • 2.0 days ago
@Random Anonymous rect.

I hope you can learn from our experience.

One might think so, but apparently not. Instead, in so many ways the Australian culture seems to be marching in suicidal lockstep with the USA, like the mythical lemmings toward the proverbial cliff.

An appalling example of this is the insidious slide of the Australian medical system over the last few decades from a universally free model to a for-profit one infested with middle men and insurance rackets, presumably on a trajectory towards a full-blown American-style Big-Pharma business model with the poor folk thrown under the bus.

The rich get richer, & the poor get the picture.

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website November 11, 2020 at 8:24 pm GMT • 2.0 days ago
@Malla rt of thinking aligns somewhat with reports of homecoming head-chopping ISIS psychos being sent to reeducation camps in Xinjiang, China. The local indigenous population apparently is doing just fine, but returning extremists trained for genocidal wars in the Middle East no longer fit in.

Here's a true story which helps to illustrate that the principle of cultural harmony transcends race, and even species. I was raised on a farm, and on this farm were herds of sheep and also some turkeys. One particular sheep somehow got it into her head that she was a turkey. She would follow the turkey flock around all day, and at night, she would roost in a tree with the turkeys. The turkeys didn't seem to mind, and the sheep seemed quite happy. Compatible cultures.

True story.

Trinity , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:10 am GMT • 1.6 days ago

The stolen election is like Jewish control of the media. EVERYBODY, even Biden voters know this SELECTION/ELECTION WAS STOLEN, but like Jewish control of the media, we are demanded to pretend it doesn't exist or never happened.

No Trump fan here, but I voted for the Orange Man because of the alternative. I still have hope that Team Trump can turn this around. All the Jew/Israel butt kissing aside and the broken promises and holding meetings with (c)rappers, Trump did expose the "normies" to the FAKE MEDIA. Hell, that is more than any other modern day POTUS has done for Whites. Can someone tell me when was the last time Whites had a true representative in the White House that actually looked out for White Americans and was concerned about White civil rights? I am pushing 60 and we haven't had one in my lifetime for sure.

Truth , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:39 am GMT • 1.6 days ago

The Stolen Election Will Red-Pill 70 Million Americans

Well now, that's kind of the whole point.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/iNkrF43SZEU?feature=oembed

Ilya G Poimandres , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:48 am GMT • 1.6 days ago

So that, as a White Nationalist, I am a German nationalist, an English nationalist, a Scottish nationalist, a French nationalist, etc.

I think if we take it as far as Hitler, we are also Chinese nationalists, and Japanese nationalists etc – those nations can develop in their spheres – and so much the better for them. But they may not force themselves on us (or others).

This whole article is based on the Susan Sarandon premise in 2016 when Bernie lost – that a Trump win would inspire the base to elect a progressive, caring left wing politician. This didn't turn out – the system got rigged for about as establishment a criminal as could have been chosen.

Article 10 is not easy to execute. The right may have honour and guns, but the left is TDSed, and rabies is one strong steroid to help with a fight!

In addition there is no real leader – one who could strategise a secession effectively. Trump certainly couldn't. He'd be great as the PR guy, but not as the leader. Until one is born, America is stuck within the belly of the US beast.

Majority of One , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:10 am GMT • 1.6 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

There is a Tribe, which in the main, can be described as Culture Vultures.

Wally , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:24 am GMT • 1.6 days ago
@Cutler

Author Costello said:
"Had Trump gotten more votes from white males, it looks like he would have outvoted even the dead and the fake voters."

Nope.

Costello misses the point that the curious count stoppage was a pause to enable the left to manufacture the votes that they then anticipated needing in lieu of the largely pro-Trump turnout numbrs. And, any unanticipated pro-Trump surge could have easily been overcome by having a reserve at the ready.
IOW:
Regardless of who had voted for Trump, they simply would have been overcome by the left creating more fake votes for Biden.

Majority of One , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:25 am GMT • 1.6 days ago
@Malla ir level of verisimilitude.

I would add materialist values and urbanization to the blend. All my ancestry emanated from Scandinavia. After checking out several major cities during the years of my young manhood, I returned to a rural, homesteading life.

Working with my hands and body is important to my well-being. Seasonally, living on the northwestern fringe of the Northwoods, winters are long and arduous -- a good time for artistic and intellectual pursuits. The soul has its needs, as Thomas Moore pointed out in his book "Growth of the Soul". My needs center on living close to the mother of us all. Northeast Asians and Northwest Europeans share much in this perspective.

Zarathustra , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:32 am GMT • 1.6 days ago

Not too many answers to why and to what purpose but still a brilliant article.
Generals love the war, soldiers not so much.
There is lingering question in my mind! The question is: Who loves more war, Israel , or seventeen intelligence agencies with General staff.
But for the time being I am very much against any radical solution.
I am with Trump's "Stand down and stand by".
I think Biden also does deserve a chance to come up with solutions.
But if Biden starts a new war than everything will be justified and Final solution will become inevitable.

Majority of One , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:37 am GMT • 1.6 days ago
@TG k up a feast. The younger children enjoy their own fun and games. The older ones help their samesex parents. During the evening after supper, the bottles get passed around and sometimes there is music and perhaps dancing.

The bulk of the Amish -- and the Mennonites -- emerged from an Anabaptist culture in Switzerland and parts of Germany and during the late 17th Century many of them relocated to Lanacaster County Pennsylvania, from which they have now colonized westwards wherever there is the possibility of true country living. Not many of them migrate past the 90th Meridian, where poor soil and semi-arid conditions are poorly conducive to agriculture and cozy country living.

Genrick Yagoda , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:41 am GMT • 1.6 days ago
@Questioner

The Siberians weren't first, they aren't nations, and they never made any claims to this country.

No one genocided any Siberians.

Every word in your post is a pack of lies, including the "and" and "The"

Gleimhart Mantooso , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:45 am GMT • 1.6 days ago
@Questioner

Okay, Schlomo.

The Real World , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:52 am GMT • 1.6 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave s have manipulated much in America in the last 50 years and that is the bigger reason for what are marketed as 'cultural clashes'. Most of them are bogus and engineered.

Race & religion are distractions. Compatible cultures can assimilate in a harmonious society, while incompatible cultures cannot.

Agree, again, I'd use the term: shared or accepted values.

(Fwiw, I'm willing to go the step further and view the author as a likely racist and supremacist. Most people like that have lived sheltered lives and had little exposure to a variety of peoples. Many of their assertions are simply empty and unaware of ahem the real world.)

Syd Walker , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 6:55 am GMT • 1.5 days ago

If Brexit ranks NINE on the Collective Self-Harm for No Good Reason scale, proposing a civil war in the 21st century to create a "whites only" state in North America is so nutty it breaks the dial.

Thomasina , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:59 am GMT • 1.5 days ago

"At this point, it seems unlikely that Trump is going to prevail in his legal challenges."

If the courts follow the letter of the law, Trump WILL prevail.

freedom-cat , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:03 am GMT • 1.5 days ago

No thanks. I'd rather go back to Europe.

But We'll give you MT, ND, SD, WY, IA, NB, KS, and Maybe OK. That way you can all go back to growing crops and digging oil (ND) for your subsistence. Every place else is getting too mixed for you.

Maybe if you're nice the Hawaiians will let you vacation on their islands occasionally to get a break from long cold winters.

Blue Collar Mike , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:13 am GMT • 1.5 days ago

Though a lame and uninsightful article on the whole, the strategy of and desire for secession is the healthiest conclusion that the author could have been reached. I would just hope that when whites within the ethnostate inevitably conflict with the ethnogovernment that he would also want for them to secede.

Johnny Caine , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:22 am GMT • 1.5 days ago

I can always tell a jerkoff who never served in the military.

Stonehands , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:28 am GMT • 1.5 days ago

What a simple morality play for the banking elites (who own both parties through "lobbying, i.e. bribery" sanctioned by the highest courts) to divide and conquer the taxcattle.

You are arguing over who you pay Tribute to. This is a golden opportunity for mass civil disobedience to overwhelm and bury the decrepit, imperial corporatist oligarchy.

Macumazahn , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:40 am GMT • 1.5 days ago
@Questioner

The stone-age aboriginals who previously inhabited what is now America failed to defend their lands from invasion. Sadly, we've learned nothing from their mistakes.

Stonewall Jackson , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:46 am GMT • 1.5 days ago

Ronnie Unz needs to weigh in here Give the little cretin credit for posting this of course.

Ronnie you are about to get your brown invasion that you so crave good and hard. Of all the things that the globalist elites want in electing this moron demented POS called Biden is an open border

Here it comes Ronnie Won't you and your bro Cholo loving Reed be soooo very happy

Amnesty is going to be served up as one of the first acts of Shithead Biden's administration

Rejoice Ronnie . More poverty crossing the border to cut your grass.. And a bigger mass of people for the welfare state

Of course you think that maids and dry wall hangers are natural conservatives I beg to differ Where i live in Virginia they are natural clients of our welfare offices. We are ground zero for the Welfare Dreamers who come from Central America.

I don't have to gaze into my navel and dream up some statistics about this you insipid moron I can walk down the street to the Socialist Service office and see it for my own eyes.

Yes Ronnie White Nationalist failed thanks to shitheads like you . Now asshole enjoy paying California taxes to support open door poverty

Virginia is we are now on par to have California style taxes to support the brown wave.

Your Buddy Reed had a good plan for escaping that I believe he used to be a Virginian he moved to where the cholos are leaving!

As to this article right!! Cucked whites are doing shit. They'll be called racists and shrivel up like a daisy in a wind storm.

Frankie P , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:51 am GMT • 1.5 days ago
@Priss Factor he Jewish agenda. Why don't we have a Herve Ryssen here in the US? Why don't we have an Alain Soral, publishing prolifically and SELLING books to the deplorable French yellow vests? Why don't we have a comedian like Dieudonne, poking fun at the organized community and its endless wailing about its victimhood? We need more strong voices, willing to point out the fact that there is NO SUCH THING as "Judeo-Christian values"; the very idea grew out of a poison, Scofield Reference Bible influenced swamp, a hideous swamp monster feeding on bleating Christian Zionist sheep, baa baa baaing as their wealth and futures are extracted by the oligarch Jews.

Speak out folks!

Just another serf , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:56 am GMT • 1.5 days ago

It seems, based on much video, as well as the geographic centers of this fraud, that negroes played a disproportionate role in the illegal election activities. Now that does seem counter intuitive, as negroes are overwhelming honest, law abiding citizens.

I can only imagine that it was some small group of Jews that bribed our colored brethren to engage in this thoroughly out of character misbehavior that may well lead to violent, bloody national upheaval.

If only we had employed a larger share of our negro population in the various lucrative advertisement opportunities, thereby sparing them from a life of soul crushing poverty. We might have saved the nation, had we been kinder to our minority Black population.

utu , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:59 am GMT • 1.5 days ago

"A White Nationalist is someone who believes that white peoples have a right to their own homelands." – White Americans forfeited this right the moment they began bringing African slaves here. Advocacy for white nationalism in America is advocacy for secession or genocide. If you have no stomach for advocating genocide of non-whites in America you must advocate for carving out white homeland for white nationalists. This homeland no long will represent America or be America, so you no longer will be American white nationalist but white 'bantustan' nationalist. If you lucky the rest of America will let you have casinos in your bantustan.

noname27 , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 9:42 am GMT • 1.4 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

YOU are a part of the problem and your infantile, asinine handle proves it.

christine , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:42 am GMT • 1.4 days ago
@Questioner

The karma of the U.S was always screwed from the day the vile white Euro invaders fucked with the natives and if there should be statues they should be of the likes of Geronimo and not white imperial scum.

May the spirits of all the slaughtered native North American Indians be smiling from ear to ear at the potentially very dangerous division in the middle country of North America.

noname27 , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 9:47 am GMT • 1.4 days ago

A very good article that raises a lot of valid points. White Supremacy is the ONLY way, that's what (((they))) call us, so ride with it – wear their labels with pride. Onwards and upwards!

"The goal of abolishing the white race is, on its face, so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed WHITE SUPREMACISTS .Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as the white race is destroyed."

– Noel Ignatiev, Jewish Harvard professor and co-founder of 'Race Traitor' magazine.

silviosilver , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:51 am GMT • 1.4 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

It's not language or race or skin colour, its CULTURE. Egged along by idiotic government officials and vested interests.

Get lost idiot. Race is real and it matters. Fifty years of denying this obvious reality has only gotten us where we are today. Enough.

noname27 , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 9:52 am GMT • 1.4 days ago
@utu

What makes you think White Americans brought blacks to America? America didn't even exist when black slavery commenced and the bulk of black slaves went to the Spanish colonies, not the American colonies.

silviosilver , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:54 am GMT • 1.4 days ago
@Questioner

A just reckoning of homelands begins with recognizing their prior rights here first,

A just reckoning also requires a statute of limitations on questions priority and a recognition of who actually built the country.

Besides, the 'native' tribes were already killing and displacing each other. They were mutually hostile, not united. Why should the addition of one more tribe to that warring mix – albeit a tribe whiter and more successful than the rest – make any difference? Ironically, it takes a 'racist' to claim that it does.

silviosilver , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:57 am GMT • 1.4 days ago
@Rosie

Agree, although Jews have a few advantages that make them much better at it, namely a couple thousand years experience operating as tiny minorities in others lands and a shameless hyperethnocentric instinct evidently lacking in white gentiles.

LondonBob , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:01 am GMT • 1.4 days ago

I looked at gab but it didn't seem very user friendly, problem is also everybody needs to cease using twitter and shift to gab at the same time, critical mass.

theMann , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:08 am GMT • 1.4 days ago
@RoatanBill

Move back to Texas?

And where, amongst these face diapered morons and Covid fearing degenerates, will you find freedom?

America's problems are far greater than issues of Race, Politics, or Culture. At the core, the issue is complete Spiritual Collapse, manifested in craven cowardice, cringingly lickspittle obedience, mindless group think, and resolute belief in imaginary events.

This isn't going to end well for anyone. The spiritual death of America is as permanent as it is absolute.

The Alarmist , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:09 am GMT • 1.4 days ago

This latter course would mean that we all go back to Europe, which the Europeans won't allow .

You haven't been paying attention, sonny. The Europeans are busy trying to catch up with America's comparitive advantage by importing masses of similar types.

Tucker , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:10 am GMT • 1.4 days ago

Has anybody else besides myself noticed how fast Jared Taylor and his #1 prize writer, Gregory Hood – have cucked and caved in and conceded that the DemonRats won the 2020 Presidential election?

And, how each of these guys have now gone into full concession mode and are trying to persuade and influence their followers to join them in their cuckery and effeminate willingness to become submissive?

Also, I was listening to a recent Red Ice podcast where they had a slew of allegedly pro-white community spokesmen and women on to discuss the fraudulent and clearly obvious attempts by the Demonic leftists to steal the election and they were pushing a meme that I found more than a little bit disturbing.

It went something like this: Racially healthy Whites need to respond to this travesty by 'opting out' of the 'system'. This means that Whites need to stop participating; i.e., stop voting completely.

Alex Linder once said, when discussing the suicidal mindset of Whites who were infected with Christianity – and who we all have repeatedly heard on various talk radio call-in shows come on the
radio – after another leftist anti-white agenda victory and say: "Well, I will just continue to pray and leave things up to God" – Linder dubbed that kind of attitude by Whites as nothing more than pathetic excuse for them to continue to 'do nothing' to help themselves or their people. I agree.

This meme that 'Whites need to stop voting' is exactly the same kind of attitude. I am willing to concede the point that voting is senseless as long as the system continues to allow fraudulent and illegal chicanery to thrive and go unpunished. But, anyone who actively promotes the idea that Whites should just completely opt out is pushing advice that is exactly what our mortal enemies want most. It is a complete surrender to being ruled over by non-whites and jews who hate our guts and who do not want to encounter any opposition to their agenda to genocide our race of people.

Dr. Charles Fhandrich , [AKA "Anonymous"] says: November 12, 2020 at 10:16 am GMT • 1.4 days ago

Yes, the election WAS stolen, the democrats having admitted it themselves after four years of trying to get rid of president Trump, as they said, "BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE"!! So rational people are now to believe that they have suddenly become honest players in the 2020 election? As the saying goes, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT THOUGHT /..Dr. Charles Fhandrich.

mark green , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:36 am GMT • 1.4 days ago
@Stonewall Jackson sympathizing with some of your sentiments, Stonewall, but your mean-spirited discourse (directed towards our host, no less) is a textbook example of why Comments Sections (and some commentators) get edited–and even banned. Why take this route? It seems self-defeating.

Your disrespectful attitude undermines your appeal. It also diminishes this site.

Why not aim higher? Why not civility?

Ron Unz might be wrong here and there. But he is not a "moron". Making such claims makes you look like one.

Ron Unz has given the world a forum where countless and controversial and conflicting points of view are given oxygen and light. This is invaluable and rare.

Anonymous [661] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:47 am GMT • 1.4 days ago

This is probably the most profound and auspicious moment in modern American history. I would like to see Trump and the Republican party seize this moment by creating a parallel government. Imagine 71 million Americans standing solid and publicly announcing a resounding "Fuck you!" to the Jewish commies and all their colored cohorts.

christine , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:55 am GMT • 1.4 days ago
@silviosilver

'Why should the addition of one more tribe to that warring mix make a difference?'

Because it was their homeland, unlike the Euro invaders of central North America and just try asking an elderly Palestinian how that feels.

And the different tribes may have been at war occasionally but this can hardly be compared to the mass slaughter of the Native North American Indians and their Bison(to try and starve them).

Ugetit , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:15 am GMT • 1.4 days ago

The Stolen Election Will Red-Pill 70 Million Americans

Wow. Awesome.Yawn.

Who cares about pills when what this country really needs is a yoooge enema?

PS: There is no known cure for brain dead.

lavoisier , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 11:31 am GMT • 1.4 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave Most importantly, the lies attributing black dysfunction to white racism must stop immediately, and the government has to stop shoving diversity down our throats continuously.

Allow freedom of association, enforce the laws, stop making excuses for black dysfunction, and limit if not eliminate further immigration into the West from the Third World.

Perhaps then there can be some hope for us living together with a modicum of peace and prosperity.

But I agree with you that nothing is accomplished by referring to an entire group of people in completely disparaging terms.

That being said, black dysfunction has been and continues to be a serious problem that will not be resolved by blaming it on white racism.

anarchyst , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:35 am GMT • 1.4 days ago
@Frankie P , who are both honored as Prophets in Islam, but instead, Jews spit on hearing their names and do the same while passing a Christian of any kind or a Christian Church in Israel. They have no respect for Christians or any other religion.
It is time the Jewish lobbies and the American Government leaders as well as the evangelical Christian leaders who mislead the poor American young into joining the military and believing that they are doing something for God and Christianity by fighting Israel's wars were named, shamed and arrested and tried for treason.
In a perverse sort of way, israel's favorite "war song" is "Onward Christian Soldiers"
There I've said it
glib , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:38 am GMT • 1.4 days ago

Will the redpilled understand that America has done this to many other countries, with many more dead, or will their new consciousness be limited to this particular event? Because the redpilled ones were always enthusiastic about new military adventures.

Ugetit , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:47 am GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Based Lad

If the warriors came unarmed, but wound up killing people instead, I'd wonder what took place in the interval. Something tells me we're only hearing one side and only a small part of the story.

As for avoiding a fight they couldn't win, what advantage would they have obtained if they just bent over and took it in the cheeks without a fight?

Maybe the reason "we" call them savages is called projection.

BTW, here's an example of what failing to fight will get ya,

[MORE]
Rogue , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:01 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Questioner

Subjugated people don't get to make the rules. The rules are made for them by the subjugaters.

This is not only true of the America's, or of White colonialism generally, but is true of the whole history of the world.

Just one example out of many:

North Africa is Arabic. But it wasn't until the Arabs conquered it. Why not lecture them and tell them to push off? Good luck with that.

trickster , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:21 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@theMann

Excellent comment

PolarBear , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:22 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Frankie P

Sam Hyde is our golden boy.

White Guy In Japan , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:23 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Questioner

NOT STOLEN!

CONQUERED!

Ugetit , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:25 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago

Here's a heart warmer for Wally.

'My Friends Joe Biden and Kamala Harris': Netanyahu Speaks of His 'Warm Relationship' with US Democrats

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/my-friends-joe-biden-and-kamala-harris-netanyahu-speaks-of-his-warm-relationship-with-us-democrats/

Ozymandias , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:34 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Thomasina

If the courts follow the letter of the law, Trump WILL prevail

Since when have the courts been confined by the law? They believe themselves to be the law.

Jack McArthur , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:35 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago

"But it's useful to remind ourselves of who we are from time to time. We are White Nationalist"

Nope.

Rogue , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:38 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave the sheep, in the Kruger park game reserve in South Africa.

An elephant that had some tests performed on it was going to be culled. However, in the end, they decided to release it back into the wild (within the reserve).

This elephant took it into it's head that it was an African buffalo!

It hung out with the buffalo herd, and started to emulate the buffaloes behavior. Initially, of course, the buffaloes were a tad leery of their new, very large friend – but eventually got used to him.

And the elephant provided plenty of muscle when it came to lions stalking the herd.

Ha ha.

Genuine story, not making this up.

sparky , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:42 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@christine

It seems like you got the Pocahontas version of history.
All I can say is that if some guys on horses abducted my daughter and then slowly tortured and scalpted her to death, you can be sure I wouldn't hesitate to genocide each and every one of those savages down to the last one. But let's not have facts interrupt your narcissistic moral masturbating. Just don't come here, coz in the end we'll end up laughing at you.

trickster , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:42 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Majority of One watermelon, they pass around the gin and juice and sit around smoking the chronic and endo. Guns and ammunition are then passed around and they all discuss that nights or the next days activities.

The bulk of the Negroes emerged from the African bush, sold by their own and competing tribes and have colonized all 52 states wherever there is the possibility of free living and handouts. Not many of them migrate to rural areas where country living and hard work would be considered racist and discriminatory.

We have to thank our black Bros and Sistas. Without their motto "there can be no construction without destruction" the USA would never be what it is today.

SittingBull , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:48 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago

Ahhh This white man has put in a convincing case for himself and people like him and he has my total support. He and his people can have Wyoming and half of South Dakota, only half. Want some cows and mules? Take them. Take some white women also if they agree to go. And you must take Trump with you, he's white like you. Good luck.

DICARLO , says: November 12, 2020 at 12:55 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

Oh, thankyou, thankyou, but it isn't Whites who need to be lectured about being "racist". Whites aren't the problem. Whites aren't the haters.

DICARLO , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:00 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Questioner

White liberals cry crocodile tears when the jewsmedia reminds them how White settlers stole land formerly inhabited by American Indians. But, the fact is, every people alive in the world today stole the land they now live on from a weaker people. It's the history of mankind. Further, every Indian tribe in America at the time of Columbus had stolen their land from another tribe, and they continued warring and land stealing until the White man put a stop to it.

hillaire , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:00 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Questioner

This obsession with restitution and atonement, is replacing religion. Only a race too long comfortable would consider giving away to the defeated all they have accomplished and hard fought for.

Churchills jewish henchman, fake aristocrat and architect of the Dresden and associated slaughters frederick linderman mused that the defining event of the 20th century would be 'the abdication of the white man'.

The seeds of annihilation were sown in the late 19th century, now comes the reaping, aided ably by the mendacity, sloth and cowardice of our own peoples and leaders.

Rogue , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:03 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@mark green

Agreed.

(Can't use "agree" button).

Robjil , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:05 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago

President Kushner or President Emhoff that is the question. Same old – Jewish "White" Supremacy. The "white" supremacy game of our "free" Zion press forgets to say which "whites" are supreme. Our "free" Zion press is right that there is a "white" group that is supreme but do not go into details which one. Unz site is one of the few sites that notices this "white" group that is supreme in the US and in the entire west.

https://www.wkrn.com/news/your-local-election-hq/harris-husband-to-quit-law-firm-for-white-house/

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, will leave his job as a partner with a high-profile law firm to focus on his role in the new Biden administration.

A campaign spokeswoman said Tuesday that Emhoff will sever ties with DLA Piper by Inauguration Day. Emhoff took a leave of absence from the firm in August, when Harris was named Joe Biden's running mate. Biden and Harris will be inaugurated Jan. 20.

Emhoff is working with the transition team to determine the issues he will take on as the vice presidential spouse. He is the first man to hold that role, as Harris is the nation's first female vice president.

augusto , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:09 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago

thanks mr Costelo for showing your thought crystal clear.
I a south american, am not entirely a contradictor to your views. And even share a few of them.
If you re a white US nationalist I am a Brazilian, no matter-what-color, nationalist.
A nationalist must necessarily abide by the Westphalia Peace and be a faithful son of the 1815 Wien Conference.
The first corolarium of a nationalist like you is , of course, abhorr and abolish globalism. This concedes a few exceptions (such as worlwide communications) since they are already in place and cannot be sensibly reverted.
NOTE 1:I do want to wipe out globalism. (though not for every small nation nation of the world, which would turn not applicable and counterproductive) away from my country for the next decades at least.
The second corolarium is that any self conscious country should cling and fiercely defend a strong list of protectionist laws. And entirely renegotiate the rusty, hegemonic leaning WTO rules. Not to quit it but to found a new WTO. This protection is what the US did all the the 19th century long, from top to bottom.
The third one that springs out as a consequence is that the STATE presence and adhesion to state owned companies in key sectors is vital to any nationalism.
Now the big criterium to enlight and tell things apart is: the less develoloped a country is the more
of state ownership and reliance it will requires.
So until my home country does reach a 40.000 dollar/year PER CAPITA income, with an acceptable
income distribution, I will be a feroucious nationalist just like Costello.
It is taken for granted that small places like Singagore, Uruguay, Andorra, Bosnia or seychelles can AT WILL make an option to globalize, to intenationalize, to sell themselves out to neighbor or to the best bidder.
No half words, no subtle or figurative language. And nobody must keep a secret as to what to do when a big , rich, established country the destroy this legitimate thir party Nationalism, annex or dominate the so described national entity.
Revolution, no less.

bjondo , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:18 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago

Not President-elect Biden/Deep ShitState
time to concede the election.

Take your lies and leave.
America and Americans don't need you.

Johnny Smoggins , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:19 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Questioner

North American aboriginals would last about two weeks without the White man babysitting them.

Embarrassingly, aboriginals are the one group of people on earth even dumber and lazier than Africans.

geokat62 , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:23 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Random Anonymous ti" future, they needed to introduce the intermediate step of civic nationalism, whereby anyone could be an American as long as they were willing to assimilate into the dominant culture. Hence, Israel Zangwill's The Melting-Pot .

Thus, civic-nationalism represented the proverbial camel poking its nose through the tent before entering it completely. Once Westerners became acclimated to having non-Westerners living among themselves, the assimilationist approach slowly began to be transformed into the multicultural framework, one in which the overarching objective of dismantling "white supremacy" was slowly unfurled. This is where we find ourselves today.

Miha , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:26 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Tucker

Like sensible people, I think they understand that America is never going to be another Orania.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orania,_Northern_Cape
It's possible to get a deeper appreciation of the roots of America's social crisis America by reading Thomas Sowell who has uniquely, I think, shown that patronizing guilt-ridden whites (those that were) over the decades bear a particular responsibility.

Pedro , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:41 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago

Well, if you can't see racism in this guy words I'm convincente that you're already a totally blind racist.

There is NO white land in this continent, son. If you are that German, english, Nordic white nationalist then you can surely Go back there to European origins and claim your ancestors' lands. But one thing you can never claim is the right over stolen territory, neither to define how long one have to occupy robbed land until be able to recognize others as a "native white"
or INVADERS.

EVERY SANE HUMAN KNOWS WHAT IS BEHIND THIS FACADE OF ARGUMENT.

NO WAY ANY REAL NATIVE CAN CLAIM TO BE WHITE, LET ALONE CALL AFRICAN DESCENDENTS ("OUR BLACKS" ) PARASITES AND THIA SPEAKS VOLUMES ABOUT THE SICK PREMISES THIS COLONIALIST SUPREMACIST IS DEFECATING FROM HIS MOUTH.

geokat62 , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:48 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@Stonewall Jackson eelings about "diversity":

Friday rush hour. Euston station [in London]. Who's here? Who isn't. A kaleidoscope of skin colours. The world in one terminus. Barbara Roche can see it over the rim of her cup of Americano coffee. "I love the diversity of London," she tells me. "I just feel comfortable."

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2016/03/11/roche-motel-revisited-the-comfort-of-an-atomized-society/

Ron, too, likes to feel "comfortable." But, unlike Barbara, he's less willing to publicly admit it.

Robert Dolan , says: November 12, 2020 at 1:49 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago
@christine

Moron ..the "native americans" are NOT natives in any way .their DNA is ASIAN ..

they came over from Siberia.

They have no claim on the land.

Go. to. hell. you hate filled anti-white bigot pos.

Realist , says: November 12, 2020 at 2:04 pm GMT • 1.3 days ago

The Stolen Election Will Red-Pill 70 Million Americans

Seventy million Americans are already Red-Pilled that's why they voted for Trump.

The question is what is going to be done about the coup?

Poco , says: November 12, 2020 at 2:06 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@utu

White Americans brought them here? All White Americans? Was a black or two parceled out to each White American? Blacks were brought here before America was a nation. And not by White Americans.

A huge number of White Americans came to America after White Americans abolished slavery. Most black slaves weren't even brought to White America but spanish america. White Americans must pay as a group right?

Poco , says: November 12, 2020 at 2:10 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@christine

No. They're in hell. Definitely not smiling.

Zarathustra , says: November 12, 2020 at 2:10 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

" Back to the future"
War criminals are rising their heads like mushrooms after rainy night.

Turk 152 , says: November 12, 2020 at 2:13 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@noname27

Fart should know that this is Merica and all his fancy thoughts and high falutin language arent welcome round here.

AndrewR , says: November 12, 2020 at 2:15 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

Congrats on being the lowest IQ writer to ever be published on this site. Glad to see Ron Unz is doing his part to increase representation of the imbecile community.

Felix Krull , says: November 12, 2020 at 2:24 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

his delivery lacks nuance and has a coarseness which suggests prejudice to the point of racism.

What's wrong with racism?

Felix Krull , says: November 12, 2020 at 2:30 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Questioner

First Nations

"Nation" is a white concept. De-colonialize your brain, bigot! To the redskins, land belonged to those who could take it, and Europeans honored that tradition in grand style.

AKINDLE , says: November 12, 2020 at 2:39 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@The Real World

Do you really believe the BS you just spewed? "So, things began to slide when welfare became generous and English wasn't required, etc. All of that has been to the detriment of the black population and the cause of many problems in that population." Just another excuse for blacks. Blacks are parasitic criminals, they are going to complain welfare or not. Cut off welfare to blacks then, they never deserved it anyway. The most undeserved race in the world.

ConqueringFools , says: November 12, 2020 at 2:39 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

This obsession with Tucker Carlson is as ridiculous as the obsession with Jordan Peterson. Neither give two shits about anything white nationalist. Tucker was born into this life with a jewish silver spoon in his mouth. The guy is worth $20+ million. The fact he hasnt left Foxnews immediately after the networks recent debacle with election reporting shows where his loyalty lies, like most jews (even though he's adopted) its with $$$$

Ugetit , says: November 12, 2020 at 2:48 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@DICARLO

Further, every Indian tribe in America at the time of Columbus had stolen their land from another tribe, and they continued warring and land stealing until the White man put a stop to it.

Of course they put a stop to it. Because they wanted a monopoly on all that. Same reason the White Euro Christians put a stop to Germany's "lebensraum" ideas. The examples are nearly endless.

We hyoominz are wunnerful, no? And religions and politicians are here to solve it all. Uh -huh!

BannedHipster , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 2:52 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

80%+ of Republicans think the election was "stolen."

Everyone can now see how overtly and comically partisan the media is. Everyone agrees with Trump that the media is "fake news."

If anything, popularizing the term "fake news" made Trump worth it.

Trinity , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:00 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Questioner

How do you feel about the THEFT OF PALESTINE, SHLOMO.

How do you feel about the racist state known as Israel, Shlomo Goldbergtein?

geokat62 , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:00 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

Just came across this interesting video of Enoch Powell debating Jonathan Miller on issues around UK immigration. They both appeared on the Dick Cavett Show, which aired back in 1971

https://www.youtube.com/embed/MEPtyb9OHP8?feature=oembed

I looked into Jonathan Miller's background and was shocked – shocked I tell you – to discover this little tidbit

Early Life

Miller grew up in St John's Wood, London, in a well-connected Jewish family.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Miller

Not sure if the honourable Enoch Powell had known this trivia about Jonathan, but if he had he should've put the following query to him:

"You seem to be an ardent proponent of promoting mass immigration into Britain. Are you just as ardent a proponent of promoting mass immigration into Eretz Israel?"

If Jonathan had been injected with a truth serum, he would have likely responded:

"Don't be silly. Why would HaShem's chosen people wish to mix with the goyim of the world? Sheesh, what a schmuck!"

anastasia , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:03 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

While it is true that people of the same culture, race and religion live in more harmony in their marriages, and probably in their society, there is no way to achieve that objective in today's world of mass communication and mass transportation. Impossible. To even think about something like that is a recipe for nothing better than frustration and despair. The Church recommended that people of the different cultures and races and religions should not marry because of the risk that it would interfere with the harmony in their marriage as they face life's other trials. It's solution when the Christians came to the Americas was for them to convert the nations and it's objective was to promote better like-mindedness and better harmony that could sustain them as they lived together in the Americas.

This is what the globalists believe they can achieve without Christianity. Well, they can't, because without Christianity, there is only self-interest, the opposite of Christianity, and that is what they are affirmatively teaching at the moment, for self-interest is what they need to promote disunity, for that provides the means for better control of society.

In my opinion, you had better find another way. Maybe you would be better off correcting the vast majority of hispanics for believing they are something other than Caucasian.

Trinity , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:08 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@christine p>

Indians slaughtered each other on the regular, they enslaved each other on the regular, they were not a peaceful people and quite savage. Indian tribes would often join up with the White man to fight other Indian tribes.

Hey, are you a member of the same tribe that Lizzy Warren is from or are you a member of the (((tribe.))) Come on, now, you really don't give two shits about Native Americans, you just hate Whitey, don't you? Anyone can search my rather lengthy comment history and they will find they I have a few posts claiming the American Indian is the ONLY nonwhite people who Whitey owes a damn thing to, not a popular opinion, but it is mine and I will own it.

Robert Dolan , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:10 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Pedro

You are a hate filled anti-white bigot moron.

The "native americans" have asian DNA .

DUMBASS.

I have an excellent idea! Go to the south and find some white man, preferably someone who hunts, and tell him he has to move because he's on "stolen land."

Best of luck, asshole.

PrussianBlues , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:11 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Tucker aged what got us here in the first place? So certainly, completely disengaging is what will further accelerate our demise. You have to wonder, maybe these organizations are part of the gay op to further disenfranchise whites even faster?

This display of white weakness needs to end. If you believe in your right to exist and for the sake of your children, never let them gain any more power, ever. If that means voting for someone that also supports Israel, then so what? If you as a WN, ever think there have been more 'pure and honest' politicians in the past, or are waiting for your perfect WN savior to support in the future, then you are just stupid, sorry.

GMC , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:11 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@christine drafting place – but not exclusive. I spent over 3 decades with Athabaskan and eskimos – Inuit, Yupik, and a few Aleuts – since the Aleuts were the last genocided tribe – during WW II when they moved all of them to the mainland – in order own all their land – after the War. In the end, this is all planned by the Owners – Illuminati- Deep State – Zionists etc. It doesn't matter if they genocide the Nates – the whites, blacks, Browns – until all the tribes unite and take out the Cancer – the Plan will continue. PS the Russians , when they owned Alaska – never genocided the Native population – no matter what the media or stupid SE Nates – say. I homesteaded in Alaska .
Robert Dolan , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:13 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

https://www.bitchute.com/video/FE08wodNiEnA/

anon [189] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:16 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

Thanks for the tip on Gab. I will now start checking it regularly for Trump's "gabs". Eff Twitter.

anon2024 , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:18 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

Thanks to CNN, I've discovered a new cable channel, Newsmax TV. They have their live TV feed on their website 24×7:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/newsmax-tv-trump-voters-are-flocking-to-a-channel-that-claims-biden-is-not-president-elect/ar-BB1aVJK5?ocid=mailsignout&li=BBnbfcL

According to Wikipedia, Newsmax is co-owned by Christopher Ruddy and Richard Mellon Scaife(heir to the Mellon fortune in Pittsburg). Ruddy is the son of a police officer in NYC and a confidant of Trump. Per Wiki he graduated from Hebrew University of Jerusalem for undergrad, but his first name suggests he's not Jewish. Is he? He describes himself as a "libertarian conservative" and Reaganite.

Agent76 , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:20 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

Nov 6, 2020 Biden war machine anxious to get back into Syria and cause chaos in Caucasus

https://www.youtube.com/embed/b_SzhntgMx4?feature=oembed

October 28, 2020 Report: Biden Would Kill Upwards Of 159K Jobs In Mich.

According to a recent study, Michigan supports around 159,000 jobs in the oil and gas industry, all of which would be eliminated under Biden's plan to achieve zero emissions by 2035.

https://www.oann.com/report-biden-would-kill-upwards-of-159k/

Oct 26, 2020 Biden discusses his debate comments on the oil industry during presser

https://www.youtube.com/embed/qMvn8be_P_M?feature=oembed

ThreeCranes , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:22 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@christine aph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9110838/Stone-age-Europeans-were-the-first-to-set-foot-on-North-America.html"> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9110838/Stone-age-Europeans-were-the-first-to-set-foot-on-North-America.html

http://www.sanctepater.com/2012/02/stone-age-europeans-were-first-to-set.html

Also, the tribes were not at war occasionally; they warred continuously. It was part of their life style, how a boy became a man.

See My Sixty Years on the Plains by W. T. Hamilton for eye witness testimony.

Rogue , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:24 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@glib

I'd say you're completely wrong about that.

The "redpilled" fully understand that America's foreign wars are a load of BS that profit the military industrial complex and certain lobbying groups – but not the USA itself.

God's Fool , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:24 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

To you, a Jew is an American nationalist because he is not a recent arrival, unlike, say, Ilhan Omar. I got your number you're not a nationalist but a paid up harlot masquerading, sadly, as a White nationalist.

Montefrío , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:33 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Malla class="comment-text">

"Like what North America, Australia, Argentina predominantly was before mass non -White migration"

Argentina? No mass non-White migration here, to speak of. This country since the white arrival has always been a mestizo society.The same is true of much of Central and more so South America. During this century in Argentina,there has been a substantial migration of Bolovins, Peruvians and Paraguyans thanks to the Kirchners (our Clintons) " Patria Grande " program that allowed them in, but it represents nothing on the scale of what has been done elsewhere to the north. Here the issue is less a color issue than a class issue.

Craig Nelsen , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:34 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@freedom-cat

But We'll give you MT, ND, SD, WY, IA, NB, KS, and Maybe OK.

You'll need to get Canada's permission before you give away New Brunswick.

I imagine the "honesty belt" would quickly become a desirable place to live compared to everywhere else, and the good solid folks in Honestan would again allow their resident shlomos to open the floodgates.

Gidoutahere , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:34 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

Now, now – musn't step on any toes.

Rooster10 , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:36 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

In order to be taken seriously you need some kind of united front. Take a look at even small minority groups such as the LGBTQ community, who maybe accounts for 3% of the US population, but has grown into a unified political force.

There also needs to be a consequence if your group is wronged. We have daily mainstream television shows that do nothing but make fun of White people and their traditions. The Muslims behead anyone who dares draw a stick figure of Muhammad, let alone entire programming dedicated to the denigration of their culture.

In order to defeat a bully, you need to punch them in the mouth. Right now many people are hopefully waking up to the fact that there is indeed a bully, then identifying exactly who that is, and finally taking some sort of action against the bully.

DaveE , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:40 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Priss Factor anded by their "G_d" to Rule the World, tikkun olam , " (b)light unto the nations " and 20 other descriptors for the megalomaniac tyrant known as the Jew, who lusts to control blacks, whites and everyone else in slavery to itself.

I do agree with the author that we White Nationalists need to lose our fear of defending our racial identity, but da' blacks ain't da' problem. The Jewish race / ideology that lusts to destroy us ALL – IS the problem.

Talking about black / white racial tensions as if they were the source of our problems is like worrying about dandruff on a cancer patient. So PLEASE, let's get to the point, shall we?

Wielgus , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:42 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Ugetit

And not so long ago Trump and Netanyahu were such buddies

ContrarianKen , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:43 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

Increased white nationalism leads to increased anti-white-nationalism. Genociding indigenes makes white supremacists look evil. Trumpism leads to BLMism and Antifa. White wars of aggression lead to brown refugees going to Europe. God will turn Europe and North America black, red and yellow if He wants to, and He can do it by taking advantage of white people's pride and letting them do stupid "white supremacist" things that make them look bad.

jsm , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:47 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Questioner

So, we can all assume you've been giving 80 percent of your income and your house to a former resident of Pine Ridge County, South Dakota?

No?!!!!

The Spirit of Enoch Powell , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:47 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@geokat62

The pilpul by Miller is truly astonishing, comparing old British people to immigrants!

People like Miller serve the purpose of trying to rationalise the decisions of the other members of his Tribe, usually by gaslighting people into thinking they are crazy and nothing out of the normal is happening. Hence you see these crazy metaphors and analogies drawn by the likes of Miller in that clip.

God's Fool , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:50 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

"As many on our side have said, we will make no real and substantial progress until we are willing to openly stand up for ourselves -- in person, in broad daylight, and without sock puppets and noms de plume like "Jef Costello." Is that day imminent? I believe that it is."

In that case, let's have your real name practice what you preach!

P. S. My real name George Washington.

Malla , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:53 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Majority of One

Northwest Europeans share much in this perspective.

I would say, all Northern Europeans (both Eastern and Western) thus including the North Eastern Europeans like the Russians too share this.

Montefrío , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:56 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@noname27

"the bulk of black slaves went to the Spanish colonies, not the American colonies"

Could you please cite supporting evidence for this assertion? I think (but am unsure) it is incorrect. One thingof which I am certain, however,is that the Spaniards abolished slavery far earlier than the white Americans. Another is that Spaniards are also "white".

KenR , says: November 12, 2020 at 3:58 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

White males are the only group Trump did not make gains with in 2020.

Is that true? How does anybody know that? Exit polls?

After all these wildly inaccurate polls for four years, are we suddenly to believe polls now?

Furthermore, consider this: The one group you can steal votes from if you're the Democrats are the white males. This is where you would do it. You can't steal any from the column of black voters -- since they vote 90% for you already there simply aren't enough to steal. You steal them from the white males, it's a beautiful double-whammy. One, you get your stolen victory; two, you demoralize the strongest group arrayed against you.

God's Fool , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:03 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

"In my experience, the only tiny minority of Muslim people who have caused friction are invariably of Arab origin, and more specifically from Saudi Arabia – an inherently tribal & chauvinistic culture (and a key American ally in the Middle East – just sayin')."

Unfortunately, Arabs, in particular Saudis, are a horrible disease that needs to be removed by all means, including thermo nuclear radiation therapy!

jsm , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:06 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Robert Dolan

What I don't get, from the likes of sweethearts like Pedro

how does the fact that the Sioux were riding their horses across Colorado before we got here, make it mean that Mexican half-Aztec / half Spaniards have a right to come and steal it from *us* ?

If we stole it from the Sioux as he says, the presence of his lardbutt here means he is accepting stolen goods, which means his sin is as big as -- or bigger than -- ours.

tomo , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:07 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Priss Factor

I keep telling blacks about jews and slavery in JUSA – they pretend they don't believe what I am saying even though I provide evidence (from this website).
I guess they are more opportunistic than I thought and less brave, hoping their jewish masters will somehow help them get more money from white people, so they don't want to bite the hand they expect will feed them

Mike Tre , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:14 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Tucker

Perhaps the point is there are no peaceful solutions left for whites, and only violent alternatives remain.

Zarathustra , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:16 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

To whom the land belongs?
At one time in world history all land did belong to dinosaurs.
So how to do justice about ownership of the land?
Human beings should kill each other until no human being left, and than the land will belong to its rightful owners again, the animals.
Native Americans were the ones who had this right idea.
They were killing each other and eating each other.
..
Did somebody ask Dahmer if human flesh taste better than chicken?

Superman to the Rescue , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:21 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

Someone for the love of God please start an American Nationalist conference and invite all people who have the tiniest shred of dignity left in this chemical plagued population.

The goal of the conference: to discuss starting a political party that will be a valid third party option. Agendas to be fleshed out: donor registration, billboard campaigns, multi-state speeches targeting smaller towns that have been boarded up, setting up a volunteer network of security operatives to forcibly secure election integrity, etc.

This stuff isn't rocket science and I don't understand why so many people who have money and claim to be for WHITE NATIONALISM have not pushed their people in this direction. BUT IF YOU DONT HAVE MONEY and are interested in this let me share with you a secret to start it. Get 10 under-writers who will lend $5,000 for a total of $50k. $50,000 should be enough to get the ball rolling. I would be willing to help $. If you sell enough tickets you can pay the lenders back. Secure a venue and promote tickets to the conference across multiple platforms.

Just an idea for saving our people in this midnight hour.

europeasant , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:24 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

"I suggest adjusting the author's arguments to recognise the actual fundamental issue in play, which is not skin colour or race or language, but CULTURE"

I call BS. You are one of those people who believe that NURTURE is everything and NATURE accounts for nothing. A very foolish mindset. A deluded mindset. Do some research and come back after you have learned something from the real world and not from your Marxist professors.

Truth , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:25 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@DaveE

It's not Jews (technically JewISH). It is the multitudes of all races around the world, who have ignored the word of God, and chosen the JewISH (and Catholic, at the top) agenda, as the preferred way of life.

Crush Limbraw , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 4:26 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago

This frank article confirms pretty much what I posted in DaLimbraw Library over a year ago – https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2019/08/white-supremacy-is-it-time-to-face.html?m=0 – a summary of articles on Western Civilization with links provided. Requires some serious reading!
History shows that WC was built on Christianity, Graeco-Roman law traditions and primarily in Europe – meaning the White race. That's just fact!
White supremacy – if it ever returns – might just save our Western Civilization!

Truth , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:27 pm GMT • 1.2 days ago
@jsm

Hey, how ya been, Sheila?

Ralph Seymour , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:33 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@theMann

Now that is a darn good point. I was in Texas just last year and was shocked by what I found.

In Austin, young people presumably from California have ruined the place. Won't be going there again.

Things done changed.

Ralph Seymour , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:35 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Justvisiting

Very good.

Ralph Seymour , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:37 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Cauchemar du Singe

Quite right. Managed by Jews.

Robert Dolan , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:39 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@jsm

I had an excellent exchange with a retarded mexican a while back, as the stupid pos was blabbing that whitey "stole this land from the indigenous people," (HIS people -- -mexican cretins.)

I said, "Oh really? Hmmm ..what tribe are you from?"

Empty stare.

"Are you Apache? Comanche? Sioux? The El Chapo tribe?"

The dumb motherfucker walked away in a huff.

tomo , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:40 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave nd is to what they were mislead to believe I see it here with my African friends, Swiss, other Europeans etc everyone I know has experienced this
So this kind of betrayal and feeling of being tricked also contributes to whether they assimilate (and what there really is to assimilate into when the new host country has no culture whatsoever to offer to anyone, including the natives – apart from shopping and watching TV).
Plus add to this the feeling that say the 800 000 refugees imported last year understand that Canadistan actually played a role in destroying their countries and their desire to assimilate or to respect the new country diminishes even further.
Orville H. Larson , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:48 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@mark green

"Ron Unz has given the world a forum where countless and controversial and conflicting points of view are given oxygen and light. This is invaluable and rare."

I associate myself your comment.

Malla , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:49 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Majority of One
How an Amish Gentleman (he is really one) handles a racism issue, how he handles a triggered lefty, chip on the shoulder, black "British" spoilt snobby urban London girl Sienna on some bullshit "racist" incident. How wise the Amish are compared the "English" (non Amish White American folk) around them!!!
One would be surprised (or not so surprised if you do not fall for typical Jew media/ history stereotypes) that the most snobby arrogant person among the six British youth who went and lived among the Amish in the USA in this British TV series was the black girl Sienna whose parents are from Africa.
Check out the comment section, everybody hates Sienna.
Genrick Yagoda , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:57 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Pedro

White people, and only white people created and built the country of the USA. No one else.

We are home. You primitives had every opportunity to create a country, but you were too stupid, too primitive, and too savage to do so.

Too bad, so sad.

Trinity , says: November 12, 2020 at 4:58 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

So there are approximately 330 million people in America, and the latest vote count shows that 150 million or thereabouts voted in this election? NO WAY IN HELL. To be honest I don't think Trump received over 70 million LEGITIMATE VOTES much less Biden. I think they have Biden at 75 or 77 million right now, can't remember which. LMAO. NO WAY IN HELL JOE BIDEN HAS RECEIVED 75-77 LEGITIMATE VOTES.

Think about it people. Think of the people too young to vote, the people incarcerated, the people who don't ever vote, the people so old that they just don't give a damn like the ones in nursing homes, etc. Just the other day, I was talking to the Orkin man who sprayed my house, and he stated he didn't even vote. Well, given I was flying a Trump flag maybe the guy was being diplomatic or lying but who knows? I think another LIE in this STOLEN election is the total vote count. I guess the people who stole the vote for Biden and manufactured that Biden accumulated close to 80 million votes had to even up Trump's votes to make this fairy tale seem somewhat believable.

John Johnson , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:05 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

First of all I don't identify as White nationalist. When I lived in a liberal city I couldn't stand being around White people. I would much rather live in Mexico than around liberal Whites. Urban Whites especially can be really annoying regardless of politics. They want to be morally right and feel intellectually superior without having to do any work or give any explanation as to why. They want to feel cosmopolitan and view any dissention as a thorn in the side to their unexplained superiority.

Will White people be red pilled by this election? Nope.

We have the internet and most White people can't seem to be bothered with spending a couple nights reading about how both Con Inc and liberals lie about race. Intellectual laziness abounds.

Most of those Trump voting Republicans really believe that we can turn every Black family into the Huxtables with the right level of minimal government/low taxes/etc. They really believe this. It's shocking.

There is no silver lining with this election. It's a disaster.

Too many White people choose to live in a false reality where race doesn't exist. Our best hope is that White egalitarian leftists breed out themselves off by having few or no children. Then we'll probably have to align with Hispanics to end the welfare system. Don't get mad at me for pointing that out. Go take it up with the moron conservatives still pushing Alisa Rosenbaum fantasy over facts.

Dum Spiro Spero , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:06 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

Two things can happen: that Trump wins (which would be something of justice), and that the whites go looking for their places in the United States.
In fact, this is what has already happened in California for years: whites are leaving that state.

Hans Scott , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:13 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

God forbid! But IF Beijing Biden slithers his way into the WH the 1619 Project will be the theme of the US Govt. Which, of course, means that we don't belong here..Well, if we don't belong here then we can only go back to Europe. Who cares if the anti-white EU countries don't want us? They've spent the last several years taking in destructive, horny, hostile opportunistic welfare shopping scum if there's room for them there's room for us. Unless they want us to stay here and be genocided like the S. Africans.

christine , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:17 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@sparky

If the white evil scum invaders had come in peace without their guns the natives wouldn't have wanted revenge.

Its somewhat ironic that guns and more guns are the scary part of modern central North America but i guess what goes around comes around.

geokat62 , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:18 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

Concluding paragraphs to Chuck Baldwin's latest column, Almost No One Else Will Say It, So I Must :

That's why Benjamin Netanyahu already congratulated Joe Biden on an election victory -- even before the election was firmly decided. He is keenly aware of the exponential rise in Zionist power and influence that accompanies the Harris family rise to the White House.

Amazingly, many evangelicals continue to stupidly believe that Netanyahu (and Zionism itself) is a friend of the United States and a friend of Christianity. What dupes!

In a real sense, the rise of the Marxist attack against America, personified in Kamala Harris, can be, at least partially, attributed to the misguided support for Zionism among our evangelical churches.

As I said, almost no one else will say it, so I must.

https://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/tabid/109/ID/4078/Almost-No-One-Else-Will-Say-It-So-I-Must.aspx

Anonymous Jew , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:18 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

To bolster your argument against the Left, instead of identifying first as a "White Nationalist" you should say, simply, that you are an Ethnic Nationalist. That makes your argument harder to refute and highlights the logical inconsistency of the Left's argument, which, at its core, is really just anti-White.

As I point out to people, I'm a Tibetan Nationalist and an Anglo-American Nationalist; a Black Nationalist but also a White Nationalist. All ethnic groups are entitled to their sovereignty, lands and control of their borders. Humans are tribal and need common cultural ties to maintain social capital and build a functioning society. This should be common sense, but somehow it's instead become taboo.

Bill , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:19 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Trinity

Trump did expose the "normies" to the FAKE MEDIA.

In other words, Trump made the same arguments Republicans have been making for 50 years. Coincidentally, he also pursued the same policies Republicans have been pursuing for 50 years.

jsm , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:21 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Robert Dolan

Love this. Can I steal it?

Beautiful Evidence , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:22 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

Longer viewer:
Folks are acting like elections have not been stolen in the past. Get real.
Folks are acting like our government has not been completely corporate-owned since Reagan. Get real.
Folks are acting like the Talmudic syndicate has played no role whatsoever in this scam. Get real.

geokat62 , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:25 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Superman to the Rescue

Someone for the love of God please start an American Nationalist conference The goal of the conference: to discuss starting a political party that will be a valid third party option.

National Justice Party Statement on the 2020 Presidential Election

https://nationaljusticeparty.com/2020/11/06/national-justice-party-statement-on-the-2020-presidential-election/

John Johnson , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:25 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Genrick Yagoda haven't created an America somewhere else.

Everyone hates White people and yet everyone wants to move to White countries.

Leftists tell us this is because Whites are bad and have colluded against everyone. That is the reason behind their success.

So build America in Africa without them? Why is this not the plan? Would it not prove that egalitarians were correct all along? Funny how the plan of the leftist to move the third world to White countries. There seems to be zero dissention along this line. All leftists agree by their actions that assimilating White countries for their ideals is more viable than building a new America without Whites.

Rurik , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:25 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

BREAKING: Trump Drops Bombshell Tweet, Alleges 2.7 Million Trump Votes Were Deleted

https://trendingpolitics.com/breaking-trump-drops-bombshell-tweet-alleges-2-7-million-trump-votes-were-deleted/

I just posted this to Unz's new Breaking News site

https://www.unz.com/news/

if this is true, and verifiable, it could be consequential

Something tells me Trump must have some pretty good evidence for him to post something so momentous at this particular point in time.

Thomasina , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:28 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Ilya G Poimandres develop the vaccine).

Trump is taking on Big Ag. He's taking on the military as best he can; he hasn't started any new wars.

Trump is taking on the U.S. multinational corporations who took the jobs overseas (tariffs).

Trump is taking on the fraud in the election system. DNC's top election guru just resigned (yeah, I bet he did!) Trump is exposing the algorithms in the Dominion Voting System.

Trump got 72 million votes. He owns the Republican Party now! They have been fighting him up until this point, but they are now realizing that they are nothing without Trump.

If Trump were to start a third party, look out! How's that for leading?

Genrick Yagoda , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:32 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@christine

The very first white man who tied to live with the Stone Age Siberian Savages was Etienne Brule. He was part of Cartier's exploration team in the early 1600's.

When Cartier returned and inquired about Etienne he was informed that the Siberian savages murdered, scalped and ATE him.

May the spirits of Siberian Savages be suffering the endless tortures they would visit on their victims.

John Johnson , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:32 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@christine tives wouldn't have wanted revenge.

What makes you think the Chinese or Japanese would have left the Americas alone?

This is some egalitarian fantasy of the Americas remaining scarcely populated with warring tribes. As if the rest of the world would have left it as a nature preserve.

It was never a country and in fact the tribes would align with warring European countries against other tribes. That of course probably wasn't mentioned in your White guilt history class. Numerous tribes used Europeans and their tools as a means of enacting revenge against their traditional enemies. Read about the Blackfoot for a politically incorrect reality check.

christine , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:35 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Trinity

I like to think that the Indians were just exacting pure revenge against the gun toting euro invaders and your wrong i am of irish white heritage and don't make me laugh about torture and despicable human acts as i have seen those pictures of massive piles of bison that were gunned down by invading euro scum that were attempting to starve the natives.

Anonymous [502] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:41 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

It doesn't matter who the president is, you know that Hillary Clinton didn't lose and Trump didn't win, but here's the president, Obama didn't want to do exactly what you're doing now, and he didn't want to launch an investigation. You are directly pushing America into a civil war, by a "fraud of choice" that has no evidence. Indeed, you are pushing everyone into the catastrophe of the Civil War. You know very well that everything Trump claimed was a lie, and half the world was accused of lies, nowhere is evidence and the UN laughs at him, but you claim that now Trump claims the truth once in his life, again without a dictatorship.

Dum Spiro Spero , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:44 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

If Trump loses, the consequences would be dire.
We are interested in Trump winning.
On the other hand, the strength of the whites was their Christian and authentic religion. Not their race. In the Middle Ages it was the Church that defended Europe from the Muslim invasion.
Nowadays an infiltrator is seated in Pedro's See, Bergoglio does not think like a Catholic.
Only with that faith can our culture and our lives be saved.

Wally , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:46 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Questioner

Genocide not. The fake "indigenous people" / little dummies are everywhere and have a complete free ride with plenty of taxpayers cash ("rent") to stay loaded on, to avoid any personal responsibility.
And clearly, American Indians were "xenophobic" / "racist" in resisting European migrants.
recommended:

[MORE]
Anonymous [353] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:47 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

It seems rather odd and highly suspicious that so called NATIONALISTS CONSERVATIVES (whites) propose cowardice in the face of aggression they all claim to be so outraged so contrived BUT all of them propose INACTION now this is the main reason YOU/WE are LOSING America we bowed our heads, weeping sorrowful and thats all The DEMS implemented 4yrs of on the ground campaign of terror they were called BLMANTIFA a permanent campaign of terror And NOW the CONSERVATIVE NATIONALISTS suggests stupidity separation, repatriation, secession ALL DUMB STUPID RANTS UTOPIAS .WE MUST STAND OUR GROUND NOW NOW History, legality, morality, is on OUR SIDE and people know it .THE MAIN THRUS SHOULD BE MUST BE MASSIVE RED STATES REVOLT 1776mII REDUX .By the time dictator Biden finish his first year HE would had used his excutive powers, and in coalition with BLUE/RINOS enacted a NEW CONSTITUTION, REDO THE ELECTORAL FRAMEWORKS so that NO RED Nationalist will ever be elected again,,,never,,,so called ANTI TRUMP LEGISLATIONS which really means ANTIWHITE laws an AMERICAN JIM CROW LAWS IN REVERSE dont you see the perils to come its not about utopias, there is no tomorrow..unless WE FIGHT NOW mass revolts peacefully???? 1776 II MILITIAS..

The Wild Geese Howard , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:52 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Malla

the Japanese too cannot live and do well in live in multiracial Ottoman-Byzantine like societies.

Isn't there a large Japanese diaspora doing well in Brazil and Peru?

The Chinese too will be rejected by the darkie masses in the future,

I have a hard time seeing the Chinese falling for that shuck and jive unless they become a completely Christian society, all the way to the top of the pyramid.

Robot9000 , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:54 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Priss Factor

This post was better than OP. I am suspicious the author ripped on blacks but had nothing to say about Jews.

Twodees Partain , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:56 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

right now, less than a week after polls closed And, as the Biden camp continues to vote

I don't know whether or not red-pilling Trump's fans will help, but it should already be obvious to those with eyes open that too many people believe whatever they see and hear on TV. It's entirely possible that most of the Trump supporters won't be red-pilled at all.

Even Americans who don't particularly like or trust Trump may be disgusted enough with the blatant media push to declare Biden the winner, that they decide not to allow it any more. That may be enough to get some of them to decide that waiting for government to "do something" is a waste of time.

If the rioters decide to riot in celebration of Biden's win, or in outrage over his win being revealed as fraud and rejected, some number of Americans could just decide to shut the rioters down themselves. It wouldn't be that hard for armed Americans who know how to fight, and there are hundreds of thousands of combat vets with recent experience who just might go ahead and do it.

One thing's for sure, they won't be giving any warning on social media before they hit back.

Mr. Anon , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:56 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Zarathustra

I think Biden also does deserve a chance to come up with solutions.

He already has: To imprison you in your home, Melbourne-style, for 4-6 weeks.

The Wild Geese Howard , says: November 12, 2020 at 5:59 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Thomasina

If the courts follow the letter of the law, Trump WILL prevail.

Unfortunately, courts are run by judges, who are all flawed people in their own right.

Genrick Yagoda , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:01 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@christine and despicable human acts as i have seen those pictures of massive piles of bison

They tortured the bison! The horror!

I guess you have never heard about Buffalo Jumps, then?

You may claim to be white, but it's clear you have had your empty head filled by Anti-White delusional lies. The Siberians were so savage that during the French Indian wars the French troops finally refused to fight alongside their Indian allies, because they were savage to the point that the French viewed them as being similar to the THE XENOMORPHS from the movie Aliens.

Imagine being such a primitive savage that your own allies abandon you in a time of war. glib , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:08 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

@Rogue

excellent. In The last 20 years they have changed deeply. Because only 17 years ago they were all gung ho about destroying Iraq. Perhaps a bit of depleted uranium shot into Peoria will cement their views.

Trinity , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:10 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Bill lifetime. The only politicians who really gave a damn about Whites in my lifetime were Dixiecrats, and probably most of them were good ole boy crooks who just talked a good game but CAVED eventually. Hell, Strom Thurmond fathered a mixed race daughter IF I am not mistaken.

Tell me what did all the Presidents from JFK to Obama do to make this nation better? And before you give the standard JFK horseshit, JFK was all for the multiracial plan for America, and he sure supported integration of schools down South. Okay, let me hear what President in the last century REALLY LOOKED OUT FOR WHITE INTERESTS OVER JEWISH OR NONWHITE INTERESTS. I got time and I am all ears.

silviosilver , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:18 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@christine

The point is whites did nothing that any one of those tribes wouldn't have done to all the others if they had had the power to do it. (If anything, whites treated them much better than they treated each other.) We might look at that from the vantage point of 21st century morality and call it awful – just as we might with the Mongol or Islamo-Arab conquests – but it would remain 'ancient history,' not something to constantly dredge up in order to instill racial guilt and gain political advantage.

The Real World , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:18 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@AKINDLE

Akindle = another sheltered, uninformed, inexperienced racist and skin color supremacist.

Color me not shocked.

Pls make the world a better place and crawl back into your hole. Sunlight is too difficult for you.Thanks

omegabooks , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:22 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago

We'll see about the "red pilled" part, but even liberals out here, even ones who voted Biden, are NOT convinced Biden-Harris won legitimately. And who knows? Maybe the criminal psycho elites realized perhaps awakening a couple 'o hundred million gun owners was a but premature and will "allow" Trump to retake the White House I mean, Biden's doing what Biden was gonna do .make the whole damned thing look illegit. And NOBODY out here has anything but distrust when it comes to Harris one liberal from Commie-fornia who lived there knows Harris is evil.

Really it all come down to these–will we let them take our guns, will we let them force vaccines on us, and will we let them burn this nation to the ground while forcing all rural folks into stack 'n packs, Agenda 2030 style?

silviosilver , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:27 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@utu o if there was ever a serious prospect it might happen, they would probably want to separate as well. And why not? Ultimately, we're all better off living around people more like ourselves than less like ourselves. (Duh)

And why would anyone be required to call himself a 'bantustan nationalist'? When Mexicans arrive in America they don't suddenly cease to call themselves Mexican, so why should Americans stop calling themselves American simply because of an altered political geography? For an intelligent man, it's astonishing how quickly you transform into a blithering idiot the moment you begin discussing issues that emotionally disturb you.

Richard B , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:29 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Priss Factor

White Liberationist is better.

Good suggestion. Perhaps some can think of others. Either way, it's good because it's more cultural than political, at least it sounds that way, and because it puts the focus exactly where it belongs, on our basic freedoms.

One thing's for certain. Putting ideology and politics before race and culture, ie; Right = White (and visa versa) will be like shooting yourself in the foot before running a marathon in difficult terrain. In other words, it'd be a piece of unforgivable stupidity. And irreversible as well. Since, if this is flubbed, a second chance will not come again.

christine , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:30 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Robert Dolan

All human DNA is southern African you numpty.

I guess for some white yanks the truth about the birth of their country is a little too close to the bone for their liking and a bit too raw and painful but the truth is the truth and shame on all the euro invaders of all of the Americas in the past.

omegabooks , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:30 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@Ralph Seymour

Try coming out to rural remote far west Texas .Austin isn't all of Texas. And I said rural, not El Paso!
And, oh yeah, Midland-Odessa, Lubbock, Amarillo that is, all of Texas except El Paso westward of the San Antonio-Austin lib-tard areas (including artsy-fartsy Marfa they may like Biden but the don't like Harris if you know what I mean).

Richard B , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:46 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@silviosilver e superior too?

JSI is basically a criminal organization that wants power. Everything they say and do flows from this. They are The People Of The Lie . The point is, you might be able to obtain control of a culture or civilization through lies. But you can't run it that way.

And now we're back to the point you raise in your comment and what it directs our attention to. It directs our attention to what we're witnessing, to what anyone can see as soon as they stop talking about how powerful they are and how screwed everyone else is. Enough! No. What we're witnessing is nothing less than The Pyrrhic Victory Of Jewish Supremacy Inc .

Trinity , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:51 pm GMT • 1.1 days ago
@christine I think your heart is in the right place, I and I respect that, but instead of trying to right things that are ancient history how about focusing on what IS HAPPENING TO YOUR PEOPLE RIGHT NOW. Whites are being slaughtered in South Africa. Little children being held hostage while they watch their mother raped right in front of their eyes, entire families of Whites being butchered by racist Black thugs. I am all for you pointing out how Whites were guilty of mistreating the Native American, but I would also ask you to point that passion to something that is going on RIGHT NOW, something that didn't happen long ago and can't be changed. YOUR OWN PEOPLE are suffering, does that not bother you?
randall r , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:54 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago

What a bad joke the dissident right wignat faction turned out to be.

Richard Spencer and the bugger accounts aligned with his views are doing nothing but spamming straight-up system propaganda, a lot of which has migrated onto these pages.

anon [287] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:54 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago

This article in the The American Conservative shows how much the conservatives still do not get it:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-realignment-is-real/

The author Jonathan Van Maren seems to think the American electorate has realigned itself with social conservatism + economic populism on the GOP side, and progressivism, elitism and Big tech on DNC side. Based on this, he calls for the GOP to use social conservatism specifically anti-abortion, anti-assisted suicide, pro medicare, pro social security to appeal to a coalition of working class America including blacks and Latinos.

The main reason people like me voted for Trump is because of immigration and non-interventionism which he promised on his campaign trail in 2016. We want to see America end the endless wars and the endless immigration . I could care less about abortion, assisted suicide, medicare or social security.

Once again, the social conservatives missed the boat and are now calling for more coalition with Latinos, which probably means support for more immigration as George W. did, because Latinos make good conservatives, right? When will these idiots wake up?! Have they been reading Ron Unz's misleading articles on Hispanic crime? Ann Coulter was so right. The Republican party is the stupid party, and it's because it's run by tone deaf "conservatives" that run webzines like TAC and National Review.

Thomasina , says: November 12, 2020 at 6:57 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@Rurik

Yes, Trump tweeted out: "We will win!"

Just read at The Duran: "Obama lackey John Pilger resigns from DOJ election crimes job."

Maybe Mr. Pilger knows something too? Maybe he resigned before being fired? Maybe those Dominion Voting machines have been compromised using algorithms?

This is heating up. I actually believe Trump will win.

Ralph Seymour , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:04 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@omegabooks

North West Texas is still good? Thank you for that. Because the rest of it is depressing.

follyofwar , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:11 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@Tucker y the Jews? Has it worked for European man, or, with its strictures to turn the other cheek, has it made him a second class citizen? That was my thoughts when I saw so many disgusting, pathetic whites bowing down and kissing the boots of BLM Supremacists this summer.

In any case, unless one is so hopelessly wedded to Christianity that his mind is closed, an article written by Thomas Dalton, "Christianity: The Great Jewish Hoax," has taken the Christian myth head on (National Vanguard, 9 Aug 2020). Indeed, as Israel-first Evangelicals have taken control of Christianity in the US, we should ask if devotion to a Middle Eastern Jew named Jesus is helping or hurting our cause.

Robjil , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:13 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@Richard B r with the foreigners; and this spirit of wear, principle of any cowardice, is so natural in their hearts, that it is the continual object of the figures that they employ in the species of eloquence which is proper for them. Their glory is to put at fire and blood the small villages they can seize. They cut the throat of the old men and the children; they hold only the girls nubiles; they assassinate their Masters when they are slaves; they can never forgive when they are victorious: they are enemy of the human mankind. No courtesy, no science, no art improved in any time, in this atrocious nation. -- Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs (1756) Tome 2, page 83
Whitewolf , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:15 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@Ultrafart the Brave pon its introduction. Since then the government has provided tax incentives to people paying for private insurance. Basically you pay a reduced medicare levy if you have private insurance. The Australian medical system has it's faults like long waiting times for elective surgery etc but it's still pretty good.

On the immigration front though Australia is in worse shape than the US. We have a much smaller population and it doesn't take as much third world immigration to turn it into a third world country. Especially since many use New Zealand as a back door into Australia. Australia is already unrecognisable from even just 20 years ago. In another 20 it's likely to resemble Brazil.

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 7:17 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@Syd Walker

proposing a civil war in the 21st century to create a "whites only" state in North America is so nutty it breaks the dial.

Your observation is clearly correct.

I'd like to add two speculations to this –

1. The civil war is no longer a proposition, it's been underway for some time.

2. Racial friction is being managed as one of several pretexts to rally enthusiasm for that war.

Genrick Yagoda , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:19 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@christine

Yet another empty-headed anti-White idiot comment.

Man originated in Europe, not Africa. White people have NEVER been Africans.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/05/22/europe-birthplace-mankind-not-africa-scientists-find/

Mr. Anon , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:20 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago

Trump has now moved over to Gab, a free-speech platform that has embraced thought criminals of all kinds (so far). Trump's supporters will follow him to Gab -- millions of them. They will read the other stuff and become more red-pilled. You can almost predict this one with mathematical certainty.

Lots of conservatives are now departing Facebook and Twitter for other social media platforms that are less restrictive. This will further separate the left and right in this country, as they'll have even that much less in common. It will separate families, with liberals staying on Facebook, and their conservative family members leaving, decreasing communication between them, especially now with all the Corona bulls ** t being used to suppress the association of people in meat-space.

Bill , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:27 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@Tucker

But, anyone who actively promotes the idea that Whites should just completely opt out is pushing advice that is exactly what our mortal enemies want most.

They are oddly quiet about it. Unlike everything else they want.

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 7:28 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@noname27

YOU are a part of the problem and your infantile, asinine handle proves it.

Hey, it was either that, or Scrotie McBoogerballs.

I believe I made the principled choice.

Anonymous [330] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:30 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago

A worthwhile article.

White people are going to need to get good at living in diaspora, since that's where we are at now. We need to adopt tribal methods similar to the way other tribes operate. For example, spending a little more to buy from our own people. Finding a way to brand white ownership. Finding a way to associate said white ownership with white activism.

It is no good giving money to a local, vice signalling white traitor. It would be better to get cheap products from a multinational, at least you get value for money. However, we need to find ways of rewarding our own financially. We need to ensure that money goes out for things of value – land, buildings, shares of companies, etc. Money comes in from the fruit of our labor and intellect.

It isn't going to be easy because Jews have attempted to criminalize many of the things we would like to do (specifically us, while giving other races/ethnicities a pass), but we can find ways around that.

It will be easier to live in diaspora than via separatism.

Muaddib , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:37 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago

The author is an idiot. To begin with, not all 70 million or so people who voted for Trump were White. He received, what, 30% of the Hispanic vote. Also, approximately 20% of black males voted for Trump.
Your guy just lost flatout. He was unpopular.
70 million means what? I call that pathetic compared to what Biden got.
Btw, you guys were able to be racist the last four years. Sit your butt down the next 4 years because you White nationalists suck ass.
Urban Whites don't like you, period.
Whites invented everything? Even if that was the case, it came from URBAN WHITES. You mother fuckers, whose ancestors are probably farmboys, only take credit.
What have rural whites achieved? Nothing besides taking credit.
Besides all this, due to immigration, most of the entrepreneurs and inventors are liberal immigrants.
Bottomline is that liverals invented everything. Rural hillbillies did shit!

P.S. Bow down to Biden.

Trinity , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:39 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@randall r n that over the top cartoon character seriously to being with. He reminded me of some of those (((actors))) who frequented those '90's talk shows like Donahue or Doprah Pigfrey portraying "White Supremacists" or foaming at the mouth skinhead so called "neo-Nazis." haha. I think they found out that half of those characters were Jews who worked for the ADL or at least some them were. All portrayed the same old stereotype of an evil White racist who shocked the audience by saying "niggers" or just portraying anyone who is pro-White civil rights as a maniacal neanderthal. My gaydar always went off every time I watched a video of Spencer speaking that MANUFACTURED horseshit anyhow.
Reg Cæsar , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:43 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@Priss Factor

Go Palestinians.

Only the Christians. The rest can "go" back to Arabia.

Mohammedans are our enemy. Their prophet said so. Racially, Arabs are just poor, stupid Jews– unless they live above oil, then they're rich, stupid Jews. The problem with your analysis is that it isn't anti-Semitic enough .

And tell blacks that Jews exploit them for profits.

Tell Mexicans that Jews hog all the wealth.

They already know. They don't care. Just someone different to kiss up to.

Peter Frost , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 7:48 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@tomo istic culture that is foreign to them and which makes them feel alone and inferior. So they respond accordingly. The same is true for young Canadians in general.

I agree that immigrants are no longer assimilating, but not because Canada lacks a strong sense of national identity. The main reasons are demographic and technological. Immigrants now arrive in such large numbers that they end up interacting only with each other. They can also watch TV programming in their own language, via the Internet or cable TV, and communicate with people back home via Skype or social media.

Assimilation takes effort, even in ideal conditions, so more and more immigrants are taking the easy way out. They learn enough English or French for work, and that's usually enough.

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 7:48 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@lavoisier he government has to stop shoving diversity down our throats continuously.

I think this is one area where most objective people can agree.

Idiotic attempts by governments at social engineering and correcting past injustices by penalising the present population continue to be rolling disasters worldwide.

I would think the German people might eventually rebel against their perpetual financial tribute to the Holocaust doctrine, if not for the current crop of self-inflicted immigration problems engulfing Europe.

I also suspect that the "white supremacist" propaganda isn't a benevolent attempt to correct society's problems. Rather, it looks more like part of a coordinated destructive strategy to dismantle the existing society. Wielgus , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:49 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago

@geokat62

Miller's maternal grandfather had sought to emigrate to the USA from Lithuania and got off the ship at its destination, which he thought was New York. It was in fact Cork in Ireland. His daughter, Miller's father, became a well-known novelist in Ireland.

christine , says: November 12, 2020 at 7:53 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@silviosilver dn't commit a long long time ago?.

For me its more about recognition of past evils and their karmic effect on a nation and the color of skin doesn't come into it at all really but i do have a real soft spot for the native North American Indian cause because i have had shamanic past life recollections of being one and so i will always side with the Indians over the disgusting European invaders of North America and i will never ever forget those photos i have seen of absolutely humungous piles of shot Bison that were killed in an attempted genocide of the Indians and if the Indians scalped many out of revenge then i hope that the pain was excruciatingly intense.

Muaddib , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:02 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago

Here is something to consider: Liberals in general are happy people. Conservatives, on the other hand, have a victim mentality.
You could see that conservatives had this victim mentality even under Trump.
Also, from my own experience, the conservative types have fucked up lives. Due to their own issues, they lash out.
Could it not be that the reason you have a bad life is due to your own problems? Instead of blaming immigrants or blacks and hispanics, consider looking at your own life.

Reg Cæsar , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:04 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
@DaveE terialism is genocide. Autogenocide.

If Adam and Eve are too Jewish for you, there is always Ask and Embla . Or Deucalion and Pyrrha . Or Dr Yakub .

Authenticjazzman , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:08 pm GMT • 23.9 hours ago
@Muaddib your idiotic mouth.

"It came from urban whites". At the time of the greate innovative wave in the US there was no such thing as "Urban" citizenry, as almost all major towns were located directly within farming territory, and a cosmopolitan mentality was nowhere to be found, guys like Edison, Ford,Tesla, held absolutely no connection to any sort of "Liberal" worldview.

Name a few of "Liberal" "Inventions" Come on give a list thereof.

You are a bloody ignoramous and full of shit up to your ears. You have no clue as to what you are blathering about.

AJM "Mensa" qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army vet, and pro Jazz artist.

DT 2020

AnonFromTN , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:22 pm GMT • 23.7 hours ago
@Muaddib

Bow down to Biden.

Logic is certainly not your strong suit. Why would people of any color capable of anything worth mentioning bow down to a corrupt senile stuffed shirt?

wakeupscreaming , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:22 pm GMT • 23.7 hours ago

"At this point, it seems unlikely that Trump is going to prevail in his legal challenges. "

Oh, do you know something we don't?
I've been reading tons of alternative media, and it's looking good for President Trump.

GeneralRipper , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:22 pm GMT • 23.7 hours ago
@Questioner nk it would probably be best for you and all those who agree with you to kill their family and extended family, and then blow their own brains out. Firstly, to atone for "white guilt" and "white privilege" and secondly as a constructive means of reducing the white population in these "stolen" Injun lands. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Of course, if you worthless cunts can't summon the nerve to do that, then you should at the very least, REMOVE YOUR OWN WHITE ITINERANT ASS from this "stolen land".

Africa, China or Mexico beckons. Bon Voyage!

It's known as "leadership by example".

We won't be holding our breath.

Trinity , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:27 pm GMT • 23.6 hours ago
@Muaddib The average Biden voter = anti-White and yes there are anti-White white people, I call them WINOs short for White In Name Only or better yet, white traitor trash

I think liberals have went the way of the Dodo Bird. And no, racist Jews, who PRETEND to love everyone Black, Brown, etc., anyone except Whites are only pretending to love POC to USE THEM against Whitey. Case in point, in Israel they export African Jews all the time proving that Judaism isn't a religion but a race. Nope, I doubt Sammy Davis Jr. would have ever truly been welcomed to move to Israel. And there is no such thing as a nonwhite liberal, nonwhites are tribal as hell and only out for themselves.

Muaddib , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:28 pm GMT • 23.6 hours ago
@Authenticjazzman ated? How about, uh, everything, including the internet you are using? Yes, and immigants and minorities contributed.
If you don't like liberals, maybe you should start by turning off your computer.
But let me guess, you want to breathe the liberal air.
You brag about your Mensa score. And what did you achive with that? Hatred for liberals? So what good was your Mensa? It was probably a fraud.
Look around you. The world has changed. You are basically an Amish in a sea of modernity.
This is what you get when you don't meet people of all types.
Just old, disgruntled and blaming others because your life wasn't ideal.
Authenticjazzman , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:30 pm GMT • 23.6 hours ago
@Muaddib

"Liberals are in general happy people"

Yeah this is why they fill the waiting rooms of shrinks to be pumped full of psycho-drugs, and resort to "screaming at the sky" when their political party loses an election.

Liberals are the most disturbed, troubled grouping of individuals to be found world-wide. They are the nut-cases who stick themselves full of needles and pins , and dye their hair blue so as to present their deranged worldview for all to see.

Again you are a hopeless moron and have no clue as to what you are blathering about.

AJM

gay troll , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:31 pm GMT • 23.6 hours ago
@Zarathustra

Indeed, all land belongs to the birds. Humans may only claim sovereignty to the indoors.

GeneralRipper , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:34 pm GMT • 23.5 hours ago
@Muaddib

Here is something to consider: Liberals in general are happy people. Conservatives, on the other hand, have a victim mentality.

Yes, we've seen myriad examples of those happy, well adjusted, tolerant "Liberal" people over the last four years. When they're not freaking out or breaking down, they're "lashing out" in the form of assaulting, burning, destroying, looting, and murdering etc

Certainly an inspiring example for us all.

What color is the sky in your world, numbnuts?

Art , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:35 pm GMT • 23.5 hours ago

Hmm -- not one "Jew" word!

Is the author of this article a coward – he attacks the weak blacks – and ignores the overpowering Jews.

Blacks are not America's problem – Jews are.

Do blacks own and or control social media, print media, broadcast media, Congress, the president, schools, Wall Street, and the Fed – or is it Jews. Be honest.

It is the Jews who siphon our wealth and divide us.

Jews control the cities that are devastated by black crime. Get the Jews out of control, and things will improve. Guaranteed!

Societies need both a political left and a political right – the Jew control of the left is killing America. (Actually, they control both.)

Jeff Costello needs to put on his big boy pants and attack the true evil in America.

PolarBear , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:42 pm GMT • 23.4 hours ago
@Pedro

Plenty in the US are pure Europeans. Many Nordic and German families are recent immigrants. Old Colonials often have slight Native admixture. Bantu Africans, Aztecs, ect. need to return all stolen territory aswell then.

Ugetit , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:44 pm GMT • 23.3 hours ago
@Wielgus

And not so long ago Trump and Netanyahu were such buddies

That, my friend, was exactly why I posted that. Thank you for emphasizing the point.

In case Wally doesn't get it, new boss is much the same as the old boss, and Netanyahu was never a friend to either, not that it should come as a surprise to anyone. Netanyahu won't give Trump a second thought after the "ingrovelation."

Sad stuff.

Muaddib , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:45 pm GMT • 23.3 hours ago
@Trinity

Huh?
Jews this and that. This is the problem with White Nationalists. You believe in conspiracy theories.
Newsflash: Soros does not control anything. He is old, and about to die. He has money. He is pretty much a moderate.

Qanon is stupidity. If any Mensa guy here believes in the stupidity known as Qanon, consider a retest.

jsigur , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:53 pm GMT • 23.2 hours ago

Comments like this, "while our blacks have been here a long time and some of them do sing, dance, and dribble well, they are mostly parasites who contribute almost nothing to the society except grief.", are all too common in white nationalist circles and gives the illusion of truth to the Jewish propaganda about us.
One has to wonder if that is the intention. It basically says white nationalists hate everyone but themselves which is exactly what Jews are saying about us in the propaganda system
This is not a closed site! Anyone can come in here and read these tacky remarks.
I think some of you need to follow the Jewish example which is hate the goy while you pretend to help them
In case you didn't know, non-whites are about 50% of the population now and considering all the fire power is in support of them against us. perhaps we can find another way to advocate our predicament

Trinity , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:54 pm GMT • 23.2 hours ago
@Muaddib

I don't know their political views or what passes for a liberal but one thing is certain WHITES have contributed more than all the other races combined. Henry Ford, Wright Brothers, Tesla, Thomas Edison, etc., I don't think those guys were Jews or negroes.

My guess is YOU ARE NOT A LIBERAL, you are either an anti-White racist Jew, and or some other form of anti-White degenerate who HIJACKED the term, "liberal." In your case the correct tag would be, LIEberal.

christine , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:55 pm GMT • 23.2 hours ago
@Trinity

I think the Irish band Clannad wrote songs about and in solidarity with the North American Indians, so you could be right.

This genocide and the photographic images from it that i have seen will never be forgotten by me and the color of the faces of the Europeans with guns doesn't come into it and if i mentioned 'white euro scum' it was to differentiate between northern Europeans and those a bit darker/olive skinned southern Europeans that invaded lands further south than todays U.S.A.

Peace.

GeneralRipper , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:56 pm GMT • 23.1 hours ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

It's not language or race or skin colour, its CULTURE.

Hate to break the news to you, bossman, but "language, race and skin color" as well as religion have very much to do with CULTURE.

The author makes a lot of cogent and well-reasoned points, but his delivery lacks nuance and has a coarseness which suggests prejudice to the point of racism.

I'm afraid any jackass who accepts or gives credence to the enemy's descriptors of those who naturally honor and favor their own race to others, does not really deserve to be taken seriously.

jsigur , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:56 pm GMT • 23.1 hours ago
@GeneralRipper

My way or the highway? Great talking points!
You do know almost all Indians were wiped out as the result of Jewish colonialism, right?

Commentator Mike , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:58 pm GMT • 23.1 hours ago
@The Real World

Fwiw, I'm willing to go the step further and view the author as a likely racist and supremacist. Most people like that have lived sheltered lives and had little exposure to a variety of peoples. Many of their assertions are simply empty and unaware of ahem the real world.

You shouldn't make personal statements about people you don't know. You could read more of this author's work to discover his ideological evolution and that his views result from life experience and not the lack of it.

Genrick Yagoda , says: November 12, 2020 at 8:59 pm GMT • 23.1 hours ago
@christine

The Indians didn't scalp out of revenge, they scalped because they were primitive savages.

On or about the year 1,300 AD long before the Siberians saw a single white man, one tribe of Siberians murdered, scalped, and ate every single one of the 498 women and children of the losing tribe whose men the victorious Siberians had slaughtered.

And we know this because we found the bones of the women and children at Crow Creek in 1978.

Tell me, when you were a Shaman in your past life how much Man Corn did you eat?

tomo , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:05 pm GMT • 23.0 hours ago
@Peter Frost ly of all ages as well as tourist to hear their opinion – and I have never met anyone who does not agree or has similar stories. People are very lonely here and there is too much virtue signaling without any virtue. I spent a few months on a placement in one of the biggest hospitals in Toronto – and what I have seen there confirms my experience. Every day there was one or two teenagers (white) trying to kill themselves. That's only what I have seen while on ER. I spoke to mental 'health' patients too.
There is far too much passive aggressive backstabbing here in Canada – definitely more than I have seen anywhere (I've lived in London, LA, SF, DC, Serbia , Germany etc)
geokat62 , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:10 pm GMT • 22.9 hours ago
@Wielgus

His daughter, Miller's father, became a well-known novelist in Ireland.

You lost me. How are these individuals related, again?

Muaddib , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:13 pm GMT • 22.9 hours ago
@Trinity ve equal rights. Immigrants have equal rights. DACA folks who came here due to no fault of their own need to be given a chance to stay here, etc.
2. Social programs can be good for society. Think not just social security, but also healthcare for all.

When you treat everybody with respect, by nature you are a happy person.
I will tell you something. If somehow all immigrants and minorities were kicked out, you would still be unhappy. The reason is that you are by nature unhappy.

So think about where your life is. Whose fault is that? Put your ego aside. It was YOUR decisions.
So why blame anybody else?

anonymous [110] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:15 pm GMT • 22.8 hours ago

Trump did not do much to curb legal immigration especially H1B and international students until the very end, a couple of months before the election. Now Biden is about to undo everything and let the MexChindian third world horde wash over us. The dumb millennials who complained about being unemployed or underemployed with massive student loan debt will have an even harder time finding a job now. I've often wondered why these idiots still insist on voting for Biden.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/11/12/biden-presidency-offers-promise-reset-international-education-challenges-remain

Another regulatory change, now in the proposed rule stage, would eliminate the H-1B visa lottery in favor of prioritizing applicants earning higher wages.

"It basically will again ice out anyone who's entry-level," said Sharvari Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Many international students use the H-1B visa as a pathway for staying to work in the U.S. after they graduate.

The least Trump could do on his way out is to finalize this crucial rule as a parting gift to his base which largely stuck by him. It took him long enough to finally get to this. He should've cancelled H1b and OPT on Day 1. If he had done that he might have won the election.

Trinity , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:26 pm GMT • 22.6 hours ago
@christine frican children and women, as well as adult males being slaughtered in South Africa by marauding racist genocidal Blacks?

Hmm, IF you are TRULY concerned about injustice in a demonic world, why aren't you concerned about Whites?

Do you feel for the Whites who endured the Holodomor? Did you know that Genrikh Yagoda and Lazar Kaganovich, two chief architects of the systemic starvation of MILLIONS of Ukrainian and Russian Whites were Jewish?

The FACT THAT YOU DID NOT ADDRESS WHAT IS HAPPENING IN SOUTH AFRICA, just shows me that you are MORE ANTI-WHITE than someone who really cares about humanity, truth or justice. Hell, you probably are not even (((Irish.)))

R2b , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:34 pm GMT • 22.5 hours ago

That you americans vote for that mafioso, is beyond comprehension.
You are so extremely stupid, and I am sorry to say, you bring it on all of us!
Why do you even vote for Bidén!?
Vote for Trump and after half term, create a more representative party.
The freest country in the world, and you just let it happen.
Anyway, I dont believe the official result.
You americans have not been that stupid.
Take the banner of Christ!
And reject zionism.
And reclaim youre country!
The world is waiting.

Stonehands , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:37 pm GMT • 22.5 hours ago
@Ugetit

You said more truth -right there in 25 words- than Ron Unz can say in 10,000

Kudos, my friend.

Emslander , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:42 pm GMT • 22.4 hours ago

Complete drivel. As a German-American of almost two centuries of heritage, I don't identify with your labels, priorities or prejudices.

If you're concerned about certain colors of people having more children than you, the solution is simply to be generous with the Creator with your families. Have more children.

Negrolphin Pool , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:44 pm GMT • 22.3 hours ago
@animalogic

Americans who identify as white are over 95 percent genetically European.

And when the problem is existential, giving 101 reasons why a solution won't work as evidence that we shouldn't even try is plain demoralization.

Robjil , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:55 pm GMT • 22.2 hours ago
@Muaddib

When Kings ruled Europe, people could call them out.

The problem with our new rulers, we can't call them out.

It is anti-S -- – to do so.

Rulers should not be protected like this. It stops all talk or possible corrections of the actions of our Rulers.

That is the situation that we are in the west.

It is reality. All ethnic groups are effected by our Rulers. It is not a white, black, blue, green, purple or any color one can apply to a people.

Daniel Rich , says: November 12, 2020 at 9:56 pm GMT • 22.1 hours ago
@The Real World

They were free to continue traditions from native lands but, they had to learn our language, obey our laws

Then who were the ones who decided what the language of the native land would be and what laws to adhere to ?

They?
Us?
Them?
We?

Robert Dolan , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:00 pm GMT • 22.1 hours ago

https://www.bitchute.com/video/GwbTRmt8jDo/

aleksander , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:10 pm GMT • 21.9 hours ago
@RoatanBill at all times.

We're dealing with serious control freaks here people. I wish people would just realize that the COMMUNISTS stole the election and are about to go full Bolshevik on us.

YT is already petrified by blacks at work. One slip up, and it's off to the HR gulag archipelago, then full termination. Anyone who is not a "true believer" in the Revolution, will be scheduled for termination.

Amazing how history repeats itself. YT has been so programmed to think of everyone as "nice," that they can't even come close to imagining that Satanic Marxist pedophiles just stole a national election.

As if anyone could make peace with such Hellspawn.

GeneralRipper , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:11 pm GMT • 21.9 hours ago
@jsigur https://i1.wp.com/historyreviewed.best/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/excellent-white-supremacy-joseph-sobran.jpeg?resize=720%2C582

That's the facts, Jack. Who gives a Fiddler's fuck if it offends your delicate sensibilities?

White Christian European people, and White Americans in particular, will apologize when every other race, nation and religion are duly scrutinized and exposed for their "crimes" and "atrocities".

Which will most likely happen in the reign of Queen Dick lol

We are not now, nor will we EVER be, ashamed of our history or our people, despite the best efforts of the Jew Globalist Left.

Quite the contrary.

anon [110] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:12 pm GMT • 21.9 hours ago

I would not count on the GOP, even with a 52 vote majority, to stop any attempt at immigration reform by the Dems. There are enough RINOs in there including both of the R from Utah(Mike Lee, Mitt Romney), Marco Rubio, Lindsay Graham, Lisa Murkowsky, Joni Ernst, to name but a few, who could easily go with the Dems on reform.

Mike Lee (R-UT), one of Trump's faves, has been trying to push through the Indian green card bill S. 386 for at least the last two years. The bill was originally to give employment based greencards, some 140k per year, to Indian nationals only for the next ten years. After being blocked 3 times by 3 different senators – Perdue(R-GA), Dick Durban(D-IL), Rick Scott(R-FL), the bill has morphed into a monster.

With each blockage, the bill keeps getting changed to include more and more beneficiaries. In its final iteration, it will now 1) up the per country limit for family based greencard from 7% to 15%, 2) completely eliminate the per country cap of 7% for employment based visa, 3) remove an offset that reduced visas available for Chinese nationals, 4) Reserve a percentage(didn't say what %) of EB2 and EB3 visas (both for high skills) to nationals from outside the top two countries (which I am guessing are India and China), with max of no more than 85% from any single country.

Most importantly, the latest iteration of this bill will treat any Indian who has applied for a green card as already having one, with all the benefits of a greencard while they wait, incl. being able to travel, change jobs.

More Americans need to wake up to this type of treasonous bills being pushed by GOP senators:

https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2020/08/07/mike-lees-s386-bill-creates-green-card-lite-for-more-migrants/

Sen. Rick Scott of FL referred the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he has been attacked as KKK by Indian tech workers lobby.
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2020/08/31/rick-scott-torpedoes-mike-lees-s-386-h-1b-outsourcing-bill/

PolarBear , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:12 pm GMT • 21.9 hours ago
@jsigur

There is many Jews here but I see nothing untrue about stating the fact that Blacks contribute very little. You've stated nothing Blacks contributed and merely whined about Whites doing what every non-White race does more than Whites. No race has been more of a "schwartze-lover" than Whites. Whites should be more honest about race and stop believing Blacks are magical. Whites should not tolerate any bad behavior from Blacks or any non-White race for that matter.

Nancy O'Brien Simpson , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:13 pm GMT • 21.9 hours ago

This is a joke, right? Millions of non-whites are simply going to get up and leave their homes, jobs, schools, neighborhoods so that Whites can have a little patch of paradise? Has our dear article author been hitting the crack pipe again?
I got news for you. The world is not flat. Leeches do not suck disease out of humans. The earth is brown, no longer yellow, red, black, and white. It gets browner every day.
As for a shared culture and a homeland, the whites were the only race dumb enough not to preserve theirs. Japan is almost 100% Asian. China is Asian. Africa is black. India is Indian. The USA is a mixture of everything. Europe is a mixture of everything. The whites were the only race with the inability to preserve a homeland. Hence they are too shortsighted to deserve one.

jsm , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:16 pm GMT • 21.8 hours ago
@Truth

What?
Troof?
What are you still hanging around here for? Did you not read Questioner? You're squatting on stolen land and you need to vamoose.

Tom , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:23 pm GMT • 21.7 hours ago
@Priss Factor

Whites need to get increasingly audacious using insulting humor of the Charlie Hebdo, or SNL kind. It's free speech, right? I feel empowerment growing among Whites during the Voter Fraud Saga and I think there will be a lot less self-censorship from now on. The hate speech laws need to be brought to court so that a charge of "racism" has to be substantiated, or otherwise ruled as a federal hate crime. Who started the whole Racism Industry? Could it have been Jewish intellectuals in their pursuit of the cultural and economic genocide of Gentiles?

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 10:33 pm GMT • 21.5 hours ago
@Felix Krull or more items according to specified parameters.

In common usage, though, "discriminate" is taken to mean the unfair treatment of one party compared to another. Again, typically regarded as an uncivilised activity. And again, this may be pertinent within a given context, but is not automatically true.

So, strictly speaking, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with "racism".

However, IMO the author uses language which suggests disdain for black Americans (for example). If that is an expression of "racism", then it would be in the colloquially "bad" context.

Regardless, IMO the emphasis on the racial dimension limits the article's perspective. Is "Trumpism" just a white movement, or is it an American movement, or is it something more (or less)?

onebornfree , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 10:35 pm GMT • 21.5 hours ago

"The Stolen Election Will Red-Pill 70 Million Americans"
Here's a real "red pill" for murkans [and the rest of the world], stated 3 different ways:

"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure" Robert LeFevere

"Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class." Albert J. Nock

"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

Thomasina , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:41 pm GMT • 21.4 hours ago
@anon He's the one the people voted for, not them, and they are just waking up to this now.

It's the same type of diversion the Democrats just tried to pull off with Antifa and BLM. They got everybody looking at "White Supremacy", racial and identity issues so that you wouldn't be looking at the money the elites are skimming off the top. I'm sure they could have cared less about the POC.

The elites are fighting Trump hard; they don't want him changing anything. They knew it would be mainly "Whites" voting for Trump, so they invented this White Supremacy bullshite.

Yes, the people who voted for Trump ARE interested in immigration, and so is Trump.

AnonFromTN , says: November 12, 2020 at 10:47 pm GMT • 21.3 hours ago
@Authenticjazzman

stick themselves full of needles and pins , and dye their hair blue so as to present their deranged worldview for all to see

Yep, that describes it. I understand that a lot of people cannot help being stupid, but I never understood why people want to aggressively advertise their stupidity. Perverted exhibitionism, maybe?

lloyd , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 10:53 pm GMT • 21.2 hours ago

Costello seems a strange choice of nom de plume for a white nationalist. I at least identify the name as Shepardi Jew. The J word never comes up in the article with its problematic issue of where Jews fit in a white nationalist homeland. Has anyone noticed the only high profile non retired public figure left with a wasp name and is not black is Homer Simpson? I am of course exaggerating but the signs are there. With the demise of the white wasps has come the fall of foundation America. The non wasps don't really share its cultural sentiments. Its sobriety is lacking except among the best black people who share its names. I am thinking of Ben Carson. Homer Simpson is a cartoon of a simple slobbish white American. There is no public movement to remove him of course. So it isn't really surprising America is going the catastrophic way of her sourthern neighbours.

Q Anon is clearly JFK jr. His crash and recovery was prophesised in the Nostradamus Quatrain for July of 1999. He carries on the legacy of the Kennedys since grandfather Joe as does his cousin Robert Kennedy.

geokat62 , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:10 pm GMT • 20.9 hours ago

Brother Nathanael's latest instalment is a doozy, FAKE NEWS, FAKE ELECTION :


https://www.bitchute.com/embed/LRQK9TfcNJM2/

Hardest-hitting passage:

Cackling Commie Kamal, who humped her way to the top, married Big Tech lawyer Jew, Douglas Emhoff, a few years back.

The Jew would be "First Man" and you can kiss your First Amendment goodbye.

Big Tech -- (with Emhoff's impending high position and legal conniving) -- will be free to ban all 'hate speech,' which is 'speech' Jews 'hate' to hear.

And the entire Jew-owned media and their leftist political machine operatives will decide all elections from henceforth now and forever.

You are about to enter the Twilight Zone -- a Jew-ruled, Jew-ruined, Jew-controlled America.

Full transcript

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Truth , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:13 pm GMT • 20.9 hours ago
@jsm

I won a lottery given by the renters, and was given free transatlantic transport.

Dum Spiro Spero , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:15 pm GMT • 20.8 hours ago

Fake Pope to fake president:
https://novusordowatch.org/2020/11/pope-francis-congratulates-joe-biden/

Priss Factor , says: Website November 12, 2020 at 11:18 pm GMT • 20.8 hours ago
@DaveE an mean the need for white unity & power. Or it can mean white power as the basis for world domination. Nationalism need not be imperialist but often took an imperialist turn in the past when a nation became very powerful.
In contrast, 'liberation' emphasizes the need for whites to seek emancipation from the current power that dominates the West and the World which is Jewish Power. (Even 'white national liberation' sounds better than mere 'white nationalism'.) White Politics that only focuses on whites and white power is less likely to be appealing than White Politics that seeks freedom from the actual tyranny that rules the world: Jewish Supremacist Power or JSP.
[MORE]
anon [773] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:19 pm GMT • 20.8 hours ago

I think more likely, whites will sink into despair and return to a state of apathy for politics. I don't see any Republican being able to generate the kind of enthusiasm Trump did. Tucker Carlson does not have the financial backing or the personality cult. Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton are two Zionist social conservatives who will revert back to the GOP's standard abortion, abortion, abortion and say nothing about immigration or non-interventionism to rouse enough interest from Trump's base.

The only way for white nationalism to stay alive is if Trump stays politically active through outlets like Newsmax TV and Gab.com , and return for another run for office in 2024. However he needs to be very careful. Once he leaves office he will no longer have the kind of security protection given him as POTUS. There had been many assassination attempts while he's in office (at least 6 I've heard of), he could put himself in great danger if he continues to stay in the limelight to position himself for 2024.

As far as a separate whites only nation within the US, look at states that are probably the whitest – Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, all are heavily (D). A fat lot of good that does. TX will be (D) by 2024, too many Hispanics and CA transplants, like AZ and NV. Whites are too splintered, thanks in large part to single white women, who voted 62% in favor of Biden, compared to married white women who went for Trump 55%. White women are marrying and having children at an ever lower rate due to lack of eligible men. White women graduated from college at 60% to 40% compared to white men. As most women only want to marry up, college educated women rarely want to date much less marry non-college educated men. Due to height issues, most white women would only date white men or occasionally, black men. Asian and Hispanic men are too short and unromantic. Meanwhile more and more white men are marrying Asian and Hispanic women. White women are running out of men to date, marry and start a family. More unmarried white women means more white votes will be going for Biden.

frankie p , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:32 pm GMT • 20.5 hours ago
@anon

The American Conservative is no longer really conservative on many issues. Ron is not running things there any more, and they have been compromised.

Robjil , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:33 pm GMT • 20.5 hours ago
@aleksander icagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-viz-joe-biden-election-celebration-photos-20201107-nskvgzvp3necvfv6nnd42hzpm4-photogallery.html

Supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden celebrate after he was elected the 46th president of the United States on Nov. 7, 2020.

https://www.thoughtco.com/russian-revolution-timeline-1779473

October 25 (November 7 NS): The October Revolution begins when the Bolsheviks take over Petrograd (also called the November Revolution if following the Gregorian calendar).

anonymous [773] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:34 pm GMT • 20.5 hours ago
@Thomasina two months before this election that he proposed some rule changes to H1b, and still none of those rules have been finalized and probably never will. He made these tech plantation owners many times richer through the stock market, while they treated him with contempt and helped bring him down. What an idiot!

If Trump had cancelled H1b, OPT, L1 and all other work visas and forced our employers to hire and train US workers on Day 1 as he promised, he might have won by a landslide by now. The only group that went down in votes for him in 2020 is white men, because too many feel betrayed by him in immigration. All he cares about is taking care of Jews and blacks, both Jews in Israel and on Wall Street. He trusted wormtongue too much, and that's his downfall.

Afterthought , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:35 pm GMT • 20.5 hours ago

Let's just separate.

frankie p , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:37 pm GMT • 20.5 hours ago
@Thomasina

Richard Pilger is (was) the top DOJ Official investigating voter fraud who resigned after Barr authorized federal prosecutors to pursue "substantial allegations" of voter irregularities before the election outcome is certified. He is a swamp rat, a cretin, one of many who should have been drained from the swamp long ago.

John Pilger, on the other hand, is a hero, a filmmaker and journalist with a long, excellent record of shining light on malfeasance and bad behavior of politicians of every stripe.

GeneralRipper , says: November 12, 2020 at 11:46 pm GMT • 20.3 hours ago
@Nancy O'Brien Simpson

Nancy, you are definitely the type of Irish I would have no trouble killing, along with Joe Biden and John Brennan.

Numerous instances of Irish killing Irish, especially in the US.

You need to learn the lesson again.

Richard B , says: November 13, 2020 at 12:25 am GMT • 19.7 hours ago
@Robjil

The culture of the Chosen people does not understand the concept of compassion. This is why the world has been in a very sad place for the last hundred or so years since 12.23.1913.

Exactly!

And thanks for the link and quote.

anonymous [284] Disclaimer , says: November 13, 2020 at 12:25 am GMT • 19.7 hours ago
@Priss Factor the white race and goyim in general. Just ask the Palestinians about the nature of Jewish Power.

Spot on here. Don't expect Biden to let up though. The Jew owned media (both msm and "conservative" media e.g. Zerohedge, Breitbart, National Review, Fox News) will keep up the pressure. I see a future, perhaps in two decades, where East Asian immigration to the US will come to a screeching halt, and most likely even go into reverse as more East Asians return to their homelands because Jews, negroes, homos, trannies, stupid white women, Latino drug gangs, Muslim terrorists, Sub Saharan African welfare leeches, Indian H1b slaves with their clannishness, collusion with Jews and caste-ism make the US an increasingly unlivable hellhole. Oldtradesman , says: November 13, 2020 at 12:28 am GMT • 19.6 hours ago

@Truth

I won a lottery given by the renters, and was given free transatlantic transport.

Your line's post-African existence and ability to publicly complain like little girls owes much to the transatlantic slave trade. Thank the niggas who sold your ancestors into slavery, nigga.

annamaria , says: November 13, 2020 at 12:52 am GMT • 19.2 hours ago
@noname27

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5_cNZH6ohgw?feature=oembed

http://therealistreport.com/how-the-holocaust-was-faked

DonutsMan , says: November 13, 2020 at 12:54 am GMT • 19.2 hours ago

There's plenty of majority-white states you can move to if Pale Skin is so important to you. Go to West Virginia, for instance.

Majority-white states with conservative governments tend to be dull, economically depressed and stagnant. The same will characterize the imaginary white secessionist state you fetishize.

It's amazing to me that someone could speak with such satisfaction about other people being subjugated simply because of their color. But then again, animals like you have no morals nor any decency.

That's why the vast majority of whites in this country will say "no thanks" to your ugly message.

GeneralRipper , says: November 13, 2020 at 12:59 am GMT • 19.1 hours ago
@Afterthought

That's not allowed.

See 1861.

Corvinus , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:01 am GMT • 19.1 hours ago

A lot to unpack by the author, who is simply stating things we already have heard previously.

"A White Nationalist is someone who believes that white peoples have a right to their own homelands."

You do have your own homelands. It's just that in a number of cases, you invaded other homelands for gimmedats and free stuff.

"So that, as a White Nationalist, I am a German nationalist, an English nationalist, a Scottish nationalist, a French nationalist, etc. Or, at least, I support all those nationalisms."

And what about Eastern and Southern Europeans? Why no example of you being a Polish nationalist or a Slavic nationalist? Remember, these groups were deemed to be other than heritage Americans–dirty, filthy papists who should have never entered our shores with their alien mannerisms.

"To be a white nationalist in America is really to recognize that the core "American people" are the white people whose ancestors built the country and who continue to pay for it. Thus, American White Nationalism = American nationalism."

The reality is that American nationalism is defined by each person and group how they view it.

"Since it now looks impossible to go back to the good old days when we had blacks in complete subjection"

Slavery and Jim Crow laws were decidedly anti-American nationalism, and were patently unjust and immoral.

"white Americans will never work toward a white American homeland unless they are aware of themselves as White Americans"

We are aware of ourselves as white Americans, just not in the manner you prefer. Do we not have agency? Must we submit to your definition of what is and what is not a white nationalist?

"that we effectively secede from the USA and carve out our own white space (or spaces) within North America. It is this latter option that now seems like it may be our only option, and something we must work toward."

It will take a fight. Will you be front and center, or far away from the hostilities?

"The country was already fractured along political lines. Now it is completely broken Now their faith has been completely and irreparably shattered. And this is hugely significant for us And those many millions of whites are now choking down a gigantic red pill. As we all know, the red pill is the path to liberation."

What you are doing here is ASSUMING. The "us" is not "we". It's only those people who you know for absolute certain are on your side.

"It seems that there is credible evidence that there was voter fraud in the election"

More like accusations that need to meet the burden of proof.

"Take it from me -- from my own personal experience: once you have accepted that one big thing is a total sham, you begin to wonder whether everything else is."

So why would we want to be duped like you?

"It would take whites being pushed to a point where they are so angry they speak and behave imprudently, damning the consequences."

LOL. I've heard this argument for the past 40 years! It's always a "well, we are upset now, but just want until we really get mad, then we will put heads on pikes". Either put up or shut up.

Corvinus , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:01 am GMT • 19.1 hours ago
@Oldtradesman

Why didn't your ancestors pick their own damn cotton?

SC Rebel , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:08 am GMT • 18.9 hours ago
@noname27

(((They))) brought them here

Even Farrakhan gets that.

Peter Frost , says: Website November 13, 2020 at 1:10 am GMT • 18.9 hours ago
@tomo e powerless?

The situation is somewhat better for young whites whose parents were immigrants. Their family structure is more stable, and they have a possible escape route. I know several who have "returned" to Europe, even though they were born here. But it's stupid and ignorant to tell old-stock Canadians they have that option. My ancestors left England in the 19th century, and the ancestors of French Canadians left France in the 17th and 18th centuries. We're indigenous.

I agree that "people are very lonely here" but that's relatively recent. The breakdown of the family began in the 1960s and became "normal" in the 1990s. Again, it has nothing to do with climate or geography -- other than the fact we're next door to the United States and its culture.

Factorize , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:16 am GMT • 18.8 hours ago
@tomo

tomo, I have been thinking a great deal about income inequality lately (especially the relative income hypothesis (i.e., all of our social problems are caused by differences in income)). I would love to hear your comments on this question given your wide ranging experiences around the globe. Would life really be better for us all if we Scandanavianized?

Jim Bob Lassiter , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:17 am GMT • 18.8 hours ago
@Montefrío

Brazil (Portugal) was the largest consignee of African slaves in both absolute numbers and on per capita white colonizer basis. The Anglo North American mainland was far less of a slave based economy. Brazil was also the last nation in the Americas to outlaw slavery -- and it was done without 600,000 white men slaughtering each other and burning the defeated side's country to the ground.

GeneralRipper , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:18 am GMT • 18.8 hours ago
@Corvinus

Because it was cheaper to have nigger's do it, so your type could purchase it.

You are a disgrace, Corvie,

But I'm sure you already understand that.

Corvinus , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:18 am GMT • 18.8 hours ago
@anon

"I think more likely, whites will sink into despair and return to a state of apathy for politics."

If you are someone who "doesn't want to get your hopes up" or "is afraid to be disappointed" or "is concerned that it might be a trap" or "seriously hope you're wrong", or sees doom in every direction, then this is not the place for you. I'm not saying that you're a bad person or that anyone here wishes you ill. I'm simply stating a simple fact: this is not the place for you. No one here is interested in your fears, your worries, your psychological vagaries, or your concerns.

All the best, Vox Day

Ugetit , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:23 am GMT • 18.7 hours ago
@Stonehands

Thanks! It's nice to be appreciated!

Oldtradesman , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:24 am GMT • 18.7 hours ago
@Corvinus

My ancestors didn't own slaves, but it wouldn't matter if they did. The statement remains, Troof's post-African line owes its very existence and ability to complain like little bitches to the transatlantic slave trade. Falsify it or fuck off, traitor.

Ugetit , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:27 am GMT • 18.6 hours ago
@aleksander

I wish people would just realize that the COMMUNISTS stole the election and are about to go full Bolshevik on us.

True, but I wish people would just realize that the COMMUNISTS stole the election from the Zionists and are about to go full Bolshevik on us.

Robert Dolan , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:39 am GMT • 18.4 hours ago
@DonutsMan

The majority white states have the highest quality of life ..low crime .church-going Christians ..lower housing costs .family friendly environment.

Contraviews , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:43 am GMT • 18.4 hours ago

The Dems were quite determined to remove Trump from office by hook and by crook. First by the fabricated Russiagate fake story When they did not succeed by impeachment. Now today by a fraudulent election. They, the MIC appear to have succeeded. We are back in the Bush/Obama era.

Montefrío , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:00 am GMT • 18.1 hours ago
@Jim Bob Lassiter

Thanks for the info.

Your point about the slaughter in the USA is well taken. Nevertheless, I believe it was unnecessary and that the war there wasn't truly about slavery. Hell, I lived in an African nation for three and a half years and saw some slavery first hand; that was 40 years ago, mind, and the slaves were by and large as happy as clams. WASPy culture is peculiar if you ask me, which of course you didn't, but even so Who are the "slaves" now in the USA? Hmmm?

Oldtradesman , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:06 am GMT • 18.0 hours ago
@GeneralRipper

You are a disgrace, Corvie,

But I'm sure you already understand that.

Corvie's "moral authority" is equivalent to the Negro chieftain who sold Troof's Negro ancestor into slavery in exchange for pretty rocks and trinkets, and less than the "white-debils" who bought him.

Corvie and Troof can fuck off.

Trinity , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:07 am GMT • 18.0 hours ago
@Corvinus those people worried about kissing Black ass are either COWARDS like all those white traitor trash rich kids or Jews who really use Blacks as pawns. More than likely that rich leftist self hating white trash is the person who owned slaves or some Jew who blames it all on Whitey. Either way, Whites have been enslaved themselves by Arabs and are in some ways slaves today in their own land.

You worried about Blacks, sucka, why does Israel push out Black Jews? Jive talkin', sucka, keep it a hunnert up in here, turkey. Why did Leo Frank try to blame a Black man for his crime? lololol. Cue the Bee Gees "Jive Talkin" for all the (((trolls))) up in here. Yo, playa, we gotz dis.

Corvinus , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:09 am GMT • 17.9 hours ago
@GeneralRipper

"Because it was cheaper to have nigger's do it, so your type could purchase it."

I know, it is the inherent nature of Southrons to be lazy. It's in born.

"You are a disgrace, Corvie,"

I'm not the one who has made empty threats of violence on a opinion webzine against a woman (snicker snack). You said, "Nancy, you are definitely the type of Irish I would have no trouble killing, along with Joe Biden and John Brennan". You've sunk to a new low.

Ron Unz , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:14 am GMT • 17.8 hours ago
@Montefrío he bulk of black slaves went to the Spanish colonies, not the American colonies"

Could you please cite supporting evidence for this assertion?

All the academic accounts I've read indicate that only about 5% of the African slaves shipped across the Atlantic were sent to the mainland English colonies that became the United States, while the rest went to areas of Latin America and the Caribbean. However, these latter included Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch colonies, as well as Spanish ones. The reason their need for slaves was so enormous was that the death rate in the plantations producing sugar and other lucrative crops was extremely high. Rogue , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:15 am GMT • 17.8 hours ago

@christine

You are a most silly woman (assuming you're a woman).

Maybe the folks who say women shouldn't be allowed to vote have a point

John Johnson , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:15 am GMT • 17.8 hours ago
@christine iv>

All human DNA is southern African you numpty.

Did lactase persistence originate in southern Africa?

Egalitarian response:
Oh but that's the exception along with any other non-cognitive changes we might accept if you prove they exist. But we won't talk about them and will keep telling children that everyone is African.

Imagine if other fields of study had to follow this insanity.

American wolves don't exist unless you are talking about DNA changes in American wolves that separate them from European wolves. But other than those changes that would denote a different subspecies they don't exist.

Hang All Text Drivers , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:17 am GMT • 17.8 hours ago

"""But all the voices on the far-Right who labeled Trump "a distraction" have now been proved correct. Trump actually wound up doing little for white people -- despite being continually vilified by the Left as a white supremacist""""

At least the author got that right. Trump was elected to remove the illegal aliens (almost all of them non-white) and he did practically nothing in 4 years. It would have been easy to make them self-deport by taking away their jobs and freebies but he didn't do it.

Thomasina , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:18 am GMT • 17.8 hours ago
@frankie p

Thanks. Yes, I do know who John Pilger is. I guess I just typed in the wrong name. Good catch!

Corvinus , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:19 am GMT • 17.8 hours ago
@Oldtradesman

"Troof's post-African line owes its very existence and ability to complain like little bitches to the transatlantic slave trade."

Do you realize that there was a difference between African slavery and American chattel slavery?

https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=445

[MORE]
Commentator Mike , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:22 am GMT • 17.7 hours ago
@Corvinus

So the landowner immigrants could pretend they were European aristocrats in parody version.

Montefrío , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:24 am GMT • 17.7 hours ago
@Ron Unz

Thank you, sir, particularly for the multi-national breakdown, so to speak.

When all is said and done, it was an ugly business, but long ago was long ago, and imho it has little to do with the world today. I'm Irish, and "we" weren't well treated long ago either, but we don't whine or whinge much. I wish that were true of others whose ancestors suffered hard times.

Me? At 74, life is wonderful! May it be so for all here!

Rogue , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:30 am GMT • 17.6 hours ago
@The Wild Geese Howard

Yep, judges are promoted lawyers.

And who ever said that lot were an honorable profession?

Ha ha.

But one or two are OK. I think of the Black dude on the US Supreme Court. Best Justice America has.

Of course, he's not your typical judge – or Black person.

Rogue , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:33 am GMT • 17.5 hours ago
@glib

They weren't red-pilled.

They were anything but.

Get your facts and terminology straight.

redmudhooch , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:36 am GMT • 17.5 hours ago

The Stolen Election Will Red-Pill 70 Million Americans is what the Establishment/Trump hope actually means The Stolen Election Will Keep 70 Million Americans on the Republicrat Plantation

Imagine thinking rich white conmen like Trump give a shit about you as a "white nationalist" or that Trump or GOP are against non-white immigration. Hahahahahahhahaha

Delusional. Trump wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. He and everyone around him have already made it clear you racist cracka ass niggaz aren't welcome in his circle or the GOP. Oprah Winfrey, Lil Pump, Lil Wayne and Kanye have more clout with Trump than you clowns. You should ask yourself why that is.

You, average white guy are no better than a dindu or a beaner in the eyes of rich capitalists. In fact you're less to them because you demand a living standard and wages that the beaner doesn't.

Let me know when Trump invites some homeless white veterans or any poor cracka for that matter to fill his hotels, you know since he cares so much for the white race. Yall should really take a look around if you believe these rich white guys are your allies. "White nationalism" is a hoax.

The rich white capitalist will stab you in the back every time, history has proven this over and over again, you're nothing but wage slaves, tax donkeys and cannon fodder to them, cracka.

Every election is stolen by the rich capitalists that own all the candidates and all the media. The CIA and Wall St run the country, not puppet politicians

This is not your country. It is up for sale to the highest bidder, welcome to capitalism. There are despots in Saudi Arabia that "own" more of this country than you losers. Poor low IQ right wingers, keep believing those fairy tales your owners like telling you. Hahahahaha

annamaria , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:44 am GMT • 17.3 hours ago
@Anonymous ards possessors of illicit drugs, but no -- Hunter is special!). Biden loves, loves the bomb, and he supported all 'humanitarian" interventions (mass-slaughters) on behalf of the war profiteers and zionists. Or perhaps you are fond of the murderous Clinton, and the Schiff-Schumer-Nadler triumvirate of traitors working diligently to destroy the US Consitution? Do you really believe in the patriotism of McCabe, Strzhok, Comey, Brennan, and Dm. Alperovitch? Too much FakeBook can be detrimental to one's cognitive function.

The woke crowd of 'progressives' is too much into the cheap revolutionary rhetoric skillfully inserted into their brains by Bernays' pupils working for MSM.

GazaPlanet , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:50 am GMT • 17.2 hours ago
@Authenticjazzman

The whole premise of the multi-cult Left is that divers racial minority groups, sanctimonious yankees and perverts join together under the aegis of Jewry to socially marginalize the rest of society. You cannot listen to these people for more than a minute without hearing them vent hatred against the NORMAL people. There's a reason the Jews are so dead-set against the way the white world was not too long ago. It's normal, it's sane, and they DON'T FIT IN. Their depraved appetites and megalomania don't fit in with Western, Christian Civilization.

Priss Factor , says: Website November 13, 2020 at 2:52 am GMT • 17.2 hours ago

Get yourself a Palestinian flag and shout "Palestine is our greatest ally."

Time for Goyexit and Whitexit from vile Jewish Supremacism. Enough is enough.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Palestinian-Flag-3×5-ft-Palestine-Free-State-Independent-National-Homeland/150672063565?hash=item2314c13c4d:g:LtAAAMXQk-FRFRHt

Trinity , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:54 am GMT • 17.2 hours ago
@Corvinus s))) and many of them looked and acted like Corvinus.

Slavery is ANCIENT HISTORY and your kind was very well involved in it, same as a lot of pompous Yankees who claim they fought to end slavery, blah, blah. The fact of the matter is that only a tiny percentage of Whites ever owned slaves in the South. Poor Whites weren't treated much better than Blacks for that matter, maybe YOUR ANCESTORS OWNED SLAVES, Corvie, just like good ole SJW Anderson Cooper.

Fact is Blacks are not exactly saints when it comes to the African Slave Trade themselves.

How about we stick to this century, (((Corvie.))) I don't see or hear Whites whining about being enslaved by Arabs.

annamaria , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:59 am GMT • 17.1 hours ago
@omegabooks

The MSM, FakeBook, Twitter, and Google must be demolished, considering their willful treasonous activities during the American color revolution (Russiagate).
By their vicious attacks on the First Amendment, the MSM, FakeBook, Twitter, and Google have rivaled the Lobby. Or perhaps they are, in reality, an extension of the Lobby.

Robert Dolan , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:00 am GMT • 17.1 hours ago

https://www.bitchute.com/video/JmRjZ337KGEK/

GeneralRipper , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:00 am GMT • 17.1 hours ago
@Corvinus

I've told you numerous times, I will meet you IRL. Corvie.

If you think my threats are empty, then take me up on it.

What have you got to lose?

Majority of One , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:05 am GMT • 17.0 hours ago
@Malla

Thanks Malla, checked out.

GeneralRipper , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:11 am GMT • 16.9 hours ago
@Corvinus

It took your self righteous Yankee retards four long bloody years and eight successive commanders to defeat the "Lazy Southrons". Despite having a GDP five times as large and nearly twenty times the amount of military age males lol

All the while devastating the homes, towns and cities of the people in the South.

This next time around, you will get a taste of war and hate, Mr Corvinus.

Of course, I doubt a pussy ass bitch like you will stand and fight.

epochehusserl , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:16 am GMT • 16.8 hours ago
@Muaddib synonymous with abolishing social standards. We see the poisonous fruits of giving everybody respect rather than on conduct: an inability to use force in the face of rioting and looting instead focusing on people who call others harsh names, rewarding family breakdown, government debt, women screaming in the streets through bullhorns demanding that other people pay for their fornication, an unwillingness to condemn homosexuals for deliberately spreading AIDS for fear of being homophobic.

I will tell you something. If somehow all immigrants and minorities were kicked out, you would still be unhappy.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
Its a good place to start

Robert Dolan , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:16 am GMT • 16.8 hours ago

https://www.bitchute.com/video/hxrVAGuE7Oo1/

anonymous [284] Disclaimer , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:20 am GMT • 16.7 hours ago
@Factorize is worth.

Diversity makes everything worse.

Robert Putnam said in his book Bowling Alone that the more diverse a society, the less trust there is between people. He also found that in diverse communities, even whites distrust other whites, which makes them even more alienated, because the immigrants at least form their own ethnic communities. This is what is happening now in all Western countries. Whites are increasingly alienated in their own countries and societies due to over immigration, leading to depravity, depression and suicide. It's why birthrate is so low in Western European countries. It's also why immigration must stop, not just to bring back homogeneity and kinship, but to reduce the population so each life means more.

frontier , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:22 am GMT • 16.7 hours ago
@Muaddib for all.

Again, you're asking gimme dat while oblivious to the fundamentals. Social programs aren't payed for by the government the government doesn't make profits, it spends other peoples money which it collects at gun point . In order to satisfy you thirst for privileges the government has to literally rob someone else at gun point. Don't people have the right not to be robbed? Again, only criminals think the "right" to rob is more important than the right not to be. Moreover, the "good social programs" now stand at $185 Trillion of debt and other liabilities. Do you know what that number means? Nothing "good" about it. annamaria , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:23 am GMT • 16.7 hours ago

@Muaddib MSM? The dimwit wokes who avoid like a plague any discussion on Obama/Clinton's 'humanitarian interventions' in faraway countries, which resulted in a multitude of dead civilians, many of them children.

Biden is ready to intensify the illegal war against Syria (why his progeny has not joined the 'moderate terrorists' White Helmets is a mystery, don't you think so?). The old corrupted opportunist would begin a hot war with Russia without understanding what he is doing.

Sure, the MIC has been terribly unhappy with Trump -- not much of 'humanitarian interventions' during the last four years.

Oldtradesman , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:31 am GMT • 16.6 hours ago
@Corvinus

Do you realize that there was a difference between African slavery and American chattel slavery?

Do you realize you are lower than the Negro chieftain who sold Troof's ancestor to white debils in exchange for pretty rocks and trinkets?

It doesn't matter what the Negro chieftain knew or didn't. You certainly know more than he did, traitor.

Art , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:39 am GMT • 16.4 hours ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

I suggest adjusting the author's arguments to recognise the actual fundamental issue in play, which is not skin colour or race or language, but CULTURE.

Culture is everything! Culture determines how you treat your neighbor.

Hmm -- the average black in Mississippi has more Euro white Christian culture in him, then the average white in NY City. Hence NYC's dysfunction.

Anti-Christian Jews are responsible for black disfunction in NYC – period!

annamaria , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:45 am GMT • 16.3 hours ago
@Muaddib -- are you a whiny liberal of lgbtq variety, demanding a special bathroom and denouncing white privilege a la hypocritical Meghan Markle (and her ridiculous duke 'just harry'), or you used to be a 'conservative' but it was too boring for you? You know, family responsibilities, decent education, work ethics

California is the most liberal state in the US. But for some reason, Californias have been fleeing California like crazy. And you know what, the happy Liberal Californians have been fleeing to conservative states, without being invited. Last year, "the negative migration was the 9th year in a row for California."

Something is not right with your reasoning.

TKK , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:51 am GMT • 16.2 hours ago
@Stonewall Jackson

Ron Unz allows a base, boring, bitter troglodyte like you to post your rude and insulting garbage on HIS site where he accepts no advertising and runs out of his own pocket so all viewpoints can be discussed with a light hand and open mind.

You aren't fit to pump his gas.

anaccount , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:57 am GMT • 16.1 hours ago

I agree with the article but this election isn't actually over outside of the CNN newsroom.

If the powers that be want to weaken the right they will give Trump his (obvious) win but only after deluding democrats into thinking that they won the election. I think we are watching that play out right now.

annamaria , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:01 am GMT • 16.1 hours ago
@Muaddib Some of the 'immigrants' were from the Soviet Union where they received a fantastic education for nothing. The development of the Internet was conducted under the watchful eye of intelligence services; the involved have profited handsomely on the enterprise. Long before the 'immigrants' and their handlers made the killing, there were brilliant people like Ada Lovelace, Turing, and others who have prepared the ground for modern information technology.

Today, the woke profiteers ('liberals') at FakeBook and Google religiously follow the diktat of the CIA/FBI that serve war profiteers and financial Squid. These 'liberals' have been betraying the interests of human society at large.

James Scott , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:03 am GMT • 16.0 hours ago
@christine what is now North America wanted to stay in the stone age. They live in houses and drive cars. If whites had never came to what is now North America the people living here would still be stone age. It took Europeans over 6000 years to go from the iron age to the industrial age where we were when we founded the USA. There is no way the natives who were stone age would have been living modern lives.

Colonization was white people going around the world pulling stone age people into the modern world. Whites are non whites benefactors and only morons cannot see this.

You are not a good thinker. You should be posting on a cooking or sewing site. Politics is beyond your ken.

TKK , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:06 am GMT • 16.0 hours ago
@christine your enemy in a hide bag over a roaring fire and letting them roast to death.

The ant trap: coating your enemy in a sticky resin from trees and restraining them over ant mounds

The head bury: burying your enemy at low tide and allowing the tide to roll in and drown them.

The horse pull: tying each arm and leg to four separate horses and letting them go four separate ways.

But our Anglo Western criminal justice system of the 8th Amendment, bonds, free lawyers , probation, counselors and medical care in prison is much more savage.

Karma? The crystal ball it's fuzzy but an image is coming in wait .I see a dung beetle in your future.

Oldtradesman , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:15 am GMT • 15.8 hours ago
@Corvinus

I'm not the one who has made empty threats of violence on a opinion webzine against a woman (snicker snack). You said, "Nancy, you are definitely the type of Irish I would have no trouble killing, along with Joe Biden and John Brennan".

Why do you respond to "empty," traitor?

Either the threat was empty or it wasn't.

It certainly wasn't a personal threat.

Looks like a threat against a "type of Irish."

What I see is a cucked, traitorous e-activist misrepresenting a threat to pose as a chivalrous defender of e-womanhood.

TG , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:20 am GMT • 15.7 hours ago

This might not be directly relevant, but let me tell you a story.

The Island of Hispaniola was the site of the only known successful slave revolt in history. So far, so good. The victors where blacks and whites ('hispanics'). Well, that did not work out well. The whites ('hispanics') revolted and carved out their own nation, it's called the Dominican Republic. The blacks were left in their own nation, it's called Haiti. The Dominican Republic has problems, in particular a very high murder rate, but compared to most of the rest of the world, is not doing so bad. Haiti is an unspeakable cesspool of poverty and filth.

Of course, the Dominican Republic has a viciously effective border control policy preventing Haitian blacks from moving in. Why doesn't our corporate press complain about this anti-migrant xenophobia? Maybe rich Americans like the beaches in the Dominican Republic as they are.

Is that something that could – or should – happen in the Untied States? Probably not, circumstances are different. But still

al gore rhythms , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:23 am GMT • 15.7 hours ago
@The Wild Geese Howard

"Isn't there a large Japanese diaspora doing well in Brazil and Peru?"

Perhaps they are a self-selected sample of Japanese who are untypical enough of their culture that they wanted to forge a new path elsewhere.

Corvinus , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:23 am GMT • 15.7 hours ago
@Oldtradesman

"Do you realize you are lower than the Negro chieftain who sold Troof's ancestor to white debils in exchange for pretty rocks and trinkets?"

Actually, African tribes received guns, rum, clothing, spices, and other assorted goods.

"You certainly know more than he did, traitor."

You mean I know more that you, friend.

Corvinus , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:27 am GMT • 15.6 hours ago
@GeneralRipper

"I've told you numerous times, I will meet you IRL. Corvie."

And I told you to take care of the immediate threats in your own neck of the woods. Make sure to record it on social media.

"It took your self righteous Yankee retards four long bloody years and eight successive commanders to defeat the "Lazy Southrons"."

LOL, we got our act together with Grant and Sherman.

"All the while devastating the homes, towns and cities of the people in the South."

It was a just war.

"This next time around, you will get a taste of war and hate, Mr Corvinus."

More empty threats on your behalf.

Corvinus , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:31 am GMT • 15.6 hours ago
@Oldtradesman

"Why do you respond to "empty," traitor? Either the threat was empty or it wasn't. It certainly wasn't a personal threat."

Of course it was empty and personal! But that's what Internet armchair warriors do.

"What I see is a cucked, traitorous e-activist misrepresenting a threat to pose as a chivalrous defender of e-womanhood."

All you do is posture. I take comfort you lack the guile and guts to pull a St. Breivik.

Majority of One , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:37 am GMT • 15.5 hours ago
@christine

Christine: I too have experienced at least one native prior lifetime and my home is almost exactly halfway between two reservations. Friends. Currently I'm reading a book you would likely enjoy–perhaps thoroughly: "Listen to the Wind: Speak from the Heart" by Roger Thunderhands Gilbert, who is Metis and has been very close to both the Apache and Lakota cultures. Publisher is Divine Arts Media.

[MORE]
Clay Alexander , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:40 am GMT • 15.4 hours ago

Always love the comments here, a great range from bright to not so bright to downright dim. But no matter who you are I'm sure you'll all agree we went from being Bozos on the bus to being Dr. Zeke's lab rats.

Rogue , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:44 am GMT • 15.3 hours ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

I approve of both names!

Truth , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:50 am GMT • 15.2 hours ago
@Oldtradesman

Yeah, maybe, but then if it wasn't for the slave trade, you'd be wearing nylon underwear right now

ooooh!

Truth , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:52 am GMT • 15.2 hours ago
@Corvinus

I remember that one, Flipper. Not one of your shining moments; although they are probably rare.

Art , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:53 am GMT • 15.2 hours ago
@Stonewall Jackson

TROLL!

Truth , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:54 am GMT • 15.2 hours ago
@Robert Dolan

So move to one.

Robert Dolan , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:11 am GMT • 14.9 hours ago
@James Scott t (which liberals are not) all of the stone age people currently living in Christendom . ride in cars, use computers and cellphones, travel in jets .have access to the white man's brilliant technology ..it's like we allowed them to jump into our time machine so they could fast forward into the future we created.

You could also add that we have the patent on high trust culture based on Christian values of industriousness, honesty, fairness, and decency ..though much of this is being wrecked by Jewish multiculturalism.

If not for the subversion of organized Jewry, whites would still have the respect of the stone age non-whites instead of their hatred and contempt.

Felix Krull , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:36 am GMT • 14.5 hours ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

However, IMO the author uses language which suggests disdain for black Americans (for example). If that is an expression of "racism", then it would be in the colloquially "bad" context.

Black Americans kill, rape and steal in huge disproportion to their numbers. Why should I not disdain that?

The Real World , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:54 am GMT • 14.2 hours ago
@Commentator Mike

You shouldn't make personal statements about people you don't know.

He put himself and his views out there, as any author does, and this is a Comment Board. I made my comments and observations. Are you new to venues like this? That's how they work

John Johnson , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:36 am GMT • 13.5 hours ago
@Muaddib onestly about their failures? They don't support it. In fact they despise free speech.

Social programs can be good for society. Think not just social security, but also healthcare for all.

Social programs can be good for society. But liberalism is not about finding good programs. It is about trying to denigrate and demoralize White people in an attempt at creating equality. Most liberals are White but they see themselves as the "good Whites" and all other Whites must be taken down. Liberals are nihilistic egalitarians. They will do anything for equality. They would sacrifice our children just for some fleeting feeling of equality that doesn't exist.

John Johnson , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:50 am GMT • 13.2 hours ago
@Muaddib ily life but in your mind all progress is held back by those other Whites . I saw that all the time. Urban Whites get "celebrate diversity" bumper stickers and then hang out with Whites 99% of the time.

More inventions came from WW2 than any other period and Whites on both sides during that time would think that today's urban egalitarian Whites are total morons.

P.S. your women aren't sexually attracted to you if that wasn't obvious by how they boss you guys around.

I lived around urban Whites for years. What a soulless and pathetic existence the typical urban White male lives. The homeless Blacks seem happier than you guys.

Wielgus , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:57 am GMT • 13.1 hours ago
@geokat62

The father of Jonathan Miller's mother wanted to emigrate to the USA but got off in Ireland instead, when it was under British rule. Miller gave an account of this during an interview. I can't recall whether his grandfather got off in Cork by mistake or whether the person who arranged his ticket cheated him and others by putting them on a boat to Ireland rather than New York. For Miller this was an amusing anecdote he told on TV.
At any rate the mother of Jonathan Miller was one of the relatively few Jews living in Ireland, although Miller himself was born in England.

christine , says: November 13, 2020 at 9:01 am GMT • 11.1 hours ago

'White people built the U.S.A it's ours'

This tell me exactly the nasty white supremacist that you must be and i pity you for your ignorance and severe lack of understanding about life.

Take the red pill next time.

Alden , says: November 13, 2020 at 9:08 am GMT • 10.9 hours ago
@christine

You've never been around any American Indians or their national autonomous homelands aka rezess have you? As a group, they're probably the most contented of all definable American race and ethnic groups. At least they're not endlessly bitching whining and kvetching like the rest of us.

You should spend a year driving around their rezess and talking to them. Try to fit in as a tourist or something. Don't be rude and just inform them you're some kind of social scientist studying their exotic oppressed abused soon to be genocided tribe. Don't insult them. Be polite. They are regular people just like the rest of us.

Alden , says: November 13, 2020 at 9:17 am GMT • 10.8 hours ago
@utu

We weren't Americans and America wasn't America when the Africans were brought over. We were English citizens subjects living in separate English colonies known as Massachusetts Connecticut Virginia Maryland etc.

Check Wikipedia ignoramus.

Alden , says: November 13, 2020 at 9:23 am GMT • 10.7 hours ago
@Stonewall Jackson

Taxes??? California just voted down proposition 19 which would have raised property taxes. No raises in property taxes.

christine , says: November 13, 2020 at 9:26 am GMT • 10.6 hours ago
@TKK

If only the vile white northern Euro invading scum had come with pipes of peace instead of guns and i find it poetic justice how guns and more guns and yet more guns are the scariest part of modern central North America.

May the spirits of those that suffered genocide and holocaust at the hands of gun wielding invading Northern Europeans be smiling from ear to ear at todays United Gun States of America.

Ugetit , says: November 13, 2020 at 10:14 am GMT • 9.8 hours ago
@Authenticjazzman

They are the nut-cases who stick themselves full of needles and pins , and dye their hair blue so as to present their deranged worldview for all to see.

You forgot the utterly worthless dye disfigurement known as tattoos. All this probably has roots related to the mutilation known as circumcision as well.

Indignant of Maidstone , says: November 13, 2020 at 10:21 am GMT • 9.7 hours ago
@tomo

@tomo
Talk to them about Louis Farrakhan. He has the Nation of Islam ( https://www.noi.org/ ] eating out of his hand. The videos are out there.

Louis names the Jew without disaster resulting. Tell them about The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, a splendid book, available from Amazon – at a price or direct from the
https://www.noi.org/final-call-news/

Ugetit , says: November 13, 2020 at 10:36 am GMT • 9.5 hours ago
@Peter Frost e US along with the breakdown of the family, loss of the work ethic, a rampant sneering at honesty, and almost total lack of basic civility. One of my sisters attributes a lot of that to the effects of casting infants into daycare where it's "dog eat dog" from the beginning and which I believe is reinforced by years of exposure to the sinecure and benny seeking bureaucrats in the baby sitting and brainwashing institutions known as schools.

We have ourselves to blame for our choices both as individuals and as a society and we can whine all we want about blacks and others, but in the end we're paying for our worship and pursuit of "cool," or self absorption, or whatever.

animalogic , says: November 13, 2020 at 10:50 am GMT • 9.2 hours ago
@Negrolphin Pool

No, I agree -- a purely "racial" response should not be tried. It will lead to failure (which is not to say that things like race, culture, values, beliefs etc are not important)

noname27 , says: Website November 13, 2020 at 10:50 am GMT • 9.2 hours ago
@Montefrío

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zqv7hyc/revision/2

I suggest you also do a search on the infamous Jew, Aaron Lopez, and work out why he chose a Spanish name to hide behind rather than an Anglo-Saxon name.

Supply and Demand , says: November 13, 2020 at 10:53 am GMT • 9.2 hours ago
@Authenticjazzman

The large majority of TrumpBoomers are screaming at the sky right now with this fraud cope, because it is inconceivable that a wave of brown, angry youth and affluent whites like myself have eclipsed them as a voting bloc. The white working class has been melting down worse than the 2016 SJW trannies for a week now.

christine , says: November 13, 2020 at 11:50 am GMT • 8.2 hours ago

Yes of course i would be polite and come in peace and i would make sure not to point a rifle or pistol at them and start shooting them and then start raping their women and children and i wouldn't slaughter any livestock that they may have to try and starve them because what decent white Northern European would do that in central North America anyway?.

If i came in peace and harmony like this they would naturally be far more likely to respond in kind and share with me what they may know about nature/god, just like what their wonderful ancestors learnt about from their use of plant medicines/entheogens/sacraments like the Peyote cactus for example that was used by the Apache Comanche and Kiowa tribes but if i was pure evil and slaughtered them then of course i wouldn't get to learn from their wisdom and i would deserve to remain in complete darkness (spiritually speaking) just like most everyone alive is in the U.S today.

Like i said upthread.

Don't fuck with the natives!.

.

geokat62 , says: November 13, 2020 at 11:53 am GMT • 8.2 hours ago
@Wielgus

I got tripped up by this

His daughter, Miller's father, became a well-known novelist in Ireland.

Who is the subject in this sentence? Was it someone's daughter or Miller's father who became a well-known novelist in Ireland? The structure of your sentence makes it unclear.

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website November 13, 2020 at 12:48 pm GMT • 7.3 hours ago
@Felix Krull who have given their support to Trump.

As I said originally, that doesn't automatically make the author a "racist" in the "bad" sense, but the suggestion is implicitly there for anyone who wants to make it.

Maybe the author is being emphatically practical in his analysis. FWIW in the past Australian experience, cohesive immigrant populations have taken at least a couple of generations to fully naturalise in Australian society. And there does seem to be a lot of cultural clashing going on in the USA. So maybe a coarse exclusionary approach to reclaiming power for the American people is the shortest path to a solution (albeit with potential for collateral damage).

Or maybe one has to read between the lines to get the full sense of what the author is trying to say.

Robjil , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:16 pm GMT • 6.8 hours ago
@christine igners; and this spirit of wear, principle of any cowardice, is so natural in their hearts, that it is the continual object of the figures that they employ in the species of eloquence which is proper for them. Their glory is to put at fire and blood the small villages they can seize. They cut the throat of the old men and the children; they hold only the girls nubiles; they assassinate their Masters when they are slaves; they can never forgive when they are victorious: they are enemy of the human mankind. No courtesy, no science, no art improved in any time, in this atrocious nation. -- Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs (1756) Tome 2, page 83
Plato's Dream , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:36 pm GMT • 6.5 hours ago

Was it EVER possible to pronounce Mitt Romney's and John McCain's names without gagging? News to me

Also I disagree with the main premise that can be expressed in the ironic Russian saying: "They are fucking us, and yet we are just getting stronger". Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. Success begets success, failure begets failure. With the machinery of state in the DemocRATs' hands, will they really allow their enemies to take back the levers of power? Last time was a fluke because Hurricane Donald had caught them by surprise.

noname27 , says: Website November 13, 2020 at 1:40 pm GMT • 6.4 hours ago
@Ultrafart the Brave

Like you, your principles are part of the problem.

Wielgus , says: November 13, 2020 at 1:57 pm GMT • 6.1 hours ago
@geokat62

Miller's mother , sorry, was a well-known novelist in Ireland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Miller_(author)

glib , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:18 pm GMT • 5.8 hours ago
@Rogue ck of critique of their own past, lack of any sort of conciliatory moves towards past victims, dooms them.

And this when the entire world rejects globohomo (and usury) with disgust. They have all sorts of potential allies a home and abroad, and do not use them. Having lived in the Detroit area for decades, for example, I can tell you that local Muslims are ready-made allies. They are hardly the only ones. Count any working Latino and all people of Asian descent in this group, as well as all people of Eastern European descent. They even have allies among working blacks for christ sake. You are in the fight of your lives, and you don't even think about allies.

Jim Bob Lassiter , says: November 13, 2020 at 2:41 pm GMT • 5.4 hours ago
@Montefrío

I would say productive non-executive suite Whites are the new slaves in the Waspy-Jewy Anglo world. But Brazil isn't that far behind either with all of its Sherwin-Williams color sample shade cards being used in its own affirmative action programs.

geokat62 , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:07 pm GMT • 5.0 hours ago annamaria , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:32 pm GMT • 4.5 hours ago
@christine nominy of the Wars for Israel?

Unlike the profitable fables of holobiz, the Jewish rabid hatred towards Palestinians and the destruction of Palestinian lives is true. Thievery, sadism, torture of teenagers in Israeli prisons, desecration of Palestinian cemeteries, the intentional handicapping of Palestinian children Are you ready to talk about the Jeiwsh State's crimes against humanity, committed in the context of international law? (The US and Israel 'are joined at the hip' according to US Congresspeople). If not, then your 'righteous' diatribes are cheap.

And don't forget to check the amazing results of the Obama/Clinton's color revlution in Ukraine.

Trinity , says: November 13, 2020 at 3:39 pm GMT • 4.4 hours ago
@Truth irst son of a bitch who was foolish enough to bring over the African for cheap labor ( yes, the African did receive a wage in food, shelter and medical care), these fools using Mexicans for dirt cheap labor are ruining this nation because of greed and the love of money. That poor beaner busting his ass for 12 bucks an hour? Don't worry about him folks, he's living large because he's more than likely being paid cash or he's gaming the system and receiving all kinds of freebies along with a regular paycheck. I drive by a chicken processing plant daily that employs nothing but our friends from south of the border and I see some damn fine trucks and other nice looking vehicles.
Genrick Yagoda , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:17 pm GMT • 3.8 hours ago
@Supply and Demand

The white working class has been melting down worse than the 2016 SJW trannies for a week now.

Is that right? So why were there no massive chimpouts and looting? Why was it not necessary to board up the stores, as it would have been had not the ZOG stolen the election?

Thomasina , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:29 pm GMT • 3.6 hours ago
@anonymous

Stupidly, I think Trump tried to win over the corporate elite, Big Tech, Big Ag, etc.. Maybe bad advice from his son-in-law? Didn't listen to his intuition? Who knows.

If he is reelected, he will not make the same mistake twice. I think they know this too.

Genrick Yagoda , says: November 13, 2020 at 4:30 pm GMT • 3.6 hours ago
@christine ringing a force of about five or six to one against his enemy; kills helpless women and little children, and massacres th e men in their beds; and then brags about it as long as he lives, and his son and his grandson and great-grandson after him glorify it among the "heroic deeds of their ancestors."

https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/redman.html

If you came in peace, do you think the Stone Age Siberians would have also shared their vast knowledge about the Wheel? Or metal smelting? Or writing and math?

Or even the toothbrush? Trinity , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:09 pm GMT • 2.9 hours ago

People like (((Christine))) always bring up atrocities committed against Indians and they make some valid points, HOWEVER, as we saw, (((Christine))) had nothing to say about Whites being butchered by racist Black homicidal maniacs in South Africa nor did she address the Holodomor. This leads me to believe that (((Christine))) the self proclaimed "Irish" lass is more than likely just a (((troll.)))

And of course, people like (((Christine))) don't talk about so-called Jews stealing the Palestinians land and brutalizing Palestinians, instead they focus on ANCIENT HISTORY. And these people will never talk about Black guys executing little white boys or Black guys snatching a little white boy from his white mother and throwing the kid off a balcony. Or how about when a black woman kidnapped a white boy in Texas and burned him to death with a blowtorch. Oh, yeah, lets focus on ancient history, which unless you lived back then no one really knows what the damn truth was, we know we certainly can't rely on (((historians))) or mainstream (((history books.))) Unless things change, 100 years from now, people will be reading about how 3 Black women sent America to the moon.

Obvious LIES that will be told or have been told

6 million Jews were gassed in concentration camps during WWII

Germany started WWII

the official 9-11 narrative

Osama Bin Laden was killed * that dude probably was dead years before he was claimed to have been killed, the guy was in poor health.

James Earl Ray did not kill MLK * the dude said so on his death bed, why would you still keep holding on to the same story if you were going to die anyhow?

And when it comes to Presidential elections.

JFK didn't beat Nixon
Dubya didn't beat Gore
And Joe Biden sure as hell didn't beat Trump, hell I would admit that if I hated Trump's guts. Don't like Gore, voted for that sorry sack of shit, Dubya, but no way in hell, Gore lost.

Some more code words we can start using ((( ))) for are (((SJW))) or (((military industrial complex.)))

Felix Krull , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:36 pm GMT • 2.5 hours ago
@Ultrafart the Brave people too, patriotic or otherwise. White nationalism is a political stance, of course it will exclude people who are not white nationalists, duh!

Indeed, one bad thing leads to another. Once the dynamics are set in train, it will take generations to unravel (if ever).

What "bad thing" lead to blacks people committing heinous amounts of murder, robbery and rape? Slavery? Colonialism? Affirmative Action? Must be something whites did, right?

As I said originally, that doesn't automatically make the author a "racist" in the "bad" sense.

You have not explained what's bad about racism. And what are those quotation marks for?

Truth , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:41 pm GMT • 2.4 hours ago
@Alden

You've never been around any American Indians or their national autonomous homelands aka rezess have you? As a group, they're probably the most contented of all definable American race and ethnic groups. At least they're not endlessly bitching whining and kvetching like the rest of us.

Aldey, having lived in the most Indian state in America for the last 17 years, I can assure you that that is patently ridiculous.

Ugetit , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:41 pm GMT • 2.4 hours ago
@Genrick Yagoda

Some things never change. As Mark Twain wrote in his Essay about The Noble Red Man;

He is ignoble–base and treacherous, and hateful in every way. Not even imminent death can startle him into a spasm of virtue .

With that Twain appears slightly ahead of his time. He could have just as accurately been describing other "Reds," such as the Bolsheviks and their supporters most of whom could have taught the Indians a thing or two about terror and torture especially the mass varieties.

Truth , says: November 13, 2020 at 5:43 pm GMT • 2.4 hours ago
@Trinity

I drive by a chicken processing plant daily that employs nothing but our friends from south of the border and I see some damn fine trucks and other nice looking vehicles.

They're probably hiring, Old Sport.

Supply and Demand , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:12 pm GMT • 1.9 hours ago
@Genrick Yagoda

Whites are storming ballot counting centers instead of looting their own businesses. Whites routinely chimp out, they just pick different targets. Look at the devastation around Hockey arenas when teams win the Stanley Cup.

As far as the election being stolen, well, you sound like a crazed conspiracy nutter.

Trinity , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:27 pm GMT • 1.6 hours ago
@Truth

They are ALWAYS hiring, breh. Maybe you can tell some of da homies. But I doubt da homies could cut the mustard. I worked with tons of Mexicans and El Salvadorans and I can tell you from experience they really look down on lazy negroes. My gawd, some of the things I heard these Brown folks say about Black folks had me blushing crimson. I went from Donald Trump orange to the color of my favorite soda, cherry red. Cue: You Can't Always Get What You Want by Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stoooooooooones.

Robjil , says: November 13, 2020 at 6:43 pm GMT • 1.4 hours ago

US Presidents are figure heads. Jared Kushner or Douglas Emhoff are the real deal in our Zogacracy.

https://www.jta.org/2020/11/07/politics/iran-israel-anti-semitism-and-more-what-to-watch-in-joe-bidens-presidency

The Second Guy: Kamala Harris' husband, Douglas Emhoff, is Jewish; he will not only be the "second gentleman" (caveat: No one has settled on a term for the job), he will be the first Jewish second spouse. Emhoff has been vocal about his Jewish identity, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out in a role that has been used to advance education initiatives.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/doug-emhoff-job-kamala-harris-white-house-biden-administratio-b1720674.html

Kamala Harris's husband has quit his law firm job for a White House role despite claiming he wouldn't go into politics.

Doug Emhoff will leave DLA Piper, where is a partner, by inauguration day on 20 January, according to the Associated Press.

Mr Emhoff took a leave of absence from the firm in August when vice president-elect Harris ran on Joe Biden's ticket.

The future second man is reportedly working with Mr Biden's transition team to establish a role for him in the administration.

Majority of One , says: November 13, 2020 at 7:11 pm GMT • 54 minutes ago
@Alden lcohol.

Yet, there do remain groupings of well-rooted people who are able to cope with a clinically insane "white" culture which surrounds them physically and throughout most electronic mediums. Their struggle is huge, yet they persist in reconnecting with traditional tribal values, with powwows, drumming fests and even -- gradually -- re-learning their indigenous languages.

There are still waaaay too many European-descended people in my area who retain an ignorant , discriminatory and even prejudicial attitude towards these, our neighbors and in some cases, potential teachers. But those who reach out do tend to reach those who also reach out. So hope remains.

Majority of One , says: November 13, 2020 at 7:14 pm GMT • 51 minutes ago
@Genrick Yagoda

HATER -- perhaps not without some viable personal reason/s, but nevertheless one incapable of discriminating between individuals and devolved into rank prejudice.

Authenticjazzman , says: November 13, 2020 at 7:25 pm GMT • 40 minutes ago
@aleksander

Brilliant!!! Absolutely brilliant.

I spent time on the other side of the wall early seventies, and I will never forget the dead eyes of the oppressed citizenry and the morgue-like atmosphere of the grey cities, and these lunatic Democrats are now pushing to create such a scenario in the US

AJM

DT 2020

[Nov 13, 2020] On Tucker Carlson's show about six weeks ago, Tucker had on guest Darren Beattie to describe the specific type of color revolution that the Democrat Party appeared to be planning to proceed ahead with to usurp this election:

Nov 13, 2020 | www.unz.com

Pure Coincidence , says: November 9, 2020 at 5:52 pm GMT • 3.6 days ago

@Brett Redmayne-Titley

Excellent article and explanation of procedure, Mr. Redmayne-Titley. On Tucker Carlson's show about six weeks ago, Tucker had on guest Darren Beattie to describe the specific type of color revolution that the Democrat Party appeared to be planning to proceed ahead with to usurp this election:

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

Tucker's show tonight will be as clear as could be as to which Tucker he is going to be selling to his huge audience: independent journalist or Fox News/DS apparatchik. I will be watching and hope that he will continue to be the voice of much of the people, though his letting up on the Hunter Biden story was troubling to say the least.

ThisIsAnon153Replying , says: November 9, 2020 at 5:42 pm GMT • 3.6 days ago
@TRM

Even with Pennsylvania and Georgia, the 2 most likely to flip imo, trump would still lose, unless he miraculously flips Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, or Michigan.

The fix was in no doubt and trump won all those states fairly, but its a tall order and I'm skeptical that trump can pull it off.

TRM , says: November 9, 2020 at 11:11 pm GMT • 3.3 days ago
@ThisIsAnon153Replying

Biden is at 290. Penn is 20. Any loss of any state after Penn and Biden loses. I don't see Biden holding all 4.

Orca , says: November 9, 2020 at 6:00 pm GMT • 3.6 days ago

The Media is a serious enemy of The United States. This is treason by no other definition, it goes beyond free speech.

Curmudgeon , says: November 9, 2020 at 6:09 pm GMT • 3.6 days ago
@shylockcracy

Thanks to the Trumpet, the CIA/FBI/NSA, etc., have now been able to clearly identidy the sections of the populace that feel their pure whiteness is being victimised,

Were you in a coma for a number of years? For 20 years, starting with William Binney through Edward Snowdon and Dave Montgomery, there have been warnings that the alphabet agencies have been illegally spying the US citizens. Montgomery pointed out they spied on Trump before he became a candidate.
The Trumpian corporate party's biggest sin was trying to get in on the Republocrat – Demican Uni-party corporate party action.
Never gonna happen.

Cyrano , says: November 9, 2020 at 8:46 pm GMT • 3.4 days ago
@Tyler Durden

I believe that US are truthful when they talk about "free" elections. Theoretically, the only way you can get something "free" in life is – if you steal it, or if somebody gives you something as a gift. This "election" has fulfilled both of these 2 criteria. First the deep state stole the election from Trump and then they presented it as a gift to Biden. So it's all good. It was a free election for Biden, Trump got robbed – but hey, you can't please everybody.

anon [383] Disclaimer , says: November 9, 2020 at 11:41 pm GMT • 3.3 days ago

Karma's a biatch. All those color revolutions in Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, Hong Kong, propped up in one way or another by Mike Pompeo when he was head of CIA continuing into Secretary of State, is now coming back to haunt Trump. Good job appointing that fat fuck.

If Trump loses, it would be his own doing in some ways. He has failed to roll back legal immigration esp. H1B/OPT until a month before the election, and spent most of his time catering to the Zionist filth with all the nauseating sycophantic overt pandering to Israel and the Wall Street Jews. Wormtongue's pandering to the blacks by letting all the drug dealers out of jail is backfiring big time too. 92% of blacks still voted for Biden so fuck you Kushner.

If Trump somehow survives this and actually comes back to win, I hope he learned from his mistake in the first term. Instead of spending all 4 years pandering to Jews and blacks who didn't vote for him, spend his time taking care of those who did vote for him, his white voting base, and we want an end to H1B, OPT, EB5, L1, illegal immigration. No more green cards for the next 40 years! Begin mass deportation. Most importantly, fire Pompeo and Javanka!

Skeptikal , says: November 10, 2020 at 12:15 am GMT • 3.3 days ago

Many thanks, Mr. Redmayne, for this overview-cum-dissection of the recount scenarios.

That all of these counting-stopping orders took place in swing states defies credulity.
Surely poll workers were being paid to continue counting throughout the night. Not to go home and catch 40 winks. Lord knows we have plenty of night-time workers in this 24/7 country.

It is ironic that in the context of the USA's overseas military disasters, the common advice when the home team is obviously getting pounded has been "Just declare yourself the winner" and get the hell out.

Seems like the Dems are using this playbook and hoping they can create a new reality by declaring it so.

The spectacle of Joe Biden calling for "unity" after the shitshow following 2016 is rich.
I doubt that this richness is going to be lost on the "losers" in this election.

The country is very n eatly divided between blue urban and red countryside. I would not county on "unity" rearing its head anywhere in redland.

Biden ain't no Lincoln.

Carroll Price , says: November 10, 2020 at 12:32 am GMT • 3.3 days ago
@The Alarmist

The only people loyal to Trump is the working class. No one else gives a damn whether he lives or dies, including the vast majority of Republican officials and office holders concerned only with keeping what they have.

Paul Lake , says: November 10, 2020 at 1:55 am GMT • 3.2 days ago
@Beavertales

Yes, the disgusting PC CBC reporters display their contempt for Trump at every turn, and are complicit in obscuring Democrat misdeeds, whether by uncritically parroting the Maddow ravings on Russiagate or ignoring the influence peddling of Dems from Biden to HRC. CBC reporters are repeatedly characterizing charges of election fraud as groundless. Clearly they are unaware of Pelosi's admission of how the public is misinformed, with her description of 'leaking' fabricated allegations to MSM insiders, then using the subsequent MSM reports as 'evidence' of veracity.

annamaria , says: Next New Comment November 10, 2020 at 12:56 pm GMT • 2.8 days ago
@GMC ciders). The not-so-youthful Obamas the Fraud and the badly aged Clintons have been liberally using revolutionary rhetoric a la Che Gevara, never mind that the Obamas and Clintons are major war criminals guilty of the mass slaughter of civilian populations (including the multitude of children) in the brown countries of Syria and Lybia and non-brown countries of former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. They, Obamas and Clintons, are murderers, cannibals. Yet for the 'progressive' wokes, the history of the US is not known and is not interesting for knowing. The wokes like the keto diet, mild psychedelics, cool outfit, and a special set of words, including 'solidarity, social awareness, political correctness, LGBTQIA' and such to stroke gently their, wokes,' egos. The aroma of rot is in the air.
annamaria , says: Next New Comment November 10, 2020 at 1:18 pm GMT • 2.8 days ago
@The Alarmist ake-sure-trump-supporters-receive-accountability
Emily Abrams can not forgive Trump for being so ineffective in the Middle East. Unlike the Obama/Clinton administration, Trump has not started a new War for Israel. And for this, Trump and "anyone who took a paycheck to help Trump" must be punished.

Meanwhile, the reality is hitting up:

After Attorney General Bill Barr authorized federal prosecutors to pursue "substantial allegations" of irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, the head of the DOJ's Election Crimes Branch [Richard Pilger] has decided to resign.

https://www.rt.com/usa/506245-doj-election-investigation-resign/

Pancho , says: Next New Comment November 10, 2020 at 4:39 pm GMT • 2.6 days ago

Vote fraud is as American as apple pie. Just remember how JFK and George W. Bush manged to sneak into the White House. America has always bee a banana republic, now it has just become more evident.

[Nov 13, 2020] BREAKING EXCLUSIVE- Analysis of Election Night Data from All States Shows MILLIONS OF VOTES Either Switched from President Trump to Biden or Were Lost -- Using Dominion and Other Systems

Nov 13, 2020 | www.thegatewaypundit.com

BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Election Night Data from All States Shows MILLIONS OF VOTES Either Switched from President Trump to Biden or Were Lost -- Using Dominion and Other Systems By Joe Hoft
Published November 10, 2020 at 6:32pm
2080 Comments
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BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Election Night Data from All States Shows MILLIONS OF VOTES Either Switched from President Trump to Biden or Were Lost -- Using Dominion and Other Systems By Joe Hoft
Published November 10, 2020 at 6:32pm
2080 Comments
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BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Election Night Data from All States Shows MILLIONS OF VOTES Either Switched from President Trump to Biden or Were Lost -- Using Dominion and Other Systems By Joe Hoft
Published November 10, 2020 at 6:32pm
2080 Comments
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Share on Facebook (34k) Tweet Share Email

Jimi Headstone Biden is a FRAUD 2 days ago ,

So despite the help from the massive software "glitch", Biden fraud machine had to dump late night dump ballots all for Biden only in a hurry. How bad did he lose? It almost looks like most of his votes are fabricated. I would not be surprised if he were 20 points behind in legal votes.

forgivn73 Jimi Headstone 2 days ago ,

I think the ballot dumping was the side show to keep us from finding out about the vote switching and deleting. How can this be verified, and how can this be seen on the machines now?

Marchioness forgivn73 2 days ago ,

There is a lawsuit by the guy who invented email (not Gore), but the PhD at MIT who invented it is suing for the ballot images...

Ricke Floyd Marchioness 2 days ago • edited ,

Dr Shiva, badass brown guy

TheMarshall Ricke Floyd 2 days ago ,

Badass American of Indian decent (actually was born in India I believe but family came here legally when a young child). Ran for senate in Massachusetts as a Republican and was/is a big Trump supporter. Blew the doors off the Covid 19 scam, not that it wasn't real but how it was being treated and handled by MSM and the Socialist Democratic Party, ie, by those who hyped the whole thing.

Ricke Floyd TheMarshall 2 days ago • edited ,

///

Tom Davis Ricke Floyd 2 days ago • edited ,

EventBrite just told everyone that "March for Trump" was cancelled. It is NOT Cancelled.
The Elites / Big-Tech / MSM (including Fox) are TERRIFIED We Will Show Up - doing everything possible to shut us down.
Don't let them. Break their Narrative.
Get to DC or the nearest contested state-house This Weekend, or we hand Biden the WH.

realvoter2012 Tom Davis 2 days ago ,

Million MAGA March is on Twitter use @milionmagamarch. Type only one "l" for million – they have to trick Twitter for censoring them.

Snorpheus realvoter2012 21 hours ago ,

People are using parler. I nuked my Twitter, as have many.

realvoter2012 Snorpheus 19 hours ago ,

I'm already on Parler, will dump Twitter soon.

MikeR Snorpheus 16 hours ago • edited ,

🤷‍♂️ Remember "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN."

I've never used Twitter, Facebook, nor Instagram. I never intend to. I do not have a television in my house. I don't miss it, either.

"People who like to waste hours of their time yakking with people they've never actually met" are an easy-to-reach demographic. But, nothing more.

Santiago Matamoros MikeR 5 hours ago ,

Even if you don't persuade the opposition, you can at least encourage those who need it.

42comment MikeR 10 hours ago ,

Gore wins over Bush

Joseph Mack Tom Davis 2 days ago ,

CORRECTION!! We hand the WH to Kamala, the most leftist (socialist) senator in the Senate! She falls right in line with Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro, Fidel,Stalin and other (in)famous dictators politically. If you are a veteran, have a CFL, have made a firearms purchase from a dealer, etc. - your personal information WILL be found and used to confiscate your arms if these socialists gain enough power. They have already stated that they will rejoin the 'climate accords,' restart 'fair trade' with China, move our embassy out of Jerusalem, restart nuclear 'cooperation' with N. Korea, pass 'common sense' gun laws to protect our citizens (never mind the THOUSANDS of gun laws now on the books that are NOT ENFORCED,) tear down 'Orange Man Bads' border fence, open up our borders to all comers, and amnesty all illegals now in the nation - and that's just for a start.

Michael Hennesy Joseph Mack a day ago ,

You are so right ....but the Marxists better ask the British what happened when General Gage sent British regulars to DISARM AMERICANS at CONCORD . THAT is when the Revolutionary War turned into a REAL SHOOTING WAR .

GenEarly Joseph Mack a day ago • edited ,

Avoidance of War is Not Peace. While I am praying for Honest Election Results that = Trump Victory, the NWO Deep State must be stopped Now.
Marxist democRats and Quisling repubs are Bought and Paid for by their NWO Oligarch Masters.
Never Submit, Never Surrender.
If they mean to have CW, then let it begin with this Coup if it is accomplished in Jan of 21

Second Lite GenEarly 2 hours ago ,

When things go dark, know what to do.

sammi42 TheMarshall a day ago ,

And it is still being hyped big time all for political reasons pro-Biden.

Marianne TheMarshall 2 days ago ,

He also doesn't believe AIDS is caused by HIV... really?! And that we should expand the USPS by having them set up and regulate a national email service. Broken clock, twice-a-day, etc.

Watchman Marianne 2 days ago ,

H.I.V was found to be nothing more than Biologically Inactive Gunk by Nobel Laureate Professor and Cancer specialist Doctor Peter Duesberg and his work was backed up by Nobel Laureate Doctor Carey Mullin. The H.I.V hypothesis proposed by the Fraudulent Doctors Gallo and Anthony Fao-Chi[ yes! That Fao-chi] never passed the Koch Postulates, so they turned to the MSM to pressure the Reagan administration into acceptance of their Hypothesis and that is the most important part of the H.I.V Hypothesis...

42comment Watchman 10 hours ago ,

Wow, I hadn't heard that. Thank you.

America's Voice Fan Marianne 2 days ago • edited ,

Yesterday on hannity's radio show, John Solomon was severely downplaying the software problems. Never trusted that guy. Does anyone ever say, "hey, you have to check out Just the News?!". NOPE.

Nukecell America's Voice Fan 11 hours ago ,

John Solomon was an integral part of uncovering the SpyGate scandal. Just because he says something you disagree with does NOT make him a partisan hack.. He's one of the last investigative reporters left in the U.S.

aaron ortwein Nukecell 10 hours ago ,

He speaks the truth and the truth is that as of now we have zero evidence of wrongdoing other than hearsay. "Data passed around" analyzed by some guy does not cut the mustard in court. Actual proof is needed and as of now we are just spouting BS. I am not delusional as most of you and understand that as we sit we are losing big time. He does not say everything I need to hear......WAAAAAAAA.

America's Voice Fan Nukecell 11 hours ago • edited ,

I don't really trust him after watching him on Lou Dobbs A LOT. He squirms out of tough questions. I agree about the investigation into obamagate with Sara Carter. Why is he now putting a liberal (UNTRUE) spin on the software problems?

aaron ortwein America's Voice Fan 10 hours ago ,

No spin, Just the truth. The evidence as of now would get thrown out of court as it is hearsay. Get the data looked at by a real analytics team not some random guy sitting in his basement.

DadintheBurbs Ricke Floyd 2 days ago ,

He ran hard against Pocahontas up here in MA. Brilliant man! Someone had to step up with indisputable proof and stop this charade now! OT: Watched a bit of Tucker Carlson tonight...the bosses got to him. He's talking about senile Biden's virus response. No Tucker, President Trump is in charge.

DG Canelli DadintheBurbs 2 days ago ,

I agree! Tucker was singing the praises of FNC several nights ago about their truth telling...what garbage! Tucker can go too with FNC, I'm done with them!

JONES DG Canelli 2 days ago ,

That was before election night. Before the election panel showed their a$$.

gi joe DG Canelli 2 days ago ,

Lets not forget that Tucker even stated himself that Hunter Biden was a good friend of his ... Did you guys

miss that statement he made ? and then stated that he would no longer discuss the laptops that were

discovered. And by the way, don't hear a word about that anymore !

Second Lite gi joe 2 hours ago ,

I don't hear a word from Fox anymore. I must be fickle.

America's Voice Fan gi joe 11 hours ago ,

I read an email on the laptop from Tucker to Hunter the day after he said that on his show. It was just thanking Hunter for writing a letter of recommendation to Georgetown for someone. Nothing bad, but Tucker would not touch the photos on the laptop of incest with underage family members.

[Nov 13, 2020] Tucker Carlson: This is a corporate takeover of the country. Joe Biden's transition advisers include executives from Uber, Visa, Capital One, Airbnb, Amazon, the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation and the nonprofit run by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Are you surprised? No, you're not

Notable quotes:
"... ...BIDEN, SPEAKING DURING SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: Within 100 days, I'm going to send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people. And all of those so-called dreamers, those DACA kids, they're going to be immediately certified again to be able to stay in this country and put on a path to citizenship. ..."
Nov 13, 2020 | www.foxnews.com

This is a corporate takeover of the country. Joe Biden's transition advisers include executives from Uber, Visa, Capital One, Airbnb, Amazon, the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation and the nonprofit run by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Are you surprised? No, you're not.

...According to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal, at least 40 members of the Biden transition team announced earlier this week either were or are registered lobbyists. You won't be shocked to learn that the government of China looks on at all this and is highly pleased. A weak, divided America obsessed with narcissistic identity politics is good for them and very different from them.

... Joe Biden has announced that as president he will not deport a single illegal alien from this country in his first 100 days. It doesn't matter who they are, it doesn't matter what they've done. It doesn't matter whether they were convicted of crimes such as rape and murder or not. Literally, they can all stay here.

This is great news if you're Silicon Valley. The tech companies wanted this because they rely on cheap labor. But for the rest of us, what's the upside exactly? By the way, if you live anywhere along the U.S.-Mexico border, good luck to you. Also, don't bother locking your doors or pining for a border wall or thinking that immigration restrictions might improve your life.

...BIDEN, SPEAKING DURING SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: Within 100 days, I'm going to send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people. And all of those so-called dreamers, those DACA kids, they're going to be immediately certified again to be able to stay in this country and put on a path to citizenship.

[Nov 13, 2020] Dead people tend to vote more often, if you make it more convenient for them

Nov 13, 2020 | parler.com

Here is alternative BitChute's posting as a backup to Parler: https://www.bitchute.com/video/oV2Bp07vvWxw/

[Nov 13, 2020] TUCKER CARLSON PROVIDES COMPLETE TOTAL PROOF OF WIDESPREAD DEMOCRAT VOTE FRAUD THAT STOLE THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Nov 12, 2020 | www.paulcraigroberts.org

TUCKER CARLSON PROVIDES COMPLETE TOTAL PROOF OF WIDESPREAD DEMOCRAT VOTE FRAUD THAT STOLE THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Paul Craig Roberts

Tucker Carlson is the ONLY honest media figure in the United States. No wonder the presstitutes want him arrested. I am concerned that the criminal Hillary DNC will have him assassinated. You are simply not permitted to tell the truth in the United States. To tell the truth in the American media is a capital offense.

This had to be posted on Parler because Twitter, FaceBook, and YouTube will not permit the Fox News report on Vote Theft to be posted. What more evidence do you need that there is a conspiracy to steal the presidential election from Trump? If the treasonous and criminal Democrats get away with their coup against democracy, the United States is finished as a country. No Trump voter will ever again think of the US as his/her country.

https://parler.com/post/f4b23b8551d34921ab7cf9f2833709e0

Here is BitChute's posting as a backup to Parler: https://www.bitchute.com/video/oV2Bp07vvWxw/

Some browser's refuse to open these alternative sites. It shows how tight the tech conspiracy against truth is.

[Nov 12, 2020] No Surrender! President Trump Should Not Concede -- No Matter What by James Kirkpatrick

Nov 12, 2020 | www.unz.com

JAMES KIRKPATRICK NOVEMBER 10, 2020 1,400 WORDS 186 COMMENTS REPLY

The Dem/ Main Stream Media Complex is infuriated that President Donald J. Trump will not concede the 2020 election. This is a Sign of Contradiction that he is doing the right thing. This does not yet mean that Trump won enough votes in key states, as Tucker Carlson has noted, but we also can't say with confidence that Trump lost [ Tucker Carlson Says There's Not Enough Fraud to Change Election Results , by Jacob Jarvis, Newsweek, November 10, 2020]. And here appears to be solid evidence that there was at least some wrongdoing -- far more so than for the Russia Hoax that paralyzed Trump's Administration for three years. The same neoconservatives who are demanding Trump concede would be insisting the U.S, invade another country to "bring democracy" if we saw its government behaving this way. Ultimately, the entire battle is about who is sovereign in this country -- American citizens or the Dem/ MSM complex, including Big Tech oligarchs. They ensured it was not a "free and fair" election, and President Trump should never concede.

Let's consider the almost hysterical fury from the MSM telling us that President Trump has a duty to admit defeat because Biden "won."

What happens if Trump refuses to concede US election now Biden has won , by Joe Middleton, Independent, November 10, 2020 What happens if Trump won't concede , by Richard Hasen, Slate, November 8, 2020 No modern presidential candidate has refused to concede. Here's why that matters . By Amy McKeever, National Geographic, November 8, 2020

And there are countless others.

In fact, of course President Trump isn't doing anything illegal. No one has won or lost. Senate Mitch McConnell may be afraid to defy Trump because he doesn't want to lose the two Senate seats in Georgia and thus, his status as Majority Leader. But he's absolutely right when he says that the Electoral College determines the winner and, until that happens, "anyone who is running for office can exhaust concerns" [ Mitch McConnell says Electoral College will determine 2020 election , by Lisa Mascaro, Fox6 Milwaukee, November 10, 2020]. The Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore that settled the 2000 election didn't come to an end until December 12, 2000. Media outlets "declaring" the winner have no legal significance, especially when their projections seem to be based on polls that have proven to be inaccurate [ Professional pollsters blew it again in 2020. Why? b y Matthew Rozsa, Salon, November 4, 2020].

As of this writing, Arizona, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Georgia are all undecided. North Carolina was just called for Trump (and underwhelming Chamber of Commerce GOP senator Thom Tills managed to win a narrow victory over Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham [ Cal Cunningham concedes to Thom Tills in North Carolina Senate race , by Evie Fordham, Fox News, November 10, 2020]). Joe Biden's lead in Arizona is narrow and shrinking dangerously.

President Trump has a strong legal case in the key state of Pennsylvania, where it appears that the state Supreme Court simply created a new power to count votes that arrived after election day. The U.S. Supreme Court (without Amy Coney Barrett) deadlocked over this, but the Trump campaign will almost certainly take this case to SCOTUS again [ Byron York's Daily Memo: The election lawsuit Trump should win, by Byron York, Washington Examiner, November 10, 2020]. As Senator Ted Cruz has said, there has thus far not been a "comprehensive presentation of evidence" [ Ted Cruz: Trump Election Fraud Allegations Will Be Resolved In Court, Not By Persuading You Or Me , by Tim Hains, RealClearPolitics, November 10, 2020]. Republican leaders in Pennsylvania have already called for a recount "in any counties where state law was broken" [ Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda , Pennsylvania State Senate, November 6, 2020].

However, there are more fundamental issues at stake. Thanks to the Sem/ MSM complex's campaign of COVID-19 hysteria, the country engaged in a massive experiment with mail-in voting [ Are We Sure About All Those Mail-in Ballots , by Josh Hammer, The American Mind, November 10, 2020]. Different state requirements add to the confusion. There have been specific claims of outright fraud, notably the inclusion of dead people on the voter rolls, reports that local officials gave voters instructions that would invalidate their ballots, and open theft of ballots [ On Electoral Fraud in 2020 , by Pedro Gonzalez, American Greatness, November 9, 2020]. Critically, in several of the states where President Trump is launching legal challenges, the common factor is a company called Dominion Voting Systems. In one proven case, a "glitch" in its system awarded 6,000 votes to Joe Biden rather than President Trump [ Republicans expand probe into Dominion Voting Systems after Michigan counting snafu , by Zachary Halaschak and Emily Larsen, Washington Examiner, November 8, 2020]. One former Deputy Attorney General for Michigan says counters in Detroit outright provided fraudulent ballots to non-voters [ Ex-Michigan Deputy Attorney General Alleges Detroit Counters Assigned Fraudulent Ballots To Non-Voters , by Kyle Olson, Breitbart, November 9, 2020].

The truth or falsity of these claims must be shown in court. Of course, anti-Trump groups are trying to prevent any legal challenges by individually targeting the law firm that President Trump is using [ Inside the Lincoln Project's new campaign targeting Trump's law firm , by Greg Sargent, Washington Post, November 10, 2020]. No one seems to have considered that such a strategy ensures that most Trump supporters will -- correctly -- consider a Biden Administration utterly illegitimate.

Twitter and other social networking oligopolists are currently putting their thumb on the scale by censoring posts or by claiming there are "election integrity" issues with posts they dislike, even posts by President Trump himself [ Tucker Carlson: Big Tech Took Part in 'One of the Worst Forms of Election Tampering , by Mary Chastain, Legal Insurrection, November 10, 2020].

This control of information both before and after the election renders democracy pointless. If Tech oligarchs can control what the voters see and hear, we might as well put them in charge and dispense with Election Day altogether. It would be simpler and less time consuming than going through a farce where both the exchange of information before an election and tabulating of votes on Election Day itself are apparently too much for the world's sole superpower.

If this is the way the system works, then, as President Trump has been claiming for years, it is "rigged" and illegitimate. If this is how it is going to be, whatever the Regime on the Potomac says in future should be considered as foreign to the Historic American Nation as governments based out of Brussels, Moscow, or Beijing.

Indeed, one can't help but wonder whether the historic American nation would fare better under outright foreign occupation than a hostile elite which considers itself our rulers and treats us with open contempt, if not hatred.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1326279746381082625&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Farticle%2Fno-surrender-president-trump-should-not-concede-no-matter-what%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=500px

President Trump and outraged Republicans do have a card to play even if all the legal challenges fail. State legislatures must certify a state's electors before the College can vote for the next president. If state delegations believe the vote has been corrupted, they can send their own competing slate of electors [ Donald Trump's Stealthy Road to Victory , by Graham Allison, National Interest, November 6, 2020].

President Trump also has powers that he can use to change the political environment, especially by destroying hostile institutions and declassifying documents that the Deep State really doesn't want to be made public [ Reflections on the late election , by Curtis Yarvin, Gray Mirror, November 8, 2020].

If a rigged system is going to take President Trump down, he can take it down with him.

Arguably, if President Trump had the will to do something like that, he would not be in this mess. He did not bring Big Tech to heel. He did not ensure that the bureaucracy was filled with people loyal to him. He kept hiring people who were his enemies and then acted surprised when he was rewarded with treachery. He governed like a conventional Republican while talking like a nationalist, the worst of both worlds [ The Tragedy of Trump , by Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, November 16, 2018].

Nonetheless, with his back to the wall, Trump can and should fight. Even now, he has a popular movement behind him -- all he needs to do is lead them against the System that they thought they had defeated in 2016.


The Company , says: November 11, 2020 at 5:16 am GMT • 18.4 hours ago

The reason I want to see Trump win is to see if anyone like Brennan or Comey end up in jail. If not then it's proof this is all smoke and mirrors on behalf of the usual suspects.

JimDandy , says: November 11, 2020 at 5:16 am GMT • 18.4 hours ago

If a rigged system is going to take President Trump down, he can take it down with him.

Amen, brother!

A123 , says: November 11, 2020 at 5:19 am GMT • 18.4 hours ago

A new issue has turned up in Pennsylvania putting another 100,000+ ballots in line for exclusion: (1)

Over 51,000 ballots were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out -- an extraordinary speed, given U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivery times, while nearly 35,000 were returned on the same day they were mailed out. Another more than 23,000 have a return date earlier than the sent date. More than 9,000 have no sent date.

"Since October 1, the average time of delivery for First-Class Mail, including ballots, was 2.5 days," USPS said in an Oct. 29 release.

Impossible and improbable return dates indicate there's something wrong with either the database or the ballots.

Objective facts show that Trump won Pennsylvania.

-- Will the system work?
-- Or, will the Blue Coup cause the Constitution to collapse?

Biden has no legitimate way to claim victory.

PEACE

AnonFromTN , says: November 11, 2020 at 3:27 pm GMT • 8.2 hours ago

Why should he concede when he won the elections? In fact, Dem crazy policies and senile half-dead nominee resulted in them losing votes. Apparently, they believed their own lies, taking their own psyop "polls" at face value. Massive fraud needed to push their corpse ahead was so crude and ham-handed because it was perpetrated in a hurry. If the fraud stands, the US is kaput. If Trump succeeds in insisting on real results, the US would keep sliding down slowly. Either way, the direction is down, the only difference is the speed.

Sirius , says: November 11, 2020 at 3:47 pm GMT • 7.9 hours ago
@Verymuchalive US elections because you back both horses. It doesn't matter about where the "Jewish" vote goes. It's not about ordinary Jews. It's the Zionist power structure and the big money: Adelson for the Repubs, Saban for the Dems = both bases covered.

Even a not sufficiently Zionist like Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish himself, is blocked because he's not subservient enough to be a minion and horror of horrors, supports a few basic Palestinian human rights and a more balanced policy.

It's easy. They only have to cover 2 bases because there are no viable 3rd parties nor will there ever be under this system, nor is it a direct vote anyway. There will be no change as long as this duopoly persists.

AnonFromTN , says: November 11, 2020 at 3:59 pm GMT • 7.7 hours ago
@EliteCommInc.

I absolutely agree with this author's conclusion, the president should fight.

Absolutely, he won the elections. However, he thinks that the fight is for him, but in reality it is for the American electoral system in particular and the whole political system in general. If this obvious fraud is allowed to stand, the Empire is doomed. If true result is recovered, the slide down would be slow.

nsa , says: November 11, 2020 at 4:05 pm GMT • 7.6 hours ago
@AnonFromTN

If those clever wascally Ds so easily rigged the Prez race for Joey Depends, then why didn't those same clever wascally Ds also rig a few more Senatorial races and capture the Congress?

AnonFromTN , says: November 11, 2020 at 5:24 pm GMT • 6.3 hours ago
@nsa ad to manufacture hundreds of thousands in each swing state. Apparently, the supply of the cheaters was insufficient, and dishonest poll workers were available only in several places (hence the turnout in some places went way above 100%). Sloppy job. Next time they might prepare better. Say, they had more time manufacturing all those mail-in ballots from dead people (naturally, all dead people voted for half-corpse). If mail-in voting remains on the books next time, I expect a lot stronger turnout among the dead.

A single frog is worth more than Joey Depends and Poor Widdle Donnie put together

Now, that is true, but the frog was not on the ballot. It could have won.

[Nov 12, 2020] Recount in 2020 in Florida vs 2020 recount in Pennsylvania by Tucker Carlson

Nov 12, 2020 | www.foxnews.com

The presidential election was on Tuesday and we still don't know the outcome. If you followed the Florida recount 20 years ago, you probably assume you've got some idea of how this will play out.

Officials in contested states will carefully count all the available votes, supervised by bipartisan observers from both campaigns, to reassure all of us it's on the level. If they find irregularities or they see questions of fraud, we'll all get to learn exactly what those allegations are and how they were resolved. That's what we did in 2000. Remember hanging chads? We put them on TV so people could see the ballots for themselves.

In the end, the dispute between Al Gore and George W. Bush continued all the way to the Supreme Court. It took 36 days to resolve and every one of those days, if you remember them, seemed like a month. That process was excruciating, it required patience and calm, but in the end, it was well worth it.

For the record, the news organizations in this country covered every moment of it. No one in any newsroom in America even considered censoring information about what was happening. That would have been regarded as grotesque and immoral. Then, as now, almost everyone in the media was a partisan Democrat. But in 2000, they understood that preserving the public's faith in the system was more important than getting Al Gore or anyone else into the White House. So they pushed for openness and transparency in the process, and thank God they did.

A lot has changed over two decades. It's entirely possible now that someday soon the news media will decide to shut this election down. Believe it or not, they effectively have the power to do that. Let's say officials in Philadelphia produce a large number of newly counted votes. The Pennsylvania secretary of state hastily ratifies them, puts a seal of approval on them and then declares Joe Biden the winner.

Winning Pennsylvania would put Joe Biden over the threshold of 270 electoral votes, so Joe Biden is now the president-elect. But how many of the 69 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump this week would believe that and accept it at this point? Not very many. Not that anyone cares, and of course, the fact that no one cares is the reason they voted for Donald Trump in the first place.

[Nov 12, 2020] Going forward the GOP needs to push hard for a Voting Integrity Act that mandates all voter registration must be approved by social security office to verify citizenship status.

Nov 12, 2020 | www.unz.com

anon [287] Disclaimer , says: November 11, 2020 at 4:50 pm GMT • 6.8 hours ago

I think Tucker Carlson is wrong. I believe there are enough fraudulent votes to change the result -- if the recount is done honestly. WI, MI, GA, PA could all flip, even AZ and NV. The DNC is run by End Justifies Means people who believe everything they do is justified due to Holocaust, Slavery, yada yada.

MSM is working hard to try to make this a foregone conclusion. Each day we hear about Biden this Biden that, Biden's Transition Team, Biden's New Cabinet, Biden's Foreign Policy, Biden's Trade policy Instead of feeling discouraged, I hope this actually gets Trump and his lawyers fired up to push for recounts. He just filed a new lawsuit in MI. There is no reason why the recounts have not started in WI, GA and PA. It's total BS. The longer this drags on, the harder it'll be to overturn the results. They need to press on.

Going forward the GOP needs to push hard for a Voting Integrity Act that mandates all voter registration must be approved by social security office to verify citizenship status. I suspect a high number of voters esp. in blue states like CA and WA are non-citizens, from tens of thousands to millions, since the DMV asks everyone to register to vote and never check their citizenship status. In WA the ballot used to ask people to confirm they are US citizens before signing the ballot with indication of fines/jail time for non-citizens who vote, but they've removed that warning entirely in all ballots since 2016.

The Voting Integrity Act should include a mass audit of the voter registration in every state, with a national database that detects people who are registered to vote in more than one state. Even if Trump doesn't prevail due to mass cheating in the recounts, the GOP needs to put this Voting Integrity Act in place or they will never win another election.

[Nov 12, 2020] Here's One Report on Dominion Vote Flipping

Giuliani has an Outstanding Reputation as a Federal Prosecutor
Nov 12, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
IronForge , Nov 11 2020 21:54 utc | 91

Here's One Report on Dominion Vote Flipping.
https://www.minds.com/media/1172915702746034176

Also, Mayor Giuliani has claimed mamy Cases of Fraud and is Filing Lawsuits as Trump's Lawyer.

Also, Tucker Carlson has also claimed that his Team have verified a good number of Reported Incidents.

Statistical Analyses Claimants are coming forward as well.

Those who claim that there were none or not enough - including you, B - need to read around a bit more and wait before making presumptive assessments when we don't have All the Claim Cases, related Data, and Votes Affected.

Personally, I've seen enough to believe this Election is Compromised. Dominion are allegedly vested by the Pelosis (which alone raise a few Red Flags for a RICO Investigation).

It may be Prudent to Not only Hold Audits; but Redo the Federal Election Seats (WH and Congress) again with Federal Ballots Monitored by Federal Personnel.

Biden should have been sent to Bethesda/Walter Reed/Hopkins for an Alzheimer's/Dementia Review Panel (put my Own Mother through the Drill every several years prior to her going to her Nursing Home); and Hunter should have been Arrested for Crack/Child Molestation while being further investigated for MoneyLaundering/RICO with Pops.

Giuliani is Confident Here As Well. One thing for Certain, B, is that Giuliani has an Outstanding Reputation as a Federal Prosecutor; and Does. Not. Bπ££$#!+. Around. When it comes to Criminal Cases.

I'll rely on Giuliani's Assessments more than anyone else's on this Matter.

V/r,

[Nov 12, 2020] Over 51,000 ballots were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out -- an extraordinary speed, given U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivery times, while nearly 35,000 were returned on the same day they were mailed out. Another more than 23,000 have a return date earlier than the sent date. More than 9,000 have no sent date

Look either way the Banker Oligarchs win. Why fight over the scraps, neither one party or leader represents the little guy (defined these days as those with less than 100m USD in assets).
Nov 12, 2020 | www.unz.com

A123 , says: November 11, 2020 at 5:19 am GMT • 18.4 hours ago

A new issue has turned up in Pennsylvania putting another 100,000+ ballots in line for exclusion: (1)

Over 51,000 ballots were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out -- an extraordinary speed, given U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivery times, while nearly 35,000 were returned on the same day they were mailed out. Another more than 23,000 have a return date earlier than the sent date. More than 9,000 have no sent date.

"Since October 1, the average time of delivery for First-Class Mail, including ballots, was 2.5 days," USPS said in an Oct. 29 release.

Impossible and improbable return dates indicate there's something wrong with either the database or the ballots.

Objective facts show that Trump won Pennsylvania.

-- Will the system work?
-- Or, will the Blue Coup cause the Constitution to collapse?

Biden has no legitimate way to claim victory.

PEACE

shylockcracy , says: November 11, 2020 at 5:50 am GMT • 17.8 hours ago

In today's episode of America's Next Zionist President, we have an insider giving us all an accurate description of our beloved US constitutional republic and democracy which we must fight to protect:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/qfrhATD4nM0?feature=oembed

JimDandy , says: November 11, 2020 at 5:52 am GMT • 17.8 hours ago
@Greatequalizerr

Max Boot, Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, Jake Tapper, et al. are so confused right now.

Roacheforque , says: Website November 11, 2020 at 5:55 am GMT • 17.8 hours ago

For rational people, the media's outlandish bias and presumptive misinformation will not end well for their handlers. True, in a fake new soylent green economy, businesses don't need customers and politicians don't need constituents – you can just manufacture them, and pay yourself with your own money by decree. But reality has a way of eventually creeping in (as you gag on your fake beyond meat burger).

The reality here is that we need to take a step back from the media frenzy and recognize rule of law. Concession cannot even be legally possible for several weeks as it stands today. And the only excuse for Biden falsely claiming victory is that he is too senile to observe Constitutional law.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2020-11-09/us-presidential-election-not-over-heres-where-things-stand-right-now

Clay Alexander , says: November 11, 2020 at 6:24 am GMT • 17.3 hours ago

The Don is done. Lindsey and Mitch and their Dem co-conspirators will be thrilled to get back to business as usual. Motives aside he did change things a bit in between hiring and firing everyone in sight.

To much of a rocky ride Washington doesn't like that no criminal enterprise does.

Don't cry for Don he'll bounce back this is a man who lost three casinos then went on to hawking steaks and finally ended up as President. A real life 21st. century Jack Armstrong. He can write a book play some golf, Melania can go on doing her Eva Gabor impersonation and Don Jr. and Eric can do whatever it is they do. And as for us we're all on a slow boat to China most likely to work at one of those Sino-Ivanka Fashion Inc. factories.

MorningStar , says: November 11, 2020 at 7:15 am GMT • 16.4 hours ago

Big Brother has spoken. Even Fox News has kicked Trump's ass into the shithole and called the election for Biden. Tucker Carlson may also be looking for the exit or he has been instructed to change his tune if he wants to keep his job which in all likelihood he will comply. Trump lovers and sympathisers better face up to the bitter reality and take to the hill to prepare a defense against brutal persecution by their enemies who will come after them with unimaginable passion right after Jan 20, 2021. They already have THE LIST and names are being added to it fast and furious. Bread and circus, people!

Justsaying , says: November 11, 2020 at 7:20 am GMT • 16.3 hours ago
@Greatequalizerr

Come on, get real. American voters were presented with two donkeys and puppets of Israel as candidates. Millions voted for one or the other of two donkeys both of whom dance to the beat of Jewish drums. Come to think about it, which American president in recent memory has not outfawned his predecessor on Israel? Jewish power owns us. End of.

Meimou , says: November 11, 2020 at 7:32 am GMT • 16.1 hours ago

@All trumpers

This fiasco is scripted....

Ray Caruso , says: November 11, 2020 at 8:53 am GMT • 14.8 hours ago

Tucker Carlson said, " At this stage , the fraud that we can confirm does not seem to be enough to alter the election result." That's a far cry from, "There's not enough fraud to change the election results." Newsweek's paraphrasing is, therefore, itself fraudulent and part of the gigantic Democrat gaslighting campaign to convince the nation Joe Biden is the legitimate winner. It should not be repeated here without the actual quote and a caveat.

This also goes to the wider issue of trying to be reasonable and fair when dealing with Democrat cockroaches who are anything but. They will unfailingly distort measured and diplomatic language. It's best to make no concessions to them.

gotmituns , says: November 11, 2020 at 9:38 am GMT • 14.0 hours ago

I don't give a rat's butt about trump or biden. As far as I'm concerned they'll always be two draft dodger/shirkers and nothing more. Interesting how both of them hid in college in the 60's and refused to serve as privates in the army but think they should be able to have the power to send men in harms way.

Verymuchalive , says: November 11, 2020 at 11:06 am GMT • 12.6 hours ago
@Greatequalizerr

Actually, the Zionists and the Jewish vote generally were overwhelmingly for Biden. They were very hostile to Trump. Why would they do this if Trump were a Zionist minion ? Because he's not.

Trump wants to normalise relations with Russia and pull US troops out of the Middle East, including Syria. These moves are very much opposed to Zionist aims and the interests of Israel. Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu was very quick to recognise Biden as the winner. That's because Biden really is a Zionist minion.

Timur The Lame , says: November 11, 2020 at 11:16 am GMT • 12.4 hours ago
@Roacheforque every TDS normie discussed it like it had a real chance of occurring despite not having thought out how exactly how such a ridiculous event would take place on a practical level. Added to which the 'homey' comments coming from diaper Bill and Kameltoe Harris have a overly saccharine flavour to them, more likely scripted with great thought put in as opposed to spontaneous quotes from some gosh darn nice people who want to heal the nation such that anyone trying to prevent them from doing so necessarily must be evil.

If the Zerohedge article is accurate, thank you for posting it. If it has weaknesses perhaps some poster could point them out. It is the most sane thing that I have read on the topic since the 3rd.

Cheers-

Tommy Thompson , says: November 11, 2020 at 11:24 am GMT • 12.3 hours ago

No Surrender! President Trump Should Not Concede -- No Matter What

Sure just like Hillary should not have conceded in 2016, when they had strong evidence of electronic vote rigging.

Look either way the Banker Oligarchs win. Why fight over the scraps, neither one party or leader represents the little guy (defined these days as those with less than 100m USD in assets).

The Zio Banking elite wins hands down right now Biden or Trump. At least Biden might keep some social services like Soc Sec, Medicare, and Obama Care!!!! Yes the public deserves to get something for paying all these taxes not just the Oligarchial super rich who were openly looting the Fed budget under Trump. The unthinking and unemployed working/middle class, especially the Whites amongst them seem to put their crisis of identity ahead of their well being. Daaah.

What did Trump (led by his handlers Kushner/Ivanka) do for the little guy except fill their heads with racial antagonisms and anti-government innuendo (some true but most false). For sure he fulfilled every Zio-Israeli fantasy at the expense of US interests. Yes, no problem for the unquestioning MAGA types, but where did he lead America to, to the precipice of a pending national disaster?

So stop tearing down the constitutional republic, preserve what the general public still has left to protect their individual rights and economic well being. Obviously the elite is pushing for civil unrest so they can bring on a military and dictatorial regime, where all sorts of new control straps can be implemented.

Kirkpatrick you are shameful for stoking the embers of civil unrest! Nobody is calling for unity and statesmen like leadership these days on RU report. Biden is looking much more leader like than cry baby Trump. Trump as you like to say -- -- -- -- – YOUR FIRED!!!!! Man-up and get out and move on and get a life.

Only idiots and fools still want to carry Fake and Slimy Politicians on top of their shoulders. Find some brains and lobby for your own interests, no politician in this system will work for you unless forced to by their electorate.

GeeBee , says: November 11, 2020 at 11:35 am GMT • 12.1 hours ago

[Reflections on the late election, by Curtis Yarvin, Gray Mirror, November 8, 2020].

Because I began my journey to 'red-pilled' awareness thanks to Curtis 'Mencius Moldbug' Yarvin, I naturally clicked on the link and read his piece. One has travelled far since reading his 'Unqualified Reservations' blog way back on 2007-08, and I now agree with much of Andrew Joyce's recent critique of Yarvin ( https://www.unz.com/article/jews-in-the-cathedral-a-response-to-curtis-yarvin/ )

However, I frequently chuckled while reading Yarvin's piece linked by James Kirkpatrick, and marvelled anew at the quality and brilliance of his insights. In this regard it rather took me back in time twelve or so years.

A sample or two:

After describing how Trump could legally take full and absolute personal power for the length of his second term, Yarvin points out that what is required amounts to nothing less than 'regime change', and states that 'A true regime change must be a revolution in every sense of the word Of course, since the right is order and the left is chaos, the left-wing revolution is a butcher and the right-wing revolution is a surgeon. If ours needs to keep its bandages on for a few days, theirs can barely be sold as hamburger. And even before her stitches are out, America feels and looks better than ever.'

He goes on:

'One lesson that should be appreciated by all sides in all civic conflicts is that force is not another word for violence. Force is the opposite of violence. Violence is bad, and force is good. Violence is chaos, and force is order. Violence is slow and force is fast.

'If you can win by force, what are you waiting for? Do it immediately. If you can't win without violence, you probably can't win at all, and you probably shouldn't try. Much bloodshed could be saved if all young persons were educated with these simple and timeless Machiavellian principles'.

And earlier, he explains the role of elections in a 'democracy' as being to assess the power of each side's support, and that this power ought to reflect actual physical strength and or courage, remarking:

'The fundamental purpose of a democratic election is to test the strength of the sides in a civil conflict, without anyone actually getting hurt. The majority wins because the strongest side would win. Better to measure that by counting heads, than knocking heads; and counting heads produces a reasonable guess as to who would win a head-knocking contest. Same outcome, fewer concussions: a Pareto optimization.

'But this guess is much better if it actually measures humans who are both willing and able to walk down the street and show up. Anyone who cannot show up at the booth is unlikely to show up for the civil war. This is one of many reasons that an in-person election is a more accurate election. (If voters could be qualified by physique, it would be even more accurate.)

'My sense is that in many urban communities, voting by proxy in some sense is the norm. The people whose names are on the ballots really exist; and almost all of them actually did support China Joe. Or at least, preferred him. The extent to which they perform any tangible political action, including physically going to the booth, is very low; so is their engagement with the political system. The demand for records of their engagement is very high, because each such datum cancels out some huge, heavily-armed redneck with a bass boat.'

Great stuff!

God's Fool , says: November 11, 2020 at 11:40 am GMT • 12.0 hours ago
@Greatequalizerr

Even with the gift of Jerusalem they're out to get him you simply can't trust them!

Emslander , says: November 11, 2020 at 11:44 am GMT • 11.9 hours ago

He governed like a conventional Republican while talking like a nationalist, the worst of both worlds

Precisely. Still, Biden didn't win. Time for it all to come down anyway, if only because of the financial collapse looming.

Emslander , says: November 11, 2020 at 11:46 am GMT • 11.9 hours ago
@Greatequalizerr

Your obsession with Jews is really misplaced here. As soon as anyone starts blaming the Jews, that person has immediately branded himself unfit for further comment.

potemkin villiage bank , says: November 11, 2020 at 12:09 pm GMT • 11.5 hours ago

The purpose of Main Scream Media fake polls

was

to disguise massive ballot rigging on the day of the zombie apocalypse election

Had it not been for President Trumps massive rallies in Pennsylvania the stitch up might have worked

The demobrats wish to turn the USA into a soddem and gomocracy with male in voting for themasses

AKINDLE , says: November 11, 2020 at 12:23 pm GMT • 11.3 hours ago

Trump had four years to do something about election fraud. Didn't do a thing. Kinda funny Trump and those Senator Georgians that sucked up to blacks thought blacks would actually vote for them. Georgia and trump lost! Maybe taught them a lesson! I doubt it. Georgia has been overrun with Hispanics and absolutely flooded with H-1B Indians for years too . The GOP has committed suicide and taken the rest of America down with it. But hey, they made a few bucks doing it! Maybe trump can do another publicity stunt with a rapper to save his campaign.

Katrinka , says: November 11, 2020 at 12:33 pm GMT • 11.1 hours ago

The problems with the election are just a mirror image of the problems with this country. Fake money, fake border, fake pandemic, fake scholarship, fake news, fake food, fake votes. Did I miss anything?

sally , says: November 11, 2020 at 12:41 pm GMT • 11.0 hours ago
@TheTrumanShow ll decide. and failing that, the congress shall decide.. If a candidate interferes with that constitutional process, changes or alters it to suit a personal circumstance, he or she invites the crowd operated guillotine, i fear.

I agree the election process in many states is subject to corruption.. but Trump had four years to change that process. like most things he did not provide the leadership needed to get the masses to help him do just that.. Now Trump complains ..to the very people who expected more from him .. and seeks to circumvent their intentions. I hope not?

I learned long ago: the pilot that does not pay the mechanic, pays the undertaker, when the engine quits at 15000 feet.

Adrian , says: November 11, 2020 at 12:44 pm GMT • 10.9 hours ago

I am an Australian living in an Australian country town. My email address is recognisably Australian. I have never lived in the US. I have never even been there in fact.

Yet I have been inundated with election propaganda from the Democrats (from the other side nary a peep).

Recently an organisation that goes under the name "Fight for Reform"invited me, as a "Top Democrat in your state", to sign a card to congratulate "Joe and Kamala" testyifying that I too had been crying "tears of joy" about their election.

When I didn't react I was asked, virtually the day after, why I hadn't done so. They were "running low on support from"registered Democrats" "so please

Jake , says: November 11, 2020 at 12:59 pm GMT • 10.7 hours ago
@Greatequalizerr

Well, if you think that Biden and Harris will serve Israel any less than Trump, then you should be willing to purchase my Jewless estate of 500,000 acres in NY, which comes with 6000 square foot fully restored 19th century house, a 2500 square foot guest house, and a horse barn. It also comes with both a real pond and a ce- ment pond. I'm asking only $600,000. It's a steal of a bargain.

Frankie P , says: November 11, 2020 at 1:48 pm GMT • 9.9 hours ago
@Emslander

In other words, according to you, the Jews as individuals, organizations, or as a people may never be blamed for anything. Methinks it is YOU wearing the brand that says "unfit for further comment".

geokat62 , says: November 11, 2020 at 2:16 pm GMT • 9.4 hours ago

Ultimately, the entire battle is about who is sovereign in this country -- American citizens or

LOL! I haven't seen the words "sovereignty" and "American people" in the same sentence for quite some time. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not simply restricted to American people, as it applies to all peoples of the West.

We must muster the will to shift this balance of power.

Old and Grumpy , says: November 11, 2020 at 2:57 pm GMT • 8.7 hours ago
@The Oracle class="comment-text">

Whining about jail time over tax laws is why Trump has to fight? He can tell us deplorables it is for us. Its not. It will be about preserving his empire. As much as I want the corrupt PA democrats to finally get theirs in this legal process, I support Trump in his fight for himself. If you twerps are allowed to destroy someone like a President Trump, just imagine what you will do to a mere lunch lady for using the wrong pronoun. Please for once in your miserable life admit your side is not made up of good people but rather a whole bunch of totalitarian dictatorial wannabes. Scarily you keep moving the goalposts of your endgame because every victory is never enough to satiate the rumble in your hollow souls.

[Nov 12, 2020] Caitlin Johnstone- Americans didn't vote against Trump, they voted against more media psychological abuse by Caitlin Johnstone

Highly recommended!
Nov 12, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

By Caitlin Johnstone , an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitoz

'Trump derangement syndrome' didn't come from Trump. It came from abusive media trying to spin the evils of his presidency as somehow worse than any other US president's.

The word "coup" is being thrown about in American liberal media today, not because US liberals suddenly became uncomfortable with the fact that their nation constantly stages coups and topples governments around the world as a matter of routine policy, but because they are all talking about (you guessed it) Donald Trump.

To be clear, none of the high-powered influencers who have been promoting the use of this word actually believe there is any possibility that Donald Trump will somehow remain in office after January of next year when he loses his legal appeals against the official results of the election, which would be the thing that a coup is. There is no means or institutional support through which the sitting president could accomplish such a thing. This is not a coup, it's a glorified temper tantrum. Trump will leave office at the appointed time.

The establishment narrative managers are not terrifying their audiences with this word because they believe there is any danger of a coup actually happening. They are doing it because it's their last chance to use Trump to psychologically abuse their audiences for clicks.

... ... ...

It is not Trump himself who's been making people feel terrified of a tyrannical Russian agent ending democracy in America and ruling with an iron fist, it is years of shrieking, hysterical coverage about Trump from the mass media.

//www.youtube.com/embed/kgBxfHdb4OU

Without all the deranged and persistent fearmongering, driven by a disdain for Trump's unrefined narrative management style and an insatiable hunger for ratings and clicks, it would never have occurred to Americans that they should be more terrified of this president than of any other sh***y Reaganite Republican. The Russian collusion narrative which dominated most of Trump's presidency turned out tobe essentially nothing . The concentration camps, millions of deportations and armed militias driving non-whites out of the country that we were promised never came; he never even came anywhere close to Obama's deportation numbers and his support from minorities actually went up. He hasn't been any more warlike than his predecessors overall, and by some measures arguably less so. Most Americans actually reported that their lives had improved over Trump's term before the pandemic hit.

If people had just been given raw information about Trump's presidency, they would have seen a lot of bad things, but things that are bad in the same way all the horrible aspects of the most destructive government on earth are bad. They wouldn't have known to be horrified and anxious and have headaches and irritable bowel syndrome. They would have handled themselves in about the same way they always handled themselves during the administration of a president they didn't like.

Instead, they were psychologically terrorized. Made frightened, sick and traumatized by mass media pundits who only care about ratings and clicks, as was made clear when CBS chief Les Moonves famously said that Trump is bad for America but great for CBS. Dragged through years of Russia hysteria and Trump hysteria with any excuse to spin Trump's presidency as a remarkable departure from norms, when in reality it was anything but. It was a fairly conventional Republican presidency.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1085310153405083648&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fop-ed%2F506415-americans-vote-trump-media%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

In reality, though most of them probably did not realize it, this is what Americans were actually voting against when they turned out in record numbers to cast their votes. Not against Trump, but against this continued psychological abuse they've been suffering both directly and indirectly from the mass media. Against being bashed in the face by shrieking, hysterical bull***t that hurts their bodies and makes them feel crazy, and against the unpleasantness of having to interact with stressed-out compatriots who haven't been putting up well with the abuse.

It wasn't a "Get him out" vote, it was a "Make it stop" vote.

Meanwhile, another pernicious effect of making Trump seem uniquely horrible has been retroactively making his predecessors seem nice by comparison, which is why George W Bush now enjoys majority support among Democrats after years of unpopularity. Their depravity is hidden behind a media-generated wall labeled "NOT TRUMP" . And when Biden steps into office, his depravity will be hidden from view in the same way, neutering all mainstream opposition to his most deadly and dangerous actions .


The First Rule , 5 hours ago

I certainly hope this isn't True. You should never surrender to Evil.

And the MSM in America is Pure Evil.

(except Tucker Carlson)

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

Oh, and this is what you missed when you went to Bed Election Night

(Apparently the same thing happened in MI, WI and possibly GA):

PA Vote Flip (at :04 and then at :36):

https://t.co/nTGpOtHA8N

KY Vote Flip (from Gov Race Last Year - Detailed Explanation of what is happening):

SMOKING GUN: ELECTRONIC VOTE FRAUD CAUGHT LIVE ON CNN! #TheHammer #Scorecard (bitchute.com)

Macho Latte , 5 hours ago

It's the politics of HATE

Too many people succumb to the psychological warfare that has been raging against us for 5 decades. It is very difficult to break free from the indoctrination regardless of intelligence or education. The backbone of the DemonRat organization is a very strong emotion that overcomes all logic and reason. It is HATE. Today it is called by the gentle name of Identity Politics. Nevertheless, it is still a HATE based psychological manipulation. Women need to HATE men. Blacks need to HATE everyone. Whites need to HATE themselves. Everybody needs to HATE Trump.

Did anybody vote FOR Biden or Harris?

The DemonRats have the Deep State covering, aiding and abetting their insurrection. As we have seen, the stupid white people support the peaceful protests and are played like a violin by the professional agitators likely trained by the CIA & FBI. The BLM aristocracy claims to be "trained Marxists". Trained by whom? Nobody asks.

The cops are used like trained dogs to attack everyone who opposes the BLM/Antifa sanctioned riots to the point where citizens are afraid of the cops and the BLM/Antifa people use the cops for target practice, and the cops just take it. Nobody really respects the FBI or the cops anymore.

Then there is the constant 24/7 drum beat of propaganda from the MSM and social media driving people crazy.

Welcome to the world of Kamala Pelosi.

With Trump gone, who will they hate next?

DemonRats: The Party of Lies & HATE


Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.
- Orwell

archon , 2 hours ago

Every time Maddow speaks she reminds me that we're living in clownworld. Lets not forget this is coming from people who spent the last four years attempting their own coup.

cankles' server , 4 hours ago

I'm not sure if twitter deleted but here's the youtube link

Screencap 1

Screencap 2

This shows a vote switch of 19,958 votes deducted from Trump and added to Biden.

Video explaining electronic election fraud.

[Nov 12, 2020] Fox News was always the controlled opposition for the deep state.

Nov 12, 2020 | www.unz.com

Old and Grumpy , says: November 11, 2020 at 3:04 pm GMT • 8.6 hours ago

@Priss Factor

Rubert's media empire was just a stepping stone for gigs like a sitting board of director with Genie Oil. Even with that Fox News has always been neocon. If most conservative types weren't enamored with supporting the troops, who will be just like the cops in supporting the establishment in any civil war, then they would have known Fox News was controlled opposition for the deep state.

A123 , says: November 11, 2020 at 3:07 pm GMT • 8.6 hours ago
@Priss Factor

Fox News is now Fix News.

Rupert Murdoch's heirs are #NeverTrump Libtards. They have been systematically installing SJW Globalists for some time. The day-to-day programming has flipped to Fake Stream Media propaganda. It is no surprise that they went full TDS for election coverage.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1322953472938070019&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Farticle%2Fno-surrender-president-trump-should-not-concede-no-matter-what%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=500px

Katrinka , says: November 11, 2020 at 5:42 pm GMT • 6.0 hours ago
@A123

https://www.klowdtv.com/package.ktv?package=freeoannTrump

The above link will provide you with a FREE KlowdTV subscription to OAN and eleven other channels for the remainder of 2020. Easy to do, two quick steps. DUMP FOX! Pass it on.

[Nov 12, 2020] Tucker Carlson may also be looking for the exit or he has been instructed to change his tune if he wants to keep his job which in all likelihood he will comply.

Nov 12, 2020 | www.unz.com

Realist , says: November 11, 2020 at 6:39 pm GMT • 5.0 hours ago

@MorningStar

Tucker Carlson may also be looking for the exit or he has been instructed to change his tune if he wants to keep his job which in all likelihood he will comply.

Yes, Carlson's program last night was decidedly more milquetoast than the night before. His choice of topics was much more mundane. Perhaps he has gotten the word.

anon [287] Disclaimer , says: November 11, 2020 at 9:51 pm GMT • 1.8 hours ago

Tucker Carlson is toeing the Fox editorial line by claiming not enough fraudulent votes to change the outcome. The only question is how was he coerced into making this statement -- was it the carrot or the stick? Both? The stick would be he gets fired from Fox. The carrot would be he gets major pay raise, promotion, or even getting help set up as front runner for 2024.

TC is no longer to be trusted. I have felt that about him for some time as his website Daily Caller started toeing the Zionist line with increasing hostility towards China this past year. He's now just controlled opposition like Stephen Miller, Breitbart.

Wally , says: November 11, 2020 at 10:15 pm GMT • 1.4 hours ago
@The Company

Note that Carlson did NOT say, as the article falsely states, "Tucker Carlson Says There's Not Enough Fraud to Change Election Results", he said:

At this stage, the fraud that we can confirm does not seem to be enough to alter the election result . We should be honest and tell you that. Of course, that could change," he said, on his Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight.

I believe Carlson will spotlight the fraud claims on his program tonight.

[Nov 09, 2020] Biden victory in some ways looks like Catch 22 for neoliberal Dems

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... But while they now have the power, globalists do not have solutions to the country problems, and the crisis of neoliberalism (which started in 2008) will continue, the far-right nationalism will stay and may even gain strength. This suggests that in 2024 is somebody like Tucker Carlson will lead the ticket. And Tucker is a more dangerous opponent to neoliberal Dems than Trump ever been. "Trumpism without Trump" will live, so to speak. ..."
Nov 09, 2020 | crookedtimber.org

Hidari 11.08.20 at 8:20 pm

Interesting piece by Beinart about the obvious question that isn't being asked: Why did Trump lose? After all he had the advantages of incumbency, until February the stock market was booming, wages were rising, things were going great.

Answer: because he was not nearly radical enough. Because he was a weak leader who was captured by the Republican elite (not the other way round). Also (rather ironic this) because he was and is a terrible negotiater. He continually caved into the likes of Mitch McConnell, and, well the rest is history.

Question: will 'super Trump' in 4 or 8 years time manage to follow the Eastern European template and create a genuine populist party? (economically social democratic, particularly concentrating on pensioners: extremely hostile to immigration, skeptical of environmental issues, culturally conservative?). If so the future is the Republicans' but it's a big if.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/11/07/how-trump-lost/

likbez 11.09.20 at 4:20 pm (no link)

@Hidari 11.08.20 at 8:20 pm

...he was a weak leader who was captured by the Republican elite (not the other way round). Also (rather ironic this) because he was and is a terrible negotiator. He continually caved into the likes of Mitch McConnell, and, well the rest is history.

All true. But Biden victory in some ways looks like Catch 22 for neoliberal Dems (Will the Democrats Ever Make Sense of This Week? – New Republic):

In sum, if the results we have hold, Joe Biden will win the election and preside over a divided Congress. A chastened and anxious Democratic caucus will continue to hold the House.

A triumphant Senate Republican caucus will obviously destroy his major legislative agenda. Biden will assuredly turn to policy by executive action, just as Barack Obama did late in his legislatively stymied administration.

When he does, Republicans will do all they can to send those actions to a 6–3 conservative Supreme Court Biden will be unable to pack or meaningfully reform.

In defeating Trump, Democrats will have avoided their worst-case scenario. Instead, they will have won the worst possible Biden victory, a political situation that will be a nightmare all its own.

Trump, with his "national neoliberalism," was an anomaly in its own right. And such things do not last long. So this is a kind of "return to normal" -- return to power of the "internationalist" faction of Oligarchy who is linked to globalization (and constitutes the majority of the US oligarchy), which was unexpectedly defeated in 2016 and since then foght tooth and nail for the return to power. And such "normalization" is the most logical outcome of the 2020 elections and is to be expected.

But while they now have the power, globalists do not have solutions to the country problems, and the crisis of neoliberalism (which started in 2008) will continue, the far-right nationalism will stay and may even gain strength. This suggests that in 2024 is somebody like Tucker Carlson will lead the ticket. And Tucker is a more dangerous opponent to neoliberal Dems than Trump ever been. "Trumpism without Trump" will live, so to speak.

That may spell troubles for the well-being of the PMC (professional and management class) to which we all belong.

I would add that the fact that Biden victory legitimized Russia-gate and abuse of their power by intelligence agencies is also a problem. I suspect that Neo-McCarthyism, in the long run, might backfire.

[Nov 09, 2020] Tucker: GOP Establishment Happy to Sell Out their Voters with Amnesty

Highly recommended!
Nov 09, 2020 | www.breitbart.com

Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson says Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is "happy to sell out his voters with an amnesty deal" after he suggested finding "common ground" with Democrats on immigration.

During a segment Friday night, Carlson called out Graham -- who just won reelection in South Carolina -- for suggesting to the Senate Republican caucus that their agenda next year could include working with Democrats on amnesty for 11 to 22 million illegal aliens. Carlson asked:

Who's excited to greet our new corporate overlords? Who plans to collaborate, particularly who on the right side, the Republican side, the side that said it was defending you. Who's happy about all of this? That seems worth keeping track of just so we know who we're dealing with here.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=BreitbartNews&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1324895855283826688&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fpolitics%2F2020%2F11%2F06%2Ftucker-carlson-gop-establishment-happy-to-sell-out-voters-with-amnesty%2F&siteScreenName=BreitbartNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Carlson went on to say:

I was particularly interested in the comments of Lindsey Graham who just won reelection in the state of South Carolina because conservatives voted for him the people around Trump put a great deal of pressure on Lindsey Graham to send them money, so after a day or two, he made a great show of sending them $500,000.

But then on the issues that matter, Lindsey Graham immediately ran away from the ideas that he claimed to support and said that he would be happy to sell out his voters with an amnesty deal, like within hours of the election.

You have a deeply flawed party that refuses to protect its own voters and represent their legitimate interests but they are the only hope that this country doesn't descend into something unrecognizable. It puts 70 million decent people in a tough spot.

Already, America First conservatives and immigration reformers are pushing back against Graham's comments.

"The new base of the Republican Party is the American working class, of all races. 'Common ground' on immigration reform is code for amnesty, and amnesty is an insult to the millions who voted GOP in the election," Bostonians Against Sanctuary Cities President Lou Murray told Breitbart News.

https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?guci=2.2.0.0.2.2.0.0&client=ca-pub-9229289037503472&output=html&h=280&adk=2736325427&adf=1262648085&pi=t.aa~a.2269643242~i.24~rp.4&w=640&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1604935036&num_ads=1&rafmt=1&armr=3&sem=mc&pwprc=4447812914&psa=1&ad_type=text_image&format=640x280&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fpolitics%2F2020%2F11%2F06%2Ftucker-carlson-gop-establishment-happy-to-sell-out-voters-with-amnesty%2F&flash=0&fwr=0&pra=3&rh=160&rw=640&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&wgl=1&fa=27&adsid=ChAIgO6j_QUQ6Kvx1bmpjO1KEioAcZ31n3u0f1-6xD8uaLoJuUnASrVBGTwwiGM-NeHZkETS3IXB6odzgQk&dt=1604935397830&bpp=3&bdt=1189&idt=-M&shv=r20201104&cbv=r20190131&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3D41f18ada65038798-2254e2a13cc400f3%3AT%3D1603479558%3ART%3D1603479558%3AS%3DALNI_Ma_MbMqN5jLfiBUKGi7DG2VL9rOxg&prev_fmts=0x0%2C605x280&nras=3&correlator=6306825717591&frm=20&pv=1&ga_vid=1120795352.1603479559&ga_sid=1604935398&ga_hid=1513731987&ga_fc=0&iag=0&icsg=8623630520&dssz=23&mdo=0&mso=0&u_tz=-300&u_his=3&u_java=0&u_h=864&u_w=1536&u_ah=864&u_aw=1536&u_cd=24&u_nplug=3&u_nmime=4&adx=275&ady=2311&biw=1519&bih=762&scr_x=0&scr_y=0&eid=42530671%2C21067467%2C21068109%2C21068433&oid=3&pvsid=3230549208084939&pem=203&rx=0&eae=0&fc=1408&brdim=1536%2C0%2C1536%2C0%2C1536%2C0%2C1536%2C864%2C1536%2C762&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7Cs%7C&abl=NS&fu=8320&bc=31&jar=2020-11-09-02&ifi=10&uci=a!a&btvi=2&fsb=1&xpc=Tcu80jEaBe&p=https%3A//www.breitbart.com&dtd=44

Currently, there are about 20 million Americans who are jobless or underemployed, mostly due to the Chinese coronavirus crisis, but all of whom want full-time jobs.

Economists have found that their job opportunities and wages can be easily diminished by high immigration levels.

One particular study by the Center for Immigration Studies' Steven Camarota revealed that for every one percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers' occupation, their weekly wages are cut by perhaps 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by potentially 8.75 percent, since more than 17 percent of the workforce is foreign-born.

The high immigration policy is a boon for giant corporations, real estate investors, Wall Street, university systems, and Big Agriculture that can cash in on an economy that offers low wages to a flooded U.S. labor market.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .

Sharon Barnes Schrödinger's cat 2 days ago

Term limits are needed.

Terrence Carlson Sharon Barnes 17 minutes ago

A Constitutional amendment to enact term limits, and remove all money from the election process.

scrutinizer1 Time_4A_Change 2 days ago • edited

To start one's own party is not so easy and outright impossible under the current conditions. If the majority of GOP supports him then the best course would be to purge and reinvigorate GOP: he should issue a call of action to his supporters and create the situation when those who use their membership to their own benefits will be forced to step down or cancel the membership. By purging I don't mean filling it in with 'yes-men': they don't have to be obliged to love Trump; criticism is essential, but these people have to be able to differentiate between the personal and common when on service. They all have to be loyal to the America First. If you call yourself 'Republican' then behave like one or choose another party. Such RINOs are materially motivated - they never couldn't build a career in the Dems Party, especially now, with the Squad; they can't start their own Party - nobody will vote them, because they'll be the party of traitors and sell-outs. Benny Too Too deploritarian 2 days ago

No your corrupt corp fraud media did it to him along with hussein osama's weaponized US agencies! Now go back to watching CNN lying hate media to get even more stupid

freevoter2016 Benny Too Too 2 days ago

With 25 Million Illegal Aliens in our Country the Democrats have an absolute Lock on this and future Elections by enabling them to Vote. No Voter ID laws, Sanctuary Cities awarding them all Privileges of US Citizens from Drivers Licenses and access to all welfare state programs. We are not a Sovereign Nation any longer. ANITFA called it in their Protests "No More BORDERS. Democrats support this Treasonous Group because it gives them perpetual control of Washington. Elibar deploritarian 2 days ago

Better European papers? LOL! I live in Europe and can tell you they're every bit as lying and partisan as the MSM EVERYWHERE! Practically every European national broadcaster and newspaper gets s o r o s funding, unless you happen to read Hungarian. For instance, the long defunct Italian Radical party's radio station was close to collapse due to lack of support. They are now back on air admitting the Hungarian pos gave them almost 400,000 euro if they supported 'immigration'. Read the Beano, it's far more informative.

[Nov 09, 2020] Will the next "super Trump" in 4 or 8 years time manage to follow the Eastern European template and create a genuine populist party? The answer is probably yes

We need to watch Tucker Carlson
Nov 09, 2020 | crookedtimber.org

Hidari 11.08.20 at 8:20 pm ( 51 )


[Nov 09, 2020] The Democrats all stopped counting in numerous states on election night to give them time to "create" some extra mail-in Biden votes.

Nov 09, 2020 | www.breitbart.com

Rob TheDrewtho 2 days ago • edited

The GOP will stand with Trump, and Trump will be legally reelected. The Michigan Legislature just convened a special session to consider the widespread ballot stuffing, technical "glitches," and other suspicious activity in their election. Everyone in Michigan knows that Trump and James won that election in a landslide.

The Democrats all stopped counting in numerous states on election night to give them time to "create" some extra mail-in Biden votes.

The legislature, controlled by the GOP, will invalidate the election if there is evidence of fraud. They have the Constitutional right to instruct the electors. America will not let the Democrats steal an election the way they do in Venezuela. THIS JUST IN: The Wisconsin legislature, controlled also by the GOP, has been called to investigate voter fraud too!! Milwaukee had an unprecedented 91% return rate, more than any precinct in history by 20 points. No fraud? We'll see. TruLogix Dennis Mastin 2 days ago

Yeah good luck. The work has been done. The ballots removed are long gone. GOP is to blame this was obvious and they put nothing in place to stop this knowing it was most likely part of the plan with all of the dems fighting tooth and nail for mail in. Bullet2354 Avery Bierce 2 days ago • edited

In places like Michigan, more republicans requested Absentee Ballots than Democrats...

And More republicans returned their Absentee Ballots than Democrats....

This data is public information; reported by the state. Bullet2354 trackrunner11 . a day ago

Vote Integrity will prevail.
https://www.youtube.com/wat... Bullet2354 Avery Bierce 2 days ago

https://www.nbcnews.com/pol...

Click "MI"

then Absentee voters...

It is State Data.
Bullet2354
Avery Bierce a day ago

The 20% could be mostly Biden... but 80-20%. Dems did pick up votes... but so did Trump!

And while I know you feel some republicans did not like Trump... all polling done this year shows 89-94% of Republicans were supporting Trump - actually much higher than Dem support for Biden...
- the Trump 'Voter Enthusiasm was off the charts"..... Biden had historic LOW 'voter enthusiasm most of the summer.

Also - many Bernie People (about 25% in spring) stated they would never vote Democrat after what the DNC did to Bernie in 2016 and 2020. Maybe the came back to Biden - but I don't know... I did not see Bernie people rallying for Joe at all.

I think the "ILLEGAL BALLOT ISSUE" IS NOW WHAT THE FOCUS is moving too...

Voting Laws were abused... Late ballots, fake registrations, 'the dead,' ghost mail in ballot.... -and intentionally and illegally manipulated ballots - even poll workers admitting they tossed Trump votes because they hate him so much...

I think this flipped states.... Avery Bierce Bullet2354 a day ago

Of course, support for Biden isn't in issue. Exasperation with Trump is clearly the issue.
Independents don't generally support Trump this year.
I don't think many Bernie people would vote for Trump. That doesn't make much sense.
Yes, clearly Trump wants lawyers to argue about ballots being illegal. I guess he thinks they might be able to show enough ballots were illegal, and that most of the illegal ballots were for Biden. Ball is in their court on that, I guess. But in court, Trump won't be able to argue in the form of tweets that say "we've been hearing about so much fraud." Time to put up.

ReplyShare › − Avatar Bullet2354 Avery Bierce 20 hours ago

Court challenges are coming.... that is for sure...
Supreme Court already has the PA rulings and is looking at that.

I do think overall Election Integrity has been compromised... at almost every level and every step of the process. Ghost ballots sent out, Mail in ballots sold for cash, 'the dead,' Fake Ids', out of state voters voting multiple times, dates and signatures altered, ballots trashed by partisan poll workers, ballots altered, software 'errors' (that seem to favor one party about 100% of the time) ...

It is too much.... I have seen a few poll workers arrested for trying to slide multiple votes through a machine - and I though 'well just few votes won't matter' - but now... the Trust is broken...

If anything good can come of all this - I hope the "Voting Process" is overhauled 100%... maybe even to the level of BlockChain.... Bullet2354 Mike a day ago

My concern is not the actual count... however.

My concern is that Voter Laws were abused... significantly.

illegal votes counted, illegal processes used - a really corrupted vote system..... The Law was not followed.

2016 MI was bad enough with the failed RECOUNT.... Detroit has always had massive counting errors, bribery scandals, constant inconsistencies, pay to vote schemes, 'walking around money' - and the STATE has know this for 60 years! ... yet never moved to fix it. I think it has grown 'out of control' in 2020.

I used to 'give a little' for a few fraudulent votes here or there.... a few Dead people get a ballot... a few data base errors.

This year - the Fraud has crossed the line.

I don't trust the count. - VOTE INTEGRITY HAS COLLAPSED.

[Nov 08, 2020] The Missing White Vote in Wisconsin Lost Trump the State

Nov 08, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The president's operation left millions of potential votes on the table Tomah, Wisconsin / USA - Oct 17th, 2020 (By Aaron of L.A. Photography)

NOVEMBER 6, 2020

|

12:01 AM

RYAN GIRDUSKY

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, analysts on both the left and right noticed that President Trump had the potential to grow his base of white working-class voters. Five Thirty-Eight's David Wasserman noted that over 44 million non-college-educated white voters who were not even registered to vote before the 2016 election concentrated heavily in the Midwest, including 2.6 million in Pennsylvania, 2.2 million in Ohio, 900,000 in Wisconsin, and 500,000 in Iowa. All the Trump campaign needed to do was locate them and register a fraction of them, and it would be smooth sailing till election day.

Rather than employing a strategy that looked to find the missing white working-class voter, the Trump campaign devised a plan to drive support from minority voters. They released both the Platinum Plan for black Americans and the American Dream plan for Hispanic Americans, promising hundreds of billion dollars to revive their communities and a series of other identity-driven policies.

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

This was successful to a point. The Hispanic turnout in Florida and Texas were large enough to deliver Trump a much larger victory than most people expected and helped keep Arizona and Nevada competitive even as he shed voters in the suburbs and among Independents as well as college-educated whites. Among black voters, exit polls showed Trump received 19 percent of the black voters between 25 and 44 years-old. However, he didn't budge the number of older black Americas who make up a majority of voters in their racial group.

That plan was always doomed to fail due to the small share of minority voters in the Midwest that were up for grabs. There weren't enough Hispanic voters or black Americans willing to flip to the GOP in those states. So they relied on their pool of existing voters and resting their fate on a ground game.

To the Trump campaign and the Wisconsin Republican Party's credit, they ran a fantastic operation in the state. The President's campaign increased his support and turnout in 22 of the 23 counties he flipped from President Obama in 2016. Even more astonishing, only two of those counties had turnout under 90 percent. Some counties like Price, Marquette, and Pepin had close to 95 percent turnout.

In the county of Kenosha, which saw race riots and acts of violence from Black Lives Matter supporters and members of Antifa, Trump increased his margin from .3 percent in 2016 to 3.2 percent in 2020, becoming the first Republican to win the county in back-to-back elections since 1928.

The ground game and high level of support from working-class white counties couldn't make up because the missing white vote stayed missing. In the 23 Obama-Trump counties, the number of registered voters declined by nearly 8,000 voters from January 2017 to November 2020 even though the population increased in these areas.

So Trump's campaign had to work harder with a smaller group of people. Most of the non-college-educated white Wisconsinites that didn't vote in 2016 remained untapped in 2020. For over three years, the campaign spent hundreds of millions of dollars chasing phantom voters in deep blue states like New Mexico rather than looking at their natural base sitting underneath their nose.

Had those funds been redirected to registering and turning out between five and ten percent of those non-college-educated white voters they missed in 2016, they wouldn't have to worry about suburbanites defecting to Biden. Fears of voters fraud or illegal vote count wouldn't have been a concern if they just reached out to their natural constituency.

There's a good chance that the same story could be told in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota. This election wouldn't have been close if they only worked on registering the people most likely to vote for them, rather than banking on minority voters who just weren't in the Rust Belt.

Ryan Girdusky is a host of TAC Right Now.

Reggi Harvey Polinski 3 days ago

As a boomer, I learned very early how evil and corrupt the democrat party can be. Never voted for a democrat traitor my entire life. Maybe get a little experience under your belt and you'll learn. Unless you're already a straight up Commie.

Annie from Alaska Reggi 3 days ago • edited

As Tucker said it's fact that Detroit and Philadelphia have a history of rigging elections. doesn't prove they're doing it this time, but people worried about it are as far from crazy as it gets.

Why are Democrats descending into entitled rages at demands for transparency, or even just explanations of what they are doing? We told to be patient with the mail-in vote for weeks, then they are totally impatient and seething outraged hatred with working through our concerns about fraud. Their protesters are already taking to the streets chanting "count every vote," which is where Trump's slogan, "every legal vote" comes from. Did they have the same emotional outbursts in the past times when we know for a fact they were rigging urban elections?

[Nov 08, 2020] Trump is not the savior of working Americans he proved that over the last 4 years. But, he was a step in the right directio

Nov 08, 2020 | www.unz.com

Tucker , says: November 8, 2020 at 7:39 am GMT • 15.1 hours ago

The white men who failed to vote for Trump in this election are incapable of grasping the concept of 'Incrementalism'.

How do you think the Frankfurt School's virulently anti-White Cultural Marxists managed to achieve the success that they have achieved since the 1960s? These subversive termites did not go full bore and try to shove their anti-White, anti-Western agenda down the throats of an America that, at the time, was still almost 90% White European. Instead, they began their steady 'march through the institutions' using stealth tactics – relying on incrementalism. One tiny step at a time, so as to not alert their target of destruction – White Americans.

Trump is not the savior of White America – he proved that over the last 4 years. But, he was a step in the right direction and these White males who were not 100 percent satisfied by his performance while in office lack the intelligence and patience that is necessary for TeamWhite during this fight for our very survival.

Our objective is to make sure that the Trumpism – populism, nationalism, rejection of globalism, rejection of massive third world immigration into the USA, and a cessation of fighting endless wars for Israel's sole benefit – these concepts must not be dumped by the GOP. If a Republican politician starts spouting globalism – or supporting amnesty – or calling for more wars – he or she needs to be thrown OUT of office as soon as possible and replaced by a Trumpist candidate.

Brad Griffin is an extremely low IQ, dangerously clueless, checkers playing retard who is too stupid to comprehend the strategy of the anti-White enemy and he thinks he can throw a hissy fit and somehow boost the amount of respect that other pro-White people have for him?

It is due to sanctimonious morons like him that the White race is in the existential crisis situation we now find ourselves in. These 'absolutists' and 'purists' are going to be the death of our race of people.

Gleimhart Mantooso , says: November 8, 2020 at 8:00 am GMT • 14.8 hours ago

By the way, there have already been observations elsewhere on the fact that White men supported Trump less than before. Not a revelation.

I had no idea if he would lose White men prior to the election, but I thought it a possibility. I'd see him stand up there at rallies in front of a massive sea of White people and he'd start bragging about all the shit he'd done for Blacks, Hispanics, and Women, but nary a mention of White men.

And what's with his hangouts with Kanye West? Saying he's the least racist person in the room. And the Platinum Plan? Is this shit why we elected you, chief?

I guarantee that no White men were thrilled to hear about blacks being let out of jail. The more blacks in jail, the better. They need to be kept where less of them can procreate. If I were POTUS, I find out which crimes black women were good at and increase the penalties for those, so we could lock up the breeders.

[Nov 07, 2020] No Surrender -- At Least Not Yet by DECLAN LEARY

Nov 07, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The old guard wants us to lay down and take it, but this election is far for over. It's time to fight, and Trump is our man.

Mitt Romney would have conceded by now. John McCain would have conceded Tuesday night. George Bush would have called it quits, and then invaded Iraq for good measure. Thank God in heaven for Donald J. Trump.

Speaking late Thursday from the White House, President Trump predicted that, if all legal votes (and only legal votes) were counted, they would show that he has won the election. Over the past few days, former Vice President Biden has consistently made similar claims, without the caveat that votes must be legally cast. As has become the norm when conservatives voice concerns over a questionable election, the president's observations and forecast were quickly "fact-checked" by the mainstream media and censored by Big Tech platforms -- while Biden's went unchecked.

The facts, we are told, show a clear Biden victory. Any suggestion to the contrary, any attempt to investigate reports of Democratic misconduct, is dismissed as right-wing conspiracizing, or the petulant protestations of a sorry bunch of sore losers. (Russiagate, it seems, has been memory-holed.) The decent thing, they say, would be concession -- take the numbers at face value and call it a day. To his great credit, it looks like Trump will do no such thing.

This election has essentially come down to six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Of these six, only Arizona and Nevada really remain question marks. Michigan and Wisconsin have already been called for Biden by most sources, and Pennsylvania and Georgia are expected to follow close behind. Even if Arizona and Nevada both went for Trump in the end -- the latter seems likely, while the former is a long shot -- victory in the other four would secure Biden a comfortable electoral college win at 289. It can hardly be ignored that the major blue cities in each of these states -- Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee -- are all dominated by strong, old-school, Tammany-style machines. It can hardly be forgotten that urban Democratic machines are not exactly known for the integrity of their elections.

This is the question being asked by Trump and other right-wingers: not whether some massive conspiracy has been orchestrated at the national level, with Biden pulling the strings from a basement in Delaware, but whether the substantial misconduct that has long defined city political machines is influencing outcomes in these four key locations. This is not a question on which we can play it safe and civil. We need a full court press to get answers from people who have shown themselves unwilling to provide them.

Pay attention to the mainstream argument: Trump's claims have not been conclusively proven, and so the mere suggestion is considered far beyond the pale. For many, the president's assertion that 1) misconduct has been observed on a large scale in all of these key locations and 2) this misconduct will be challenged in court, is the conclusive proof they need that we are sliding into the dictatorship they predicted four years ago. The concerns are rebuked with the usual dismissals -- unfounded, unproven, unsubstantiated, "without evidence" -- and the narrative that Biden is the clear winner tightens its grip with every word out of every anchor's mouth. But more than enough preliminary evidence has been provided in each of these places to justify -- no, demand -- investigation.

The fundamental reason all these claims remain "unsubstantiated" is that the very people who reject them on this basis are the ones who are supposed to be substantiating them -- and they have absolutely, entirely abandoned this basic duty. Anyone who tries to look into the evidence is denounced as a kook or (in Trump's case) a caudillo. We can hardly expect an honest accounting of what's happened in the blue cities when talking about what's happened in the blue cities has suddenly become the eighth deadly sin.

This is why -- besides his unique perspective and approach drawing together the broadest coalition a Republican has built in sixty years -- Trump is actually the perfect man for the moment. The entire media establishment is aligned to declare a Biden victory prematurely, with no intention of investigating election inconsistencies. Local and state governments in the places that matter are hardly more reliable -- Michigan Attorney General Jocelyn Benson is an alumna of the SPLC, and Pennsylvania AG Josh Shapiro promised four days before the election that Trump would not win the state. The docile functionaries and milquetoast figureheads of the pre-Trump GOP could not have handled the fight ahead -- and likely would have run from it.

In fact, we know that they would have, because that's exactly what they're urging Trump to do now. If you Google "trump+thursday+speech" or any similar query, it's going to take a whole lot of digging to actually find the speech Trump delivered on Thursday. What you will find instead are abundant "fact-checks" of the speech that don't actually check any of the facts, and page upon page of ritual denunciations by the chattering classes.

These denunciations are hardly limited to the left-wingers behind the anchors' desks at every major network. CNN is proudly touting a clip of Rick Santorum, former Republican senator from PA and current senior political analyst at that esteemed news source, expressing his shock and disappointment that the president would call into question certain aspects of the election. Santorum voiced his hope that "Republicans will stand up at this moment and say what needs to be said about the integrity of our election." (The irony is apparently lost on him.)

Similarly, Scott Walker, who was one of the first to exit the Republican primary field in 2016 and lost his reelection bid for governor of Wisconsin in 2018 to Democrat Tony Evers, has issued a number of tweets insisting that a recount -- which the Trump campaign has already called for -- would be pointless. He has observed that, in normal elections, recounts have done very little to alter tallies. There's no sense to this line: this is not a normal election. Delays in ballot counting alone are enough to cause concern. Add to that the occasional full stops, after which huge quantities of Biden ballots conveniently appear. Add to that Wisconsin's level of voter turnout -- not over 100%, as some online rumors earlier suggested, but still near unbelievably high. It would be the farthest thing from a surprise if a more careful inspection really did shake things up this time around.

The same is true in Michigan, where Biden has made similarly stunning gains in witching-hour ballot dumps. On top of that, the transposition of a few thousand Trump votes to Biden in Antrim County has now been chalked up to a glitch in the tabulation software -- software that happens to be used in 46 other counties. We now know there is a problem with the way the votes are counted, and even the slightest chance that even the smallest repetition of that glitch has occurred elsewhere demands the strictest scrutiny be applied to the Michigan vote.

All this and more can be said for Pennsylvania and Georgia, the two states most vital to the president's reelection. Pennsylvania in particular is playing fast and loose with mail-in ballots, and dubious rules changes need to be challenged in court. Philadelphia has a reputation for machine-style corruption that puts Daley-era Chicago to shame. Election workers there have also repeatedly blocked GOP poll watchers from observing the process they are legally entitled to oversee. The same thing is happening in Detroit, where cardboard has actually been placed over the windows to prevent people from seeing inside the central counting location. If you have nothing to hide, right?

The president has every reason not to take the narrative at face value. This doesn't mean we throw out the election, and it doesn't mean we're undermining democracy. It means we need to exhaust every avenue and turn over every stone. Everything that can be brought before a court needs to be, and every ballot that raises red flags needs to be explained. Put the screws to every machine operative from Milwaukee to Atlanta, and make sure every word holds up.

Somebody needs to give a very good answer as to why the number of ballots left to count in Fulton County keeps changing every time we go to sleep -- and changing by margins that boggle the mind. Force the people who run the machines to speak, and see how long their story lasts. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Declan Leary is the Collegiate Network Fellow at The American Conservative and a graduate of John Carroll University. His work has been published at National Review , Crisis, and elsewhere.


Matthew Maheras a day ago • edited

The fundamental reason all these claims remain "unsubstantiated" is that the very people who reject them on this basis are the ones who are supposed to be substantiating them -- and they have absolutely, entirely abandoned this basic duty.

This is such a bizarre sentence. Why would government officials, investigators or journalists or whoever be duty bound to substantiate the existence voter fraud. They've basically done the opposite actually, and debunked the claims. Nearly every single case of claimed voter fraud has been shown to be inaccurate, a lie, simply misleading and/or a misunderstanding.

"Suitcases" of ballots? Actually it's photography equipment of local news broadcasts. Poll watchers getting "pushed out" of wards? Because PA law says you are legally only allowed a set amount of pre-certified watchers in each precinct, who must wear face masks. "Dead voters" appearing in ballot rolls? Could exist, doesn't matter though because votes are crosschecked with databases, and even if you died on the way home from dropping off your mail-in ballot , your vote will be deleted, let alone if you're some potential fraud voter who died 30 years ago.

In fact, here's a good nice long Twitter thread explaining most of the major accusations flying around social media:

November 5, 2020
Matthew Maheras Matthew Maheras a day ago • edited

I'm just going to reply to my own very long post with an addendum:

The example of Detroit is given in the article as if papering the windows over was some heinous thing. The reason why we have to protect the identity of poll workers is intimidation. We already have a situation in Fulton County, GA where some enterprising conservatives have doxxed a poll worker and actually sent the poor man into hiding.

His license plate number was posted onto Twitter, and he is now hiding at a friend's house, because conservative activists falsely accused him of throwing out ballots.

November 6, 2020
faithandhonor Matthew Maheras 7 hours ago • edited

You are a liar. You obviously have never actually WORKED an election. I have. Several, in fact.

I have personally witnessed ballot fraud on a large scale, coupled with utter incompetence. Palm Beach county, 2012.

I oversaw the correction of 60,000 "defective" absentee ballots. Each correction table was to be staffed with 1 Dem, 1 Repub, who cross-checked each others work. The corrupt Supervisor of Elections harassed and threatened Republican workers and monitors. Nasty as hell. Corrupt as hell. AND SHE NEVER FOLLOWED HER OWN INSTRUCTIONS, AND WHEN CHALLENGED POLITELY, SHE THREATENED TO THROW ALL REPUBLICANS OUT OF THE ELECTIONS SITE.

I PERSONALLY witnessed CORRECTED ABSENTEE BALLOTS taken to the back where the voting TABULATORS were, and watched as each ballot was removed from the box, examined, and some were thrown in the trash can. And I had seen a lot of ballots with Romney marked for President, with a straight Dem ticket down-ballot races all Dem. This is a BLUE county.

I reported this, and nothing was done. Cowardly Republicans do this... Nothing. I often wonder how many other blue cou ties have threatened Republican poll watchers & workers.

Your slander of decent people means NOTHING, except that you are a liar of gigantic proportions. Go over to Daily Kos, where you can fellowship with your vile compatriot scumbags.

Ammo Alamo Matthew Maheras 21 minutes ago

I support the view that it is entirely possible for a county full of good people to lean hard against the "other side" in a hot disputed election. In 2014 and 2016 the polling place was a strange church miles away; the workers there had a hand-lettered sign posted that demanded driver licenses as ID, even though State law did not demand that form of ID alone. This year I was one of the people who were locked out of the voting process; the details do not matter, but it happened, and I refused to kowtow to the system to get my registration card renewed. My county went 80% for Trump, so in fact my lone vote would not have mattered for much anyway.

No doubt some people were denied the right to vote. Historically, the right to vote is denied blacks and latinos more often than whites. But to make a blanket claim of a stolen election, just the President, mind you, is an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary proof. Trump does not even claim that any of those down ballot Repubs, candidates who did just fine for themselves, were denied votes. Just him.

It's a perfect storm of narcissism denied.

sdkeller72 faithandhonor 2 hours ago

If the democrats rigged the election then why didn't they give themselves the Senate? Why did they lose seats in the House? And why did they not take back a single statehouse?

Trump lost because the DNC opened their arms to the Bush-era neocons from the Lincoln Project. They're all republicans that voted for Biden and down ticket republicans and now Biden will be putting them in his cabinet. If the election was rigged then you can thank the those republicans for betraying their party, but the DNC is incapable of rigging anything without help from the other side.

Brother John the Deplorable sdkeller72 an hour ago • edited

Your mistake is conflating "Republicans" and "republican voters." Not the same thing. Trump was sent to DC to deal, among other things with the "Republicans."

Why didn't they give themselves the senate? A couple of hundred thousand ballots with a 100% tally for one side were manufactured to influence one election. Only one really mattered. Several million Americans were impoverished and terrorized all year long to ensure this result.

In any case, they don't need the Senate -- the "Republicans" will simply roll over. They always do. Cocaine Mitch is already signaling his intent to do so.

sdkeller72 Brother John the Deplorable 43 minutes ago

I saw his spokesperson the other day said any Biden cabinet picks will have to be approved by him. Doesn't sound like Mitch is rolling over at all. We're going to see the Lincoln Project repugs (Bush era neocons) in his cabinet and giving the MIC a seat at the table again.

Just another 4 years of Bush/Obama policies. I think we can agree that both sides lost this election and that's sadly not new either.

Maybe its time the for "fringes" to unite against the center.

sdkeller72 Brother John the Deplorable 18 minutes ago

Speaking as a progressive myself, I dont feel like we united as much as we stayed home. No one in the 2016 election was representing anything we wanted. The only thing that united us was our hatred of Hillary. ;) hahaha

We can't unify under either established party. I'm talking about really uniting and taking both out with a real populist platform (healthcare, ending our wars and getting money out of politics), all things most Americans are in favor of. What do we have to lose at this point? There's something horribly broken with our government when every 4 years both sides are left frustrated when the will of the people is never represented in our supposed representative democracy. We gotta try something different.

SJE Matthew Maheras a day ago

Fox News has aired video of certified poll observers in philly being prevented from entering polling places. but keep running interference- its obvious you wouldn't care if you KNEW fraud had taken place...

George Annie from Alaska 10 hours ago

Other Murdoch-owned news companies have done much worse! In England, his reporters spoofed a call from a dead girl's phone, giving her parents false hope. They bugged and bribed politicians, pretty ugly stuff. Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

tz SJE an hour ago

Fox News is a subsidiary NewsCorp, peddler of tabloid propaganda , promulgated by an Australian plutocrat Rupert Murdoch, who is no friend of the USA. He has been ripping us apart now for decades for his profit, power, and ego. He has made the GOP his b**ch. Note how recently he has turned on Trump (not that I mind).

Brother John the Deplorable Matthew Maheras 3 hours ago
Why would government officials, investigators or journalists or whoever be duty bound to the existence voter fraud.

What a ridiculous thing to say. Those who claim to "speak truth to power" have as their function the investigation and reporting of charges of voter fraud.

Instead, they are nothing but rank partisans, licking the government hand that feeds them, and simply memory-holing anything that might damage their boy or be thought helpful to their opponents. Liars and frauds, every last one.

Matthew Maheras Brother John the Deplorable 2 hours ago • edited
simply memory-holing anything that might damage their boy or be thought helpful to their opponents.

Whatever you want to claim about lefties with "TDS" or whatever you want to label them, this sentence is literally a word-for-word description that applies to Trump supporters.

Just endless ranks of simpletons who will thrust off every piece of evidence and correction to their accusations.

Write out a comment to debunk things being misconstrued, twisted or lied about, and Trumpists will waste your time blathering and ranting on about "rank partisans" without even a hint or lick of irony and self-reflection about how their entire post is actually about themselves.

Brother John the Deplorable Matthew Maheras an hour ago

I can just as easily dismiss you the same way, but the idea that FB, Twitter, CNN, and yes -- even Fox -- aren't nakedly partisan is ridiculous nonsense. The least you could do is pretend to understand what got Trump elected in the first place.

sdkeller72 Brother John the Deplorable an hour ago

Wall St and the MIC work hand and hand with our corporate media, an industry that's dominated by 6 corporations. They're not liberal nor conservative, they are only motivated by money and power and keeping the population divided so that they dont unite and come for them all.

Ammo Alamo sdkeller72 6 minutes ago

One only has to look at the Citizens United Supreme Court decision to see how far down the US has fallen. Now a corporation is a person? If that is so, can't they get 20-to-life when they kill someone? Can't they get the death penalty? NO, they can't; but they can get all the good things that come from that ruling, without any of the negatives at all.

Ammo Alamo Brother John the Deplorable 9 minutes ago

Not every last reporter is a rank partisan, but many of them prefer the easy route to a paycheck. Look up Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Tom Engelhardt, and others like them. There are honest historians like Howard Zinn and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. There are also honest whistleblowers who get a bad rep, like Chelsea Manning, Eric Snowden and Julian Assange. There are still a few journalists of the old school in the world. But they have to be careful less they find themselves charged with treason under an old law, and spend the balance of their lives locked down 23 1/2 hours per day in a tiny cell in a US SuperMax prison.

Christine a day ago • edited

Excellent article. I am very happy Trump is pushing to open up this election to legal review, public inspection, recounts, bipartisan review of the ballots, process violations. We were supposed to be patient and wait for the count, why not the recount. What is the hurry. If he lost, fine, I want to know that, not just trust anti-Trump, Democratic activist officials telling me that. There are so many oddities - the Biden surges coming after down time, always so conveniently. Software turning Republican votes into Democrat votes. The dead voting. Blocking access to GOP observers. Given the closeness of the results in the key states that are determining the outcome, it is not that hard to turn things one way or the other.

dstraws Ammo Alamo 6 hours ago

The state legislators decide when the mail in ballots are counted. For Florida, Oregon, Colorado they are counted when they come in and are verified as legal votes. For Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin the legislature decided they could not start processing the ballots until election day, thus it is impossible get a count of those ballots before the in person voting was counted.

Annie from Alaska Pete Barbeaux 13 hours ago

Barr is asking, "how many people who sent late-arriving mail-in ballots also showed up to vote on election day?"

It matters because it's the law we all agreed to, and you need to respect the process to retain the other side's confidence, which your side has not done.

But one thing which may be behind the law is these 100%-Biden ballot dumps that don't vote for congress. Do you see what's behind Barr's question? Mail-in ballots make ballot stuffing almost trivial because you can just dump them into the mail. The one problem is that each envelope has to have a registered voter's name on it, and that name is compared to who voted in person. To get the mail-in vote counted, and to avoid suspicious patterns, you need to put a name on there that didn't vote in person. That's much easier to do after the polls close, and you have collected all the signature books to start doing the mail-in count.

Kerr Avon Annie from Alaska 13 hours ago

Well Barr then needs to turn these questions into official DOJ actions doesn't he - When do we think the DOJ is going to start ?

IanDakar SJE 20 hours ago

Georgia goes a step farther. Even if it's post marked before election, if it gets to the office after election day it's STILL not counted.

So what's left? Just tell everyone to count what they can in 4 hours then torch the rest?

Annie from Alaska IanDakar 13 hours ago

This rule makes it harder to conspire with someone in USPS to "find" a bundle of ballots "lost" inside USPS, and stuff the ballot box that way.

gnt Annie from Alaska 7 hours ago

So if the Post Office managers intentionally lose a box of ballots, it should just stay lost, because that's not tampering with votes.

faithandhonor Annie from Alaska 7 hours ago

There was a 300,000 ballot discrepancy between ballots mailed and those received, and USPS can't account for the difference.

The postal Mail Covers Service should able to prove several things, and the fraud as well. There are several ways to prove the fraud.

And the PA vote processes that were handed down by the PA corrupt court are invalid.

ONLY THE PA LEGISLATURE IS AUTHORIZED TO MAKE CHANGES TO THE VOTING LAWS.

Matthew Maheras faithandhonor 7 hours ago
There was a 300,000 ballot discrepancy between ballots mailed and those received, and USPS can't account for the difference.

Yes they can, the USPS explained this two days ago. Many ballots don't show delivery or tracking scans because the policy was to have them hand-picked by postal workers to expedite their arrival.

Maybe they wouldn't have had to skip steps in the process if Trump should have appointed someone better than DeJoy, and maybe Congress (Republicans in particular) shouldn't have spent the better part of the last two decades screwing with the USPS.

Alex (from SF) a day ago

Delays in ballot counting alone are enough to cause concern. Add to that the occasional full stops, after which huge quantities of Biden ballots conveniently appear. Add to that Wisconsin's level of voter turnout -- not over 100%, as some online rumors earlier suggested, but still near unbelievably high. It would be the farthest thing from a surprise if a more careful inspection really did shake things up this time around.

Yeah, what kind of insane ballot-counting system would allow the poll workers to sleep ? They should be legally required to mainline stimulants until their work is done! And the only honest way to deliver counts is to transmit each individual ballot one by one to the state: sending counts in batches must be evidence of fraud! And how is it possible that after vocally discouraging his voters from voting by mail, there are relatively few Trump mail-in votes? Very suspicious! Oh and by the way, turnout in Wisconsin was quite normal:

https://www.nationalreview....

Does anyone fact check these articles? Are there editorial standards here at all?

Matthew Maheras SJE 21 hours ago • edited
jeez, it is amazing how uncurious everyone has become...

Uncurious? The uncurious are the people who take videos shared by Steven Crowder, or whatever right-wing grifter they like, and believe them as gospel truth without verifying it.

I have literally spent the better part of my precious Friday evening reading and watching a trove of claimed voter fraud incidents, and I have yet to find a substantially supported example.

1) Jill Stokke spoke at a Trump rally in Nevada, claimed her mail-in vote never came and that they had a ballot with her signature on it. Except it turns out the County Elections department went to her house, offered to let her cast a new ballot with a written statement about the supposedly falsified ballot , and she refused. Then she went to the media and claimed she had been wronged...for something she refused to rectify when given the chance!

2) Sharpiegate claimed that people were given Sharpies to invalidate Republican ballots. On the one hand, there's zero evidence this happened other than unverified claims by a few people on social media. On the other hand, it doesn't matter. Sharpies are compatible with Maricopa County's ballot scanners, and to boot, even if they weren't, the ballot would still be accepted! If you use a pen incompatible with the machine (say a red pen), especially if you send it from home, even if the machine rejects your ballot, it will simply be hand-counted afterwards.

3) Wagongate, which was perpetrated by Steven Crowder alleged that a man was secretly bringing in ballots in a wagon. Except guess what, it's actually the cameraman for WXYZ, the local ABC affiliate, bringing in his team's equipment.

4) 118-year old dead man votes was another pet theory. Again, no. What happened was the man's son, who has the same name, voted and his vote was incorrectly logged (logged not counted!) upon receipt as belonging to his father. And in Michigan, what happens if a dead person does actually try to vote? The system will flag the vote and delete it. Even if you cast your ballot before Election Day and die before Election Day, the county will know and your vote will be deleted. From the Michigan Secretary of State website:

Ballots of voters who have died are rejected in Michigan, even if the voter cast an absentee ballot and then died before Election Day.

5) Then there was this video of some guy who Eric Trump (and others) claimed was throwing Republican ballots out.

But...duh? You absolutely do have some ballots thrown out in every election, because they're improperly marked or otherwise somehow invalid. That's not a conspiracy, that's literally what poll workers have to do. I don't get it, if we think there are dead people voting (per the above conspiracy) wouldn't we want the workers to throw them out? Or do we not want them throwing them out? Can't have it both ways!

6) As a final example, last night I saw a video going around of two election workers sitting across from each other, with one filling out a ballot, and the person recording the video is claiming that they're filling out fake ballots.

It doesn't exactly take a brainiac to realize what's happening in the video. The man on the right is holding a damaged ballot, and reading off the marked selections to the woman on the left so that she can transcribe the damaged information to a new, undamaged ballot. You then mark the serial number for the new ballot onto the original, damaged ballot to keep them together.

And of course, as an extra bonus, the video is zoomed in purposefully to crop out the bipartisan poll-watchers that are standing right by this duo to make sure that they're properly transcribing the votes.

This is literally election 101 stuff, but apparently people don't know how it works.

BanBait Matthew Maheras 16 hours ago

Uh huh. 200% turnout in a Milwaukee precinct. 138,399 votes turning up for Biden and zero for Trump. Nothing to see here!!

massappeal BanBait 16 hours ago

Got a link to any of that?

Matthew Maheras BanBait 12 hours ago • edited
200% turnout in a Milwaukee precinct.

Come on, you can literally verify or debunk this on the County website. Yes, one claim going around is that Wards 273 and 274, which was located at the Spanish Immersion School reported 200% turnout.

Well, we can quickly verify this on the Milwaukee County Clerk website , and what does it tell us?

Ward 273 had 671 registered voters, and 612 actual voters; Ward 274 had 702 registered voters and 611 actual voters.

So congratulations, you bought into another easily disprovable lie. I've also seen claims that the 272nd, 277th, 269th, 234th and 312nd Wards overrated, but you can check and see that none of that is true either.

And, all of these claims are leaving out an important detail anyways: Wisconsin has same-day voter registration. It is possible , albeit perhaps unlikely, to have higher voter counts than number of pre-registered voters because of that.

RBH Matthew Maheras 15 hours ago • edited

Ballot harvesting is real: https://dfw.cbslocal.com/20... This is but one example in my state, and we're also aware of certain places sending out unrequested ballots. They all deserve jail time.

Matthew Maheras Connecticut Farmer 12 hours ago

Let's say I was. Would that make any of the proof I linked untrue? Or is truth only something that comes out of a party-flag waving conservatives' mouth?

And no, I'm not. I've pretty openly stated multiple times that I voted ASP in the Presidential race, and both R/D in various spots down the ballot.

Oh, and just in the interest of fairness, there were some conspiracies going around on the left too on election night. One that I saw was that 300,000 ballots were undelivered. While yes, many thousands of ballots were likely undelivered, what was happening wasn't that they were undelivered, it was that the USPS was skipping scanning the ballots to expedite delivery. That's why DeJoy likely won't actually get in trouble, because postal branches were specifically going out of their way to hand-pick ballots and expedite their delivery.

LgVt 18 hours ago

The reason a recount doesn't change anything is because it's just that--a recount. They take all the ballots that were counted before, and count them again. They're not looking at whether any ballots should have been thrown out. Fraudulent ballots that were counted the first time around are counted again.

A recount won't do anything about what the Democrats pulled in Milwaukee.

Annie from Alaska LgVt 13 hours ago

I also don't understand it. Hasn't the mail-in envelope with the signature and the voter's name already been thrown away? How will they remove the votes by dead people?

I have heard they're using some procedure intended for ballots that won't scan to conceal ballots with missing or invalid signatures by copying them at desks that are supposed to have bipartisan teams. I guess they throw out the original ballot when they do that to prevent the recount from checking signatures properly?

Ken T Annie from Alaska 10 hours ago
I guess they throw out the original ballot when they do that to prevent the recount from checking signatures properly?

No, they do that to prevent any possibllity of the original being mistakenly counted twice.

As you yourself pointed out, the copying takes place in front of a bipartisan team of watchers. So for your fantasy to have any validity, you have to believe that BOTH parties are conspiring together to rig the vote. In which case, your vote is irrelevant, anyway, right?

If you really care about this, then instead of believing all of these ridiculous conspiracy theories, why don't you try to actually become educated about how the process works, and next time volunteer yourself to become a certified poll watcher? Then you will KNOW the truth.

dstraws Annie from Alaska 7 hours ago

Those checks were made before the ballot was accepted and counted. They include checking that it was a legal ballot sent to a specific person. And that the signature matched that of the registered voter. Only after those checks is the ballot removed from its envelop. While there may be a few mistakes there aren't anywhere enough to be material to the final results. The ballots from in person voting are similarly dissociated from the voters' information.

stephen pickard 17 hours ago • edited

A big thank you to Mr. Maheras commenting below. Listen to him. He is our savior.

I am close to 80 years old. Old conspiracy advocates began to make extraordinary claims about most everything when photographs would appear in newspapers. Rorschach tests. Then came videos , or movie clips on TV. Think the Kennedy tape. Pretty soon we had personal video equipment. And now cell phones. All Rorschach tests. But those crazy conspiracies were the fringe long time ago. True belivers. Ideologues. But not the Republican party leaders.

About 30 years ago the new world order, illuminati, the Bilderbers, now the Davos all became the subject of the go to conspiracy advocates. Take your pick. One or all . But one thing for sure, a cabal is taking over the world. Throw in a few Clinton, or Obama conspiracies. Catch a sighting of Elvis for good measure.

Now all rolled into the Qanon cabal. Democratic pedophilia scum raping children. What they all have in common is that they are right wing conspiracy advocates. And they all are foolish.

This article fits in with those conspiracies. And by right wing
advocates naturally. When Clinton lost , her margin of defeat was similar to Trump's projected defeat. Clinton and the Democrats never asserted fraud. Nor suggested conspiracies. The political system worked, Trump won.

Now we have a reputable magazine publishing similar outlandish conspiracy theroies to the ones mentioned above. All without a scintilla of proof. The President of the United States for months has been setting his base up to claim fraud. And he has. And they have blindly bought into it.

Long way to tell you that the greatest disappointment of my lifetime is the validation by conservatives of these kooky ideas. 30 years ago even conservatives would call these conspiracy peddlers nut jobs.

Now we have a nut job in the white house. The birther in chief. And he just gets worse. But no one in the Republican party, except for a few tepid critics, will call the Predident out.

This is the same guy who saw videos of Muslims dancing on 9/11. Or an inaugural crowd rivaling the largest gathering of human beings ever assembled in the whole history of mankind. The greatest. The most perfect and strongest

I have never been so disappointed in my President. He has enabled Mr. Leary to peddle his nonsense. And tragically Leary believes his blather. This is truly heartbreaking. But it is the world that Leary and his ilk will have to live with.

Me, l'll be gone. Forgetting my own name soon. Someone tell me that what I just read is a part of my onset dementia.

OfficerSudsy28 CE in CA 8 hours ago

Lifelong stutterer? What a load of crap. Just watch some old videos of Joe in his arrogant days on the senate judiciary. He and his good buddy Ted Chappaquidick Kennedy didn't stutter when they were trashing Clarence Thomas and Judge Bork. Hey it's your right to vote for a lifer politician who's way past his prime and suffering from a tragic disease. Climate change - right. More likely God's judgement on a godless nation.

Ken T stephen pickard 10 hours ago
Now we have a reputable magazine publishing similar outlandish conspiracy theroies

As someone who started reading TAC a long time ago when it really WAS a reputable magazine, I'm afraid that particular ship started sailing several years ago, and is almost out of the harbor by now. There was a time when you could come here to find intelligent, educated, and thoughtful conservatives setting out their views and being unafraid to engage with responses from all across the entire political spectrum. Now, Larison is the only one left who consistently meets that description, a couple of others dabble in reality once in a while, and the rest are descending into Breitbart levels of paranoid lunacy.

KevinS 17 hours ago • edited

I look forward to seeing the evidence of fraud in a court of law rather than just circulating on twitter where the standards are somewhat less stringent.

And the president said BEFORE the election that any election he lost would necessarily be rigged/corrupt. So of course that evidence was going to be found if he lost.....

Victor_the_thinker KevinS 13 hours ago

You can put this is the same category as all these white guys who lost a job because they were white men. Of course the couldn't possibly make these claims in a court where discovery could happen and their BS would be exposed.

longlance 17 hours ago

Though loud, loutish, bumptious & bombastic, Trump is weak, shallow, superficial & hollow at his core. As Georgia goes, so goes the nation.

[Nov 07, 2020] Trump being booted out of office 'unfairly' may be the optimal scenario for him in certain ways.

Nov 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Muslim_Dude , Nov 7 2020 16:08 utc | 83

1. He is a victim/martyr to his right-wing constituency, in much the same way that Erdogan has always portrayed himself as a 'man of the people' and representative of the poor conservative rural Turks and still an outsider in comparison to the secular urban elites.

This 'otherness' or being separate from the establishment/elite/'swamp' is very good for Trumps' image. Even though he is a billionaire and has been part of the US elite for decades.

2. With the economy going to go through problems due to covid and other issues, Trump can try and attribute blame for the then incumbent Biden/Harris regime and free himself of any blame and say that he has better answers.

3. He may well go on to forming his 'Trump TV' with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham as is the current chatter amongst some and be seen as the de facto 'leader of the opposition', a term not really used in the (dis)United States but common in many/most other countries.

[Nov 07, 2020] It is a nexus of profiteering corporate power, and a two-party cabal of American Exceptionalism. The idea the Democrats are 'commies' is laughable and shows how deeply red the Kool Aid runs.

Nov 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

gottlieb , Nov 7 2020 15:51 utc | 75

The United States is a monopoly two-party fascist system. It is a nexus of profiteering corporate power, and a two-party cabal of American Exceptionalism. The idea the Democrats are 'commies' is laughable and shows how deeply red the Kool Aid runs. The Democrats just told the Bernie wing of the Party to shut-up or leave. And why not? The Democrats will tally up a five million vote plurality over Trump by playing to the right. It got them a President without a Congress. Thank the "Karen" constituency. Mission Accomplished.

Sure, bring on Tucker as the next Trump, or Don Jr or whatever other celebrity fascist you want. This particular bell of Pavlov's doesn't work on all the dogs. There is a seething anti-fascist sentiment out there against for-profit healthcare, politics and war. Before a 4th Reich takes hold in the USA, a Civil War will be fought and the left, verified by study after study, is more intelligent as a group.

The foreign policy of the USA is fully bi-partisan. Did a Democrat make a peep about the all the weapons-based 'peace deals' Trump made with the Oil Kingdoms? No. Do the Dems disagree about regime change anywhere the USA contemplates it? No. Do the Dems want to get rid of anything but bad manners? No.

So please, knock off the existential BS about Dems 'stealing' the election. Stealing what exactly? The high ground of plausible deniability? Hilarious.

[Nov 07, 2020] The result of this election can be summarized with one phase "Strange non-death of neoliberalism."

Highly recommended!
Nov 07, 2020 | crookedtimber.org

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The result of this election can be summarized with one phase "Strange non-death of neoliberalism."

Joe Biden win is a win the tech companies, the big banks, Beijing, as well a PMC class.

likbez 11.07.20 at 5:37 pm (
)

It's entirely possible that Biden will be a 1 term President, and this is something that Democrats should have given some thought to. But they had other, sillier, things on their mind, and, well, here we are.

They don't care. It is return to business as usual -- classic neoliberalism with the classic neoliberal globalization on the agenda. And this is all that matter to them.

The people behind Joe Biden are Clinton classic neoliberals. Who ruled the country since 1990th with a well known result.

It is unclear what will happen in 2020 as Biden is a weak politician clearly unable of dealing with the current crisis the country faces. He is kick the can down the road type of guy.

And some start speculate that Dems the might get Tucker Carlson in 2024 as the opponent to Kamala.

(2) From an American perspective, Republican control of the Senate means that the Dems have limited scope to carry out grandiose economic and social experiments. Which I doubt Biden is much interested in anyway. (Incidentally, the idea that Biden or Copmala is in any way a "socialist" is yet another far-fetched MAGA fantasy just ask the folks at Chapo Trap House ). The idea that he came to power via fraud will not be quite enough to delegitimize the Biden Presidency – it's not like George W. Bush's narrow and contested victory over Al Gore in Florida remained much of an issue after a couple of months – but it certainly wouldn't hurt Republicans to have that as an additional rhetorical tool.

(3) Most consequentially, this substantially discredits American soft power and its "democracy promotion" efforts.

[Nov 07, 2020] Tucker Carlson- A Biden victory would usher in the Age of Oligarchy - Fox News

Nov 07, 2020 | www.foxnews.com

If Joe Biden wins, the tech companies, the big banks, Beijing and the billionaire class will have won as well

Editor's Note: This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the Nov. 6, 2020 edition of " Tucker Carlson Tonight "

me title=

Who exactly is Joe Biden , the man who may be our president come Jan. 20? The truth is, as of right now, we don't really know.

We have no clue what Joe Biden actually thinks, or even if he's capable of thinking. He hasn't told us and no one's made him tell us for a full year. In fact, it's becoming clear there is no Joe Biden. The man you may remember from the 1980s is gone.

Video

What remains is a projection of sorts, a hologram designed to mimic the behavior of a non-threatening political candidate: "Relax, Joe Biden's here. He smiles a lot. Everything's fine." That's the message from the vapor candidate.

So who's running the projector here? Well, the first thing you should know is that the people behind Joe Biden aren't liberals. We've often incorrectly called them that. A liberal believes in the right of all Americans to speak freely, to make a living, to worship their God, to defend their own families, and to do all of that regardless of what political party they belong to or what race they happen to be born into or how far from midtown Manhattan they currently live.

A liberal believes in universal principles, fairly applied. And the funny thing is, all of that describes most of the 70 million people who just voted for Donald Trump this week. Most of them don't want to hurt or control anyone. They have no interest in silencing the opposition on Facebook or anywhere else. They just want to live their lives in the country they were born in, and it doesn't seem like a lot to ask. So by any traditional definition, they are liberal.

However, our language has become so politicized and so distorted that you would never know it. What you do know for certain is that the people behind Joe Biden are not like that at all. They don't believe in dissent. "You think one thing? I think another. That's OK." No, that's not them at all. They demand obedience to diversity, which is to say, legitimate differences between people is the last thing they want. These people seek absolute sameness, total uniformity. You're happy with your corner coffee shop? They want to make you drink Starbucks every day from now until forever, no matter how it tastes. That's the future.

TUCKER CARLSON: MEDIA MISJUDGED TRUMP SUPPORT AMONG NON-WHITE VOTERS

me title=

Now, if these seem like corporate values to you, then you're catching on to what's happening. The Joe Biden for President campaign is a purely corporate enterprise. It's the first one in American history to come this close to the presidency. If a multinational corporation decided to create a presidential candidate, he would be a former credit card shill from Wilmington, Del., and that's exactly what they got. What's good for Google is good for the Biden campaign and vice versa. We have never seen a more soulless project. They literally picked Kamala Harris as Biden's running mate, someone who can't even pronounce her own name. Not that it matters, because it's purely an advertising gimmick.

We watched all of this come together in real time. We stood slack-jawed in total disbelief as a man with no discernible constituency of any kind rose to the very top of our political system, as if by magic. It's possible in the end that Joe Biden himself never convinced a single voter of anything over the entire duration of the presidential campaign, but he didn't have to. Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination because he wasn't Bernie Sanders. He came to where he is today because he isn't Donald Trump. It's the shortest political story ever written.

Now, whatever you may think of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, they did it the traditional way. Each one of them had the support of actual voters. Living, breathing people loved them, believed in them, vested their hope in them, and, by the way, agreed with their ideas, which they articulated clearly.

But corporate America hated them both. They couldn't be controlled, particularly Donald Trump, whose complete unwillingness to submit made him the greatest possible threat. That's why they hate Donald Trump, because he won't obey.

It's insulting to say that Joseph R. Biden won this election, if that is what comes to pass. The tech companies will have won. The big banks will have won. The government of China, the media establishment, the permanent bureaucracy, the billionaire class -- they will have won, and not in the way that democracy promises. If a single person equaled a single vote, a coalition like that could never win anything. There aren't enough of them.

But as a group, they have something that Donald Trump's voters sadly do not have, and that is power. They have lots of power and they plan to wield that power, whether you like it or not. It's all starting to look a lot like oligarchy at this point. The people who believe they should have been in charge all along now may actually be in charge.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

So what does that mean for the rest of us? Will corporate America declare victory and back off? Can we speak freely again? Will they take the boot from our necks? Can we have America back now that the Great Orange Emergency has passed? Well, the mandatory lying orders finally be lifted?

me title=

Those are the questions we'll be paying attention to, since we plan to stay in this country. And one other thing while we're at it, who's excited to greet our new corporate overlords? Who plans to collaborate, particularly of those on the right side, the Republican side, the side that said it was defending you? Who's happy about all of this? That seems worth keeping track of, just so we know who we're dealing with here. Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel's (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.

[Nov 07, 2020] They get rid of Trump, they may get Tucker in 2024

Nov 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Down South , Nov 7 2020 13:20 utc | 17

the perfect setup for a talented right-wing populist to sweep into office in 2024. And make no mistake: They're all thinking about it.

And just yesterday I read this article on express.co.uk with the headline:

Tucker Carlson bombshell: 'Door open' for Fox host to run for President if Joe Biden wins

Northener , Nov 7 2020 13:21 utc | 19

I think calling it Harris (Biden) administration is a bit childish. Harris will have about as much effect on policy as Pence had during last 4 four years. Certainly nothing like Cheney. And she won't be the Dems candidate in four years.
Josh , Nov 7 2020 13:24 utc | 20
The state of the government is a sad thing to behold.
Down South , Nov 7 2020 13:25 utc | 21
I agree with your analysis but I feel there is just one thing you left out.

BLM and Antifa are going to disappear. The Democrats and George Soros don't need them anymore, they have served their purpose.

warren schaich , Nov 7 2020 13:48 utc | 26

Chris Sweeney, UK reporter, says" Britain died for me, its become a Covid-obsessed police state."He further writes that the courageous spirit that defines Britain is disappearing. Do you feel the same about the US. I do. The response to the lockdown and masks etc. sends brave loggers here in the Catskill into a state of child-like fear . Who said there is a sucker born every minute.

[Nov 06, 2020] It's Still Trump's GOP, Not Liz Cheney's

Nov 06, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

On the eve of the election, for example, Politico published a fawning profile of Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who is laying the groundwork to become speaker of the House in a future Republican majority. An ideological mirror of her father, she and her cohort long for a restoration of the early 2000s Bushite foreign policy of globe-trotting regime change and democratic nation building administered by a national security state in Washington D.C.

Their cause, however, is as infertile as their past efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is because despite his poor record, Donald Trump has created a permanent and growing disconnect between the War Party and the GOP.

There is no need to sugarcoat how Donald Trump has squandered four years of opportunity in foreign policy. His promises to bring the troops home have not materialized and remain "promises" to be kept at a permanently delayed date. He has intensified U.S. interference in Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and Venezuela. He's overseen the continued deterioration of relations with Russia, while leaving North Korea at the diplomatic altar. And he's brought the United States and Iran into a first exchange of direct, open conflict.

A big-picture assessment, however, requires not looking at how Trump failed to bring what restrainers wanted, but how he succeeded in destroying what they needed gone.

me title=

00:01 / 00:59

Trump's election caused the departure of the most loathsome of the war peddlers -- including Bill Kristol, David Frum, Jamie Kirchick, Steve Schmidt, and Max Boot -- from Republican ranks. United under the banner of "Never Trump," for four years they used every inch of column space, every CNN interview, and a small fortune to cleave off a portion of the Republican base that they believed would be happy to return to the world of 2006.

The result? Exit polls show Trump winning 93 percent of the Republican vote, a higher percentage than he won in 2016. As an election post-mortem summarized, Never Trump hawks "basically do not exist anywhere outside of the Washington Beltway or cable news green rooms -- and after tonight's results, we shouldn't have to see them on TV or even see their tweets ever again."

That the average American has the same respect for the War Party's minions as they have for a tobacco executive should come as no surprise. Polling continually shows a supermajority of Americans ready and eager to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. That includes 77 percent of Republicans, 40 percent of whom want to decrease military engagement with the rest of the world as well. These voters are a vanguard that will stop any future Bushite ascendance, whether from Nikki Haley or the spawn of Dick Cheney.

Slowly, Republican members of Congress are beginning to reflect the wishes of their voters. One year ago this month, I wrote about the emerging cadre of antiwar conservatives in the House of Representatives. While most broke under pressure to support Trump's escalation with Iran, not all did. It's a more active and vocal Republican contingent than has existed for decades and it's growing fast. Following Tuesday's results, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming will join Rand Paul and Mike Lee in the U.S. Senate, while Nancy Mace of South Carolina will lock arms with Representatives Thomas Massie and Matt Gaetz. Both women are vetted and proven war skeptics who are determined to challenge Liz Cheney at every turn.

Beyond government, the creative destruction brought by the Trump presidency in conservative circles has given a new lease on life to restrainers long excluded from the Beltway's incestuous institutions. That includes the continued ascension of publications like The American Conservative , which has become a wheelhouse for the most important foreign policy conversations happening on the right; Tucker Carlson, whose program has become the highest rated in cable news history, no doubt aided by his antiwar opening monologues; the Quincy Institute, which is dragging other think tanks kicking and screaming into dialogues about shifting U.S. positioning overseas; and activist organizations like BringOurTroopsHome.US , a collection of right-of-center veterans who are lobbying to end the country's unconstitutional wars.

The American empire was formed over the course of a century, and currently encompasses over 850 overseas military bases. Hundreds of billions of dollars are exchanged every year through facets of the military-industrial complex, while thousands of very powerful people make their cushy salaries off the current imperialistic system (and will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way).

One election was never going to change that. Donald Trump was never going to be a miracle worker. But he's kicked in the door and let us in, even if we wish he'd tidied up better before he left.

We have principled leaders in government. We have the infrastructure. And most importantly, we have the voters. Liz Cheney and her misbegotten hangers-on may not realize it yet, but their heyday has long past. It's our party now and we're going to bring America home.

Hunter DeRensis is the communications director of BringOurTroopsHome.US and a regular contributor to The American Conservative . Follow him on Twitter @HunterDeRensis.

[Nov 06, 2020] Why Donald Trump's supporters love him so much by Tucker Carlson

Nov 06, 2020 | www.foxnews.com

A vote for Trump is a vote against America's ruling class

On Saturday night, President Trump held a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. Butler is a town 35 miles north of Pittsburgh, and it's like a lot of places you'll find in this country once you head inland from the coasts.

Butler is a former industrial town -- they made Pullman rail cars there for many years -- but it's been losing population for decades. There are still a lot of nice people in Butler and for $60,000 or so, you can buy a decent house there. It's a place you might be happy in.

But our professional class is not impressed by Butler. They don't consider Butler, Pa. or places like it to be the future. To them, places like Butler are embarrassing relics of a past best forgotten. The men of Butler may have built this country, and they did, but they mean nothing to our leaders now. You can be certain of that because when large numbers of people in Butler started killing themselves with narcotics, no one in Washington or New York or Los Angeles said a word about it.

Trump supporters hold up four fingers as they chant 'Four More Years' at President Trump's campaign rally in Butler, Pa. Saturday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

There have now been so many opioid deaths in Butler that a few years ago, residents built an overdose memorial in the middle of town. MSNBC didn't cover that.

So given all of that, it was interesting how the people around Butler feel about Donald Trump. Between 10,000 and 15,000 people came out to see him Saturday night, depending on whose estimate you believe. Pictures of the rally site showed a sea of people obscuring the horizon, the kind of image you would see of a visit from the pope.

When was the last time a political speech drew that many people? Well, the media didn't ask. Instead, they attacked the rally as a "superspreader" event. OK, we'll leave the epidemiology to CNN.

But the questions still hung in the air. Why did all those people come? They must have known that Donald Trump is the most evil man who hass ever lived. They've heard that every day for five years. They know that people who support Donald Trump are also evil, they're bigots, they're morons, they're racist cult members. They know that Americans have been fired from their jobs for supporting Donald Trump, not to mention kicked off social media, belittled by their kids' teachers and shunned by decent society. Only losers and freaks support Donald Trump.

me title=

TRUMP CLAIMS BIDEN ENERGY AGENDA WOULD 'SEND EVERY STATE INTO CRUSHING POVERTY"

People in Butler knew all of that. But on Saturday, they went to the Donald Trump rally, anyway. Why exactly did they do that? We should be pondering that question deeply as we watch Tuesday night's returns and as we live through the aftermath of them.

Millions of Americans sincerely love Donald Trump. They love him in spite of everything they've heard. They love him, often, in spite of himself. They're not deluded. They know exactly who Trump is. They love him anyway.

Trump addresses the crowd at his rally in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

They love Donald Trump because no one else loves them. The country they built, the country their ancestors fought for over hundreds of years, has left them to die in unfashionable little towns, mocked and despised by the sneering halfwits with finance degrees -- but no actual skills -- who seem to run everything all of a sudden.

Whatever Donald Trump's faults, he is better than the rest of the people in charge. At least he doesn't hate them for their weakness. Donald Trump, in other words, is and has always been a living indictment of the people who run this country. That was true four years ago when he came out of nowhere to win the presidency. And it's every bit as true right now, maybe even more true than it's ever been. It will remain true regardless of whether Donald Trump wins reelection.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Trump rose because they failed. It's as simple as that. If the people in charge had done a halfway decent job with the country they inherited, if they cared about anything other than themselves, even for just a moment, Donald Trump would still be hosting "Celebrity Apprentice." But they didn't. Instead, they were incompetent and narcissistic and cruel and relentlessly dishonest. They wrecked what they didn't build, and they lied about it. They hurt anyone who told the truth about what they were doing. That's all true. We all watched.

America is still a great country, the best in the world, but our ruling class is disgusting. A vote for Trump is a vote against them. That's what's going on in those pictures from Butler. That's what's going on in this country.

[Nov 05, 2020] What matters and what does not

Nov 05, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

snake , Nov 5 2020 3:32 utc | 299

300 election don't count comments not one comment about the future of America? All I see here is who shall be king of the mountain. What is it that our leader (whoever it is, should do)?

1. Reduce military spending by 50% per year for each of the next four years.
2. Close 50% of the military bases each year, over each of the next four years
3. Standardize national examinations for high school and undergraduate degrees pass the examination
receive the BS or BA.. degree.. eliminate any all accreditation requirements, people can study wherever
whenever and how ever they wish. Tutorials not bureaucratic institutions will prepare the students for
the examinations.
4. eliminate copyright and patent laws so as to reduce the wealth gap and so as to return America to
from monopolism to capitalism.
5. fix the constitution so the governed have a powerful, meaningful say in not just in how uses the
government to govern, but also so the governed have a powerful say in what it is those who are elected
to the government must accomplish why they are in the employee of our elected government.
6. Find a way to get the USA activities subject to human rights courts.
7. Paint all of the white people black in order to eliminate race as condition of life.

A list of goals and objectives should be put forth on what the elected are supposed to accomplish in the next four years. In that way, it will not matter who is the President, what will matter is did he or she accomplish what it was they were elected to do?


uncle tungsten , Nov 5 2020 3:34 utc | 301

H.Schmatz #255

your quote from Rafael Poch, US´Qing Syndrome:-

There is nothing in China like the military-industrial complex of the United States that structurally fosters militarism and imperialism with its powerful "lobbies" and think tanks. The mandarins of the United States are prisoners of a network that greatly complicates their adaptation to the new world. Its powerful and efficient propaganda apparatus ("information & entertainment") presents the United States' two-headed, single-party political regime based on the money aristocracy as a democracy.

That is really well put.

"The mandarins of the United States are prisoners of a network that greatly complicates their adaptation to the new world"


Exactly that!

Nick , Nov 5 2020 3:38 utc | 303

Nevada will put Joe Biden over for the Presidential win..
Tonight.. Now the question is. How long will Biden last until Harris becomes the Queen of Spades of Pentagon?

gm , Nov 5 2020 4:57 utc | 316

RE: gm | Nov 5 2020 4:14 utc | 312


See? Twitter is cool with allowing this posting by David Litt, former Obama speechwriter, *today* 5:34 pm Nov 4 of a democrat ballot "curing" (post Nov 3 ballot harvesting) assistance operation in Georgia over the next three days (Wed, Thurs and Fri)

https://twitter.com/davidlitt/status/1324117440297639940

"About this event

Attention everyone in or near Georgia: We need YOUR help today! This race is not over and we need every single vote to be counted.

It is all hands on deck and all eyes on Georgia!

Join us today for a virtual training to learn how to knock doors to help voters cure their ballots. We need you in this fight with us today and tomorrow and Friday. We've come so far, this is how we bring it home. See you in the virtual training room and out knocking doors soon!"

And this is legal??? Under Georgia law?

gm , Nov 5 2020 5:35 utc | 317

"The guy at the source of the whole kerfluffle acknowledges that the 130,000 magical votes Tweet was based on incorrect data"

-Posted by: _K_C_ | Nov 5 2020 3:50 utc | 306

I'm not so sure about this, _K_C. His explanation for the late night MI Biden vote bump "kerfluffle" still smells sketchy to me. Given the stakes, could someone have gotten that guy to "flip" his statement after the fact?

See this from tonight's Tucker Carlson show:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/trump-legal-adviser-jenna-ellis-discusses-magical-138000-michigan-biden-votes-appeared-nowhere-middle-night-video/

PS: you will note that all the Twitter post links to the data/details in the story were evaporated by Twitter.


[Nov 05, 2020] Understanding the Tri-fold Nature of the Deep State -- Strategic Culture

Nov 05, 2020 | www.strategic-culture.org

Not that long ago the United States came close to total dissolution.

The financial system was bankrupt, speculation had run amok, and all infrastructure had fallen into disarray over the course of 30 years of unbroken free trade. To make matters worse, the nation was on the verge of a civil war and international financiers in London and Wall Street gloated over the immanent destruction of the first nation on earth to be established not upon hereditary institutions, but rather on the consent of the governed and mandated to serve the general welfare.

Although one might think that I am referring now to today's America, I am in fact referring to the United States of 1860.

The Trifold Deep State

In my past two articles in this series, I discussed how a new system of political economy was established by Benjamin Franklin and his disciples in the wake of the war of independence driven by protectionism, national banking and internal improvements.

I also demonstrated that the rise of the thing known as today's "deep state" can also be understood as a three-headed beast which arose in its earliest incarnation under the leadership of arch traitor Aaron Burr who established Wall Street, killed Alexander Hamilton and devoted his life to the cause of dissolving the union. After having been caught in the act of sabotage, Burr escaped arrest in 1807 by running off to England where he live in Jeremy Bentham's mansion for 5 years, only to return to oversee a new plot to break up the union that eventually boiled over in 1860.

The three prongs of the operation that Burr led on behalf of British intelligence and which remains active to this very day, can loosely be described as follows:

Some Uncomfortable Questions

The story has been told of Lincoln's murder in tens of thousands of books and yet more often than not the narrative of a "single lone gunman" is imposed onto the story by researchers who are either too lazy or too corrupt to look for the evidence of a larger plot.

How many of those popular narratives infused into the western zeitgeist over the decades even acknowledge the simple fact that John Wilkes Boothe was carrying a $500 bank draft signed by Ontario Bank of Montreal President Henry Starnes (later to become Montreal Mayor) when he was shot dead at Garrett Farm on April 26, 1865?

How many people have been exposed to the vast Southern Confederacy secret service operations active throughout the civil war in Montreal, Toronto and Halifax which was under the firm control of Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin and his handlers in British intelligence?

How many people know that Boothe spent at least 5 weeks in the fall of 1864 in Montreal associating closely with the highest echelons of British and Southern intelligence including Starnes, and confederate spy leaders Jacob Thompson and George Sanders?

Demonstrating his total ignorance of the process that controlled him, Booth wrote to a friend on October 28, 1864: "I have been in Montreal for the last 3 or 4 weeks and no one (not even myself) knew when I would return".

On The Trail of the Assassins

After Lincoln was murdered, a manhunt to track down the intelligence networks behind the assassination was underway that eventually led to the hanging of four low level co-conspirators who history has shown were just as much patsies as John Wilkes Boothe.

Days later, President Johnson issued a proclamation saying : "It appears from evidence in the Bureau of Military Justice that the murder of Abraham Lincoln [was] incited, concerted, and procured by and between Jefferson Davis, late of Richmond, Va., and Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, [Nathaniel] Beverly Tucker, George N. Sanders, William C. Cleary, and other rebels and traitors against the government of the United States harbored in Canada."

Two days before Booth was shot, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton wrote : "This Department has information that the President's murder was organized in Canada and approved at Richmond."

Knowledge of Canada's confederate operations was well known to the federal authorities in those days even though the majority among leading historians today are totally ignorant of this fact.

George Sanders remains one of the most interesting figures among Booth's handlers in Canada. As a former Ambassador to England under the presidency of Franklin Pierce (1853-1857), Sanders was a close friend of international anarchist Giuseppe Mazzini – the founder of the Young Europe movement. Sanders who wrote "Mazzini and Young Europe" in 1852, had the honor of being a leading member of the southern branch of the Young America Movement (while Ralph Waldo Emerson was a self-proclaimed leader of the northern branch of Young America ). Jacob Thompson, who was named in the Johnson dispatch above, was a former Secretary of the Interior under President Pierce, handler of Booth and acted as the top controller of the Confederacy secret service in Montreal.

As the book Montreal City of Secrets (2017), author Barry Sheehy proves that not only was Canada the core of Confederate Secret Services, but also coordinated a multi pronged war from the emerging "northern confederacy" onto Lincoln's defense of the union alongside Wall Street bankers while the president was fighting militarily to stop the southern secession. Sheehy writes: "By 1863, the Confederate Secret Service was well entrenched in Canada. Funding came from Richmond via couriers and was supplemented by profits from blockade running."

The Many Shapes of War from the North

Although not having devolved to direct military engagement, the Anglo-Canadian war on the Union involved several components:

Financial warfare: The major Canadian banks dominant in the 19 th century were used not only by the confederacy to pay British operations in the construction of war ships, but also to receive much needed infusions of cash from British Financiers throughout the war. A financial war on Lincoln's greenback was waged under the control of Montreal based confederate bankers John Porterfield and George Payne and also JP Morgan to "short" the greenback.

By 1864, the subversive traitor Salmon Chase had managed to tie the greenback to a (London controlled) gold standard thus making its value hinge upon gold speculation. During a vital moment of the war, these financiers coordinated a mass "sell off" of gold to London driving up the price of gold and collapsing the value of the U.S. dollar crippling Lincoln's ability to fund the war effort.

Direct Military intervention Thwarted: As early as 1861, the Trent Crisis nearly induced a hot war with Britain when a union ship intervened onto a British ship in international waters and arrested two high level confederate agents en route to London. Knowing that a two-fold war at this early stage was unwinnable, Lincoln pushed back against hot heads within his own cabinet who argued for a second front saying "one war at a time". Despite this near miss, London wasted no time deploying over 10 000 soldiers to Canada for the duration of the war ready to strike down upon the Union at a moment's notice and kept at bay in large measure due to the bold intervention of the Russian fleet to both Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the USA . This was a clear message to both England and to Napoleon III's France (who were stationed across the Mexican border) to stay out of America's war.

Despite Russia's intervention, Britain continued to build warships for the Confederacy which devastated the Union navy during the war and which England had to pay $15.5 million to the USA in 1872 under the Alabama Claims.

Terrorism: It is less well known today than it was during the 19 th century that confederate terror operations onto the north occurred throughout the civil war with raids on Union POW camps, efforts to burn popular New York hotels, blowing up ships on the Mississippi, and the infamous St Albans raid of October 1964 on Vermont and attacks on Buffalo, Chicago, Sandusky, Ohio, Detroit, and Pennsylvania. While the St Albans raiders were momentarily arrested in Montreal, they were soon released under the logic that they represented a "sovereign state" at conflict with another "sovereign state" with no connection with Canada (perhaps a lesson can be learned here for Meng Wanzhou's lawyers?).

Assassination: I already mentioned that a $550 note was found on Boothe's body with the signature of Ontario Bank president Henry Starnes which the failed actor would have received during his October 1864 stay in Montreal. What I did not mention is that Booth stayed at the St Lawrence Hall Hotel which served as primary headquarters for the Confederacy from 1863-65. Describing the collusion of Northern Copperheads, anti-Lincoln republicans, and Wall Street agents, Sheehy writes: "All of these powerful northerners were at St. Lawrence Hall rubbing elbows with the Confederates who used the hotel as an unofficial Headquarters. This was the universe in which John Wilkes Booth circulated in Canada."

In a 2014 expose , historian Anton Chaitkin, points out that the money used by Boothe came directly from a $31,507.97 transfer from London arranged by the head of European confederate secret service chief James D. Bulloch. It is no coincidence that Bulloch happens to also be the beloved uncle and mentor of the same Teddy Roosevelt who became the president over the dead body of Lincoln-follower William McKinley (assassinated in 1901).

In his expose, Chaitkin wrote:

"James D. Bulloch was the maternal uncle, model and strategy-teacher to future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. He emerged from the shadows of the Civil War when his nephew Teddy helped him to organize his papers and to publish a sanitized version of events in his 1883 memoir, The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe. Under the protection of imperial oligarchs such as Lord Salisbury and other Cecil family members, working in tandem with Britain's military occupation of its then-colony Canada, Bulloch arranged English construction and crewing for Confederate warships that notoriously preyed upon American commerce."

The Truth is Buried Under the Sands of History

While four low level members of Booth's cell were hanged on July 7, 1865 after a four month show trial (1), the actual orchestrators of Lincoln's assassination were never brought to justice with nearly every leading member of the confederate leadership having escaped to England in the wake of Lincoln's murder. Even John Surrat (who was among the eight who faced trial) avoided hanging when his case was dropped, and his $25 000 bail was mysteriously paid by an anonymous benefactor unknown to this day. After this, Surrat escaped to London where the U.S. Consuls demands for his arrest were ignored by British authorities.

Confederate spymaster Judah Benjamin escaped arrest and lived out his days as a Barrister in England, and Confederate President Jefferson Davies speaking to adoring fans in Quebec in June 1867 encouraged the people to reject the spread of republicanism and instead embrace the new British Confederation scheme that would soon be imposed weeks later . Davies spoke to the Canadian band performing Dixie at the Royal Theater: "I hope that you will hold fast to their British principles and that you may ever strive to cultivate close and affectionate connections with the mother country".

With the loss of Lincoln, and the 1868 death of Thaddeus Stevens, Confederate General Albert Pike established restoration of the southern oligarchy and sabotage of Lincoln's restoration with the rise of the KKK, and renewal of Southern Rite Freemasonry. Over the ensuing years, an all out assault was launched on Lincoln's Greenbacks culminating in the Specie Resumption Act of 1875 tying the U.S. financial system to British "hard money" monetarism and paving the way for the later financial coup known as the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (2).

While the Southern Confederacy plot ultimately failed, Britain's "other confederacy operation launched in 1864 was successfully consolidated with the British North America Act of July 1, 1867. The hoped-for extension of trans continental rail lines through British Columbia and into Alaska and Russia were sabotaged as told in the Real Story Behind the Alaska Purchase of 1867.

Instead of witnessing a new world system of sovereign nation states under a multipolar order of collaboration driven by international infrastructure projects as Lincoln's followers like William Seward, Ulysses Grant, William Gilpin and President McKinley envisioned , a new age of war and empire re-asserted itself throughout the 20 th century.

It was this same trifold Deep State that contended with Franklin Roosevelt and his patriotic Vice President Henry Wallace for power during the course of WWII, and it was this same beast that ran the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. As New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison demonstrated in his book On the Trail of the Assassins (1991 ), Kennedy's murder was arranged by a complex assassination network that brought into play Southern secret intelligence assets in Louisiana, and Texas, Wall Street financiers, and a strange assassination bureau based in Montreal named Permindex under the leadership of Maj. Gen. Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. This was the same intelligence operation that grew out of MI6's Camp X in Ottawa during WWII and changed its name but not its functions during the Cold War. This is the same British Imperial complex that has been attempting to undo the watershed moment of 1776 for over 240 years.

It is this same tumor in the heart of the USA that has invested everything in a gamble to put their senile tool Joe Biden into the seat of the Presidency and oust the first genuinely nationalist American president the world has seen in nearly 60 years.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

[Nov 05, 2020] Exclusive- How the Bidens Made Off With Millions in Chinese Cash -

Nov 05, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Exclusive: How The Bidens Made Off With Millions In Chinese Cash

New documents show that as regulators closed in, Hunter struck a fresh deal with his Chinese partners World Food Program USA Board Chairman Hunter Biden speaks at the World Food Program USA's Annual McGovern-Dole Leadership Award Ceremony at Organization of American States on April 12, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for World Food Program USA)

NOVEMBER 3, 2020

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12:01 AM

ARTHUR BLOOM

The Senate's report on Hunter Biden's activities released several months ago, which was spun by the New York Times as having shown "no evidence of wrongdoing," nevertheless had several important gaps in the business activities of the troubled son of the former vice president.

Draft legal documents and 2017 bank records obtained by The American Conservative show at least $5 million was transferred to Hunter and Jim Biden from companies associated with the Chinese conglomerate CEFC, with millions coming after the company had come under legal scrutiny both in the United States and China.

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

CEFC official Patrick Ho was arrested in November 2017 and charged by the Southern District of New York with corruption, and was convicted last year. In addition, on or about March 1, 2018, CEFC Chairmen Ye Jianming was arrested in China for economic crimes and hasn't been seen since. CEFC assets in China were seized by Chinese state agencies. In the U.S., major beneficiaries were Hunter and Jim Biden.

What the following documents show is that as regulators moved to seize CEFC's assets, Hunter Biden attempted to take control of the company founded in partnership with it. Instead, after striking a deal with two CEFC employees in the U.S., the funds were disbursed over the next six months to his and his uncle's companies until it was all gone, in total at least $5 million.

2017 Bank Records

On August 5, 2017, the Bidens and CEFC entered into a 50-50 limited liability company agreement (Hudson West III) between Owasco, Hunter Biden's company, and Hudson West V (CEFC). The Sep 22, 2020 report from the Senate Judiciary Committee (the "HGSAC Report") surmised an agreement like this, but a copy can be seen, for the first time here . In early 2017, CEFC was ranked as one of the top 500 corporations in the world.

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Hudson West III set up two bank accounts with Cathay Bank, with the first set up on or about August 5. A company associated with CEFC deposited $5 million into the account on August 8; no contribution was made by the Bidens. On Nov 2, 2017, CEFC Limited deposited a further $1 million into the account. (Subsequently, the Hudson West III account shows a wire of $1 million back to CEFC Limited on Nov 21, followed a few days later on Nov 27 by a credit memo for $999,938. The HGSAC Report interpreted the Nov 21 wire transfer as a return of the $1 million, but appear to have omitted consideration of the credit memo apparently reversing the return). The net result is that CEFC and its affiliates deposited almost exactly $6 million into Hudson West III in 2017.

In the 5 months between August 8 and Dec 31, 2017, Hudson West III disbursed almost $1.6 million to Owasco (Hunter Biden) in wire transfers and credit card binges by the Bidens. The transfers appear to have been structured as $165,000 in monthly payments, plus two other payments of $400,000 and $220,387.

Collated screengrabs from Hudson West III bank statements showing payments to Owasco (Wells Fargo Clearing Services LLC)

The HGSAC Report reported on the $99,000 credit card spree by the Bidens in early September 2017, but, in addition to that spree, there was an additional $77,700 in credit card sprees, making a total of $176,700 for the five month period.

Figure 2. Screengrab from Hudson West III bank statements showing credit card disbursements

Total expenditures by Hudson West III in the five months were $1,947,439, of which $1,522,000 went to the Bidens (via Owasco and credit cards). Hudson West III bank accounts contained more than $4 million in cash at the end of 2017.

March 2018 Deal

Shortly after the arrest of CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming on March 1, 2018, there appears to have been a rolling seizure of CEFC assets. Even with the profligate spending by the Bidens, Hudson West III would still have had about $3.5 million in cash in March.

On March 26, a Chinese-American employee who was fiercely loyal to Hunter suggested to him that Hunter and the two CEFC employees in the U.S. (Mervyn Yan and Kevin Dong) figure out a way to appropriate the Hudson West III cash before it was frozen by Chinese regulators or receivers:

you guys (You/Mervyn/Kevin) figure out a way to have the money transferred to the right U.S. account before any restriction levied by Chinese regulators or appointed new boss in charge of manage the enterprise Ye left behind.

In fact, Hunter had already begun the process of appropriating Hudson West III cash before a receiver could arrive. On March 18, Hunter's lawyer sent a letter to Mervyn Yan proposing that Hudson West V (the proximate CEFC entity) assign its interest in Hudson West III to Owasco (Hunter), a transaction which would give control of all the cash to Hunter (see here , and here ).

On or about March 30, 2018, Hunter and the two Chinese appear to have worked out a different arrangement. Among the newly available documents are redlined versions of an assignment agreement in which Hudson West V assigned its 50% interest in Hudson West III to Coldharbour Capital Inc., with Kevin Dong the proposed signatory for Hudson West V, Mervyn Yan for Coldharbour Capital and Hunter signatory for Owasco's consent to the assignment.

The HGSAC Report does not appear to have had access to these documents: they noted that ownership of Hudson West III at some point was 50% Coldharbour, but does not appear to have been aware of the prior ownership of this interest by Hudson West V or the assignment to Coldharbour in late March 2018.

During the next six months, the cash was completely drained into the accounts of Owasco and Coldharbour, spent on consulting fees and expenses. According to the HGSAC Report, total payments from Hudson West III to Owasco amount to an astonishing $4,790,375 by September 2018, when the Hudson West III accounts were totally depleted. In November 2018, Hudson West III was dissolved by Owasco and Coldharbour.

From the 2017 bank records, we know that $1,444,000 had been transferred to Owasco in 2017 (excluding direct payment of credit card sprees); thus, transfers to Owasco in the first eight months of 2018 were approximately $3,345,000.

The assignment of Hudson West V's interest in Hudson West III to Coldharbour and the dissipation of cash to the Hudson West III managers would probably not have stood up to a determined receiver appointed by the Chinese parent company, but there doesn't appear to have been any attempt by the parent company to stop or control the dissipation of Hudson West III's cash reserves.

Lion Hall (Jim Biden) Invoices

Included in the newly available material are invoices to Owasco and, separately, to Hudson West III from Jim Biden doing business as Lion Hall Group. The HGSAC Report stated that, between Aug 14, 2017 and Aug 3, 2018, Owasco sent 20 wires totaling $1,398,999 to Lion Hall Group. The newly available documents show that Jim Biden charged Owasco $82,500 per month as a "monthly retainer for international business development":

Readers will recall that Hudson West III bank statements showed regular monthly payments of $165,000 for the last 5 months of 2017. The corollary is that Hunter split this regular monthly payment from Hudson West III 50:50 with Jim Biden. The HGSAC Report notes that the payments to Lion Hall Group had been flagged by Owasco's bank (Wells Fargo) for potential criminal activity. The new documents contain an inquiry email from Wells Fargo compliance, together with a reply from Hunter which was unresponsive on the key compliance questions. By the time that Wells Fargo raised its compliance concerns, the Hudson West III cash had been exhausted and with it, presumably the stream of 50-50 payments to Uncle Jim.

As noted above, in addition to the regular $165,000 monthly payments, Owasco received other large transfers in 2017 and presumably in 2018. It is not known whether Uncle Jim split these 50-50 as well, or whether this was a side transaction by Hunter.

Concurrent with this flood of money from CEFC, Hunter continued to receive a lavish stipend from Burisma. Nonetheless, by the end of 2018, Hunter had hundreds of thousands in tax liens. In March 2019, despite having received millions from Chinese business interests, Hunter even had to plead with former partner Jeffrey Cooper to email him $100 for gas so that he wouldn't be stranded on the highway. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Arthur Bloom is editor of The American Conservative online. He was previously deputy editor of the Daily Caller and a columnist for the Catholic Herald. He holds masters degrees in urban planning and American studies from the University of Kansas. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Spectator (UK), The Guardian, Quillette, The American Spectator , Modern Age, and Tiny Mix Tapes. email

[Nov 02, 2020] Glen Greenwald is at his peak in his Tucker Carlson interview, talking of infiltration of "the left" by the agencies.

Nov 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Australian lady , Nov 1 2020 23:39 utc | 54

It makes me nauseous just thinking about who might be chosen for a Biden administration.

There will be no hope for reform within the Democratic Party, ever, with a 2020 win.

A win will be the formal announcement of the death of "the left" as the ideology that has traditionally represented the interests of the people. The credibility of "the left" has been eroding with each regime change war the U.S. has been initiating and participating in, with NATO, since the war on Yugoslavia, but particularly in the Middle East and Libya. There has not been a reckoning. Moral transgressions and cowardice, greed and inertia have in fact been rewarded, and institutionalised. Eichman's plea a badge of honour and the whistleblower blown away. The neocons, those influential Jewish, X-Trotskyite political chameleons pushed those wars, and soft sold them through their many corporate media connections to produce "left wing" journalism which manipulated concern for cruel dictators, for persecuted ethnic minorities, refugees, weapons of mass destruction (the latest toxic version is chemical weapons) and the unavailability of certain kinds of human rights, in nations which were experiencing wars of "bomb them back to the stone age" aggression and psychopathic proxy terror arranged by these very same neocons.
"The left" signalled their virtue by believing the war propaganda, and have not sufficiently grasped the gravity of the sham perpetrated on their minds by this array of war criminals. The derangement by Donald syndrome has also proven to be a most emphatic signal of virtue with "the left", a commandment of wokeness. It is also most apparent that the deplorables, aka the rednecks, can never be included in a census of the left- oh that is just way beyond the pale! Very hard to imagine a large group of people who are so denigrated, and not just within the US. Even the bourgeois left has become elitist, and the elitist as in Marxist left has paradoxically no time for people, let alone the common ones. Vk has left us in no doubt.

Glen Greenwald is at his peak in his Tucker Carlson interview, talking of infiltration of "the left" by the agencies. This is compelling journalism because these truths are dangerous. If there is a deep state, then it is the Dems, they've got it covered and the Atlanticists are their allies. It fits in with Giraldi's latest prognostications, and what would be a counterrevolution and not a revolution should "the left" decide to make the push. By left he means Dems and their corporate sponsored affiliates, partisan elements of the spy agencies and big tech. (I think of Mark2 and his misspelt slogans straight from the Gene Sharpe handbook and wonder if earnest Mark2 is a typical lefty cadre, and muse over his enthusiasm for the gutless Jeremy Corbyn, whom I'm sure is a very nice chap personally, but look at the Labour Party now. Mark2, have you heard of the two forms of fascism, fascism and anti fascism?). Jimmy Dore continues to be heroic when faced with unpleasant truths. Keep being mad Jimmy, and just don't stand for it anymore!

Some of us are grateful for these individuals (and thanks to b for his meta commentary) because they are publically enacting a kind of meaculpa, and they have premonitions and we are being warned. There is grace in that. There still are still some good people who can speak publically.
I used to be left politically, but got disillusioned some time ago. Not knowing what progressivism is leading to, and not trusting its practitioners, I find conservatism to be the more reasonable and tolerant position for these times.

[Nov 02, 2020] What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change-

Nov 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change? worldblee , Oct 31 2020 17:02 utc | 1

Pepe Escobar is as pessimistic about a Harris (Biden) administration as I am. The incoming foreign policy team would be the return of the blob that waged seven wars during the Obama/Biden administration:

Taking a cue from [the Transition Integrity Project], let's game a Dem return to the White House – with the prospect of a President Kamala taking over sooner rather than later. That means, essentially, The Return of the Blob.

President Trump calls it "the swamp". Former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes – a mediocre hack – at least coined the funkier "Blob", applied to the incestuous Washington, DC foreign policy gang, think tanks, academia, newspapers (from the Washington Post to the New York Times), and that unofficial Bible, Foreign Affairs magazine.

A Dem presidency, right away, will need to confront the implications of two wars: Cold War 2.0 against China, and the interminable, trillion-dollar GWOT (Global War on Terror), renamed OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) by the Obama-Biden administration.

The Democratic White House team Escobar describes (Clinton, Blinken, Rice, Flournoy) would be an assembly of well known war mongers who all argue for hawkish policies. The main 'enemies', Russia and China, would be the same as under Trump. Syria, Venezuela, Iran and others would stay on the U.S. target list. U.S. foreign policy would thereby hardly change from Trump's version but would probably be handled with more deadly competence.

But Escobar sees two potential positive developments:

In contrast, two near-certain redeeming features would be the return of the US to the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was Obama-Biden's only foreign policy achievement, and re-starting nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia. That would imply containment of Russia, not a new all-out Cold War, even as Biden has recently stressed, on the record, that Russia is the "biggest threat" to the US.

I believe that Harris (Biden) will disappoint on both of those issues. The neoconservatives have already infested the Harris (Biden) camp. They will make sure that JCPOA does not come back :

Last night on an official Biden campaign webinar led by "Jewish Americans for Biden", and moderated by Ann Lewis of Democratic Majority for Israel, two prominent neocon Republicans endorsed Biden, primarily because of Trump's character posing a danger to democracy. But both neocons emphasized that Biden would be more willing to use force in the Middle East and reassured Jewish viewers that Biden will seek to depoliticize Israel support, won't necessarily return to the Iran deal and will surround himself with advisers who support Israel and believe in American military intervention.

Eric Edelman, a former diplomat and adviser to Dick Cheney, said Trump's peace plan has fostered an open political divide in the U.S. over Israel, ...

Eliot Cohen, a Bush aide and academic, echoed the fear that Israel is being politicized. ...
...
Cohen and Edelman opposed Obama's Iran deal, and both predicted that Biden will be hawkish on Iran.
...
"There will be voices" in the Biden administration that seek a return to the Iran deal, but the clock has been running for four years, and we're in a different place, he said. And "it will be hard [for Biden] not to use the leverage that the sanctions provide in part because Iran is not abiding by a lot of the limits of the nuclear agreement They're about three, maybe four months away from having enough fissile material to actually develop a nuclear weapon."

For lifting the sanctions against Iran the Harris (Biden) administration will demand much more than Iran's return to the limits of the JCPOA. Iran will reject all new demands, be they about restricting its missile force or limiting its support for Syria. The conflict will thereby continue to fester.

The other issue is arms control. While a Harris (Biden) administration may take up Putin's offer to unconditionally prolong the New-START agreement for a year it will certainly want more concessions from Russia than that country is willing to give. Currently it is Russia that has the upper hand in strategic weapons with already deployed hypersonic missiles and other new platforms. The U.S. will want to fill the new 'missile gap' and the military-industrial complex stands ready to profit from that. The New-START prolongation will eventually run out and I do not see the U.S. agreeing to new terms while Russia has a technological superiority.

Domestic policies under a democratic president will likewise see no substantial difference. As Krystal Ball remarked, here summarized from a Rolling Stone podcast:

But even with a Biden win, Ball doesn't think it will mean much for policy.

"My prediction for the Biden era is that very little actually happens," says Ball. "Democrats are very good at feigning impotence. We saw this in the SCOTUS hearings as well. They're very good for coming up with reasons why, 'oh those mean Republicans, like we want to do better healthcare and we want left wages, but oh gosh, Mitch McConnell, he's so wiley, we can't get it done.'"

'Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies. A real change never came. The Harris (Biden) administration must be seen in similar light.

I therefore agree with the sentiment with which Escobar closes his piece :

In a nutshell, Biden-Harris would mean The Return of the Blob with a vengeance. Biden-Harris would be Obama-Biden 3.0. Remember those seven wars. Remember the surges. Remember the kill lists. Remember Libya. Remember Syria. Remember "soft coup" Brazil. Remember Maidan. You have all been warned.
Posted by b at 16:45 UTC | Comments (183) I have been trying to set the expectations for my deluded Democratic, pro-tech industry, pro-security state friends and colleagues who think they are forward-thinking progressives but actually just hate Trump as emblematic of non-college educated blue collar types they prefer not to associate with. Biden himself said it, "Nothing will change," and Obama deported many more people in his first term than Trump has to pick but one issue. There will be no M4A, little change in foreign policy, no major stimulus for workers, etc. But since the face in the White House will have changed, they will convince themselves that America has changed and it was all thanks to them...

One major change I expect to see is that BLM protests will fade into the background if Harris/Biden is elected. Without the need to pressure an administration the elites want to get rid of, there won't be the funding and energy to sustain it. But America will continue on the same downward trajectory and the same divisions will still exist with no remediation in sight.


Michael , Oct 31 2020 17:18 utc | 2

Great and accurate summary! Thank you.

Given our future circumstance I've been pondering bumper stickers that will help me get pulled over by the Stasi. Two come to mind immediately:

Wars R US! Biden 2020!
and from a photo on some recent web page

Defund the Elite!

Laguerre , Oct 31 2020 17:25 utc | 3
Really, so what? You have a choice between chaotic anarchic corruption, and organised professional corruption. Is it not better to have the calm, predictable, version - at least you know what you're getting. In any case I am not sure Biden would be able to go back to launching new wars so easily. The US gives the impression of being over-stretched as it is.
ToivoS , Oct 31 2020 17:25 utc | 4
It seems clear that Biden will win. This means that the possibility of a serious military confrontation with Russia is more likely than it would be with a Trump win. In any Biden cabinet Michelle Flournoy will have a major voice. She would have likely become Hillary's Secretary of Defense. In August of 2016 Flournoy wrote a major foreign policy article advocating a 'no fly' zone over Syria. That would have meant that the US military would have been obliged to prevent the Russia airforce from operating in Syrian skies (even though, the Syrian government had invited the Russians to be there). No one really knows if Flournoy would have been given authority to carry out such insanity had Hillary won, but the consequences of such insane policy are easy to imagine.

But without much doubt, a Biden administration will have Susan Rice and Michelle Flournoy in very high policy positions. Given that Biden is rapidly descending into dementia and Kamala Harris seems utterly clueless, US government foreign policy will very likely be led by a Rice/Flournoy collaboration in the coming years. Of course, China has become a much bigger player in the last four years. Maybe those fools around Biden will be distracted by China and they avoid war with with Russia. In either case it looks like very dangerous times ahead.

NemesisCalling , Oct 31 2020 17:25 utc | 5
Trump was always for me about controlled demolition of the empire.

Putin will not tolerate another ramping up of hostilities in the MENA.

I believe, just as in 2016, open military confrontation with Russia hangs in the balance.

It is believed here and elsewhere that Russia and China are working hand in hand and lockstep to thwart the empire.

They may be trade allies but they are not bed fellows.

Russia will always do what is in its own interest and will be beyond reproach from China come a last-minute attempt for it to talk down hostilities btw Ru and U.S.A.

I hope those peddling the narrative that all is theater and a mere globalist game to keep the peons entertained are correct.

But I fear the stupidity and egoism of man far more than I do their love of money and life of luxury.

steven t johnson , Oct 31 2020 17:31 utc | 6
The JCPOA's "snap back" provisions etc. prove that Obama never intended JCPOA as a long term agreement in the first place. The issue was always how long it would suit, not how long it would take for the US to. Nor is the US going to forego it's support for a colonial assault on the Middle East, aka Israel, any more than England will give up Gibraltar.

That said, there really is a policy debate between attacking Russia first or attacking China first or simultaneously attacking both. The thing is, the conflict will continue after any election. Since the Democratic Party isn't a programmatic party but a franchise operation of Outs, there will be zero unanimity within the Democratic Party and not even a clean sweep of the national government will resolve the dispute, which will be waged with exactly the same panic-mongering, paranoid cries of treason, barely subdued hysteria at the prospect of the lower races overtaking the God-given rights of the US government to exercise imperium (right to punish, particularly with death, originally) over humanity, and so on. The same ignorant vicious halfwits who were convinced Clinton Foundation was worse than the Comintern infiltrating innocent America made assholes of themselves. They'll just do it again over Biden, but with different made up excuses.

Domestically, there will be real differences, albeit some will still consider them entirely minor. There will be less emphasis on military officers masquerading as civilian officials; more emphasis on actually having competent officials who are even confirmed by the Senate; somewhat larger infrastructure investment; somewhat less deliberate destruction of government capacity to deliver services; slightly greater emphasis on keeping money valuable by limiting government spending, with smaller increases in military spending, slightly greater taxes, and only limited support to state governments going bankrupt, bankrupt unemployment and pension funds; a few restrictions on mass evictions; no separation of families in ICE prisons; open appeals to racism will cease. There will not however be any Medicare expansion, nor will there be a radically progressive federal income tax, not even a new bankruptcy law, nor will there be even political reforms like direct popular election of the president or even reform of the judiciary. There may be a minimum wage increase to $15 per hour.

One note: The idea that any president will honor any deal to step down or that a president can be forced down is refuted by history thus far. All theories that Biden is scheduled to be terminated are silly. Or worse, attempts to race bait Harris (note the ones who like to call her by her first name.) The influence exercised by Obama in getting Biden the nomination shows that if Biden is in any sense a puppet, he's Obama's puppet. Fixating on Harris instead is foolish even as some sort of amateur conspiracy mongering. No matter what Obama thinks, the inauguration will sever all puppet strings.

Laguerre , Oct 31 2020 17:36 utc | 7
Posted by: ToivoS | Oct 31 2020 17:25 utc | 4

Can't say I'm convinced by all these threats of wars. They didn't do a No-Fly Zone in Syria when they could, e.g. 2013. The reason it was not done is that it was too difficult to do, and required too vast a military investment. Situation remains true today. You'll find most of Biden's prospective wars fall in the same category.

Kiza , Oct 31 2020 17:40 utc | 8
The US self-declared "progressives" are horribly dumb people, no matter their degrees and "intellectual" professions. Stupidity is the illness (weakness) of the societal immunity system. The Blob of the parasitic class is the pestilence that thrives on the immune weakness of the US society. Not happy with mine, then find a better metaphor.

I repeat myself from before, US presidents change, US policy (Mayhem Inc.) does not. Nether on Russia, Syria, Iran, Venezuela ..., nor on China. If Trump loses, I will miss only the potential duel at the OK Corral between Trump and the Blob/Swamp. If Trmp wins, I am buying popcorn.

erik , Oct 31 2020 17:51 utc | 9
Just, oh my goodness to #6. What a turgid, contradiction filled ramble
c1ue , Oct 31 2020 17:51 utc | 10
@Laguerre #7
I would argue the failure of a "no-fly" zone in Syria was more due to united UN (Russia and China) opposition plus the Russia airbase in Tartus rather than any policy changes in the US.
Jackrabbit , Oct 31 2020 17:55 utc | 11
More pearl-clutching for Trump .

It's everywhere. And matched by Democratic Party ineptitude, fake "resistance", and generally lax attitude (spurred by a false sense of security due to polling numbers that can't be relied upon).

That's why I'm predicting a Trump landslide - including winning the popular vote.

The Deep State wants a 'Glorious Leader' type that can lead the country against Russia and China.

God help us.

!!

Laguerre , Oct 31 2020 17:56 utc | 12
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 17:51 utc | 10

Not a policy change, more that the military will have advised against it, the same problem that has always prevented an attack on Iran.

jo6pac , Oct 31 2020 17:59 utc | 13
KB has it right the demodogs will have better PR but nothing will change. The only thing I hope they do is fully throw the u.s. govt behind stopping the virus and even that will be hard do to many stupid people.

Trumpster and the swamp all he did was change the cruel animals in it and biden will change it back to the other cruel animals that were there before.

Down South , Oct 31 2020 18:00 utc | 14
It is hard to tell what will change if the Democrats win because they have flip flopped on policies so many times that you don't know what they really stand for.

Are they going to ban fracking or not?
Are they going to end the oil industry or not?
Are they going to pack the Supreme Court or not ?
Are they going to implement the Green New Deal or not ?
Are they going to encourage immigration or not ?
Are they going to tear down the Wall?
Are they going to defund the police or not?

Other than #OrangeManBad what do they actually stand for ?
Jonathan Pie lays it out quite nicely
https://youtu.be/IdnHfYbr1cQ

The one issue that is critical is that it is clear than Biden will not make it full term. His mental faculties are deteriorating rapidly. He might just make it over the goal post line but just barely.

Therefore the real question is what will Kamala Harris do?

Russia has a lead in strategic weapons that the US will not be able to catch up with. Hence the US emphasis on nuclear weapons to bridge the gap. Russia has successfully thwarted the empire on several occasions. How will the empire struck back ? (So as not to lose credibility with allies and vassals alike)

There are too many unknowns.

Down South , Oct 31 2020 18:06 utc | 15
Another look at what a Biden win may mean by Philip Giraldi.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/10/29/disappearing-america-progressives-want-a-revolution-not-just-change/

Malchik Ralf , Oct 31 2020 18:08 utc | 16
They are going to reduce government subsidies for fracking
And encourage the oil industry's ongoing retooling to other energies
They are going to expand the SCOTUS to 13 seats in keeping with the number of Circuit Courts
They are going to implement environmental legislation and policies
They will hopefully try to adopt a comprehensive policy on immigration and naturalization
They will abandon The Wall project as pointless
They will review the role of the police in dealing with situations where a social worker or a psychologist (with police escort) might better be able to handle the situation

Kamala Harris will keep an active and high profile as she is being groomed to run in 2024


ptb , Oct 31 2020 18:20 utc | 17
I agree that trajectory in foreign policy will be the same. I think a Trump administration would tend to entrench into the bureaucracy the xenophobic nationalists. This is in contrast to the neoliberal nationalists that make up the Democrat side of the foreign policy clique. In practice the latter ends up carrying water for the neocons, so the difference from the global perspective, the perspective of those on whom the bombs fall, is academic.

Domestically, however, I don't think we can say there's no significant difference. At some point far down the road, there will be a more meaningful internal political struggle in the US. Talking about when the $$ printing power runs out, so several presidential cycles from now at the very earliest, maybe many decades away.

The out-groups targeted by xenophobic nationalism will shift by then - either black or hispanic people will necessarily be included into the Republican party, and the divide may be more a matter of religion or nationality than race, but the overall idea will be the same.

No matter the details, it would be better to go into that conflict without giving the right-wingers a big head start. I think we should admit that Trump does accelerate the process. Maybe readers outside the US take some pleasure in the chaos produced by this, but for anyone actually planning to live within the US, who also objects to unrestrained nationalism, there actually is a pretty high price to pay for peeling off the mask of phony benevolence off of the de-facto imperialist foreign policy.

Down South , Oct 31 2020 18:25 utc | 18
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-30/biden-aides-see-warning-signs-in-black-latino-turnout-so-far
Mark2 , Oct 31 2020 18:29 utc | 19
'b' half the truth isn't the truth, no doubt you'l get round to the other half. It's conspicuous !
In these times focusing on what might happen if we get Biden, is biased.
What in your view might happen if we get trump ?
Given his track record.
Much more relevant I feel.
c1ue , Oct 31 2020 18:30 utc | 20
@Malchik #16
Well, kid, I will guarantee that 2/3rds of what you say will happen with a Biden win, won't happen.
I am particularly struck by your assertion that "super predator" Biden and "Lock 'em up" Harris will do anything to rein in police misbehavior. That is pure fantasy.
As for fracking: the subsidies were primarily by banksters in the form of loans and have long since ended. Nobody believes fracking is going to be a profitable business for at least a decade.
vk , Oct 31 2020 18:32 utc | 21
The only objection I have with supporting Trump's reelection from a non far-right viewpoint is that you would essentially be supporting an anti-democratic process: Trump is certainly going to lose the popular vote. Deserving or not, Biden does represent the absolute majority of adult America. By supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the interests of a small redneck aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016 election results) in the Rust Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white supremacy those rednecks undoubtedly support - wanting you or not.

In my opinion, it's time for the non far-right of the USA to start thinking seriously (specially if you're one of the twelve socialists in the country) in Third Party vote. Yes, you won't pick up the fruits immediately, but at least you're build up a legacy for the generations to come to try to change the landscape.

Now, of course, very little will change with Biden-Harris. But this has a good side, too: it shows the American Empire has clearly reached an exhaustion point, where the POTUS is impotent to the obstacle posed by China-Russia. Putin has already publicly stated he doesn't care who's next POTUS; China has already stated what the USA does or decides won't mean shit. Maybe the rising irrelevance of the POTUS is good in the greater scheme of things - or, at least, it gives us new, very precious, information about the core of the Empire.

Jackrabbit , Oct 31 2020 18:35 utc | 22
Is b really suggesting Trump is more peaceful than Biden?

The notion that Trump is fundamentally different than Biden or Hillary or Obama or Bush is specious. They are all on Team Deep State, which serves the monied class.

And the pretense that the Deep State is divided or partisan is equally laughable.

Strange that so many smart people fall for the shell game behind the 'Illusion of Democracy'. Is it so difficult to see the reshuffling of deck chairs and entertaining diversions that pass for "US politics"?

!!

Bemildred , Oct 31 2020 18:35 utc | 23
Biden will bring fresh blood to the Presidency, just you watch.

But seriously, things have been changing very rapidly all of my life, and accelerating as we go. I don't see that the political/managerial classes here are up to the job of managing that change, have shown any aptitude for it or understanding of it in the past either. They remain focussed on their depraved personal ambitions and demented interpersonal disputes. So no change in the midst of lots of change is what I expect, time to keep an eye out and consider ones options.

dh , Oct 31 2020 18:37 utc | 24
@14 Will they fund a task force to deliver a preliminary report on reparations?
Down South , Oct 31 2020 18:47 utc | 25
vk @ 21
By supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the interests of a small redneck aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016 election results) in the Rust Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white supremacy those rednecks undoubtedly support - wanting you or not.

Jesus but that is an ignorant comment. Michael Moore explained 4 years ago why Trump will win the election (2016)
https://youtu.be/vMm5HfxNXY4
div> @vk #21
You said:
The only objection I have with supporting Trump's reelection from a non far-right viewpoint is that you would essentially be supporting an anti-democratic process: Trump is certainly going to lose the popular vote.

The United States has a Constitution and was designed as a Republic.
"Democracy" as in majoritarian rule was explicitly designed against by the Founding Fathers.
Thus your criticism is utterly irrelevant. Until the Electoral College system is changed by Constitutional Amendment, or the United States of America is overthrown by a revolution, all this talk about "majoritarian demos rule" is purely partisan nonsense.
Note also that the 48 states which are "first past the post" are all disenfranchising the minority views. I 100% guarantee that a European style ranked vote system would see far more minority votes be submitted than the present systems.
Deserving or not, Biden does represent the absolute majority of adult America. By supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the interests of a small redneck aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016 election results) in the Rust Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white supremacy those rednecks undoubtedly support - wanting you or not.
Wow, thanks for showing your "deplorables" views. Anyone against the "right" and "proper" Democrat sellouts to pharma, tech and enviro must be rednecks. It is precisely this view that galvanized the vote against HRC in 2016.

Posted by: c1ue , Oct 31 2020 18:50 utc | 26

@vk #21
You said:
The only objection I have with supporting Trump's reelection from a non far-right viewpoint is that you would essentially be supporting an anti-democratic process: Trump is certainly going to lose the popular vote.

The United States has a Constitution and was designed as a Republic.
"Democracy" as in majoritarian rule was explicitly designed against by the Founding Fathers.
Thus your criticism is utterly irrelevant. Until the Electoral College system is changed by Constitutional Amendment, or the United States of America is overthrown by a revolution, all this talk about "majoritarian demos rule" is purely partisan nonsense.
Note also that the 48 states which are "first past the post" are all disenfranchising the minority views. I 100% guarantee that a European style ranked vote system would see far more minority votes be submitted than the present systems.
Deserving or not, Biden does represent the absolute majority of adult America. By supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the interests of a small redneck aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016 election results) in the Rust Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white supremacy those rednecks undoubtedly support - wanting you or not.
Wow, thanks for showing your "deplorables" views. Anyone against the "right" and "proper" Democrat sellouts to pharma, tech and enviro must be rednecks. It is precisely this view that galvanized the vote against HRC in 2016.

Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 18:50 utc | 26

c1ue , Oct 31 2020 18:55 utc | 27
@JackRabbit #22
You said
The notion that Trump is fundamentally different than Biden or Hillary or Obama or Bush is specious.

That's not actually true.
Biden has 47 years of track record to rely on.
HRC, ditto.
Bush is umpteenth generation Bush in government (100 years plus).
Obama was groomed through Harvard, community organization and Senate position as a servant of the oligarchy.
Trump is a billionaire and 2nd generation wealthy, but he neither shares the views of the oligarch classes - his historical behavior is clear proof of that - nor is he predictable as the other 4 are.
If presented with a neocon view - all 4 of the above would 100% agree.
Trump? 85%.
That is a difference albeit absolutely not world changing.
Hoyeru , Oct 31 2020 18:56 utc | 28
Pure BS.
Giving health care to 20 million poor Americans ain't nothing to sneeze at. Adding pre existing conditions save millions of lives. That's why the right despises Obama so much. How dare he give money to those free loaders!

lets show what the republicans have done for poor Americans besides taking more needex money from them and giving it to their rich buddies.
and No, Democrats cannot do anything if they don't control the Congress. They should have done it 2 years ago but since all they were doing was scream RUSSIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! at the top of their lungs,the people turned their backs on them.
Bullshit article.

David , Oct 31 2020 18:57 utc | 29

The Democrats are not going to end fracking. It is doomed to collapse without their help. A Wall Street Journal study revealed a remarkable fact that few Americans know; From 2000-2017 fracking companies spent $280 billion more to extract fracked oil and gas than they received in revenue. Fracking is nothing more than a massive Ponzi scheme predicated on the constant issuing of debt and stock. Fracking wells deplete quickly. There is a constant need for more expensive drilling. The remaining areas that will be fracked have less productive wells. Much of the debt fracking companies have issued is back loaded while the well's production is front loaded. There simply isn't going to be enough revenue generated to meet debt obligations. What made the scheme possible was the artificially low interest rates created by the Federal Reserve. There was a demand for yield that drove investment into debt of dubious quality. A crash is inevitable.
c1ue , Oct 31 2020 19:03 utc | 30
@Bemildred #23
You said:
Biden will bring fresh blood to the Presidency, just you watch.

I am curious why you think so.
Biden is nothing, if not a creature of habit (of obedience to his corporate masters).
Biden likely NSC: Tony Blinken. Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy NSC under Obama.
Susan "Bomber" Rice?
John Kerry?
Sally Yates? The one who signed the FISA warrants based on the Steele Dossier (based on 2 drunkard Russians in Malta mad at being fired)
Michael Bloomberg?
Jamie Dimon?
The only "fresh blood" in this group is the teenage blood they inject to try and remain young.
Elizabeth Warren, were Biden to appoint her as Treasury Secretary, *would* constitute fresh blood.
The likelihood of the Senator from MBNA appointing her to that position is zero.
I would love to be wrong in that instance, but it ain't gonna happen.
Mark2 , Oct 31 2020 19:06 utc | 31
What is trumps legacy so far ?
Let's call that -- - 'The Crimes Of Donald Trump'
Well he has legitimised cold blooded murder.
Ditto racism.
Run roughshod over national laws and conventions. -- Invading an embassy. Assange, koshogie murder, white helmit chlorine attack false flag. Funding and arming by US of Isis.
Corporate mansloughter by virus.
Interference in numerous country's internal politics.
Allowing Israel to interfer take over US politics.
The above are a few that comes to mind.

Have we done away with law and order ?

Feel free to add to my 'Crimes of Donald Trump' list.
In a word normalisation.

ToivoS , Oct 31 2020 19:08 utc | 32
Laguerre | Oct 31 2020 17:36 utc | 7

I hope you are right that the US will avoid war in Syria because they would lose. I was, on the other hand, very impressed that Flournoy was advocating that no fly zone in August of 2016. It was on the basis of her article at that time I fled the US Democratic Party. I knew it was bad before, but it suddenly became clear how Hillary would lead us int WWIII.

Jackrabbit , Oct 31 2020 19:10 utc | 33
c1ue @Oct31 18:55 #27

We've talked at moa about how policy doesn't change much between Democrat and Republican Administrations. And we've talked about the Illusion of Democracy.

That each President has a different personality as well as different priorities and challenges during their time in office doesn't indicate any fundamental difference in how we are governed.

!!

Jackrabbit , Oct 31 2020 19:13 utc | 34
Mark2 @Oct31 19:06 #31

Yes, Trump is normalizing the 'Rules Based Order' in which financial and military power dictates what should be.

!!

circumspect , Oct 31 2020 19:16 utc | 35
And Hillary Clinton wants to be Secretary of Defense in a Biden administration. Not only would the world be in trouble I could see her using the DOD internal hit teams to go after her domestic enemies. They will make 8 years of Bush junior look like a Disneyland vacation. It will be similar to the many unsolved murders of Weimar Germany.
Bemildred , Oct 31 2020 19:17 utc | 36
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 19:03 utc | 30

That was sarcasm, I knew it was going to cause trouble, sarcasm never works on the web unless you add a /sarc tag or something, I guess I feel a bit perverse today.

But to be serious, any attempt to predict what comes next here must rely on the idea that the future will be like the past, we extrapolate in other words, from various trends that we pick out. We can expect Biden to remain who he has been in the past, politicfally he's a hack, what we know of Harris does not suggest any principles to speak of either, so I feel more like I want to pay attention to what's coming than trying to predict what they is going to do or not do. That likely depends on "contingencies" just as in the past.

jayc , Oct 31 2020 19:18 utc | 37
#23 - "I don't see that the political/managerial classes here are up to the job of managing that change, have shown any aptitude for it or understanding of it in the past either."

This is a highly relevant observation. For some time the character and intellectual scope of the political/managerial sectors in the West have been noticeably mediocre, and will likely continue as such for the foreseeable future. The necessary reforms of capitalism were vetoed decades ago, ensuring that productive energies would gradually dissipate. For the last decade all the West has had to offer the rest of humanity is neoliberal austerity, colour revolutions, and armament contracts. This is a journey towards an eventual hollowed-out self-imposed isolation, a process the political/managerial sectors are actively encouraging and supporting without realizing it at all.

Piero Colombo , Oct 31 2020 19:18 utc | 38
Interesting to see how the kayfabe vocabulary of Dim propaganda infects everyone's thought and speech. Including b's:

"'Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies."
Republican my eye. Democrat policies, period. A party founded, maintained and run to implement the ruling class empire and war agenda, just like the Repucrats.
As if Obama was some kind of exception. Ditch this language.

Piero Colombo , Oct 31 2020 19:20 utc | 39
Hoyeru @28

"Giving health care to 20 million poor Americans ain't nothing to sneeze at".

On the contrary, it would be a very good thing, to be applauded.
But when, o when, is it ever gonna happen? We've been waiting for it too long.

dfnslblty , Oct 31 2020 19:27 utc | 40
usa is the major unknown;
China and Russia don't need to physically war - they are winning at PR around the globe.
Even tiny Cuba has greatly better creds!
usa needs to be a people who truly and consistently respect their allies.
Which comes back to usa being the major unknown.
'Cept for warmongering.
Don Bacon , Oct 31 2020 19:30 utc | 41
The blob from the swamp wants to be heard with Why Those 780 Top National Security Leaders Support Biden . .think 'Get Russia.'
"All of us who spent careers in the military were raised on the notion that you lead by example, and President Trump has been the antithesis of that in dealing with this pandemic," said Charles "Steve" Abbot, former commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and deputy Homeland Security Adviser. "Instead of taking steps that I would call 'Crisis Management 101,' President Trump shirked his duty to the nation by failing to provide the central leadership necessary to get our arms around the problem, and he continues to mislead the entire nation about this terrible threat. The result of that failure of leadership was that his administration committed an unrelenting string of missteps, and the American public has lost trust in what the president tells them."

The sixth Fleet is Europe, so "this terrible threat" must be Russia, which is the natural enemy of the DNC/AtlanticCouncil/NATO unlike Trump the 'Putin-lover.'
And more on anti-Russia, from the article:
President Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton said earlier this year that Trump had repeatedly raised the issue of withdrawing the United States from NATO, and warned of "a very real risk" that Trump would actually follow through in a second term.

Nicholas Burns, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and the number three official at the State Department, put it this way: "Every modern president since Harry Truman has viewed our commitment to democratic allies around the world as sacrosanct, because for half a century those alliances have been a key source of American power." He noted that a dissolution of NATO is at the top of Russian President Vladimir Putin's wish list. "Under President Trump we have walked away from that global leadership, and, as a result, trust in the United States has plummeted even among our closest friends. That's done enormous damage."

Bemildred , Oct 31 2020 19:35 utc | 42
This is a journey towards an eventual hollowed-out self-imposed isolation, a process the political/managerial sectors are actively encouraging and supporting without realizing it at all.

Posted by: jayc | Oct 31 2020 19:18 utc | 37

I've been sort of fascinated by that for some time, back when I was young we were still smart enough to know we had to compete with the USSR, and that we therefore had to develop our human capital. And we did pretty well for a couple decades, but then after VietNam they stopped doing that and choose the present "system" instead. Thus abandoning their long-term ability to compete, the source of their power in the first place. Banana republics do not compete well. Decadent.

But you have to give credit to the Russians and the Chinese too, their achievements are impressive by any standard. Our enemies, the ones who have survived, have all proved their mettle.

pnyx , Oct 31 2020 19:50 utc | 43
Can be, can be, no expectations in Biden / Harris. Nevertheless, Tronald is definitely not the lesser evil. His foreign policy is also heading for a clash with China, and things are not going well with Russia either. The warmongering anti-Iran axis has his support, the war in Yemen continues, he won't leave Syria alone, his extremely Israel-friendly attitude increases the danger of war. Everything that is suspected of being left-wing in South America is strangled.

In addition, he has an encouraging effect on all the fascists of the world, his disastrous ecological policy, his negative influence on the treatment of the Corona crisis, his general dislike of multilateral organizations and treaties on which the weaker states of the world are compulsorily dependent. Overall, he exerts an extremely negative influence on the entire globe. He should be disposed of.

He will lose the elections, but what happens then is open.

Maureen O , Oct 31 2020 19:57 utc | 44
In 2009, Biden tried very hard to convince Obama not to surge 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. Obama listened to the generals not his VP.
steven t johnson , Oct 31 2020 20:11 utc | 45
The claim that support for minority rule isn't purely partisan BS is yet another lie. The moral principle in countermajoritarianism like the Founders' is that democracy cannot be allowed to threaten property. Except of course property before democracy, before liberty, before humanity is a vile and disgusting tenet that shames everyone so lost to common decency. The defense that a piece of parchment, a law, makes things moral and righteous and that even opposition is somehow wrong is an offense against common sense. By that standard, the Thirteen, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were the end of freedom in America!

It's one thing to have a mind deranged by rabid hate of your perceived social superiors, but to openly uphold vulgarity is merely snobbery inverted. It is a mean and small minded vice, always, and never a virtue. The Access: Hollywood tape was proof of vulgarity but to defend it as not being proof of a crime but as a positive good is vicious. Vicious is not a synonym for "bad ass." Or if it news, then "bad ass" is a horrible insult.

And, speaking of deranged minds, Wilson was felled by a stroke and Reagan was felled by Alzheimer's, yet they did not fall from power. Quite aside from the question of how anyone could decide who is battier, Trump or Biden, Biden will never be replaced by Harris for incapacity short of a coma.

Linda Amick , Oct 31 2020 20:20 utc | 46
I agree wholeheartedly with the concluding paragraph
Oriental Voice , Oct 31 2020 20:31 utc | 47
A very cogent analysis by b. But I believe the return of the Blob may not be as ominous as feared.

The dangerous component of the Blob's collective fantasy is the confrontation against China and Russia. As late as 4, 5 years ago the prevailing sentiment among Americans, the masses and the elites alike, was one in which The Empire's might was still considered unquestionably dominant and unchallenged. There was penchant for dressing down both China and Russia, and the clumsy maneuvers of the Blob's operators (Obama/Clinton/Bolton/Rice et al) were wholeheartedly supported even if contemptuously regarded for their clumsiness. That sentiment has evaporated, especially after Chinese and Russian military parades as well as American's numerous own infrastructure project failures along with abject performances of Boeing jets and Zumwalt class destroyers. The COVID19 pandemic adds salt to injury.
There is an issue with self confidence now, up and down the hierarchy within the American society, perhaps with the lone exception of Trump's rednecks.

So, the Blob may return with a vengeance but their political capital may be rather meager. They will be all mouth and little substance, as would Trump's prospective second term.

Steve , Oct 31 2020 20:33 utc | 48
I've tuned out of thesilly circus of the US election since the day Biden became the Democratic Party flag bearer.
alaff , Oct 31 2020 20:48 utc | 49
I do not always agree with the opinion of the Saker, but in this matter I tend to support him and can only quote from one of his recent articles :

And, in truth, the biggest difference between Obama and Trump, is that Trump did not start any real wars. Yes, he did threaten a lot of countries with military attacks (itself a crime under international law), but he never actually gave the go ahead to meaningfully attack (he only tried some highly symbolic and totally ineffective strikes in Syria). I repeat – the man was one of the very few US Presidents who did not commit the crime of aggression, the highest possible crime under international law, above crimes against humanity or even genocide, because the crime of aggression "contains within itself the accumulated evil", to use the words of the chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Robert H. Jackson. I submit that just for this reason alone any decent person should choose him over Biden (who himself is just a front for "President" Harris and a puppet of the Clinton gang). Either that, or don't vote at all if your conscience does not allow you to vote for Trump. But voting Biden is unthinkable for any honest person , at least in my humble opinion.

I am surprised by people who are of the opinion that half-dead Biden, suffering from obvious dementia, is better. If only not Trump.
In 2016, Hilary, in fact, openly stated that she was going to use the so-called 'nuclear blackmail' against the Russian Federation. And there was no guarantee that this crazy old witch, having become president, would not have pressed the very button that launched nuclear missiles at Russia. Four years ago, the choice was between an insane sadistic misanthropist who could actually start a nuclear war, and a "dark horse" businessman with the illusory prospect of some improvement in relations between the two strongest nuclear powers. I do not want to drag in religion and the intervention of higher powers here, but it may not be at all accidental that Trump snatched victory from the witch. Maybe we avoided a nuclear war.

Yes, now both options are bad. But of the two evils, it is better to choose the lesser, which, of course, Trump is.


two near-certain redeeming features would be the return of the US to the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was Obama-Biden's only foreign policy achievement, and re-starting nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia. That would imply containment of Russia, not a new all-out Cold War , even as Biden has recently stressed, on the record, that Russia is the "biggest threat" to the US.

What? Funny. I thought it was Obama (read Democrats) who started this new Cold War. Just to remind - It was Obama who made the decision to deploy missiles in Poland and Romania, which are a direct threat to Russia. It is Obama & Co who are responsible for the Ukrainian coup, which, in fact, became a trigger for the total deterioration of relations between Russia and the West. It was Obama who began the unprecedented expropriation of Russian diplomatic property in the U.S. and the expulsion of russian diplomats. It was under Obama that "the doping scandal" was organized against Russia. And so on and so on...
Trump just continued what Obama had started. It is strange that Pepe Escobar does not understand this.

Mark2 , Oct 31 2020 20:50 utc | 50
Off topic
Boris Johnson announces Britain will be going into its second fake total lockdown this coming Thursday.
Mark Thomason , Oct 31 2020 20:52 utc | 51
If Iran and/or Venezuela get their oil back on the market, that will cause an oil price crash that would "end fracking." It can't survive oil much under $50/barrel over a long term.

An oil price crash would also effect the larger energy market, making solar and wind less competitive, even though their direct competition is really coal rather than oil.

Huge and powerful constituencies don't care about Iran or Venezuela, but care very much about oil prices staying high. They make common cause now, and will under Biden too.

uncle tungsten , Oct 31 2020 20:53 utc | 52
Well, having given deep consideration to the question and the current advanced state of malady in the USA - I will leave it to Vic as he has summarised the position with minimum fuss - here.

Enjoy this sharp witted, all encompassing 4 minute rant from inside the asylum. I would shout the bar for all with this one.

JohnH , Oct 31 2020 20:58 utc | 53
Biden is an old man. He is a tired man, if not now, then in six months. He has already told wealthy donors that nothing will change. He has no record of leadership. He has no record of achievement, unless you count floating to the top. He will be the establishment's model 'status quo, do-nothing Democrat.

Biden will preside as a figurehead legitimizing the shenanigans of the blob, Wall Street, and the US Chamber of Commerce, and Big Oil. Heck, I doubt that he will even override many of Trump's executive orders, except for the token bone thrown to his delusional supporters.

Harris will be as much a figurehead as Biden. She is utterly unprepared. While she is likable enough, she lacks gravitas and "credibility," which, she will be convinced, can be established only by bombing a few wogs back to the Stone Age.

Both will serve as placeholders until Trump 2.0 arrives in 2024. Elites will sufficiently sabotage the economy until then to assure that Trump 2.0 with neocon values is elected in 2024.

james , Oct 31 2020 21:11 utc | 54
thanks b... i appreciate you highlighting pepe's article... i enjoyed it.. terms like "Kaganate of Nulandistan", " The Three Harpies" and etc...

i still like the dynamic between joe rogan and glenn greenwald discussion on this same topic from the link debs left yesterday -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0rcLsoIKgA&feature=youtu.be

the usa is an approaching train wreck and no amount of persuading one side or the other is going to change any of this... the world is moving on and rightfully so... no one wants to get down into this... the swamp and fake news is permanent at this point...until the whole system implodes - this is what we have in store.. vote for trump or biden - it matters not... one is a slower motion move then the other - but the end result is the same... there is no way out... sorry... on the other hand it is beautiful and sunny here where i live... life goes on outside this political circus called the usa presidential election..

lysias , Oct 31 2020 21:17 utc | 55
77,000 voters may have decided the outcome of the 2016 election, but they were not the only ones who voted for Trump. 63 million voters did.
Per/Norway , Oct 31 2020 21:20 utc | 56
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 18:50 utc | 26
I do not agree with you on 99.8% of wordly affairs BUT this comment you wrote is pure gold!!
Even on the other side of the Atlantic ocean @ the western edge of Europe us reading types know the difference.
And it annoys me just as much as it seems to annoy you how few people know that the US of terror is a republic and NOT a democracy😂🥴
steven t johnson , Oct 31 2020 21:27 utc | 57
By the way, people who are truly interested in seeing the Democratic Party removed as an obstacle to a true people's party (no one else here wants a workers' party) the very best way to split the national party would be a clean sweep of House, Senate and Presidency followed by enough treasonous shenanigans by Trump to arouse mass resistance. (Genuinely treasonous as in subverting the republic by force, fraud and violence, not in the half witted definition of dealings with foreigners so popular around here.) Biden et al. would split the Democrats rather than enact a popular program---which would be left because the when the masses begin to move they always march left.

Also by the way, Bloomberg is continuing his bid for a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party, aping the media version of Trump's hostile takeover of the Republic (NOT A DEMOCRACY!) Party.

Richard Steven Hack , Oct 31 2020 21:27 utc | 58
"Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies. A real change never came."

I was calling Obama "Bush Lite" during his first campaign. Anyone who read his foreign policy platform would have to agree. And the *only* reason he negotiated the JCPOA was because he needed at least one foreign policy win for his eight years - and he knew it would be torn up by whoever came after him, either Clinton or Trump. But he needed it for his own narcissistic view of his "legacy".

People forget that Obama wrote the leaders of Brazil and Turkey in 2010 prior to their negotiation with Iran for a deal, listing the points of a deal he would accept. Clinton pooh-poohed the idea that those leaders could get a deal. After a marathon negotiation session, they got it. The US then dismissed the deal 24 hours later, prompting Brazil's leader to release the Obama letter to establish that Obama was a liar.

"Change You Can Believe In" - "Make America Great" - only morons believe in campaign slogans - or the people who utter them.

uncle tungsten , Oct 31 2020 21:28 utc | 59
Pardon me b !
"The other issue is arms control. While a Harris (Biden) administration may take up Putin's offer to unconditionally prolong the New-START agreement for a year it will certainly want more concessions from Russia than that country is willing to give."

Russia has made it abundantly and repetitively clear that they are not doing INCREMENTAL DEFEAT any more - there are no concessions to make - they no longer do supine acceptance of UKUSAi rights to dominate, subvert or belligerently mass arms at their advancing borders.

Why would any country concede to the incessant belligerence of the west? They must have lead in their drinking water to be that dumb!

The concession must come from the aggressor, the colour revolution fomenter, the incessant smearer and hate propagandist - the west.

A Harris/Biden Presidency lacks those attributes (perhaps lacks any attributes of goodwill) and a Trump Presidency is no different.

The narcissistic personality disorders run the USA - the asylum inmates are in charge, not the elected leaders. And the elected leaders are morons or wholly captive klutzes.

Richard Steven Hack , Oct 31 2020 21:34 utc | 60
Posted by: Laguerre | Oct 31 2020 17:36 utc | 7 They didn't do a No-Fly Zone in Syria when they could, e.g. 2013. The reason it was not done is that it was too difficult to do

Obama tried *six times* to start a war with Syria. First he submitted *three* UNSC Resolutions with Chapter 7 language in them. Russia and China - burned by the US over Libya - vetoed those. Then Obama was within hours of launching an attack on Syria in August, 2013. He only stopped when he got push-back from Congress and then Putin outmaneuvered him by getting Assad to give up his chemical weapons. Then in fall, 2015, Obama was talking no-fly zone yet again. Putin again outmaneuvered him by committing Russian forces to Syria. Then sometime in 2016 - I forget the exact month - there was a news article saying Obama was having a meeting on that Friday to discuss no-fly zone yet *again*. That Tuesday or Wednesday, the Russia Ministry of Defense issued a statement that anyone attacking Syrian military assets would be shot down by Russia. On Friday, Obama pulled back and said there wouldn't be a no-fly zone.

So it was Russia, primarily, that was the reason Obama didn't not succeed *six times* trying to start a war with Syria.

Richard Steven Hack , Oct 31 2020 21:36 utc | 61
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 17:51 utc | 10

Correct (for once).

uncle tungsten , Oct 31 2020 21:41 utc | 62
Bemildred #23

"Biden will bring fresh blood to the Presidency, just you watch."

YES. thank you for the clarifying statement, as that is exactly what I expect too. Harris /Biden blood spattered globe again. Or a Trump spattered equivalent. No socialism for the USA.

gottlieb , Oct 31 2020 21:42 utc | 63
We went from snarling Cheney Wars to shiny happy Obama wars to snarling Trump wars now back to shiny happy Biden wars to... Forever War is obviously bi-partisan.

But perhaps with Great Depression 2.0 coming this Dark Winter in order to stave off civil war and/or revolution they'll throw resources to much needed infrastructure projects, diminish to a slight degree the supremacy of the for-profit healthcare industry through a laughable but better than nothing 'public option' and make some baby steps toward avoiding climate catastrophic.

The change is marginal. And probably meaningless. Hope is just another word for nothing left to lose.

vk , Oct 31 2020 21:53 utc | 64
@ Posted by: lysias | Oct 31 2020 21:17 utc | 56

Those 77,000 - purely because of location - overcame 3 million+ votes. That's the equivalent of giving those 77 thousands the right to vote 40 times each.

Are you in favor of censitary vote?

--//--

@ Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 18:50 utc | 26

Yes, but at the end of the day, Hilary Clinton got 3.6 million votes more than Donald Trump.

You're telling everybody you're in favor of censitary vote in opposition to one person, one vote, just because you don't want an ideological enemy of yours to win. This is still liberal - but you would have to dig to the early liberal thinkers (Locke, Tocqueville etc.) to find such reactionary and elitist opinion.

Even by liberal standards today censitary vote is already considered outdated/reactionary. Concretely, you're defending the interests of a blue collar elite of the north-midwest, who number on the dozens of thousands, in detriment to more than half the voting population. It is what it is: you can't fight against mathematics.

--//--

@ Posted by: Down South | Oct 31 2020 18:47 utc | 25

So what? Fuck Michael Moore. If Michael Moore told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it? He's not the guardian of the absolute truth, he's just a random guy with an opinion.

Michael Moore can defend a mythical blue collar America how much he wants to - it doesn't change the fact this America doesn't exist anymore. America is, nowadays, the land of the petit-bourgeois, the land of the small-medium business-owners (a.k.a. zombie business-owners) , of the New York financial assets owning middle class "coastal elites", of the influencers, of Kim and Chloe Kardashian, of Starbucks, Amazon and Apple, of the billionaire tied to Wall Street. That's the true America, want it.

America will never be blue collar again. The insistence of turning America blue collar again will destroy the American Empire. They will be the Gorbachevs of the USA.

uncle tungsten , Oct 31 2020 22:11 utc | 65
Richard Steven Hack #61


Obama tried *six times* to start a war with Syria. First he submitted *three* UNSC Resolutions with Chapter 7 language in them. Russia and China - burned by the US over Libya - vetoed those. Then Obama was within hours of launching an attack on Syria in August, 2013. He only stopped when he got push-back from Congress and then Putin outmaneuvered him by getting Assad to give up his chemical weapons. Then in fall, 2015, Obama was talking no-fly zone yet again. Putin again outmaneuvered him by committing Russian forces to Syria. Then sometime in 2016 - I forget the exact month - there was a news article saying Obama was having a meeting on that Friday to discuss no-fly zone yet *again*. That Tuesday or Wednesday, the Russia Ministry of Defense issued a statement that anyone attacking Syrian military assets would be shot down by Russia. On Friday, Obama pulled back and said there wouldn't be a no-fly zone.

So it was Russia, primarily, that was the reason Obama didn't not succeed *six times* trying to start a war with Syria.

Thank you, it seems that your succinct statement should be included as an auto response macro to every laguerre post. They never stop their blathering those AI CPU's. My take is that they are a retro definition of the term interrupt .

MarkU , Oct 31 2020 22:16 utc | 66
@ Jackrabbit

I remember you as being a reasonably sane contributor but atm you have a serious case of TDS. Are you seriously trying to tell us that the last 4 years of US media foaming at the mouth about Trump (Russia-gate, Trump supporters being 'white supremacists' and egging on a race war) were all a plot to get him re-elected? I mean seriously? WTF? What the hell would they do if they wanted him removed?


Mark2 , Oct 31 2020 22:19 utc | 67
Now I know I have been very very harsh on trump and his supporters of late. Please forgive me ! It's what we call 'tough love' I do have a heart, dispite all of America's crimes against the rest of the world. I did hope that the US at the last moment would come to it's senses and turn it's back on trump. Alas ! I fear not. Really sad, I'm sorry.
But for the rest of the world including myself, we can only watch with fascination and relief as America destroys itself from within. My heart goes out to the inocent.
I fear trump supporters are in for a -- --
Pyrrhic victory (spelt correctly) I recommend googling the word.

Adolph Hitler rose to power with similar glory and power unbridled. Just as trump now !! Then what ?
Dresden!!
Think on.

_K_C_ , Oct 31 2020 22:29 utc | 68
Posted by: MarkU | Oct 31 2020 22:16 utc | 67

Why is it so hard to believe? The media needs a heel and they actually prefer Trump to remain in office. Maybe on the ground level you have a lot of regular old liberals, but the upper echelons of the media (and holding companies) are all about keeping the ratings bonanza going. Another Trump term but with Democrat control of Congress would be like manna from heaven to them. Matt Taibbi is one writer who has chronicled the phenomenon since before Trump ever got elected. Here's a more recent piece. Let me know if it's paywalled and I can copy/paste.
CNN chief has an ethical problem.

Schmoe , Oct 31 2020 22:39 utc | 69
On JCPOA, The Nation had a quote from one of Biden's foreign policy advisers to a group of Jewish campaing donors saying all sanctions on Iran will remain intact unless they return to full compliance. I agree that it will not be as simple as that given political reality, but Biden was closely involved in its negotiation and likely has some ownership of it.

I expect there to be a false flag attack by "Iran" to throw sand in the gears if re-implementation looks likely, or perhaps an Israeli attack on Lebanon. Best plausible outcome is Iran keeps its current level of cooperation, and a Biden admin looks the other way on sanctions violationsw.

jinn , Oct 31 2020 22:40 utc | 70
Are you seriously trying to tell us that the last 4 years of US media foaming at the mouth about Trump (Russia-gate, Trump supporters being 'white supremacists' and egging on a race war) were all a plot to get him re-elected? I mean seriously? What the hell would they do if they wanted him removed?
_____________________________________________
Of course it was all phony and designed to not ring true, which benefits Trump by giving him credibility with the voters.
The whole idea behind trump is the same as with Reagan he is portrayed as the outsider doing battle against the corrupt and powerful Washington swamp. Trump is Reagan on steroids. But it is all phony both Reagan and Trump are one of the powerful elites and their opposition by the left wing media is designed to give them credibility with voters.

Remember that half of the corporate controlled media loves Trump and sings his praises daily. It is only half the corporate media that is attacking Trump the other half is showing its viewers blacks that strongly support Trump and solid evidence that Russiagate is pure bullshit.

As for what the media would do if they really wanted to bring Trump down. They would attack him on real issues instead of phony ones that actually strengthen trump's credibility.

Josh , Oct 31 2020 22:45 utc | 71
What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change?
This,
https://sputniknews.com/viral/202010311080939179-ukrainian-code-biden-has-netizens-in-stitches-as-he-pledges-to-mobilise-trunalimunumaprzure/
Nice,
dave , Oct 31 2020 22:59 utc | 72
"What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change?"

The same thing it always changes, absolutely nothing except who accepts the bribes from the elite.

As long as the American people stay asleep they will continue with the "American DREAM" until they suddenly wake up inside their newly constructed corporate industrial zone. The prison industrial complex is the model society if you're an elite.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone, don't get so caught up in this sham (s)election that you ruin what little freedom you have left.

S , Oct 31 2020 22:59 utc | 73
Berlin's Madame Tussauds has put Donald Trump's wax figure into a dumpster . Is this normal behavior by a museum? Is this not "an interference in the democratic processes of the United States"? Or is it okay because the Germans are doing it? (But God forbid if a Russian or an Iranian criticizes a U.S. presidential candidate publicly ahead of the election.) Have similar performances been staged against Bush, under whom the U.S. intelligence agencies manufactured claims of Saddam Hussein preparing to use weapons of mass destruction, which the U.S. "free" media printed almost in unison without any criticism, leading to an invasion that killed 650,000 Iraqis ? When a visitor beheaded Adolf Hitler's figure in 2008, the same museum had this to say :
Madame Tussauds is non-political and makes no comment or value-judgement either on the persons who are exhibited in the Museum or on what they have done during their lifetime.

I guess starting a war that resulted in deaths of 26,000,000 million Soviets -- most of them Russians -- is not nearly as bad as being a rude person who has once recommended in private grabbing women by their genitals.

S , Oct 31 2020 23:01 utc | 74
*26,000,000 Soviets
MarkU , Oct 31 2020 23:18 utc | 75
@ jinn (71) and _K_C (69)

You are clearly over-thinking this, clutching at straws to justify supporting the other side. Remember the saying "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people". Whoever wins the election is going to be faced with major unrest, the worms are clearly not going back in the can. There are easier ways to get someone re-elected.

Trump is clearly at least as toxic as any of them wrt foreign policy, however he is not a globalist and that is his major sin in their eyes.

Don Bacon , Oct 31 2020 23:19 utc | 76
@ Maureen O # 45
In 2009, Biden tried very hard to convince Obama not to surge 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan.
Perhaps he was successful? . . . Obama actually surged 70,000 troops into Afghanistan, raising Bush's 30K to 100K+. That got Mr Hope & Change the Nobel Peace Prize.
arata , Oct 31 2020 23:21 utc | 77
Posted by: alaff | Oct 31 2020 20:48 utc | 50

What is JCPOA, in reality?

We should remember there were 6 UNSC against Iran, and one of them under Chapter 7 ( the most dangerous), before JCPOA. We should keep in mind there are gang of 5 + 1( 5 in UNSC + Germany) coalition behind 6 resolutions.

From Iran's eye, Imperialism was, combination of these 5 in the club, and their collateral and vassals ( Germany, Japan, etc). The master of JCPOA, caught the opportunity to put a wedge into the body of the club, and it worked perfectly. America is mad cutting her own arteries, out side the club. Trump or Biden are not different in this regard, America needs some one to understand the depth of the wound and retreat immediately, before too much hemorrhage. And such person ( or group ) is not in horizon. Let it die by her own wounding.

Going back to JCPOA is not so simple.

uncle tungsten , Oct 31 2020 23:34 utc | 78
Down South #15

Thank you for that Philip Giraldi report. The descent into madness from the raucus sounds of the echo chamber. Where does a revolution start?

First they need to dismantle their media concentration across the spectrum of "news" including all media forms.

Second they need to send their journalists through the same cultural revolution cycle as was done in the China and other countries where people go to different work supporting the growth of their communities for a five to ten year separation from the craft of journalism. Listen to the people and sweat alongside them in their labour to survive.

Sure there is much more but the echo chamber must surely be demolished at commencement.

Jen , Oct 31 2020 23:39 utc | 79
RSH @ 61:

I believe back in August 2013 after a CW attack in East Ghouta, east of Damascus, wrongly blamed on the Syrian govt that Obama was preparing to enforce his no-fly zone threat. Then the UK parliament voted not to support such a threat, Obama hesitated and then Putin saw his opportunity and posted an opinion in the New York Times. That ultimately stopped the US from going ahead with the attack.

I'm sure British MPs have since been forced to "come to their senses".

karlof1 , Oct 31 2020 23:43 utc | 80
I linked to and commented upon Pepe's article when it was published by Asia Times a few days ago, and I don't see any reason to add to it as b echoes much of my sentiment. What I will do is link to a brief item by Chinese scholar Zhang Weiwei, professor of International Relations at Fudan University, "How China elects their political leaders" , which seems very appropriate at this moment in time:

"China has established a system of meritocracy or what can be described as 'selection plus election'. Competent leaders are selected on the basis of performance and broad support, through a vigorous process of screening, opinion surveys, internal evaluations and various types of elections. This is much in line with the Confucian tradition of meritocracy. After all, China is the first country that invented civil service examination system or the 'Keju' system....

"Indeed, the Chinese system of meritocracy today, makes it inconceivable that anyone as weak as George W. Bush or Donald Trump could ever come close to the position of the top leadership. It's not far-fetched to claim that the China model is more about leadership rather than the showmanship as it is in the West. China's meritocratic governance challenges the stereotypical dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy. From Chinese point of view, the nature of the state including its legitimacy, has to be defined by its substance, that is, good governance, competent leadership and success in meeting the people's needs."

Zhang Weiwei is the author of a very important book some may have heard about and even read, The China Wave: Rise Of A Civilizational State , of which an open preview can be read here . Also, the professor gave a talk at the German Schiller Institute related to the above book and the BRI project, which can be read here .

I've commented several times that China's political-economic system is far superior to the Parasitic Neoliberalism that's destroying the West. China's success suggests very strongly that we listen and closely observe while not taking heed of what any Western source has to say about China.

Jen , Oct 31 2020 23:43 utc | 81
Uncle T @ 79:

I'm all for sending the entire Australian news media into a cave for 5 - 10 years. Maybe in 10,000 years archaeologists investigating the cave will be wondering whether fossil remains there denote a species of human more primitive than those found in Liang Bua cave on Flores Island in Indonesia. :-)

Hagbard Celine , Oct 31 2020 23:51 utc | 82
@worldblee #1

Can you elaborate on this funding you referred to for BLM protests? What is your evidence that it was actually funding street protests? Are you referring to the national corporate BLM? If so, what does that have to do with leaderless protests in the streets?

uncle tungsten , Nov 1 2020 0:09 utc | 83
Mark2 #68

Adolph Hitler rose to power with similar glory and power unbridled. Just as trump now !! Then what ?
Dresden!!
Think on.

Ahem, Think about this :

From February 13 to February 15, 1945, during the final months of World War II (1939-45), Allied forces bombed the historic city of Dresden, located in eastern Germany. The bombing was controversial because Dresden was neither important to German wartime production nor a major industrial center, and before the massive air raid of February 1945 it had not suffered a major Allied attack. By February 15, the city was a smoldering ruin and an unknown number of civilians -- estimated between 22,700 to 25,000–were dead.

Dresden and other cities held magnificent collections of human posterity. Cities of science - of intellectual excellence and endeavour within europe. Cities of humans associated with brilliant minds doing the work of human understanding and progress.

Sure Hitler's imbecile adventures ably funded by global private finance capitalism and a hatred of communism led to war that ultimately led to the vengeful destruction of great cities and great store houses and museums of this earth of mankind.

Hitler did not bomb Dresden.

Germans were proud of their science and their knowledge and storehouses and museums.

Europe shared in that pride in excellence as did many throughout the world.

The UKUSA bombed Dresden in mid February 1945. They had no need to do so as Germany was crippled, Berlin was surrounded and doomed. On April 20, Hitler's birthday, the first Russian shells fell on Berlin. What followed was a brief but brutal fight.

Those first shells falling on Berlin TWO months after the demolition of cities of science and archeology and human history. NOT cities of military significance.

I think of Vietnam

I think of Iraq

I think of Korea

I think of China

I think of Japan

Bombed by UKUSA. So lets not obsess with a dead nazi comrade, lets open our eyes to the live nazis.

uncle tungsten , Nov 1 2020 0:12 utc | 84
Jen #82

++ :))

little hairy pens preserved in paperbark and beeswax perhaps

[email protected] , Nov 1 2020 0:34 utc | 85
I think Biden will win this presidency, and win it fairly easily. It will become apparent early on that the Biden Administration intends not only to turn the heat up on Russia, but will continue Trump's aggression towards China. There may be a feint towards renewing JCPOA, but it will not be fulfilled, and aggression towards Iran will not abate either.

The Mighty Wurlitzer of pro-war propaganda is again spinning up in anticipation. The Atlantic and the Economist have been busy comparing Chinese Policy towards it's Muslim citizens with the Holocaust...Russia, Russia, Russia!!! which never went away is again being amped up.

But, this isn't 2016. Four years has given China and Russia time to further modernize their militaries. Iran has developed its missile and drone programs to the point that a conflict with Israel will result in mutual destruction. In 2016 USA/NATO had the military advantage, but that is now gone, and the balance shifts further by the day. I almost feel sorry for Biden, as he will be the one taking the blame when the economy collapses and America gets their asses handed to them. Hopefully it doesn't go nuclear, but I am not very optimistic.

With the NeoCon infestation capturing the Democratic Party, the media, and a big chunk of the Republican, it is only a matter of time before they get their way. Short-sided parasites as they are, this time they will kill their host. If humanity survives, a new multi-polar era may emerge.

Mark2 , Nov 1 2020 0:56 utc | 86
Uncle tungsten @ 84
Please re-read my heart felt comment. It was sincerely ment. To many here think this is just fun and speculation.
But this is real, the USA have the same misguided sense of infalalabilty now, that the German public hand then.
Did we learn nothing from world war 2 ?
Please don't belittle my urgent warning.
This is not a game. Perhaps re read my comment. Respect
_K_C_ , Nov 1 2020 1:12 utc | 87
Posted by: MarkU | Oct 31 2020 23:18 utc | 76

Naw, you're not reading me right. Did you check out the Taibbi piece? He has numerous others over the past 4 years. Also see Les Moonves and other corporate media executives' statements on Trump during that same time period. I acknowledged that the rank and file among the media class is largely woke, liberal and pro-Biden (and very anti-Trump), but they don't call the shots and you're not looking at the situation with enough attention to details. It's the little things that give it away.

Ever heard the saying "there's no such thing as bad publicity"? A brand like Trump's has been clearly demonstrated to benefit immensely from the negative coverage. The media are hated by Trump's followers and the people who watch the media hate Trump. So what does that tell you? Compare CNN and MSNBC ratings during Trump's term to Obama's. They know that hate sells and they never call Trump out for his ACTUAL bad behaviors (other than COVID and ACB, I guess) while they focus on meaningless nonsense, thus distracting the public from the bi-partisan corporate dominated graft going on and the Empire's ongoing wars and sanctions programs abroad. Very rarely if ever will you read or hear about the hundreds of thousands of people who have died due to American sanctions on Iran or Venezuela. Why is that? Because top brass at the corporate media outlets support it. They cheered when he launched the missiles at Syria.

Someone did a study or analysis on the amount of air time given to Trump versus the Democrat primary and it wasn't even close. He plays them and his supporters like a fiddle, too. SNL had him on NBC when he was running against Hillary. Some argue that this might have been due to the same mindset that Hillary's team was alleged to have had. Namely, that Trump would be the EASIEST candidate for her to beat and he had no chance, so he was harmless as a threat. I don't think it's that complicated. They know what gets ratings.

Yeah, occasionally they'll make a peep about the environment or jobs, but like the Democrats in Congress and "Intelligence" Community's Russia and Ukraine witch hunts/impeachment they intentionally ignore the types of actions that DO justify investigations and impeachments. Do you honestly think that the Democrats thought Trump would be removed from office for the bogus "whistle blower" charges they ginned up? Of course not - the Senate was never going to go along with it and it wasn't exactly secret, even over here across the pond it was obvious.

As far as him not being a globalist - he's not exactly anti-globalist when it comes to policy, but why would that matter to the corporate media? Again, it's the corporate big wigs and majority shareholders who make the calls and the reporters, editors and personalities on TV know how to toe the line without being told explicitly. Now, if you want to talk Silicon Valley and the social media giants, I'm with you - they are actively trying to help Joe Biden. But take another example - the Hunter Biden laptop story. Social media giants censored it, but it isn't like it's not being talked about non-stop by the MSM and newspapers. They just don't talk about what was IN the emails or photos, leaving some of their viewers/readers curious to go find out for themselves.

I didn't read jinn's comment in detail, but I'm definitely not trying to make points that justify voting for Biden; but I stand by my points - I'm just pointing out what's REALLY going on with all of the "negative" coverage of Donald Trump in the corporate mainstream media. At the end of the day, the corporate MSM upper brass doesn't really care who gets elected, but they also understand that having a "heel" (from the pro wrestling world) and "bad guy" to always go after on crap that's ultimately meaningless, makes it easier to sell the hate and drive ratings and subscriptions.

David , Nov 1 2020 1:12 utc | 88

You summed it up beautifully tribolij. I believe it will play out just as you described. There is no basis for optimism.
uncle tungsten , Nov 1 2020 1:19 utc | 89
Mark2 #87
Uncle tungsten @ 84
Please re-read my heart felt comment. It was sincerely ment. To many here think this is just fun and speculation.
But this is real, the USA have the same misguided sense of infalalabilty now, that the German public hand then.
Did we learn nothing from world war 2 ?
Please don't belittle my urgent warning.
This is not a game. Perhaps re read my comment. Respect

Respect and apology in return Mark2. I jumped the gun.

Yes, the sense of infallibility infuses the bloodlust of the UKUSAi.

With any luck humanity will be spared their obscene and lunatic 'reprisal mania' that has rotted their minds. I somehow doubt that.

And I share your fear.

That said though - I am ever the optimist. There are many warrior clans of past decades that have made delightful blunders and ended up on the block instead of on the grog in the opponents bars. Time will tell.

I believe it is time for the great people of South America to shake off these barnacles on the arse of humanity once and for all.

_K_C_ , Nov 1 2020 1:30 utc | 90
@MarkU, #67 -

Sorry I got a little long winded in my last reply. I think this response will make my position easier to interpret.

You asked: " What the hell would they do if they wanted him removed?"

The answer to that question is the same as the answer would be if you asked what the Democrats in Congress would (have) do(ne) if they really wanted to remove him from office. They would actually investigate and attempt to prosecute a litany of possible crimes rather than silly, simplistic accusations from a "whistleblower" that anyone with a IQ over 100 could see was not going to work.

Maybe you're right and I'm wrong, and Americans really are that stupid. It wouldn't necessarily conflict with what I've seen and heard from Democrat supporting relatives and social media contacts. A lot, if not most of them STILL believe that there was collusion between Trump and Russia. It was like my conservative friends and relatives for about a decade after the Iraq war - they were CONVINCED that we DID find WMDs and that the US media had somehow hidden it.

c1ue , Nov 1 2020 1:42 utc | 91
@vk #65
It is striking how you still refuse to acknowledge the reality of the law.
The United States is not a majoritarian democracy.
In fact, there is not one single country in the entire world that is a majoritarian democracy.
If the law were changed via the methods already written, tried and true, then I guarantee that there would be a lot more voters in the minorities of both red and blue states.
As it is, the only partisan here is your and the Democratic party's whining about how they have more popular votes, much as the talk about packing the Supreme Court, etc etc.
If ultimately the existing laws of the land are merely an impediments to anyone doing whatever they have the power to do, then there is no law.
Mark2 , Nov 1 2020 2:01 utc | 92
Uncle @ 90
Thanks for that. I feel we are in full agreement !
To perhaps clarify to those less astute than you.
My comment @ 68 points out the law of unintended consequence. The majority of Americans don't want war, riots, poverty and distruction. They want to keep there families safe.
The comparison being the same can be said for Germans prior to the war, they weren't evil as portrayed in history they simply made the same mistake the US is about to make. With the consequence of there country devistated. A dreadful mistake voting for the wrong man, whipped up by a false sense of superiority !
Don't do it.
Half of America won't tolerate it.
Free quarters of the rest of the world won't. By voting trump you vote for your own distruction.
I would rather vote for a donkey, never mind Biden.
jinn , Nov 1 2020 2:19 utc | 93
the moron wrote:

You are clearly over-thinking this, clutching at straws to justify supporting the other side.
__________________________________________
What other side???
I'm guessing you are accusing me of supporting trump but who knows maybe you think I'm supporting Biden. Either way it is stupid of you to project your "side" based logic onto others. Do you really think it is impossible to analyze without first taking a side?

uncle tungsten , Nov 1 2020 2:25 utc | 94
c1ue #92
response to vk #65
As it is, the only partisan here is your and the Democratic party's whining about how they have more popular votes, much as the talk about packing the Supreme Court, etc etc.


Thank you, I liked that retort to vk. Can I distort your point that while the Demonazis delude themselves in more popular votes - the Repugnents have more of the un-popular votes. The deeply corrosive nonsense being shouted into the demonazi echo chamber is truly dangerous to the point that they will generate a standing wave resonance and collapse the entire building. Trouble is we will then have to endure an 11/11 to compete with their absurd 9/11 and - we'll never hear the end of it. :))

james , Nov 1 2020 2:26 utc | 95
mark - serious question...have you been drinking?? cheers james who thinks you need to step away from the computer keyboard!
Mark2 , Nov 1 2020 2:39 utc | 96
James
I share one bottle of wine a month. I don't do drugs, but thanks for asking.
I note you don't ask the 'right wing' to step a way'
But if the truth is hurting you. Perhaps you ought ?
Have a peaceful night.
Jackrabbit , Nov 1 2020 2:41 utc | 97
MarkU @Oct31 22:16 #67

I remember you as being a reasonably sane contributor ...

Thanks!

=
... but atm you have a serious case of TDS.

No. I'm neither for nor against Trump. I see him as a symptom of the system who has joined (possibly long ago) Team Deep State (the managers of the Empire). If it wasn't Trump, it would be some other media-savvy guy that can con the people.

=
Are you seriously trying to tell us that the last 4 years of US media foaming at the mouth about Trump (Russia-gate, Trump supporters being 'white supremacists' and egging on a race war) were all a plot to get him re-elected?

IMO Trump's economic nationalism and zenophobia were very much planned. As was the failure of the Democrats to mount any effective resistance. They pretend to hate Trump so so much but shoot themselves in the foot all the time.

Russiagate was nothing more than a new McCarthyism. That works well for the Deep State both internationally and domestically. Any dissenter is called a "knowing or unknowing" Russian asset.

Background: I've written that Trump was meant to beat Hillary. The 2016 election was a farce. Sanders and Trump were friendly with the Clintons for a very long time. Sanders was a sheepdog (not a real candidate) and Hillary threw the race to Trump. Trump is much more capable at what he does than Hillary would've been.

I mean seriously? WTF? What the hell would they do if they wanted him removed?

If the Deep State wanted him removed (but they don't) they would find a reason to invoke the 25th Amendment. They have positioned people to do this, if necessary. For example: VP Pence was a friend of McCain (who was a 'NEVER TRUMP'-er); Atty General Barr is close to the Bushes and Mueller ('NEVER TRUMP'-ers); CIA Dir. Gina Haspel is an acolyte of John Brennan (you guessed it, a 'NEVER TRUMP'-er).

=

MarkU @Oct31 23:18 #76

...he is not a globalist and that is his major sin in their eyes.

He's not anti-globalist as you seem to suggest. He's even bragged about his business dealings with Chinese, Arabs, Russians - pretty much any group with money.

Trump and the Deep State - the true Deep State, not the pretended partisan off-shoot - are EMPIRE-FIRST (and have been for decades). You can see this in what Trump has done globally. USA just wants a bigger cut of the action because they have to do the 'heavy lifting' of taking on China and Russia.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

I know that my cynical perspective must generate a lot of cognitive dissonance in many readers. But I don't see any other way to rationally explain Deep State actions and the history that has brought us to where are today.

!!

Jackrabbit , Nov 1 2020 2:59 utc | 98
MarkU

You might be interested in my comment on the Greenwald thread .

!!

vk , Nov 1 2020 3:04 utc | 99
@ Posted by: c1ue | Nov 1 2020 1:42 utc | 92

The numbers are there for everybody to see: Trump won with 3 million + votes below Hilary Clinton. That is not democracy in any sense of the word unless you go back to the more traditional forms of liberalism of the 16th-19th centuries. Those are the numbers, not my opinion.

Besides, I think you're not getting the irony of your position: the situation in the USA has gotten so degenerated that you're hanging by a thread - a thread you put on a golden pedestal and claim is the salvation of the Empire (the electoral college). Where did I see this? Oh, yes - the War of Secession of 1861-1865, when the slave states were already outnumbered 6 to 1 by the northern states. They kept their parity artificially for decades, until the whole thing suddenly burst up in the war (a war where they were crushed; no chance of victory at all).

So, the problem isn't in the system per se, but the pressure the ossification of the system is building up. When they seceded, the confederates genuinely thought they were the true inheritors of the liberal thought, the slave states being the most perfect manifestation of freedom; the same situation is building up today, albeit, obviously, on a much milder scale (there's no California gold this time, just the good ol' race to the bottom).


--//--

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 1 2020 2:25 utc | 95

I agree with you: the end of the electoral college (with it, any form of district vote) will give a chance for the conservatives (Republicans) to win back, for example, California (which has 40-46% of the popular vote). But it will also give the Democrats Texas (Dallas + Houston regions already make almost 50% of the population of the state and are Democratic bastions). It will also open the gates for third parties to flourish (avoiding a situation like Bernie Sanders, who had to affiliate to the Democrats).

Either way, it will give the American people and government a more honest, precise picture of the state of the nation. Or are you willing to live a perpetual illusion of "coastal elites vs heartland deplorables" forever (which, by the way, only fuels up secession as the only solution)?

denk , Nov 1 2020 3:34 utc | 100
The myth of HIQ whitemen....
--------------------------------------

Caitlin[for prez]johnston

Russia gate morphes seamlessly into China gate without missing a beat.

One hiq white man opines, oh so innocently

IN Russia gate, they were quoting only anon, nameless witness.
This time its different, we've real witness testifying on teevee , in Tucker [fuck China] Carlson show, no less !

The poor dear was referring to an 'ex CIA' [see, an insider, wink wink ] telling Tucker [fuck CHINA] Carlson ....

Psssst, many dem were CCP trojans !

ROFLAMO

oR that HUnter BIden buddy whatshisname again, who told Tucker [fuck China] Carlson oh so solemnly,

'Yes , I think the BIdens were compromised by the chicoms'

OMFG !
BIden is CCP'S man !

What happen if Biden get into the WH and immediately bomb Shanghai.?

Well half of gringos , the Trumpsters, would scream,

'Why isnt BIden bombing Beijing already, well BCOS we all know he's Xi's man in Washington' !

The dems, eager to clear their potus name, would implore earnestly,

'Hey BIden, you should invade Beijing RIGHT now, show them repuc we are just as tough, no, even better in showing the chicoms who's the boss around here.

What a devious brilliant way to get a bi partisan support for more wars.

BI partisan ?
That practically cover 99% of HIQ gringos.
hehehhehehhe


Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me hundreds of times.........

[Nov 01, 2020] What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change

The Blob will dominate the USA foreign policy, no matter who wins.
Notable quotes:
"... I've commented several times that China's political-economic system is far superior to the Parasitic Neoliberalism that's destroying the West. China's success suggests very strongly that we listen and closely observe while not taking heed of what any Western source has to say about China. ..."
"... The executives and majority shareholders of the CIA/NSA infiltrated corporate news media don't care whether Trump wins, and in fact often prefer it. ..."
"... Those guys are just part of the polarization narrative tearing the country apart. The hatred is real but there is acting involved, especially with Olbermann. These commentators feel that this polarization narrative is giving the country what it wants and it drives ratings. Schiff is just a first class liar ... ..."
"... Obama was just put in the pipeline as one of their possible future candidates for president. They have a stable of these people being mentored. Clinton was one as well. I bet Harris is one as well. ..."
"... I think they hate the Trumper so much because he he was in some else's stable. Possibly the controllers from campus in Tel Aviv. Different stable, same horse shit. ..."
"... Election of president = false flag iperation. The purpose is to fund the private media with advertising revenue paid for by consumer taxpayers. ..."
"... The rest of the world knows that the US is not agreement capable, it does not matter for Iran one bit what happens on November 3rd. ..."
"... I understand the rationale behind Trump's policies. But my conclusion is exactly the opposite: his attempt to stop the disintegration of the American Empire is accelerating the disintegration of the American Empire, not averting it. ..."
"... The key here is to understand that that's not how the American Empire should work. The USA continues to deindustrialize at an accelerated pace under Trump; Wall Street was never stronger than under Donald Trump; American debt was never higher. And now, unemployment is as high as during the 1929 era. ..."
"... The American Empire is the American Empire precisely because it doesn't need to produce anything it needs except defense. It prints money in order to siphon wealth from the rest of the world, enriching its economy while impoverishing the rest. That's the only way the Empire can function - any other way will result in its destruction. ..."
"... Obama ran on Hopey-Changey and on his projected charm, actually glib con-man gab. Worked wonderfully, imagine getting the Nobel Prize because you had a dead-beat Dad who was from Kenya and you scored B+ for public speaking? Argh. (The real reason: killing will continue, the status quo is preserved..) ..."
"... That Trump would win in 2016 was obvious as soon as he became a candidate. He was the cartoon contrast of Obomber - white, fat, orange, tall, R vs. D, outspoken, strident, clumsy (vs. the smooth-talking con), opinionated, stupid, and outrageous in a way. Click bait and viewer bait for the MSM - but not for no reason. ..."
"... To pretend that Trump is some special Peacemaker, trying oh so hard to overcome deep state resistance to rolling back empire, is Trumpism. Escobar is always there. Trump must be understood as a leading creature of the swamp himself. Trying so hard just as Obama was trying so hard. ..."
"... The relative scores settled terribly are more a matter of opportunity than ruthless efficiency. Though it is true that "success" requires dialing it back a bit, and having the likes of Bolton around is a way of ensuring either that nothing gets done, or we all end up ashes. Trump managed to axe Bolton on time, that time. ..."
Nov 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
MarkU , Nov 1 2020 4:22 utc | 103
@ Jackrabbit and _K_C

I do agree with you both that the anti-Trump hysteria has probably worked for him to some extent but I really don't believe that is a four year long plan, it is too much of a stretch to believe that the likes of Olbermannn and Schiff are consciously working for him. American politics really is that toxic, remember the stuff about Obama's birth certificate.

I also agree that Trump might actually have the support needed for a landslide win, not so much because of the vilification but because of the arson and looting imo. A lot of Trump supporters are keeping their heads down atm (and who can blame them) However, now it is my turn to make a prediction. I predict mass unrest on polling day. it is well accepted that the majority of the Democrat voters (fraudulent or not) are going to vote by post. Conversely most Trump supporters are likely to vote in person on the day (or try to at least)
I expect a concerted attempt to disrupt the polls by people who know that it will disproportionately affect the Trump vote. I expect violent clashes (with both sides trading blame) and a result that will please nobody. The worms are not going back into the can.

if I am wrong then I will be big enough to say so on the first appropriate thread on this site, fair enough?


OhOh , Nov 1 2020 4:36 utc | 104

Posted by: karlof1 | Oct 31 2020 23:43 utc | 81

Zhang Weiwei is the author of a very important book some may have heard about and even read, The China Wave: Rise Of A Civilizational State, of which an open preview can be read here. Also, the professor gave a talk at the German Schiller Institute related to the above book and the BRI project, which can be read here.

I've commented several times that China's political-economic system is far superior to the Parasitic Neoliberalism that's destroying the West. China's success suggests very strongly that we listen and closely observe while not taking heed of what any Western source has to say about China.

More gems, thanks.

uncle tungsten , Nov 1 2020 4:37 utc | 105
Well it wont change Wall Street on Parade or the tireless commentary by Pam Martens and Russ Martens. Legends.

I just paused by their tavern to see what elixirs of despair or mirth they have on offer today. Pour a strong drink comrades and scroll through the cellar. Always worth a visit.

Biswapriya Purkayast , Nov 1 2020 5:54 utc | 109
Trump has been preselected to win. The rest is just a circus.
m , Nov 1 2020 6:01 utc | 111
If Biden is not much different from Trump then why does "the blob" portray Trump as the Beelzebub?
_K_C_ , Nov 1 2020 6:10 utc | 112

If Biden is not much different from Trump then why does "the blob" portray Trump as the Beelzebub?
Posted by: m | Nov 1 2020 6:01 utc | 112

Because he's the heel and none of the negative coverage they give him sticks, most often on purpose. Don't mistake their serious tones and somber pronouncements for genuineness. It's not. The executives and majority shareholders of the CIA/NSA infiltrated corporate news media don't care whether Trump wins, and in fact often prefer it.

Sorry for the long link, I'm on a tablet and formatting is really difficult here:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/with-cnn-flap-medias-trump-era-identity-crisis-continues-195072/

MarkU , Nov 1 2020 6:32 utc | 114
@_K_C (108)

I am aware of the fact that corruption is rife in both parties. I saw the link to the Biden bus incident, deplorable yes but hardly on the same scale as the massive rioting, looting and intimidation of the BLM movement, they didn't actually burn down half the neighborhood did they. Organized voting obstruction will largely be confined to swing states for obvious reasons. I made my predictions, we will see.

Just to be clear, I don't even live in the US, I am British. If I did live in the US I wouldn't vote for either party, I'm not a 'lesser of two evils' kind of guy. To be frank I am viewing events in the US with considerable trepidation, I regard what happens in the US as a window into the likely future of the UK and the rest of Europe. I fear that a nuclear war may well occur sometime in the near future, quite possibly by accident owing to the continual cutting of warning times, mainly by the US. A very powerful nuclear armed country convulsed by civil unrest is a very dangerous entity, I fear the worst and so should we all imo.

Anyway thank you for being polite and civilised and for including actual information with your replies.

chu teh , Nov 1 2020 6:50 utc | 117
OT..I just read this translation from a Russian link...most agreeable as a counterpoise to Exceptional Nation nuttiness:

"Construction of the industrial complex, where high-speed trains will be produced, began in the Urals. In five years, Russia will have a domestic rolling stock for the VSM - high-speed highways. Moreover, the level of localization of production is stated at 80%, which means additional orders for the Russian industry."

https://aftershock.news/ [Of course, cannot vouch for the datum]

circumspect , Nov 1 2020 6:51 utc | 118

I do agree with you both that the anti-Trump hysteria has probably worked for him to some extent but I really don't believe that is a four year long plan, it is too much of a stretch to believe that the likes of Olbermannn and Schiff are consciously working for him. American politics really is that toxic, remember the stuff about Obama's birth certificate.

Those guys are just part of the polarization narrative tearing the country apart. The hatred is real but there is acting involved, especially with Olbermann. These commentators feel that this polarization narrative is giving the country what it wants and it drives ratings. Schiff is just a first class liar ...

As far as Obama's birth certificate, since his mom was a CIA officer using the Ford Foundation as cover during the murder of millions of leftists in Indonesia, I am sure she took time out to make sure he was born on US soil. All that stuff about him growing up on embassy row in Indonesia while the left was being slaughtered is carefully taken out of the story. Not his fault but it was quite a slaughter of humans and we know her employer was deeply involved. Going into the Indonesian villages to do studies. Really, studies and observations. They used to call it SOG groups.

Obama was just put in the pipeline as one of their possible future candidates for president. They have a stable of these people being mentored. Clinton was one as well. I bet Harris is one as well.

I think they hate the Trumper so much because he he was in some else's stable. Possibly the controllers from campus in Tel Aviv. Different stable, same horse shit.

Norwegian , Nov 1 2020 9:11 utc | 129
@circumspect | Nov 1 2020 6:51 utc | 118
I think they hate the Trumper so much because he he was in some else's stable. Possibly the controllers from campus in Tel Aviv. Different stable, same horse shit.
That makes a lot of sense!
gm , Nov 1 2020 9:56 utc | 130
What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change?

Well for one thing you probably won't see any more of this sort of thing escape into the open media: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8901193/National-security-nightmare-Hunter-Bidens-laptop.html

Because the FBI's evidence cleaner/tamperer division's mandate will be greatly expanded, as will the powers of the Silicone Valley Tekkies to more comprehensively throttle public free speech on electronic media, that the deep state's Invisible Hand disapproves of.

snake , Nov 1 2020 11:50 utc | 132

Trump is about controlled demolition of the empire NemesisCalling @ 5.

B summarized the style differences very well. But failed to mention the greater problem. 3 votes at polls every four years is not democracy<= no American is in charge of any thing the USA does.

the layers in the global power stack (each nation state the same):

  1. layer 1: global franchisor sets rules of play; establishes goals <=local nation state franchisees must obtain to remain in power.
  2. Layer 2: oligarch <= national (wall street beneficiaries who use their wealth to conform national outcome consistent with global powers).
  3. Layer 3: copyright y patent monopoly power constitute 90% of corporate Assets.
  4. Layer 4: think tank and other private orgs
  5. public<= layer 5: 527 elected government <= a tool to regulate members of public
  6. Layer 6: Intergov Bureaucracies limit and direct elected power to global goals.
  7. public<= layer 7: the 340,000,000 members of the media regulated public
  8. layer 8: stop and go economic system control
  9. layer 9: media controls info environment & public narrative (many techniques)

all layers but 5 and 7 are contained within an envelop of privately owned control freaks.

Election of president = false flag iperation. The purpose is to fund the private media with advertising revenue paid for by consumer taxpayers.

Article II and amendment 12 clearly deny American people any say in who is to be the P and VP of the USA.

Agree with Nemesiscalling, since 1947, standing orders from Layer 1<= demo the American excellence; deny superior economic power to average Americans . standing orders <=homogenize the world and standardize its governance.

American lifestyle and quality of life is indifferent to who the media puts into the white house.

by c1ue @ 26 said it best "Anyone against the "right" and "proper" Democrat sellouts to pharma, tech and enviro must be rednecks. It is precisely this view that galvanized the vote against HRC in 2016." the method used by the public layers is reflected here, it is called divide and conquer.

B reviewed the elements and factors that maintain the division of the masses..

Norwegian , Nov 1 2020 11:53 utc | 133
@Circe | Nov 1 2020 11:22 utc | 131
Biden is set to restore the JCPOA and treaties and policies that Trump burned.
The rest of the world knows that the US is not agreement capable, it does not matter for Iran one bit what happens on November 3rd.
H.Schmatz , Nov 1 2020 12:49 utc | 137
On the absence of a real left in the US ( is all right and more right..)and of a real program which could include real changes that could make any difference in people´s lives, on that what matters is political technology and communication based on demonizing the other candidate which translates in deep polarizing of societies with unexpected unknown consequences..

"Whoever wins, it will take a long time"

" If Trump were re-elected for another four years, it would be a real calamity and armed conflicts could even break out by the most radical groups, so that the country could be paralyzed "

"The ideological profile and policy of the United States is that of the president and, each one, even if they are from the same party, has maintained quite different political lines throughout history", says Rafael García, professor of International Relations at the USC. For this reason, he affirms that, in North America, "there is no strong party structure, but rather that the party acts as an electoral structure and it is on the candidates of each moment that certain policies are formed."

DEMOCRATS VS. REPUBLICANS. So much so that, as the professor explains, "the ideological configuration of the parties in the 20th century changed radically". On the one hand, he alludes to the fact that the Democrat, "in historical terms, was the party of the southern states, when they faced each other in the Civil War; racist states, which lasted until the 1920s ". Precisely, the political scientist indicates that "it was shortly before when the change took place, with the Roosevelt presidency, that he decided to change the configuration of the Democratic party as a result of the crisis of 29".

On the other hand, the Republican party, he points out, "was that of the union, that of the northern states, championed by Lincoln; the abolitionist party and that of the blacks ". So how did these changes come about until today? Rafael García points to "a consequence of the political strategies that the presidents embodied at all times, not because there was an ideological line behind each party ."

TRY TO ASSIMILATE THE AMERICAN MODEL TO THE EUROPEAN. For Rafael García, the Spaniards, when speaking of US politics, "make a mistake in translating our political structures" to those there. In other words, "in Europe the duality between left and right is widely assumed and we unconsciously transfer it to US policy." "That is a complete error" , sentence.

And it is that there " there is neither right nor left, there is right and more right ", affirms the professor. Which means that there does not exist and did not exist a historical labor-union party as such. In fact, the transmutation that is usually made from the democratic party to 'social democratic' is not correct . For García, Biden embodies "a more moderate man than the crazy Trump, but that does not mean that he has some kind of relationship with a left-wing thought ."

RIGHT AND RIGHT. "A multimillionaire gentleman, absolute representative of the establishment" (referring to Biden), and "a traditional gentleman, more conservative" (referring to Trump) ". "Although Biden is a Democrat, who perhaps holds stronger principles and is hopeful, identifying him with the left is still a long way from reality," he says. Therefore, it is denied that the Democrats are the American left and the Republicans the right .

THE CAMPAIGN LACKS PROGRAMMATIC INTEREST. For the USC political scientist, the US electoral campaign lacks interest: "It is absurd, it seems like a disqualification competition in which a political or government program is not exposed ." And every time Spain is also getting closer to that model of disputes.

"We are Americanized, in the sense that the weight of the parties is also being diluted in Spain in favor of the candidatesThese advisers are responsible for the growing division that is taking place in Western society ," he says.

THE GOVERNMENT IN THE HANDS OF POLITICAL ADVISORS. In Rafael García's opinion, the decision margin "is shrinking", that is, "the autonomy capacity of governments to make decisions is smaller, and they are conditioned ". So, what is the difference, in practice, in management, between PP and PSOE? "Little thing, in the end, little thing," he asserts.

That is why " that little thing can not be said to the voter, but must be mobilized with a degree of identification, unconditional adherence, so that it can be recognized in a brand ." And what is this transformation of Spanish politics due to? The professor is clear about it: " It is a translation of commercial marketing techniques to politics." Thus, a marketing advisor must "build customer loyalty" and a political advisor should build voter loyalty .

Now, if there are no significant differences between the two options, how to achieve it? "Through a demonization of the opposite and the creation of a hostility that is dangerous, because the divisions to which society is returning are irreconcilable ." In this way, García believes that " it is the work of political advisers who, apart from the difficulties that exist in societies, which are many, polarize them when it comes to building and mobilizing a faithful electorate, to the point that they make no difference what the party says or what the leader says ".

In the United States, as evidenced by this expert, "it does not matter if Trump does the atrocities he does, or if he said in the previous campaign that he could murder a person on Fifth Avenue in New York without anything happening to him ." This, transferred to the Spanish sphere, "assumes that the party can do any outrage: fraud, embezzlement, illegal financing ...". "That is something we are seeing, whatever party it is, but for the faithful voter it does not matter, because their party will continue to be so and will continue to listen to the channel and read the newspaper that supports it," he says.

THE ELECTORAL RESULT WILL BE EXTENDED OVER TIME. "I have no idea nor do I want to make forecasts, but I consider that Trump is a calamity and that if he were there for four more years it would be an absolute calamity ", says Professor García. However, " there is a state of opinion that fears that the result of these elections will be complicated and that there will be challenges, so that the end result will be a diabolical process of recount, county-by-county challenges, repetitions in certain districts. .. a real madness that can last several months ", he warns, something that," with this polarization trail, it is not known how it could end. "

" I am referring to the outbreak of armed conflicts; These people have weapons, radical groups, some of them crazy and who can shoot themselves in a demonstration, doing outrages as part of the institutional paralysis in which the country can be plunged ", he asserts.

This is how people, like those at SST, who lied about the real difference amongst Democrats and Republicans in real effective changes of policy, shouting to the four winds that "the Communists are coming", when they are not, and this way spread hatred and division amongst the US society as if there was no tomorrow so that to conserve their "tax cut", could end witnessing the total destruction of the US, not only as "Empire" ( a process already in march before Corona-fear and 2020 electoral process, a construct of decades of lying the electorate for the greed of a minority...), but also as a nation state. All these people who, holding privileged insider knowledege of the funtioning of the state as former insiders, should be held accountable for their willing and conscious participation in the build up of the social and economic disastaer to come....

Forecast at the end of the article posted and quoted above:

The future: Institutional paralysis

··· An institutional paralysis like the one that can come after 3-N "could already occur in 2000, in the elections between George Bush Jr. and Al Gore, but the latter accepted the results even though they were open to challenge, and that it avoided institutional collapse".

··· However, "now it does not seem that either of the two candidates is going to have a gesture of these characteristics, with which, if doubts already appear, it will not only be in the State, but the final collapse may be extremely long and with unimaginable consequences ", indicates Professor García. "It seems to me that the United States has a terrible situation ahead ", he sentenced.

H.Schmatz , Nov 1 2020 13:06 utc | 138
A scene of Game of Thrones which could summarize 2020 US election campaign, that it was based on throwing dirty to each other....But who has the real "power", not the "government"?:

https://twitter.com/IvanRedondo__/status/1322190858427502594

Feral Finster , Nov 1 2020 14:09 utc | 139
The Blob, the Borg, the Deep State, or whatever you want to call it, never left, largely because Trump was unable to effectively fight it.

No, a second Trump term, if it were to happen, would be no better, because Trump will still be Trump. Weak, stupid and easily manipulated.

vk , Nov 1 2020 14:20 utc | 141
@ Posted by: Down South | Nov 1 2020 7:04 utc | 122

I understand the rationale behind Trump's policies. But my conclusion is exactly the opposite: his attempt to stop the disintegration of the American Empire is accelerating the disintegration of the American Empire, not averting it.

The key here is to understand that that's not how the American Empire should work. The USA continues to deindustrialize at an accelerated pace under Trump; Wall Street was never stronger than under Donald Trump; American debt was never higher. And now, unemployment is as high as during the 1929 era.

The American Empire is the American Empire precisely because it doesn't need to produce anything it needs except defense. It prints money in order to siphon wealth from the rest of the world, enriching its economy while impoverishing the rest. That's the only way the Empire can function - any other way will result in its destruction.

Trump's ideology will destroy the American Empire. It will collapse under a wave of hyperinflation, skyrocketing unemployment, shortage of goods and collapsing economic output.

JoeG , Nov 1 2020 14:52 utc | 144
Advance FL voting #s are SERIOUS BAD NEWS for the Blue team. Joe just might be done before it even starts. :) https://joeisdone.github.io/florida/
JoeG , Nov 1 2020 14:59 utc | 146
President Trump pulling over 15% Hispanic early votes in NC. :) https://joeisdone.github.io/northcarolina/
Down South , Nov 1 2020 15:11 utc | 151
vk @ 141
The manufacturing sector saw 17,000 jobs added after four months of flat activity. This followed a strong run of an average of 22,000 manufacturing jobs added every month in 2018 and 15,800 per month in 2017. Those gains followed two weak years that saw 7,000 manufacturing jobs lost in 2016 and only 5,800 per month added in 2015.

In the last 30 months of President Obama's term, manufacturing employment grew by 185,000 or 1.5%. In President Trump's first 30 months, manufacturers added 499,000 jobs, expanding by 4.0%. In the same 30-month time span during the mature, post-recovery phase of the business cycle, some 314,000 more manufacturing jobs were added under Trump than under Obama, a 170% advantage

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.forbes.com/v/s/www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/07/10/in-trumps-first-30-months-manufacturing-up-by-314000-jobs-over-obama-what-states-are-hot/amp/%3famp_js_v=0.1&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%253D#ampf=
He's doing a really great job of de-industrialising the US.

I'm not including current figures because of the economic impact of COVID.

Noirette , Nov 1 2020 15:55 utc | 161
As Trump is going to win (provided the usual conditions pertain, fraud is not over the normal levels, and the whole sh*t-story doesn't end up in the courts or fought out on the streets, whereupon no reasoned predictions can be made), speculation about Biden as Prez. is a waste of time.

The last part of the Pepe piece in b's post, which gives reasons to not vote Biden, my take.:

Obama ran on Hopey-Changey and on his projected charm, actually glib con-man gab. Worked wonderfully, imagine getting the Nobel Prize because you had a dead-beat Dad who was from Kenya and you scored B+ for public speaking? Argh. (The real reason: killing will continue, the status quo is preserved..)

Anyway, the ACA was a damp squib, it didn't solve anything, and depending on pov was in effect a gift to Mega Insurance or was just 'lame' or as often, 'favored some over others' etc.

Then the Financial Crisis hit. The Obama admin. didn't prevent it (one might argue they couldn't not sure) and it didn't 'repair' as far as the ppl were concerned. Banks and Some Big Cos were bailed out - millions of homeowners were tossed to the curb by Banks. Child poverty, hunger, increased; wages weren't upped, health stats got worse No need to go on - this provoked tremendous anger. The 2010 elections saw big R gains, 2014 they took the Senate, iirc.

(Who cared about foreign parts like Ukraine, Syria? is what I'm saying.)

That Trump would win in 2016 was obvious as soon as he became a candidate. He was the cartoon contrast of Obomber - white, fat, orange, tall, R vs. D, outspoken, strident, clumsy (vs. the smooth-talking con), opinionated, stupid, and outrageous in a way. Click bait and viewer bait for the MSM - but not for no reason.

DT's electoral promises were both opportunistic and more profound: like fire-brand preachers of old, Build The Wall - MAGA - i.e. pledging a return to the past (see, again the opposite of Barry, who hoped for the future) -- Stop the wars, undo past mistakes (Dems don't run on anti-war..!), and, most important:

Drain the Swamp. The Deplorables are not ordinary ppl, but criminals in positions of power. By putting this forward, Trump became a mirror of the ppl, part of them.

Imho, Trump's record (null or abysmal or whatever depending on pov) is not enough for rejecting him in favor of loathed "failed" policies of the past - Clinton gang, Biden a part of it, Obama, etc. (By US voters I mean.)

but see Kiza 8, gottlieb 63, dave 72, Jack, others, >> no difference.

Down South , Nov 1 2020 15:59 utc | 162
...Bringing the supply chain back to the US and re-industrialising the US isn't going to happen overnight or even in a couple of quarters. Just like the process to de-industrialise didn't happen overnight. But that the process has started, it is undeniable, and will only pick up pace when he wins a second term.
c1ue , Nov 1 2020 16:01 utc | 163
Poll update: Nov 1 update Trafalgar vs. MSM vs. 2016

4 new Trafalgar polls came out for 10/29: Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Michigan. Trump expanded his lead on Biden in Florida and Michigan vs. Trafalgar's earlier October polls:
FL from +2.3% Trump to +2.7%
MI from +0.6% Trump to +2.5%

Trump did worse in Nevada and AZ: AZ from +4% Trump to +2.5%.

Nevada polled +2.3% Biden

Once again: the question is if Trump outperforms vs. MSM polls. If he repeats anywhere near his 2016 - he will win.

William Gruff , Nov 1 2020 16:06 utc | 164
Trump can only win again if the establishment/deep state is once again exceptionally overconfident and asleep in the control room. They have numerous ways of swinging the election at the last hour, from pre-hacked Diebold paperless voting machines to hanging chads to simply having their operatives scattered around the nation throw ballots away and fabricate the tallies. Oddly enough this extreme carelessness is still possible. The establishment/deep state have not yet come to terms with what caused their plans to blow up in 2016 and really do seriously believe that Russia had something to do with it, even though they have no idea what Russia might have actually done to wreck their expected electoral blowout by Clinton. They also think that part of the problem was that Trump wasn't vilified harshly enough (they wanted the election to at least appear competitive), and they think they have that covered this time around. It could be that the over-the-top hysteria from the TDS victims has them overestimating the anti-Trump sentiment, though.

Still, the establishment/deep state screwing up exactly the same way twice in a row doesn't seem likely. Even so, their profound incompetence continues to astonish, so maybe we will once again get treated to the delightful spectacle of crowds of middle class faux left dilettante snowflakes melting down.

Don Bacon , Nov 1 2020 16:14 utc | 165
@ Down South #159

It not hard to see why big pharma despises Trump. They stand to lose a lot of money. My health stock investment has almost doubled during Trump's tenure.

Anne , Nov 1 2020 16:24 utc | 167
vk @158 - Not acreage - but based (until Andrew Jackson, hardly any principled person's prez) on PROPERTY VALUE. JUST as in the good ol' UK. Yep - despite NPR folks believing otherwise (clealry never visited a history book) - the aristo controlled (in what way really different?) Britain was actually a "democracy":, and was so from Magna Carta on... Of course it was a, how to say, constrained, constricted "democracy," but then so was the original one in Athens. Those who count as THE Demos - always been a matter for property holder concern... So in GB - male, 21 and over and owning a property of a taxable (always this, huh) value of a certain sum. Ensured that the hoi polloi males over 21 couldn't vote - and for the exact same reasons, I do not doubt, as the intentions behind the Electoral College construct by those less than admirable FFs. Gotta prevent the vast masses of the population - the great unwashed, "the bewildered herd" in Hamilton's verbiage I do believe - from having the ability to grab (well, they knew all about blood-letting theft of land, after all, didn't they?) that sacred "property." (Sacred, surely 'cos owned by the equivalent of the Murican aristos.)

Little - no, Nothing has changed.

c1ue , Nov 1 2020 16:30 utc | 168
@Down South #159
It shouldn't be surprising. Actual doctors and nurses are, by and large, really great people. They don't want to turn away anyone.
The poorest in America can't afford health care - even the middle class can't really as testified to by the millions of bankruptcies caused by medical expenses. Hospitals thus were losing large sums of profit treating people who simply could not pay.

Obamacare threw many (not all) of those people onto health insurance company plans by having the government pay the health insurance premium and then having the existing health insurance customers pay via increased premiums - all this on top of the ongoing health care profiteering. That's why Obamacare should really have been called "No Health Insurance Company or Hospital Left Behind".

The existence of Obamacare also distracts people from the real problem: actual affordable health care - which every other nation in the world except the US has, entirely due to national health care.

I've posted this before - I will post it again.

In 2006, I left the semiconductor software industry on my own because I disagreed with management decisions to outsource all jobs to India rather than change their fundamentally flawed business model. Semiconductor software companies are the only part of the design chain that charges by software license rather than per part made - this was great in the early days of semiconductors but is a disaster when the industry consolidates to 5 large multinational but US based companies.

In 2007, I experienced a retinal detachment right after my COBRA ended. I paid $35,000 in cash to get that fixed - including a 5 hour total elapsed journey through a hospital which included a 1 hour surgical room occupancy and 1 hour of recovery time. In the door at 6:30 am and waiting for a taxi at 12:30 pm. The UCSF doctor that attended to me (and did a great job to be clear) said his fee out of all that was $1200.

The following year, some cells stirred loose by the corrective surgery landed on my now-attached retina and started reproducing. Instead of coughing up another $35K (or more), I chose to fly to Australia, consult with the best eye doctor recommended by the Royal Opthalmological Society of Australia and New Zealand.
That doctor's office was literally a light year more advanced than UCSF - supposedly one of the premier teaching hospitals in the US. I pay him AU$5000 - US$4000 at the time, plus another AU$800 for the hospital visit. The Sydney Eye Hospital gave me the choice of staying a 2nd night (I stayed 1 night because I was at the end of the queue for the day, as a foreigner), for free, including meals and medications administered on site.

I paid literally 1/7th the price in AU vs. the US - an Australia is not a 3rd world country. The doctor got paid 3.5x in absolute terms. The service I received was immensely better. Even including travel costs: flight plus 2 weeks in AU (which I was vacationing), the overall cost was still 1/5th of my US experience.

That opened my eyes (literally) to just how fucked up the US system is.

It has only gotten worse since.

c1ue , Nov 1 2020 16:36 utc | 169
@Don Bacon #165
Stock price doesn't bear any short term correlation with profits.
Just look at Tesla, Uber and what not.
Health care sector profits have increased disproportionately since Obamacare: CFR report on health insurance company profits
Since ACA implementation on January 1, 2014, health insurance stocks outperformed the S&P 500 by 106 percent.

106% = more than double the overall market.

Down South , Nov 1 2020 16:36 utc | 170
Don Bacon @ 165

Trump has not been able to repeal and replace Obamacare yet so the profits are still rolling in.

vk , Nov 1 2020 17:00 utc | 171
@ Posted by: Anne | Nov 1 2020 16:24 utc | 167

You're right. The early liberals - specially from the American South - loved to compare themselves with the Athenian Republic. The rationale is that the existence of slaves enabled them to enjoy unparalleled freedom. Black slaves were frequently compared with helots when the problem of slave revolts appeared (with the pro-abolitionists evoking the figure of Spartacus). The South considered itself freer than the North in the USA - it was only after their destruction in 1865 that the tide turned and the North became, retrospectively, the paragon of liberal freedom.

In Europe, England was considered the ultimate free nation. Even American liberals (including Benjamin Franklin) built up their legitimacy on being of English stock (Anglo-Saxon race). With time, liberals begun to legitimize their hegemony with a worldwide racial hierarchy - hence the definition of American democracy as Herrenvolk Democracy ("Master race democracy").

And yes, the original liberals considered the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as their birth date - not the French Revolution of 1789 (which they condemned as illiberal, or "radical"). The founders of neoliberalism (Hayek, Mises, etc. etc.) put 1870 as the apex of liberalism, which they tried to revive.

Wind Hippo , Nov 1 2020 17:06 utc | 172
Escobar writes: "In contrast, two near-certain redeeming features would be the return of the US to the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was Obama-Biden's only foreign policy achievement"

Anyone who actually thinks this is either ignorant or moronic. Biden will absolutely require Iran to limit their ballistic missiles before "rejoining" that then-altered deal. Iran will never let this happen. Thus the deal is essentially dead [as far as US involvement goes, which the other parties should ignore]. MOA notes this as well.

I don't know why though MOA refers to Escobar at all here though. The ignorance demonstrated in the above quote should be enough to disqualify such a person from any discussion about Biden, Iran, etc. and to also ignore anything else such a person claims. You might as well quote a schizophrenic you meet down by the river for his take on Iran and the JCPOA. Might as well learn sign language and ask the chimps at your local zoo what they think about it.

Down South , Nov 1 2020 17:13 utc | 173
c1ue @ 168

You are not the only American who is doing it. They have even developed a term for it - medical tourism:

With rising healthcare costs in the US and the rise of health tourism destinations that offer quality and affordable healthcare perked up by a beautiful travel experience, Americans are scampering to book appointments with healthcare providers far away from home. Yearly, millions of patients travel from countries lacking healthcare infrastructure or less advanced in a particular area of medical care to countries that provide highly-specialized medical care.
https://www.magazine.medicaltourism.com/article/top-10-medical-tourism-destinations-world
William Gruff , Nov 1 2020 17:22 utc | 174
Noirette @161: " Drain the Swamp. The Deplorables are not ordinary ppl, but criminals in positions of power. By putting this forward, Trump became a mirror of the ppl, part of them."

True enough, and as even the bunny claims, this was part of the act. But those who think Trump's upset victory in 2016 was part of the plan need to offer up a better explanation for why those criminals in positions of power would want to kneecap themselves with public exposure. The rationale has to be extraordinarily critical and of huge value to the elites because that price of exposure has been monumentally damaging to them.

Keep in mind that one of the most important (if not the most important) aspects of US presidential elections is the "electoral mandate" . Far more important than specific campaign promises is the general tone of the campaign. If a winning candidate had campaigned on ending wars, bringing jobs back from abroad, and fighting corruption in government, this isn't just an indication that the public wants something done about these issues. First and foremost it forces an acknowledgement that these are indeed major issues that the public wants to be part of the national discourse that the capitalist mass media tries to control. Allowing these issues to become part of the national discourse is diametrically opposed to the interests of the power elites. They do not want these issues to even be discussed, much less addressed by the state.

So why would they intentionally force these issues into the forefront of national discourse? That is, after all, what Trump's victory did, despite the establishment's best efforts to distract with "Russia! Russia! Russia!" and "Racism, sexism and pussy-grabbing, oh my!" . These issues were already smoldering below the surface due to Sanders' campaign, so why would the elites want them fanned into flames?

Answer: They didn't. As much as the issues that the winner campaigns on getting elevated in priority by the "electoral mandate" , the loser's issues get diminished. Trump was supposed to lose, and lose bigly, and in the process the things he campaigned on were supposed to be crushed down to objects of ridicule by the corporate mass media. Trump's resounding defeat was supposed to signal that Americans rejected Trump's "conspiracy theories" about some fictitious "deep state" that only existed in Trump's imagination, burying the suspicions that the election fraud committed against Sanders aroused. Trump being ignominiously trounced was supposed to allow the mass media to say that Americans unequivocally voiced their opposition to ending war and their support for intervention in Syria, clearing the way for Clinton's "no fly zone" . Trump being utterly humiliated in the polls was supposed to decisively demoralize the "deplorables" , convincing them with finality that there will never again be good-paying blue collar jobs and that they are just disposable relics, while at the same time crippling their resistance to the social engineering of "identity politics" ; social engineering that I should point out is even more ill-conceived and incompetently executed than the 737MAX MCAS system.

Trump was supposed to lose and take those issues with him to the dustbin of history.

It is important to understand this point because it clarifies who our enemies really are and helps us to understand how they view the world.

lysias , Nov 1 2020 17:41 utc | 177
Ancient Athens excluded from power slaves and resident foreigners (metics). Also women in the families of male citizens, although one could argue that they had virtual representation through the male citizens in their families. So also for the children in citizens' families, although they would have full rights once they reached adulthood. The adult male citizens who had full political rights were about 20 percent of the population of Attica.

And even the poorest citizens had much more political power than average citizens of today's so-called democracies have today. They could attend and vote in the Assembly, they could be chosen by lot to serve in such bodies as the Council and juries, and to serve in most offices. And for doing all these things there was pay, so that poor citizens had particular motivation to participate, which they did. Just read Aristophanes. No wonder most rich Athenians hated the system.

NemesisCallimg , Nov 1 2020 18:20 utc | 179
@176 H schmatz

Again, you are mistaken. I am getting tired of correcting you.FoxNews drug their heels when it came to supporting DJT in 2015 until it was clear that the majority of conservatives actually wanted DJT as their candidate.

It was at that point that business-smartz kicked in and they had to acknowledge that they must throw their weight behind the Trump ticket lest they prove themselves the faux-conservative Rinos they actually were/are.

Business 101, my friend. You wanna keep the advert. revenue coming in, you produce content your audience actually agrees with.

TBH and AFAIK Tucker Carlson is still the only truly sane conservative on FOx news. The rest, including Hannity, don't neccessarily mind the endless wars so long as the public endorses them. They are chameleons without an ethical lodestar guiding their commentary.

jinn , Nov 1 2020 18:23 utc | 180

gruff wrote

Trump being utterly humiliated in the polls was supposed to decisively demoralize the "deplorables", convincing them with finality that there will never again be good-paying blue collar jobs and that they are just disposable relics,
_____________________________________________

The problem is you think the oligarchs are every bit as stupid as you are. It would be nice if they were, but unfortunately they're not.

First of all lets examine who are these deplorables who you imagine were set up by the oligarchs to be crushed and demoralized by running Trump as their candidate.

The deplorables are:
-The Americans that own the guns

-The Bible thumping American jihadist

-The Americans that sign up for the police and military and in those rolls operate the states weaponry

-The Americans who believe the tree of liberty needs to be watered with the blood of tyrants

I could go on but all you have to do is tune into the corporate mass media that caters to the deplorables to find out who they are and what they are being sold.

But Mr Gruff is just too stupid to figure out why in the world the oligarchs might want to not antagonize that segment of the population.

The oligarchs would have to have lost their frikken minds to hire trump for the purpose of giving the deplorables a big "fuck you" as you imagine. The oligarchs are well aware that they already gave a big fat finger to the deplorables when they engineered the election of Obama (not to mention the 40 preceding years of marginalizing that segment of the population) and just maybe it was time to pacify that segment of the population that was growing larger and a bit restless.

Charles Peterson , Nov 1 2020 19:26 utc | 183
William Gruff @ 174
But those who think Trump's upset victory in 2016 was part of the plan need to offer up a better explanation for why those criminals in positions of power would want to kneecap themselves with public exposure. The rationale has to be extraordinarily critical and of huge value to the elites because that price of exposure has been monumentally damaging to them.
Amen!!! I don't think that people who forward that narrative fully understand how damaging this exposure has been to them.

By being exposed they have been shown to exist . This is super critical! No more is talk of the deep state relegated to the lunatic fringe where they can be easily derided as "conspiracy theorists"

Whether Trump can drain the swamp or not is to be seen but what is not in dispute is that they exist.

Posted by: Down South | Nov 1 2020 18:31 utc | 181 How can the blob "return" when they never really left?

To pretend that Trump is some special Peacemaker, trying oh so hard to overcome deep state resistance to rolling back empire, is Trumpism. Escobar is always there. Trump must be understood as a leading creature of the swamp himself. Trying so hard just as Obama was trying so hard.

The relative scores settled terribly are more a matter of opportunity than ruthless efficiency. Though it is true that "success" requires dialing it back a bit, and having the likes of Bolton around is a way of ensuring either that nothing gets done, or we all end up ashes. Trump managed to axe Bolton on time, that time.

It's avoidance of those lower probability mega catastrophes that is the principle reason of voting trump out with regards to foreign policy. And there are other reasons.

[Oct 31, 2020] What CIA does not like about Trump: Trump is bait; his presence is resulting in many, many bad actors revealing themselves to be nefarious.

Oct 31, 2020 | greenwald.substack.com

Abbybwood 22 hr

Four years ago I was railing against Hillary Clinton on Facebook without any censoring.

Tonight I watched an interview Tucker Carlson did with Glenn Greenwald regarding the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden scandal and Tucker showed a poll revealing that 51% of those polled believe this scandal is "Russian Disinformation" with ZERO evidence.

Why do those being polled believe this? Because the bulk of the MSM they watch have told them so and the major tech platforms have ALL censored the pertinent information so there is NO debate amongst the electorate. All of this less than one week from our national election.

With Facebook and Twitter and Google's and the bulk of the MSM's heavy fingers on the scales of public information there are only two words to describe this:

ELECTION INTERFERENCE.

And this with over 70 million voters already having cast their ballots!

Regardless of the outcome next Tuesday, these tech/media corporations should ALL be brought down at least to the point where they can never be allowed to interfere in another American election again, regardless of the higher-ups personal political preferences.

And this is the system the war-mongering DNC wants to "spread around the world" with their "regime change wars"?!

No thank you.

Reply
Stephanie Shaw Oct 29

Glenn-I'm a new subscriber this evening. I want Trump gone. But I appreciate your non-partisan search of truth.

Reply Frank P Huguenard Oct 29

Stephanie, why do you want Trump gone? Trump is bait. His presence is resulting in many, many bad actors revealing themselves to be nefarious. Just look at Twitter/Facebook censoring this blockbuster news (along with the rest of the media). We, The People, are finally seeing first had the level of tyranny that's upon us. None of it has anything to do with Trump. But it's Trump's existence in the White House that is bringing it to light. Without him, we would have never seen it for what it is. Think about that.

Reply Calbeck 19 hr

I may disagree with your take on CIA involvement, but the above paragraph couldn't be more accurate. Trump's election was like throwing a brick through a rotten, wasp-infested beehive.

Reply bitskipper 13 hr

I'll second that. Though perhaps to be fair to the original sentiment, perhaps the brick has only knicked the beehive, and then smashed a window or two along it's way. He is arguably inevitable, even desirable from some perspective, but the degree of nuisance is not erased, so much as outweighed, by the necessity. We would be living in a better world, by definition, if someone like him had never been required to improve it.

Reply Calbeck 9 hr

Agreed. I have been telling Democrats all they need do is run better candidates - and virtually every time, I get people trying to claim there was never anything wrong with Hillary or Joe and also Trump is Literally Hitler Incarnate.

I grew up watching psychos in the Extreme Right talk that way about whoever THEY didn't like politically. Arguing that Bill Clinton was going to send Janet Reno to take their guns and cart them off to FEMA camps like a scene out of "Red Dawn" or something. But this isn't the fringes talking anymore. It's the mainstream, and it's on the Left.

Seriously chilling.

[Oct 31, 2020] This is project Mockingbird happening on a scale almost unimaginable

Oct 31, 2020 | greenwald.substack.com

Frank P Huguenard Oct 29

Glen, I just paid for a subscription so that I can say this one FACT. The PODESTA EMAILS WERE NOT THE RESULT OF A HACK.

Please stop reporting this nonsense. The cover story was all part of the plan (approved by HRC) to shift attention to a Trump-Russia collusion narrative that has always been fiction. Guccifer 2.0 was created out of this same scheme. The meta data on the files prove that it's impossible that those emails were hacked, they had to be downloaded on a local device (thumbdrive most likely).

The FISA Abuse, the spying on Trump, The plan to implicate collusion, the Flynn frameup, the Impeachment, The Mueller investigation were not the base crimes, those were all part of a cover up. By you insinuating that the DNC server got hacked (which there is zero evidence for), you are wittingly or unwittingly complicit in perpetuating the lie that it was. You're missing a much, much bigger story here. The biden laptop isn't even the tip of the icebeg here.

Ask yourself this; "Why would dozens of high level DOJ, FBI, CIA and Whitehouse officials in the Obama Administration put their careers on the line and commit literally hundreds of felonies all in an effort to obstruct/neutralize Trump?" That is first question any true journo should be asking right now.

Reply
Frank P Huguenard Oct 29

You mention in this article that the media is basically over-compensating for helping Trump win in 2016. That is extremely naive on your part. The media/twitter/facebook/CNN/MSNBC, etc. is too well orchestrated, too well coordinated to be operating even vaguely independently. This is project Mockingbird happening on a scale almost unimaginable. Maybe even the Intercept was intercepted. Why would the publication that you founded not allow you to publish this? If you look back at 2016, the entire media industrial complex was just as coordinated as it is now, they just got sloppy because they were certain Trump wasn't going to win. Who's being naive now Kay?

Reply Elizabeth Renee Oct 29

I also get frustrated with what I see as a naive interpretation, by figures like Dan Bongino, Tim Pool, etc. I wonder if there is a fear by some to point behind the curtain, that they will be attacked and cancelled for "conspiracy theories."

Reply Frank P Huguenard Oct 29

Neither Tim or Dan are really journalists and besides, this story is so massive and so incomprehensibly large in scope/scale/magnitude that we shouldn't get too frustrated.

The main point to remember here is that none of this has anything to do with Trump. Look at the timeline in its entirety, the best we are able to do and then plot a graph of the Media Industrial Complex's behavior. They were out to derail Trump from the moment he came down the escalator and it's not because he's a womanizer or that he's a game show host. They couldn't afford to have an non-establishment player come in and wreck their plans. The question is, what the f#$% were their plans? Why did they risk so much to keep him out of the WH?

Reply ScuzzaMan 15 hr

My view is that the constant sturm und drang about the corruption of the elections (voter suppression, mail fraud, ballot harvesting, etc, etc) is a ploy to distract from the fact that the real corruption already happened long before the election.

The real corruption is even mentioned by Glenn in his draft: the SELECTION process.

The media do what they're told, and what they are doing is keeping up the drumbeat of election corruption. In other words, they've been told to distract all attention from the real story.

The real story is that, to the people who control candidate selection, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO WINS.

That is the whole point of controlling the selection process. Oh yes, I know the media hates Trump and so do the establishment. Really? The same establishment that just benefitted from the greatest upward transfer of wealth in human history, during a pandemic panic, under Trump? Bezos has gained over 70 billion in net worth this year, under Trump. You think he hates Trump? Really?

You think Biden will do less? Or perhaps you think he would do more than the greatest upward transfer of wealth in human history?

Republicans versus Democrats is a con game. It's a kabuki theatre of manipulation of parochial tribalism, a Punch n Judy Show for the rubes.

As was once mentioned in the UT threads at Salon, isn't it time for a second political party, Mr Greenwald?

Reply 13 replies Ron Wagner 21 hr

Because they were sure Hillary would win and they would be protected and rewarded.

Reply Substack Commenter 34 12 hr

It's not about their plans. It's just a non-violent (so far) class war. Trump is a vessel for the working classes to carry their dissatisfaction of elite leadership. It's easier to communicate directly to the people now due to social media, so the traditional media can't tell the people how to vote (can't declare a candidate to be beyond the pale any more, squashing their chances, and they used to have that power). The media are part of the elite leadership, they don't like the working classes not listening to them, and they don't like the loss of power. That's their agenda.

They have taken to "any means necessary" to keep that power, even though now it's basically lying and obfuscation. They are trading off their legacy trustworthiness for short term benefit, but they are destroying that foundation of trust as well. That happens slowly but surely as more people see through them. Takes too long in the experience of everyone who is reading this, because we're well ahead of the curve. The average mid level elite is a working professional with kids too busy and not interested enough to dig to the next level and has been taking their word - but they too see the truth every time they really look and over time that is going to go as we all hope it will. It's just going to take a while.

Reply 2 new replies Bob Oct 29

Except Trump was/is good for ratings and business.

Reply 2 replies Calbeck 21 hr

"The guy who co-founded one of the current-day major online journalism outlets isn't really a journalist" - Someone Posting to the Comments on an Article by a Guy Who Co-Founded One of the Current-Day Major Online Journalism Outlets

Reply 5 replies Bob Oct 29

not to mention ;The Intercept (Omidyar et.al .), intercepting their cache of the "Snowden Files" from the public..

Reply Frank P Huguenard Oct 29

There is good cause to question the Snowden story. He was CIA. Once a CIA agent, always a CIA agent. It's plausible that he was inserted into booz allen hamilton in an attempt to harm the NSA (on behalf of the CIA). Tell me this Glen, how did Snowden evade the largest dragnet/manhunt ever on the planet to evade the authorities and make it to Moscow? Am I the only one who finds this a little fishy? As someone who has been in software for 40 years, when I heard him on Joe Rogan podcast about a year ago, I didn't find his backstory credible at all. He sounds intelligent, but when you get beyond that and listen to him from a technological perspective, his story doesn't add up. I find it hard to believe.

Reply Scott 22 hr

Why would a "patriot" doing work on behalf of the CIA be thrown to the wolves? Why wouldn't they cover for him after it was released? I haven't been in software for 40 years, but I believe that the Snowden story is extremely credible.

Reply 13 replies e.pierce 2 hr

Snowden was a libertarian high school dropout hacker

The Deep State hired 800,000 employees/contractors around the Beltway after 9/11 on a war footing, so anyone that was seen as clean and patriotic may not have needed a lot of standard credentials by the usual bureaucratic managerial idiot types working for the Feds

I've been told that military field grade IT is all from the 1990s, dunno about national security agencies, but unless you have actually worked with national security IT stuff I'm not sure why your views should hold much weight

Senior people I know in the military and national security apparatus have told me that corruption, waste and inefficiency are rampant (80-90%?)

Reply Calbeck 21 hr

Sorry, but I've heard that "anything CIA is automatically X" way too many times in my life. Often from people trying to sell books about how we never landed on the Moon (you'd be amazed how many ex-[alphabet agency] agents "back up" these claims with the worst sort of pseudo-authoritative malarkey).

Reply 13 replies Hugo Mossner 19 hr

I thought Snowden was NSA vice CIA.

Reply 1 reply Bob 23 hr

After reading Surveillance Valley by Yasha Levine; things really smell fishy

Reply 3 replies Calbeck 21 hr

Hah! They "helped" Trump by running two billion dollars' worth of 95% negative coverage. It made Trump look like the victim of a massive smear campaign by partisan hacks. What have they been doing to "over-compensate", exactly? Make it 99%?

Reply Frank P Huguenard 14 hr

Whether or not they helped Trump, Greenwald's article claimst that journalists feel responsible for Trump being elected last time so they are trying not to make the same 'mistake'. At least that's what Glenn is asserting here.

Reply Calbeck 10 hr

They're not wrong. They helped elect him with their sheer negativity. I've seen these people argue the point, and they always point the finger at other journalists somehow NOT being negative enough. It's never themselves.

So there's no collective soul-searching going on, no self-awareness, only a drive to be angrier and finger-wagging with less concern for the actual facts of any given matter. They don't realize how transparent it's become for those not already personally invested in the extant narratives.

This, I think, is why we are seeing many more people defect to Trump rather than away from him; when one is personally and deeply invested in a narrative, it's an article of faith. Imagine you walk into church one day and the pastor says "this just in: the Archangel Gabriel was a child molestor who felt up Baby Jesus". Next week, they accuse the Virgin Mary of the same. Would a member of the faithful just roll with that, or consider moving to another church altogether just to avoid the emotional whiplash?

Reply 2 replies Liz Burton 9 hr

More to the point, the head of Crowdstrike, the company run by a known Russia-hater the Democrats sent their server to instead of the FBI, and who never provided that server to the FBI, admitted in a Senate hearing that there was, in fact, no evidence of hacking. He was under oath that time. Russiagate remains one of the most successful propaganda campaign in history.

Reply Rochelle Levy 23 hr

What Frank Huguenot said is likely.

Just before or just after Trump's 2016 election I was in a Manhattan restaurant with my domestic partner talking with strangers from DC. It turned out that they worked in the State Dept. and they told us that since Trump questioned the veracity of some things the intelligence establishment had said, they would absolutely bring him down. We were shocked but have remembered this throughout the FISA debacle,the Mueller mess,the impeachment and this election cycle.

Reply Linda Jansen Oct 29

Right. Thank you. I wrote to Matt T. about this same issue in his article. I'm hoping they will do the investigation required for them to amend their articles. It really is a fundamental mistake to perpetuate this propaganda.

Reply Frank P Huguenard Oct 29

It's literally in the Mueller report that the DNC server was hacked, without a shred of evidence. As Fox Mulder said "Trust No One". Matt & Glen really need to get to the point where they chuck everything they think they know and start over. Everything has been a lie. Why would anyone believe ANYTHING the FBI or DOJ of Obama WH put out at this point? The MSM has no credibility, FBI/DOJ/CIA? This cancer has metasticized to the point where the patient is on life support.

We need to understand that Trump is Chemo. It takes an outsider to come in, someone who didn't need this job, someone who couldn't be bought, to come in and kill that cancer.

Reply e.pierce 3 hr

See Matt Taibbi's reporting on how CNN groomed Trump to run in 2015/16 to increase views/clicks and advertising $$$

Reply Bernard 16 hr

Just to offer some confirmation for that, Here is a CNN article from the time: "A phishing email sent to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta may have been so sophisticated that it fooled the campaign's own IT staffers, who at one point advised him it was a legitimate warning to change his password."

https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/politics/phishing-email-hack-john-podesta-hillary-clinton-wikileaks/

However, they also report that the link was from " [email protected] ." I searched for whether that email address had been reported as malicious on the day that the story broke. Far from being "sophisticated", it was just a phishing link that was going around randomly, and had already been reported to this spam reporting site:

http://report-spam.email/no-reply/accounts.google.com?fbclid=IwAR26KFL4k6sOWS-rqi7V15UR0KtdlirODcKP5q-v_rqvFa5HegoAMXoZM7Q

And in fact people were talking about the phishing link on reddit as much as two years before the 2016 election:

https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1vqzza/suspicious_sign_in_prevented/

So, despite (much of) the media converging on a "sophisticated spear phishing" narrative, this looks to be a link that was sent to a large number of people over a long period, and just a case of random spam phishing that got lucky.

Reply e.pierce 2 hr

re: "so sophisticated that it fooled the campaign's own IT staffers"

I'm not a google mail user, but in general it is pretty rare for a phishing email to NOT have extended headers (server route log) that reveal a bogus or weird looking origin.

Reply Frank P Huguenard 14 hr

ummmm....did you just quote CNN in a thread about how CNN is a misinformation/disinformation arm of the CIA?

Reply Calbeck 10 hr

"Alleging" would be more accurate. They've been acting quite more brazenly as a misinfo/disinfo arm of the DNC. Whether or not the DNC has deep enough connections with the CIA to provide a useful and reliable data/policy bridge is another question, but both DNC and GOP likely have enough connections to establish semi-functional "lamprey" networks just due to their longevity and resulting personal/professional contacts therein.

Reply Ron Wagner 21 hr

Frank, you need to be frank with yourself. You are fooling yourself by evading the obvious truth. Democrats are now demoncrats.

Reply David G Horsman 17 hr

Hi Frank. " The PODESTA EMAILS WERE NOT THE RESULT OF A HACK.

Please stop reporting this nonsense. The cover story was all part of the plan (approved by HRC) to shift attention to a Trump-Russia collusion narrative that has always been fiction. Guccifer 2.0 was created out of this same scheme. The meta data on the files prove that it's impossible that those emails were hacked, they had to be downloaded on a local device (thumbdrive most likely)."

Based on the forensics that was my conclusion but beware of these rabbit holes. It has never been discussed that those details can also be faked (the meta data.) Certainly Gucifer which seemed like damage control. I am unsure of the claims about his being backtracked tho.

So it's possible that the evidence is faked having accepted the conclusions of VIPS analysts.

Reply Frank P Huguenard 14 hr

Could be. It would also mean that it was the first time Wikileaks published something that wasn't authentic. Assange knows where the emails came from and he asserted that they didn't come from Russia.

Reply David G Horsman 17 hr

Note to all: You must use actual (historical) ISP speeds as of the specific months in question. They increased a good deal in the months that followed in that area.

Reply Substack Commenter 34 9 hr

I agree that there was a massive fake Russia story created by GPS Fusion, the Clinton campaign, Clinton allies, with the help of US intelligence, often willing and sometimes just incompetent.

But there is definitely some evidence of a DNC hack. Among other things, the Dutch intelligence services seem to have observed evidence in their spying on the Internet Research Agency - reported by mutliple sources including Dutch media. What the nature of the hack was and how it gibes with the evidence that there must have been a person on the ground to transfer the data files that fast is of course fair to discuss.

There is also evidence, both purposely forgotten in media coverage after Jan 2017, of an attempted RNC hack and the overt public hack and release of Colin Powell's email to embarass and hurt Trump. There is plenty of other evidence of Internet Research Agency activity that was pro-BLM and anti-Trump, making their more likely overall goal the sowing of chaos than only supporting Trump. Thus the need for GPS/Clintonistas/Intelligence/Mueller's team to spin a narrative.

Reply Alex G. 23 hr

I became a fan of yours when I was in law school at UC Hastings in 2003. Your the best, for sure. But fuck...

I got to be honest...I'm glad the press is ignoring this story. There's just too much at stake. Biden might be losing his edge, his family might be trading in his name, but who gives a shit? The alternative is worse by light years.

And yeah, I don't trust the "people" out there to get it right. The "people" are rubes. Those idiots voted for this piece of shit once before, they'll do it again, in a heartbeat.

More importantly, you really want to do Rudy Giuliani's work for him? I don't know, I don't get it...why so eager to make the campaign's case for them? It's not a rhetorical question. I just don't get it.

Reply Rupert Giles 11 hr

Alex: you are saying that we should not have independent press, that the media ought to be agents of propaganda, consciously decieving the public for the greater good.

Maybe Biden is the lesser evil in this election. But without actual journalists like Glenn we could never know.

I get the frustrations over Trump. He is a disaster. But the answer to that disaster does not concist in advocating for more lies and propaganda.

Reply Calbeck 10 hr

I have yet to hear a reasonable case for Trump being either the greater evil or a disaster. Many of the allegations against Trump have remained that - allegations - but in Biden's case some of the same accusations (particular about racism) is in his Senate record. He was a terrible candidate to position against Trump, and he picked as his veep the only person in the entire primary season to get blown out by a single phrase from Tulsi Gabbard - who the rest of the party's establishment absolutely despised because Hillary said so.

With Trump? Roaring economy brought to a halt not even by coronavirus, but massive economic lockdowns that break the economy down to virtually Blue-State (down) / Red-State (up) comparisons. Democrats were accusing Trump of "meddling" when he was still a candidate and nonetheless pressured a Detroit factory into staying in the US. The man understands economic leverage, and to ignore or deny that is like denying the Sun heats the Earth.

Three Middle East peace deals leading to an equal number of Nobel nominations. He is roasted for de-escalating international tensions, lauded only when he fires missiles at nations Democrats think need shooting at, and then castigated for killing a terrorist leader in the same nation they were cheering him for firing missiles at.

I see very little criticism of Trump that isn't associated with bald-faced party-based opposition, from establishment Republicans who hated his cockblocking of JEB BUSH FOR GODSAKE to Democrats who still think Hillary's shit job as Secretary of State (ruining more nations than Trump has cut peace deals for) is beyond reproach.

Speaking as a lifetime independent, please: the naked, incessant and baseless fury demonstrated by Democrats and the Radical Left since 2016 has NOT been a selling point for us.

Reply Calbeck 11 hr

"The alternative is worse by light years"

Biden has been credibly accused of actually pinning a staffer against the wall and stuffing his fingers up her vagina. The media didn't attack her story, but her college credentials, and dumped the story after.

Biden has actually authored racist legislation and in recent years spoke of "being able to work across the aisle" - with racist segregationists.

Trump's been merely ACCUSED of a shit-ton of things. But I don't join lynch-mobs. Same reason the lynching of Justice Kavanaugh (seriously, you guys went after him over "I like beer" and school calendars you had to try and reinterpret as codebooks?) made me see the Democratic Party as a progressively more lunatic outfit. Reducing impeachment to "who needs criminal charges? we really just hate the guy" wasn't a winner with us independents either, not just speaking for myself there.

A pox on both your damned parties, and thank Trump for being that pox.

Reply AZJeff 10 hr

Gee Alex, elitist much? You don't like Trump so the people making an informed choice is not a worthy goal? Anyone who disagrees with your world view is a rube who is not smart enough to see the light - as defined by you? And you wonder why Trump won last time. The left is populated by arrogant asses who think because they came out of college with a degree in some worthless major, they are smarter than everyone else. Well, I went to college to but got a degree in engineering vice sociology but I guess I'm just an educated rube.

Reply LookingforTrubble 1 hr

Your law school tuition dollars were clearly wasted. Most of the people/rubes/idiots I know and love learned the difference between "your" and "you're" in high school - and acquired critical thinking skills at the same time. Too bad you missed out.

Reply tp3192000 22 hr

Yeah, we the people (rubes) are fn sick of the fn lawyers (especially from UC Hastings) being in political control of our country and want a non-political person to clean up. What's so hard for you to understand?

Reply Alex G. 22 hr

How's your guy doing you fucking rube? Great choice! Job well done!! If you ever wonder why nobody gives a shit about your opinion, the fact that you chose a fucking reality star who ran every business he ever owned into the ground, and fancies a bizarre hairdo, that's why no one cares what you say. You're fucking stupid.

Reply tp3192000 22 hr

Meet me.

Reply Alex G. 22 hr

bahahahahaha...go crawl back into your fucking prol shit hole dwelling and latch onto Tucker's teat. You're a fucking joke and always will be, no matter how special your dear leader makes you feel.

Reply 5 replies Calbeck 11 hr

Three Nobel nominations for actual peace deals, to start. Wow, you're a hateful person. Have you considered therapy?

Reply 11Bravo 9 hr

You are a lawyer? You sound more like a garbage truck driver. You learn to talk in a trash can?

Reply Smaack 7 hr

It would appear that either UC Hastings has low admission standards or that Alex was short-changed in his education.

Reply Eric 7 hr

Our local sanitation workers are much more thoughtful and respectful actually. I am voting for Biden but I find this lawyer's response detestable. We need to grow up and stop with ad hominem attacks that do nothing to advance the discussion.

Reply Urepiphany 2 hr

You're a bit of a bully. Have you noticed how cruel your side has become? You ever read Don Quixote?

Reply CJ4700 7 hr

Anyone who feels the need to not-so-subtlety brag that they're an attorney should know the difference between "your" and "you're"...

Reply Scott 22 hr

Morals and ethics obviously mean nothing to a lawyer. If this was Don Jr, you would be out for blood. As an independent voter, I want to know that I'm not voting for a piece of shit that has been compromised by the Russians and Chinese! People like you, the FAKE NEWS media, and antifa, etc are a major reason why I won't ever give my vote to Biden!

Reply Piper Scott 5 hr

Elitists like Alex G. made the election of Donald Trump as president both inevitable and necessary. The more he disses the "people" aka "rubes," the more President Trump's re-election becomes equally inevitable and necessary. To borrow from Sen. Ted Cruz's exchange with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, "Who the hell made Alex G. the final authority on how and what people should think, say and do?"

One thing we know for sure is Alex G. never learned any humility or manners growing up. To substantiate this, he stands condemned out of his own mouth. Last thing this country needs is to have an authoritarian demagogue like him anywhere near the levers of power.

Reply Urepiphany 2 hr

Please go back and fact check the old stories that made us hate Trump in the first place. They've proven to be lies. He isn't perfect, but Biden will destroy this country. He's beyond corrupt. Go look at the source materials.

Reply Political Economist 15 hr

So after Biden wins, assuming he does, you think the press will suddenly become interested in these things. Most lawyers aren't that naive.

Reply e.pierce 3 hr

Arrogant, smug D party loyalist goons and assholes like you are a very large part of why people voted for Trump in 2016 and will vote for him in this election. T-R-0-L-L

---

Drunk? On drugs? Ran out of psych meds?

Reply NYEngineer 12 hr

I believe in the democratic system. The people may make mistakes, but so can anyone else. An average of all the people is more accurate than randomly picking subsets of people to make decisions. You say that you and your friends are not a random subset, you are better than average. Your opponents say the same thing. We have a system for resolving these disputes. Maybe you can invent a better one, but "I'm right and my opponents are wrong" is not a new approach.

In answer to your "Why" question, perhaps Mr. Greenwald believes the same thing.

I'm a Biden voter.

Reply Bottlethrower 4 hr

Why report it?

*thinking*

Because it's important news, serious allegations concerning possibly the next POTUS?

Am I close?

Btw, got really depressed after your 3rd paragraph, when I realized you weren't joking

Quite an anti-democratic edge for someone who calls himself a "Democrat"

Reply KTA Oct 29

Glenn - new subscriber today (saw you with Tucker Carlson). As a conservative voter, I support your new venture, not because your story is critical or suspicious of Biden, but because we need more talented journalists willing to just investigate possible corruption and inform the public. I also support Matt Taibbi for the same reason. The last line of your article sums it up best for me.

"The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from information than whether it's true."

Good luck, I hope you find this new path rewarding professionally and financially.

Reply Eric 17 min

Agreed, I also like reading Quillette for it's equal publication of articles (they printed that big article from the Environmentalist who demonized Environmentalism after he was banned from his original publisher), and I also like reading Sharyl Attkisson as well.

Reply Frank P Huguenard 14 hr

I find it interesting how Glenn sees all the propoganda from these agencies in the media, but fails to see the full extent of it in social media and therefore is unable to report on it adequately. The DNC server hack is more of the same.

Reply NV Oct 29

I paid for a subscription precisely because I believe that, despite what you may or may not personally believe, you don't allow it to influence your pursuit of the truth. I want the truth - nothing less and nothing more.

Reply 11Bravo 8 hr

I just signed up, too, for that very reason. When those in positions of power put on a mask and practice deception, they must be exposed. Sunlight is the cure for the disease of corruption.

Reply fidelity Oct 29

Personally, having read your work going back to Cato Institute and Volokh, I'm happy you're independent and I can directly fund you. I'm willing to throw even more money at your projects. Consider crowdfunding video documentary teams and other large projects. Your following after all of this is going to be as large as ever.

Reply Herbie Oct 29

I've supported him here as well because I think he is an important voice right now. There are few journos out there right now who have Glenn's credibility who are willing to take on media groupthink. But it is a tough environment. With NYT offering their digital for 4$ a month that gives access to all of their writers/content, it is very difficult for writers like Glenn to compete.

Reply Political Economist Oct 29

For me it's easy. Glenn is worth a multiple of the NYT. I can read their take anywhere. His is much harder to find.

Now if I lived in NYC it might be different, but, luckily for me, I do not.

Reply John Oct 29

I have, and it's still worth the multiple

Reply David G Horsman 18 hr

I had a rule to never use paywalls but this is Glenn Greenwald we are talking about here. He's worth every Canadian ruble I forked over.

Reply bamage Oct 29

[Oct 31, 2020] Senate Committee Verifies Bobulinski Evidence On Bidens (So Why Is MSM Covering It Up-)

Oct 31, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmed Wednesday the information exposed by former Hunter Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski that connects the former Vice President to companies and ventures in China. But you wouldn't know it by following the main stream press.

Bobulinski's bombshell interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson Tuesday, along with Carlson's follow up exclusive on Wednesday, revealed that Democratic candidate Joe Biden was aware of his son's business questionable overseas business dealings. It should be a huge story. After all, Joe Biden has publicly denied knowing about his son's business ventures in China, Ukraine and other parts of the world.

So why isn't this story on the front page of every newspaper and covered by every cable network?

How is it possible that the majority of main stream media outlets, newspapers and cable networks had no problem running unsubstantiated stories about President Donald Trump, his family and his businesses only to find out later – without corrections- that the information they published was bogus.

Here, there is an eye witness to the Biden family operations: Bobulinski. He has come forward and shown his credibility. He has verified documents, photos, receipts from Hunter Biden's hard drive that the FBI had obtained, along with President Trump's friend and personal lawyer former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Why hasn't the FBI done anything with this before the election? The bureau has had it for almost a year. Giuliani then did the only thing he could do – he turned over the documents to The New York Post. Those documents obtained from Hunter Biden's laptop are the massive breadcrumbs to a real political scandal.

These documents raise serious questions as to whether or not our possible future president really is compromised by foreign adversaries, or whether or not he was using his position in government to profit his family.

Still, it's only crickets from the main stream media. At the same time, big tech giants like Twitter, Google and Facebook are also working diligently to squash the story and keep the truth from the American people.

me title=

Tucker Carlson had the highest ratings – historic ratings – at Fox News Tuesday night with more than 7 million viewers tuning in for the Bobulinski story. Yet, the Bobulinski interview wasn't trending on Twitter, and in fact, it appeared that his story was non-existent on the other networks.

Not even the Senators, who held a hearing on Wednesday, could get a straight answer from Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey on why his platform banned The New York Post stories.

Sen. Ted Cruz said on Twitter "What @Jack told the Senate, under oath, is false."

"I just tried to tweet the @nypost story alleging Biden's CCP corruption. Still Blocked."

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321499884919377927&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fsenate-committee-verifies-bobulinski-evidence-bidens-so-why-msm-covering-it&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Censorship in full force. However, this is not like the old Soviet censorship – this is a bizarre new self-censorship by elitist leftists who believe they know what's best for the American people.

Think about this – what if this story was about information these news agencies discovered on Donald Trump Jr. or Eric Trump. How would they treat it?

Let's start with the most widely discussed and central to the issue of alleged corruption was Hunter Biden's paid position on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma Holdings. Despite the fact Hunter Biden had no background in energy he was being paid more than $50,000 a month and in some instances as much as $83,000 a month.

What about the most concerning connection for the Biden's with China's CEFC, an energy giant that is compared to Goldman Sachs. It is directly connected to the Chinese Communist Party and according to Bobulinski, as well as senior lawmakers investigating, possible used as leverage against the Bidens by the communist government.

"Joe Biden and the Biden family are compromised" said Bobulinski in Tuesday night's hour long interview with Carlson. He said he turned over evidence to the FBI and openly spoke about his alleged meetings with then Vice President Joe Biden. Biden is referred to by his son Hunter Biden in emails obtained by the FBI and first published by The New York Post as the 'Big Guy' and or 'the Chairman.'

Bobulinski revealed that he "held a top-secret clearance from the NSA and the DOE. I served this country for four years in one of the most elite environments in the world, the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command, and to have a congressmen out there speaking about Russian disinformation or Joe Biden at a public debate referencing Russian disinformation when he knows he sat face-to-face with me, I traveled around the world with his son and his brother. To say that and associate that with my name is absolutely disgusting to me ."

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321263064319217665&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fsenate-committee-verifies-bobulinski-evidence-bidens-so-why-msm-covering-it&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Joe Biden, however, has publicly denied having any financial gain from his son's, Hunter, business ventures. He said at the second Presidential debate, "I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life." However, Biden has refused to answer any questions regarding the allegations or address some of the accusations against him or his son.

The American public has the right to know if their next president has been compromised by their families business dealings with the communist Chinese. Moreover, many of the business ventures his son was connected with were during his tenure as Vice President.

Our nation has been divided but not by President Trump. It's been divided by an army of bureaucrats, liberal elites, the New Democratic socialists, special interests and more importantly a biased partisan media.

NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

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For now, Americans will be left in the dark. On Wednesday committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, R- WI, told The Daily Caller, that Bobulinski will not be called to testify before the Nov. 3 elections. He said the committee is working to review all the information that has been provided to the committee by Bobulinski.

The information has to be verified, as it is subject to the same false information to Congress laws that verbal or written testimony does.

However, a Johnson spokesperson told the Caller that all the material provided by Bobulinski to the committee is legitimate and verified .

The committee has "also" not come across any "signs" or evidence to suggest the content Hunter Biden and Bobulinksi content is false , the spokesperson added.

It's tragic to think that if by chance – a small remote chance – that Biden actually wins the election justice will never be served and our nation will fundamentally change.

America will be at a crossroads on November 3. The main stream media is doing its part to ensure that the American people are not informed, so it is up to you to vote your conscience and seek out the truth.

Col. Leghorn CSA , 9 hours ago

I suggest enabling RICO charges against any media that conspires to hide the truth.

[Oct 31, 2020] First steal, then find

Is UPS a subsidiary of the US intelligence agencies, or DNC or both ? Who would think about such a possibility ;-)
Oct 31, 2020 | www.rt.com
UPS has found documents that went missing in transit to Tucker Carlson, putting to rest questions about the whereabouts of a trove that the Fox News host had called "damning" of presidential candidate Joe Biden's family.

"After an extensive search, we have found the contents of the package and are arranging for its return," a UPS spokesman told the Daily Beast on Thursday. "UPS will always focus first on our customers and will never stop working to solve issues and make things right."

ALSO ON RT.COM Hunter's ex-business partner says Joe Biden is 'COMPROMISED' by China, while detailing family deals in explosive interview

While the successful search resolved the issue of the documents' whereabouts, questions remain about how they disappeared from a package sent to Carlson in California from a producer in New York -- and who, if anyone, was behind it. Without naming the company involved or specifically saying the papers were purposely targeted and stolen, Carlson suggested on his show on Wednesday night that the disappearance wasn't coincidental.

"As of tonight, the [shipping] company has no idea and no working theory even about what happened to this trove of material – documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign just six days from now," Carlson said. The company's executives "seemed baffled and deeply bothered by this, and so are we."

//www.youtube.com/embed/Wuul_R-vwhI

Carlson described the package as containing confidential documents about the Biden family and said they were "authentic, real and damning." He said he asked a Fox producer in New York to send the documents to him in Los Angeles, where he had traveled to interview former Biden business associated Tony Bobulinski on Tuesday. The package didn't show up on Tuesday morning, prompting UPS to begin an exhaustive search.

Mainstream media critics mocked Carlson for saying the documents had disappeared, including some who suggested that they never existed. HuffPost said Carlson "concocted yet another conspiracy theory " to explain the disappearance of documents related to what they called his "conspiracy theory" about Biden's son, Hunter.

Carlson devoted his entire show on Tuesday night to the Bobulinski interview, which provided more specific allegations about the Biden family's business dealings in China following an Oct. 14 New York Post report on the ventures. Although Bobulinski provided legal documents, text messages and recordings to back up his claims, the interview was largely ignored by other mainstream media outlets.

//www.youtube.com/embed/2zLfBRgeFFo

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[Oct 30, 2020] What Tony Bobulinski told me and why it matters by Tucker Carlson

Oct 30, 2020 | www.foxnews.com

Tuesday night, we heard at length and on camera from one of the Biden family's former business partners. His name is Tony Bobulinski. He's a very successful businessman and a Navy veteran.

Bobulinski spoke to "Tucker Carlson Tonight" for a full hour. He told us he met two separate times with Joe Biden himself. Not just with Joe Biden's son or his brother, but with Joe Biden -- the former vice president and the man now running for president -- to discuss business deals with the communist government of China .

That's a very serious claim, and whatever your political views, it's hard to dismiss it when Tony Bobulinski makes it because Bobulinsky is an unusually credible witness. He's not a partisan, he's not seeking money, he's not seeking publicity. He did not want to come on our show.

But when Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the Biden campaign accused Tony Bobulinski of participating in a Russian disinformation effort, he felt he had no choice. That was a slander against him and against his family. So Bobulinski came to us. He arrived with heaps of evidence to bolster the story he was telling. He brought contemporaneous audio recordings, text messages, e-mails, many financial documents.

Video

By the end of the hour, it was very clear to us that Tony Bobulinski was telling the truth and that Joe Biden was lying. We believe that any honest person who watched the entire hour would come to the same conclusion.

Well, on Wednesday, a Senate committee confirmed it . The Senate Homeland Security Committee reported that all of Tony Bobulinski's documents are, in fact, real. They are authentic. They are not forgeries. This is not Russian disinformation. It is real.

Bobulinski told a remarkable story. Joe Biden -- who, once again, could be president of the United States next week, was planning business deals with America's most formidable global opponent. And when he was caught doing it, Joe Biden lied. And then he went further. He slandered an innocent man as a traitor to his own country. It is clear that Joe Biden did that. That's not a partisan talking point uttered in bad faith on behalf of another presidential campaign. It's true.

https://c0c754eabe03683fa93ffdd97cfadeee.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

So the question is, what is Joe Biden's excuse for doing that? What is his version of this story? Everyone has a version and we'd like to hear it, but we don't know what Joe Biden's version of the story is, because no one in America's vast media landscape has pressed Joe Biden to answer the question. Instead, reporters at all levels and their editors and their publishers have openly collaborated with Joe Biden's political campaign. That is unprecedented. It has never happened in American history.

Video

Wednesday morning, the big papers completely ignored what Tony Bobulinski had to say. So did the other television networks. Not a single word about Bobulinski appeared on CNN or anywhere else. Newsweek decided to cover it, but came to the conclusion that the real story was about QAnon somehow. This is Soviet-style suppression of information about a legitimate news story. Days before an election, the ramifications of it are impossible to imagine. But we do know the media cannot continue in the way that it has.

No one believes the media anymore and no one should. You should be offended by this, not because the media are liberal, but because this is an attack on our democracy. You've heard that phrase again and again, but this is what it looks like. In a self-governing country, voters have a right -- an obligation -- to know who they're voting for. In this case, they have the right to know the Democratic nominee for president was a willing partner in his family's lucrative influence-peddling operation, an operation that went on for decades and stretched from China and Ukraine all the way to Oman, Romania, Luxembourg and many other countries. This is not speculation once again, and it's not a partisan attack. It's true, and Tony bobulinski confirmed it.

Bobulinski met with Joe Biden at a hotel bar in Los Angeles in early May of 2017, and when he did, Joe Biden's son introduced Bobulinski this way: "Dad. Here's the individual I told you about that's helping us with the business that we're working on and the Chinese."

The man I told you about.

Video

Now, written documents confirmed this is real. At one point, Joe Biden's son texted Tony Bobulinski to say that Joe Biden, his father, was making key decisions about their business deals with China.

CARLSON: When Hunter Biden said his chairman, he was talking about his dad.

me title=

BOBULINSKI: Correct, and what Hunter is referencing there is, he spoke with his father and his father is giving an emphatic 'no' to the ask that I had, which was putting proper governance in place around Oneida Holdings.

CARLSON: So, Joe Biden is vetoing your plan for putting stricter governance in the company. I mean, and it's it's right here in the email.

BOBULINSKI: Yes, Tucker, I want to be very careful in front of the American people. That is not me writing that. That is not me claiming that. That is Hunter Biden writing on his own phone. Typing in that 'I spoke with my chairman,' referencing his father.

All this is spelled out in the clearest possible language in documents that Bobulinski provided us, documents that subsequently federal authorities have authenticated as real.

On May 13, 2017, for example, Hunter Biden got an email explaining how his family would be paid for their deal with the Chinese energy company. His father, Joe Biden, was getting 10%.

BOBULINSKI: In that email, there's a statement where they go through the equity, Jim Biden's referenced as, you know, 10%. It doesn't say Biden, it says Jim. And then it has 10% for the big guy held by H. I 1,000% sit here and know that the big guy is referencing Joe Biden. It's, that's crystal clear to me because I lived it. I met with the former vice president in person multiple times.

That was three years ago, and we still don't know where all that money went, because the media haven't forced Joe Biden to tell us. But Tony, Bobulinski did add a telling detail. Joe Biden's brother, Jim, saw his stake in the deal double from 10% to 20%. Was Jim Biden getting his brother's share again? It might be worth finding out.

me title=

We also know that according to an email from a top Chinese official, this one written on July 26, 2017, the Chinese proposed a $5 million dollar interest-free loan to the Biden family, "based on their trust on [sic] BD [Biden] family." The e-mail continued, "Should this Chinese company, CEFC, keep lending more to the family?" And indeed, CEFC was supposed to send another $5 million dollars to the Bidens' business ventures. Apparently, that money never made it to the business. Where did it go? A recent Senate report suggests it went to Hunter Biden directly. And from there, who knows? Again, no one's asked.

JIM BIDEN REFUSES TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT FAMILY'S BUSINESS DEALINGS

Tony Bobulinski also told us he learned Hunter Biden became the personal attorney to the chairman of CEFC, Ye Jianming, just as they were tendering 14% of a Russian state-owned energy company. That was a deal valued at $9 billion dollars. It's pretty sleazy. It's pretty amazing, actually, that this happened and no one noticed.

We're not going to spend the next six months leading you through a maze of complex financial transactions. This isn't that complicated: Millions of dollars linked directly to the Communist Party of China went to Joe Biden's family, and not because they're capable businessmen. Jim Biden's one business success appears to have been running a nightclub in Delaware that ultimately went under.

No, the Bidens were cut in on the world's most lucrative business deals, massive infrastructure deals in countries around the world for one reason: Because Joe Biden was a powerful government official willing to leverage his power on behalf of his family.

Now, if that's not a crime, it's very close to a crime and it's certainly something every person voting should know about. The Bidens didn't do this once. They did it for decades. So the question is, how did they get away with it for so long? Tony Bobulinski asked Jim Biden that question directly. To his credit Jim Biden answered that question honestly.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

me title=

BOBULINSKI: And I remember looking at Jim Biden and saying, 'How are you guys getting away with this?' Like, 'Aren't you concerned?' And he looked at me and he laughed a little bit and said, 'Plausible deniability.'

CARLSON: He said that out loud.

BOBULINSKI: Yes, he said it directly to me. One on one, in a cabana at the Peninsula Hotel.

"Plausible deniability." In other words, "we lie." We get away with selling access to the U.S. government, which we do not own, because we lie about what we're doing. And as we lie, we try to make those lies plausible. That's why we call it "plausible deniability." That is the answer that Joe Biden's brother gave when asked directly.

So the question is, what is Joe Biden's answer to that question? We wish we knew.

ForFoxSake!!! 1 hour ago Everything that is happening right now is because Trump was right about the swamp, the media, and the ruling class families who have been selling out America for decades. ohhappyday657 1 hour ago Tucker is doing this country a great service. The FBI doesn't seem to want to engage. Mr. Bobulinski is a patriot and we are lucky he came forward. The Bidens need to be called out for their high crimes and misdemeanors. Joe should be impeached for his time as VP. Thank you Tucker. resipsaloquitor ohhappyday657 29 minutes ago You can smell the desperation on the Trump supporters. The lies, the distortions and the grasping, pathetic search for the proverbial Hail Mary to salvage the quickly sinking ship. If Mr. Bobulinski is the best you have the Democrats will 'trump' you with: 227,000 dead Americans, close to 9 million more infected and an economy in tatters. The day of reckoning is approaching and a dozen Bobulinskis won't change that. Trump and his unseemly administration are doomed.

[Oct 30, 2020] Tucker Carlson's interview with Tony Bobulinski is must-see TV by Andrea Widburg

Oct 28, 2020 | www.americanthinker.com

On Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson did something he'd never done before: he dedicated his entire show to a single interview. The person he interviewed was Tony Bobulinski, an experienced international businessman who found himself working with Hunter Biden, James Biden, and others on a deal between the Biden group and CEFC, a Chinese energy company with ties to the communist government and the military. Bobulinski powerfully confirms that Joe Biden was deeply involved in the transaction, which had its beginnings when Joe was still vice president.

Fox News has not yet uploaded (and may never upload) the interview in its entirety. However, the four videos below bring together almost everything from the interview.

Tucker opened by making the point that he was dedicating his show to the Bobulinski interview because the rest of the American media are assiduously ignoring the story, downplaying it, or claiming it's a Russian smear. The leader of the Russian smear approach is, naturally, Rep. Adam Schiff, a man who has all the hallmarks of a conscienceless psychopath. Ironically, it was Schiff's smear about Hunter Biden's hard drive that led Bobulinski, a Democrat, to go public with his story.

If you can't watch the interview, here's a brief overview:

Bobulinksi is a former naval officer with a Q clearance. That's an extremely high clearance level for people working in the Department of Energy -- and Bobulinski worked in the Navy's nuclear program. He comes from a military family and is very proud of that legacy.

After leaving the Navy, Bobulinski became an international businessman. His expertise led to Hunter Biden and his people wooing Bobulinski to give them the business expertise they needed to get their partnership up and running.

The partnership, SinoHawk, was intended to bring together CEFC and the Biden family. Both Hunter and James Biden, after all, brought nothing to the table other than their last name and, with it, the promise that China would have access to political influence at the highest level of American government.

Bobulinski's name recently became public knowledge when James Gilliar, another businessman working on SinoHawk, sent an email to Tony Bobulinski, setting out the terms Gilliar had been negotiating with CEFC. What caught everyone's interest was the statement that Hunter would hold "10[%] for the Big Guy." Bobulinski confirmed that Joe Biden was the "Big Guy."

At this point, Schiff, the media, and Joe Biden, none of whom ever denied the legitimacy of the email, claimed that the whole thing was a Russian smear. This unfounded accusation got Bobulinski's dander up. As a naval officer from a military family and a true patriot, being smeared as a Russian agent was beyond the pale.

Bobulinski demanded that Schiff retract the insult, and when Schiff failed to do so, he went public and did a full document dump. Bobulinski had saved everything -- every document, every email, and every text.

That's the quick background to the interview with Carlson, during which Bobulinski said that

If we had a decent media establishment, this story would be on every front page and at the top of every news hour. Instead, Bobulinski is trying desperately to get Americans to know that he is not a Russian agent and that Joe Biden was in bed with the communist Chinese government, starting when he was vice president and continuing after he left the White House. This screen shot from Memeorandum shows that none of the legacy media outlets is touching the story:

(As an aside, and separate from the Bobulinski interview, a former CIA operations office believes it's entirely possible that Biden was already doing China's bidding in 2012, when the Obama administration gave China free rein in the South China Sea.)

In case the embedded videos do not play, you can find them here , here , here , and here .

We've always known that Joe Biden is an odd bird. Just think of the lies, the egotistical boasting, the offers to fight people, the skinny-dipping, and the way he fondles and sniffs little girls. He is a genuinely creepy man.

It speaks volumes about Washington, D.C. and the Democrat party that Joe spent 47 years in the swamp and rose to the second highest office in the land. What we've learned now, though, irrefutably and without any Russian hokum, is that Joe Biden is also a profoundly corrupt man who willingly sold out America and her allies to enrich himself and his sleazy, incompetent family.

Image: Tony Bobulinski Tucker Carlson interview . Tucker Carlson Show screen grab.

me title=

Fox News has not yet uploaded (and may never upload) the interview in its entirety. However, the four videos below bring together almost everything from the interview.

Tucker opened by making the point that he was dedicating his show to the Bobulinski interview because the rest of the American media are assiduously ignoring the story, downplaying it, or claiming it's a Russian smear. The leader of the Russian smear approach is, naturally, Rep. Adam Schiff, a man who has all the hallmarks of a conscienceless psychopath. Ironically, it was Schiff's smear about Hunter Biden's hard drive that led Bobulinski, a Democrat, to go public with his story.

If you can't watch the interview, here's a brief overview:

Bobulinksi is a former naval officer with a Q clearance. That's an extremely high clearance level for people working in the Department of Energy -- and Bobulinski worked in the Navy's nuclear program. He comes from a military family and is very proud of that legacy.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/9371484590420070?pubid=ld-8832-1542&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanthinker.com&rid=www.americanthinker.com&width=610

After leaving the Navy, Bobulinski became an international businessman. His expertise led to Hunter Biden and his people wooing Bobulinski to give them the business expertise they needed to get their partnership up and running.

The partnership, SinoHawk, was intended to bring together CEFC and the Biden family. Both Hunter and James Biden, after all, brought nothing to the table other than their last name and, with it, the promise that China would have access to political influence at the highest level of American government.

Bobulinski's name recently became public knowledge when James Gilliar, another businessman working on SinoHawk, sent an email to Tony Bobulinski, setting out the terms Gilliar had been negotiating with CEFC. What caught everyone's interest was the statement that Hunter would hold "10[%] for the Big Guy." Bobulinski confirmed that Joe Biden was the "Big Guy."

At this point, Schiff, the media, and Joe Biden, none of whom ever denied the legitimacy of the email, claimed that the whole thing was a Russian smear. This unfounded accusation got Bobulinski's dander up. As a naval officer from a military family and a true patriot, being smeared as a Russian agent was beyond the pale.

Bobulinski demanded that Schiff retract the insult, and when Schiff failed to do so, he went public and did a full document dump. Bobulinski had saved everything -- every document, every email, and every text.

That's the quick background to the interview with Carlson, during which Bobulinski said that

If we had a decent media establishment, this story would be on every front page and at the top of every news hour. Instead, Bobulinski is trying desperately to get Americans to know that he is not a Russian agent and that Joe Biden was in bed with the communist Chinese government, starting when he was vice president and continuing after he left the White House. This screen shot from Memeorandum shows that none of the legacy media outlets is touching the story:

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/tucker_carlsons_interview_with_tony_bobulinski_is_mustsee_tv.html#ixzz6cECCtpGU
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

[Oct 30, 2020] Yes, there is a Republican ideology. That is the problem . . -

Oct 30, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

Likbez , October 26, 2020 9:50 pm

People who claim Trump is undermine the republic are wrong. The last nail in the coffin of the republic was put by George Bush, We are now living in the empire.

The replacement of the republic with the "national security state" started with Truman, reached local max in 1963 when a faction within CIA killed JFK and irrevocably became an empire in 1991 with the disappearance of the USSR. And the global neoliberal empire ruled from Washington that the USA tries to maintain as a world hegemon is a death sentence to republic and democracy. So it is fair to say that formally republic (and democracy) in the USA seized to exist after dissolution of the USSR, when the USA ruling elite became drunk with the feeling of the only world superpower and neocons start to determine the USA foreign policy. People just became hostages, forced to support and die in imperial wars, while standard of living of lower 80% of population start gradually sliding, like always happens with empires, and manufacturing (and jobs) stared to move oversees, mainly in China. The decline started actually under Carter.

Truman initiated the transition of the republic into national security state by creating CIA, NSA and FBI. Herbert Hoover was probably the first who noted that now "tail is wagging the dog ": intelligence agencies were able to the control of Congress and executive branch via dirt of politicians and other standard for the "deep state" tricks. To say nothing about Allan Dulles, CIA and JFK assassination.

And later Obama managed to paraphrase Mr. Orwell 1984, "We always have to be at war with Eastasia." Just 30 years later. Now you need to add to this pervasive wiretapping of all communications due to the treat of terrorism.

The look how easily the deep state derailed Sanders candidacy. Nobody even managed to scream, until it was too late. As Professor Sheldon Wolin put it we live under "inverted totalitarianism ":

"One cannot point to any national institution[s] that can accurately be described as democratic surely not in the highly managed, money-saturated elections, the lobby-infested Congress, the imperial presidency, the class-biased judicial and penal system, or, least of all, the media."

Wolin showed us all the realities of and limits of the US form of government. It is still a livable space and if you do not try to undermine the neoliberal social order they will leave you alone. There not much forceful indoctrination that was a hallmark of the USSR. It's still a better country, I can attest.

Also the USA "nomenklatura" is more agile, less fossilized in comparison with Brezhnev's nomenkatura.

But "we are an empire now" as Karl rove told us. Even formally it is no longer republic as elected President is more or less ceremonial figure, who does not control non-elected bureaucrats of the executive branch. they (aka "deep state") control him.

Even in a sense of oligarchic republic ( the democracy for the top 1% or less ) the democracy is under assault. The "Deep state" is effectively strangulated even this, very limited form, that existed before 1991 (the year of dissolution of the USSR). As we can see from Sanders case, or Supreme Court role in Bush II case. And Sanders was definitely a member of the elite, not some random guy from nowhere. The same was true for Al Gore. But they stole the election from him, plain and simple.

Wendy Brown moved Wolin ideas further suggesting that neoliberalism is the novel fusion of economic with political power (one dollar one vote; voters turned into consumers; neoliberal rationality) and that alone completely "poison democracy at its root" It think I already wrote about those topics. My judgment here is highly suspect -- I never lived in Washington and never studied history or political science professionally.

Let's hope for the best. Our great advantage is that we are old and are probably the only generation that managed to live without the major war. Let's hope that we will be able to die before WWIII 😉

Still, I think Trump entered (not without influence of Russiagate; and those sleazy intelligence crooks like Comey, Brennan and Mueller and their clan of "national security parasites" be those scoundrels internally damned) a very dangerous path -- the path advocated by neocons and MIC.

As Biney said on Jan 1, 2018 ( https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/01/the-still-missing-evidence-of-russia-gate/ ) :

"Ultimately, my main concern is that it could lead to actual war with Russia. We should definitely not be going down that path. We need to get out of all these wars. I am also concerned about what we are doing to our own democracy. We are trampling the fundamental principles contained in the Constitution. The only way to reverse all this is to start indicting people who are participating in and managing these activities that are clearly unconstitutional."

IMHO the current neo-McCarthysim campaign that was deployed to solve some internal problems within the Democratic Party (rejection by electorate and subsequent political fiasco of Hillary Clinton) is a very dangerous tool. You can't blame Trump victory on Russia. That's simply stupid or disingenuous. Trump election is a sign of systemic crisis of neoliberalism in the USA, somewhat similar to the crisis of Marxism the the USSR experienced before dissolution. Rust Belt voters rejected Hillary as the establishment candidate who symbolized the status quo (which they hate) and that was it.

In such crisis the elite is de-legitimized and often resort to dirty tricks to regain the lost legitimacy. A war is one such trick. Neo-McCarthyism campaign is another. Of course, Russia in far from being a saint and bear a part of responsibility for unleashing the civil war in Donbass (and generally destabilizing Ukraine -- it is a curse to be a neighbor our of such a large and powerful country; Canadians and Mexicans probably think the same 😉 ,

But what currently we see in major MSM looks to me like a classic witch hunt with the implicit goal to whitewash humiliating for neoliberal Democrats (Clinton wing of the party) defeat and blame it on the external force (Putin looks really like "Deus Ex Machina" for democrats 😉 . <

While Trump run brilliant election campaign based on opposition to neoliberal status quo, his elections slogans were completely fake. He completely folded three month after the elections and now symbolizes "empty governance" as if somebody changed the man. During election the New York billionaire structured his campaign around three topics which propelled him to victory.

First, he seemed to comprehend America's status quo crisis -- the disintegration of neoliberalism that had defined the country since Reagan. Large numbers of voters understood immediately what he was saying, particularly since the crisis of working class was largely ignored by the other candidates.

Second, he positioned himself as an "anti-neoliberal status quo" candidate. While two neoliberal parties instinctively clung to time-tested positions and neoliberal groupthink, shunning any changes. Trump sidestepped this rigid political thinking of both parties and crafted a new mix of issues cutting across partisan lines. He embraced traditional GOP positions such as reduced taxes, school choice, increased defense spending, and rejection of the idea of human-induced climate change. But he also took positions contrary to Republican orthodoxy -- Social security and Medicare protection, attacks on neoliberal globalization and "free trade" regime, rejection of austerity economics . And he manifested contempt for an important part of neoliberal ideology embraced by both parties -- neoliberal view of immigration

Third, Trump's disdain for political niceties suggested to voters what he declared political war on the country's neoliberal elite -- all those despicable neocon think tanks, university professors, the neoliberal MSM, the managerial class, "national security parasites", Hollywood, and Wall Street financial titans.

Like Don Quixote he was alone warrior against neoliberalism and all-powerful adversaries. And he wouldn't buckle when they fought back to protect their cherished neoliberal globalization and privileged standing of multinationals as the real power behind the throne

What emerged from the campaign was a growing recognition that the country stands at a fundamental crossroads -- whether to follow the elite vision of neoliberal globalism and "anti-nationalism", with money, people, ideas, and cultures moving freely across increasingly indistinct borders (Biden administration path); or to retreat to traditional nationalism including fealty to Western cultural heritage and reject multiculturalism.

In other words the main battle lines in 2020 are really ideological.

But there a lot of problems with painting Trump as a fighter against Clinton/Bush/Obama-style of neoliberal globalization. After inauguration we saw quite different Trump. He's abandoned all of his "anti-neoliberal" election promises, particularly in foreign policy and dealing with Wall Street titans, that helped propel him into office. And he started openly flirting with prospects of a war with Iran. Probably to please his Zionist sponsors, but also may be out of his complete and utter incompetence.

That means that now he is unable conduct a meaningful conversation with his voters. Outside fanatics who will support him in any case, he definitely betrayed them. In this sense he might have difficulties to preserve his base in 2020. Due to his foreign policy blunder and Pompeo brass style of gangsterism in foreign policy some of his political capital among independents shrunk. That same is true with his tax cut. This was a clear betrayal. Add to this that he was pinned down by Mueller investigation until December 2017, when Strzok-gate scandal broke and only in 2019 Mueller (and Rosenstein) lost credibility and became a joke. Mueller investigation actually was a shroud gambit against him based on his own blunders.

But BLM and, especially, riots gave his a short in the arm. So everything is possible now.

Also one clear achievement of Trump is that clearly and convincingly demonstrated how corrupt and crooked are neoliberal MSM. As the result I even started watching some Fox news (Tucker) recently ;-). If somebody predicted that a couple of years ago I would laugh in his/her face.

A very good (IMHO) overview of the current situation can be found in London review of books. See

What We Don t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking by Jackson Lears

[Oct 30, 2020] Hunter Biden Documents Vanishws From Overnight Envelope send via major carrier, Tucker Carlson Says

Oct 30, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

BGen. Jack Ripper , 2 minutes ago

FBI is on the case!

1Y4NixfGQ4MbMO4f , 1 minute ago

Correction, FBI was on the case. They got what they wanted.

[Oct 30, 2020] Tucker Carlson's interview with Tony Bobulinski is must-see TV - American Thinker

Oct 30, 2020 | www.americanthinker.com

October 28, 2020 Tucker Carlson's interview with Tony Bobulinski is must-see TV By Andrea Widburg

On Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson did something he'd never done before: he dedicated his entire show to a single interview. The person he interviewed was Tony Bobulinski, an experienced international businessman who found himself working with Hunter Biden, James Biden, and others on a deal between the Biden group and CEFC, a Chinese energy company with ties to the communist government and the military. Bobulinski powerfully confirms that Joe Biden was deeply involved in the transaction, which had its beginnings when Joe was still vice president.

Fox News has not yet uploaded (and may never upload) the interview in its entirety. However, the four videos below bring together almost everything from the interview.

Tucker opened by making the point that he was dedicating his show to the Bobulinski interview because the rest of the American media are assiduously ignoring the story, downplaying it, or claiming it's a Russian smear. The leader of the Russian smear approach is, naturally, Rep. Adam Schiff, a man who has all the hallmarks of a conscienceless psychopath. Ironically, it was Schiff's smear about Hunter Biden's hard drive that led Bobulinski, a Democrat, to go public with his story.

If you can't watch the interview, here's a brief overview:

Bobulinksi is a former naval officer with a Q clearance. That's an extremely high clearance level for people working in the Department of Energy -- and Bobulinski worked in the Navy's nuclear program. He comes from a military family and is very proud of that legacy.

After leaving the Navy, Bobulinski became an international businessman. His expertise led to Hunter Biden and his people wooing Bobulinski to give them the business expertise they needed to get their partnership up and running.

The partnership, SinoHawk, was intended to bring together CEFC and the Biden family. Both Hunter and James Biden, after all, brought nothing to the table other than their last name and, with it, the promise that China would have access to political influence at the highest level of American government.

Bobulinski's name recently became public knowledge when James Gilliar, another businessman working on SinoHawk, sent an email to Tony Bobulinski, setting out the terms Gilliar had been negotiating with CEFC. What caught everyone's interest was the statement that Hunter would hold "10[%] for the Big Guy." Bobulinski confirmed that Joe Biden was the "Big Guy."

At this point, Schiff, the media, and Joe Biden, none of whom ever denied the legitimacy of the email, claimed that the whole thing was a Russian smear. This unfounded accusation got Bobulinski's dander up. As a naval officer from a military family and a true patriot, being smeared as a Russian agent was beyond the pale.

Bobulinski demanded that Schiff retract the insult, and when Schiff failed to do so, he went public and did a full document dump. Bobulinski had saved everything -- every document, every email, and every text.

That's the quick background to the interview with Carlson, during which Bobulinski said that

If we had a decent media establishment, this story would be on every front page and at the top of every news hour. Instead, Bobulinski is trying desperately to get Americans to know that he is not a Russian agent and that Joe Biden was in bed with the communist Chinese government, starting when he was vice president and continuing after he left the White House. This screen shot from Memeorandum shows that none of the legacy media outlets is touching the story:

(As an aside, and separate from the Bobulinski interview, a former CIA operations office believes it's entirely possible that Biden was already doing China's bidding in 2012, when the Obama administration gave China free rein in the South China Sea.)

In case the embedded videos do not play, you can find them here , here , here , and here .

We've always known that Joe Biden is an odd bird. Just think of the lies, the egotistical boasting, the offers to fight people, the skinny-dipping, and the way he fondles and sniffs little girls. He is a genuinely creepy man.

It speaks volumes about Washington, D.C. and the Democrat party that Joe spent 47 years in the swamp and rose to the second highest office in the land. What we've learned now, though, irrefutably and without any Russian hokum, is that Joe Biden is also a profoundly corrupt man who willingly sold out America and her allies to enrich himself and his sleazy, incompetent family.

Image: Tony Bobulinski Tucker Carlson interview . Tucker Carlson Show screen grab.

me title=

Fox News has not yet uploaded (and may never upload) the interview in its entirety. However, the four videos below bring together almost everything from the interview.

Tucker opened by making the point that he was dedicating his show to the Bobulinski interview because the rest of the American media are assiduously ignoring the story, downplaying it, or claiming it's a Russian smear. The leader of the Russian smear approach is, naturally, Rep. Adam Schiff, a man who has all the hallmarks of a conscienceless psychopath. Ironically, it was Schiff's smear about Hunter Biden's hard drive that led Bobulinski, a Democrat, to go public with his story.

If you can't watch the interview, here's a brief overview:

Bobulinksi is a former naval officer with a Q clearance. That's an extremely high clearance level for people working in the Department of Energy -- and Bobulinski worked in the Navy's nuclear program. He comes from a military family and is very proud of that legacy.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/9371484590420070?pubid=ld-8832-1542&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanthinker.com&rid=www.americanthinker.com&width=610

After leaving the Navy, Bobulinski became an international businessman. His expertise led to Hunter Biden and his people wooing Bobulinski to give them the business expertise they needed to get their partnership up and running.

The partnership, SinoHawk, was intended to bring together CEFC and the Biden family. Both Hunter and James Biden, after all, brought nothing to the table other than their last name and, with it, the promise that China would have access to political influence at the highest level of American government.

Bobulinski's name recently became public knowledge when James Gilliar, another businessman working on SinoHawk, sent an email to Tony Bobulinski, setting out the terms Gilliar had been negotiating with CEFC. What caught everyone's interest was the statement that Hunter would hold "10[%] for the Big Guy." Bobulinski confirmed that Joe Biden was the "Big Guy."

At this point, Schiff, the media, and Joe Biden, none of whom ever denied the legitimacy of the email, claimed that the whole thing was a Russian smear. This unfounded accusation got Bobulinski's dander up. As a naval officer from a military family and a true patriot, being smeared as a Russian agent was beyond the pale.

Bobulinski demanded that Schiff retract the insult, and when Schiff failed to do so, he went public and did a full document dump. Bobulinski had saved everything -- every document, every email, and every text.

That's the quick background to the interview with Carlson, during which Bobulinski said that

If we had a decent media establishment, this story would be on every front page and at the top of every news hour. Instead, Bobulinski is trying desperately to get Americans to know that he is not a Russian agent and that Joe Biden was in bed with the communist Chinese government, starting when he was vice president and continuing after he left the White House. This screen shot from Memeorandum shows that none of the legacy media outlets is touching the story:

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/tucker_carlsons_interview_with_tony_bobulinski_is_mustsee_tv.html#ixzz6cECCtpGU
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

[Oct 30, 2020] Hunter Biden Documents Mysteriously Vanish From Overnight Envelope, Tucker Carlson Says

Oct 30, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,

A collection of confidential documents related to the Biden family mysteriously vanished from an envelope sent to Fox News host Tucker Carlson , the host said on Wednesday night.

Carlson's team allegedly received the documents from a source on Monday. At the time, Carlson was on the West Coast filming an interview with Tony Bobulinski, the former business partner of Hunter Biden and James Biden. Carlson requested the documents to be sent to the West Coast.

According to Carlson, the producer shipped the documents overnight to California using a large national package carrier. He didn't name the company, saying only that it's a "brand name company."

"The Biden documents never arrived in Los Angeles. Tuesday morning we received word from our shipping company that our package had been opened and the contents were missing," Carlson said. "The documents had disappeared."

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321608055549775872&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fhunter-biden-documents-mysteriously-vanish-overnight-envelope-tucker-carlson-says&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

The company took the incident seriously and immediately began a search, Carlson said. The company traced the package from when it was dropped off in New York to the moment when an employee at a sorting facility reported that the package was opened and empty.

" The company's security team interviewed every employee who touched the envelope we sent. They searched the plane and the trucks that carried it. They went through the office in New York where our producers dropped the package off. They combed the entire cavernous sorting facility. They used pictures of what we had sent so that searchers would know what to look for," Carlson said.

"They far and beyond, but they found nothing."

"Those documents have vanished," he added.

"As of tonight, the company has no idea and no working theory even about what happened to this trove of materials, documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign just six days from now."

me title=

Executives at the shipping company were "baffled" and "deeply bothered" by the incident, Carlson said.

Carlson's interview with Bobulinski aired on Tuesday night. In the interview, Bobulinski opined that Joe Biden and the Biden family are compromised by China due to the business dealings of Hunter Biden and James Biden. Joe Biden has not publicly responded to Bobulinski's allegations, but during a presidential debate on Oct. 22 said he had "not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life."

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Bobulinski provided more than 1,700 pages of emails and more than 600 screenshots of text messages to Senate investigators and handed over to the FBI the smartphones he used during his business dealings with the Bidens. The documents detailed a failed joint venture between a billionaire tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a company owned by Hunter Biden, James Biden, Bobulinski and two other partners.

While the corporate documents don't mention Biden by name, emails sent between the partners suggest that either James Biden or Hunter Biden held a 10 percent stake for the former vice president. In the email, the stake is assigned to "the big guy," who Bobulinski says is Joe Biden.


_arrow NoDebt , 3 minutes ago

I heard Tucker talk about this earlier tonight and realized we are FULLY controlled now. Whatever the **** is going on, whether this is true or not doesn't matter. We are just unwitting participants in some kind of TV reality show now. Everything is meaningless.

lwilland1012 , 5 minutes ago

Please tell me he was smart enough to make copies...

CatInTheHat , 1 minute ago

Ok.

What was IN the documents and from whom?

This is an inside job. Probably a never Trumper at Fox. There are a few.

quanttech , 3 minutes ago

If Trump loses, Fox will go full Dem. Trump will start TrumpTV, and Tucker will need a job....

btw, Tucker should get the Nobel Peace Prize for keeping us out of Iran for the last 3.5 years.

Nona Yobiznes , 4 minutes ago

This story doesn't make sense. You sent confidential, highly sensitive documents via post? Because Tucker was on the west coast? You couldn't scan them in? Were they originals, and are there copies? This doesn't smell right.

icolbowca , 6 minutes ago

Takes a special kind of moron to send something like that via mail...

[Oct 30, 2020] UPS Suddenly Locates -Lost- Biden Evidence, Returning Docs To Tucker Carlson -

Notable quotes:
"... Biden's campaign earlier this month said Biden never had a meeting with an executive at a shady Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, while he was the vice president and his son sat on the board of the firm. A report from the New York Post, citing alleged Hunter Biden emails, suggested Hunter Biden had arranged a meeting between him, the executive, and Joe Biden. ..."
Oct 30, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Delivery giant UPS confirmed Thursday it found a lost trove of documents that Fox News' Tucker Carlson said would provide revelations in the ever-growing scandal involving Joe Biden 's son Hunter and his overseas business dealings.

UPS Senior Public Relations Manager Matthew O'Connor told Business Insider on Thursday afternoon that the documents are located and are being sent to Carlson.

"After an extensive search, we have found the contents of the package and are arranging for its return," he said in a statement.

"UPS will always focus first on our customers, and will never stop working to solve issues and make things right. We work hard to ensure every package is delivered, including essential goods, precious family belongings and critical healthcare."

It came after Glenn Zaccara, UPS's corporate media relations director, confirmed Carlson used the company to ship the materials before they were lost.

"The package was reported with missing contents as it moved within our network," Zaccara said before they were located. "UPS is conducting an urgent investigation."

During his Wednesday night broadcast, Carlson said that a UPS employee notified them that their package "was open and empty apparently, it had been opened."

"The Biden documents never arrived in Los Angeles. Tuesday morning we received word from our shipping company that our package had been opened and the contents were missing," Carlson also remarked. "The documents had disappeared."

On Tuesday night, Carlson interviewed former Hunter Biden associate Tony Bobulinski, who claimed that the former Democratic vice president could be compromised by the Chinese Communist Party due to Hunter and brother James Biden's business dealings in the country.

Joe Biden has not responded to Bobulinski's allegations. Last week during his debate with President Donald Trump, he said he had "not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life."

Biden's campaign earlier this month said Biden never had a meeting with an executive at a shady Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, while he was the vice president and his son sat on the board of the firm. A report from the New York Post, citing alleged Hunter Biden emails, suggested Hunter Biden had arranged a meeting between him, the executive, and Joe Biden.

It's now possible that a special counsel will investigate Joe Biden should he win the presidency.

"You know, I am not a big fan of special counsels, but if Joe Biden wins the presidency, I don't see how you avoid one," Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) said . "Otherwise, this is going to be, you know, tucked away, and we will never know what happened. All this evidence is going to be buried."

UPS did not provide further details about the apparent mishap.

[Oct 30, 2020] Bobulinski will sing tonight - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Notable quotes:
"... Hunter Biden is the modern equivalent of the pre-Reformation papacy selling indulgences. Cash in exchange for unfettered passage into the promised land ..."
Oct 30, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Bobulinski will sing tonight


"Former Biden insider Tony Bobulinski allegedly has a recording of Biden family operatives begging him to stay quiet , or he will "bury" the reputations of everyone involved in Hunter's overseas dealings.

According to The Federalist 's Sean Davis, Bobulinski will play the tape on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Tuesday , when Carlson will devote his show 'entirely' to an interview with the Biden whistleblower."

"According to a source familiar with the planning, Bobulinski will play recordings of Biden family operatives begging him to stay quiet and claiming Bobulinski's revelations will "bury" the reputations of everyone involved in Hunter's overseas deals."

As The Federalist notes:

The Federalist confirmed with sources familiar with the plans that Bobulinski, a retired Navy lieutenant and Biden associate, will be airing tapes of Biden operatives begging Bobulinski to remain quiet as former Vice President Joe Biden nears the finish line to the White House next week.

Bobulinski flipped on the Bidens following a Senate report which revealed that they received a $5 million interest-free loan from a now-bankrupt Chinese energy company .

According to the former Biden insider, he was introduced to Joe Biden by Hunter, and they had an hour-long meeting where they discussed the Biden's business plans with the Chinese, with which he says Joe was "plainly familiar at least at a high level." " Zerohedge

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

First of all, Bobulinski is NOT a "retired Navy lieutenant." He is a former Navy Lieutenant.

Well, folks, it's up to you to watch TC's show tonight if you want to learn about this. Tucker's show is the most watched news show in the history of cable television, so the pain should not be too great, pl

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/youll-bury-everyone-involved-bobulinski-recorded-biden-operatives-begging-him-stay-quiet


ked , 27 October 2020 at 11:31 AM

I don't watch cable TV so I'll have to depend on the objectivity of observers. I'll be curious who / what is a "family operative"? are they traceable like a military chain-of-command?

in related news, we can get a fix on the play between private / public behaviors & the pace of Justice winding.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/federal-judge-smacks-down-bill-barrs-attempt-to-have-doj-defend-trump-in-rape-defamation-case/

I am willing to predict that these examples will have equal impact on the election.

Diana L Croissant , 27 October 2020 at 11:59 AM

Tucker Carlson's show is my favorite news/commentary show. I try not to miss it. Because of the fact that he seems to try hard to verify his sources--and the people he interviews, I trust him. He also tries to provide guests from the left in an attempt to be fair.

He's definitely not a Hannity, who is the one who turns many off of FOX (though Hannity comes right after Tucker).

Deap , 27 October 2020 at 01:23 PM

Hunter Biden is the modern equivalent of the pre-Reformation papacy selling indulgences. Cash in exchange for unfettered passage into the promised land .

Paco , 27 October 2020 at 03:37 PM

selling indulgences.

If St. James day is on Sunday Indulgentia Plena.

Fred , 27 October 2020 at 03:42 PM

Ked,

Thank goodness the Federal Judge has allowed the lawsuit by the private citizen and writer, based on the 1990s allegation, to procede without government interference. I'm sure nobody will do that to democrats in the future. Meanwhile in the Flynn case the DOJ confirms that the govenment documents and discovery exhibits are ture and correct. I'm sure Judge Sullivan will procede expeditiously with granting the unopposed motion to dismiss that case.

https://twitter.com/Techno_Fog/status/1320935992329687040

GEORGE CHAMBERLAIN , 27 October 2020 at 04:08 PM

This story interests me because I believe he is the first to leave the sinking ship but not the last.
There would be no reason for this if he thought Joe would win and the investigation would be snuffed out.
If Trump wins there will most likely be a new version of "Let's Make A Deal" being aired on the nightly news.
I am down to one package of popcorn. I need to restock.

Norber M Salamon , 27 October 2020 at 04:18 PM

another interesting tid-bit:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hunter-biden-confesses-partnership-china-spy-chief-fumes-after-he-and-joe-named-criminal

Lyttennnburgh , 27 October 2020 at 04:30 PM

2Deap

Actually, indulgences were more akin to BitCoins. Especially after 1567, when His Holiness the Pope finally officially banned them... but they had been still produced and sold in large quantities. In France only Richeliue put a stop to this con.

turcopolier , 27 October 2020 at 04:35 PM

Lyttenburgh

Yes, the Catholic Church is so old that it has been corrupt and reformed many times

Fred , 27 October 2020 at 08:04 PM

George,

"version of "Let's Make A Deal""

The democrats turned that down a couple weeks ago, thus this is blowing up in their faces right now.

james , 27 October 2020 at 08:28 PM

lol! you are filling in some of the many blanks in my musical knowledge... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbX2diR9b4U

GEORGE CHAMBERLAIN , 27 October 2020 at 08:34 PM

Serve me my plate a Crow. Maybe.
He is saying now that he is 2nd generation military and that they pissed him off claiming he was a Russian asset.
That is plausible.
Maybe it is both?
Regardless it seems he has a great deal of proof.

Diana L Croissant , 27 October 2020 at 09:20 PM

I was convinced during the interview. Bobulinsky seemed pretty convincing in his concern for his own reputation, having been associated with the Biden "Mafia" in the first place.

It was clear during the interview that he had provided Tucker verification for his claims.

I am more concerned that this revelation comes too late and that many, many people have voted early. He referenced some hearings that will be held in Congress. I doubt that will affect the election, given the slow pace of anything getting done in Congress. I voted early, but I am not personally concerned because I did NOT vote for Biden; however, I am concerned that those who voted early for Biden could not now change their votes.

elaine , 27 October 2020 at 09:22 PM

ked, Tucker Carlson Tonight shows are usually on YouTube shortly
after they air on cable

turcopolier , 27 October 2020 at 09:25 PM

james

Yes. You have to watch out for unannounced medical visits. "Guido, get in the wagon, you need a check up."

akaPatience , 27 October 2020 at 10:12 PM

SO, if I understand the situation correctly, Bobulinski was essentially sought after, used and then screwed by the Bidens, which seems risky on the part of the clan. But I guess if Joe wins the election, they will have gotten away with it as I can't imagine, in spite of any damning evidence, the Bidens will suffer the same punishing rectal examination-like scrutiny and vilification the Trump family's been subjected to.

Eric Newhill , 27 October 2020 at 10:12 PM

Col Lang,
Hoping you write about your assessment of B and what he had to say.

I found him to be generally credible. All of his motives for singing largely make sense to me. I think he's a patriot. Some good supporting evidence. He's sharp. I liked him. He's the kind of guy I'd enjoy working with.

I don't know anything about the realm of international deal making and finance. I'm wondering how a Navy O3 works his way to enjoying yachts in Monaco while making $millions. Is he an Annapolis guy? Tight with the right classmates? Not a lot to be found on him via Google.

turcopolier , 27 October 2020 at 10:22 PM

Eric Newhill

He was no longer in the navy when he was messing around with the Biden familia. He was probably in the Navy three or four years. He ought to lay off on that. I'll think it over tonight.

turcopolier , 27 October 2020 at 10:24 PM

akapatience
Yes, bend over for the Silver Stallion. "Ah, I see a polyp!"

Fred , 27 October 2020 at 10:37 PM

akapatience,

Once Wray's FBI gets done with the Rusty Wallace Noose Case they'll have time to deep dive the laptop he's had for almost a year.

Col.,

Bobulinski seemed awful polished during that interview. Almost too good to be true. Hunter being a druggy and Burisma payments being real certainly lend an air to credibility.

Deap , 28 October 2020 at 01:55 AM

Adam Schiff:........"Bobolinski is a Russian agent".
BAM!

Executive summary of the interview.

Bobo , 28 October 2020 at 07:52 AM

Turns out Patrick Ho Hunters partner in CEFC had a FISA warrant on him when he was nabbed in New York awhile back. His first call was to Hunter to seek legal advice and Hunter represented him. So them scumbags in the FBI have been sitting on this for awhile and will use it on Joe (if elected) when needed. Must be modus operandi at the FBI in gathering dirt on all politicians via FISA's, Hoover is still there.
As with all of us Bobulinski is not lily white but is making an effort to clean his act and those around him. Lily White always comes in degrees. Not much in the NY Times, Wash Post or WSJ this morning but the WSJ deserves a little credit with McBurn's editorial.
Bobulinski obviously comes from a military family thus his harping on his Navy creds. Guess when your in that much sunshine you fall back strongly on anything available.

fakebot , 28 October 2020 at 09:25 AM

I don't doubt his credibility and it's good that he at least got on Tucker Carlson to provide some much needed answers, but he's not a known quantity and I have hard time imagining his revelations will change minds.

I think the FBI sandbagging the whole affair is what holds back this story getting the attention it deserves from the public. The president I'm sorry to say has been badly served by Wray, Haspel, and company. I think he should have replaced them months ago and waiting until reelection to do it may have been a mistake.

[Oct 30, 2020] Tucker Carlson- What Tony Bobulinski told me and why it matters - Fox News

Oct 30, 2020 | www.foxnews.com

Tuesday night, we heard at length and on camera from one of the Biden family's former business partners. His name is Tony Bobulinski. He's a very successful businessman and a Navy veteran.

Bobulinski spoke to "Tucker Carlson Tonight" for a full hour. He told us he met two separate times with Joe Biden himself. Not just with Joe Biden's son or his brother, but with Joe Biden -- the former vice president and the man now running for president -- to discuss business deals with the communist government of China .

That's a very serious claim, and whatever your political views, it's hard to dismiss it when Tony Bobulinski makes it because Bobulinsky is an unusually credible witness. He's not a partisan, he's not seeking money, he's not seeking publicity. He did not want to come on our show.

But when Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the Biden campaign accused Tony Bobulinski of participating in a Russian disinformation effort, he felt he had no choice. That was a slander against him and against his family. So Bobulinski came to us. He arrived with heaps of evidence to bolster the story he was telling. He brought contemporaneous audio recordings, text messages, e-mails, many financial documents.

Video

By the end of the hour, it was very clear to us that Tony Bobulinski was telling the truth and that Joe Biden was lying. We believe that any honest person who watched the entire hour would come to the same conclusion.

Well, on Wednesday, a Senate committee confirmed it . The Senate Homeland Security Committee reported that all of Tony Bobulinski's documents are, in fact, real. They are authentic. They are not forgeries. This is not Russian disinformation. It is real.

Bobulinski told a remarkable story. Joe Biden -- who, once again, could be president of the United States next week, was planning business deals with America's most formidable global opponent. And when he was caught doing it, Joe Biden lied. And then he went further. He slandered an innocent man as a traitor to his own country. It is clear that Joe Biden did that. That's not a partisan talking point uttered in bad faith on behalf of another presidential campaign. It's true.

https://c0c754eabe03683fa93ffdd97cfadeee.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

So the question is, what is Joe Biden's excuse for doing that? What is his version of this story? Everyone has a version and we'd like to hear it, but we don't know what Joe Biden's version of the story is, because no one in America's vast media landscape has pressed Joe Biden to answer the question. Instead, reporters at all levels and their editors and their publishers have openly collaborated with Joe Biden's political campaign. That is unprecedented. It has never happened in American history.

Video

Wednesday morning, the big papers completely ignored what Tony Bobulinski had to say. So did the other television networks. Not a single word about Bobulinski appeared on CNN or anywhere else. Newsweek decided to cover it, but came to the conclusion that the real story was about QAnon somehow. This is Soviet-style suppression of information about a legitimate news story. Days before an election, the ramifications of it are impossible to imagine. But we do know the media cannot continue in the way that it has.

No one believes the media anymore and no one should. You should be offended by this, not because the media are liberal, but because this is an attack on our democracy. You've heard that phrase again and again, but this is what it looks like. In a self-governing country, voters have a right -- an obligation -- to know who they're voting for. In this case, they have the right to know the Democratic nominee for president was a willing partner in his family's lucrative influence-peddling operation, an operation that went on for decades and stretched from China and Ukraine all the way to Oman, Romania, Luxembourg and many other countries. This is not speculation once again, and it's not a partisan attack. It's true, and Tony bobulinski confirmed it.

Bobulinski met with Joe Biden at a hotel bar in Los Angeles in early May of 2017, and when he did, Joe Biden's son introduced Bobulinski this way: "Dad. Here's the individual I told you about that's helping us with the business that we're working on and the Chinese."

The man I told you about.

Video

Now, written documents confirmed this is real. At one point, Joe Biden's son texted Tony Bobulinski to say that Joe Biden, his father, was making key decisions about their business deals with China.

CARLSON: When Hunter Biden said his chairman, he was talking about his dad.

me title=

BOBULINSKI: Correct, and what Hunter is referencing there is, he spoke with his father and his father is giving an emphatic 'no' to the ask that I had, which was putting proper governance in place around Oneida Holdings.

CARLSON: So, Joe Biden is vetoing your plan for putting stricter governance in the company. I mean, and it's it's right here in the email.

BOBULINSKI: Yes, Tucker, I want to be very careful in front of the American people. That is not me writing that. That is not me claiming that. That is Hunter Biden writing on his own phone. Typing in that 'I spoke with my chairman,' referencing his father.

All this is spelled out in the clearest possible language in documents that Bobulinski provided us, documents that subsequently federal authorities have authenticated as real.

On May 13, 2017, for example, Hunter Biden got an email explaining how his family would be paid for their deal with the Chinese energy company. His father, Joe Biden, was getting 10%.

BOBULINSKI: In that email, there's a statement where they go through the equity, Jim Biden's referenced as, you know, 10%. It doesn't say Biden, it says Jim. And then it has 10% for the big guy held by H. I 1,000% sit here and know that the big guy is referencing Joe Biden. It's, that's crystal clear to me because I lived it. I met with the former vice president in person multiple times.

That was three years ago, and we still don't know where all that money went, because the media haven't forced Joe Biden to tell us. But Tony, Bobulinski did add a telling detail. Joe Biden's brother, Jim, saw his stake in the deal double from 10% to 20%. Was Jim Biden getting his brother's share again? It might be worth finding out.

me title=

We also know that according to an email from a top Chinese official, this one written on July 26, 2017, the Chinese proposed a $5 million dollar interest-free loan to the Biden family, "based on their trust on [sic] BD [Biden] family." The e-mail continued, "Should this Chinese company, CEFC, keep lending more to the family?" And indeed, CEFC was supposed to send another $5 million dollars to the Bidens' business ventures. Apparently, that money never made it to the business. Where did it go? A recent Senate report suggests it went to Hunter Biden directly. And from there, who knows? Again, no one's asked.

JIM BIDEN REFUSES TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT FAMILY'S BUSINESS DEALINGS

Tony Bobulinski also told us he learned Hunter Biden became the personal attorney to the chairman of CEFC, Ye Jianming, just as they were tendering 14% of a Russian state-owned energy company. That was a deal valued at $9 billion dollars. It's pretty sleazy. It's pretty amazing, actually, that this happened and no one noticed.

We're not going to spend the next six months leading you through a maze of complex financial transactions. This isn't that complicated: Millions of dollars linked directly to the Communist Party of China went to Joe Biden's family, and not because they're capable businessmen. Jim Biden's one business success appears to have been running a nightclub in Delaware that ultimately went under.

No, the Bidens were cut in on the world's most lucrative business deals, massive infrastructure deals in countries around the world for one reason: Because Joe Biden was a powerful government official willing to leverage his power on behalf of his family.

Now, if that's not a crime, it's very close to a crime and it's certainly something every person voting should know about. The Bidens didn't do this once. They did it for decades. So the question is, how did they get away with it for so long? Tony Bobulinski asked Jim Biden that question directly. To his credit Jim Biden answered that question honestly.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

me title=

BOBULINSKI: And I remember looking at Jim Biden and saying, 'How are you guys getting away with this?' Like, 'Aren't you concerned?' And he looked at me and he laughed a little bit and said, 'Plausible deniability.'

CARLSON: He said that out loud.

BOBULINSKI: Yes, he said it directly to me. One on one, in a cabana at the Peninsula Hotel.

"Plausible deniability." In other words, "we lie." We get away with selling access to the U.S. government, which we do not own, because we lie about what we're doing. And as we lie, we try to make those lies plausible. That's why we call it "plausible deniability." That is the answer that Joe Biden's brother gave when asked directly.

So the question is, what is Joe Biden's answer to that question? We wish we knew.

ForFoxSake!!! 1 hour ago Everything that is happening right now is because Trump was right about the swamp, the media, and the ruling class families who have been selling out America for decades. ohhappyday657 1 hour ago Tucker is doing this country a great service. The FBI doesn't seem to want to engage. Mr. Bobulinski is a patriot and we are lucky he came forward. The Bidens need to be called out for their high crimes and misdemeanors. Joe should be impeached for his time as VP. Thank you Tucker. resipsaloquitor ohhappyday657 29 minutes ago You can smell the desperation on the Trump supporters. The lies, the distortions and the grasping, pathetic search for the proverbial Hail Mary to salvage the quickly sinking ship. If Mr. Bobulinski is the best you have the Democrats will 'trump' you with: 227,000 dead Americans, close to 9 million more infected and an economy in tatters. The day of reckoning is approaching and a dozen Bobulinskis won't change that. Trump and his unseemly administration are doomed.

[Oct 30, 2020] Plausible Deniability

Oct 30, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"Plausible Deniability"


" ... the former CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, which he said was the partnership between the CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming and the two Biden family members.

"I remember saying, 'How are you guys getting away with this?' 'Aren't you concerned?'" he told Carlson.

He claims that Jim Biden chuckled.

"'Plausible Deniability,' he said it directly to me in a cabana at the Peninsula Hotel," he said.

In the interview, he outlines how an alleged meeting with Joe Biden took place on May 2, 2017. Fox News first reported text messages that indicated such a meeting. Bobulinski said that it was the Bidens, not him, who had pushed the meeting.

"They were sort of wining and dining me and presenting the strength of the Biden family to get me engaged and to take on the CEO role to develop SinoHawk in the U.S. and around the world in partnership with CEFC," he said.

He went at length into how Joe Biden arrived for a Milken conference, partly held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and how he was introduced by Jim and Hunter Biden to the former vice president.

"I didn't request to meet with Joe" Biden, he said. "They requested that I meet with Joe [Biden ]. They were putting their entire family legacy on the line. They knew exactly what they were doing."" FN

-----------

Bobulinski is a successful international business hustler. I know the type well. The Biden familia wanted him in this China deal for the purpose of having him hold the reins of this enterprise even as they looted it for the purpose of quickly enriching the fam.

A TV commentator remarked last night after watching the interview that this defection from the Biden camp is reflective of an old business truth which can be stated as "don't screw your partner if he has enough material to sink you."

I am unimpressed with selfless patriotism as Bobu's most basic motivation in sticking it to Joe, Jimmy and Hunter Biden. A sense of betrayal in a business deal wrecked by the Bidens' overwhelming greed and their desire to consolidate family riches as fast as they could is a more plausible. motivation.

This does not mean that Bobu is not telling the truth. His collection of e-mails addressed to him and incriminating memoranda is most impressive.

IMO, what has been revealed is a truth with regard to the Biden crime family. They are nouveau riche grifters who will have a much grander stage for their efforts if Joe is elected as a presidential figurehead. pl

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/plausible-deniability-tony-bobulinski-biden-family


Deap , 28 October 2020 at 11:39 AM

Did Hunter Biden's young business partners bring anything of value to the table, or were they just name brand ride-alongs too. Archer, Conley, Heinz, etc. Biden was running a very leaky ship, with such a large but relatively unsophisticated and compromised entourage.

jonst , 28 October 2020 at 01:04 PM

I am, and I'm sure this is not an original observation, because it's as the Col notes, singularly unimpressed with the entire lot of them. Bobo, Jim B, Hunter B, Duncan Hunter, Joe B, Bulger's nephew, I've seen more gravitas among bookies, juicemen, and fences, that I grew up with in NYC. And I mean that. Not a throw away line. And THESE guys will run the show? And Harris I find singularity creep, artificial, and somehow just down right inappropriate. I would not select any of them to run a post office.

NancyK , 28 October 2020 at 01:13 PM

I guess it comes down to a choice between the grifters we know and the grifters we don't know. I still trust Joe Biden more than Trump.

Bill H , 28 October 2020 at 01:26 PM

I got a little tired of the man making so much of his "service to his country." Not that it isn't worth quite a lot and I respect him for it, but four years... I served six years, and what I dwell on is how much I loved serving in submarines and the enormous degree that it contributed to building my character. The degree to which my service benefited my country was trivial. It benefited me enormously.

Like you, I think he is telling the truth in that interview.

turcopolier , 28 October 2020 at 01:32 PM

nancyK
What is the evidence that Trump is a "grifter?" Not accusations, evidence?

Rick Merlotti , 28 October 2020 at 02:38 PM

NancyK

After 4 plus years of the intelligence agencies and MSM looking under every conceivable rock, you think that there is anything left to find about Trump? You are delusional and headed for a massive case of buyer's remorse if swiss-cheese-for-brains gets in.

Diana L Croissant , 28 October 2020 at 02:45 PM

Thank you for asking that question. I was about to ask it myself. My understanding is that Trump's children are working for him as he is President for little pay. They may be still handling Trump business accounts; but it seems they work for his White House office and its many functions--and for his campaign.

I still believe in the American middle class, the people who make American run. These are the people at his rallies, wearing MAGA hats, and showing up in overflow numbers.

They are not people who are easily swayed by "false prophets."

Trump keeps pointing out how well our economy was doing UNTIL China sent the virus (and, I DO believe they sent it). He promises the return of that economy.

That is why Biden now is totally into frightening people about COVID and pushing masks and social distancing. He is afraid that Trump will indeed be able to bring back a good economy. He doesn't know how to do that, as is clear by this desperate attempt to cover up his shady dealings with first Ukraine and now China.

Where I live, a large percentage of our population are clearly very tired and bored with the COVID scare. We still do as our DEMOCRAT Governor, who hails from the People's Republic of Boulder, Colorado, and the University of Colorado, where Socialist, Marxist, and Ultra Feminists rule in the Arts and Humanities. We call Boulder "forty square miles surrounded by reality." Unfortunately, the Boulder/Denver triangle contains the largest voting block. We used to be able to count on Colorado Springs, but the universities in that area and into Pueblo have also been taken over by the leftists.

What is also clear is that Biden's real hope was to build his own family dynasty by using the Presidency as nothing but a cash cow for him and his inept and useless son.

I don't care really what Bobulinski's motives were for coming forward with his documents and emails, I'm just thankful that he did. I hope it wasn't too late. And I'm thankful he chose Tucker Carlson's show as the place to do it.

akaPatience , 28 October 2020 at 03:01 PM

Joe Biden doesn't seem to be the brightest bulb for someone with a JD. To wit: why didn't he just offer that he's given his son some fatherly advice about business now and then? Instead, he's repeatedly and categorically denied discussing ANYTHING with his son about his business dealings, which we now know is provably false. I'm no lawyer but I'd think Joe's repeated lying infers a tacit admission of guilt. Deniability doesn't seem plausible in this case.

I'd even go so far as to infer that Joe's gotten away with business dealings of this sordid sort for SO long that he's become sloppy (e.g., the braggadocio ON VIDEO of withholding US aid to Ukraine until its solicitor investigating Burisma, which was paying his son $50-80 thousand per month, was fired.) He obviously has the [justifiable] expectation of never being held accountable.

JohninMK , 28 October 2020 at 03:15 PM

Did anyone else clock his comment that he wasn't being paid, not even expenses, for all these trips. He said he was funding them himself, presumably until the $5M arrived.

Then it didn't but the Bidens got their $5M. The Bidens arrogance just piles onto their stupidity. Did they really think that kind of operator would take it lying down?

eakens , 28 October 2020 at 03:49 PM

NancyK. It unfortunately appears a vaccine for covid is way ahead of anything for TDS

smoke , 28 October 2020 at 06:09 PM

@ Diana Croissant

With one foot in Colorado Springs, I'd like to suggest that you may be overstating the weight of the local colleges in ColSpr's growing Democrat numbers. El Paso county election results have remained fairly reliably Republican, if not by as sure a margin as once.

Population growth may be more significant mover, the high rate of in-migration to Colorado, esp Denver. The seven county Greater Denver-Boulder area, with a population of 3.3 million, grew 1.1% last year, and has grown as fast or faster in the previous ten years. In number, the Denver population has grown faster than anywhere else in the state. In the past ten years the population of Denver Co alone increased 21%.

Colorado Springs/ El Paso Co. has grown quickly in the same period, but not as much as Denver. The current population of 720,000 increased 16% from ten years ago. A good part of this growth has been driven by Denver's growth and skyrocketing housing prices. A house costs much less in El Paso County.

Too many Denverites are choosing to commute an hour+ from ColSpr to Denver, as seen by the explosion of new housing at the north end of El Paso County and the now-daily traffic crawl at rush hour on I-25 between ColSpr and Denver. Just try to get up to the speed limit on that stretch. The state is adding extra lanes as fast as it can. It appears that Denver attitudes move in with many of these commuters. Is ColSpr fated to become a bedroom community?

Finally, Colorado appears to be one of the places attracting migrants from the blighted, overbuilt, overdetermined coasts. Again, newcomers arrive with attitudes from the places they left.

I am hoping that the open skies and spaces, the particular self-reliance of rural Colorado, and the more democratic openness to citizen initiatives via the ballot will mellow their views.

This level of population growth and shifting politics, lacking a concommitant growth in productivity of local biz and industry, is not viewed with equanimity by older inhabitants of ColSpr. IMO It would be best if Colorado remained independent, with reasonable political compromise and collaboration between parties, as before it has been.

Is a comparable dynamic underway north of Denver in your direction?


The Twisted Genius , 28 October 2020 at 08:40 PM

pl and NancyK,

In reference to Trump's reputation as a grifter, I offer the following sample:
- He paid $2 million in fines and had to close down the Trump Foundation for using it as a personal piggy bank.
- The Eric Trump Foundation was forced to close for similar grift. It was funneling money into Trump family businesses and accounts. It's wasn't like the family directly stole money from kids with cancer, but it ended up doing just that.
- His friend Bannon's recent grift with his Build the Wall Foundation, along with Manafort's tax and bank fraud convictions, and Cohen's conviction for paying hush money for Trump's sexual escapades.
- The sham Trump University was forced to close with a $25 million settlement to two class action lawsuits and a NY civil lawsuit.

None of this sunk Trump. What it did do was inure the American public to the increasing shittyness of our politician's behavior. Hunter's antics would have caused Joe to withdraw from public life ten years ago, but today it's just par for the course.
-

turcopolier , 28 October 2020 at 11:19 PM

TTG
My friend, as I have told you before, you have no real knowledge of practice in the business world. Nobody says Trump has sold the US for his family's profit.

[Oct 28, 2020] Disinformation By Popular Demand- How The Authenticity Of Hunter's Laptop Became Immaterial -

Oct 28, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden was again insisting that the scandal involving Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation despite the direct refutation of that claim by the FBI .

No mainstream reporter bothered to ask the simple question of whether this was his son's laptop and emails , including emails clearly engaging in an influence peddling scheme and referring to Joe Biden's knowledge. Instead, media has maintained a consistent and narrow focus. Indeed, in her interview, Leslie Stahl immediately dismissed any "scandal" involving Hunter in an interview with the President on 60 Minutes. It was an open example of what I previously noted in a column: " After all, an allegation is a scandal only if it is damaging. No coverage, no damage, no scandal ."

In her interview with Joe Biden, CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell did not push Biden to simply confirm that the emails were fake or whether he did in fact meet with Hunter's associates (despite his prior denials). Instead O'Donnell asked: "Do you believe the recent leak of material allegedly from Hunter's computer is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?"

Biden responded with the same answer that has gone unchallenged dozens of times:

"From what I've read and know the intelligence community warned the president that Giuliani was being fed disinformation from the Russians. And we also know that Putin is trying very hard to spread disinformation about Joe Biden. And so when you put the combination of Russia, Giuliani– the president, together– it's just what it is. It's a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about. What is he running on? What is he running on?"

It did not matter that the answer omitted the key assertion that this was not Hunter's laptop or emails or that he did not leave the computer with this store.

Recently, Washington Post columnist Thomas Rid wrote said the quiet part out loud by telling the media:

"We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation -- even if they probably aren't."

about:blank

about:blank

me title=

Let that sink in for a second. It does not matter if these are real emails and not Russian disinformation. They probably are real but should be treated as disinformation even though American intelligence has repeatedly r ebutted that claim. It does not even matter that the computer has seized the computer as evidence in a criminal fraud investigation or that a Biden confidant is now giving his allegations to the FBI under threat of criminal charges if he lies to investigators.

NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX

Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.

It simply does not matter. It is disinformation because it is simply inconvenient to treat it as real information.


Bastiat , 3 hours ago

I should have lost the capacity for shock in reaction to this Mockingbird crap but the sheer naked audacity of it still gets me.

Carbon Skidmark , 3 hours ago

I don't know what is worse. The concept that hiding crimes is no longer that important or the lack of response to the crimes by so many.

jin187 , 3 hours ago

I don't know what's worse. The fact that our supposed news networks do this, or the fact that in spite of the vast majority of Americans saying they distrust them, they still let them get away with it. They still watch, and read, and listen. TBH, I don't think the lack of MSM coverage is an issue with this particular story. I think the average Democrats and RINOs are just covering their eyes and ears with this one. They want Trump to lose so bad, they don't care if day one of the Biden administration is him handing suitcases of military hardware blueprints to the Chinese. Anyone with a (D), never Trump, keep the swamp churning. That's all they care about.

Four chan , 25 minutes ago

the laptop and its contents are 100% verified with clean chain of control.

UndergroundPost , 3 hours ago

It's now clear the Democrat Party under the Biden / Clinton Dynasties is nothing more than a fully compromised, corrupt and criminal extension of the Communist Party of China

SDShack , 3 hours ago

Absolutely! The timelines of everything line up perfect. These laptops were dropped off at the computer shop in early 2019. Work was done, but not paid for. The owner tried to get paid and have the laptops picked up for 3 months. No go, so abandoned property now belongs to the computer shop. All perfectly legal. It's now fall 2019 and the Impeachment Sham related to Ukraine is starting. Computer shop realizes that laptops belonged to Demorat VP son being caught up in the entire Impeachment Sham. Computer shop guy realizes he is holding dynamite with lit fuse so he contacts FBI. FBI does nothing, then gets involved, then sits on the story. This is all end of 2019.

Meanwhile, demorat primaries are starting and Bernie is the leader. DNC can't have Bernie win, so they try to game the system to stop him just like 2016. But no one early on can do it. Senile Joe fails first. Then Kamalho, who was the favorite, flames out. Then all the others. It's now early 2020 and the DNC is hemorrhaging money and in disarray. Then look what happens, the DNC miraculously unities around Senile Joe to stop the Angry Berd, with Kamalho being the fallback position as VP. It is clear that the CCP ordered the DNC to do this because they had the goods on Corrupt Joe, and the DNC needs the Chicom money. They all figured they had it all covered up. They never figured on the crazy cokehead son blowing it all up. The timelines all line up, and explain why Senile Joe rose from the dead in the primaries to be the anointed one, along with Kamalho. The CCP got the candidates they bought and paid for.

GoldmanSax , 1 hour ago

100% true but the republican government refuses to prosecute their buddies. The US has 1 party and we ain't invited.

Robert De Zero , 3 hours ago

It isn't real, we hope it isn't real, you can't prove it's real, 50 experts said it isn't real, Russia planted it, Russian disinformation, Rudy is compromised, Rudy might be a Russian agent, Rudy almost banged a 24 YO and he can't be trusted, It's not about Joe we don't care, Hunter isn't running, Bobulinski has a funny name so he can't be trusted...NOT ONCE ASKING IF THIS IS a MAJOR PHUCKING PROBLEM.

The problem isn't RUSSIA, it's you bastards in the Big Lies Media!

GoldmanSax , 1 hour ago

Why hasn't the patriotic republicans arrested the evil democrats? Whats the hold up?

tonye , 3 hours ago

At some point we are going to have to break up the corporate media conglomerates.

All of them.

And start racketeering prosecutions.

Salsa Verde , 3 hours ago

Facts mean nothing in a country where emotional outbursts are now considered gospel.

Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago

I think we need to bring back the death penalty in every state and not keep housing these criminals for lifetimes.

Zorch , 2 hours ago

Wait! What does Gretta say?

VisceralFat1 , 3 hours ago

so... the hunter laptop is fake

and global warming is real

got it

jin187 , 3 hours ago

You just summed up the only thing 90% of students actually learn from 12 years of public school.

rwe2late , 3 hours ago

correct on both points

Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago

duh...

the Feds have plenty of laptops that have incriminating evidence of our elected leaders (Wasserman Schultz, Iman Brothers, Weiner, DNC Servers, etc...), Dems and Repubs

at issue is if we REALLY knew the depths of treason from said leaders, we'd run out of rope and tall trees...

so...anyone who votes Democrat, is complicit in my eyes (and they don't need to vote Republican) and deserve the heat of the truth, strong enough to melt all the snowflake-SJW's

Carbon Skidmark , 3 hours ago

ban laptops...it's so simple...no laptops and bad things stop happening

Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago

/sarc

banned public schools first...they're indoctrination centers of controlled deception

NO critical thinking...NO innovative strategies

ONLY State sponsors 'information' filtered by the snowflakes anti-social media platforms and e-encyclopedia (Schmoogle)

11b40 , 3 hours ago

Ban email & instant messages. Life would be immediately better.

CosmoJoe , 3 hours ago

Dorsey looks like a fvcking homeless person. What a clown. I'd love to rip that ring right out of his nose.

sunhu , 2 hours ago

losers anger is always fun to watch

chubbar , 3 hours ago

The media is acting against the best interests of the USA. Think about it, "IF" the allegations are true, we need to find out BEFORE we elect someone who is selling out our country for personal gain, not after. WHY would the media think differently unless they don't care whether the allegations are true or not? Are they working for China? Is the DNC? These are appropriate lines of inquiry given the wholesale censoring the media has levied on the Biden corruption story. The FBI sat on this for months and it has Child ****, which means children remain at risk until the FBI goes in and stops it. WTF is wrong with Wray that he allows this to go on?

somewhere_north , 3 hours ago

Dude, if it was for real Hunter Biden would have been arrested by now. You can't seriously believe they're just holding back their damning evidence. The obvious conclusion is they don't have it.

Mr. Universe , 2 hours ago

...except those pictures of a naked Hunter with his niece and the emails of the family trying to keep a lid on Mom's protestations.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/10/breaking-exclusive-hunter-biden-pictures-half-naked-exposed-certain-minor-joe-biden-lying/

somewhere_north , 2 hours ago

You see lots of pics of Hunter Biden with a blacked out bitch. No way of knowing who he's actually with.

hugin-o-munin , 2 hours ago

Yeah like duh really man, I mean come on man. Stop thinking so much man, hang ten and chill bruh.

8-(

Im4truth4all , 2 hours ago

Has Comey, Clapper, Strozk and the list goes on ad infinitum, been arrested? No.

ebear , 1 hour ago

"The obvious conclusion is they don't have it."

An inference, by itself, is not a conclusion.

Soloamber , 2 hours ago

Wray inherited a completely screwed up Comey FBI .

He is not a culture changer .

glasshour , 3 hours ago

Stop calling these people mainstream. There is nothing mainstream about them because nobody watches their crap.

Joe Rogan's show last night got more views than all of them combined.

WhatDoYouFightFor , 3 hours ago

Hunter is still walking around free, system is F'd. Nothing will right the United States at this point.

Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago

it's the Hillary conundrum, right?

IF they get Hunter, it's 'election interference'...

deceitful godless individuals...

randocalrissian , 3 hours ago

But but but Her Emails

slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago

he will always be free on these items as the evidence was all acquired illegally and likely doctored to all hell.

jin187 , 3 hours ago

This is why I said the day Trump got elected that these people just need to disappear to a blacksite in Yemen. The best way to drain the swamp is waterboarding all the ones we know to find the ones we don't know.

Ghost of Porky , 3 hours ago

If Trump rescued 30 drowning children with his helicopter the CNN headline would read "Trump Increases Carbon Footprint to Risk Superspreader Event.

Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago

Exactly - so tired of MSM and their opinionated lies

pstpetrov , 3 hours ago

Yes Liberals are all about disinformation and Trump has the moral high ground.

randocalrissian , 3 hours ago

Best joke I've heard in October. Well played, sir!

otschelnik , 3 hours ago

How would the MSM react if Don Jr. flew into China on AF1 with his father, met with Chinese central committee members and intelligence officials, formed a Joint Venture with them and then got a 5 million dollar no interest loan from the head of a private oil company, who's chairman used to work in intelligence?

Imagine that. How would ABC MSNBC CNN NPR WaPo NYT PBS broadcast that?

glasshour , 3 hours ago

Better question, who cares. Nobody watches that junk anymore.

fanbeav , 3 hours ago

Liberal sheeple still do.

randocalrissian , 3 hours ago

Let's get the case in a court of law so allegations and wild claims can be proven or disproven. But wait, this was timed so court isn't an option. So all we are left with is the sniff test. Smells like baby diaper needs changed.

slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago

How did they react when it was Kushner doing the traveling and getting the money for his business?

Iconoclast422 , 3 hours ago

the computer has seized the computer as evidence

Why does every article have these little tidbits that make me think every writer has stroked out in 2020?

11b40 , 3 hours ago

You see that, too? Something is wrong in the editing process. Sloppy, I guess, or foreign.

Santiago de Mago , 3 hours ago

I noticed that in several articles today... almost like they are being written by AI bots.

jin187 , 3 hours ago

It was written by this guy https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UYC1ASU

JasperEllings , 2 hours ago

You've found the treasure trove, my friend.

"My Macaroni And Cheese Is A Lesbian Also She Is My Lawyer"

balz , 3 hours ago

Every time you see someone saying they are a "journalist" at a MSM, don't forget to tell them they are wrong and their job-title is "propagandist".

Shut. It. Down. , 2 hours ago

Some of the emails have already been verified by the outside recipient or sender.

Next you'll tell me all the sex videos were photoshopped by Putin.

KayaCreate , 1 hour ago

I lost 5 mins of my life watching Hunters **** getting kicked around by a probable minor while smoking crack. You could tell it was him as his fake teeth glowed in the dark.

Cephisus , 3 hours ago

The media are scum.

Bill of Rights , 3 hours ago

Funny isn't it, every time the Globalist are exposed its " Disinformation " ..Hows that Russian Collusion evidence coming along? its only been four years.....

American2 , 2 hours ago

The only question remaining to ask is simply this: Who is more enfeebled, Joe Biden; or the networks and ABC, NBC, CBS, NY Times, WaPo, LA Times?

CosmoJoe , 3 hours ago

I have been out of f*cks to give when it comes to the MSM for a decade now. What is so comical is that when the MSM so overtly covers for candidates, it backfires horribly. You can't hyperventilate over an anonymously sourced Trump tax return story and yet ignore the Biden laptop. People see right through that.

randocalrissian , 3 hours ago

Trump's taxes were made public. Nobody knows where Biden's (or whoever's) laptop came from. Giuliani is already very late with the promised salacious details. How many people do you think are really changing their vote to the Domestic Terrorist in the WH?

IndicaTive , 3 hours ago

I know of one person

Invert This MM , 3 hours ago

You are a freaking Share Blue Clown. Nobody buys your monkey dung

IndicaTive , 3 hours ago

You know me so well, after 3 months of trolling here.

Invert This MM , 2 hours ago

You really are one stupid fuuk. You just outed one of your sockpuppets and I was purged in the Google crack down. I have been posting here for 12 years. You monkeys are really stupid.

Invert This MM , 2 hours ago

Hey Monkey, I was purged during the Google shake dawn. Been here 14 years. Like a complete moron, you just outed one of your sockpuppets. Dumbass

replaceme , 3 hours ago

No serious Dem thinks the laptop isn't Hunter's - your supposed to ignore it, or pretend it has nothing to do with Joe. The Russians, booga boogah

invention13 , 3 hours ago

No, his taxes weren't made public. Claims about his taxes were made public - there is a difference which you seem happy to elide.

CosmoJoe , 3 hours ago

Trump's taxes as reported by the NY Times were NOT made public, what gives you that idea. The info was leaked to the Times.

jin187 , 3 hours ago

This is what I want to know. How is it that the NYP is still banned from Twitter based on them obtaining information "illegally or illicitly", when we know for a fact now that they didn't? At the same time, I'm pretty sure that the NYT and their followers are still happily linking and chatting away about the story on how they illegally obtained Trump's tax returns.

wearef_ckedwithnohope , 3 hours ago

Matt Taibbi has written a series of articles bemoaning the current state of journalism.

replaceme , 3 hours ago

What's journalism?

invention13 , 3 hours ago

I'm beginning to think it is something that never really existed - just an ideal in some people's minds.

Shillelagh Pog , 2 hours ago

Journalism is putting down on paper your, or someone you like, or is paying you for, feelings, duh.

slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago

He has the same issues with his journalism.

starcraft22 , 1 hour ago

The laptop is real. The media is the foreign disinformation.

Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago

Just shocking how MSM is so quick to dismiss this shocking evidence. We know it's not part of their brainwashing echo chamber of lies for their low IQ and low informed voters but had this been one of Trump's sons laptops - this would be MAJOR HEADLINES for the next 12 months.

Remember the 4 year Russiangate investigation, 40 million to Robert Mueller all based on a bought and paid dossier paid for by the DNC/Clinton foundation, corrupt FBI, FISA warrants all to spy and setup Trump to incriminate him for the VERY same crimes they were in FACT committing.

Ar15ak47rpg7 , 2 hours ago

Note to all Zero HEDGERS....there seems to be no difference between the scrubbing of comments on Twitter and Facebook and ZH. The free flow of ideas on ZH no longer exist. Just like the Drudge Report the Deep Stater's have gotten to the Tylers. Beware

One of these is not like the others.. , 2 hours ago

I concur, the more thoughtful the post, the more likely it seems to vanish.

ebear , 1 hour ago

I must be an idiot then. As much as I'd like to add that badge to my collection, my stuff never seems to get scrubbed. Damn!

Urfa Man , 3 minutes ago

Gulag and the shrews that run it are putting big financial pressure on ZH to censor us. This month I've twice tried to post a URL for the news article that details the censorship here, but go figure, those posts get scrubbed.

It's all because of you and me. The Bolsheviks at Gulag say this comment section hurts feelings and therefore must be dominated and controlled with an iron fist.

Gulag Bans ZeroHedge From Ad Platform

If you replace "Gulag" with the name of a major search engine and conduct a search using the words in italics above - via a search engine like duckduckgo - the results will probably point you to the news article that gives the details of this ZH censorship and why your comments disappear.

lacortenews com is the domain that carries the news report

Good luck. There's not much left of free speech or the original freedom of the internet.

unionbroker , 3 hours ago

A business associate of mine told me with a straight face that he didn't trust Bobulinski because he had a Russian sounding name. He is on Twitter a lot so maybe that explains it.

slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago

I don't trust him either. He has already changed his story. he requested to meet Joe Biden and then later he didn't request it. . And he met him, but he didn't have a meeting with him. He confirmed that on Fox last night.

Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago

I trust him 100% #imwithhim

remember Dr Christine Ford and her fake as story against Kavanaugh - this is much more realistic than her fake as

Republicans can play dirty too

jin187 , 2 hours ago

Yeah, this is what it's come to, so **** it. I hope Rudy is out there right now handing out suitcases of cash to anyone willing to come forward with any lies about Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, just like our side's Gloria Steinem.

Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago

bring him in under oath and actually investigate...

BUT that would be 'election interference' (you know, the whole Hillary conundrum, right?)

rule of law is now changed to morality of feelings...if it makes me feel insignificant, it CAN'T be TRUE!!

WAAAHHHHHH

Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago

he will testify under oath watch - and he won't be like pencil neck Schiff and those other cowards and plea the 5th

rwe2late , 3 hours ago

???

you could watch the Tucker Carlson show interview instead of your imagined one.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/10/27/tucker_carlson_interviews_hunter_biden_business_partner_tony_bobulinski_about_joe_biden_involvement.html

somewhere_north , 3 hours ago

Uh... did watch it. And yes, the story he tells there about meeting Biden is not the same as the one he told before. Riddle me this: if this is real, why would they hopelessly compromise their chain of evidence by dribbling it to the public like this?

Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago

because no one in the MSM would dummy - they are all in DEEP ****

somewhere_north , 3 hours ago

They don't have to use the MSM, or any media. They simply arrest Hunter Biden, then drop all the info at once instead of tantalizingly holding the smoking guns out of our view. All they are doing here, if they actually have anything, is risking the lives of their witnesses and giving the perps a lot of warning. That's to say nothing about compromising the evidence to the point of inadmissability. It's running a risk for no gain whatsoever.

rwe2late , 3 hours ago

stuff is only out of your view if your eyes are closed

rwe2late , 3 hours ago

"not the same" ?

missed your weblink (not that you could be making stuff up, cough, cough.)

also, how that would have any significant bearing on the whole matter,

including most MSM news censorship and Russia nonsense ?

RedNeckMother , 3 hours ago

Who told you that bulls hit?

calculator , 2 hours ago

It's entirely possible he is military intelligence and was sent undercover to infiltrate the Bidens and discover their treachery. The CIA and FBI sure as hell don't appear to be doing it. Since we may very well be in a shooting war with the CCP at some point in the near future, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the military is actually doing their jobs to ensure we are not compromised.

SDShack , 3 hours ago

We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation -- even if they probably aren't."

Cmon Turley, parse these words> Why does the WaPo say 'WE MUST' treat these leaks this way? This implies that the WaPo is BEING ORDERED to treat these leaks this way! So WHO has power over the WaPo? Is that power direct, or financial, or BOTH? Also the assumption the WaPo is trying to propagate is that the Foreign Intelligence Operation is...THE RUSSIANS...but could it not actually be the CCP that is pulling the WaPo strings? Doesn't the CCP revelation go to the central heart of the entire Corrupt Joe matter, as well as the financial angle for the Bezo's Amazon WaPo? Even in their lies, the nuggets of hidden truth are exposed.

Amel , 3 hours ago

Asking yourself why the CIA control of the MSM favors a Manchurian candidate over Trump ? Because the CIA's own survival is valued above national security.

invention13 , 3 hours ago

For they same reason they had to treat the Russian collusion allegations as though they were real.

LetThemEatRand , 3 hours ago

Same reason there was no outrage at the Obama child cages at the Mexico border. Or outrage at all of the wars Obama started. Or outrage at all of the drone killing under Obama.

Most Blue Team members are satisfied getting their news from MSM, leaving MSM able to shape the narrative almost completely. There are a handful of guys like Jimmy Dore on the left who call out the rest of the left on this. Pretty scary, actually.

factorypreset , 3 hours ago

It sure seems like the press is helping to squash this whole thing by asking any questions in such a way that Joe doesn't perjure himself.

mtl4 , 3 hours ago

Yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden was again insisting that the scandal involving Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation despite the direct refutation of that claim by the FBI.

All makes perfect sense in a time when you chose your gender in the morning while getting dressed, you only need to be accused of anything to completely ruin your reputation (unless your a politician in which case there are no laws). So why would anyone deal with reality at a time when we've gotten so good at simply ignoring it.

[Oct 25, 2020] American facilities for many of our poorer, middle class elderly are disgusting places of squalor and nosocomial infections

Oct 25, 2020 | www.unz.com

ConqueringFools says: October 24, 2020 at 4:28 pm GMT 200 Words ↑ @Anon

Yeah .and how many of those deaths were from the complete mismanagement of the sick elderly ie throwing them back into nursing homes. American facilities for many of our poorer, middle class elderly are disgusting places of squalor and nosocomial infections. How many were among elderly that were already on death's door step? This scamdemic has destroyed this country. If there is one demographic in this country that should burning it to the ground it's young, white 20 something conservative males who are seeing their future destroyed before their eyes. Seeing Americans walking around with what amounts to respiratory diapers on their face is disgusting, pathetic and embarrassing. The elderly, who for the most part have overall lived the peak American dream, are living in hysteria and fear. The boomers in America are confirmed now as some of the most selfish, self absorbed, and enfranchised generations ever. To blame the covid deaths on Trump is the most stupid and intellectually dishonest argument in this whole election narrative. Dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery you want to wear a worthless diaper on your face fine .don't force tyranny on the rest of us!

[Oct 24, 2020] Great COVID-19 reset

Oct 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Down South , Oct 22 2020 20:29 utc | 21

@2 @16

Although many details about the Great Reset won't be rolled out until the World Economic Forum meets in Davos in January 2021, the general principles of the plan are clear: The world needs massive new government programs and far-reaching policies comparable to those offered by American socialists such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in their Green New Deal plan.

Or, put another way, we need a form of socialism - a word the World Economic Forum has deliberately avoided using, all while calling for countless socialist and progressive plans.

"We need to design policies to align with investment in people and the environment," said the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, Sharan Burrow. "But above all, the longer-term perspective is about rebalancing economies."

One of the main themes of the June meeting was that the coronavirus pandemic has created an important "opportunity" for many of the World Economic Forum's members to enact their radical transformation of capitalism, which they acknowledged would likely not have been made possible without the pandemic.
https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/504499-introducing-the-great-reset-world-leaders-radical-plan-to%3famp

[Oct 21, 2020] And now, drums, sad truth about Congressman Adam Schiff

Oct 21, 2020 | www.realclearpolitics.com

"Adam Schiff is seriously the most pathological liar in all of American politics that I've seen in all of my time covering politics and journalism," Greenwald said on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' "He just fabricates accusations at the drop of the hat at the other people change underwear. He's simply lying when he just asserts over and over that the Russians or the Kremlin are behind the story. He has no idea whether or not that is true. There is no evidence to support it."

[Oct 21, 2020] This Is Not A Russian Hoax 'Nonpublic Information' Debunks Letter From '50 Former Intel Officials'

Highly recommended!
Is this 50 former Intel officials or 50 former national security parasites? Real Intel officials should keep quite after retirement. National security parasites go to politics and lobbying. One telling sign that a particular parson is a "national security parasite" is his desire to play "Russian card"
From comments: "Did the 50 former intelligence officials find the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction yet?"
Oct 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
"This Is Not A Russian Hoax": 'Nonpublic Information' Debunks Letter From '50 Former Intel Officials'

by Tyler Durden Tue, 10/20/2020 - 08:45 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Hours before Politico reported the existence of a letter signed by '50 former senior intelligence officials' who say the Hunter Biden laptop scandal "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" - providing "no new evidence," while they remain "deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case," Tucker Carlson obliterated their (literal) conspiracy theory .

According to the Fox News host, he's seen 'nonpublic information that proves it was Hunter's laptop ,' adding " No one but Hunter could've known about or replicated this information ."

" This is not a Russian hoax. We are not speculating ."

Watch:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1317255675320348673&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fnot-russian-hoax-tucker-carlson-has-seen-nonpublic-information-proving-laptop-was-hunter&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

TUCKER: "This afternoon, we received nonpublic information that proves it was Hunter's laptop. No one but Hunter could've known about or replicated this information. This is not a Russian hoax. We are not speculating." pic.twitter.com/cl2ktdmdVc

-- August Takala (@AugustTakala) October 17, 2020

Meanwhile, the Delaware computer repair shop owner who believes Hunter dropped off three MacBook Pros for data recovery has a signed work order bearing Hunter's signature . When compared to the signature on a document in his paternity suit, while one looks more formal than the other, they are a match.

Going back to the '50 former senior intelligence officials' and their latest Russia fixation, one has to wonder - do they think Putin was able to compromise Biden's former business associate , Bevan Cooney, who gave investigative journalist Peter Schweizer his gmail password - revealing that Hunter and his partners were engaged in an influence-peddling operation for rich Chinese who wanted access to the Obama administration?

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890

Did Putin further hack Joe Biden in 2011 to make him take a meeting with a Chinese delegation with ties to the CCP - arranged by Hunter's group, two years they secured a massive investment of Chinese money?

The implications boggle the mind.

Here's the clarifying sentences from the '50 former senior intelligence officials' that exposes the utter farce of it all:

While the letter's signatories presented no new evidence , they said their national security experience had made them "deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case" and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin's hand at work.

"If we are right," they added, "this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this."

It would appear these former intel officials are not aware of the current intel official views, confirmed by DNI Ratcliffe yesterday that:

"Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign."

And then there's the fact that no one from the Biden campaign has yet to deny any of the 'facts' in the emails. lay_arrow jin187 , 2 hours ago

Totally ridiculous. This ******** beating around the bush for both sides pisses me off. Dump all the laptop contents on Wikileaks if it's real. Let the people sort it out. If you say it's not real, prove it. If Biden wants me to believe it's not real, then stand behind a podium, and say clear as day into a pile of cameras that's it's all a forgery, and that you've done nothing wrong.

Instead we have Giuliani swearing he has a smoking gun, but as far as I can tell he's just pointing his finger underneath his shirt. Biden on the other hand, keep using weasel words to imply it's fake, but never denies it outright. It's almost like he's trying to hedge his bet that no one will manage to prove it's real before he gets into office, and makes it disappear.

Roacheforque , 7 hours ago

To play the "Russian Card" yet again should be beyond embarrassing. An insult to the intelligence of anyone with an IQ over 80. And so it's harmful to the left wingnut derangeables. Like Assad's chemical weapons and Saddam's WMDs, it is now code for pure ********. Not even code, just more like a signal.

A signal that say's "guilty as charged - we got nothin' but lies and BS over here".

East Indian , 4 hours ago

An insult to the intelligence of anyone with an IQ over 80.

They know their supporters wont find this insulting.

Kayman , 4 hours ago

@vulvishka.

538 ? North Korea has better propaganda.

Don't forget to go all in, like you did with Hillary.

Antedeluvian , 2 hours ago

Unfortunately, some very bright people are sucked into the conspiracy theory. I know one. Very bright lawyer. She says, "I still think there is substantive evidence of Russian collusion." I can point to a sky criss-crossed with chemtrails (when you see these "contrails" crossing at the same altitude, this is one sure clue these are not from regular passenger jet traffic) and she refuses to look up. She KNOWS I am an idiot (a PhD scientist idiot at that) because I get news and analysis on the web from sites that just want to sell me tee shirts and coffee mugs (well, she is partly right there!) whereas she gets her news from MSNBC, a venerable and trustworthy news source.

4DegreesOfSeparation , 6 hours ago

More Than 50 Former Intel Officials Say Hunter Biden Smear Smells Like Russia

"If we are right," the group wrote in a letter, "this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote."

DescendantofthePatriots , 7 hours ago

That ****, James Clapper, signed his name at the top of this list.

Known liar, saboteur, and sneak.

The cognitive dissonance in our country is astounding. The fact that they would take these people's opinion over hard fact is astounding.

No wonder why we're sliding down the steep, slippery slope.

strych10 , 8 hours ago

So... let me get this straight.

50, that's 10 times five, fifty former intelligence officials are going with a convoluted narrative about a ludicrously complicated Russian Intelligence disinformation campaign involving planted laptops and at least half a dozen patsies when the two words "crack cocaine" explain the entire thing?

I'm not sure what's more terrifying; That these people think everyone else is dumb enough to believe this or that they're actually retired intelligence officials ​​​​​​.

Who the actual **** is running this ****show? The bastard child of Barney Fife and Inspector Clouseau?

Seriously, "Pink Panther Disinformation Operation" is more believable at this point.

Someone Else , 9 hours ago

This needs to get out, because a FAVORITE method of the Deep State, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) is to parade some sort of a stupid letter with a bunch of signature hoping to look impressive but that really don't mean a damn thing.

Notre Dame graduates against the Supreme Court nominee, Intelligence agents alleging collusion, former State Department operatives against Trump. Its grandstanding that has been overdone.

moneybots , 8 hours ago

The letter by 50 former intelligence officials is itself, disinformation.

otschelnik , 8 hours ago

Remember when Weiner's attorney turned over Huma's home laptop to SDNY/FBI with all of Shillary's emails, and the FBI sat on it for a month and then Comey deep sixed them without even looking at them?

So now the FBI subpeona'd Hunter's laptop and burried it? Deja vu all over again.

enough of this , 8 hours ago

The FBI and DOJ constantly hide behind self-serving excuses to refuse the release of documents and, when forced to do so, they release heavily redacted files. They offer up the usual pretexts to fend off public disclosure such as: the information you seek cannot be disclosed because it involves an ongoing investigation, or the information you seek involves national security, or our methods and sources will be jeopardized if the information you seek is divulged to the public. But it seems the ones who would be most harmed by public disclosure are the corrupt FBI and DOJ officials themselves

Cobra Commander , 7 hours ago

A short 4 years ago the FBI and CIA were all concerned about "Kompromat" the Ruskies might have on Candidate Trump; concerned enough to spy on his campaign and open a counter-intelligence operation.

There are troves of Kompromat material, actual emails and video, on Joe, Hunter, and the whole Biden family; not made-up DNC-funded dossiers claiming a Russian consulate in Miami.

Now when it's Candidate Biden, everyone be all like, "Meh."

Cobra!

The Fonz...before shark jump , 5 hours ago

we gotta listen to the 50 former intelligence agents...you know the ones that had lone superpower status in the early 90s and then pissed it all away with 9/11 and infinity wars in middle east hahahahah ok buddy lol... histories D students....

Occams_Razor_Trader_Part_Deux , 7 hours ago

Signed by James Clapper and John Brennan;

You mean, the 2 Bozos who under the threat of perjury said there was NO evidence of Russian Collusion and the Trump campaign................. and 2 hours later called Trump 'Putin's puppet' on CNN.............

[Oct 20, 2020] Tucker Carlson- The American Media Will Never Be The Same After Hunter Biden Story - Video - RealClearPolitics

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Meanwhile, back on ABC, Joe Biden skated on answering any questions of substance about his son or Antifa or BLM. On NBC, Guthrie pushed Donald Trump to condemn QAnon and White supremacy, and he did it dutifully. But it wasn't enough. The point of demanding performative disavowals isn't to get the disavowal, it's to smear the person you're asking to disavow the group by association with the group. ..."
Oct 20, 2020 | www.realclearpolitics.com

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: If you flipped the channel during our show Thursday night, you may have seen the president and his challenger making their respective cases to voters. But President Trump and Joe Biden weren't debating each other. That would have been too risky. There's a massive public health crisis underway, you may have heard.

So to avoid what doomsday hobbyists on Twitter like to call a "superspreader event," Trump and Biden held separate indoor town halls surrounded by people. They talked to partisan moderators instead of each other. That might seem like a loss to the country three weeks before a presidential election. But unfortunately, the science on this question is clear: Nothing could be more dangerous to America than a televised in-person debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

So the so-called debate commission made certain a debate couldn't happen. Who benefitted from that decision? Well, not voters. America has held regularly scheduled presidential debates for decades and we have them for a reason. The more information voters can get directly from the candidates rather than the media, the better our democracy functions, not that anyone's interested in democracy anymore.

Joe Biden doesn't care either way. He just didn't want to talk about Burisma. That's the scandal that vividly illustrates how, as vice president, Biden subverted this country's foreign policy in order to enrich his own family. The good news for Biden Thursday night was that he didn't have to talk about it. No one from ABC News asked him about that scandal for the entire 90 minutes.

As we've been telling you this week, the New York Post and a few other news outlets, including "Tucker Carlson Tonight," have published e-mails taken from Hunter Biden's personal laptop. They show that Hunter Biden was paid by foreign actors to change American foreign policy using access to his father, then the vice president. This is a big story. It is also a real story.

Friday afternoon, we received nonpublic information that proves conclusively this was indeed Hunter Biden's laptop. There are materials on the hard drive of that computer that no one but Hunter Biden could have known about or have replicated. This is not a Russian hoax. Again, we're saying this definitively. We're not speculating. The laptop in question is real. It belonged to Hunter Biden. So there is no excuse for not asking about it.

But they didn't ask about it. It was a cover-up in real time. No matter what happens in the election next month, the American media will never be the same after this. It cannot continue this way. It is too dishonest.

Nevertheless, we did learn a few things Thursday night. (It's hard not to learn when you watch Joe Biden try to speak for 90 minutes.) At one point, an activist told Joe Biden that she has an eight-year-old transgender daughter. She asked Joe Biden what he thought about that. Here's how he responded:

BIDEN: The idea that an eight-year-old child or a 10-year-old child decides, 'You know, I've decided I want to be transgender. That's what I think. I'd like to be a -- make my life a lot easier.' There should be zero discrimination. What's happening is too many transgender women of color are being murdered. They're being murdered. I mean, I think it's up to now 17, don't hold me to that number.

So if an eight-year-old biological boy decides one day that he's really a girl, that's final and you'd have to be a bigot to pause and say, "Wait a minute, you're eight years old, you're a small child. Maybe let's think about this for a minute." That's what a normal person who has kids would say. People with kids know that children grow and change. They change their minds about a lot of things, including themselves. That's the reality of it.

But if you're a crazed ideologue, you don't care about reality. So you would tell the rest of us that an eight-year-old is entitled to hormone therapy on demand and permanent, life-altering surgery. That's what Biden is telling us.

It doesn't matter how fashionable talk like this is right now, and it is very fashionable, it is crazy and it's destructive and it's having a profound effect. No one wants to say it, but it's true. We know that between 2016 and 2017, the number of gender surgeries for biological females in this country quadrupled. We also know that many people who get those surgeries regret them later, deeply regret them. We'd have a lot more data on that, but universities are actively punishing researchers who follow that line of inquiry. So much for science.

In the end, mania like this will end. The left is at war with nature. Inevitably, they will lose that war, because nature always prevails. But in the meantime, many children are being hurt irreparably. Biden doesn't care. It's the new thing, and so he's for it. In fact, Biden is now busy rewriting his entire life story to pretend that he has been woke for 60 years. Thursday night, he told us he became a gay rights supporter during the Kennedy administration, sometime around 1962, when he and his father saw two gay men kissing.

When asked about police brutality, the former vice president speculated that maybe people like George Floyd would be alive today if the police had just shot him in the leg a few times.

BIDEN: There's a lot of things we've learned and it takes time. But we can do this. You can ban chokeholds ... But beyond that, you have to teach people how to deescalate circumstances, deescalate. So instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do shoot to kill, shoot him in the leg.

How much would you have to know about firearms or human biology to wonder if maybe there could be some unintended consequences there? People do have arteries in their legs, after all, and sometimes bullets do miss their targets. So why did no one point out how demented Biden's answer was?

Well, we have some clarity on the question of why no one pointed it out. It turns out George Stephanopoulos, the moderator of last night's ABC town hall, was not the only political operative in the room. One supposedly uncommitted voter was, in fact, a former Obama administration speechwriter called Nathan Osburn. Osburn repeated Biden campaign talking points to the letter, at one point referring to court-packing as a safeguard "that'll help ensure more long-term balance and stability" on the Supreme Court.

BIDEN: I have not been a fan of court-packing because I think it just generates, what will happen ... Whoever wins, it just keeps moving in a way that is inconsistent with what is going to be manageable.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're still not a fan?

BIDEN: Well, I'm not a fan ... It depends on how this turns out, not how he wins, but how it's handled, how it's handled. But there's a number of things that are going to be coming up and there's going to be a lot of discussion about other alternatives as well.

So we did learn something new last night: Joe Biden isn't a fan of court-packing. Court-packing has had a few off years, and Joe Biden started to lose his faith in it, even sold his "Court-Packing" jersey. But at the end of the day, Joe Biden is still open to court-packing and can get back on the court-packing bandwagon depending on how things are "handled." Got it?

Biden was allowed to answer non-questions like this because he was surrounded by sycophants and former employees of his party. Over at NBC, by contrast, the sitting president didn't have that luxury, to put it mildly. (By the way, it's not good for you to be sucked up to too much. It's good to get smacked around a little bit. It makes you sharper.)

During the president's one-hour event, moderator Savannah Guthrie asked him dozens more questions than the voters in the room got to ask. And when Trump began speaking, Guthrie interrupted him over and over again. Joe Biden wasn't there, so the moderator played stand-in for Joe Biden.

The good news about all of this is it's so bad and so transparent that it can't continue. All their stupid little morning shows and their dumb Sunday shows and their even dumber cable shows -- all of that's going away when the smoke clears from this election. There will be a massive realignment in the media no matter who wins, because they've showed who they are and it's so unappealing, so far from journalism, that it can't continue.

Meanwhile, back on ABC, Joe Biden skated on answering any questions of substance about his son or Antifa or BLM. On NBC, Guthrie pushed Donald Trump to condemn QAnon and White supremacy, and he did it dutifully. But it wasn't enough. The point of demanding performative disavowals isn't to get the disavowal, it's to smear the person you're asking to disavow the group by association with the group.

GUTHRIE: You were asked point-blank to denounce White supremacy [at the first debate]. In the moment, you didn't ... A couple of days later on a different show, you denounce White supremacy --

TRUMP: You always do this. You've done this line -- I denounce White supremacy, OK?

GUTHRIE: You did two days later.

TRUMP: I've denounced White supremacy for years. But you always do, you always start off with the question. You didn't ask Joe Biden whether or not he denounces Antifa ... Are you listening? I denounce White supremacy. What's your next question?

NBC was under a lot of pressure from Democrats to make Thursday night's town hall look like this, and just like Facebook and Twitter delivered earlier this week, NBC delivered, too.

whatmeworry? 1 day ago The only difference between the "news" media today, and, say a decade ago, is that they no longer try to conceal their bias. They've dropped the cloak of objectivity and come out as democrat activists. It's sort of refreshing. We no longer have to waste time and energy arguing about the fairness of the media. Scotty2Hotty 1 1 day ago Liberals are more an enemy of the free press than Donald Trump is--we know that for sure after the NY Post incident. For all the times Trump has trashed the press, he has never shut them down (he can't), but the liberals at Facebook and Twitter did just that to the New York Post, because they didn't like a story of theirs. The story should never have been banned anywhere. In a free society, bogus stories are debunked by other free speech outlets and press agencies. They are not banned. Trump is not a friend of the press, but liberals are a worse enemy than he is, to press freedom. Leftists have a strong totalitarian streak, and they continually work to create environments where only one viewpoint is permitted, whether in academia, television, the press or elsewhere. Liberals believe more in shutting down dissent than in discrediting it, through argument. Gadsden_1968 2.0 1 day ago 90% of the media is now formally known as the Democratic Party propaganda ministry. Arm yourselves, it appears the majority of people are 100% controlled by the Democratic Party's propaganda ministry. If Biden wins, his propaganda ministry will make Pravda look like a high school news paper. Architech 1 day ago Why is the crackhead Hunter Biden a taboo subject? Nobody mentions that Hunter is The Train Wreck of the Century. Even on right wing news they don't tell you what a drop dead irresponsible loser low life that Hunter is. He sleeps with his dying brothers wife while he is still alive. Red flag. Plenty of other girls, but no, your sister in law. But that is nothing. Nada. Kicked out of the Navy for drug use. Banged 1000 strippers in Wash DC, knocked one up, denied the child, was proven he was the dad, denied child support and was forced to pay. Nice. Dead beat dad deluxe. There are about 100 things like that. Too long to list. And nobody mentions is. They act like Hunter is just another guy.... Calling out the Loser of the Century is not off limits in my book. Calling out stupidity, no self control, no personal responsibility, corruption, unethical behavior, outright crimes....not off limits. It's actually illegal to be a crack addict did you know that?

[Oct 20, 2020] Glenn Greenwald- Media and Intel Community Working Together To Manipulate The American People - Video - RealClearPolitics

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "The whole point of the Intelligence Community since the end of World War II was that whatever propaganda the CIA produces, whatever disinformation campaigns they engaged were never supposed to be directed domestically," he said. "That was the point of the NSA, the CIA, and all those intelligence communities." ..."
"... "What we have seen since 2016 going back to the 2016 campaign is incessant involvement in U.S. domestic politics. Working with journalists to disseminate purely for partisan ends. If you want to talk about things like violating norms, and dangers to democracy, what's more dangerous than allowing the CIA constantly to be manipulating our politics by making cover for the Biden campaign by claiming anonymously that the Russians are behind the story and therefore you disregard it. Even if the Russians why does that alleviate the responsibility of journalists to evaluate the emails and to examine whether or not Joe Biden actually engaged in misconduct?" Greenwald asked. ..."
Oct 20, 2020 | www.realclearpolitics.com

Glenn Greenwald: Media and Intel Community Working Together To Manipulate The American People Posted By Ian Schwartz
On Date October 19, 2020

Glenn Greenwald: Media and Intel Community Working Together To Manipulate The American People

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.417.2_en.html#goog_590212220

Glenn Greenwald appeared on Tucker Carlson's FOX News show Monday night to criticize the media for its lack of response to the Hunter Biden laptop story. Greenwald also criticized intel community activity in domestic elections and posed the question that even if Russians are behind the story it just requires journalistic investigation in case Biden is compromised.

"Adam Schiff is seriously the most pathological liar in all of American politics that I've seen in all of my time covering politics and journalism," Greenwald said on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' "He just fabricates accusations at the drop of the hat at the other people change underwear. He's simply lying when he just asserts over and over that the Russians or the Kremlin are behind the story. He has no idea whether or not that is true. There is no evidence to support it."

"And what makes it so much worse is that the reason that the Bidens aren't answering basic questions about the story," Greenwald said. "Basic questions like did Hunter Biden drop that laptop off of the repair shop? Are the emails authentic? Do you know denied that they are. Do you claim that any have been altered or are any of them fabricated? Did you in fact meet with Barisma executives? The reason they don't answer the questions is because the media has signaled that they don't have to. That journalists will be attacked and vilified simply for asking."

"The whole point of the Intelligence Community since the end of World War II was that whatever propaganda the CIA produces, whatever disinformation campaigns they engaged were never supposed to be directed domestically," he said. "That was the point of the NSA, the CIA, and all those intelligence communities."

"What we have seen since 2016 going back to the 2016 campaign is incessant involvement in U.S. domestic politics. Working with journalists to disseminate purely for partisan ends. If you want to talk about things like violating norms, and dangers to democracy, what's more dangerous than allowing the CIA constantly to be manipulating our politics by making cover for the Biden campaign by claiming anonymously that the Russians are behind the story and therefore you disregard it. Even if the Russians why does that alleviate the responsibility of journalists to evaluate the emails and to examine whether or not Joe Biden actually engaged in misconduct?" Greenwald asked.

"The much bigger point is the way that the information is being disseminated," he said. "It is a union of journalists who have decided that their only goal is to defend Joe Biden and election him president of the United States working with the FBI, CIA, NSA not to manipulate our adversaries or foreign governments, but to manipulate the American people for their own ends. It's been going on for four straight years now and there's no sign of it stopping anytime soon." Related Videos

[Oct 20, 2020] Hunter Biden Is Not The Problem, The Problem Is His Dad -

Oct 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com


Hunter Biden Is Not The Problem, The Problem Is His Dad


by Tyler Durden Mon, 10/19/2020 - 19:00 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

It seems in our complicated world many murky relationships develop that come across as inappropriate. Over the years, growing crony capitalism has become the bane of modern society and added greatly to inequality. This is why, when we look at Hunter Biden and how he benefited from his father's role as Vice President an investigation is in order. Even before we get to what happened in Ukraine, the ties between China and the Biden family are too many and too large to ignore. President Trump has received a lot of criticism related to how he gained his wealth, however, almost all of what Trump has done he did as an outsider and not as part of the ruling political class.

Before going deeper into this subject it is very important to look at how the "Biden revelations" are being handled by the media. The way media has handled these allegations reveal a flaw or bias in both mainstream media and social media to the point where even censorship is being deployed. A good example of the spin being put on this red flag of corruption can be seen in an article that appeared under trending stories on my city's main news outlet. Here in the conservation heartland of America, the media published a piece titled; "Biden email episode illustrates risk to Trump from Giuliani"

The Associated Press piece written by Eric Tucker shines the spotlight on Rudy Giuliani portraying him as the messenger of Russian contrived information aimed at damaging Biden and influencing the election. It starts off referring to "a New York tabloid's puzzling account about how it acquired emails purportedly from Joe Biden's son has raised some red flags." Then claims that during Giuliani's travels abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens he developed relationships with some rather questionable figures. These include a Ukrainian lawmaker who U.S. officials have described as a Russian agent and part of a broader Russian effort to denigrate the Democratic presidential nominee.

The piece then moves on to the area of how the FBI seems more interested in the emails as part of a foreign influence operation than wrongdoing by Hunter or his father. The people reading this article are informed how this is just another latest episode involving Giuliani that "underscores the risk he poses to the White House" which has spent years dealing with a federal investigation into whether Trump associates had coordinated with Russia.

The part of the article that got my goat was when it referred to how " The Washington Post reported Thursday that intelligence agencies had warned the White House last year that Giuliani was the target of a Russian influence operation." Sighting the Washington Post as an authority and bastion of truth is a common tactic used by journalists to add validity to their bias and lazy reporting. Tucker forgot to mention The Washington Post is the propaganda mouthpiece of Amazon and owned by its CEO Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world which has had several run-ins with the President.

The effort to denigrate Giuliani rather than focus on Biden wrongdoings cites both "former officials' and statements made by a person "who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity to AP," and of course, the exact scope of what was being investigated was not clear. Claiming that many people in the West Wing have been concerned about Giuliani's actions or saying the president has expressed private dismay at Giuliani's scattershot style does not make it true.

Thinking a case can be made that Hunter enriched himself by selling access to his father but claiming Giuliani's lack of credibility will cause the allegations to implode is a bit of a reach. This fact much of what appears to be bribe-taking at the highest levels of government has been overlooked for so long is in its self is a problem. The appointment of an unqualified Hunter Biden to the board of a Ukrainian energy company with a reported compensation package worth some $50,000 per month led the Wall Street Journal, to publish a scathing article, on May 13, 2014. bringing the issue before the public.

At criminal.findlaw.com, FindLaw's team of legal writers and editors detail what constitutes bribery. It is offering or accepting anything of value in exchange to influence a government/public official or employee. Bribes can take many forms of gifts or payments of money in exchange for favorable treatment, such as awards of government contracts. Other forms of bribes may include property, various goods, privileges, services, and favors. Bribes are always intended to influence or alter the action of various individuals and are linked to both political and public corruption. In most situations, both the person offering the bribe and the person accepting can be charged.

me title=

Was Influence Peddled Or Bribes Taken?

Both giving and receiving bribes is usually a felony with significant legal ramifications. Influence peddling, the illegal practice of using one's influence in government or connections with persons in authority to obtain favors or preferential treatment falls into this category. One thing is clear, whenever we are talking about the involvement of huge sums of money, foreign players, officials holding high public office, or family members of politicians a few eyebrows should get raised. With this in mind, the Biden problem extends well past Hunter but also into how other family members have profited from Joe's time as Vice President such as his brother's involvement in a huge government contract in Iraq.

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The issue of Hunter Biden receiving money from Russia, Ukraine, and China surfaced during the first Presidential debate and Biden claimed it was a story already discredited by authorities. This narrative was destroyed when the Washington Times acknowledged the Treasury Department records confirm Hunter Biden received a wire transfer for $3.5 million from the Mayor of Moscow's wife. It is difficult to find anyone that holds Hunter in high esteem and the fact the United States suspects the woman sending him this money built much of her wealth through corruption does little to improve his standing. For those of us cynical of all the so-called public servants that seem to line their pockets and hold the attitude they are above the law this is a big red flag.

If the veil of secrecy surrounding Hunter's career is lifted we will most likely find Hunter's dad did share in the spoils bestowed upon not only his son but others in the Biden family. I contend Joe Biden's cozy relationship with corruption is why former President Obama did not rush to endorse Biden when he announced he planned to run. To be clear, we are talking about, millions, and hundreds of millions of dollars or more. For us cynics, we see this as what may be only the tip of the spear when it comes to public officials throwing the American people under the bus for fun and profit. As a voter, this dovetails with my concern about Biden's relationship and attitude towards China which I consider a major issue. Jan_Michael_Vincent007 , 4 hours ago

The [neoliberal] political class is the problem. ******* all of them. Biden just got caught.

Jan_Michael_Vincent007 , 4 hours ago

The political class is the problem. ******* all of them. Biden just got caught.

RedDog1 , 4 hours ago

Highly recommend reading Peter Schweitzer's book Secret Empires. It's business as usual to launder bribes through family members and associates.

philipat , 2 hours ago

Yes agreed, the problem here is actually that the entire US political (and economic) system is completely corrupt and broken. Why has no action been taken against those responsible for a proven attempted coup? Or against a MSM and SillyCon Valley that is censoring everything the average American (rightlly or wrongly) actually reads and which is stifling the very democracy and free speech upon which the country was founded?

The answer? Follow the money.

I do disagree with the author about the specific Biden situation because "The Biden Crime Family" would be a better description. They are ALL responsible. It is obvious from the Hunter laptop that payments were being made to "The Big Man" and other family members also, so this is NOT a Hunter-specific problem. The game was for Hunter to serve as a proxy for "The Big Man" and receive the "commissions" (better described as influence peddling payments and extortion - something the Dems are very good at; The Clinton Foundation Model!!) for onward distribution to the family, visibly or invisibly. In this way, "The Big Man" would not have anything to report and could appear to be "clean". Pretty obvious to anyone who can fog a mirror?

And yet still they vote for him. Does that mean a public acceptance of the sleaze and corruption which is the US today? I certainly hope not.

Rural Hermit , 2 hours ago

Why do you think Obama picked Biden to be his VP? He knows how to shakedown everyone. Obama's tutor. I do think that the student has surpassed the teacher though. When the rest of this shakes out, the Kenyan will be in chains.

gregga777 , 3 hours ago

If the truth ever comes out, it will probably show that, among other things, Hunter Biden was / is probably connected to human trafficking networks, and most likely Eastern European, most likely involving The Russian Mafia. It's not a stretch to speculate that it also included children.

HoodRatKing , 1 hour ago

https://www.postcrescent.com/story/news/2018/09/13/woman-gets-7-years-giving-kids-meth-forcing-man-into-prostitution/1288051002/

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdia/pr/hills-man-sentenced-22-years-prison-child-sex-trafficking-methamphetamine-and-firearms

https://www.actionnewsnow.com/content/news/Chico-man-sentenced-to-14-years-for-sex-trafficking-distribution-of-meth-to-a-minor-571646431.html

The problem is at all levels , not just the top...

gregga777 , 4 hours ago

If the United States of America had a functioning [sic] Intelligence Community and [Ha, ha, ha] national law enforcement the Silicon Valley tech giants and others like Amazon wouldn't be heavily infiltrated by People's Republic of China Ministry of State Security operatives. Consequently, the massive extent of political corruption would be common knowledge, especially specifics regarding names, dates, places and amounts. Right Paul Ryan and Willard Romney?

Rusty Shorts , 3 hours ago

The hits just keep coming.

"Pelosi's Son Now Involved In Ukraine Scandal, Democrat Party In Shambles"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9ll6z4XYZo

Leguran , 4 hours ago

Seriously, does anyone think a Democrat controlled Congress will investigate Biden and all his cronies, to include Obama? The whole DC swamp is set up to allow selling out of the American people. DC is not just a threat to national security it is steeped in Treason.

No sense ranting as it does nothing. The only consolation is that stupid people who vote Biden/Harris will get the crime and corruption they voted into office.

Stackers , 4 hours ago

In Roman times when someone was caught bribing a public official they would cut off his nose, sew him in a bag with a wild animal, and throw that bag in the river

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfysYXxEe8k

told_ya_so , 4 hours ago

The problem with all this is that it is extremely well documented going back a number of years of Hunter Jnr's shopping trips with his father and nothing has been done about it all. Just search on Biden and China, Romania or Ukraine and then you see the "deals" that Hunter gets every time.

Every f\/cking place that Biden turned up, Hunter was right behind with his hand out, like some sort of mob shakedown. Did Biden senior tell Hunter what to do and who to meet because junior doesn't seem that clever enough to come up with this on his own? That way, the money also flows to junior who then funnels it to dad later on (which the laptop seems to show).

Washington insiders know the f\/cking truth and are desperate to keep the gravy train going. That is why they hate Trump. That is why Barr and co have no interest in getting to the truth because they are all implicated. The swamp is very deep.

Merica101 , 4 hours ago

Human nature is swampy - that's why the Founding Fathers tried to design a system that limited the "swampiness'. Unfortunately, they couldn't even begin to imagine the depravity and games that are now being played. Pray.

Fuster-cluck , 3 hours ago

I have worked for a number of large multi-national corporations. In each, employees must take an annual ethics course. The only approved amount you can spend on a client is $0. I mean, no golf, no lunches, no tee shirts, no hunting weekends, zippo, nothing. If anyone in your family is connected to government, it is automatically assumed to be a conflict of interest, and you must remove yourself from any part of the dealings. These policies have been implemented because of the intense fear of the unlimited penalties that may be applied by goverment sponsored prosecutorial abuse.

So tell me, have those same standards been applied here? Ha. Ha. Ha.

Smilygladhands , 3 hours ago

i think we must implement a no fraternization rule between DC politicians and staff and the media. too many personal relationships going on up there

TahoeBilly2012 , 3 hours ago

Tards have finally been caught out, no way back.

Look man, I never would have voted for HILLARY OR JEB, no f'ing way! I am a Ron Paul Libertarian and I rolled the dice with Trump.

You Tards are all a gang of freaks. The fact you even halfway support Biden (or Hillary) is pathetic. The only way you get change is sticking to your guns or having a Trump come along and hope he is for the people and not a Satanic criminal, like the Biden's, the Bush's and the Clinton's. What exactly is it that you freaks don't get and while Bernie may have been somewhat more "authentic" than the rest, he's a friggin Bolshevik Commy, in his own way, worse than them all, likely not as corrupt.

There's nothing left to the Dem Party, zero, zilch, it's a stinking rotting corpse relying on Corporate Media lie after lie to try to compete with Trump. Hell, every Neocon has left Trump and joined up with y'all. Geez, the stench!

Pathetic, disgusting, sick.

Lucius Septimius Pertinax , 3 hours ago

What bothers me about all this is the reaction of Democrats in general. They don't seem to care what the Biden's have done, as long as they defeat Donald Trump. We seen this on a smaller scale with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, it's all about sex manta. But in this case we have what appears to be at least for now, almost a watertight case against Joe Biden. And still no moral outrage at what Biden's family is up to? Guess I should not have been amazed, but still hope their are a few thinkers left on the left that can still see the truth when it bites them.

I expected the CNN's of the left to react this way. Further when their "the Russians" excuse for everything, is exhausted, they will need someone else to blame, cause they know Biden and son are as pure as the driven snow. Or at least the owners of all these so called media news companies decide that Joe cannot win and flush the comode on him.

sirnzee , 3 hours ago

The media has done a terrific job of brainwashing half of America. So sad to be a part of this. Who is to blame? The media, or the people who allowed their minds to be controlled the way they are?

Fugly

Merica101 , 3 hours ago

Most of the MSM have their own agenda - a globalist agenda where the US is not their priority.

12Doberman , 4 hours ago

Some deny the Biden's got the money which is absurd since the Senate report details the wire transfers. Denial of facts seems to be a democrat trait.

chiquita , 3 hours ago

This is the Democrat philosophy--one of the best movie scenes ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC9Op0vI-70&ab_channel=mjbandes

Oracle of Kypseli , 1 hour ago

Try This also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a6YdNmK77k

sbin , 4 hours ago

Biden has used his family as bag men for graft since he was shaking down banks that incorporated in Delaware for tax purposes.

He was MBNA Joe long before he became dementia Joe.

Totally vile corrupt dullard on his best day.

That is why the DNC wants him.

CogitoMan , 3 hours ago

Any person who has knowledge of Biden family crimes and still votes for him is beyond deplorable.

Even demonrats that hate Trump IF they have at least minimum token of decency should abstain from voting.

But alas, most of dumbocrats will vote for Biden even if he raped their daughters and shot their wives.

This country with such moral attitude has no chance of survival, especially when tough times come.

Sad, very sad.

12Doberman , 3 hours ago

Trump learned quickly that without powerful allies in powerful positions in the executive agencies, within congress, and in the courts he's essentially powerless against this corruption. Pelosi is involved in Ukraine...McConnell is up to his eyeballs in Chinese graft.

Md4 , 4 hours ago

"Hunter Biden Is Not The Problem, The Problem Is His Dad"

Pops has been demonstrably crooked for years.

But... Hunter is not a child.

He's a grown man... with a law degree.

His problems are now...his own.

He can begin to recover...when he accepts responsibility for them...

Hotspice2020 , 4 hours ago

Stop treating mainstream media as "independent, objective, unbiased" they are "captured media", and vassal servants to a hidden hand ruling elite ... as are the Bidens and K. Harris. The Clintons were vassals before as was slamma Obama. The media will say whatever their master tell them to say. Thus, when a Hard Drive with pedo, crack, bribery is found, the masters say...blame it on the Russians. When Trump wants to bring Hunters double dealing to light...the masters say.. Impeach Trump. What is needed is for a bright light to shine on the owners of the media...e.g., Bezos Rag (Wash. Post) and Laurene Powell Jobs (mistress to Steve) owns the Atlantic. Once you keep focusing on the fact that the media has owners that make every story fit their narrative and you shine a light on them, then you can solve the problem.

tyberious , 5 hours ago

Term limits

Full income disclosures while in office

No benefit for any legislation co-authored after leaving office

zerozerosevenhedgeBow1 , 4 hours ago

No honor, integrity or honesty in politics anymore. Why would there be any, when apart for a little public shaming, corruption pays and pays big. The Clinton foundation raked in hundreds of millions, altered policy and maybe even caused death of the impoverished, i.e., Haiti and other places. Sold out national and global security with Uranium One and other controversies. The end result?... They got to keep all the money. When that happens, everyone in and running for office gets the message and sees dollar signs.

You need serious recourse like some sort of treason charges when you put money over country. Audit all family members and colleagues. Then do not let lobbying jobs before or after office.

moneybots , 3 hours ago

"The Associated Press piece written by Eric Tucker shines the spotlight on Rudy Giuliani portraying him as the messenger of Russian contrived information aimed at damaging Biden and influencing the election. It starts off referring to "a New York tabloid's puzzling account about how it acquired emails purportedly from Joe Biden's son has raised some red flags.""

Yes, it raises Red Flags about the integrity of the Associated Press, considering the story is a propaganda piece.

Merica101 , 4 hours ago

Joe and Hunter Biden (and the Biden family) aren't the ONLY ONES....there are many others.

toady , 4 hours ago

The questions that simply are not being asked/answered....

I have not heard that any Biden has been asked about any of this... apparently they thought they could just have CNN and the other talking heads say it was all "debunked" and the brain dead general population would nod and say "okay".

And they were right, the demonrats are all just doing the Alfred E Numan "who, me, worry?"

It's simple. The "17 intelligence agencies" need to be all over this, starting 15 years ago.

But they aren't. And they won't. And the US will not recover.

TheLastMan , 3 hours ago

perspective:

1. you work 50 hours a week

2. .gov takes 22% for income tax

3. joe biden (and the rest) take your tax $$$ and provides $$$ foreign aid to country X

4. hunter biden makes business connection to country x

5. country x takes your foreign aid tax dollars (edit) and pays hunter biden $$ for his services

6. hunter biden pays joe biden $$ for (his service to your country) edit - servicing your country

7. repeat step 1

Smilygladhands , 3 hours ago

the biggest problem that must be addressed is our dishonest, biased DNC propaganda arm also known as main stream media.

they've allowed biden to get away with not answering the SCOTUS packing question and now actively running cover for him. we cannot allow this to continue

Md4 , 4 hours ago

" Both giving and receiving bribes is usually a felony with significant legal ramifications. Influence peddling, the illegal practice of using one's influence in government or connections with persons in authority to obtain favors or preferential treatment falls into this category."

When it involves a mortal adversary... we call it something else...

HailAtlantis , 4 hours ago

Always lots of fun this time of year taking Anti-Money Laundering etc continuing education courses and reading about high level scandals in finance and governments in current news (it's just gotten progressively more insidious every year).. Scrutinizing little 'guys' while making billions at the top.

johnny two shoes , 2 hours ago

Can't forget old Swiftboat Kerry...

At the time, Hunter Biden, now 49, and Christopher Heinz, the stepson of then-Secretary of State John Kerry, co-owned Rosemont Seneca Partners, a $2.4 billion private equity firm. Heinz's college roommate, Devon Archer, was managing partner in the firm. In the spring of 2014, Biden and Archer joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company that was at the center of a U.K. money laundering probe. Over the next year, Burisma reportedly paid Biden and Archer's companies over $3 million.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/john-kerrys-son-cut-business-ties-with-hunter-biden-over-ukrainian-oil-deal

vasilievich , 4 hours ago

Electing a President is electing someone in formal command of enough power to kill most of the people on the planet - perhaps three times over. Including you and me. This is not the mayor of Minneapolis we're talking about.

vasilievich , 4 hours ago

To use biologists' terminology the species may not be adaptive. To be clever at graft does *not* assure survival in the long run. It may assure extinction.

12Doberman , 4 hours ago

Biden wasn't clever. Hillary was a bit clever using a Foundation and a 'charity' to launder her graft. Cost her 15% or so but she had the facade of the charity. Biden put his crackhead son in charge of laundering the graft...needless to say it was careless in the extreme...and the DNC knew all about this before they selected Biden. Stunning level of arrogance.

chiquita , 4 hours ago

Nobody ever said Biden was a smart guy. He knew how to plagerize as in words (speeches), but he didn't know how to copy as in ideas (charitable foundations)

SurfingUSA , 4 hours ago

Per someone on this forum who has met Biden, he is stupid not just by politician standards but by everyday people standards.

coelacanth10 , 3 hours ago

Bill gets credit for using the Foundation, base on a undergraduate course at Georgetown on non-profits and foundations.

chiquita , 4 hours ago

Obama had to know what was going on, if not a party to it. There was a clear distance between the two of them--Obama did not show a great love for Biden and you have to wonder what that was all about. He tried to tell Joe "he didn't have to do it" relative to running, which leaves a lot open to interpretation. Trump keeps saying that Biden was not a bright guy and that's pretty obvious in a lot of Biden's stories and his overall history. Obama knew Biden wasn't the smartest guy too. Was Obama trying to tell Joe to leave well enough alone and not run for the presidency, which would surely expose all this stuff? There was a good chance Biden wasn't going to get this far, but now see what has happened. You have to wonder what is at play with this--why didn't they shut Biden down before it got this far?

[Oct 19, 2020] This Coming Leftist Coup Could Backfire -- Like 1991 In Soviet Union by Wayne Allensworth

This is not leftist coup. This is intelligence agencies coup. Big difference. And Obama who is the most probably mastermind and coordinator is as far from leftist as one can get, he is a typical neoliberal with neocon inclinations, servant of the USA empire with probably some delusions of American exeptionalism.
The statement " On August 18, 1991, with Mikhail Gorbachev preparing to sign a treaty that would have decentralized the Soviet Union, his hardline political opponents in the Soviet leadership arrested the father of perestroika at his Crimean dacha, proclaiming that the Soviet State Committee on the State of Emergency was in charge." is naive and is not supported by the facts. Gorbachov probably organized this coup to give himself a chance to get back control of the country that was spinning out of his control. He failed and that was the end of his political career of a sleazy second rate politician.
Oct 19, 2020 | www.unz.com
WAYNE ALLENSWORTH OCTOBER 17, 2020

Our country seems headed for a political crisis, with the enemies of Deplorable America making noises suggesting they are planning a post-election " Color Revolution "-type coup against Trump. As a long-time Russia-watcher, I suggest that the failed Soviet coup of 1991, and the collapse that it spurred on, is instructive.

The Soviet State Committee on the State of Emergency, August, 1991

The key point that year came when Soviet military and security units refused to move against Boris Yeltsin and his defenders. Could something like that happen here, with Trump playing the Yeltsin role?

What yours truly has dubbed the globalist Blob has been signaling for some time that it has no intention of yielding to Trump come election day. Hillary Clinton, in her guise as the post-American Madam Defarge of the present Cultural Revolution, h as even stated publicly that Joe Biden should not concede the election to Trump " under any circumstances." [ Morning Greatness: Hillary Clinton Says Biden Should Not Concede 'Under Any Circumstances' , by Liz Steele, AmGreatness.com, August 26, 2020]

Meanwhile, the Democrats, with help from rabid Never Trumpers like Bill Kristol and David Frum, have been " wargaming " scenarios for preventing Trump from taking office should he win, developing a plan for what Trump has correctly described as "an insurrection." [ The Billionaire Backers of the 'Insurrection' , by Julie Kelly, AmGreatness.com, Sep 14, 2020] The plan is to claim that Trump has stolen, or attempted to steal, the election. "As far as our enemies are concerned," as I wrote here last month, "they are on the right side of history, and neither election law nor the Constitution or any antiquated notions about fair play will stop them." [ Revolution and Resistance: How can elections continue? , American Remnant, September 4, 2020]

The mail-in balloting plan plays into the Blob's wargaming. If the Democrats can't swing the election their way by hook or crook, then the lengthy process of accounting for all the mail-in ballots could be used as a means to sow confusion and chaos, giving them room to maneuver in the aftermath of Election Day.

The Blob's minions have been signaling their intention to drag out the vote count. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer , for example, declared on Face the Nation that her state would not be held to any "artificial deadlines" for reporting election results. [ MI Gov. Whitmer: No 'Artificial Deadlines' for Announcing Election Results , by Jeff Poor, Breitbart, October 11, 2020] In an example of the psychological projection characteristic of Democrats, Whitmer further claimed that those who might want to expedite the vote count had "political agendas."

Meanwhile, the Blob's militant wing has been circulating a plan for post-election disruption. [ READ: Left-wing Radicals Post Online Guide to 'Disrupting' the Country if Election is Close , by Joel Pollak, Breitbart, October 12, 2020] A Leftist group calling itself ShutDownDC [ Tweet them ] plans to prevent a Trump "coup" -- more projection there -- by shutting down the country and forcing Trump out if the vote is too close to call. The plan calls for "sustained disruptive movements all over the country." The militants also state that they intend to demand that "no winner be announced until every vote is counted."

ShutDownDC further proclaims that it has no intention of allowing the country to return to normal. The goal is to "dismantle" what it calls "interlocking systems of oppression."

This isn't just about an election -- it's a blueprint for completing the Left's anti-American Cultural Revolution.

In the chaos that appears increasingly likely after Election Day, we may not even have a clear idea of what happened–-and, indeed, that may be part of the Blob's design.

In a recent segment on "Critical Race Theory" gaining traction at the Pentagon, Tucker Carlson wondered just why the Left was so intent on capturing the military.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_q4dYLC_rtw?feature=oembed

My answer: the Blob was contemplating the possibility of using the military as part of an attempt to block a second Trump term.

It's quite clear that the top military brass has been subject to "the Great Awokening" and Trump Derangement Syndrome as much as the rest of the federal bureaucracy. The military Establishment has steadfastly resisted Trump's inclination to disengage from foreign interventions. Moreover, the Pentagon has also resisted Trump's order to stop indoctrinating its personnel in "Critical Race Theory." [ Trump's Anti-Critical Race Theory Order is Necessary But Insufficient , By Timon Cline, AmGreatness.com, October 5, 2020]

In his book Rage , Bob Woodward reports that former Defense Secretary and retired Marine General James Mattis once commented to then Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats that "There may come a time when we have to take collective action" against Trump, since Mattis deemed the president "dangerous" and "unfit." [ Mattis told Coats Trump is 'dangerous,' 'unfit': Woodward book , by Tal Axelrod, The Hill, September 9, 2020]

It's likely that General Mattis's view of Trump is widely shared among top level military officers.

So how might the military figure into the Blob's wargaming plans? Peter van Buren has contemplated a post-election scenario in which a "temporary" military government might be pitched as the only way to break an electoral deadlock and end post-election disorder. [ What if Trump Won't Leave The White House? The fearmongers are at it again, this time with their mantle-holder Biden, warning of the coming dictatorship. , American Conservative, June 30, 2020] Van Buren reminded us that Trump's opponents have never accepted his legitimacy, that "RussiaGate" was good practice for them -- good practice for a coup, that is -- and that they are gearing up for an all-out effort to dislodge him from the White House.

Obama, Comey And Eric Holder In The White House

Van Buren further noted that Joe Biden, who has claimed that it is Trump who "is going to try and steal this election," has also stated quite plainly that if Trump refuses to leave the White House, he is "absolutely convinced" that the military would "escort him from the White House with great dispatch." [ Biden: Military Will Remove Trump From the White House if He Refuses to Leave, by Julie Ross, Daily Beast, June 11, 2020]

It's worth mentioning that van Buren is not a Trump supporter, was a career foreign service officer, and is an honest man, an Iraq war whistleblower who wrote an excellent book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People , on his experiences in that country. I reviewed it here ). He does not believe that a Pentagon-backed coup is merely "paperback thriller material." It's a plausible scenario.

Nevertheless, an attempt to use the military to block Trump's re-election could result in the coup plotters stepping into a trap of their own making.

This is what happened in the failed 1991 coup attempt in the Soviet Union.

On August 18, 1991, with Mikhail Gorbachev preparing to sign a treaty that would have decentralized the Soviet Union, his hardline political opponents in the Soviet leadership arrested the father of perestroika at his Crimean dacha, proclaiming that the Soviet State Committee on the State of Emergency was in charge.

The conspiracy against Gorbachev had been organized by KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov and six other top level political and security officials. They were alarmed by Gorbachev's reforms, which had already loosed centrifugal forces in the USSR that threatened the power of the Communist party and the Soviet apparatus.

But within three days, the coup attempt collapsed.

Boris Yeltsin at the Russian White House, August 19, 1991.

The coup collapsed because of resistance by then-Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin and his supporters, and the refusal of elite military and security units to move against them.

On August 19, Muscovites gathered at the Russian "White House," the seat of Russia's parliament in central Moscow, and erected barriers around it. Boris Yeltsin climbed atop a tank to address the crowd. Yeltsin condemned the State Emergency Committee as an unlawful gang of coup plotters and called for military and security forces not to support the "Gang Of Eight."

Major Sergey Yevdokimov, a battalion commander in the Tamanskaya Division, had already declared his loyalty to Yeltsin (hence the tank on which Yeltsin made his historic stand). Yevdokimov later said that early on he had decided that he would not fire on any Russian citizens. As his battalion approached the "White House," one of Yeltsin's supporters climbed on Yevdokimov's tank and asked him to come over to their side. The major made his historically-significant choice, setting in motion events that would help thwart the coup.

KGB special forces units never appeared at the scene. When the planned assault on the Russian "White House" ("Operation Thunder") failed to materialize after a brief skirmish, it was clear that the coup was over. This was quickly followed by the collapse of the Communist party and the Soviet administrative apparatus; and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

That was an enormous surprise to the majority of Western Kremlinologists at the time.

Of course, the situation in the U.S. today is not exactly analogous. For starters, Trump is operating in a hostile environment ("the Swamp") dominated and controlled by his enemies. The generals are not on his side. It seems unlikely that a large group of citizens from the DC area would quickly materialize to support Trump against some sort of military-backed coup.

It's possible, however, that Trump may not even be in Washington when a coup is set in motion. This would leave him an opportunity to do what he does best -- hold mass rallies to fire up his support base in "Deplorable" areas of the country.

Both "red" and "blue" areas across the country are already effectively separating , threatening secession from the United States and practicing nullification. The as yet inchoate Middle American resistance has shown it is capable of fighting back. [ Organizing Middle American Resistance: Who Will Take the Next Step? , American Remnant, July 31, 2020]

If general disorder and a deadlock over the elections acts as a cover to deploy military units, it raises the same question Soviet officers and men were faced with in August 1991: Would the "boots on the ground" obey orders?

Trump may be disliked by top-level officers. But my sense is that he is popular with the rank-and-file. What if a significant number of them refused to obey a clearly illegal order? It may take only one Major Yevdokimov refusing unlawful orders for the whole plot to unravel.

The Deplorables have good reason to think the Blob will rig or otherwise reverse the election results. The past four years have already taught them that. And the Blob's Main Stream Media arm has been hard at it selling the Narrative of Trump stealing the election. The Democrats' base appears to be ready and willing to accept drastic measures against Trump and the Middle Americans they loathe.

The potential for a seismic political crisis is clear.

What we are witnessing is what I've called " the end of politics ." [ Chronicles , May 2019] American elections are becoming more like the zero-sum games they are in the undeveloped world -- and were to some extent in pre-modern Britain . A post-election crisis, especially a force majeure situation precipitated by military intervention, would accelerate the centrifugal forces already at work in the United States.

The failure of a coup attempt could do to the Democrats' "Coalition of the Fringes" what the failure of the August coup did to the Communists in the USSR -- opening up room to maneuver for what I call the American Remnant and VDARE.com calls the Historic American Nation.

Given the circumstances, with the demographic ring closing in, that may be a providential outcome.

Wayne Allensworth is a Corresponding Editor of Chronicles magazine. He is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia , and a novel, Field of Blood . He writes at American Remnant .

Alden , says: October 19, 2020 at 3:25 am GMT

I'm not as optimistic as Allensworth. Only one escort of the elites moved against Gorbachev in 1991. Most of the rest held back. That allowed elite sector 2 to help Yeltsin resist. Plus, the Jew Wolves of Wall Street swarmed in. So there's that.

The military the rank and file is heavily black, especially the career sergeants petty officers who really carry out the officers orders. I think the Hispanic and White tank and file will stay loyal. But follow orders from the anti White officer corps and black sergeants

Consider the French Revolution. It didn't start till most of the officer corps were revolutionary masons. The National Guards were revolutionary and so were the judges and lawyers.

Every elite sector from the clergy through academia media professions and occupations education both unions and employers Chamber of Commerce Association of manufacturers nurses teachers Drs. Engineers construction probably big Agricultural which is all that matters any more. Every organized group is against Trump

All Trump has is us individuals maybe half the adult population but just unorganized individuals The Republican Party is organized but just as anti Trump and anti White as the most hysterical liberals and Democrats.

Vindemann Jew immigrant colonel inserted into a position where he could get General Flynn charged wit crime and the elected president impeached. There's Millions of Vindemanns in tactical and strategic positions all over the country in every sector. The anti Trump anti White revolutionaries already own media and communications

I hope I'm wrong. But what's been happening in America for the last 56 years and the acceleration since 2016 fits the pattern of every successful revolution in the last 500 years.

[Oct 01, 2020] Tucker -- City of Seattle tells white employees to work on undoing their whiteness - YouTube

Jul 24, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Fox News Fox News 5.73M subscribers SUBSCRIBE White employees were informed that their so-called 'white' qualities were offensive and unacceptable. #FoxNews #Tucker

[Oct 01, 2020] CIA Director Haspel Personally Blocking Declassification Of Russiagate Documents

CIA is the cornerstone of the deep state.
Notable quotes:
"... The REASON they won't release them: The TRUMP Collusion wasn't with the Russians , but with APARTHEID Isra-h-e-l-l. But NO ONE will investigate that. M.A.G.A. is out. M.I.G.A is in. ..."
"... 'Bloody Gina' is Trump's loyalist appointee, following through on what loyalist Pompeo started to protect Trump Crime Family Corruption, Chabad Mafia, and ZOG. ..."
"... please allow me to still congratulate Gina on reducing the almighty Third Option into the Toiletpaper Option. ..."
"... 2018, BREAKING: Trump appoints Haspel as first female CIA director ..."
"... 2017: Breaking: CIA Director Mike Pompeo appoints Haspel as the first female CIA officer to be named deputy director. ..."
"... Fathead and Esper were best buds at West Point.. ..."
"... Evidence destruction was one the main purposes of the Mueller "investigation". ..."
"... Please. If you can see what Trump has done, basically bending the US and its taxpayers over for Israel, you'd realize he's just another in a long line of AIPAC Presidents. Ain't nobody opposing him. CIA knows what Russia knows about him, and they're just using him as bait. ..."
"... proof is in the pudding, Hillary still walks free, none of the corrupt ones are in jail and won't ever go to jail. Face it, Biff has many fooled. ..."
"... U.S. Navy Reserve Doctor on Gina Haspel Torture Victim: "One of the Most Severely Traumatized Individuals I Have Ever Seen" ..."
"... What bothers me more is how deep the Deep State goes in Washington. They totally control the government and without mass firings it is impossible to even make a dent in it. This country is gone and just doesn't know it yet. Once Kamala is crowned as queen reality will come slamming home pdq. By the time the country realizes what has happened to them it will be way too late, no matter how many guns they have at home. Once they cut off access to your money, very few people will be independent enough to survive on their own. ..."
"... Trump has opened the eyes of more Americans to the simple fact that an unelected bureaucracy is running the country ..."
"... DJT hired this c8nt, sure, but the pool of candidates equipped to take over the CIA is very small, and all are career swamp things. If DJT put in a true outsider, the ranks would close and the "Director" would know nothing, could do nothing, and nothing would change. The ranks would just wait for another President. Trump is powerless over the CIA. After all, they could easily have him 'accidentally' killed; they've done it before. ..."
"... The CIA just needs to be dissolved in acid. The political, psychological and historical deep-rooted corruption isn't fixable by anyone. ..."
"... McConnell would never confirm a "true outsider". Mitch is the real problem here, he tells Trump who he will and will not confirm, so Trump has to accept one of Mitch's choices. ..."
"... He could put in Mike Flynn. And any vested employee who "closed ranks" would go on immediate and permanent furlough. ..."
"... Here's something we Americans can learn from the Russians. In August 1991 after Gorbachev left to the Black Sea for a short vacation, the heads of the USSR "power ministries" (KGB chairman, armed forces chief of staff, Minister of Interior, etc. etc.) formed the "State Committee for Extrordinary Situation" ( G.K.Ch .P.) and tried to overthrow the government. ..."
"... That's what happened in Washington in 2016-2018 - "GKChP Lite." ..."
"... After the putsch attempt failed, the leaders were arrested and the power ministries reorganized - the KGB was split into several departments including the FSB and SVR for internal and external intelligence. ..."
"... Trump can declassify these personally if he wants, at any time. He could even go live on air and read portions of it to the public. He has the power, but he refuses to use it. ..."
"... Trumps entire cabinet is full of Goldman Sachs, Skull and Bones, CFR, Pentagon, CIA, Career politicians... at what point do you realize he was never going to drain the swamp? Both candidates are a joke and so is this website for becoming a Big R Republican website. ..."
"... This is all kabuki theater because Trump could have signed an Executive Order releasing everything back to JFK 3 years ago instead of flapping his yap. Comey has a Hollywood movie coming out this fall, As Biden said, "Shut up, man". ..."
"... No one is going to prison that deserves to over this. They'll crucify some desk monkey or intern, pat each other on the back and brag about a job well done. We've seen it the last four years, some low level schmuck changes the footer on some emails and the DOJ is all over it like white on rice. Totally ignoring the fact there is a seditionist movement, maybe even treasonous, happening at a systemic level throughout government. Four years is enough time to build a case, lord knows any one with half a mind can find all the evidence needed in four damned days. ..."
"... The a-holes running the DOJ won't prosecute Comey, or Clinton, or Brennan or any other name we know. Because they're doing dirty deeds themselves and don't want to set the precedent in fear those who come after them might in turn prosecute them ..."
Oct 01, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Ian Schwartz via RealClearPolitics,

"Federalist" co-founder Sean Davis reports that CIA Director Gina Haspel is personally blocking the release of documents that will show "what actually happened" with Russiagate.

" This isn't just a scandal about Democrat projection, this is a scandal about what was a coup planned against the incoming administration at the highest levels and I can report here tonight that these declassifications that have come out," Davis told FOX News host Tucker Carlson on Wednesday. "Those weren't easy to get out and there are far more waiting to get out."

"Unfortunately those releases and declassifications according to multiple sources I've talked to are being blocked by CIA director Gina Haspel who herself was the main link between Washington and London ," Davis said.

"As the London station chief from John Brennan's CIA during the 2016 election. Recall, it was London where Christopher Steele was doing all this work. And I'm told that it was Gina Haspel personally who is blocking a continued declassification of these documents that will show the American people the truth of what actually happened."

Watch:


pier , 1 hour ago

The REASON they won't release them: The TRUMP Collusion wasn't with the Russians , but with APARTHEID Isra-h-e-l-l. But NO ONE will investigate that. M.A.G.A. is out. M.I.G.A is in.

Joseph Sullivan , 1 hour ago

No. This is all the UK. And Brit east India/pharma complex I'm serious. Israel is a UK proxy.

tion , 1 hour ago

True. 'Bloody Gina' is Trump's loyalist appointee, following through on what loyalist Pompeo started to protect Trump Crime Family Corruption, Chabad Mafia, and ZOG.

My last comment including my sentiments towards Gina got eaten by censorship for reasons obvious to me, but please allow me to still congratulate Gina on reducing the almighty Third Option into the Toiletpaper Option.

acetrumchura , 1 hour ago

2018, BREAKING: Trump appoints Haspel as first female CIA director

acetrumchura , 1 hour ago

2017: Breaking: CIA Director Mike Pompeo appoints Haspel as the first female CIA officer to be named deputy director.

BGen. Jack Ripper , 49 minutes ago

Fathead and Esper were best buds at West Point..

NoWorries77 , 1 hour ago

Evidence destruction was one the main purposes of the Mueller "investigation".

realitybiter , 2 hours ago

Trump Has played like Tom Brady. Without either guard or tackle. Take the CIA and the FBI. They are both still ran by rats. Tree of liberty is VERY thirsty.

eatapeach , 1 hour ago

Please. If you can see what Trump has done, basically bending the US and its taxpayers over for Israel, you'd realize he's just another in a long line of AIPAC Presidents. Ain't nobody opposing him. CIA knows what Russia knows about him, and they're just using him as bait.

GreatUncle , 57 minutes ago

Either they are accountable or they are treasonous. CIA is the globalist intelligence agency now.

MAGAMAN , 2 hours ago

It will happen, the fuse just keeps getting shorter. Nobody even refutes that Obama is a traitor that spied on Trump's campaign and tried to overthrow the President. The evidence is overwhelming and continues to snow ball.

ChiangMaiXPat , 1 hour ago

It will never happen as Trump appointed these Clowns. Imagine appointing people working DIRECTLY against your self interest. Does this sound logical or even remotely plausible? I don't recall it EVER happening in any other administration.

spqrusa , 2 minutes ago

He cannot do anything without Consent from the Privy Council and the circle of demons.

ThaBigPerm , 2 hours ago

Aaaand Trump can just order declassification over "her" head. Do it.

Lather Rinse Repeat , 1 hour ago

Surfaces the cabal's foot soldiers. CIA Director Haspel was a great leader when appointed. But when process drives Haspel to block an action, the message is that Haspel is rot and so is Haspel's network. These networks run deep and wide and prosecuting 1 or 10 does nothing - you need them all, or the problem comes back in 5 years.

Lokiban , 2 hours ago

He won't

proof is in the pudding, Hillary still walks free, none of the corrupt ones are in jail and won't ever go to jail. Face it, Biff has many fooled.

spam filter , 2 hours ago

The way he's constantly saying, "someone should do something about this" ...Tells my spidey sense that he has little power in the swamp.

Propaganda Phil , 2 hours ago

Isn't she the same chick who destroyed all the torture tapes? Good luck.

Mr. Bones , 1 hour ago

All power of classification is derived from the office of the executive.

He could do exactly this, unilaterally.

Farmer Tink , 1 hour ago

First, normal people who consume news from the networks, particularly those that get their news from MSNBC and social media, would never hear this. Second, if they did find out about this, they'd never believe it. It would cause too much cognitive dissonance for them to believe.

They wouldn't believe it unless the four legacy broadcast media told them so. They just live in a land of Orange Man Bad as far as news go. A plot to overthrow the US government by Obama and the Brits would be unfathomable to them.

Someone Else , 2 hours ago

Trump had an abrasive demeanor during the debate and in general.

How could he not, when truly everybody for four years HAS fought him tooth and nail? Few would have had the ability to stand up to what he has stood up to.

Quia Possum , 1 hour ago

He had that demeanor before he was president too, so I don't accept that excuse.

desertboy , 27 minutes ago

U.S. Navy Reserve Doctor on Gina Haspel Torture Victim: "One of the Most Severely Traumatized Individuals I Have Ever Seen"

justyouwait , 2 hours ago

All this crap needs to come out. Any date for the release before the election will have the Dems and their media lap dogs crying foul. It just doesn't matter. They will NEVER support the release of any documents that are damming to them. He should release it all right up to the day of the election. This country needs to know all the criminality that went down. That goes for the so called Durham report too, of which there have been so many rumors. That one is likely to be a huge zero though by the time Barr gets done with it and then tells us there were "improprieties" but nothing really bad. What a joke.

What bothers me more is how deep the Deep State goes in Washington. They totally control the government and without mass firings it is impossible to even make a dent in it. This country is gone and just doesn't know it yet. Once Kamala is crowned as queen reality will come slamming home pdq. By the time the country realizes what has happened to them it will be way too late, no matter how many guns they have at home. Once they cut off access to your money, very few people will be independent enough to survive on their own.

John Couger , 2 hours ago

Trump has opened the eyes of more Americans to the simple fact that an unelected bureaucracy is running the country

Sigh. , 2 hours ago

DJT hired this c8nt, sure, but the pool of candidates equipped to take over the CIA is very small, and all are career swamp things. If DJT put in a true outsider, the ranks would close and the "Director" would know nothing, could do nothing, and nothing would change. The ranks would just wait for another President. Trump is powerless over the CIA. After all, they could easily have him 'accidentally' killed; they've done it before.

The CIA just needs to be dissolved in acid. The political, psychological and historical deep-rooted corruption isn't fixable by anyone.

Mclovin , 1 hour ago

McConnell would never confirm a "true outsider". Mitch is the real problem here, he tells Trump who he will and will not confirm, so Trump has to accept one of Mitch's choices.

gcjohns1971 , 1 hour ago

He could put in Mike Flynn. And any vested employee who "closed ranks" would go on immediate and permanent furlough.

There are only a couple or three thousand CIA agents and analysts. The rest are contractors.

To bypass the swamp things you sideline them and put your own people in charge of the contracts.

otschelnik , 1 hour ago

Here's something we Americans can learn from the Russians. In August 1991 after Gorbachev left to the Black Sea for a short vacation, the heads of the USSR "power ministries" (KGB chairman, armed forces chief of staff, Minister of Interior, etc. etc.) formed the "State Committee for Extrordinary Situation" ( G.K.Ch .P.) and tried to overthrow the government.

That's what happened in Washington in 2016-2018 - "GKChP Lite."

After the putsch attempt failed, the leaders were arrested and the power ministries reorganized - the KGB was split into several departments including the FSB and SVR for internal and external intelligence.

Trump has to do the same thing - break them up.

Occams_Razor_Trader , 1 hour ago

Kennedy wasn't a big fan................. look where it got him......................

Back and to the left.................................

LostinRMH , 2 hours ago

Trump can declassify these personally if he wants, at any time. He could even go live on air and read portions of it to the public. He has the power, but he refuses to use it.

LostinRMH , 2 hours ago

The only timing Trump is interested in is running out the clock. If he get's a second term, a lot of these current issues will magically vanish, and new ones will appear. This is just a scripted political show for the sheeple. It's all fake.

Oldwood , 2 hours ago

The swamp owns the government's employment agency. All hires come from within the swamp.

LooseLee , 1 hour ago

Sorry Old Man. Trump could have handled this sooooo much better and differently. I call BS.

knightowl77 , 50 minutes ago

Here is the "B.S."

80 to 90% of the Federal Government are swamp creatures or friendly to the swamp...90 out of 100 U.S. Senators are either swamp members or at least friendly to the swamp....Trump can only get people confirmed to certain agencies who are Not hostile to the swamp...McConnell and company are blocking the draining....The Dems would be even worse or just impeach Trump....

No One else has even tried...I doubt anyone else could've survived the swamp as long as Trump has....So you tell us HOW he could have done it better and differently?????????

AlexTheCat3741 , 1 hour ago

Not one person who has had a prior association with John Brennan should be doing anything in the Trump Administration. And if that person cannot be fired, then reassign them to cleaning toilets or picking up trash.

WHERE IS PRESIDENT TRUMP GETTING HIS PERSONNEL CHOICES FROM? We know Chris Cristie was one who recommended director of the "Fibbers Bureau of Insurrection", Chris Wray and he is an absolute disaster AND NEARLY AS BAD AS JAMES COMEY WHO MUST BE SUFFERING FROM DEMENTIA TOO AS HE CANNOT SEEM TO REMEMBER ANYTHING WHILE UNDER OATH BEFORE A SENATE COMMITTEE.

And now we have this Gina Haspel running the CIA? ARE YOU F CKING KIDDING??

The first person to next get the ax in the Trump Administration is whoever it is that is giving him these personnel choices, e.g., Rex Tillerson, James Matis, John Kelly, Kirsten Nielson, Mark Esper, Mark Miley..........WHO IS PICKING THIS TRASH WHEN THE PRESIDENT NEEDS REAL HELP PERFORMING A COLON FLUSH ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO GET THE GARBAGE OUT AND TO UNDO THE DAMAGE DONE BY 8 YEARS OF BARACK O'DINGLEBARRY AND SLOW JOE BIDEN??

Citi The Real , 1 hour ago

Trumps entire cabinet is full of Goldman Sachs, Skull and Bones, CFR, Pentagon, CIA, Career politicians... at what point do you realize he was never going to drain the swamp? Both candidates are a joke and so is this website for becoming a Big R Republican website.

DeeDeeTwo , 1 hour ago

This is all kabuki theater because Trump could have signed an Executive Order releasing everything back to JFK 3 years ago instead of flapping his yap. Comey has a Hollywood movie coming out this fall, As Biden said, "Shut up, man".

Alfred , 2 hours ago

The Director of the CIA is a cabinet position. If she doesn't want to take direction from POTUS, she should be fired.

Wild Bill Steamcock , 53 minutes ago

Yeah, there's a reason she's blocking it. If those papers are released, it'll lead to someone high up the food chain facing a courtroom out of necessity because people will lose their goddamed ****.

Once that happens, you'll by necessity have to go after six more. Then six more. Then everyone in D.C., their families, friends, and pet dogs are gonna be locked up.

They protect themselves. "Obeyance of the law is for thee, not for me."

Wild Bill Steamcock , 41 minutes ago

No one is going to prison that deserves to over this. They'll crucify some desk monkey or intern, pat each other on the back and brag about a job well done. We've seen it the last four years, some low level schmuck changes the footer on some emails and the DOJ is all over it like white on rice. Totally ignoring the fact there is a seditionist movement, maybe even treasonous, happening at a systemic level throughout government. Four years is enough time to build a case, lord knows any one with half a mind can find all the evidence needed in four damned days.

The a-holes running the DOJ won't prosecute Comey, or Clinton, or Brennan or any other name we know. Because they're doing dirty deeds themselves and don't want to set the precedent in fear those who come after them might in turn prosecute them

radical-extremist , 1 hour ago

Be aware CIA people stick together like glue. They're more loyal to each other than they are the US or any president. Once you're in the CLUB, you're in the CLUB for life. Trump was absolutely right about not trusting "our intelligence agencies".

12Doberman , 1 hour ago

I hate the CIA...and it's been a power unto itself for a very long time. The idea that it is under civilian oversight is a joke.

Max21c , 1 hour ago

the CIA...and it's been a power unto itself for a very long time. The idea that it is under civilian oversight is a joke.

Quite true there is no oversight and the secret police community and intelligence community are presently and have been for a long time above the law, above the Constitution, above the very framework of government per above Congress & above the President and above the Courts... and everybody just goes along with the pack of criminals in the security state and accepts that they have the right to commit crimes, run criminal activities, and abuse secret police powers... and nobody ever stands up to the Nazis and NeoNazis and these radicals in the military secret police, military intelligence, Pentagon Gestapo, National Security Council, FBI & CIA and the rest of the criminal underworld network inside and around the organized criminal enterprises and organized criminal networks of the security state...

12Doberman , 1 hour ago

That's right and the civilian government is largely just a facade.

ken , 1 hour ago

CIA wasn't W-A-S for preventing 9/11...or were they involved in it? Did the missing trillions go to Israel, and that other country, as payment for services???

_arrow
protrumpusa , 2 hours ago

Someone asked in previous post - why do democrats hate Trump? Good question.
It can't be his policies - who except illegals don't want secure borders, who doesn't want a strong private buisiness economy, who doesn't want manufacturing jobs to be brought back from China.
Our democrat leaders, plus Romney all have a connection to Ukraine's stolen treasury money and Soros's money too, and Trump doesn't . This I believe is the reason democrats hate President Trump

protrumpusa , 2 hours ago

The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they who were meddling in a presidential campaign - using executive intelligence powers to monitor the president's political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that he'd had any role in Russian intelligence's suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.

[snip]

In the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, President Obama authorized his administration's investigative agencies to monitor his party's opponent in the presidential election, on the pretext that Donald Trump was a clandestine agent of Russia. Realizing this was a gravely serious allegation for which there was laughably insufficient predication, administration officials kept Trump's name off the investigative files. That way, they could deny that they were doing what they did. Then they did it . . . and denied it.

LEEPERMAX , 30 minutes ago

Gina Haspel worked directly for the instigator of the Crossfire Hurricane operation – John Brennan. It would have been impossible for Haspel not to have known about the British spying from London since it was reported in UK newspaper on a weekly basis.

She certainly was controlling Stefan Halper , Josef Mifsud , Stephan Roh , Alexander Downer, Andrew Wood, John McCain, Mark Warner, Adam Schiff and the other conspirators.

Kan , 2 hours ago

The FBI and CIA are the enemy of the people. There is little doubt at this point that they serve nobody but the bankers that formed the organization and themselves.

Gunston_Nutbush_Hall , 2 hours ago

How convenient.

CIA operative Trump nominates Haspel to be the CIA director, after CIA Operative Trump picked CIA chief Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, thereafter Epstein is Trumpincided on CIA Operatives Barr Pompeo Trump's watch, while running smoke cover for the CIA's Obama's False Flag National Government.

Shortly after taking office in 1999, Jesse Ventura writes he was asked to attend a meeting at the state Capitol. He says 23 CIA agents were waiting for him in a basement conference room.

The greatest False Flag ever? Brainwashing Americans to think Constitutional Federal Government exists.

Kefeer , 17 minutes ago

The people who want to know and care to know the truth already know the truth. It is suspect that Trump appoints people like Christopher Wray and Gina Haspel and I really do not know what to make of it - is he part of the swamp or making bad decisions? I honestly do not know, but my biblical lens filter tells me we are in trouble regardless of the outcomes because so many of the institutions in government and industry are so corrupt.

Maltheus , 29 minutes ago

Trump is absolutely incompetent, when it comes to selecting people. He always has been. Flynn was one of the few, who was halfway decent, and he got thrown to the wolves. Pretty much everyone else, he's ever chosen, has knifed him in the back, and most of us saw it coming a mile away.

Tuffmug , 13 minutes ago

The Swamp is deep and has had twenty + years to grow . Trump had to chose the ones who stunk least from a slimy pool of corrupted officials and fight against every agency, each filled with deep state snakes. I'm just surprised he is still breathing.

Kinskian , 29 seconds ago

So his incompetence begins and ends with "selecting people" and that gets no downvotes from the 'tards. I understand why. You're still blaming other people for Trump's failures in office instead of placing the blame squarely with HIM. He is incompetent in his role as President, and that is his responsibility.

LEEPERMAX , 36 minutes ago

Gina Haspel would have known about the coup. If she has not reported all of this to the President Trump, she is complicit in the overthrow attempt and is guilty of HIGH TREASON.

Wild Bill Steamcock , 49 minutes ago

Spooks run this world. And they certainly like power, and money. But do you want to know what they like most of all?

Information.

Control of information drives everything else. And anyone who has even sniffed that world knows to get quality information you can't buy it. Instead you have to trade information of equal value.

We're not important enough to have the opportunity to know what they know. I don't know about you, but I'm a little angry about that.

StealthBomber , 30 minutes ago

That is because they are un-accountable.

Wild Bill Steamcock , 30 minutes ago

and untouchable.

Take one out and the whole thing collapses.

insanelysane , 51 minutes ago

Don't think we need declassifications to know what happened. We know what happened.

as I've stated many times, governments would be completely unstable if the government legally proved that organizations within the government were involved is sedition. With the IRS scandal the deflection was that a few rogue employees did some things even though the entire IRS was involved in harassing far right and far left organizations.

The problem with Russiagate is that none of the rogue employees are willing to to go down without taking everyone involved down. The IRS rogues got nice payouts and no prison time.

radical-extremist , 1 hour ago

She doesn't want them released because obviously it implicates her in Strzok's Crossfire Hurricane scheme. It also puts mud on the face of MI6, which is why Trump might be hesitant.

October is young.

12Doberman , 1 hour ago

Haspel is also likely a figurehead in many respects. From what I've read about CIA over the years those at the top have competing agendas and don't trust and share information with each other. The idea that a president is sworn in ever 4-8 years and is brought up to speed on everything they are doing is laughable...and likely impossible. No president fully controls the CIA and it has it's own agenda that runs across and through administrations...may as well call it the head of the deep state snake.

Felix da Kat , 2 hours ago

Haspel is a Brennan redux.

The deep state is much deeper than anyone dare thought.

If Trump cannot do unwind the DS,then all is lost.

If Biden gets in, he will only serve to further entrench DS operatives.

Looking bleak out there, folks.

1nd1v1s1ble1 , 3 hours ago

*sigh* As if anything is going to come of this...when has any high ranking politician EVER been taken to task or incarcerated for their crimes? It's the same political theater brought to you by the MSM/Jesuit/Jooish/Freemason cult who ritually perform their televised 'skits' to the masses to make it appear as if justice exists or better yet, we have a Republic- newsflash: it died a long, long time ago. The frightened mask-wearing, compliant sheeple lap it up every f'n time-when do you awake and realize there is no bi-partisan political machine, there is no blue versus red, just like their cronies in Hollyweird, these politicians are simply actors who were too ugly to make it there, orange man aint gonna save ya, bumbling joe aint gonna save ya, understand Stockholm Syndrome-survivors of 'merica....they DO NOT GIVE A F#*K ABOUT YOU OR YOUR FAMILY and would prefer you were dead.

'It's a BIG club and you ain't in it...'

-George Carlin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso

MrBoompi , 1 hour ago

Even the POTUS cannot do anything in DC alone, no matter what he wants to do. He needs people to cooperate or follow orders. It seems many or most of the people around him are deep state spies. I think they are scared ****less of what Trump might try to declassify. I think the CIA would destroy evidence before providing proof of a seditious coup. If you've committed murder or treason, destroying evidence seems like jaywalking.

Now we know Haspel is personally involved and we probably know exactly why she is blocking the release of this information.

Jack_Ewing , 17 minutes ago

Trump was supposed to drain the swamp but surrounded himself with the scariest of swamp creatures, this Medusa-like entity being one of the most terrifying. Pompeo, Mnuchin, Wray, Miller, Haspel, Kushner, and the chief of the all, the official cover-upper for the Deep State for the last 40 years, William Barr.

donkey_shot , 45 minutes ago

surprise, surprise: one-time iraqi detainee torturer and current CIA chief gina haspel is a nasty piece of work: geez, whodathunk?

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

lwilland1012 , 50 minutes ago

The only reason I can think of for holding these documents is that the conspiracy is so vast and intricate, it might destroy 80 plus percent of the government! If that's what it comes down to, so be it! Blow the whole PHUCKING thing to kingdom come!

Philthy_Stacker , 45 minutes ago

An accurite assumption.

LOL123 , 1 hour ago

Gina Haspel doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.

"The most explosive revelation was that the dossier was bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee , a fact that the Clinton campaign took pains to hide, that Clinton officials lied about, and that Fusion GPS refused to reveal on its own. It wasn't an intelligence report at all. It was a political hit job paid for by Trump's opponent."

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/trump-russia-dossier-scandal/

Political issues " incorporated" into public stock holding corporations.

"Individual shareholders cannot generally sue over the deprivation of a corporation's rights; only the board of directors has the standing to assert a corporation's constitutional rights in court. [7] -USA

Ever since Citizens United, the Supreme Court's 2010 decision allowing unlimited corporate and union spending on political issues, Americans have been debating whether, as Mitt Romney said, "Corporations are people, my friend."

The question came to the Supreme Court in a challenge to regulations implementing President Obama's landmark health care law. Those regulations require employers with 50 or more employees to provide those employees with comprehensive health insurance, which must include certain forms of contraception. The contraception requirement was designed to protect the rights of women. Studies show that access to contraception has positive benefits for women's education, income, mental health, and family stability.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

*****

since a political entity ( DNC and Hillary Campaign funded a public corporation which is a " corporate personhood" and can be sued it is open to discovery in a court of law.

the chickens have come home to roost....as Mitt Romney says....corporations are the citizens "best friend".

R.G. , 1 hour ago

Citizens ARE corporaions.

4Y_LURKER , 1 hour ago

Finkel is Einhorn!

Einhorn is Finkel!

Totally_Disillusioned , 1 hour ago

If Sean Davis was able to unearth this, President Trump, Pompeo have known this for some time and Ratcliffe certainly knows this. the question is "why is she allowed to block disclosure?". None of the players are currently in service and would not be at risk if their involvement was disclosed. What possibly is the excuse? Are they using the old excuse of not revealing sources and methods?

All these people need a stern reminder the govt is owned by the people...they work for us. So far we are the only people kept in the dark. Breakup the intel 17 agencies and re-engineer down to two - one domestic and one international.

SirBarksAlot , 1 hour ago

It's always a national security issue when it's your responsibility to release the documents that would incriminate you.

Gunston_Nutbush_Hall , 3 hours ago

Exactly why CIA Trump hand selected her. Exactly for the same reason CIA Trump hand selected BARR.

TO PROVIDE CLEAN SMOKE N COVER FOR THEIR CIA NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.

Barr: CIA operative

It is a sobering fact that American presidents (many of whom have been corrupt) have gone out of their way to hire fixers to be their attorney generals.

Consider recent history: Loretta Lynch (2015-2017), Eric Holder (2009-2015), Michael Mukasey (2007-2009), Alberto Gonzales (2005-2007), John Ashcroft (2001-2005),Janet Reno (1993-2001), **** Thornburgh (1988-1991), Ed Meese (1985-1988), etc.

Barr, however, is a particularly spectacular and sordid case. As George H.W. Bush's most notorious insider, and as the AG from 1991 to 1993, Barr wreaked havoc, flaunted the rule of law, and proved himself to be one of the CIA/Deep State's greatest and most ruthless champions and protectors :

A strong case can be made that William Barr was as powerful and important a figure in the Bush apparatus as any other, besides Poppy Bush himself.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/ciabushiran-contra-covert-operative-fixer-william-barr-nominated-attorney-general/5662609

Gunston_Nutbush_Hall , 3 hours ago

...Shortly after taking office in 1999, Jesse Ventura writes he was asked to attend a meeting at the state Capitol. He says 23 CIA agents were waiting for him in a basement conference room.

Bobby Farrell Can Dance , 3 hours ago

The Navalny "incident" is the latest pathetic CIA and British MI6 operation and the Belarus incitement. Sloppy, unoriginal and going to backfire in their stupid faces.

Everybody knows the evil empire wants Nordstream II dead, Navalny is the latest lever and that woman they recognized as leader of Belarus is as laughable as that Guaido goon they recognized in Venezuela, but he's actually outside of Venezuela - yeah that's how popular he is. Western intelligence agenices are hacks, they are past their peak.

John Hansen , 3 hours ago

The real stupid thing is the West will succeed.

Spinifex , 20 minutes ago

Christopher Steele is THE GUY who 'doctored all this up'. Why has he not been bought before congress and asked questions?

Sergi Scripal worked for Christopher Steele. Sergi Scripal earned tens of thousands of pounds 'providing information' to Christopher Steele. Why is he 'not being asked questions? He's not 'dead'. Sergi Scripal is 'alive and well' and 'being hidden' by the U.K. Government 'for his own safty.' The U.K. can provide 'access to Sergi Scripal.

Pablo Miller worked for Christopher Steele. Pablo Miller was Sergi Scripals 'handler' with MI6. Pablo Miller was also the 'last person to talk to Sergi Scripal' before Sergi Scripal 'surccumed to Novichok poison.' Why is Pablo Miller (aka: Antonio Alvarez de Hidalgo - https://gosint.wordpress.com/2019/02/02/who-is-mi6-officer-pablo-miller/

All three worked for Orbis Business Intelligence the company that wrote the 'Steele Dossier' that Gina Haspel had access to and 'approved' sending onto the FBI and CIA. All three, Christopher Steele, Sergi Scripal and Pablo Miller are 'alive and well' and all three are able to provide information about the Steele Dossier, what was in the Steele Dossier, and WHERE the information in the Steele Dossier came from. Ask the questions dammit, and you'll get the answers.

headless blogger , 58 minutes ago

Not a fan of Trump, although I voted for him the first time, but he will be in serious trouble if Biden gets into office as there are too many vengeful people on that side of the isle. They attempted a coup d'etat which is the worse treason, where most of these people would be executed in "normal" times.

So, they HAVE TO win at all costs, in their thinking. They will then turn the tables on Trump as well as the entire Conservative camp. It looks like an ugly future if they win. If Trump wins, it will be ugly too.

Sure signs to get the hell out now if you can.

The Technocracy crowd is behind all of this, btw. They are waiting for the full collapse at which time we will be inundated with Tech Billionaires coming forward to "save us". BEWARE!!


4 play_arrow 1
1nd1v1s1ble1 , 1 hour ago

*sigh* As if anything is going to come of this...when has any high ranking politician EVER been taken to task or incarcerated for their crimes? It's the same political theater brought to you by the MSM/Jesuit/Jooish/Freemason Satanic cult who ritually perform their televised 'skits' to the masses to make it appear as if justice exists or better yet, we have a Republic- newsflash: it died a long, long time ago. The frightened mask-wearing, compliant sheeple lap it up every f'n time-when do you awake and realize there is no bi-partisan political machine? There is no blue versus red, just like their cronies in Hollyweird, these colluding politicians are simply actors who were too ugly to make it there, orange man aint gonna save ya, bumbling joe aint gonna save ya, understand Stockholm Syndrome-survivors of 'merica....they DO NOT GIVE A F#*K ABOUT YOU OR YOUR FAMILY and would actually prefer you were dead.

'It's a BIG club and you and I ain't in it...'

-George Carlin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso

flight77 , 1 hour ago

The capital of the USA is Jerusalem.

hoytmonger , 1 hour ago

Trump is giving Israel another $11 billion to "secure another Arab-Israeli peace treaty."

He's buying the deals with US taxpayer money...

https://www.mintpressnews.com/trump-admin-poised-to-gift-israel-11-billion-in-bid-to-secure-another-arab-israeli-peace-treaty/271603/

gfmucci1 , 1 hour ago

Better/cheaper than sending US military to fight in another useless war.

headless blogger , 1 hour ago

Gina Haspel was selected by Trump!! When you take into consideration Trump's selections of Haspel, Bolton, and many others, it becomes obvious there is someone in his admin that is directing him to bring these people on. He brings them on and then they betray him.

5onIt , 1 hour ago

Pence is the dude you are looking for.

Haspel was the CIA Station Chief in London, when this was all going down.

Be sure, she has chit to hide.

LEEPERMAX , 1 hour ago

John Brennan led the coup this side of the Atlantic, while Gina Haspel , who was in the CIA London office at the time, worked the coup from London as the CIA chief in cooperation with GCHQ and Robert Hannigan. Both are creepy, corrupt traitors of America.

LEEPERMAX , 1 hour ago

👉 CIA Director Gina Haspel is Complicit with the Attempted Overthrow of Trump

samsara , 1 hour ago

Abu Ghraib = Gina Haspel

Graphic drawings allege CIA's 'borderline torture' of Abu ...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guantanamo-bay-abu-zubaydah-drawings-cia-torture-pictures-a9335001.html

The current head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel, oversaw one such site where torture was carried out. ... Abu Zubaydah, Courtesy Professor Mark P. Denbeaux, Seton Hall University ...

y_arrow
Mister Delicious , 2 hours ago

She was Brennan's London pet.

She should be fired and escorted from the building, and then DOJ NSD should open an investigation into her contacts with Brennan.

Think there might be a Demstate coup attempt?

Well, don't you imagine any friend of John Brennan's is not a friend of Trump.

I don't care how much you love Orange Jesus - he has picked absolutely terrible people over and over and over.

Good DNI now but he needs to take charge.

richsob , 3 hours ago

Orange Fat Boy is getting played like a violin. You and I both know it. Does he? Probably because you can see it on his face but he's just not willing to do what it would take to get everything out into the open. And if he tries to expose everything after he's lost the election nobody will listen to him......even you and I. It will be too late then.

jamesmmu , 3 hours ago

NEW YORK TIMES PROVES IT IS FAKE NEWS: Shreds Years of Its Own Reporting on Trump Tax Fraud and Russiagate

AlexTheCat3741 , 2 hours ago

We would think that the New York Slimes would know something about losses. After all, they paid $1.1 Billion in 1993 for The Boston Globe and in 2013, sold it for $70 Million to businessman John Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, and a massive 93% loss.

But it's worse than that because included in that sale is BostonGlobe.com ; Boston.com ; the direct-mail marketing company Globe Direct; the company's 49 percent interest in Metro Boston, a free daily paper; Telegram.com and The Worcester Telegram & Gazette. The Times bought the Telegram & Gazette for $295 million in 1999.

We should be convinced to pay any attention to Fake News Tabloid, The New York Slimes, given that kind of Business Acumen? I don't think so.

rwe2late , 3 hours ago

Hope & Change, Drain the swamp, End the wars

Angelic Obama allegedly prevented from saving us by "deep state" Republicans.

Angelic Trump allegedly prevented from saving us by "deep state" Democrats.

Poor us, our chosen leaders and parties are always so blameless in failing us.

protrumpusa , 4 hours ago

President Trump has gotten rid just about everyone in this article I found 3 years ago
> The ATLANTIC COUNCIL is funded by BURISMA, GEORGE SOROS OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION & others. It was a CENTRIST, MILITARISTIC think tanks,now turned leftist group

> JOE BIDEN extorted Ukraine to FIRE the prosecutor investigating BURISMA, HUNTER's employer.

> LTC VINDMAN & FIONA HILL met MANY TIMES with DANIEL FRIED of the ATLANTIC COUNCIL. FIONA HILL is a former CoWorker of CHRISTOPHER STEELE !

> AMBASSADOR YOVANOVITCH is connected to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, is PRAISED in their documents, gave Ukraine a "do not prosecute" list, was involved in PRESSURING Ukraine to not prosecute GEORGE SOROS Group.

> BILL TAYLOR has a financial relationship with the ATLANTIC COUNCIL and the US UKRAINE BUSINESS COUNCIL (USUBC) which is also funded by BURISMA.

> TAYLOR met with THOMAS EAGER (works for ADAM SCHIFF) in Ukraine on trip PAID FOR by the ATLANTIC COUNCIL. This just days before TAYLOR first texts about the "FAKE" Quid Pro Quo !

> TAYLOR participated in USUBC Events with DAVID J. KRAMER (JOHN MCCAIN advisor) who spread the STEELE DOSSIER to the media and OBAMA officials.

> JOE BIDEN is connected to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, he rolled out his foreign policy vision while VP there, He has given speeches there, his adviser on Ukraine, MICHAEL CARPENTER (heads the Penn Biden Center) is a FELLOW at the ATLANTIC COUNCIL.

> KURT VOLKER is now Senior Advisor to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, he met with burisma

[Oct 01, 2020] Tucker Carlson Guest Tells GOP to Stop Pandering to Hispanics and Pander to the Working Class to Win - Media Right News

Oct 01, 2020 | mediarightnews.com

President Trump took to the debate stage tonight shortly after Tucker Carlson aired and it seemed like he was on the right track with his feisty hits on Joe Biden and plan to help all Americans by rebuilding the economy. Pedro Gonzalez, a popular guest of top-rated Tucker Carlson's show spoke to Tucker about why more Hispanics may be supporting President Trump. Here's a clue, it's not by pandering. It's by showing the American people that he is a strong, alpha leader.

It's by not treating Hispanics as though they need to be put on some higher playing field than White Americans to show them they matter. They already know they matter, they just want to know what President Trump is going to do to make America a safer country for business owners and law-abiding citizens who don't care to be known by their race, to begin with.

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We could only get the 2:20 max time in our Tweet clip that we posted to the Media Right News Twitter handle, but I think the message is clear.

Tucker says the message could even be de-racialized:

https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-7516378586463144&output=html&h=280&adk=1436321815&adf=2466281879&w=910&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1601511709&num_ads=1&rafmt=1&armr=3&sem=mc&pwprc=9018728161&psa=0&guci=2.2.0.0.2.2.0.0&ad_type=text_image&format=910x280&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmediarightnews.com%2Ftucker-carlson-guest-tells-gop-to-stop-pandering-to-hispanics-and-pander-to-the-working-class-to-win%2F&flash=0&fwr=0&pra=3&rh=200&rw=909&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&wgl=1&fa=27&adsid=ChEI8NnQ-wUQ6eb3jKKVp9XNARIqAFkVA7QqbOodq9PUq0j5VKsUCjie0cujRxbi51f0d4gBoEy191wpcoOc&dt=1601511709823&bpp=11&bdt=1916&idt=-M&shv=r20200924&cbv=r20190131&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&prev_fmts=0x0&nras=2&correlator=5958092225403&frm=20&pv=1&ga_vid=562009597.1601511709&ga_sid=1601511709&ga_hid=663873569&ga_fc=0&iag=0&icsg=4494940990078972&dssz=46&mdo=0&mso=0&u_tz=-240&u_his=2&u_java=0&u_h=864&u_w=1536&u_ah=864&u_aw=1536&u_cd=24&u_nplug=3&u_nmime=4&adx=69&ady=1672&biw=1519&bih=762&scr_x=0&scr_y=0&oid=3&pvsid=1089570163771574&pem=184&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fthelibertydaily.com%2F&rx=0&eae=0&fc=1408&brdim=1536%2C0%2C1536%2C0%2C1536%2C0%2C1536%2C864%2C1536%2C762&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7Cs%7C&abl=NS&fu=8320&bc=31&jar=2020-09-29-19&ifi=1&uci=a!1&btvi=1&fsb=1&xpc=uXq02EF1Fu&p=https%3A//mediarightnews.com&dtd=28

"People who work for a living don't like disorder because they're vulnerable to it". "You're right," Pedro says. "The GOP is starting to recycle these talking points while denigrating their white base they patronize Latinos by saying things like, one group of people does the job that another group doesn't want to do, it's not just untrue, it's morally repugnant," he says. Gonzales goes on to say that the GOP should stop trying to beat the Democrats at their own game. He says Trump should play his own game because "he's good at it and it's more popular" and he goes on to describe his thoughts more below.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1311143728585887744&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fmediarightnews.com%2Ftucker-carlson-guest-tells-gop-to-stop-pandering-to-hispanics-and-pander-to-the-working-class-to-win%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=219d021%3A1598982042171&width=550px

Perhaps President Trump should start listening to the organic voices from the right and stop listening to paid bureaucrats who are out of touch with reality going into the election as he faces a more challenging demographic voter situation than any Republican presidential candidate ever.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/12200557905683046?pubid=ld-1231-949&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fmediarightnews.com&rid=thelibertydaily.com&width=910

Ian MacDonald Independent Conservative, Free Thinker, America First Proponent.

[Oct 01, 2020] Tucker Carlson pays tribute to Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen - Fox News Video

Sep 29, 2020 | video.foxnews.com

The Nation contributing editor and frequent 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' guest died on Sept. 18 at age 81

[Sep 28, 2020] Will Biden 'Corruption' Be Off-Limits In First Debate- -

Sep 28, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Will Biden 'Corruption' Be Off-Limits In First Debate?


by Tyler Durden Mon, 09/28/2020 - 21:00 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

Chris Wallace, America is watching!

When the "Fox News Sunday" host takes the stage on Tuesday to moderate the first presidential debate of 2020, he will for 90 minutes be the most important person in the world.

His questions, his demeanor, his raised eyebrow will signal to millions of voters how they are to assess the two candidates -- President Donald John Trump and former Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

If his questions are piercing for both, if his skepticism is applied equally to both the Republican and Democrat, then all is well in this corner of the world of journalism. But if instead Wallace accuses Trump and coddles Biden, we will have one more instance of media bias, which has become so rampant that President Trump had to christen it with a pet name -- Fake News.

Every day, the supposedly professional press corps cozies up to Biden with softball questions ("Why aren't you more angry at President Trump?" has to be my favorite!) while accusing Trump of being a mass murderer, a racist and a Putin puppet. So conservatives are entirely justified in having low expectations for the debate and for Wallace, who has exhibited symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome more than once.

Wallace can ask anything he wants of Trump. I am confident the president will acquit himself admirably, but the litmus test for Wallace playing fair in the debate will be whether or not he asks any hard-hitting questions of Biden -- especially about the new Senate report on the corrupt activities of his son Hunter in Ukraine and elsewhere.

If you have heard anything about the Biden report on CNN and MSNBC, or read about it in your newspapers, chances are you came away thinking that Republicans had made up a series of fake charges against the Bidens. "Nothing to see here. Move along."

The Washington Post , as usual, was at the front of the pack for Fake News coverage. The Post used its headline to focus entirely on Hunter's position on the board of the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and claimed that the report doesn't show that the cozy arrangement "changed U.S. policy" -- as if that were the only reason you would not want a vice president's son enriching himself at the trough of foreign oligarchs.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890

The story then spent most of its 35 paragraphs excusing Hunter's behavior either directly or through surrogates such as Democrat senators, and most nauseatingly by quoting Hunter Biden's daughter, Naomi, who "offered a personal tribute to her father" in the form of a series of tweets, including the following:

"Though the whole world knows his name, no one knows who he is. Here's a thread on my dad, Hunter Biden -- free of charge to the taxpayers and free of the corrosive influence of power-at-all-costs politics. The truth of a man filled with love, integrity, and human struggles." Oh my, that's convincing evidence of innocence of wrongdoing. I imagine she also endorses her grandfather for president, for what it's worth.

The three reporters who wrote the Post piece also spin the facts like whirling dervishes. They say that the report by Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley "rehashes" known details of the matter. They quote Democrats to say without evidence that the report's key findings are "rooted in a known Russian disinformation effort."

The following passage in particular shows how one-sided the story is:

"Democrats argue that Johnson has 'repeatedly impugned' Biden, and they pointed to his recent comments hinting that the report would shed light on Biden's 'unfitness for office,' as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, to argue that the entire investigation was orchestrated as a smear campaign to benefit Trump."

Using the "shoe on the other foot" test, can you ever imagine a similar statement being made in the Washington Post about the Trump impeachment investigation? Let's see. How would that go?

"Republicans argue that Rep. Adam Schiff has 'repeatedly impugned' Trump, and they pointed to his recent comments hinting that the report would shed light on Trump's 'unfitness for office' to argue that the entire investigation was orchestrated as a smear campaign to benefit Biden."

Oh yeah, sure! The chance of reading that paragraph in the Washington Post news pages would have been absolutely zero.

Perhaps even more insidious was the decision by the editors to push the most significant news in the report to the bottom of the Post's story. That is the lucrative relationship that Hunter Biden established in 2017 with a Chinese oil tycoon named Ye Jianming. Biden was apparently paid $1 million to represent Ye's assistant while he was facing bribery charges in the United States.

Even more disturbing, "In August 2017, a subsidiary of Ye's company wired $5 million into the bank account of a U.S. company called Hudson West III, which over the next 13 months sent $4.79 million marked as consulting fees to Hunter Biden's firm, the report said. Over the same period, Hunter Biden's firm wired some $1.4 million to a firm associated with his uncle and aunt, James and Sara Biden, according to the report."

Then, in late 2017, "Hunter Biden and a financier associated with Ye also opened a line of credit for Hudson West III that authorized credit cards for Hunter Biden, James Biden and Sara Biden, according to the report, which says the Bidens used the credit cards to purchase more than $100,000 worth of items, including airline tickets and purchases at hotels and restaurants."

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The Post also glossed over payments received by Hunter Biden from Yelena Baturina, who the story acknowledges "is the widow of former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov and is a member of Kazakhstan's political elite." What the story doesn't say is that the payments received by Hunter Biden's companies while Joe Biden was vice president totaled close to $4 million. Does anyone have even the slightest curiosity why Hunter's companies received these payments from a Russian oligarch? As Donald Trump Jr. noted, if he had the same record of taking money from foreign nationals, he "would be in jail right now."

In other words, the headline and the lede of the Washington Post story were entirely misleading. What readers should have been told is that there is a pattern of corruption and inexplicable enrichment in the Biden family that has continued for years and that Joe Biden has turned his back on it.

Seems worthy of the attention of the voters who will determine the nation's leadership for the next four years. So the most important question at the debate Tuesday night is the following: Will Chris Wallace take the same cowardly path as the Washington Post, or will he demand an answer from candidate Biden as to why influence peddling, conflicts of interest and virtual money laundering are acceptable?

Based on Wallace's track record, I'm not holding my breath that we will get either the question or the answer, but if we do, I will happily applaud him as the tough-as-nails journalist he is supposed to be.
play_arrow chubbar , 1 hour ago

Wallace is co-opted, he's a plant. NO way does he ask about corruption or go after Joe.

CosmoJoe , 1 hour ago

All Trump needs to do is jab Biden every time his brain locks up; toss in phrases like "Its OK Joe, take your time". Keep doing that until Biden gets angry and its all over. (Well, its over anyhow, but....)

Karl Malden's Nose , 1 hour ago

He knew how to push Hillary's buttons and even though she's a spaz she's lightyears smarter than Joe. Biden is going to fume and crap his depends because Trump is about to knock him flat on his ***. He'll be stammering to answer while Trump has already moved on to the next gut punch. There's no gotcha's on Trump, only Biden. Trump is plugged in to everything and sharp as a knife. Biden will be struggling to remember his instructions and I'm sure they'll have an ear piece on him he won't hear too clearly.

Hoax Fatigue , 25 minutes ago

Nobody is expecting (((Wallace))) to be fair.

High Vigilante , 1 hour ago

Trump should bring it up, as soon as possible.

There is no guarantee Biden won't skip other debates.

Plus it would make Biden angry and negate the effect of drugs he will be loaded with.

True Historian , 1 hour ago

I have watched Wallace and he is a pretentious pile of excrement. FOX with its "Fair and Balanced" left the station when they were bought out by Disney.

Wallace sample questions:

Trump : When did you stop being a corrupt NAZI/Russian bitch?

Biden : Are you feeling OK today? If not, how can I make you more comfortable.

CosmoJoe , 1 hour ago

Trump had some fairly hostile moderators in the 2016 debates and he held his own. He has to be just as merciless with Biden as he was with Hillary. The news doesn't want to talk about Hunter and his wire transfers from Russia. This is Trump's chance to throw that crap right into the spotlight.

alexcojones , 1 hour ago

Quote : "Every day, the supposedly professional press corps cozies up to Biden with softball questions... while accusing Trump of being a mass murderer, a racist and a Putin puppet."

Why? That's because the so-called "Legacy" media is now the Enemy of The American People.

Soloamber , 1 hour ago

The question is how long can Wallace hide his anti-Trimp bias ?

Mr. Biden ...what is your favorite color ?

President Trump why do you pay no tax ?

Mr. Biden Isn't China our greatest ally ?

President Trump have you heard from Stormy lately ?

Mr . Biden Please provide your wife's first name .

President Trump.... You appear over weight have you had your blood pressure checked ?

Would you agree to do it now ?

Mr . Biden what are some of your greats political achievements in your distinguished political legacy ?

President Trump why have you caused global warming ?

DeplorableGlobalConflictWatch , 1 hour ago

Chris Wallace is a joke. Make sure he's sick and replaced by Tucker Carlson.

RealEstateArbitrage , 1 hour ago

Wally is a plant by the deep state. He is a liar and a fool.

Migao , 1 hour ago

Wallace, like his dad, pretentious snob. Yeah, Trump's a jerk, but he's a lovable jerk. Wallace is a pretentious snob.

JUICE E SMALL IT EMPIRE , 2 hours ago

No, Ukraine and China should be front and center. It is an election year. And the Dems have screwed us royally.

[Sep 28, 2020] May Non-OPEC Oil Production drops to 2013 levels by Ovi

Images deleted: see the original for images
Sep 28, 2020 | peakoilbarrel.com

A post by Ovi on peakoilbarrel

Below are a number of oil (C + C ) production charts for Non-OPEC countries created from data provided by the EIA's International Energy Statistics and updated to May 2020. Information from other sources such as the OPEC and country specific sites is used to provide a short term outlook for future output and direction.

Non-OPEC production dropped slowly from a high of 52,638 kb/d in December 2019 to 52,396 kb/d in March 2020. In April that changed when we saw the first big drop in output from the Non-OPEC countries associated with Covid and with the drop in world oil prices. May output collapsed to 45,340 kb/d, which is close to the production level in September 2013.

The projection to September (red square) was made using the September STEO report. It projects that after the low of 45,350 kb/d in May, production will increase by close to 3,500 kb/d to just under 49,000 kb/d in September.

Above are listed the worldʼs 15th largest Non-OPEC producers. They produced 83.6% of the Non-OPEC output in May. On a YoY basis, Non-OPEC production was down by 5,011 kb/d. On a MoM basis, production was down by 5,282 kb/d. World oil production was down by 11,418 kb/d, MoM and 10,318 kb/d YoY.

May saw a drop in output to 2,765 kb/d but rebounded in June to 3,013 kb/d according to this source . Maintenance and extensive turnarounds planned between September and November could shave around 200,000 b/d from Brazil's output.

The EIA shows Canadian production was down in May by 658 kb/d by 248 kb/d to 3,694 kb/d. The CER data is higher because it includes NGPLs in their estimates and is close to 6% of total output.

Canadian oil exports by rail to the US fell from a high of 411,991 b/d in February to a new low of 48,820 kb/d in June.

April 156,242 kb/d May 58,048 kb/d June 48,820 kb/d

At the same time, according to this source , "The Trans Mountain pipeline carried a record-breaking amount of oil to British Columbia from Alberta in August, despite persistent price and demand woes gripping the energy sector as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on".

"We have been full every day during the COVID period. Demand for the pipeline has not softened at all," he told The Globe and Mail in an interview Tuesday.

Chinaʼs production peaked in June-15 at 4,408 kb/d and has been in a steady decline up to September 2018 where it reached an output low of 3,694 kb/d. According to this source, Chinaʼs August production increased by 2.6% over last August. Output increased by 59 kb/d to 3,899 kb/d (Red square). However August's output is still slightly lower than the June 2019 output of 3,918 kb/d even though Chinese oil companies have increased their spending to reduce the decline rate.

Kazakhstan production hit a new output high in February, 1,976 kb/d. For May, production dropped by 203 kb/d to 1,738 kb/d. OPEC expects their output to drop by an average 15 kb/d this year.

Mexicoʼs production decreased in May by 85 kb/d to 1,686 kb/d, according to the EIA. Data from Pemex shows that production dropped to 1,647 kb/d in July (red square). Under the OPEC + Declaration of Cooperation, Mexico committed to reduce output by 100 kb/d in May. Their target was almost met.

The EIA reported that Norway's May production was 1,775 kb/d, a decrease of 14 kb/d from April.

According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, "average daily liquids production in July was: 1 739 000 barrels of oil, 296 000 barrels of NGL and 27 000 barrels of condensate. (Red lines)

On 29 April 2020, the Government decided to implement a cut in Norwegian oil production. The production figures for oil in July include this cut of 134 000 barrels per day in the second half of 2020."

In other words, if Norway hadn't made their commitment to reduce production, May's oil output would have been (1,739 + 134) 1,873 kb/d. This output level would have been very close to some earlier highs.

According to the Russian Ministry of energy, Russian production increased by 479 kb/d in August to 9,860 kb/d. July was revised up by 11 kb/d from 9,371 kb/d to 9,382 kb/d.

UKʼs production decreased by 63 kb/d in May to 1,004 kb/d. According to OPEC, crude production is expected to increase to 1,010 kb/d in June (Red square).

June's production rebounded from May's low by adding 420 kb/d according to the the EIA's August report. May's output was revised up by 15 kb/d in the EIA's September report.

US and Permian oil rigs decreased by 1 to 179 and 121 respectively in the week of September 18. As a percentage, Permian oil rigs represented 67.5% of the total for the week of Aug 21.

According to the September DPR, the 121 rigs operating in the Permian in September will be sufficient to raise production in September by 42 kb/d to 4,150 kb/d.

While WTI has remained close to $40/bbbl, there has been essentially no change in drilling activity since the week of July 17 in the US. There were 180 oil rigs in operation that week vs 179 for the week of September 18.

These five countries complete the list of Non-OPEC countries with annual production between 500 kb/d and 1,000 kb/d. All five are in overall decline. Their combined May production was 3,263 kb/d down 232 kb/d from April's output of 3,495 kb/d. Azerbaijan, Indonesia and India appear to be in a slow steady decline phase. Columbia's production began to drop in March as Brent prices began to drop.

According to Colombia's minister of energy, Maria Fernanda Suarez, ANH president Armando Zamora said if Brent oil prices hit around $35 a barrel national oil output could average around 850,000 barrels a day, down from a previous forecast of 900,000 barrels.

Guyana is a new oil producing country that started production in December 2019. According to this s ource , production was supposed to reach 120 kb/d by June. However gas re-injection issues have delayed its planned production rise. Output in June is expected to be close to 80 kb/d (red square). This new source for oil will offset some of the decline in other countries, which currently is close to 400 kb/d/yr.

NON OPEC W/O US PRODUCTION

This chart shows that oil production in Non-OPEC countries has only increased by 541 kb/d from December 2014 t0 December 2019. It is an indication that these countries as a whole are approaching an output plateau. April is the first month in which the large production drop associated with CV-19 and the plunge in oil prices shows up in this chart. In May 0utput from these countries dropped by 3,293 kb/d to 35,348 kb/d.

Using information from the September STEO, output from the Non OPEC countries W/O the US, is expected to rebound to 37,054 kb/d in September (red square). Looking further out to October 2021, output is predicted to reach 39,692 kb/d. (Blue graph). Note that the October 2021 high is currently expected to be 143 kb/d lower than the December 2019 peak. The 143 kb/d difference is probably well within the margin of error in making these projections.

World Oil Production

World oil production in May decreased by 11,417 kb/d to 71,374 kb/d. This chart also projects world production out to October 2020. It uses the September STEO along with the International Energy Statistics to make the projection. It projects that world production will recover by close to 5,000 kb/d in October 20202 to 76,019 kb/d.

This chart presents world oil production without the US. Note that the November 2016 peak is two years prior to all the worldʼs peak shown in the previous chart. May production was 61,372 kb/d, a decrease of 9,429 kb/d from April.

Using the STEO and the EIA international Energy Statistics, output for September is projected to be 63,768 kb/d, an increase of 2,396 kb/d higher than May.

[Sep 26, 2020] Black Lives Matter is a Modern Totalitarian Revolution by Douglas V. Gibbs

Jun 19, 2020 | canadafreepress.com

If we allow the Black Lives Matter movement to become America's Bolshevik Revolution, we will lose our liberty, and many of us will likely lose our lives, as well, for daring to question them. This was never about racism. It has been about power an Black Lives Matter is a Modern Totalitarian Revolution

Classic totalitarian regimes share a number of common characteristics. The rise of these regimes began with a cultural revolution, aimed at angering the citizens against the current system. During that period domestic enemies are designated, and the people in the radical movement aiming at overthrowing the old system rally together against those common enemies, calling it a common struggle, as they adopt a new official ideology that stands significantly apart from the old one. They seek to control every aspect of the lives of their people, enlisting everyone they can to participate in the struggle. Even persons who may belong to enemy classes or groups join up, hoping to receive mercy when the new regime gains control. In Stalin's Russia and Mao's China the enemies were anyone who reminded them of the old system, and anyone who could challenge them if left with enough power. The state enemies were the capitalists, landlords, richer peasants and foreign agents of all kinds. Nazi Germany included those outside the national community, which included socialists (even though Nazism was a form of socialism) and communists, Jews, Christians, and any ethnic minorities that did not fit into the German model of a loyal elite specimen.

The goal of each of the totalitarian regimes of the past were to eliminate the old system, eradicate any history or remnant of the old regimes, and create a dominant single party that stood as a rebellious alternative of the traditional State. Then, once in power, the perceived enemies were murdered or imprisoned, as were many of their allies for the crime of knowing too much. The younger generation was used as a controlling mechanism, taught to tattle on their older counterparts for not being one hundred percent in favor of the new party in charge. The youngsters were uniformed and organized into militias to turn their energies towards advancing the party line, and improving upon the power of the new political elite.

In each case anything that even resembled the free market was eliminated, and the new government controlled the economy. They took over the means of production either by taking control of it and nationalizing it, or through heavy regulations (as we saw in Italy and Germany). The immigration structure was altered, they orchestrated a break-down of morality and what were considered moral norms in their culture, they worked on the destruction of the nuclear family, they forcibly reallocated farmland, they formed a socialist economy that was designed to redistribute the wealth away from the designated domestic enemies into the hands of those revolutionaries who deserved some kind of reparations for what was allegedly lost at the hands of the domestic enemies, and early on looting and rioting was encouraged and championed. Interestingly, the list I just gave you was not just something the NAZIs and communists did, but is also a list of demands currently being voiced by Black Lives Matter.

Public expression was also controlled by past dictatorial regimes so that no dissent could emerge. If dissent was spotted, the party members acted as a mob, actively mobilized to quell the dissent in the name of the "people's struggle" against a constant list of enemies. Again, Black Lives Matter fits the bill on this one, too.

These regimes exaggerated real problems, and real aspects of human nature, and created an on-going revolution against their enemies. It was a common struggle to liberate the people from whomever the leadership designated as an enemy. To not pull the party line was to be socially asleep, or an agent of the enemy, which then would place the person under great scrutiny, and if they remained uncorrected, they would be ridiculed, shamed, and eventually jailed, or murdered.

The fuel was passion, and anger, and a common demand for answers.

Sound familiar?

Black Lives Matter is an embodiment of everything that the 20th Century dictatorships were

Black Lives Matter is an embodiment of everything that the 20th Century dictatorships were. The designated enemies may be different, and some of the alleged struggles may go by slightly different names, but underneath it all, Black Lives Matter is no different than fascism, communism, and any other dictatorial regime one can think of. And the bad part about it is that at this very moment the popularity of Black Lives Matter in the United States is greater, according to polls, than any political party, and any religious organization or sect . The Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, and Bolsheviks are all rolled into one, and they are here to overthrow our U.S. Constitution.

Eventually, Black Lives Matter will lose its appeal, and the players will grow weary of the struggle. The regime will weaken, and when they try to invigorate their revolutionaries for a new fight in order to strengthen the resolve of the regime and its followers, they will find that all of their enemies are dead or in exile, and the problem can no longer be blamed on others. However, it could take half a century, or more, before that happens, and in a Black Lives Matter America the damage will already have been done. The death of liberty and the annihilation of the free market will have left a long path of sorrow and misery following it. By then, the enemy will only be themselves, and as all regimes in history, the struggle will turn inward, and the murders will be against their own. Through the paranoia imaginary enemies will be concocted, where nobody is safe from the suspicions of one's neighbors or children. People begin to vanish, and the party begins to struggle to hold on to control.

Black Lives Matter, like all past dictatorial regimes, has successfully unleashed the passions of many members of the public. The campaigns of terror are in full swing, in the name of protesting, in the name of social justice, and in the name of standing against racism. They claim that science and reason are in their corner, when, like Stalin and Mao of the Soviet Union and Communist China, it is all a great big lie. They claim whites have unfair privilege and must be forced to kneel to their true overlords, as Hitler did with the Jews when he believed it would allow him to create a better Germany. In the end, as with all violent totalitarian regimes, violence will bring them down just as violence brought them into power.

Tucker on the incredible popularity of Black Lives Matter

https://www.youtube.com/embed/22j_OhbnW20

Islamic totalitarianism solidifies in the Middle East, and works to spread across the nations of Europe

As Islamic totalitarianism solidifies in the Middle East, and works to spread across the nations of Europe, Black Lives Matter totalitarianism is working its way through its birthing canal in the United States. Both bear all of the markers of totalitarianism. They work to control the lives, speech, and actions of those below them. They terrorize and murder, committing themselves to endless struggles against a long list of designated enemies. They pose as more than an ideological challenge. They are poised to bring down Western Civilization, which has prospered due to America's Liberty, and free market capitalistic system.

Should we fall, to where may one escape? There is no other place to go. Black Lives Matter is a real threat, an enemy who desires to overthrow America and control this country. There is no criticizing Black Lives Matter. The mobs threaten anyone who holds dissent. It is already happening. People are losing their jobs for criticizing Black Lives Matter, and they are still only a political movement. Black Lives Matter is enjoying complete immunity from criticism while they are not in power. Imagine what will happen if they ever gain a hold on the reins of our system.

It has gone beyond a demand for equality. Equality is no longer acceptable. If one were to say "All Lives Matter," for example, that is now unacceptable, and racist. Only "Black Lives Matter" we are told. White lives don't matter because of what your ancestors allegedly did a couple hundred years ago. Christianity and the American System is based on the idea of equality in the eyes of God, and equality in opportunity (or at least the attempt to create a system that accomplishes such), but now if you say that out loud, you are called a racist, and your very life could be at risk. Dissent is hate speech. You could be fired from your job, or in some cases, fined and jailed for daring to speak out against the rising totalitarian regime known as Black Lives Matter because such murmurings could be considered "hate speech".

The latest demand by Black Lives Matter is ridiculous, yet it is happening. It began with a chant, "defund the police," and now has advanced to cries to abolish the police. The City of Minneapolis is in the process of doing exactly that. When asked on CNN who, then, if the police were gone, should we call in the middle of the night while our house is being burglarized, a member of the Minneapolis city council said that the question "comes from a place of privilege." In other words, if some feel like law enforcement is not on their side, everyone should feel that way, otherwise, you have an unfair privilege, and you are racist.

Black Lives Matter is enjoying a rise to power largely because of the liberal media

Black Lives Matter is enjoying a rise to power largely because of the liberal media. Any counter-arguments against their claims are going unheard. CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the alphabet networks, and any of the other liberal outlets aren't going to report any criticism of Black Lives Matter. And as Hitler's team explained, if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. In this case, if you tell one side of the story, and the other side is never heard, it becomes true.

Unchallenged claims must be true, therefore, Black Lives Matter must be on to something. The polls say so.

Black Lives Matter is achieving their power in the same way past revolutionaries did. Through force. They break things, they burn things, and they hurt anyone who gets in the way. They believe they deserve whatever they want, and if you don't give it to them, they will take it. Then, on the way out, they will set your business on fire. They occupy, they terrorize, and nobody is willing to stop them, because if you do, you are a racist. They know this. They know you are paralyzed by your fear of them, and fear of being considered racist. They have a message. Step out of line and we will hurt you, your family, or your business. That is the strategy of Black Lives Matter, and it is becoming the strategy of the Democrat Party. If you are afraid to defy the mob, the mob rules.

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution created this system to protect us from the mob. That is why they created a constitutional republic, not a democracy (as some people like to say). Democracy is historically a transitional type of government. When the mobs of democracy begin to take control, which usually accompanies a continuous vote for benefits from the treasury, liberty breaks down and dictators begin to take control.

If we allow the Black Lives Matter movement to become America's Bolshevik Revolution, we will lose our liberty, and many of us will likely lose our lives, as well, for daring to question them. This was never about racism. It has been about power and control since the very beginning. Black Lives Matter seeks to overthrow the U.S. Constitution, and replace our system with a Marxist-based government that destroys liberty and the free market, and places their radical leaders in control of the country. If we don't stop it, and recognize the revolutionary nature of what is going on, America will disappear forever. And, if there is no America, Liberty dies worldwide.

SHOW DISQUS COMMENTS

Douglas V. Gibbs -- Bio and Archives

Douglas V. Gibbs of Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary, has been featured on "Hannity" and "Fox and Friends" on Fox News Channel, and other television shows and networks. Doug is a Radio Host on KMET 1490-AM on Saturdays with his Constitution Radio program, as well as a longtime podcaster, conservative political activist, writ

[Sep 26, 2020] As for the 'rules-based international order,' at best it is a euphemism for privately-controlled financial capitalism on a global scale

Sep 26, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Sep 23 2020 15:56 utc | 84

Escobar reviews the UNGA's first day that revealed Trump's desperation a few alluded to above. Psychohistorian will be pleased to read Pepe's channeling his #1 premise:

" As for the 'rules-based international order,' at best it is a euphemism for privately-controlled financial capitalism on a global scale ." [My Emphasis]

As I wrote yesterday, every national leader I read backed a Multilateral UN and its Charter while including various degrees of reproach for the illegalities of the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals, even the Emir of Qatar :

"The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has reminded us that we live on the same planet, and that multilateral cooperation is the only way to address the challenges of epidemics, climate and the environment in general, and it's also preferable to remember this when dealing with the issues of poverty, war and peace, and realizing our common goals for security and stability....

"And during the unjust and unlawful blockade it is going through it also has securely established its policy founded on respecting the rules and principles of international law and the United Nations Charter, especially, the principle of respecting the sovereignty of states and rejecting intervention in their internal affairs.

"And based on our moral and legal responsibilities towards our peoples, we have affirmed, and we will continue to reaffirm, that unconditional dialogue based on common interests and respect for the sovereignty of states is the way to solve this crisis which had started with an illegal blockade, and whose solution starts with lifting this blockade."

If the Saudi blockade is "unjust and unlawful," then all those imposed by the Outlaw US Empire are also.

Pepe apparently doesn't agree with Lieven's essay and writes:

"Sinophobia is the perfect tool for shifting blame -- for the abysmal response to Covid-19, the extinction of small businesses and the looming New Great Depression -- to the Chinese 'existential threat.'

"The whole process has nothing to do with 'moral defeat' [Lieven] and complaints that 'we risk losing the competition and endangering the world.'

"The world is not 'endangered' because at least vast swathes of the Global South are fully aware that the much-ballyhooed 'rules-based international order' is nothing but a quite appealing euphemism for Pax Americana -- or exceptionalism [Neocolonialism].

"What was designed by Washington for post-World War II, the Cold War and the 'unilateral moment' does not apply anymore."

As the dirty domestic underwear of the Outlaw US Empire becomes more visible to nations, they are emboldened to stand up for themselves and join the Strategic Partnership's Eurasian project.

[Sep 25, 2020] Tucker -- The left's extreme reaction to Ginsburg's death

Tucker: This parading of Ginsburg death wish "is ridiculous and insulting"
Two neoliberal faction of the US elite ("hard neolibs" and "soft neolibs") struggle for power really entered a new phase. BTW control of Supreme Court was always a part of struggle for power.
And this "royal wish" think is just one episode of this entertaining fight. Great spectacle, but friends will unite when the time comes to approve the military budget.
Sep 25, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Sabastian Taylor , 23 hours ago

So they expect us to believe the woman who upheld the constitution now wants to break the constitution as her last dying wish. Lol. OKAY!!!

fristname lastname , 1 day ago

"Never let a tragedy go to waist" -every slimy politician

NotYourVictim 1 , 1 day ago

Who cares about her so called dying wish...this is a constitutional republic not the make a wish foundation.

Andryan Tassy , 1 day ago

most dangerous virus is stupidity, and their target mostly is young people

one voice , 3 days ago

First it was a whistleblower. Then it was a unnamed source. Now it's a Dying wish. What's next, a Ouija board?

iswc27 , 15 hours ago

AOC: "Mitch McConnell is playing with fire". Meanwhile, the leftist rioters who agree with her are destroying our cities with real fire!

Blacknight1812 , 1 day ago

AOC sounds like a whining student, complaining that all her entitlements are not enough.

Maria Mammarello , 1 day ago

If we honored every dying woman's wish, well... let's be real, huh?

Zerospacedude , 1 day ago

Why are people so upset about this "final wish" thing? Like it just seems convenient to me and made up; and even if wasn't made up, who gives her the right to dictate how the constitution works. It's obvious the Dems are using this to try and keep the GOP from getting an extra seat on the Supreme Court, and I don't really blame them, GOP would have probably done the same thing, they're both hypocrites.

Jason Redden , 23 hours ago

Lol, she doesn't get to pick. She's not a Queen, your President gets to pick so you Democrats should pipe it down and stop being so dramatic

[Sep 23, 2020] Virgin Islands AG demands ENTIRETY of Epstein flight logs, 'sparking panic' among wealthy passengers

Notable quotes:
"... Passenger logs for Epstein's four helicopters and three planes have been subpoenaed by Virgin Islands AG Denise George, who recently sued the disgraced financier's estate for 22 counts including human trafficking, child abuse, neglect, prostitution, aggravated rape, and forced labor, according to a Sunday report by the UK Mirror. ..."
"... Epstein pilot David Rodgers previously provided a passenger log in 2009 tying dozens of politicians, actors, and other celebrities to the infamous sex offender – including former US President Bill Clinton, actor Kevin Spacey, and model Naomi Campbell. ..."
"... George has also subpoenaed more than 10 banks – including JPMorgan, Citibank, and Deutsche Bank – in her quest to get to the bottom of the financial edifice Epstein built up before he died. The financial institutions have been ordered to submit documents related to some 30 corporations, trusts, and nonprofit entities tied to the predatory playboy. ..."
Sep 23, 2020 | www.blacklistednews.com

VIRGIN ISLANDS AG DEMANDS ENTIRETY OF EPSTEIN FLIGHT LOGS, 'SPARKING PANIC' AMONG WEALTHY PASSENGERS Published: September 22, 2020
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SOURCE: RT

The US Virgin Islands Attorney General has subpoenaed 21 years' worth of deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's flight logs, reportedly striking fear in the hearts of high-profile passengers not yet exposed as Lolita Express riders.

Passenger logs for Epstein's four helicopters and three planes have been subpoenaed by Virgin Islands AG Denise George, who recently sued the disgraced financier's estate for 22 counts including human trafficking, child abuse, neglect, prostitution, aggravated rape, and forced labor, according to a Sunday report by the UK Mirror.

In addition to the passenger lists, George has requisitioned " complaints or reports of potentially suspicious conduct " and any " personal notes " the pilots made while flying Epstein's alleged harem of underage girls around the world. She also wants the names and contact information of anyone who worked for the pilots – or who " integrated with or observed " Epstein and his passengers.

Epstein pilot David Rodgers previously provided a passenger log in 2009 tying dozens of politicians, actors, and other celebrities to the infamous sex offender – including former US President Bill Clinton, actor Kevin Spacey, and model Naomi Campbell.

However, lawyers for Epstein's alleged victims have argued that list did not include flights by Epstein's chief pilot, Larry Visoski, who allegedly worked for him for over 25 years.

" The records that have been subpoenaed will make the ones Rodgers provided look like a Post-It note ," a source told the Mirror over the weekend, claiming that George's subpoena had triggered a " panic among many of the rich and famous. "

Epstein's private plane, nicknamed the Lolita Express, counted among its passengers such luminaries as the UK's Prince Andrew, celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz, actor Chris Tucker, Harvard economist Larry Summers, Hyatt hotel mogul Tom Pritzker, and model agency manager Jean-Luc Brunel along with Campbell, Spacey, and Clinton (who the logs show flew with Epstein over two dozen times). However, the passengers who enjoyed his other aircraft have not been made public – yet.

George has also subpoenaed more than 10 banks – including JPMorgan, Citibank, and Deutsche Bank – in her quest to get to the bottom of the financial edifice Epstein built up before he died. The financial institutions have been ordered to submit documents related to some 30 corporations, trusts, and nonprofit entities tied to the predatory playboy.

Epstein supposedly committed suicide last year in a Manhattan jail facility, while his accused madam Ghislaine Maxwell remains imprisoned in a Brooklyn detention center awaiting trial on charges related to child trafficking and perjury after her arrest earlier this year. Maxwell's lawyers have struggled to keep documents introduced as part of a recent defamation suit by one of Epstein's alleged victims under seal, insisting the information would deny her a fair trial.

[Sep 22, 2020] Stephen F. Cohen -- In Memoriam by Gilbert Doctorow

Unfortunately in his brilliant analysis of USA-Russia relations Stephen Cohen never pointed out that the USA policy toward Russia is dictated by the interests of maintaining global neoliberal empire and the concept of "Full Spectrum Dominance" which was adopted by the USA neoliberal elite after the collapse of the USSR.
Like British empire the USA neoliberal empire is now overextended, metropolia is in secular stagnation with deterioration standard of living of the bottom 80% of population, so the USA under Trump became more aggressive and dangerous on the international arena. Trump administration behaves behaves like a cornered rat on international arena.
Notable quotes:
"... On Friday, 18 September, professor Steve Cohen passed away in New York City and we, the "dissident" community of Americans standing for peace with Russia – and for peace with the world at large – lost a towering intellectual and skillful defender of our cause who enjoyed an audience of millions by his weekly broadcasts on the John Batchelor Show, WABC Radio. ..."
"... from the start of the Information Wars against Russia during the George W. Bush administration following Putin's speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, no voice questioning the official propaganda line in America was tolerated. Steve Cohen, who in the 1990s had been a welcome guest on U.S. national television and a widely cited expert in print media suddenly found himself blacklisted and subjected to the worst of McCarthyite style, ad hominem attacks. ..."
"... the opposition to Steve was led by experts in the Ukrainian and other minority peoples sub-categories of the profession who were militantly opposed not just to him personally but to any purely objective, not to mention sympathetic treatment of Russian leadership in the territorial expanse of Eurasia. ..."
"... Almost no one outside our 'dissident' community is concerned about the possibility of Armageddon in say two years' time due to miscalculations and bad luck in our pursuing economic, informational and military confrontation with Russia and China. ..."
"... My point in this discussion is that in the last decade of his life Stephen Cohen became one of the nation's most fearless and persistent defenders of the right to Free Speech. ..."
"... It was forced upon him by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major media who pilloried him or blacklisted him over his unorthodox, unsanctioned, nonconformist views on the "Putin regime." It was forced upon him by university colleagues who sought to deny his right to establish graduate school fellowships in Russian affairs bearing his name and that of his mentor at Indiana University, Professor Tucker. ..."
"... In the face of vicious personal attacks from these McCarthyite forces, in the face of hate mail and even threats to his life, Steve decided to set up The American Committee and to recruit to its governing board famous, patriotic Americans and the descendants of the most revered families in the country. In this he succeeded, and it is to his credit that a moral counter force to the stampeding bulls of repression was erected and has survived to this day. ..."
Sep 22, 2020 | gilbertdoctorow.com

On Friday, 18 September, professor Steve Cohen passed away in New York City and we, the "dissident" community of Americans standing for peace with Russia – and for peace with the world at large – lost a towering intellectual and skillful defender of our cause who enjoyed an audience of millions by his weekly broadcasts on the John Batchelor Show, WABC Radio.

A year ago, I reviewed his latest book, War With Russia? which drew upon the material of those programs and took this scholar turned journalist into a new and highly accessible genre of oral readings in print. The narrative style may have been more relaxed, with simplified syntax, but the reasoning remained razor sharp. I urge those who are today paying tribute to Steve, to buy and read the book, which is his best legacy.

From start to finish, Stephen F. Cohen was among America's best historians of his generation, putting aside the specific subject matter that he treated: Nikolai Bukharin, his dissertation topic and the material of his first and best known book; or, to put it more broadly, the history of Russia (USSR) in the 20 th century. He was one of the very rare cases of an historian deeply attentive to historiography, to causality and to logic. I understood this when I read a book of his from the mid-1980s in which he explained why Russian (Soviet) history was no longer attracting young students of quality: because there were no unanswered questions, because we smugly assumed that we knew about that country all that there was to know. That was when our expert community told us with one voice that the USSR was entrapped in totalitarianism without any prospect for the overthrow of its oppressive regime.

But my recollections of Steve also have a personal dimension going back six years or so when a casual email correspondence between us flowered into a joint project that became the launch of the American Committee for East West Accord (ACEWA). This was a revival of a pro-détente association of academics and business people that existed from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, when, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the removal of the Communist Party from power, the future of Russia in the family of nations we call the 'international community' seemed assured and there appeared to be no further need for such an association as ACEWA.

I hasten to add that in the original ACEWA Steve and I were two ships that passed in the night. With his base in Princeton, he was a protégé of the dean of diplomats then in residence there, George Kennan, who was the leading light on the academic side of the ACEWA. I was on the business side of the association, which was led by Don Kendall, chairman of Pepsico and also for much of the 1970s chairman of the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council of which I was also a member. I published pro-détente articles in their newsletter and published a lengthy piece on cooperation with the Soviet Union in agricultural and food processing domains, my specialty at that time, in their collection of essays by leaders in the U.S. business community entitled Common Sense in U.S.-Soviet Trade .

The academic contingent had, as one might assume, a 'progressive' coloration, while the business contingent had a Nixon Republican coloration. Indeed, in the mid-1980s these two sides split in their approach to the growing peace movement in the U.S. that was fed by opposition in the 'thinking community' on university campuses to Ronald Reagan's Star Wars agenda. Kendall shut the door at ACEWA to rabble rousing and the association did not rise to the occasion, so that its disbanding in the early '90s went unnoticed.

In the re-incorporated American Committee, I helped out by assuming the formal obligations of Treasurer and Secretary, and also became the group's European Coordinator from my base in Brussels. At this point my communications with Steve were almost daily and emotionally quite intense. This was a time when America's expert community on Russian affairs once again felt certain that it knew everything there was to know about the country, and most particularly about the nefarious "Putin regime." But whereas in the 1970s and 1980s, polite debate about the USSR/Russia was entirely possible both behind closed doors and in public space, from the start of the Information Wars against Russia during the George W. Bush administration following Putin's speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, no voice questioning the official propaganda line in America was tolerated. Steve Cohen, who in the 1990s had been a welcome guest on U.S. national television and a widely cited expert in print media suddenly found himself blacklisted and subjected to the worst of McCarthyite style, ad hominem attacks.

From my correspondence and several meetings with Steve at this time both in his New York apartment and here in Brussels, when he and Katrina van der Heuvel came to participate in a Round Table dedicated to relations with Russia at the Brussels Press Club that I arranged, I knew that Steve was deeply hurt by these vitriolic attacks. He was at the time waging a difficult campaign to establish a fellowship in support of graduate studies in Russian affairs. It was touch and go, because of vicious opposition from some stalwarts of the profession to any fellowship that bore Steve's name. Allow me to put the 'i' on this dispute: the opposition to Steve was led by experts in the Ukrainian and other minority peoples sub-categories of the profession who were militantly opposed not just to him personally but to any purely objective, not to mention sympathetic treatment of Russian leadership in the territorial expanse of Eurasia. In the end, Steve and Katrina prevailed. The fellowships exist and, hopefully, will provide sustenance to future studies when American attitudes towards Russia become less politicized.

At all times and on all occasions, Steve Cohen was a voice of reason above all. The problem of our age is that we are now not only living in a post-factual world, but in a post-logic world. The public reads day after day the most outrageous and illogical assertions about alleged Russian misdeeds posted by our most respected mainstream media including The New York Times and The Washington Post . Almost no one dares to raise a hand and suggest that this reporting is propaganda and that the public is being brainwashed. Steve did exactly that in War With Russia? in a brilliant and restrained text.

Regrettably today we have no peace movement to speak of. Youth and our 'progressive' elites are totally concerned over the fate of humanity in 30 or 40 years' time as a consequence of Global Warming and rising seas. That is the essence of the Green Movement. Almost no one outside our 'dissident' community is concerned about the possibility of Armageddon in say two years' time due to miscalculations and bad luck in our pursuing economic, informational and military confrontation with Russia and China.

I fear it will take only some force majeure development such as we had in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis to awaken the broad public to the risks to our very survival that we are incurring by ignoring the issues that Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Princeton and New York University was bringing to the airwaves week after week on his radio program.

Postscript

In terms of action, the new ACEWA was even less effective than its predecessor, which had avoided linking up with the peace movement of the 1980s and sought to exert influence on policy through armchair talks with Senators and other statesmen in Washington behind closed doors of (essentially) men's clubs.

However, the importance of the new ACEWA, and the national importance of Stephen Cohen lay elsewhere.

This question of appraising Stephen Cohen's national importance is all the more timely given that on the day of his death, 18 September, the nation also lost Supreme Justice Ruth Ginsburg, about whose national importance no Americans, whether her fans or her opponents, had any doubt.

My point in this discussion is that in the last decade of his life Stephen Cohen became one of the nation's most fearless and persistent defenders of the right to Free Speech. It was not a role that he sought. It was thrust upon him by the expert community of international affairs, including the Council on Foreign Relations, from which he reluctantly resigned over this matter.

It was forced upon him by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major media who pilloried him or blacklisted him over his unorthodox, unsanctioned, nonconformist views on the "Putin regime." It was forced upon him by university colleagues who sought to deny his right to establish graduate school fellowships in Russian affairs bearing his name and that of his mentor at Indiana University, Professor Tucker.

In the face of vicious personal attacks from these McCarthyite forces, in the face of hate mail and even threats to his life, Steve decided to set up The American Committee and to recruit to its governing board famous, patriotic Americans and the descendants of the most revered families in the country. In this he succeeded, and it is to his credit that a moral counter force to the stampeding bulls of repression was erected and has survived to this day.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the "View Inside" tab on the book's webpages to browse.]

[Sep 21, 2020] Trump's Attack on Social Security

Sep 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

AntiSpin , Sep 20 2020 17:10 utc | 14

Trump's Attack on Social Security
Has Started!

For eight-and-a-half decades, most Republican legislators (and some Democrats) have been trying to get rid of Social Security .

The first step in Trump's assault on Social Security's funding took effect Sept. 1st.

On Trump's orders, the IRS ordered corporations to stop withholding Social Security contributions from paychecks, through the end of the year.

Speaking on Fox Business recently, Trump advisor Larry Kudlow said that later this year Trump will order the IRS to continue the deferral indefinitely.

Social Security's chief actuary wrote that if Social Security is defunded, some benefits will be reduced next year, and that benefits will disappear entirely by the end of 2023.

If you are, or if you know someone on Social Security, please pass the word!

[Sep 21, 2020] Tucker: When do we get America back

Sep 21, 2020 | www.youtube.com


Fox News
6.2M subscribers SUBSCRIBE For Americans living under coronavirus restrictions, it's a question too rarely asked. In fact it's actively discouraged.

#FoxNews #Tucker

[Sep 21, 2020] Tucker: Democrats, fires and the climate misinformation campaign

Highly recommended!
Nice take on imbecilization of important and complex topics by the US MSM and politicians.
Money quote about neoliberal Dems like Obama and Biden " But there are others for whom altruism is an alien concept. Self-interest is all they know. These people never pause. They relentlessly press for any advantage, under any circumstances. They see human suffering as a means to increase their power."
Another money quote: "in the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky: You can't see it, but it's everywhere and it's deadly."
Notable quotes:
"... But there are others for whom altruism is an alien concept. Self-interest is all they know. These people never pause. They relentlessly press for any advantage, under any circumstances. They see human suffering as a means to increase their power. ..."
"... Joe Biden's closest friend in the world, a prominent Martha's Vineyard kite-surfer called Barack Obama, echoed that message with his trademark restraint. Obama declawed that your "life" depends on voting for Joe Biden. ..."
"... One of the few Republicans who still hold elected office in California, state Assemblyman Heath Flora, last year called on using the state's $22 billion budget surplus to implement vegetation management. ..."
"... Fires don't spread as well without huge connected forests functioning as kindling. It's obvious, which is why it's unthinkable to mention it in some Democratic circles." ..."
Sep 11, 2020 | www.youtube.com

September 11. 2020

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Massive wildfires continue to sweep across huge portions of the Pacific Northwest.

In Oregon, half a million residents have been forced to evacuate -- one out of every ten people in the state.

Dozens are dead tonight, including small children. But the fires still aren't close to contained. Watch this report from Fox's Jeff Paul:

Video report

And it continues as we speak, walls of flame consuming everything in their path: homes, animals, human beings. Tragedy on a massive scale.

When something this awful happens, decent people pause. They put aside their own interests for a moment. They consider how they can help. We've seen that kind of selflessness before.

This is, remember, the anniversary of 9-11. But there are others for whom altruism is an alien concept. Self-interest is all they know. These people never pause. They relentlessly press for any advantage, under any circumstances. They see human suffering as a means to increase their power.

These are the people who turn funerals into political rallies and feel no shame for doing it.

As Americans burned to death, people like this swung into action immediately. They went on television with a partisan talking point: Climate change caused these fires, they said. They didn't explain how that happened. They just kept saying it.

In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky: you can't see it, but it's everywhere, and it's deadly. And, like systemic racism, it's your fault: The American middle class did it. They ate too many hamburgers, drove too many SUVs, had too many children.

A lot of them wear T-shirts to work and didn't finish college. That causes climate change too. And, worst of all, some of them may vote for Donald Trump in November.

If there's anything that absolutely, definitively causes climate change -- and literally over a hundred percent of scientists agree with this established fact -- it's voting for Donald Trump. You might as well start a tire fire. You're destroying the ozone layer.

Joe Biden has checked the science, and he agrees. Yesterday, the people on Biden's staff who understand the internet tweeted out an image of the wildfires, along with the message, "Climate change is already here -- and we're witnessing its devastating effects every single day. We have to get President Trump out of the White House."

Again, by voting for Donald Trump, you've made hundreds of thousands of Oregonians homeless tonight. You've killed people.

Joe Biden's closest friend in the world, a prominent Martha's Vineyard kite-surfer called Barack Obama, echoed that message with his trademark restraint. Obama declawed that your "life" depends on voting for Joe Biden.

Hold on a minute, you might say. Doesn't this very same Barack Obama own a $12 million spread right on the ocean in Massachusetts?

At a time when sea levels are rising and we're about to see killer whales in the Rockies? Honestly, it doesn't seem like Obama is overly concerned about climate change? And by the way, didn't he go to law school? When he did become a climate expert?

Those seem like good questions. But lawyers pretending to be scientists are now everywhere in the Democratic Party.

Here's the governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, a proud graduate of Willamette University law school, explaining that he's already figured out the "cause" of the fires. Watch:

INSLEE: Fires are proof we need a stronger liberal agenda Sept 8 TRT: 18 Inslee: And these are conditions that are exacerbated by the changing climate that we are suffering. And I do not believe that we should surrender these subdivisions or these houses to climate change-exacerbated fires. We should fight the cause of these fires.

This is a crock. In fact, there is not a single scientist on earth who knows whether, or by how much, these fires may have been "exacerbated" by warmer temperatures caused by "climate change," whatever that means anymore.

All we have is conjecture from a handful of scientists, none of whom have reached any definitive conclusions.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, for example, has admitted that it's, quote, "hard to determine whether climate change played a role in sparking the fires."

Meanwhile, investigators have determined that the massive El Dorado fire in California, which has torched nearly 14,000 acres, was caused by morons setting off some kind of fireworks. And then on Wednesday, police announced that a criminal investigation is underway into the massive Almeda fire in Ashland, Oregon.

The sheriff there said it's too early to say what caused the fire, but he's said human remains were found at the suspected origin point. Nothing is being ruled out, including arson.

The more you know, the more complicated it is, like everything. Serious people are just beginning to gather evidence to determine what happened to cause this disaster.

But at the same time, unserious people are now everywhere on the media right now, drowning out nuance. Don't worry about the facts, they say. Just trust us -- the sky orange is orange over San Francisco because households making $40,000 a year made the mistake of voting for a Republican.

Therefore you must hand us total control of the nation's economy. Watch amateur arson detective Nancy Pelosi explain:

PELOSI: Mother Earth is angry. She's telling us, whether she's telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the west, whatever it is, the climate crisis is real and has an impact.

Mother Nature is angry. Please. When was the last time Nancy Pelosi went outside? No one asked her. All we know is what she said: climate change caused this. Of course.

No matter the natural disaster -- hurricanes, tornadoes, whatever -- climate change did it. Keep in mind, Nancy Pelosi owns two sub-zero freezers. They cost $10,000 apiece.

We know because she showed them off on national television. Those use a lot of energy. Like Barack Obama, she constantly flies private between her multi-million dollar estates all over the country.

Obviously, she doesn't care about climate change. And neither do her supporters -- otherwise, they'd be trying to destroy the mansions she owns, not the hair salons that expose her hypocrisy.

For the left, this is really about blaming and ritually humiliating the middle-class for the election of Donald Trump. Joe Biden knows that the Pennsylvanians who would be financially ruined by his fracking ban are the same Pennsylvanians who flipped the state red in 2016 for the first time in a generation.

That's the whole point. One of the reasons Joe Biden is barely allowed outside is that he has no problem showing his contempt for the middle-class he supposedly cares so much about.

In 2019, he openly mocked coal miners and suggested they just get programming jobs once they're all fired. Watch:

BIDEN: I come from a family, an area where's coal mining – in Scranton. Anybody, that can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine, sure as hell can learn how to program as well.

Learn to code! Hilarious. Joe Biden should try it. But there isn't time. The world is ending. Last summer, Sandy Cortez [AOC] did the math and calculated we only have 12 years left to live .

If that sounds bad, consider this -- Just four months after that warning, Sandy Cortez tweeted that we only have 10 years to "cut carbon emissions in half."

Think about the math here. We lost two years in just four months. At that rate, we could literally all die unless Joe Biden wins in November. Which is of course what they're saying.

On Tuesday, California Gavin Newsom pretty much said it Newsom abandoned science long ago. Science is too stringent, too western, too patriarchal.

Newsom is a man of faith now. He's decided climate change caused all of this , and that's final. He's not listening to any other arguments. Watch:

NEWSOM: I have no patience. And I say this lovingly, not as an ideologue, but as someone who prides himself on being open to argument, interested in evidence. But I quite literally have no patience for climate change deniers. It simply follows completely inconsistent, that point of view, with the reality on the ground.

People like Gavin Newsom don't want to listen to any "climate change deniers." What's a "climate change denier?" Anyone who thinks our ruling class has no idea how to run their states or protect their citizens.

Are we "climate change deniers" if we point out that California has failed to implement meaningful deforestation measures that would have dramatically slowed the spread of these wildfires?

In 2018, a state oversight agency in California found that years of poor or nonexistent forest management policies in the Sierra Nevada forests had contributed to wildfires.

One of the few Republicans who still hold elected office in California, state Assemblyman Heath Flora, last year called on using the state's $22 billion budget surplus to implement vegetation management.

Fires don't spread as well without huge connected forests functioning as kindling. It's obvious, which is why it's unthinkable to mention it in some Democratic circles."

Presumably, you're also a climate-change denier if you point out that six of the Oregon National Guard's wildfire-fighting helicopters are currently in Afghanistan.

Instead of dropping water to suppress blazes, the Chinook aircraft are busy supplying a war effort that's been going on for nearly 20 years. That seems significant. Has anyone asked Gavin Newsom or Jay Inslee about that? Do any of the Democrats who control these states even care?

The answer, of course, is probably not. It was just last week that Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti admitted on-the-record that his city has become completely third-world.

Of course, Garcetti didn't blame himself for this turn of events. He blamed you. Quote: "It's almost 3 p.m," Garcetti tweeted. "Time to turn off major appliances, set the thermostat to 78 degrees (or use a fan instead, turn off excess lights and unplug any appliances you're not using. We need every Californian to help conserve energy. Please do your part."

"Please do your part." Garcetti wants his constituents to suffer to try to solve a problem that Democrats in his state created. Even now, as residents in Northern California are facing sweeping power outages in addition to wildfires.

In the meantime, Gavin Newsom has vowed that 50 percent of California's energy grid will be based on quote "renewable" energy sources within a decade.

That means sources like wind and solar power -- which can't be dialed up to meet periods of extreme demand, like California is seeing right now during its heatwave.

Newsom was asked last month whether he would consider revising this stance given the blackouts that have left millions of Californians without power.

Newsom responded, quote, "We are going to radically change the way we produce and consume energy." In other words, The blackouts will continue until morale improves. So will the wildfires. Get used to it.


Fox News
6.2M subscribers SUBSCRIBE In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky: You can't see it, but it's everywhere and it's deadly. #FoxNews #Tucker


tintin3366
, 1 week ago

The fires we had here in Australia were lit by humans. They tried to say it was climate change.


Jadyyn Starlight
, 1 week ago

I think "Climate change" is exacerbated by the hot air coming out of these politicians

MAGA COUNTRY , 1 week ago (edited)

This is a direct result of Gavin Newsom eliminating forestation controls. Jerry Brown kept them in place, the only thing he did correctly. Democrats are to blame for all of this.


stelpa66
, 1 day ago

When environmentalists pushed through their "leave forests alone, allow nature to be undisturbed" bs, California and other states stopped clearing underbrush, also known as fire fuel and now we see a perfect example of cause and effect.

Don't get me wrong I am a conservatist , but with common sense , we can't conserve unless we protect and nurture nature to thrive. In fact extremism in environmentalism destroys as we see. People dead, animals dead, homes destroyed, forest destroyed because of extremism.

The narrative to leave forests alone happened long before Trump, believing otherwise makes you a useful idiot. Congratulations.

You could Google this old narrative but will you find it, well it's Google, you have to find the people who heard and lived the so called natural environmental push narrative, we remember and we remember the warnings. Congratulations, your ignorance has caused harm.

Quinten Belfor , 1 week ago (edited)

They were caused by "peaceful" arsonists


Lori Taylor
, 2 days ago

Tucker most always speaks the truth. I say "most" bc no one is perfect 😉 Everything he said here was the truth! Thank you Tucker!! 👏🏼

[Sep 21, 2020] Tucker: Democrats do nothing to discourage rage mobs

Notable quotes:
"... We are witnessing a political game of chess where the only pieces being moved are the pawns, while the king and queen sit safely on a different board. ..."
Sep 21, 2020 | www.youtube.com


Keegan Fuhs , 3 weeks ago

The 2020 presidential ticket is literally Americans vs domestic terrorists.


MasterOfThe Universe
, 2 weeks ago

Anybody find it ironic that it was a white "guy" yelling uncle tom to the black cop??

Jade Warrior , 2 weeks ago (edited)

"Every kingdom divided against itself comes to ruin, and every city and house divided against itself will not stand"....


Tyrone Shoelaces
, 23 hours ago

We are witnessing a political game of chess where the only pieces being moved are the pawns, while the king and queen sit safely on a different board.

Peter Brown , 2 weeks ago

@ 6:29 ""There needs to be unrest in the streets as there is unrest in our lives"" When the elite oligarchy ignore peaceful protests, you get aggressive uprisings. It's human nature and good ol' fashioned patriotism.

[Sep 21, 2020] Stephen Cohen Has Died. Remember His Urgent Warnings Against The New Cold War by Caitlin Johnstone

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God
"... In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen's death is a blow to humanity's desperate quest for clarity and understanding. ..."
Sep 19, 2020 | www.strategic-culture.org

Stephen F Cohen, the renowned American scholar on Russia and leading authority on US-Russian relations, has died of lung cancer at the age of 81.

As one of the precious few western voices of sanity on the subject of Russia while everyone else has been frantically flushing their brains down the toilet, this is a real loss. I myself have cited Cohen's expert analysis many times in my own work, and his perspective has played a formative role in my understanding of what's really going on with the monolithic cross-partisan manufacturing of consent for increased western aggressions against Moscow.

In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen's death is a blow to humanity's desperate quest for clarity and understanding.

I don't know how long Cohen had cancer. I don't know how long he was aware that he might not have much time left on this earth. What I do know is he spent much of his energy in his final years urgently trying to warn the world about the rapidly escalating danger of nuclear war, which in our strange new reality he saw as in many ways completely unprecedented.

The last of the many books Cohen authored was 2019's War with Russia? , detailing his ideas on how the complex multi-front nature of the post-2016 cold war escalations against Moscow combines with Russiagate and other factors to make it in some ways more dangerous even than the most dangerous point of the previous cold war.

"You know it's easy to joke about this, except that we're at maybe the most dangerous moment in US-Russian relations in my lifetime, and maybe ever," Cohen told The Young Turks in 2017. "And the reason is that we're in a new cold war, by whatever name. We have three cold war fronts that are fraught with the possibility of hot war, in the Baltic region where NATO is carrying out an unprecedented military buildup on Russia's border, in Ukraine where there is a civil and proxy war between Russia and the west, and of course in Syria, where Russian aircraft and American warplanes are flying in the same territory. Anything could happen."

Cohen repeatedly points to the most likely cause of a future nuclear war: not one that is planned but one which erupts in tense, complex situations where "anything could happen" in the chaos and confusion as a result of misfire, miscommunication or technical malfunction, as nearly happened many times during the last cold war.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/kqQbK_6meM8?feature=oembed

"I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the Cuban missile crisis," Cohen told Democracy Now in 2017. "And arguably, it's more dangerous, because it's more complex. Therefore, we -- and then, meanwhile, we have in Washington these -- and, in my judgment, factless accusations that Trump has somehow been compromised by the Kremlin. So, at this worst moment in American-Russian relations, we have an American president who's being politically crippled by the worst imaginable -- it's unprecedented. Let's stop and think. No American president has ever been accused, essentially, of treason. This is what we're talking about here, or that his associates have committed treason."

"Imagine, for example, John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis," Cohen added. "Imagine if Kennedy had been accused of being a secret Soviet Kremlin agent. He would have been crippled. And the only way he could have proved he wasn't was to have launched a war against the Soviet Union. And at that time, the option was nuclear war."

"A recurring theme of my recently published book War with Russia? is that the new Cold War is more dangerous, more fraught with hot war, than the one we survived," Cohen wrote last year . "Histories of the 40-year US-Soviet Cold War tell us that both sides came to understand their mutual responsibility for the conflict, a recognition that created political space for the constant peace-keeping negotiations, including nuclear arms control agreements, often known as détente. But as I also chronicle in the book, today's American Cold Warriors blame only Russia, specifically 'Putin's Russia,' leaving no room or incentive for rethinking any US policy toward post-Soviet Russia since 1991."

"Finally, there continues to be no effective, organized American opposition to the new Cold War," Cohen added. "This too is a major theme of my book and another reason why this Cold War is more dangerous than was its predecessor. In the 1970s and 1980s, advocates of détente were well-organized, well-funded, and well-represented, from grassroots politics and universities to think tanks, mainstream media, Congress, the State Department, and even the White House. Today there is no such opposition anywhere."

"A major factor is, of course, 'Russiagate'," Cohen continued. "As evidenced in the sources I cite above, much of the extreme American Cold War advocacy we witness today is a mindless response to President Trump's pledge to find ways to 'cooperate with Russia' and to the still-unproven allegations generated by it. Certainly, the Democratic Party is not an opposition party in regard to the new Cold War."

"Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world," Cohen wrote in another essay last year. "No American president can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks. What kind of catastrophe will it take -- in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia's electric grid -- to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/owbMRxC382A?feature=oembed

And now Stephen Cohen is dead, and that clock is inching ever closer to midnight. The Russiagate psyop that he predicted would pressure Trump to advance dangerous cold war escalations with no opposition from the supposed opposition party has indeed done exactly that with nary a peep of criticism from either partisan faction of the political/media class. Cohen has for years been correctly predicting this chilling scenario which now threatens the life of every organism on earth, even while his own life was nearing its end.

And now the complex cold war escalations he kept urgently warning us about have become even more complex with the addition of nuclear-armed China to the multiple fronts the US-centralized empire has been plate-spinning its brinkmanship upon, and it is clear from the ramping up of anti-China propaganda since last year that we are being prepped for those aggressions to continue to increase.

We should heed the dire warnings that Cohen spent his last breaths issuing. We should demand a walk-back of these insane imperialist aggressions which benefit nobody and call for détente with Russia and China. We should begin creating an opposition to this world-threatening flirtation with armageddon before it is too late. Every life on this planet may well depend on our doing so.

Stephen Cohen is dead, and we are marching toward the death of everything. God help us all.

medium.com

lay_arrow

novictim , 55 minutes ago

People are just now starting to realize that possible alternate path. But the Demoncrats in the USA must first be put down, politically euthanized, along with their neocon never-Trump Republican partners. And that cleaning up is on the way. Trump's second term will be the advancement of the USA-Russia initiative that is so long overdue.

PerilouseTimes , 48 minutes ago

Putin won't let western billionaires rape Russia's enormous natural resources and on top of that Putin is against child molesters, that is what this Russia bashing is all about.

awesomepic4u , 1 hour ago

Sad to hear this.

What a good man. It is a real shame that we dont have others to stand up to this crazy pr that is going on right now. Making peace with the world at this point is important. We dont need or want another war and i am sure that both Europe and Russia dont want it on their turf but it seems we keep sticking our finger in their eye. If there is another war it will be the last war. As Einstein said, after the 3rd World War we will be using sticks and stones to fight it.

Clint Liquor , 44 minutes ago

Cohen truly was an island of reason in a sea of insanity. Ironic that those panicked over climate change are unconcerned about the increasing threat of Nuclear War.

thunderchief , 41 minutes ago

One of the very few level headed people on Russia.

All thats left are anti Russia-phobic nut jobs.

Send in the clowns.

Stephen Cohen isn't around to call them what they are anymore.

Eastern Whale , 55 minutes ago

cooperate with Russia

Has the US ever cooperated with anyone?

fucking truth , 3 minutes ago

That is the crux. All or nothing.

Mustafa Kemal , 49 minutes ago

Ive read several of his books. They are essential, imo, if you want to understand modern russian history.

Normal , 1 hour ago

The bankers created the new CCP cold war.

evoila , 19 minutes ago

Max Boot is an effing idiot. Tucker wiped him clean too. It was an insult to Stephen to even put them on the same panel.

RIP Stephen.

Gary Sick is the equivalent to Stephen, except for Iran. He too is of an era of competence which is and will be missed as their voices are drowned out by neocon warmongers

thebigunit , 17 minutes ago

I heard Stephen Cohen a number of time in John Bachelor's podcasts.

He seemed very lucid and made a lot of sense.

He made it very clear that he thought the Democrat's "Trump - Russia collusion schtick" was a bunch of crap.

He didn't sound like a leftie, but I'm sure he never told me the stuff he discussed with his wife who was editor of the left wing "The Nation" magazine.

Boogity , 9 minutes ago

Cohen was a traditional old school anti-war Liberal. They're essentially extinct now with the exception of a few such as Tulsi Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich who have both been ostracized from the Democrat Party and the political system.

[Sep 20, 2020] CJ Hopkins Exposes The Final Act In 'The War On Populism'

Highly recommended!
These sociopaths are messed up world again.
Sep 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored (mostly satirically) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

So, it appears the War on Populism is building toward an exciting climax. All the proper pieces are in place for a Class-A GloboCap color revolution , and maybe even civil war. You got your unauthorized Putin-Nazi president, your imaginary apocalyptic pandemic, your violent identitarian civil unrest, your heavily-armed politically-polarized populace, your ominous rumblings from military quarters you couldn't really ask for much more.

OK, the plot is pretty obvious by now (as it is in all big-budget action spectacles, which is essentially what color revolutions are), but that won't spoil our viewing experience. The fun isn't in guessing what is going to happen. Everybody knows what's going to happen. The fun is in watching Bruce, or Sigourney, or "the moderate rebels," or the GloboCap "Resistance," take down the monster, or the terrorists, or Hitler, and save the world, or democracy, or whatever.

[Sep 20, 2020] Darren Beattie Tucker Carlson Discuss Color Revolutions The Plot To Oust President Trump

Trump represent new "national neoliberalism" platform and the large part of the US neoliberal elite (Clinton gang and large part of republicans) support the return to "classic neoliberalism" at all costs.
Highly recommended!
The essence of color revolution is the combination of engineered contested election and mass organized protest and civil disobedience via creation in neoliberal fifth column out of "professionals", especially students as well as mobilizing and put on payroll some useful disgruntled groups which can be used as a foot soldiers, such as football hooligans. Large and systematic injection of dollars into protest movement. All with the air cover via domination in a part or all nation's MSM.
Norm Eisen - Wikipedia quote "From 1985 to 1988, between college and law school, Eisen worked as the Assistant Director of the Los Angeles office of the Anti-Defamation League . He investigated antisemitism and other civil rights violations, promoted Holocaust education and advanced U.S.–Israel relations ."
He served as US ambassador in Chich Republic from 2011 to 2014. Based on his experience wrote that book Democracy's Defenders published by The Brookings Institution, a neoliberal think tank, about the role of US embassy in neoliberal revolution in Czechoslovakia (aka Velvet Revolution of 1989) which led to the dissolution of the country into two. BTW demonstrations against police brutality were an essential part of the Velvet Revolution
Notable quotes:
"... Same tactics - color revolutions they (Soros, Nuland/Kagan, Eisen, McCain when alive) used to overthrow Orthodox countries in Eastern Europe. Belarus the latest. Ukraine (Orange, Maidan) 2014. Georgia (Rose rev). Serbia, Montenegro. Use young people who have bad sense of history and are more sympathetic to the "West." ..."
Sep 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com

P McGill , 3 days ago

This is, without ANY question, one of Tucker's most important segments that he has ever done. IT IS EXTREMELY-RARE THAT """they""" ARE EXPOSED, BY-NAME, SO OPENLY AND DIRECTLY, BUT, IT HAPPENED, TONIGHT.

CJ Daly , 4 days ago

Please bring back Dr. Darren Beattie back. More info. on the color revolutions, Mr. Eisen, crew, and their relationship to mail in voting fraud and their impact on the 2020 election is needed. If Mr. Eisens methods are to be used in the 2020 election mass awareness is needed.

john doe , 2 days ago

This is not about Trump. The endgame of the deep state is to enslave people through social division. The election is a wrestling match for entertainment.

Chuck Emmorll , 2 days ago

Norm Eisen's loyalty? Israel?

viewoftheaskew , 3 days ago (edited)

Norm Eisen..., "Obama's Ethics Czar" wow that's a triple oxymoron lol.

Hapa Nice Day , 3 days ago (edited)

Purple is the color of this revolution. Remember the outfits Bill and Hillary wore when Hillary conceded to Trump.

Dave being , 2 days ago

Sounds like what's happening in Venezuela.

John Singer , 1 day ago

The deep state are plotting against the American people 24/7. Russia hoax was a coup, they will try it again.

sandra macey , 3 days ago

Sheesh, he looks scared. I hope he's being well protected now. Darren is a very brave man who is trying to tell the citizens of the US that there is malice aforethought towards the President and this election. It is now not a choice between Republicans or Democrats, it is a fight between good and evil. I'm sure Trump and his team are aware of the playbook and will do everything they can to sort this, with God's help. It may get hairy, but trust the plan.

Jordan Spackman , 2 hours ago

I have a feeling dems will "rig for red" to frame republicans for voter fraud, overlooking the overwhelming amount of voter fraud in favor of Biden Harris. Causing outrage and calls to remove the President from office and saying Biden actually won. When he really did not. Be prepared. Stay strong.

Peter Jones , 3 days ago

Same tactics - color revolutions they (Soros, Nuland/Kagan, Eisen, McCain when alive) used to overthrow Orthodox countries in Eastern Europe. Belarus the latest. Ukraine (Orange, Maidan) 2014. Georgia (Rose rev). Serbia, Montenegro. Use young people who have bad sense of history and are more sympathetic to the "West."

Nick Name , 2 days ago

american people still don't know and can't understand what's happening and what their government is doing, even right now it's happening in Belarus, it happened in Ukraine, Venezuela, Hong Kong and etc. and now it's happening in your own country, wake up people and don't forget who's behind all this - a NGO founded by CIA called NED (National endowment for democracy), Soros and his NGOs and the deep state.

[Sep 20, 2020] Norm Eisen And The Colour Revolution Playbook!

Highly recommended!
The narrative is based on Wikipedia article
Notable quotes:
"... Russian military leaders view the "colour revolutions" as a "new US and European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties. ..."
"... the activities of radical public associations and groups using nationalist and religious extremist ideology, foreign and international nongovernmental organizations, and financial and economic structures, and also individuals, focused on destroying the unity and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, destabilizing the domestic political and social situation -- including through inciting "color revolutions" -- and destroying traditional Russian religious and moral values ..."
Sep 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Wikipedia:

Worldwide media use the term Colour Revolution (sometimes Coloured Revolution ) to describe various related movements that developed in several countries of the former Soviet Union , in the People's Republic of China and in the Balkans during the early-21st century. The term has also been applied to a number of revolutions elsewhere, including in the Middle East and in the Asia-Pacific region, dating from the 1980s to the 2010s. Some observers (such as Justin Raimondo and Michael Lind ) have called the events a revolutionary wave , the origins of which can be traced back to the 1986 People Power Revolution (also known as the "Yellow Revolution") in the Philippines .

Participants in colour revolutions have mostly used nonviolent resistance , also called civil resistance . Such methods as demonstrations, strikes and interventions have aimed to protest against governments seen as corrupt and/or authoritarian and to advocate democracy , and they have built up strong pressure for change. Colour-revolution movements generally became associated with a specific colour or flower as their symbol. The colour revolutions are notable for the important role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and particularly student activists in organising creative non-violent resistance .

Such movements have had a measure of success as for example in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 's Bulldozer Revolution (2000), in Georgia 's Rose Revolution (2003) and in Ukraine 's Orange Revolution (2004). In most but not all cases, massive street-protests followed disputed elections or requests for fair elections and led to the resignation or overthrow of leaders regarded by their opponents as authoritarian . Some events have been called "colour revolutions", but differ from the above cases in certain basic characteristics. Examples include Lebanon's Cedar Revolution (2005) and Kuwait 's Blue Revolution (2005).

Russia and China share nearly identical views that colour revolutions are the product of machinations by the United States and other Western powers and pose a vital threat to their public and national security.

Revolution Location Date started Date ended Description
Yellow Revolution Philippines 22 February 1986 25 February 1986 The 1986 People Power Revolution (also called the " EDSA " or the "Yellow" Revolution) in the Philippines was the first successful non-violent uprising in the contemporary period. It was the culmination of peaceful demonstrations against the rule of then-President Ferdinand Marcos – all of which increased after the 1983 assassination of opposition Senator Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. A contested snap election on 7 February 1986 and a call by the powerful Filipino Catholic Church sparked mass protests across Metro Manila from 22–25 February. The Revolution's iconic L-shaped Laban sign comes from the Filipino term for People Power, " Lakás ng Bayan ", whose acronym is " LABAN " ("fight"). The yellow-clad protesters, later joined by the Armed Forces , ousted Marcos and installed Aquino's widow Corazón as the country's eleventh President, ushering in the present Fifth Republic .
Coconut Revolution Papua New Guinea 1 December 1988 20 April 1998 Long-standing secessionist sentiment in Bougainville eventually led to conflict with Papua New Guinea. The inhabitants of Bougainville Island formed the Bougainville Revolutionary Army and fought against government troops. On 20 April 1998, Papua New Guinea ended the civil war. In 2005, Papua New Guinea gave autonomy to Bougainville.
Velvet Revolution (Czechoslovakia) Czechoslovakia 17 November 1989 29 December 1989 in 1989, a peaceful demonstration by students (mostly from Charles University ) was attacked by the police – and in time contributed to the collapse of the communist government in Czechoslovakia.
Bulldozer Revolution Yugoslavia 5 October 2000 The 'Bulldozer Revolution' in 2000, which led to the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević . These demonstrations are usually considered to be the first example of the peaceful revolutions which followed. However, the Serbians adopted an approach that had already been used in parliamentary elections in Bulgaria (1997) , Slovakia (1998) and Croatia (2000) , characterised by civic mobilisation through get-out-the-vote campaigns and unification of the political opposition. The nationwide protesters did not adopt a colour or a specific symbol; however, the slogan " Gotov je " (Serbian Cyrillic: Готов је , English: He is finished ) did become an aftermath symbol celebrating the completion of the task. Despite the commonalities, many others refer to Georgia as the most definite beginning of the series of "colour revolutions". The demonstrations were supported by the youth movement Otpor! , some of whose members were involved in the later revolutions in other countries.
Rose Revolution Georgia 3 November 2003 23 November 2003 The Rose Revolution in Georgia, following the disputed 2003 election , led to the overthrow of Eduard Shevardnadze and replacing him with Mikhail Saakashvili after new elections were held in March 2004. The Rose Revolution was supported by the Kmara civic resistance movement.
Second Rose Revolution Adjara (Georgia) 20 February 2004 May-July 2004 Following the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Adjara crisis (sometimes called "Second Rose Revolution" or Mini-Rose Revolution ) led to the exit of Chairman of the Government Aslan Abashidze from office.
Orange Revolution Ukraine 22 November 2004 23 January 2005 The Orange Revolution in Ukraine followed the disputed second round of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election , leading to the annulment of the result and the repeat of the round – Leader of the Opposition Viktor Yushchenko was declared President, defeating Viktor Yanukovych . The Orange Revolution was supported by PORA .
Purple Revolution Iraq January 2005 Purple Revolution was a name first used by some hopeful commentators and later picked up by United States President George W. Bush to describe the coming of democracy to Iraq following the 2005 Iraqi legislative election and was intentionally used to draw the parallel with the Orange and Rose revolutions. However, the name "purple revolution" has not achieved widespread use in Iraq, the United States or elsewhere. The name comes from the colour that voters' index fingers were stained to prevent fraudulent multiple voting. The term first appeared shortly after the January 2005 election in various weblogs and editorials of individuals supportive of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The term received its widest usage during a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush on 24 February 2005 to Bratislava , Slovak Republic, for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin . Bush stated: "In recent times, we have witnessed landmark events in the history of liberty: A Rose Revolution in Georgia, an Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and now, a Purple Revolution in Iraq."
Tulip Revolution Kyrgyzstan 27 February 2005 11 April 2005 The Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (also sometimes called the "Pink Revolution") was more violent than its predecessors and followed the disputed 2005 Kyrgyz parliamentary election . At the same time, it was more fragmented than previous "colour" revolutions. The protesters in different areas adopted the colours pink and yellow for their protests. This revolution was supported by youth resistance movement KelKel .
Cedar Revolution Lebanon 14 February 2005 27 April 2005 The Cedar Revolution in Lebanon between February and April 2005 followed not a disputed election, but rather the assassination of opposition leader Rafik Hariri in 2005. Also, instead of the annulment of an election, the people demanded an end to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon . Nonetheless, some of its elements and some of the methods used in the protests have been similar enough that it is often considered and treated by the press and commentators as one of the series of "colour revolutions". The Cedar of Lebanon is the symbol of the country, and the revolution was named after it. The peaceful demonstrators used the colours white and red, which are found in the Lebanese flag. The protests led to the pullout of Syrian troops in April 2005, ending their nearly 30-year presence there, although Syria retains some influence in Lebanon.
Blue Revolution Kuwait March 2005 Blue Revolution was a term used by some Kuwaitis to refer to demonstrations in Kuwait in support of women's suffrage beginning in March 2005; it was named after the colour of the signs the protesters used. In May of that year the Kuwaiti government acceded to their demands, granting women the right to vote beginning in the 2007 parliamentary elections. Since there was no call for regime change, the so-called "blue revolution" cannot be categorised as a true colour revolution.
Jeans Revolution Belarus 19 March 2006 25 March 2006 In Belarus, there have been a number of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko , with participation from student group Zubr . One round of protests culminated on 25 March 2005; it was a self-declared attempt to emulate the Kyrgyzstan revolution, and involved over a thousand citizens. However, police severely suppressed it, arresting over 30 people and imprisoning opposition leader Mikhail Marinich .

A second, much larger, round of protests began almost a year later, on 19 March 2006, soon after the presidential election . Official results had Lukashenko winning with 83% of the vote; protesters claimed the results were achieved through fraud and voter intimidation, a charge echoed by many foreign governments. Protesters camped out in October Square in Minsk over the next week, calling variously for the resignation of Lukashenko, the installation of rival candidate Alaksandar Milinkievič , and new, fair elections.

The opposition originally used as a symbol the white-red-white former flag of Belarus ; the movement has had significant connections with that in neighbouring Ukraine, and during the Orange Revolution some white-red-white flags were seen being waved in Kiev. During the 2006 protests some called it the " Jeans Revolution " or "Denim Revolution", blue jeans being considered a symbol for freedom. Some protesters cut up jeans into ribbons and hung them in public places. It is claimed that Zubr was responsible for coining the phrase.

Lukashenko has said in the past: "In our country, there will be no pink or orange, or even banana revolution." More recently he's said "They [the West] think that Belarus is ready for some 'orange' or, what is a rather frightening option, 'blue' or ' cornflower blue ' revolution. Such 'blue' revolutions are the last thing we need". On 19 April 2005, he further commented: "All these coloured revolutions are pure and simple banditry."

Saffron Revolution Myanmar 15 August 2007 26 September 2007 In Myanmar (unofficially called Burma), a series of anti-government protests were referred to in the press as the Saffron Revolution after Buddhist monks ( Theravada Buddhist monks normally wear the colour saffron) took the vanguard of the protests. A previous, student-led revolution, the 8888 Uprising on 8 August 1988, had similarities to the colour revolutions, but was violently repressed.
Grape Revolution Moldova 6 April 2009 12 April 2009 The opposition is reported to have hoped for and urged some kind of Orange revolution, similar to that in Ukraine, in the follow-up of the 2005 Moldovan parliamentary elections , while the Christian Democratic People's Party adopted orange for its colour in a clear reference to the events of Ukraine.

A name hypothesised for such an event was "Grape Revolution" because of the abundance of vineyards in the country; however, such a revolution failed to materialise after the governmental victory in the elections. Many reasons have been given for this, including a fractured opposition and the fact that the government had already co-opted many of the political positions that might have united the opposition (such as a perceived pro-European and anti-Russian stance). Also the elections themselves were declared fairer in the OSCE election monitoring reports than had been the case in other countries where similar revolutions occurred, even though the CIS monitoring mission strongly condemned them.

There was civil unrest all over Moldova following the 2009 Parliamentary election due to the opposition claiming that the communists had fixed the election. Eventually, the Alliance for European Integration created a governing coalition that pushed the Communist party into opposition.

Green Movement Iran 13 June 2009 11 February 2010 Green Movement is a term widely used to describe the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests . The protests began in 2009, several years after the main wave of colour revolutions, although like them it began due to a disputed election, the 2009 Iranian presidential election . Protesters adopted the colour green as their symbol because it had been the campaign colour of presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi , whom many protesters thought had won the elections . However Mousavi and his wife went under house arrest without any trial issued by a court.
Melon Revolution Kyrgyzstan 6 April 2010 14 December 2010 The Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010 in Kyrgyzstan (also sometimes called the "Melon Revolution") led to the exit of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev from office. The total number of deaths should be 2,000.
Jasmine Revolution Tunisia 18 December 2010 14 January 2011 Jasmine Revolution was a widely used term for the Tunisian Revolution . The Jasmine Revolution led to the exit of President Ben Ali from office and the beginning of the Arab Spring .
Lotus Revolution Egypt 25 January 2011 11 February 2011 Lotus Revolution was a term used by various western news sources to describe the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 that forced President Mubarak to step down in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring , which followed the Jasmine Revolution of Tunisia. Lotus is known as the flower representing resurrection, life and the sun of ancient Egypt. It is uncertain who gave the name, while columnist of Arabic press, Asharq Alawsat, and prominent Egyptian opposition leader Saad Eddin Ibrahim claimed to name it the Lotus Revolution. Lotus Revolution later became common on western news source such as CNN. Other names, such as White Revolution and Nile Revolution, are used but are minor terms compare to Lotus Revolution. The term Lotus Revolution is rarely, if ever, used in the Arab world.
Pearl Revolution Bahrain 14 February 2011 22 November 2014 In February 2011, Bahrain was also affected by protests in Tunisia and Egypt. Bahrain has long been famous for its pearls and Bahrain's speciality. And there was the Pearl Square in Manama, where the demonstrations began. The people of Bahrain were also protesting around the square. At first, the government of Bahrain promised to reform the people. But when their promises were not followed, the people resisted again. And in the process, bloodshed took place (18 March 2011). After that, a small demonstration is taking place in Bahrain.
Coffee Revolution Yemen 27 January 2011 23 November 2011 An anti-government protest started in Yemen in 2011. The Yemeni people sought to resign Ali Abdullah Saleh as the ruler. On 24 November, Ali Abdullah Saleh decided to transfer the regime. In 2012, Ali Abdullah Saleh finally fled to the United States(27 February).
Jasmine Revolution China 20 February 2011 20 March 2011 A call which first appeared on 17 February 2011 on the Chinese language site Boxun.com in the United States for a "Jasmine revolution" in the People's Republic of China and repeated on social networking sites in China resulted in blocking of internet searches for "jasmine" and a heavy police presence at designated sites for protest such as the McDonald's in central Beijing, one of the 13 designated protest sites, on 20 February 2011. A crowd did gather there, but their motivations were ambiguous as a crowd tends to draw a crowd in that area. Boxun experienced a denial of service attack during this period and was inaccessible.
Snow Revolution Russia 4 December 2011 18 July 2013 Protests started on 4 December 2011 in the capital, Moscow against the results of the parliamentary elections, which led to the arrests of over 500 people. On 10 December, protests erupted in tens of cities across the country; a few months later, they spread to hundreds both inside the country and abroad. The name of the Snow Revolution derives from December - the month when the revolution had started - and from the white ribbons the protesters wore.
Colourful Revolution Macedonia 12 April 2016 20 July 2016 Many analysts and participants of the protests against President of Macedonia Gjorge Ivanov and the Macedonian government refer to them as a "colourful Revolution", due to the demonstrators throwing paint balls of different colours at government buildings in Skopje , the capital.
Velvet Revolution (Armenia) Armenia 31 March 2018 8 May 2018 In 2018, a peaceful revolution was led by member of parliament Nikol Pashinyan in opposition to the nomination of Serzh Sargsyan as Prime Minister of Armenia , who had previously served as both President of Armenia and prime minister, eliminating term limits which would have otherwise prevented his 2018 nomination. Concerned that Sargsyan's third consecutive term as the most powerful politician in the government of Armenia gave him too much political influence, protests occurred throughout the country, particularly in Yerevan , but demonstrations in solidarity with the protesters also occurred in other countries where Armenian diaspora live.

During the protests, Pashinyan was arrested and detained on 22 April, but he was released the following day. Sargsyan stepped down from the position of Prime Minister, and his Republican Party decided to not put forward a candidate. An interim Prime Minister was selected from Sargsyan's party until elections were held, and protests continued for over one month. Crowd sizes in Yerevan consisted of 115,000 to 250,000 people at a time throughout the revolution, and hundreds of protesters were arrested. Pashinyan referred to the event as a Velvet Revolution. A vote was held in parliament, and Pashinyan became the Prime Minister of Armenia.

Many have cited the influence of the series of revolutions which occurred in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989. A peaceful demonstration by students (mostly from Charles University ) was attacked by the police – and in time contributed to the collapse of the communist government in Czechoslovakia. Yet the roots of the pacifist floral imagery may go even further back to the non-violent Carnation Revolution of Portugal in April 1974, which is associated with the colour carnation because carnations were worn, and the 1986 Yellow Revolution in the Philippines where demonstrators offered peace flowers to military personnel manning armoured tanks.

Student movements

The first of these was Otpor! ("Resistance!") in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was founded at Belgrade University in October 1998 and began protesting against Miloševic' during the Kosovo War . Most of them were already veterans of anti-Milošević demonstrations such as the 1996–97 protests and the 9 March 1991 protest . Many of its members were arrested or beaten by the police. Despite this, during the presidential campaign in September 2000, Otpor launched its " Gotov je " (He's finished) campaign that galvanised Serbian discontent with Miloševic' and resulted in his defeat.

Members of Otpor have inspired and trained members of related student movements including Kmara in Georgia, Pora in Ukraine, Zubr in Belarus and MJAFT! in Albania. These groups have been explicit and scrupulous in their practice of non-violent resistance as advocated and explained in Gene Sharp 's writings. The massive protests that they have organised, which were essential to the successes in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine, have been notable for their colourfulness and use of ridiculing humor in opposing authoritarian leaders.

Critical analysis

The analysis of international geopolitics scholars Paul J. Bolt and Sharyl N. Cross is that "Moscow and Beijing share almost indistinguishable views on the potential domestic and international security threats posed by colored revolutions, and both nations view these revolutionary movements as being orchestrated by the United States and its Western democratic partners to advance geopolitical ambitions."

Russian assessment

According to Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies , Russian military leaders view the "colour revolutions" as a "new US and European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties."

Government figures in Russia , such as Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (in office from 2012) and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (in office from 2004), have characterised colour revolutions as externally-fuelled acts with a clear goal to influence the internal affairs that destabilise the economy, conflict with the law and represent a new form of warfare. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that Russia must prevent colour revolutions: "We see what tragic consequences the wave of so-called colour revolutions led to. For us this is a lesson and a warning. We should do everything necessary so that nothing similar ever happens in Russia".

The 2015 presidential decree The Russian Federation's National Security Strategy ( О Стратегии Национальной Безопасности Российской Федерации ) cites "foreign sponsored regime change" among "main threats to public and national security," including

the activities of radical public associations and groups using nationalist and religious extremist ideology, foreign and international nongovernmental organizations, and financial and economic structures, and also individuals, focused on destroying the unity and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, destabilizing the domestic political and social situation -- including through inciting "color revolutions" -- and destroying traditional Russian religious and moral values

Chinese view

Articles published by the Global Times , a state-run nationalist tabloid, indicate that Chinese leaders also anticipate the Western powers, such as the United States, using "color revolutions" as a means to undermine the one-party state. An article published on 8 May 2016 claims: "A variation of containment seeks to press China on human rights and democracy with the hope of creating a 'color revolution.'" A 13 August 2019 article declared that the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill protests were a colour revolution that "aim[ed] to ruin HK 's future."

The 2015 policy white paper "China's Military Strategy" by the State Council Information Office said that "anti-China forces have never given up their attempt to instigate a 'color revolution' in this country."

Azerbaijan

A number of movements were created in Azerbaijan in mid-2005, inspired by the examples of both Georgia and Ukraine. A youth group, calling itself Yox! (which means No!), declared its opposition to governmental corruption. The leader of Yox! said that unlike Pora or Kmara , he wants to change not just the leadership, but the entire system of governance in Azerbaijan. The Yox movement chose green as its colour.

The spearhead of Azerbaijan's attempted colour revolution was Yeni Fikir ("New Idea"), a youth group closely aligned with the Azadlig (Freedom) Bloc of opposition political parties. Along with groups such as Magam ("It's Time") and Dalga ("Wave"), Yeni Fikir deliberately adopted many of the tactics of the Georgian and Ukrainian colour revolution groups, even borrowing the colour orange from the Ukrainian revolution.

In November 2005 protesters took to the streets, waving orange flags and banners, to protest what they considered government fraud in recent parliamentary elections. The Azerbaijani colour revolution finally fizzled out with the police riot on 26 November, during which dozens of protesters were injured and perhaps hundreds teargassed and sprayed with water cannons.

Bangladesh Main article: 2013 Shahbag protests

On 5 February 2013, protests began in Shahbag and later spread to other parts of Bangladesh following demands for capital punishment for Abdul Quader Mollah , who had been sentenced to life imprisonment, and for others convicted of war crimes by the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh . On that day, the International Crimes Tribunal had sentenced Mollah to life in prison after he was convicted on five of six counts of war crimes . Later demands included banning the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party from politics including election and a boycott of institutions supporting (or affiliated with) the party.

Protesters considered Mollah's sentence too lenient, given his crimes. Bloggers and online activists called for additional protests at Shahbag. Tens of thousands of people joined the demonstration, which gave rise to protests across the country.

The movement demanding trial of war criminals is a protest movement in Bangladesh, from 1972 to present.

Belarus

In Belarus , there have been a number of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko , with participation from student group Zubr . One round of protests culminated on 25 March 2005; it was a self-declared attempt to emulate the Kyrgyzstan revolution, and involved over a thousand citizens. However, police severely suppressed it, arresting over 30 people and imprisoning opposition leader Mikhail Marinich .

A second, much larger, round of protests began almost a year later, on 19 March 2006, soon after the presidential election . Official results had Lukashenko winning with 83% of the vote; protesters claimed the results were achieved through fraud and voter intimidation, a charge echoed by many foreign governments. Protesters camped out in October Square in Minsk over the next week, calling variously for the resignation of Lukashenko, the installation of rival candidate Alaksandar Milinkievič , and new, fair elections.

The opposition originally used as a symbol the white-red-white former flag of Belarus ; the movement has had significant connections with that in neighbouring Ukraine, and during the Orange Revolution some white-red-white flags were seen being waved in Kiev. During the 2006 protests some called it the " Jeans Revolution " or "Denim Revolution", blue jeans being considered a symbol for freedom. Some protesters cut up jeans into ribbons and hung them in public places. It is claimed that Zubr was responsible for coining the phrase.

Lukashenko has said in the past: "In our country, there will be no pink or orange, or even banana revolution." More recently he's said "They [the West] think that Belarus is ready for some 'orange' or, what is a rather frightening option, 'blue' or ' cornflower blue ' revolution. Such 'blue' revolutions are the last thing we need". On 19 April 2005, he further commented: "All these colored revolutions are pure and simple banditry."

Burma Main article: Saffron Revolution

In Burma (officially called Myanmar), a series of anti-government protests were referred to in the press as the Saffron Revolution after Buddhist monks ( Theravada Buddhist monks normally wear the colour saffron) took the vanguard of the protests. A previous, student-led revolution, the 8888 Uprising on 8 August 1988, had similarities to the colour revolutions, but was violently repressed.

China Main articles: Chinese democracy movement and 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests

A call which first appeared on 17 February 2011 on the Chinese language site Boxun.com in the United States for a "Jasmine revolution" in the People's Republic of China and repeated on social networking sites in China resulted in blocking of internet searches for "jasmine" and a heavy police presence at designated sites for protest such as the McDonald's in central Beijing, one of the 13 designated protest sites, on 20 February 2011. A crowd did gather there, but their motivations were ambiguous as a crowd tends to draw a crowd in that area. Boxun experienced a denial of service attack during this period and was inaccessible.

Fiji Main articles: 2009 Fijian constitutional crisis and Fijian general election, 2014

In the 2000s, Fiji suffered numerous coups. But at the same time, many Fiji citizens resisted the military. In Fiji, there have been many human rights abuses by the military. Anti-government protesters in Fiji have fled to Australia and New Zealand. In 2011, Fijians conducted anti Fijian government protests in Australia. On 17 September 2014, the first democratic general election was held in Fiji.

Guatemala Main article: 2015 Guatemalan protests

In 2015, Otto Pérez Molina , President of Guatemala, was suspected of corruption. In Guatemala City, a large number of protests rallied. Demonstrations took place from April to September 2015. Otto Pérez Molina was eventually arrested on 3 September. The people of Guatemala called this event "Guatemalan Spring".

Moldova

The opposition is reported to have hoped for and urged some kind of Orange revolution, similar to that in Ukraine, in the follow-up of the 2005 Moldovan parliamentary elections , while the Christian Democratic People's Party adopted orange for its colour in a clear reference to the events of Ukraine.

A name hypothesised for such an event was "Grape Revolution" because of the abundance of vineyards in the country; however, such a revolution failed to materialise after the governmental victory in the elections. Many reasons have been given for this, including a fractured opposition and the fact that the government had already co-opted many of the political positions that might have united the opposition (such as a perceived pro-European and anti-Russian stance). Also the elections themselves were declared fairer in the OSCE election monitoring reports than had been the case in other countries where similar revolutions occurred, even though the CIS monitoring mission strongly condemned them.

There was civil unrest all over Moldova following the 2009 Parliamentary election due to the opposition claiming that the communists had fixed the election. Eventually, the Alliance for European Integration created a governing coalition that pushed the Communist party into opposition.

Mongolia

On 25 March 2005, activists wearing yellow scarves held protests in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar , disputing the results of the 2004 Mongolian parliamentary elections and calling for fresh elections. One of the chants heard in that protest was "Let's congratulate our Kyrgyz brothers for their revolutionary spirit. Let's free Mongolia of corruption."

An uprising commenced in Ulaanbaatar on 1 July 2008, with a peaceful meeting in protest of the election of 29 June. The results of these elections were (it was claimed by opposition political parties) corrupted by the Mongolian People's Party (MPRP). Approximately 30,000 people took part in the meeting. Afterwards, some of the protesters left the central square and moved to the HQ of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party – which they attacked and then burned down. A police station was also attacked. By the night rioters vandalised and then set fire to the Cultural Palace (which contained a theatre, museum and National art gallery). Cars torching, bank robberies and looting were reported. The organisations in the burning buildings were vandalised and looted. Police used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon against stone-throwing protesters. A 4-day state of emergency was installed, the capital has been placed under a 2200 to 0800 curfew, and alcohol sales banned, rioting not resumed. 5 people were shot dead by the police , dozens of teenagers were wounded from the police firearms and disabled and 800 people, including the leaders of the civil movements J. Batzandan, O. Magnai and B. Jargalsakhan, were arrested. International observers said 1 July general election was free and fair.

Pakistan Main articles: Lawyers' Movement and Movement to impeach Pervez Musharraf

In 2007, the Lawyers' Movement started in Pakistan with the aim of restoration of deposed judges. However, within a month the movement took a turn and started working towards the goal of removing Pervez Musharraf from power.

Russia Main articles: Russian opposition , Dissenters' March , Strategy-31 , and 2011–13 Russian protests

The liberal opposition in Russia is represented by several parties and movements.

An active part of the opposition is the Oborona youth movement. Oborona claims that its aim is to provide free and honest elections and to establish in Russia a system with democratic political competition. This movement under the leadership of Oleg Kozlovsky was one of the most active and radical ones and is represented in a number of Russian cities. During the elections of 8 September 2013, the movement contributed to the success of Navalny in Moscow and other opposition candidates in various regions and towns throughout Russia. The "oboronkis" also took part with other oppositional groups in protests against fraud in the Moscow mayoral elections.

Since the 2012 protests, Aleksei Navalny mobilised with support of the various and fractured opposition parties and masses of young people against the alleged repression and fraud of the Kremlin apparatus. After a strong campaign for the 8 September elections in Moscow and the regions, the opposition won remarkable successes. Navalny reached a second place in Moscow with surprising 27% behind Kremlin-backed Sergei Sobyanin finishing with 51% of the votes. In other regions, opposition candidates received remarkable successes. In the big industrial town of Yekaterinburg, opposition candidate Yevgeny Roizman received the majority of votes and became the mayor of that town. The slow but gradual sequence of opposition successes reached by mass protests, election campaigns and other peaceful strategies has been recently called by observers and analysts as of Radio Free Europe "Tortoise Revolution" in contrast to the radical "rose" or "orange" ones the Kremlin tried to prevent.

The opposition in the Republic of Bashkortostan has held protests demanding that the federal authorities intervene to dismiss Murtaza Rakhimov from his position as president of the republic, accusing him of leading an "arbitrary, corrupt, and violent" regime. Airat Dilmukhametov , one of the opposition leaders, and leader of the Bashkir National Front , has said that the opposition movement has been inspired from the mass protests of Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Another opposition leader, Marat Khaiyirulin , has said that if an Orange Revolution were to happen in Russia, it would begin in Bashkortostan.

South Korea Main article: Candlelight Revolution

From 2016 to 2017, the candlelight protest was going on in South Korea with the aim to force the ousting of President Park Geun-hye . Park was impeached and removed from office, and new presidential elections were held.

Uzbekistan Main article: 2005 Andijan unrest

In Uzbekistan , there has been longstanding opposition to President Islam Karimov , from liberals and Islamists. Following protests in 2005, security forces in Uzbekistan carried out the Andijan massacre that successfully halted country-wide demonstrations. These protests otherwise could have turned into colour revolution, according to many analysts.

The revolution in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan began in the largely ethnic Uzbek south, and received early support in the city of Osh . Nigora Hidoyatova , leader of the Free Peasants opposition party, has referred to the idea of a peasant revolt or 'Cotton Revolution'. She also said that her party is collaborating with the youth organisation Shiddat , and that she hopes it can evolve to an organisation similar to Kmara or Pora. Other nascent youth organisations in and for Uzbekistan include Bolga and the freeuzbek group.

Uzbekistan has also had an active Islamist movement, led by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan , most notable for the 1999 Tashkent bombings , though the group was largely destroyed following the 2001 NATO invasion of Afghanistan .

Response in other countries

When groups of young people protested the closure of Venezuela's RCTV television station in June 2007, president Hugo Chávez said that he believed the protests were organised by the West in an attempt to promote a "soft coup" like the revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. Similarly, Chinese authorities claimed repeatedly in the state-run media that both the 2014 Hong Kong protests – known as the Umbrella Revolution – as well as the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests , were organised and controlled by the United States.

In July 2007, Iranian state television released footage of two Iranian-American prisoners, both of whom work for western NGOs, as part of a documentary called "In the Name of Democracy." The documentary purportedly discusses the colour revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia and accuses the United States of attempting to foment a similar ouster in Iran.

Other examples and political movements around the world

The imagery of a colour revolution has been adopted by various non-revolutionary electoral campaigns. The 'Purple Revolution' social media campaign of Naheed Nenshi catapulted his platform from 8% to become Calgary's 36th Mayor. The platform advocated city sustainability and to inspire the high voter turn out of 56%, particularly among young voters.

In 2015, the NDP of Alberta earned a majority mandate and ended the 44-year-old dynasty of the Progressive Conservatives . During the campaign Rachel Notley 's popularity gained momentum, and the news and NDP supporters referred to this phenomenon as the "Orange Crush" per the party's colour. NDP parodies of Orange flavoured Crush soda logo became a popular meme on social media.

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Sep 20, 2020 | conservativefiringline.com

Revolver Exclusive -- Meet Norm Eisen: Legal Hatchet Man and Central Operative in the "Color Revolution" Against President Trump

In our report on Never Trump State Department official George Kent , Revolver News first drew attention to the ominous similarities between the strategies and tactics the United States government employs in so-called "Color Revolutions" and the coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.

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Our recent follow-up to this initial report focused specifically on a shadowy, George Soros linked group called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), which convened "war games" exercises suggesting the likelihood of a "contested election scenario," and of ensuing chaos should President Trump refuse to leave office. We further showed how these "contested election" scenarios we are hearing so much about play perfectly into the Color Revolution framework sketched out Revolver News' first installment in the Color Revolution series.

This third installment of Revolver News ' series exposing the Color Revolution against Trump will focus on one quiet and indeed mostly overlooked participant in the Transition Integrity Project's biased election "war games" exercise -- a man by the name of Norm Eisen.

As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for suing the President into paralysis and his allies into bankruptcy , who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted 10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever called the Ukraine President in 2018 , who personally served as special counsel litigating the Ukraine impeachment, who created a template for Internet censorship of world leaders and a handbook for mass mobilizing racial justice protesters to overturn democratic election results, there is perhaps no man alive with a more decorated resume for plots against President Trump.

Indeed, the story of Norm Eisen – a key architect of nearly every attempt to delegitimize, impeach, censor, sue and remove the democratically elected 45th President of the United States – is a tale that winds through nearly every facet of the color revolution playbook. There is no purer embodiment of Revolver's thesis that the very same regime change professionals who run Color Revolutions on behalf of the US Government in order to undermine or overthrow alleged "authoritarian" governments overseas, are running the very same playbook to overturn Trump's 2016 victory and to pre-empt a repeat in 2020. To put it simply, what you see is not just the same Color Revolution playbook run against Trump, but the same people using it against Trump who have employed it in a professional capacity against targets overseas -- same people same playbook.

In Norm Eisen's case, the "same people same playbook" refrain takes an arrestingly literal turn when one realizes that Norm Eisen wrote a classic Color Revolution regime change manual, and conveniently titled it "The Playbook."

Just what exactly is President Obama's former White House Ethics Czar ( yes, Norm Eisen was Obama's ethics Czar ), his longtime friend since Harvard Law School, who recently partook in war games to simulate overturning a Trump electoral victory, doing writing a detailed playbook on how to use a Color Revolution to overthrow governments? The story of Norm Eisen only gets more fascinating, outrageous, and indispensable to understanding the planned chaos unfolding before our eyes, leading up to what will perhaps be the most chaotic election in our nation's recent history.

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

"I'd Rather Have This Book Than The Atomic Bomb"

Before we can fully appreciate the significance of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution manual "The Playbook," we must contextualize this important book in relation to its place in Color Revolution literature.

As a bit of a refresher to the reader, it is important to emphasize that when we use the term "Color Revolution" we do not mean any general type of revolution -- indeed, one of the chief advantages of the Color Revolution framework we advance is that it offers a specific and concrete heuristic by which to understand the operations against Trump beyond the accurate but more vague term "coup." Unlike the overt, blunt, method of full scale military invasion as was the case in Iraq War, a Color Revolution employs the following strategies and tactics:

A "Color Revolution" in this context refers to a specific type of coordinated attack that the United States government has been known to deploy against foreign regimes, particularly in Eastern Europe deemed to be "authoritarian" and hostile to American interests. Rather than using a direct military intervention to effect regime change as in Iraq, Color Revolutions attack a foreign regime by contesting its electoral legitimacy, organizing mass protests and acts of civil disobedience, and leveraging media contacts to ensure favorable coverage to their agenda in the Western press. [Revolver]

This combination of tactics used in so-called Color Revolutions did not come from nowhere. Before Norm Eisen came Gene Sharp -- originator and Godfather of the Color Revolution model that has been a staple of US Government operations externally (and now internally) for decades. Before Norm Eisen's "Playbook" there was Gene Sharp's classic "From Dictatorship to Democracy," which might be justly described as the Bible of the Color Revolution. Such is the power of the strategies laid out by Sharp that a Lithuanian defense minister once said of Sharp's preceding book (upon which Dictatorship to Democracy builds) that "I would rather have this book than the nuclear bomb."

Gene Sharp

It would be impossible to do full justice to Gene Sharp within the scope of this specific article. Here are some choice excerpts about Sharp and his biography to give readers a taste of his significance and relevance to this discussion.

Gene Sharp, the "Machiavelli of nonviolence," has been fairly described as "the most influential American political figure you've never heard of." 1 Sharp, who passed away in January 2018, was a beloved yet "mysterious" intellectual giant of nonviolent protest movements , the "father of the whole field of the study of strategic nonviolent action." 2 Over his career, he wrote more than twenty books about nonviolent action and social movements. His how-to pamphlet on nonviolent revolution, From Dictatorship to Democracy , has been translated into over thirty languages and is cited by protest movements around the world . In the U.S., his ideas are widely promoted through activist training programs and by scholars of nonviolence, and have been used by nearly every major protest movement in the last forty years . 3 For these contributions, Sharp has been praised by progressive heavyweights like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times, compared to Gandhi, and cast as a lonely prophet of peace, champion of the downtrodden, and friend of the left . 4

Gene Sharp's influence on the U.S. activist left and social movements abroad has been significant. But he is better understood as one of the most important U.S. defense intellectuals of the Cold War, an early neoliberal theorist concerned with the supposedly inherent violence of the "centralized State," and a quiet but vital counselor to anti-communist forces in the socialist world from the 1980s onward.

In the mid-1960s, Thomas Schelling, a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear theorist, recruited 29-year-old Sharp to join the Center for International Affairs at Harvard , bastion of the high Cold War defense, intelligence, and security establishment. Leading the so-called "CIA at Harvard" were Henry Kissinger, future National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and future CIA chief Robert Bowie. Sharp held this appointment for thirty years. There, with Department of Defense funds, he developed his core theory of nonviolent action: a method of warfare capable of collapsing states through theatrical social movements designed to dissolve the common will that buttresses governments, all without firing any shots. From his post at the CIA at Harvard, Sharp would urge U.S. and NATO defense leadership to use his methods against the Soviet Union. [Nonsite]

We invite the reader to reflect on the passages in bold, particularly their potential relevance to the current domestic situation in the United States. Sharp's book and strategy for "non violent revolution" AKA "peaceful protests" has been used to undermine or overthrow target governments all over the world, particularly in Eastern Europe.

Gene's color revolution playbook was of course especially effective in Eastern Bloc countries in Eastern Europe:

Finally, there is no shortage of analysis as to the applicability of Sharp's methods domestically within the USA in order to advance various left wing causes. This passage specifically mentions the applicability of Sharp's methods to counter act Trump.

Ominous stuff indeed. For readers who wish to read further, please consult the full Politico piece from which we have excerpted the above highlighted passages. There is also a fascinating documentary on Sharp instructively titled " How to Start a Revolution ."

This is all interesting and disturbing, to say the least. In its own right it would suggest a compelling nexus point between the operations run against Trump and the Color Revolution playbook. But what does this have to do with our subject Norm Eisen? It just so happens that Eisen explicitly places himself in the tradition of Gene Sharp, acknowledging his book "The Playbook" as a kind of update to Sharp's seminal "Dictatorship to Democracy."

Watch the Clip Here

And there we have it, folks -- Norm Eisen, former Obama Ethics Czar, Ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the "Velvet Revolution," key counsel in impeachment effort against Trump, and participant in the ostensibly bi-partisan election war games predicting a contested election scenario unfavorable to Trump -- just happens to be a Color Revolution expert who literally wrote the modern "Playbook" in the explicitly acknowledged tradition of Color Revolution Godfather Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy."

Before we turn to the contents of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution manual, full title "The Democracy Playbook: Preventing and Reversing Democratic Backsliding," it will be useful to make a brief point regarding the term "democracy" itself, which happens to appear in the title of Gene Sharp's book "From Dictatorship to Democracy" as well.

Just like the term "peaceful protestor," which, as we pointed out in our George Kent essay is used as a term of craft in the Color Revolution context, so is the term "democracy" itself. The US Government launches Color Revolutions against foreign targets irrespective of whether they actually enjoy the support of the people or were elected democratically. In the case of Trump, whatever one says about him, he is perhaps the most "democratically" elected President in America's history. Indeed, in 2016 Trump ran against the coordinated opposition of the establishments of both parties, the military industrial complex, the corporate media, Hollywood, and really every single powerful institution in the country. He won, however, because he was able to garner sufficient support of the people -- his true and decisive power base as a "populist." Precisely because of the ultra democratic "populist" character of Trump's victory, the operatives attempting to undermine him have focused specifically on attacking the democratic legitimacy of his victory.

In this vein we ought to note that the term "democratic backsliding," as seen in the subtitle of Norm Eisen's book, and its opposite "democratic breakthrough" are also terms of art in the Color Revolution lexicon. We leave the full exploration of how the term "democratic" is used deceptively in the Color Revolution context (and in names of decidedly anti-democratic/populist institutions) as an exercise to the interested reader. Michael McFaul, another Color Revolution expert and key anti-Trump operative somewhat gives the game away in the following tweet in which the term "democratic breakthrough" makes an appearance as a better sounding alternative to "Color Revolution:"

Most likely as a response to Revolver News' first Color Revolution article on State Department official George Kent, former Ambassador McFaul issued the following tweet as a matter of damage control:

What on earth then might Color Revolution expert and Obama's former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who has been a key player agitating for President Trump's impeachment, mean by "democratic breakthrough?"

Being a rather simple man from a simple background, McFaul perhaps gave too much of this answer away in the following explanation (now deleted).

Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief ?

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) September 5, 2020

With this now-deleted tweet we get a clearer picture of the power bases that must be satisfied for a "democratic breakthrough" to occur -- and conveniently enough, not one of them is subject to direct democratic control. McFaul, Like Eisen, George Kent, and so many others, perfectly embodies Revolver's thesis regarding the Color Revolution being the same people running the same playbook. Indeed, like most of the star never-Trump impeachment witnesses, McFaul has been an ambassador to an Eastern European country. He has supported operations against Trump, including impeachment. And, like Norm Eisen, he has actually written a book on Color Revolutions (more on that later).

Norm Eisen's The Democracy Playbook: A Brief Overview:

A deep dive into Eisen's book would exceed the scope of this relatively brief exposé. It is nonetheless important for us to draw attention to key passages of Eisen's book to underscore how closely the "Playbook" corresponds to events unfolding right here at home. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that regime change professionals such as Eisen simply decided to run the same playbook against Trump that they have done countless times when foreign leaders are elected overseas that they don't like and want to remove via extra-democratic means -- "peaceful protests," "democratic breakthroughs" and such.

First, consider the following passage from Eisen's Playbook:

If you study this passage closely, you will find direct confirmation of our earlier point that "democracy" in the Color Revolution context is a term of art -- it refers to anything they like that keeps the national security bureaucrats in power. Anything they don't like, even if elected democratically, is considered "anti-democratic," or, put another way, "democratic backsliding." Eisen even acknowledges that this scourge of populism he's so worried about actually was ushered in with "popular support," under "relatively democratic and electoral processes." The problem is precisely that the people have had enough of the corrupt ruling class ignoring their needs. Accordingly, the people voted first for Brexit and then for Donald Trump -- terrifying expressions of populism which the broader Western power structure did everything in its capacity to prevent. Once they failed, they viewed these twin populist victories as a kind of political 9/11 to be prevented by any means necessary from recurring. Make no mistake, the Color Revolution has nothing to do with democracy in any meaningful sense and everything to do with the ruling class ensuring that the people will never have the power to meddle in their own elections again.

The passage above can be insightfully compared to the passage in Gene Sharp's book noting ripe applications to the domestic situation.

It is instructive to compare the passage in Eisen's Color Revolution book to the passage in Michael McFaul's Color Revolution book

First off, it is absolutely imperative to look at every single one of the conditions for a Color Revolution that McFaul identifies. It is simply impossible not to be overcome with the ominous parallels to our current situation. Specifically, however, note condition 1 which refers to having a target leader who is not fully authoritarian, but semi-autocratic. This coincides perfectly well with Eisen's concession that the populist leaders he's so concerned about might be "illiberal" but enjoy "popular support" and have come to power via "relatively democratic electoral processes."

Consulting the above passage from McFaul's book, we note that McFaul has been perhaps the most explicit about the conditions which facilitate a Color Revolution. We invite the reader to supply the contemporary analogue to each point as a kind of exercise.

  1. A semi-autocratic regime rather than fully autocratic
  2. An unpopular incumbent (note blanket negative coverage of Trump, fake polls)
  3. A united and organized opposition (media, intel community, Hollywood, community groups, etc)
  4. An ability to quickly drive home the point that voting results were falsified -- See our piece on the Transition Integrity Project
  5. Enough independent media to inform citizens of falsified vote (see full court press in media pushing contested election narrative, social media censorship)
  6. A political opposition capable of mobilizing tens of thousands or more demonstrators to protest electoral fraud ( SEE BLACK LIVES MATTER AND ANTIFA )

On point number four, which is especially relevant to our present situation, Eisen has an interesting thing to say about the role of a contested election scenario in the Orange Revolution, arguably the most important Color Revolution of them all.

Finally, let's look at one last passage from Norm Eisen's Color Revolution "Democracy Playbook" and cross-reference it with McFaul's conditions for a Color Revolution as well as the situation playing out right now before our very eyes:

A few things immediately jump out at us. First, the ominous instruction: "prepare to use electoral abuse evidence as the basis for reform advocacy." Secondly, we note the passage suggesting that opposition to a target leader might avail itself of "extreme institutional measures" including impeachment processes, votes of no confidence, and, of course, the good old-fashioned "protests, strikes, and boycotts" (all more or less peaceful no doubt).

By now the Color Revolution agenda against Trump should be as plain as day. Regime change professionals like McFaul, Eisen, George Kent, and others, who have refined their craft conducting color revolutions overseas, have taken it upon themselves to use the same tools, the same tactics -- quite literally, the same playbook -- to overthrow President Trump. Yet again, same people, same playbook.

We conclude this study of key Color Revolution figure Norm Eisen by exploring his particularly proactive -- indeed central role -- in effecting one of the Color Revolution's components mentioned in the Eisen Playbook -- impeachment.

-- -- -- –

The Ghost of Democracy's Future

We mentioned at the outset of this piece that Norm Eisen is many things -- a former Obama Ethics Czar (but of course), Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, participant in the now notorious Transition Integrity Project, et cetera. But he earned his title as "legal hatchet man" of the Color Revolution for his tireless efforts in promoting the impeachment of President Trump.

The litany of Norm Eisen's legal activity cited at the beginning of this piece bears repeating.

As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for suing the President into paralysis and his allies into bankruptcy , who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted 10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever called the Ukraine President in 2018 , who personally served as DNC co-counsel for litigating the Ukraine impeachment

If that resume doesn't warrant the title "legal hatchet man" we wonder what does? We encourage interested readers or journalists to explore those links for themselves. By way of conclusion, it simply suffices to note that much of Eisen's impeachment activity he conducted before there was any discussion or knowledge of President Trump's call to the Ukrainian President in 2018 -- indeed before the call even happened. Impeachment was very clearly a foregone conclusion -- a quite literal part of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution playbook -- and it was up to people like Eisen to find the pretext, any pretext.

Despite their constant invocation of "democracy" we ought to note that transferring the question of electoral outcomes to adversarial legal processes is in fact anti-Democratic -- in keeping with our observation that the Color Revolution playbook uses "democracy" as a term of art, often meaning the precise opposite of the usual meaning suggesting popular support.

Perhaps the most important entry in Eisen's entry is the first, that is, Eisen's participation in the infamous David Brock blueprint on how to undermine and overthrow the Trump presidency.

The Washington Free Beacon attended the retreat and obtained David Brock's private and confidential memorandum from the meeting. The memo, " Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action ," outlines Brock's four-year agenda to attack Trump and Republicans using Media Matters, American Bridge, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) , and Shareblue.

The memo contains plans for defeating Trump through impeachment , expanding Media Matters' mission to combat " government misinformation ," ensuring Democratic control of the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections , filing lawsuits against the Trump administration, monetizing political advocacy , using a "digital attacker" to delegitimize Trump's presidency and damage Republicans, and partnering with Facebook to combat "fake news." [Washington Free Beacon]

This leaked memo was written before President Trump took office, further suggesting that all of the efforts to undermine Trump have not been good faith responses to his behavior, but a pre-ordained attack strategy designed to overturn the 2016 election by any means necessary. The Color Revolution expert who suggests impeachment as a tactic in his Color Revolution "playbook" was already in charge of impeachment before Trump even took office -- -Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is run by none other than Norm Eisen.

But the attempt to overturn the 2016 election using Color Revolution tactics failed. And so now the plan is to overthrow Trump in 2020, hence Norm Eisen's noted participation in the Transition Integrity Project. Looking around us, one is forced to ask the deeply uncomfortable question, "transition into what?"

To conclude, we would like to call back to a point we raised in the first piece in our color revolution series. In this piece, we noted that star Never Trump impeachment witness George Kent just happens to be running the Belarus desk at the State Department. Belarus, we argued, with its mass demonstrations egged on by US Government backed NGOS, its supposed "peaceful protests" and of course its contested election results all fit the Color Revolution mold curiously enough.

One NGO called the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG) was bold or reckless enough to draw the parallels between the Color Revolution in Belarus and the events playing out against Trump explicitly. In response to a remark by a twitter user that the TDWG's remarks about Belarus suggested parallels to the United States, the TDWG ominously replied:

Now, would the reader care to take a guess as to who runs the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group? If you guessed Norm Eisen, you would be correct.

Stay tuned for more in Revolver.news' groundbreaking coverage of the Color Revolution against Trump. Be sure to check out the previous installments in this series.

[Sep 18, 2020] 'Dr. Li-Meng Yan is not a quack' Tucker Carlson

She might be not a quack, but she does has specific to the current position motives
Sep 18, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

I will go back to an approach that served me well with regard to the Iraq WMD story. I have no way of evaluating Yan's claims, but there are a fair number of people and organizations that do have the resources to evaluate. I rejected WMD claims in 2003 simply because none of the other players with relevant competence acted in ways that indicated serious concern. What is Yan Li-meng's evidence that others do not have? This issue of origin has to have been pursued by at least a couple dozen organizations with the necessary competence. None of those has made any such claims. That doesn't mean that the claims are false. But if the claims are true, then there must be very strong motives for keeping silent. So what would be the common interest between, say, the intelligence agencies of Germany and those of India?

Without such evidence this turns into a she-said-he-said story. Now that does not mean that it is wrong. Suppression and intimidation would not be out of character for the Chinese government. But again the world is loaded with very paranoid people who are capable of evaluating that. And who are pretty much immune to Chinese intimidation. They don't have to face off against the Chinese state. There are plenty of more roundabout ways to get the word out if you want to do so and have government-level resources to put into the effort.

The obvious alternative to publication of the logic for detecting human agency is to engage in simple human retaliation. Are the Chinese the only ones capable of such producing such a catastrophe? Pretty unlikely. Would such a counterstroke catch the Chinese by surprise? Again unlikely if they are aware of having stepped over the line. The measures they are taking against virus outbreaks are more extreme than what western countries have imposed, but not (yet) indicating panic. If somebody let some 1918 swine flu loose in Shanghai, would their measures be able to counter it? (Five times as contagious as what we seeing in covid-19.)

Posted by: Fredw | 17 September 2020 at 03:21 PM

Deap , 17 September 2020 at 05:11 PM

Red State raises additional skepticism about this "scientist's interview", as well as the oddities of the very original days of reporting about the Chinese t "flu" coming out of China. Remembering also one of the very first ways we even started hearing about this "new Chinese virus" in the US were reports about the Great Toilet Paper panic, even though people here did not know why they were supposed to be hoarding it.
https://www.redstate.com/michael_thau/2020/09/17/920958/

Best I could trace was to an earlier Australian toilet paper panic they claimed was hawked by Yahoo News in Australia, and then spread via social media to the US. And our Great Toilet Paper Hoax began in earnest here too. China was allegedly the source for all Australian TP, so it was claimed with so many people sick in China with this "flu" there would be no more toilet paper Down Under for their down unders.

But the US did not rely on China for TP, so the TP panic was not warrented to be set in motion here. But it did capture attention and did trigger panic before we even knew what to be afraid of. Greasing the skids in some manipulative way could be one jaundiced conclusion.

Hope someone with better skills can really trace the origins of the Great Toilet Paper Hoax, because it did wipe us out in the US. No sheet. Was that the covid panic transmission route; and not really on a flight from Wuhan to Seattle?

Who funded the movie Contagion?

Personanongrata , 17 September 2020 at 05:24 PM

'Dr. Li-Meng Yan is not a quack' Tucker Carlson

No - but she may be another in a long line of useful idiots.

"Independent fact checkers?" 25 year old Humanities and Social Sciences grads working for Facebook? Independent of what? Independent of their mommies and daddies at long last?

Countervailing research goes light-years beyond "Independent fact checkers?".

Italicized/bold text was excerpted from nature.com a report titled:

The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2

SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with mild symptoms6. Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.

The genomic features described here may explain in part the infectiousness and transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. Although the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here. However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

Italicized/bold text was excerpted from The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene a report titled:

The Origin of COVID-19 and Why It Matters

In 2007, scientists studying coronaviruses warned: "The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV–like viruses in horseshoe bats is a time bomb. The possibility of the re-emergence of SARS and other novel viruses should not be ignored."1

Studying animal viruses that have previously spilled over into humans provides clues about host-switching determinants. A well-understood example is influenza virus emergence into humans and other mammals.2 Human pandemic and seasonal influenza viruses arise from enzootic viruses of wild waterfowl and shore birds. From within this natural reservoir, the 1918 pandemic "founder" virus somehow host-switched into humans. We know this from genetic studies comparing avian viruses, the 1918 virus, and its descendants, which have caused three subsequent pandemics, as well as annual seasonal influenza in each of the 102 years since 1918. Similarly, other avian influenza viruses have host-switched into horses, dogs, pigs, seals, and other vertebrates, with as yet unknown pandemic potential.2,10,11 Although some molecular host-switching events remain unobserved, phylogenetic analyses of influenza viruses allow us to readily characterize evolution and host-switching as it occurs in nature.2

It should be clarified that theories about a hypothetical man-made origin of SARS-CoV-2 have been thoroughly discredited by multiple coronavirus experts.21,28,29 SARS-CoV-2 contains neither the genetic fingerprints of any of the reverse genetics systems that have been used to engineer coronaviruses nor does it contain genetic sequences that would have been "forward engineered" from preexisting viruses, including the genetically closest sarbecoviruses. That is, SARS-CoV-2 is unlike any previously identified coronavirus from which it could have been engineered. Moreover, the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain, which has affinity for cells of various mammals, binds to human ACE2 receptors via a novel mechanism.

Engineering such a virus would have required 1) published or otherwise available scientific knowledge that did not exist until after COVID-19 recognition; 2) a failure to follow obvious engineering pathways, resulting in an imperfectly constructed virus; and 3) an ability to genetically engineer a new virus without leaving fingerprints of the engineering. Furthermore, the 12 amino acid furin-cleavage site insertion between the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein's S1 and S2 domains, which some have alleged to be a sign of genetic engineering, is found in other bat and human coronaviruses in nature, probably arising via naturally occurring recombination.24

It is also highly unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 was released from a laboratory by accident because no laboratory had the virus nor did its genetic sequence exist in any sequence database before its initial GenBank deposition (early January 2020). China's laboratory safety practices, policies, training, and engineering are equivalent to those of the United States and other developed countries,32 making viral "escape" extremely unlikely, and of course impossible without a viral isolate present. SARS-CoV-2 shares genetic properties with many other sarbecoviruses, lies fully within their genetic cluster, and is thus a virus that emerged naturally.

http://www.ajtmh.org/content/journals/10.4269/ajtmh.20-0849

Italicized/bold text was excerpted from nature.com a report titled:

Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic

There are outstanding evolutionary questions on the recent emergence of human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 including the role of reservoir species, the role of recombination and its time of divergence from animal viruses. We find that the sarbecoviruses -- the viral subgenus containing SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 -- undergo frequent recombination and exhibit spatially structured genetic diversity on a regional scale in China. SARS-CoV-2 itself is not a recombinant of any sarbecoviruses detected to date, and its receptor-binding motif, important for specificity to human ACE2 receptors, appears to be an ancestral trait shared with bat viruses and not one acquired recently via recombination. To employ phylogenetic dating methods, recombinant regions of a 68-genome sarbecovirus alignment were removed with three independent methods. Bayesian evolutionary rate and divergence date estimates were shown to be consistent for these three approaches and for two different prior specifications of evolutionary rates based on HCoV-OC43 and MERS-CoV. Divergence dates between SARS-CoV-2 and the bat sarbecovirus reservoir were estimated as 1948 (95% highest posterior density (HPD): 1879–1999), 1969 (95% HPD: 1930–2000) and 1982 (95% HPD: 1948–2009), indicating that the lineage giving rise to SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating unnoticed in bats for decades.

With horseshoe bats currently the most plausible origin of SARS-CoV-2, it is important to consider that sarbecoviruses circulate in a variety of horseshoe bat species with widely overlapping species ranges57. Nevertheless, the viral population is largely spatially structured according to provinces in the south and southeast on one lineage, and provinces in the centre, east and northeast on another (Fig. 3). This boundary appears to be rarely crossed. Two exceptions can be seen in the relatively close relationship of Hong Kong viruses to those from Zhejiang Province (with two of the latter, CoVZC45 and CoVZXC21, identified as recombinants) and a recombinant virus from Sichuan for which part of the genome (region B of SC2018 in Fig. 3) clusters with viruses from provinces in the centre, east and northeast of China. SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 are also exceptions because they were sampled from Hubei and Yunnan, respectively.

It is clear from our analysis that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 have been circulating in horseshoe bats for many decades. The unsampled diversity descended from the SARS-CoV-2/RaTG13 common ancestor forms a clade of bat sarbecoviruses with generalist properties -- with respect to their ability to infect a range of mammalian cells -- that facilitated its jump to humans and may do so again. Although the human ACE2-compatible RBD was very likely to have been present in a bat sarbecovirus lineage that ultimately led to SARS-CoV-2, this RBD sequence has hitherto been found in only a few pangolin viruses. Furthermore, the other key feature thought to be instrumental in the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to infect humans -- a polybasic cleavage site insertion in the S protein -- has not yet been seen in another close bat relative of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4

As if on cue Li-Meng Yan appears like manna from heaven aiding/abetting in foisting forth the current dominant Western government/media narrative that China is bad.

How convenient.

[Sep 18, 2020] The New Year Gift, by Israel Shamir

Israel raises an important question about the role on neoliberal MSM is spreading COVID-19 panic.
Notable quotes:
"... Sinaisky claims that they brought the pandemics upon us because of the high debt problem, or by their inability to continue colonial plunder. Alternatively, a notable commenter to his text suggests that it was done because of overproduction of capital. In other words, the bank-lending rate is so close to zero, or even negative, that the whole machinery of capitalism was deluged in a flood of capital, and needed a major war, or indeed a global pandemic, to use it up. ..."
"... Because of this freak combination of forces, Sweden left its health policy in the hands of local professionals and remained free, while its neighbouring countries transferred the responsibility to globalist politicians and embraced quarantine. ..."
"... Thus the liberal Blairite media (beginning with the NY Times and the Guardian) played a key part in the Corona crisis. They were the piper; but who ordered the piper? ..."
Sep 18, 2020 | www.unz.com

...Do the US plutocrats (that is, the American über-wealthy) control all that? I think they would be amazed to learn that, especially "for generations", bearing in mind that the US was not a very significant factor before the WWI. In my view, the rich are not that smart. But the network exists; I have called its obscure controllers The Masters of Discourse .

Sinaisky claims that they brought the pandemics upon us because of the high debt problem, or by their inability to continue colonial plunder. Alternatively, a notable commenter to his text suggests that it was done because of overproduction of capital. In other words, the bank-lending rate is so close to zero, or even negative, that the whole machinery of capitalism was deluged in a flood of capital, and needed a major war, or indeed a global pandemic, to use it up.

Finally, Sinaisky claims that "atomization of society, breaking up community solidarity, eroding all non-monetary connections between people, destroying family relations and weakening blood ties, is a long-standing plutocratic project. Now, using this fake pandemic, the plutocrats have gone even further, now they train us to see each other not as friend, not as brother, not even as a source of profit, but mainly as a source of mortal infection." I wonder what makes him think that is an object of plutocratic desire? Certainly rich people want to make money and have more power, agreed. Is it necessary for them to atomise society? Who will they and their kids socialize with in such a ruined world?

I am not sure that there is a human agency with such goals. A non-human factor is a much more suitable culprit. In the old days, such a culprit was called Satan, and there were mighty organisations aka churches that fought Satan. In a charming movie, Luc Besson's Fifth Element, 'Love' defeats 'the Shadow', the personified evil that was about to obliterate Earth. Call it Satan, call it Shadow, the thing surely has human collaborationists in the mainstream media. I wrote about it in a piece called The Shadow of Zog . Indeed media should be sorted out in order to deal with it.

Sweden, this lucky country that avoided lockdown and its consequences, was saved by a rare media misstep. (This story has never been published though it is known to many Swedes.) Corona propaganda was carried out by the same liberal Bonnier-owned newspaper, DN (Dagens Nyheter), that played up Greta Thunberg. (Sinaisky's senses served him right: indeed Covid is a new Greta multiplied by a factor of 50). The Greta campaign had as its favourite high horse flygskam , or flight-shaming. Stop taking flights to lower carbon emissions , was the idea. Now we have no flights at all, so this movement disappeared after achieving its goals.

In February 2020, the DN organised a week-long sleeper train culture trip to North Italy for the Greta-following liberal elite. A berth on this train was priced starting at ten thousand Euros. The group went up to the Italian Alps and down to the Carnival in Venice and finally returned home, full to the brim with interesting experiences and coronavirus infections. A few days after the train returned to Stockholm, the disease broke out at large. Many of the liberal journalists that travelled on the Corona Express (as the train became known) fell sick, and their close relatives suffered, too. This incident caused the death of many elderly Jews, parents or uncles of those liberal journalists. It was a media phenomenon, and the Jewish media reported that the death rate among Swedish Jews was 14 times higher than their share of the population (well, it is not as bad as it sounds; only nine very old Jews died, all over 80).

As the people in authority knew all about the Corona Express, the liberal lobby was too ashamed to call for quarantine against the disease they has carried to Sweden. (Or they did call, but in sotto voce.) Furthermore, the DN was their only significant liberal media outlet, as Bonnier had sold his TV channel to a state-owned company in December 2019, making heaps of money but losing his ability to influence people.

Because of this freak combination of forces, Sweden left its health policy in the hands of local professionals and remained free, while its neighbouring countries transferred the responsibility to globalist politicians and embraced quarantine.

Thus the liberal Blairite media (beginning with the NY Times and the Guardian) played a key part in the Corona crisis. They were the piper; but who ordered the piper?

Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected]

[Sep 16, 2020] Tunneling Under The Media's Berlin Wall Of Truth Suppression

Sep 16, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The only other broad avenue for the people to get unbiased information is from a few news shows that don't toe the liberal line -- most notably "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox News. Since the riots began at the end of May, Carlson has taken it upon himself to expose the corruption of not just the media but the liberal elected establishment that has implicitly endorsed violence, racism, and disorder in the name of what is perversely called social justice. I've called Carlson a modern-day Cassandra because his clear-eyed assessment of the danger America faces has been met with scorn, denial and derision. But name-calling, advertising boycotts, and continued threats of violence against him and his family have not deterred Carlson from his declared mission to be "the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink."

In that regard, Carlson has long used his show to ferret out information hidden in the bowels of government and get it to the people -- bypassing the media guards who increasingly see it as their sworn role to restrict the free exchange of ideas. On Carlson's Sept. 1 show, author Chris Rufo discussed his research into how critical race theory has infiltrated the federal government. I was shocked by just how bad the situation is, something we would never learn from CNN or MSNBC.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890

"It's absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal government," Rufo told Carlson.

"What I have discovered is that critical race theory has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people."

He gave three examples of what he called "cult indoctrination." For instance, he told of a trainer who "told Treasury [Department] employees essentially that America was a fundamentally white supremacist country and 'virtually all white people uphold the system of racism and white superiority.'"

When Rufo explicitly urged Trump "to immediately issue an executive order abolishing critical-race-theory training from the federal government," I thought to myself how that was a smart move. It just might work. It's no secret that Trump watches Fox News. So why not make a direct appeal to the president while you are on one of those shows? It's the only way most guests would ever have a chance to get the president's attention. And in this case it worked.

Just three quick days later, Trump did exactly what Rufo proposed -- he issued an executive order through the director of the Office of Management and Budget to "cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund [the] divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions" where federal employees are told that "virtually all White people contribute to racism."

When Trump reacted to Rufo's revelations the same way that I and millions of people watching Tucker Carlson's show reacted - with outrage - I realized just how dangerous Carlson is to the hegemony of the far left. His show is metaphorically the tunnel under the Berlin Wall that allows direct communication between the pro-liberty, pro-American middle class and the freedom fighters in the White House , bypassing both the bureaucracy and the stunningly dishonest media that control the flow of information in and out of the Trump administration.

In order to keep our metaphor geographically, if not politically, correct, we should think of the mainstream media as the Stasi, the East German secret police who were notoriously brutal -- and effective -- in suppressing free thought and dissent from the party line. They were not just the "enemy of the people," as Trump has labeled the worst of the modern media; they were the "enemy of the truth."

That role has never been clearer than it was last week when Bob Woodward, the legacy commander of the media's Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, issued his report on what he found when he infiltrated the White House. Or at least what he purported to find.

According to Woodward, Trump perfidiously misled the American public about the scope and danger of the China virus because he called the virus "deadly stuff" in February before any Americans had died. Also because Trump knew "it goes through the air." I mean you have to be notoriously stupid, or just plain incurious, not to have figured out by February that COVID-19 was a deadly peril. Does Woodward think that Trump shut down air travel from China at the end of January just because he wanted to hurt the tourist industry?

Of course the new virus was deadly, but as Trump patiently explained to the thick-headed Woodward then, and still has to explain to the rest of the White House press corps virtually every day, there is no purpose served by terrifying the public. The president told Woodward that the virus was "more deadly than even your strenuous flus." That turned out to be true, but flus are also kept under control by widespread vaccination and therapeutics. Does Woodward need to be reminded that the much more deadly pandemic of 1918 was caused by the Spanish flu ?

Of course he does, because it's not helpful to the media's narrative that Donald Trump is a dangerous buffoon who must not be reelected. How could the country survive another four years with a president who insists on doing things his own way, who won't be cowed by the Stasi media, who considers it his duty to improve on conventional wisdom instead of surrendering to it.

Which brings us back to Chris Rufo and his pipeline -- or should I say tunnel access -- to the president. The obstinacy of Tucker Carlson, his unwillingness to take a knee to orthodoxy, has made him the most dangerous person in America (after Trump) to the far-left overlords. And when Trump acted on Rufo's entreaty regarding critical race theory, it led to near hysteria as the Stasi media realized that its Berlin Wall had been breached.

As Carlson himself reported on Tuesday, Sept. 8, "To the news media, all of this was a disaster. They claim to be journalists, but they despise actual reporting like Chris Rufo's. His coverage showed that they are complicit in an anti-American lie that is deeply unpopular with actual Americans, and they didn't take it well."

Among the many critics of Carlson for providing the president with accurate information about what is being done in his name in the federal bureaucracy, perhaps the loudest was CNN's Brian Stelter, the virtual communications director for the Stasi media.

[Sep 15, 2020] In 'War On Restaurants', Media Champion Lockdown Narrative -

Sep 15, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic Research,

Just when the fear starts to subside, and growing public skepticism seems to push governors into opening, something predictable happens . The entire apparatus of mass media hops on some new, super-scary headline designed to instill more Coronaphobia and extend the lockdowns yet again.

It's a cycle that never stops. It comes back again and again.

A great example occurred this weekend. A poll appeared on Friday from the Kaiser Family Foundation. It showed that confidence in Anthony Fauci is evaporating along with support for lockdowns and mandatory Covid vaccines.

The news barely made the headlines, and very quickly this was overshadowed by a scary new claim: restaurants will give you Covid!

It's tailor-made for the mainstream press. The study is from the CDC, which means: credible. And the thesis is easily digestible: those who test positive for Covid are twice as likely as those who tested negative to have eaten at a restaurant.

"Eating and drinking on-site at locations that offer such options might be important risk factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection," the study says.

Very scary!

Thus the implied conclusion: don't allow indoor dining! Otherwise Covid will spread like wildfire!

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=606

After six months of this Corona Kabuki dance, driven by alarmist media and imposed by wacko, power-abusing governors and mayors, I've become rather cynical about the whole enterprise, so I mostly ignore the latest nonsense.

In this case, however, I decided to take a closer look simply because so many millions of owners, workers, and customers have been treated so brutally in the "War on Restaurants."

It turns out, of course, that this is not what the study said. What's more interesting is to consider exactly what's going on here. The study was based on interviews with 314 people who had been tested of their own volition. It included 154 patients with positive test results and 160 control participants with negative test results.

The interviews took place two weeks following the tests, and they concerned life activities two weeks prior to getting the test.

Before we go on here, remember that what alarmed people about Covid was the prospect of dying. The study says nothing about this subject, nor about hospitalization. It's a fair assumption that the positive cases being interviewed here got it (presumably, if the tests are accurate, which they are not ) and got over it.

This alone is interesting simply because it reveals how much the whole subject has been changed: the pandemic has become a casedemic.

Now, to the question of life activities. In the study, based on answers to a survey, the following were not correlated in any significant degree with positive cases of Covid:

Now one might suppose, if you think the study has any merit, that this would be the headline.

The massive power of the state has been deployed all over the United States and the world to force the closure of churches, gyms, offices, salons, and malls. This all happened and is still happening. Also mask mandates became the new normal. The public has been invited by health authorities to jeer at, denounce, and turn in anyone who doesn't have a cloth strapped to his or her face.

All of this happened in complete contradiction to every commercial right, property right, or normal human freedoms. We threw it all away in the name of virus control. Our lives have been completely upended and our assumptions about our rights and liberties have been overturned.

And yet here is a study that is unable to document any correlation between these life activities and catching the disease.

That's an amazing conclusion that could have generated headlines like:

And so on. But none of this was to be. Not one single story in the mainstream press said anything like this, even though this was all implied by the CDC study.

The one place that the study revealed a positive correlation between positive cases and life activities was going to restaurants.

So that's what got the alarmist headlines. Yes, these are all real.

And so on for thousands of times in every mainstream venue. They are all competing for clicks in the great agenda of extending lockdowns and feeding public fear as much as possible. So the worst-possible spin on this slightly sketchy study gets all the headlines.

Thus is it burned into many people's minds that restaurants are really disease-spreading venues. Go out to eat and you might die!

And here is what makes this even stranger. The interviewers never asked the people in the survey whether they were eating indoors or outdoors, as incredible as that seems. The authors admit this:

"Of note, the question assessing dining at a restaurant did not distinguish between indoor and outdoor options."

Why not? Did they just forget to ask? What's going on here?

Which is to say that even if the results are meaningful – and there's so much about this study that is murky and error prone – they are practically useless for knowing what to do about it. If there is no distinction between indoor and outdoor, all speculation about ventilation or crowds or the presence of food and so on, is utterly pointless.

Without knowing that, we are at a loss to figure out any answer to the question of why and what to do. Instead, the message comes down to: don't go out to eat.

Here is how bad the science has become. In the discussion, the authors write the following:

"Direction, ventilation, and intensity of airflow might affect virus transmission, even if social distancing measures and mask use are implemented according to current guidance. Masks cannot be effectively worn while eating and drinking, whereas shopping and numerous other indoor activities do not preclude mask use."

Here is what is weird: the study itself supports none of that paragraph.


The survey never asked about ventilation because the people who made the survey somehow forgot to make a query concerning indoor vs. outdoor dining . As for masks, the study did in fact ask respondents about mask wearing and the results showed no correlation between the sickness and whether and to what extent people were wearing masks!

In other words, that paragraph in the discussion is contradicted in two places by the authors' own study.

In addition, the authors themselves point to an intriguing issue: the people in the survey might have biased their answers based on their personal knowledge of the test results.

Think about it this way. The people who had a positive Covid test are more likely to ask themselves the great question: how did I get this? Going to restaurants is such a rare activity these days that it stands out in one's mind. When the survey asked people if they had gone out to eat, it is possible that the memory of the Covid positive person might be more likely to blame the restaurant, whereas the Covid negative person might be more likely to have forgotten the locale of every meal in the last 30 days.

In other words, the real result of the study might be: Covid patients are more likely to scapegoat restaurants than gyms, churches, and salons.

Alas, none of these interesting considerations appear in the media-rendered version of this study: panic and keep the lockdowns in place!

Lockdowns have become a conclusion in a desperate search for evidence. Imagine if you undertook a study of C-positive vs. C-negative cases and asked the people if they mostly wear lace-up or slip-on shoes. If you come up with some positive correlation, the CDC will publish you and a media panic will ensue.

This is precisely where we've been for six solid months now. The media has become the handmaiden of lockdown tyranny, blasting out simplistic versions of sketchy studies to keep the panic going as long as possible. And the public, which is far too trusting of the media and its capacity for rational and accurate reporting, eats it up.

For now. Once the dust settles on all of this, it seems highly likely that media science reporting will lose credibility for a generation. It certainly deserves that fate.

Meanwhile, an entire industry is being creamed .


play_arrow Walter Melon , 3 hours ago

Same CDC that said this the other day:

"Cloth masks that are used to slow the spread of COVID-19 offer little protection against wildfire smoke. They do not catch small particles found in wildfire smoke that can harm your health."

Just checking if that's the same CDC.

LA_Goldbug , 3 hours ago

Wow !!!!!

Nice find :-)

honest injun , 3 hours ago

At what point does the man on the street realize that he has been had? It took me about 2 weeks, 6 months ago to realize what Fauci and his cronies were saying was nonsense. Smart people that I know, took months to reach the same conclusion but many people are still buying the disinfo.

[Sep 11, 2020] John Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force by Larry C Johnson

Sep 11, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

I was mildly amused by Paul Sperry's recent tweet announcing as "breaking news" that Obama's CIA Director, John Brennan, set up a Task Force to target Donald Trump. This should not be considered something "new." I reported on this almost one year ago (October 2019 to be precise). You can check out the original pieces here and here . The following provides an updated, consolidated piece.

While chatting in late October 2019 with a retired CIA colleague, he dropped a bombshell–he had learned that John Brennan set up a Trump Task Force at CIA in early 2016. One of my retired buddy's friends, who was still on duty with the CIA in 2016, recounted how he was approached discreetly and invited to work on a Task Force focused on then Presidential candidate Donald Trump. The Task Force members were handpicked instead of following the normal procedure of posting the job. Instead of opening the job to all eligible CIA personnel, only a select group of people were invited specifically to join up. Not everyone accepted the invitation, and that could be a problem for John Brennan

A "Task Force" normally is a short term creation comprised of operations officers (i.e., guys and gals who carry out espionage activities overseas) and intelligence analysts. The purpose of such a group is to ensure all relevant intelligence capabilities are brought to bear on the problem at hand. I am not talking about an informal group of disgruntled Democrats working at the CIA who got together like a book club to grouse and complain about the brash real estate guy from New York. It was a specially designed covert action to try to destroy Donald Trump.

A "Task Force" is a special bureaucratic creation that provides a vehicle for bring case officers and analysts together, along with admin support, for a limited term project. But it also can be expanded to include personnel from other agencies, such as the FBI, DIA and NSA. Task Forces have been used since the inception of the CIA in 1947. Here's a recently declassified memo outlining the considerations in the creation of a task force in 1958. The author, L.K. White, talks about the need for a coordinating Headquarters element and an Operational unit "in the field", i.e. deployed around the world.

While a "Task Force" can be a useful tool for tackling issues of terrorism or drug trafficking, it is not appropriate or lawful for collecting on a U.S. candidate for the Presidency. But Brennan did it with the blessing of the Director of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper.

A Task Force operates independent of the CIA " Mission Centers " (that's the jargon for the current CIA organization chart).

So what did John Brennan do? My friends said that a Trump Task Force was running in early 2016 and may have started as early as the summer of 2015. Recruitment to Task Force included case officers (i.e., men and women who recruit and handle spies overseas), analysts and admin personnel were recruited. Not everyone invited accepted the offer. But many did.

But this was not a CIA only operation. Personnel from the FBI also were assigned to the Task Force. We have some clues that Christopher Steele's FBi handler, Michael Gaeta, may have been detailed to the Trump Task Force ( see here ).

So what kind of things would this Task Force do? The case officers would work with foreign intelligence services such as MI-6, the Italians, the Ukrainians and the Australians on identifying intelligence collection priorities. Task Force members could task NSA to do targeted collection. They also would have the ability to engage in covert action, such as targeting George Papadopoulos. Joseph Mifsud may be able to shed light on the CIA officers who met with him, briefed on operational objectives regarding Papadopoulos and helped arrange monitored meetings. Was the honey pot (i.e., the attractive woman) named Azra Turk, who met with George Papadopoulos, part of the CIA Trump Task Force?

The Task Force also could carry out other covert actions, such as information operations. A nice sounding euphemism for propaganda, and computer network operations. There has been some informed speculation that Guccifer 2.0 was a creation of this Task Force.

In light of what we have learned about the alleged CIA whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, there should be a serious investigation to determine if he was a part of this Task Force or, at minimum, reporting to them.

When I described this development last November to one friend, a retired CIA Chief of Station, his first response was, "My God, that's illegal." We then reminisced about another illegal operation carried out under the auspices of the CIA Central American Task Force back in the 1980s. That became known to Americans as the Iran Contra scandal.

We know one thing for certain about he work of this Task Force–it failed to produce any intelligence to corroborate the specious claim that Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians. Even though the despicable Brennan has continued to insist that Trump was/is under the thumb of Putin, he failed to provide any substantive information in the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that supported the claim.


Deap , 08 September 2020 at 11:38 PM

The curious "leaks" of Michael Cohen tapes on both Cuomo and Zucker, broadcast by Tucker Carlson, makes me think Cohen also has some Trump tapes.

Cohen of course would be be more than willing to drop any Trump tapes into Tucker Carlson's lap too - or at least work a tease dropping these bit player tapes on others first to weasel a Trump pardon for Cohen at the 11th hour, in return for not dumping his Trump tapes pre-election on Carlson's lap too.

Do you think these "leaked" Cohen tapes are just coincidentally coming out now - or was Micheal Cohen a fifth column all along, and even in direct cahoots with Brennan too? Other Trump business partners were IC assets, why not Cohen who would do anything for a buck and publicity.

Deap , 08 September 2020 at 11:49 PM

The night before the Mueller report came out pundit Brennan on prime time TV (whomever he was working for CNN, MSNBC?) claimed Trump would be facing multiple indictments.

The next day when his distinguished punditry proved 100% false, Brennan then claimed on prime time TV his source (sources?) were obviously wrong. And they moved quickly on to the next topic.

Brennan was obviously operating off of some form of inside intelligence (or just making things up for effect and a paycheck?) .

Just a few lines were uttered on both nights, but now in retrospect, Brennan did admit some sort of intelligence gathering group was passing on this critical information to him - bogus or not. He claimed was in some sort of insider loop.

It would be good to review both those pre-and post Mueller report statements now. Who was he hoodwinking and should he have been paid for his "insights"?

Deap , 08 September 2020 at 11:52 PM

Was Brennan's "source" Michael Cohen?

walrus , 09 September 2020 at 06:33 AM

Cohen is a know nothing "would be if they could be". I have described this type before. He had no access to Trump, the person, as opposed to a tenuous business relationship with Trump the company.

Fred , 09 September 2020 at 08:06 AM

"But Brennan did it with the blessing of the Director of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper. " Obama isn't mentioned at all? I wonder who was actually running the show.

turcopolier , 09 September 2020 at 08:48 AM

Fred
IMO Obama was VERY careful about this.

Fred , 09 September 2020 at 09:10 AM

Col.,

I'm sure he was. He's being very careful about all the current actions on the left too. He'll be running what's left of the democratic party, if they don't succeed in bringing down the constitutional republic this election.

TV , 09 September 2020 at 10:25 AM

So, where's Durham?
Hiding under his desk or.....making a deal for a partnership in a big time DC law firm (the swamp)?

Jack , 09 September 2020 at 10:58 AM

Sir,

For a community organizer Obama is pretty crafty. He found favor with the Chicago big money who backed him for the Illinois legislature and then the Senate. And then directly to the presidency. Now he's best friends with David Geffen and Richard Branson and hangs out with the billionaire class.

He is the "puppeteer" of the Democratic Party, IMO. I'm convinced that if Biden fails, Michelle will run and likely beat an establishment Republican in 2024.

plantman , 09 September 2020 at 11:56 AM

Larry,

Who do you think was the ringleader in this operation: Brennan, Comey or Clapper?
To me, it seems most likely that it was Brennan (with Obama's reluctant approval). Comey and Clapper don't strike me as the kind of guys who would risk everything on an operation that could backfire.

What I'd really like to know is whether Director Brennan communicated with elites outside the agency who might have encouraged the spying to begin with. Can you clarify this point? Does the CIA take orders or instructions from powerful-connected elites outside of the agency??

scott s. , 09 September 2020 at 12:01 PM

It seems we know that NSA identified unreasonable queries of their comms database in 2016, leading Adm Rodgers to shut off access. Immediately after, we see FBI getting involved and setting up Crossfire Hurricane. After the election, we see FBI working with DoJ NSD to move the op into a special counsel organization which then runs the op. It appears the Senate Select Committee (Burr/Warner) was complicit in the op, not to mention Schiff.

FakeBot , 09 September 2020 at 12:37 PM

I'm not sure Obama wants to run the Democratic party. It's likelier he wants to secure his legacy and play a supportive role within the party rather than lead it.

Deap , 09 September 2020 at 01:58 PM

Obama's community organizing skills are null. It was only a title; never an actual product. He will remain the token figure head of the party; but hot heads under the radar are now its life and blood of the Democrat party today. With no small dose of our tax dollars.

Democrats produce nothing; they only consume. There is a brewing turf war within the Democrat party between their historic connection to the government unions and the new socialists - two very different forces with two very different goals. Ironically, the Democrat government unions created the new wave of Democrat socialists.

Watch how this play out - Biden is clueless about what is now seething under his titular party head. Didn't Biden promise he would put Alexandra Cortez in a key administrative position?

akaPatience , 09 September 2020 at 02:09 PM

I remember the eye-opening essay about the CIA Trump task force, especially in light of Brennan's self-assured posture that only briefly slumped (along with all of his brethren on the Left) when the Mueller report finally came out and dashed such great expectations. We can only hope that the Durham probe will expose and at the very least somehow strongly condemn and spell out WITH EVIDENCE in no uncertain terms any seditious activity. After hearing that Trey Gowdy doubts any more prosecutions will come of the probe, I'm not going to hold my breath for perp walks.

Laughably, the Left's still beating that same old Russian Dead Horse though. Just as with the DNC's lackluster national convention, I'm surprised, almost shocked actually, that in spite of the overwhelming support of the "creative class", Democrats can't come up with a better hoax. On the other hand I can't remember the last time I was dying to see a new film, buy a new book or recording, or tune into a new TV drama, so while it could just be me, I suspect the "creative class" ain't quite what it used to be...

Re: Michael Cohen comments: I have to agree with walrus and take exception to the MSM characterization of Cohen as "Trump's personal attorney". My husband and I have a small real estate company but even so, we've simultaneously employed several attorneys for various personal and business needs and our holdings are minuscule compared to Trump's. SO I seriously doubt that the MSM's inference about Cohen's role and insight into Trump's private and business dealings - that he knows all - is greatly exaggerated.

Deap , 09 September 2020 at 04:16 PM

Cohen does not need to "know all", if he was recording Trump. He just has to dole out a few juicy sound bites prior to Nov, with our without context when they did contact each other pre-2016.

Cohen's chance to make Trump squirm since Cohen just demonstrated he was willing to do this to Cuomo and Zucker - so will he or won't he IF he has Trump tapes too - just crude talk at this point would not be welcome as Trump tries to take the edge off his usual "gruff" personality.

No magic carpet to the White House for anyone. I also think people don't like giving any race like this away too early in the game - all the prior elections have swung back and forth almost daily, until they finally broke on election day.

Even John McCain and Romney were still nip and tuck until the final hours if one watched certain indicators. Ironically, the only race called conclusively before election day was Clinton-Trump 2016, and we know how that finally worked out. So more cat (Trump) and mouse (Biden) on a seesaw for a few more months.

All of which begs to say, where the heck is the Durham Report and when will we start seeing accountability for Democrat/Obama high crimes and misdemeanors?

There is a deep cynicism even in California that "no one gets punished" for anything any more, unless you are unlucky enough to be a law abiding, responsible person. Everyone else gets a free ride and a double standard of justice - and it is causing a lot of anger out here. "Law and order" is a building hunger our west.

Christie , 09 September 2020 at 05:00 PM

I hope Larry or someone on this forum can discuss this new Mondoweiss piece, pertaining mostly to the G2, Flynn, and Steele material:

https://mondoweiss.net/2020/09/israel-is-cited-often-in-senate-report-as-link-to-russian-interference-but-our-media-ignore-the-connection/

Various independent media journalists covered the 'favor' Flynn did for Israel, but not the MSM.

This Lee Smith piece may have been discussed here before, but if not, comments would be welcome on that as well.

"How Russiagate Began with Obama's Iran Deal Domestic Spying Campaign",

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/russiagate-obama-iran

nbsp; Bill H , 09 September 2020 at 05:48 PM

Where is the Durham Report? Hahaha. We've had the Durham Report. One small fish indicted. That's it. Were you really expecting more?

I said when the "investigation" was first made public that it was a red herring, a tool to keep us from making noise because we would be pinning our hopes on this "report" that would make everything wonderful. I said then that it would never be anything but a pacifier dangling in front of our noses, like a carrot keeping a donkey dragging the cart along.

nbsp; akaPatience , 09 September 2020 at 06:08 PM

Correction: I meant to say I DON'T doubt the MSM's characterization of Cohen's insight is exaggerated.

Back to the main topic: I wonder if, as in the FBI anti-Trump efforts, there's any damning CIA electronic evidence like texts or emails?

Deap , 10 September 2020 at 12:22 AM

This article came out in May 2020 - essentially why did Obama want to frame Flynn?

It was Iran-gate; not Russia-Gate that drove the Obama spying and the Russia-gate cover-up, according to this author.. Was this the motivation for the Trump Task Force in your post- to spy on Team Trump to learn if they were going to undo Obama's Iran "legacy", particularly since Flynn was advising them? https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/russiagate-obama-iran

The Flynn Spygate unraveling is far more credible as Iran-gate, and ties up many of the very loose ends, much better than the Russia-gate nonsense. If this is the more credible explanation of Obama's Spygate, what happened after this article was published several months ago in May, during the height of the "pandemic". Has this theory been debunked?

And is its current article re-circulation right now tying Obama to Iran-gate spying the reason Adam Schiff, out of no where, is back to screaming Russia-gate yet again?

And everyone else on the left is back to screaming high crimes, misdemeanors and impeachment ......yet again. Gheesh - long and complicates article but it did gel for me. Including explaining the always mysterious role played by Samatha Powers, the Queen of US Unmaskers.

Still waiting to hear more about Obama's Ambassador to that tiny Italian enclave San Marino, that got in his licks unmasking Flynn too. Who was he fronting at the time. And why San Marino?

Deap , 10 September 2020 at 12:52 AM

Connecting the dots - Obama's San Marino Ambassador unmasks Micheal Flynn

The Atlantic Media Company, parent company of the Atlantic Magazine the wife of Obama's former US Ambassador to Italy - Linda Douglass -, who himself had been curiously caught up among the many 11th hour unmaskings of Gen Flynn. For as yet undisclosed reasons.

Atlantic Magazine, part of the Atlantic Media Group, now partly owned by Steve Job's very wealthy widow Laurane Jobs and rabid anti-Trumper, is taking great delight dropping bogus bombs against Trump, that can't even last for a 24 hour credibility cycle. With the promise of many more to come.

Will Linda Douglass be delving into her husband and San Marino Ambassador's great treasure trove of Obama era unmaskings to provide these daily TDS hit pieces? A classified no-no. Or just continue to make stuff up.

Or does this recent leftist media hit piece frenzy mean Russia-gate, Iran-gate and/or Obama Spy-gate is finally going to be broken open?

Such a small, small world. Why was Obama's Ambassador to San Marino unmasking Micheal Flynn? And his wife just happens to now work for the Atlantic Magazine.

j. casey , 10 September 2020 at 10:51 AM

Mr. Johnson:

May I suggest an article updating the recent moves in the Flynn case? Looks like the prosecution is playing to time?

Thanks.

nbsp; Jimmy_W , 10 September 2020 at 12:25 PM

Deap,
Iran-Gate might be the motivating, proximate cause for Obama to approve the overall "counterintelligence" mission. With Russia-Gate the legal cover / excuse. For Brennan / Comey / et al, however, it does not seem like the personal reason for their involvement. The Trump anti-Borg inclinations is probably what motivated the Borg to go after him.

Artemesia , 10 September 2020 at 02:28 PM

Deap, my initial reaction to your mention of an Italian connection was to point to Michael Ledeen, Flynn's co-author and, apparently, consultant - colleague.

Ledeen is known for his Italian connections -- he is thought to have been responsible for the yellow-cake fabrication that pushed along Iraq war.

But the SanMarino connection appears to be on the other side of the ledger that Ledeen inhabits -- tho one should put nothing past that crafty warmonger.

https://militarist-monitor.org/profile/michael-ledeen/

"Iran has long been Ledeen's bête noir, arguing that .the country has been heavily involved in supporting attacks against U.S. forces in hotspots across the globe.[9] "No matter how well we do, no matter how many high-level targets we eliminate, no matter how many cities, towns, and villages we secure, unless we defeat Iran we will always be designing yet another counterinsurgency strategy in yet another place. We are in a big war, and Iran is at the heart of the enemy army." '

If Flynn's anti-Iran sentiments are as unhinged as Ledeen's, then I have little sympathy for his troubles, even though it appears that Ledeen's view prevailed in the Trump administration. Flynn: twice back-stabbed.

I followed John Kerry's and Wendy Sherman's negotiations carefully; I listened to hours and hours of the Congressional debates over the deal -- not a treaty, the debates seemed a sop to Congress; I listened as Iranian representatives (Mousavian, iirc) explained that the Deal was not good for Iran and most Iranians understood that, but that Iranians would go along to show good faith; because they were backed into a corner; and because of the belief that an Iran that was engaged in robust trade with Europeans & others would "come in from the terror cold." I was at American University when Obama announced that the JCPOA was affirmed.

From an "America First" perspective I endorse(d) Obama's vision, as the Forward article explained it:

"[JCPOA} was his instrument to secure an even more ambitious objective -- to reorder the strategic architecture of the Middle East.

Obama did not hide his larger goal. He told a biographer, New Yorker editor David Remnick, that he was establishing a geopolitical equilibrium "between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran." According to The Washington Post's David Ignatius, another writer Obama used as a public messaging instrument, realignment was a "great strategic opportunity" for a "a new regional framework that accommodates the security needs of Iranians, Saudis, Israelis, Russians and Americans."

The catch to Obama's newly inclusive "balancing" framework was that upgrading relations with Iran would necessarily come at the expense of traditional partners targeted by Iran -- like Saudi Arabia and, most importantly, Israel. Obama never said that part out loud, but the logic isn't hard to follow: Elevating your enemy to the same level as your ally means that your enemy is no longer your enemy, and your ally is no longer your ally."

From my America First pov, "rebalancing" USA relations such that Israel -- not a formal ally and never a trustworthy informal ally (ask survivors of USS Liberty), and other states in MidEast all held positions on a more level playing field in the eyes of American foreign policy, is appealing.

The Forward article failed to mention Ledeen, but it was, unsurprisingly, unapologetically pro-Israel and from a decidedly Jewish perspective.


The Forward's tone and underlying assumptions were and are offensive to me.


Keith Harbaugh , 10 September 2020 at 05:28 PM

Regarding the statement
"The Task Force members were handpicked instead of following the normal procedure of posting the job.
Instead of opening the job to all eligible CIA personnel, only a select group of people were invited specifically to join up."
Two questions naturally arise:
Who was doing the selection, and
was the politics of the candidates a factor, perhaps a very big factor, in the selection process?

For another case where "the right people" were requested by a political officer, consider this:
Flynn Docket #231 (dated 2020-06-24), Strzok's Notes, quotes "P" saying:
"Make sure you look at this [matters dealing with Flynn] - have the right people on it".
This was also mentioned in a Senate floor speech by Chuck Grassley:
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-flynn-investigation-what-did-obama-and-biden-know-and-when-did-they-know

"Right" to whom, and by what criteria?
Did the FBI director not know this was an important matter, which required the best investigators?
In any case, we can see who was put on it, such Trump-haters as Strzok, Page, and Clinesmith.
Just Trump's bad luck, or something more deliberate?

Deap , 10 September 2020 at 06:20 PM

Artemesia, thanks for your insights.

There was not really an "Italian" connection in the Iran-gate piece bur rather the curiosity why Obama's Italian ambassdor had interests in unmasking Michael Flynn, since his name showed up on the odd list of Obama persons who did unmask Flynn.

His name being there - Ambassador Phillips - may have been there due to his other Obama connections, or his wife Linda Douglass' Obama connections. Or his wife's current connection to the tabloid Atlantic Magazine.

Not really anything Italian per se, or even wee San Marino. Other than perhaps a mutual veneration for things Machiavellian-as this unfolding story twists and turns..

[Sep 11, 2020] Funny how "new normals" are rushing at us .9-11 was the new normal only 19 years ago, and 19 years later going on 20, a new "new normal" is upon us.

Sep 11, 2020 | www.unz.com

Priss Factor , says: Website Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 4:09 am GMT

911 Truth for Grown ups

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7B7Tn2T5VDk?feature=oembed

omegabooks , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 4:44 am GMT

Funny how "new normals" are rushing at us .9-11 was the new normal only 19 years ago, and 19 years later going on 20, a new "new normal" is upon us. The next "new normal" will only be a few years away, 9 at the most Agenda 2030 and all that. By then, AI-enhanced RNA/DNA altered "new humanity" will be upon us, and anyone not in this new "new normal" will be outcast, shunned, shamed, and unemployed and if retired will not be able to get their SS and MC.

I don't care, screw the Great Reset!

Ralph B. Seymour , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 4:50 am GMT

"As it stands, there's only one thing we do know: the establishment at the core of the Hegemon and the drooling orcs of Empire will only adopt a Great Reset if that helps to postpone a decline accelerated on a fateful morning 19 years ago."

What?

I thought Covid 19 was a tool that the establishment is using to spark a Reset. And that Agenda 21 is part of a Reset.

So why would the establishment object to a "decline"?

Pft , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 5:12 am GMT

9/11 was just the first operation of the 21st century designed to accelerate the disintegration of society and economy to achieve Agenda 21 . It was actually a continuation of the 1975 TLC Project Democracy (sardonically named) that was kicked off by the Carter administration in 1977 and went into warp speed under Reagan/Bush. Its continued ever since but is picking up speed with the agreement of Agenda 21 in the 90's and its update Agenda 2030 in 2015. 2020 is the start of the final phase which will accomplish all of the Sustainable Development Goals of Agenda 2030, which is basically means total control over every individual and all resources.

Its pretty much been an Open Conspiracy. Those who refused to question 9/11 will double up on their blue pills to deny the Plandemic and expect a return to normal, dooming their descendants to a life of serfdom should they be lucky enough to avoid the culling.

The new Normal will make some dystopian films seem like utopia. Watch some old movies and TV series to remind you of old normal. They wont be available much longer unless you have the DVD or VHS and a machines to play it. The tapes and discs age so don't last forever. Books will last longer but those with digital collections will one day fund them disappeared

Miro23 , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 5:26 am GMT

The beating heart of this matrix is – what else – the Strategic Intelligence Platform, encompassing, literally, everything: "sustainable development", "global governance", capital markets, climate change, biodiversity, human rights, gender parity, LGBTI, systemic racism, international trade and investment, the – wobbly – future of the travel and tourism industries, food, air pollution, digital identity, blockchain, 5G, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI).

Since the US is a global has-been with most of its industry gone and living on debt – it's probably useful for it to claim leadership of a "Strategic Intelligence Platform". It can bury US problems internationally (same as it did with the dollar reserve) but in a more comprehensive way than simple Globalization (only economic). If the USA NWO claims international leadership of everything on all fronts, then they become the arbiters (in their opinion) of everything everywhere on the grounds of a higher morality.

It actually looks more like the folie de grandeur of a old alcoholic than the foundation of a new religion – and not something to pay attention to – apart from the fact that he tends to get violent with anyone who disagrees.

Intelligent Dasein , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 5:41 am GMT

Regarding your 50 questions, the fact that German and Russian intelligent warned the FBI about an imminent Muslim terrorist attack is not compatible with the idea that there was a controlled demolition.

Majority of One , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 5:46 am GMT

Ah yes, the Beast reveals itself as a sensurround global hamster cage with a plethora of control mechanisms hardwired through emergent software memes in celebration of the planned future of total abstraction. Abstract reality. The hubris of the plutocratic, oligarchic and technocratic elites is of a Promethean orgasm of trans humanistic values systematically gorging itself on their perceived future of an enserfed humanity comprised of those who will compromise truth, honor, justice, beauty and love–all in the service of mammon.

Not only is human nature to be subsumed to a mechanistic mindset gone ballistic in the visions of absolute domination, but the ongoing assault on the natural world will be a by-product of this Re-set. Stated simply, these schemers are playing God and have assembled the tool-kit, which in their minds, will allow for no compromise, no mistakes. These people are either spiritually vacuous or are imbued with an evil that totally negates a natural order which is cosmic and universal in scope. Ultimately their dreams and schemes will implode like the legendary Tower of Babel. Creation is not about to be undone by those who have convinced themselves that they can control everything.

Mother Nature is not a mere lump of matter. She is a sentient being who is cosmically connected and connective. Consider the storms, the blizzards, the fires and the systematic destruction of our very atmospheres, to say nothing of oceanic life in all its magnificent manifestations. Mama is not in a good mood and when she has had all she can take ..

R.C. , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 5:59 am GMT

"Strategic Intelligence Platform" should be renamed something like "s Strategic Intelligence Millennial Platform" (SIMP)
R.C.

TheTrumanShow , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 7:37 am GMT
@Intelligent Dasein

" the fact that German and Russian intelligent (sic) warned the FBI about an imminent Muslim terrorist attack is not compatible with the idea that there was a controlled demolition."

How so? The US architects of a controlled demolition could have quite easily created fake "chatter" and fake "intelligence" about an imminent Muslim terrorist attack.

Thomasina , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 8:15 am GMT
@Intelligent Dasein be found on Youtube titled "Former NIST Employee Speaks Out On World Trade Centre Towers Collapse Investigation". It's 31 minutes long, but he says the following at approximately 18 minutes in:

"Look at the symmetry. These buildings come straight down, or almost straight down.

Asymmetric damage does not lead to symmetric collapse. It's very difficult to get something to collapse symmetrically because it is the Law of Physics that things tend towards chaos. Collapsing symmetrically represents order, very strict order.

It is not the nature of physics to gravitate towards order for no reason. It will gravitate towards chaos. It is very difficult to get a building to collapse symmetrically."

dimples , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 8:25 am GMT

I can't make any sense out of this article. It reads like a lot of stock sentences jumbled together by a computer program.

Nancy Pelosi's Latina Maid , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 8:35 am GMT
@PetrOldSack actor/author, how could he be, our cherished "thinkers" are as few and making up as they go, seconded by the crude second tier public domain politicians, the corporate mongers, them being even less prone to visionary skill. This "thing" can go wrong in all kinds of ways, but real it is, and some derivative globally altered reality is there to stay. Brusquely, genuinely."


The Atlantic
tells us that "Overall, bots are responsible for 52 percent of web traffic" and I think we're looking at Exhibit A.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/bots-bots-bots/515043/

skrik , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 8:48 am GMT
@Intelligent Dasein

an imminent Muslim terrorist attack is not compatible with the idea that there was a controlled demolition

Q: Why not? In fact, just as the 3 WTC towers were pre-loaded with explosives, so the alleged hijacker-piloted a/cs and resulting photogenic explosions were pre-planned 'Hollywood special effects' as critical components. How else to convince the insouciant punters, except with a well-scripted and executed 'whiz-bang?' Then, see the reports of putative Muslim hijackers doing dope and/or booze with lap-dancing bar-girls beforehand. You do yourself a disservice by denying *humongously obvious* controlled demolition. Tip: Try not to be silly.

EL PMIS , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 8:52 am GMT

To unravel the enigma i wonder if one does not need to go completely eurocentric.
1848 unraveling the empires or at last a planting of the seeds.

1948 the new_world order is established. With its counterpart in the east. Essentially a ynraveling of 1848 which was a crystallisation of the 30 year was and the peace of westphalia. Neither established empire being a nation while a very different nationbuiling started in europe compared to the pre-great war.

2048, no doubt some kind of replacing the new_world order with a new world_order.
One way or anothr to serve europes plutocrats. And with an eye on unraveling the previous 1948 situation. Soviets are gone, so now the disunited states of america has to go and be reduced to a new balkans.
Perhaps sweeping away europe too this time. Arabobantustan unable to sustain a developed economy certainly is on the timeline for europe.

Now. Regardless of whether the ghost of Herr Weishaupt is hanging around, the timeline is awfully useful for anyone like the anglozionist cabal of assorted late 1800s multimillionaires and their respective business empires cross inheritances into socalled NGOs. The names being quite well known like rockefeller, carnegie, rhodes etc.

Then again maybe no one really knows what they are doing anymore and there is no plan at all, just many very confused very badly planned plans. And all that will ensue is chaos and destruction and no order afterwards worthy of the name. 150 years of pisspoor mismanagement tends to have such consequences.

Alfred , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 9:34 am GMT
@Robert White billion from its Term Securities Lending Facility. It wasn't until May 31, 2008, when JPMorgan Chase closed its deal with Bear Stearns. However, the GAO reported that Bear Stearns "was consistently the largest PDCF borrower until June 2008." The Fed shows that Bear Stearns continued to receive funds until June 23, 2008.

Did the Fed Begin Secret Bailouts in 2007 Before Anyone Knew of the Pending Crisis? | Armstrong Economics

gotmituns , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 9:49 am GMT

9/11 – inside job – implosion.

Timur The Lame , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 10:05 am GMT

This article pretty much sums it up as best as I can understand. I had often stated to people of similar mind to watch for the next major 'move' after 9/11, it will be a dandy because with possibly a few white knuckle moments, the Masters will have concluded that they can get away with ANYTHING, internet or no. Truth simply fails to get traction in the minds of the majority of 'screen zombies' and the majority is all they ever needed.

Now where things might get really scary is if/when they decide to implement the great cull. From a dispassionate perspective, it is something they simply have to do. In 1950 the world population was about 2 billion. Now it is about 8 billion. If a population graph was drawn from say, 50,000 years ago it would be long and flat and then it would shoot up near vertically at the end.

The problem now of course is that with technology and agricultural machinery of all sorts the system doesn't even require the population of 1950. I recall one Master being on record as mentioning 500 million as being ideal. That is somewhat more than a cull.

Some fools say that a war is imminent for that express purpose. Sorry wars (even nuclear, which would affect the Masters too), won't result in the butcher's bill required. Only a global pandemic could conceivably attain the goal and like a neutron bomb, leave the infrastructure intact.

But this Covid is a hoax you say. Probably so, but what about this proverbial 'second wave' that is repeated like a Hare Krishna mantra everywhere. What if they released a REAL nasty virus (which we know they have somewhere) that has a proven vaccine for the 1% and then let the fun begin knowing full well that they would not be fingered for it because a pandemic is already on the move?

If it doesn't happen this fall then I may be wrong in my speculation. I always hope to be wrong when dealing with topics of unfathomable evil.

Cheers-

Liza , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 10:18 am GMT
@Majority of One

Mama is not in a good mood and when she has had all she can take ..

Or, as some folks like to say, "God is mad". But it's all the same thing. Maybe the schemers should be forced to read The Fisherman's Wife. However, they probably won't have any little hovel to go back to.

Robjil , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 10:51 am GMT
@skrik neither eyewitness testimony nor a visual documentation of the boarding process.

19 hijackers myth taken as " fact" by the 9/11 Commission. Any contradictions of this myth were ignored by this Commission.

•By ignoring the numerous and glaring contradictions regarding the identities of the alleged hijackers, the 9/11 Commission manifested its intent to maintain the official myth of 19 Muslim terrorists.

•By refusing to allow interviews with personnel who were responsible for passengers boarding the four aircraft of 9/11, the airlines manifested their intent to conceal evidence about the circumstances of the aircraft boarding.

Svevlad , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 11:30 am GMT

Sooo

Torch the power plants, you say?

Abdul Alhazred , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 11:38 am GMT

When 9/11 occurred my immediate thoughts went back to an January 2001 when Lyndon LaRouche warned that if John Ashcroft were to become Attorney General that then one could look forward to a new Reichstag fire type situation occurring within the context of the fact that the world financial system was finished and that the financial oligarchy was prepared to throw over the chess board so to speak.

LaRouche was right and because his understanding of history was correct as it is based upon a method of hypothesis that had already demonstrated the trajectories of economic collapse and attendant political operations long before, with an understanding of how to get out of the mess as demonstrated in history, particularly the Renaissance.

Of note here is a recent article of interest, which helps tell why LaRouche is hated!

https://larouchepac.com/20200908/antifa-back-future-1967-68-counterintelligence-primer-further-investigation-and-action

Hank Rearden678 , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 11:58 am GMT

This is a very interesting, all encompassing article, well done indeed. For a simpler and perhaps more digestible and more narrowly focused look at the SARS-Cov2 issue specifically, this is a worthwhile video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQE7S6c-SCk&t=50s

Alfred , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 12:16 pm GMT
@gotmituns

9/11 – inside job – implosion.

Lots of micro nukes. Plenty of distractions from alleged "conspiracy theorists" in the pay of you know who.

The nanothermite theory was a psyop from the beginning to hide the nuclear event at the towers.

Startling: The Story of the 9/11 Breath-though that Solved it all and debunked the 'truthers' forever

annamaria , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 12:21 pm GMT
@PetrOldSack ght in wars or participated in other combat operations in at least 24 countries. The destruction inflicted by warfare in these countries has been incalculable for civilians and combatants Between 2010 and 2019, the total number of refugees and IDPs globally has nearly doubled from 41 million to 79.5 million .

These babies-loving American X-tians and other Samantha Powers and Obamas, have arranged quite a spectacular mass slaughter of children of all ages to please the "deciders" (Masters of the Universe).
None of the murderous idiots has been punished, yet Assange the truthteller is in a high-security prison Belmarsh, handled by the same murderous scum. Kali , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 12:24 pm GMT

@PetrOldSack

My annotations are incomplete, but a mere "what comes to mind".

I would be interested to read them complete.
I appreciate your comment.

Thanks.

With love,
Kali.

Kali , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 12:53 pm GMT
@Majority of One eation is not about to be undone by those who have convinced themselves that they can control everything.

I couldn't agree more with this.

The intelligence of Existance Itself, the very Nature of Being is anathema to to those specs of dirt who would attempt to determine the will of God.

The same sentience which is manifest in Man is repeated and applified throughout all of existance. How could it be any other way when everything we experience is fractal? Just as God may be experience at the centre of our very Being, so the same God is observed within the All of Everything.

Thank you for your comment.

With love,
Kali. Johnny Walker Read , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 12:55 pm GMT

A great look into what is going on, and what is still to come. Yet the sleeping, brain dead, face diapered, mind controlled masses of the global corporation formerly known as he United States spend every waking hour saying "hooray for our guy". Never once does it occur to the sheeple both are puppets, controlled by the international banksters and their minions.

One of these morons has undeniable ties to the Russian mob, while the other has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party. If that weren't bad enough, they both swear undying loyalty to that little shit stain in the Middle East which seems to project more influence on world politics than the two formerly mentioned giants.

I know it is no accident the printing of this article occurred on the anniversary date of the last, greatest mind fuck to hit America since Dec. 7th, 1941. I guess the infidels have been shown a lesson and the world is now safe for a one world government technocratic Corporatocracy.

So here's to 3/11/2020(my official date for the roll out of the CV hoax), the ushering in of a new slave system, and the idiocy and gullibility of the global citizenry.

So enjoy your new bosses, as they are going to be far more tyrannical than your old.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Un5oEdfrm_A?feature=oembed

skrik , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 1:01 pm GMT
@Robjil ry:'
[I see that the 1st image is not visible, kindly try this link:
alleged 'recovered' flight recorder ]
Q: How soft was that ground, anyway? Does anyone 'believe' that part of the official 9/11 narrative? Haw. Only the 'insouciant punters' were ever hoodwinked by such offensive, lying rubbish, all faithfully echoed by the 'lame-stream media.' rgds
ploni almoni , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 1:04 pm GMT
@Intelligent Dasein

Condoleeza Rice resisting at Congressional enquiry "N-o-o-o" and then admitting in a faint there was an "intelligence report" that said said "Ben Laden planning to use airplanes in terrorist attack" was play acting to confirm what they wanted people to believe. You will remember that you were taught to prepare in advance "red herrings" and leave deliberate confusions behind you to cover your trail.

Johnny Walker Read , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 1:18 pm GMT
@Majority of One

Here's hoping you're right, but I must say I have my doubts.

Getaclue , says: Next New Comment September 11, 2020 at 1:29 pm GMT
@Robert White traitors and infiltrated enemies not by any brilliance of the vicious Chinese Communist mass murderers -- if you like the idea of taking a van ride for expressing your anti-Government thoughts you'll love the ChiCom "Model" being installed here now on all of us -- Ron Unz would be one of the first for the van ride if he tried to run a site like this in China by the way -- there is zero disputing this fact. David Rockefeller gave us the CFR, Trilateral Commission etc. and of course the WHO and: https://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/the-true-agenda-of-the-who-a-new-world-order-modeled-after-china/
skrik , says: September 11, 2020 at 1:45 pm GMT
@Alfred Haw. Or was that suppressed as well, along with the bulk-wreckage [=crime-scene evidence] which was destroyed by being exported as scrap? Haw again.

Nitty-gritty: There is no need to posit any 'exotics,' from nukes to DEW; standard explosives [both with OR without thermite/mate; only the 'best' tools = most suitable would have been deployed]; standard explosives could quite easily do the job, for example det-cord threaded into the floor-slab conduits can fully explain both the absence of floor in the rubble plus the billowing pyroclastic white dust-clouds [incidentally, explaining scorched vehicles]. And so it goes. A term for such reasoning = Occam's razor.

[Sep 10, 2020] Is BLM the Mask behind which the Oligarchs Operate, by Mike Whitney

Highly recommended!
In short black people are used as pawns in the political struggle between two neoliberal clans fighting for power, using students without perspectives of gaining meaningful employment as a ram. We saw this picture before in a different country. And riots do reverse gains achieved in civil right struggle since 1960th, so they are also net losers. Racial tensions in the USA definitely increased dramatically.
Notable quotes:
"... Bottom line: "Critical Race Theory", "The 1619 Project", and Homeland Security's "White Supremacist" warning represent the ideological foundation upon which the war on America is based. The "anti-white" dogma is the counterpart to the massive riots that have rocked the country. These phenomena are two spokes on the same wheel. They are designed to work together to achieve the same purpose. The goal is create a "racial" smokescreen that conceals the vast and willful destruction of the US economy, the $5 trillion dollar wealth-transfer that was provided to Wall Street, and the ferocious attack on the emerging, mainly-white working class "populist" movement that elected Trump and which rejects the globalist plan to transform the world into a borderless free trade zone ruled by cutthroat monopolists and their NWO allies. ..."
"... This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look beyond the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows. There lies the cancer that must be eradicated. ..."
"... The current situation cannot exist without the complicity of the secret services and the police. The heads of the secret services are either part of the cabal or close their eyes in fear ..."
"... There can be no single oligarch. It must be a larger group but very united by fear and a common goal. This can only be achieved if they are all Jews or Masons. Or both under a larger umbrella like some kind of pedo-ritual killing-satan worshiper. Soros can't do it alone. ..."
"... Of course politicians are corrupt and complicit but usually they are not the leaders ..."
Sep 08, 2020 | www.unz.com
MIKE WHITNEY 2,100 WORDS 165 COMMENTS REPLY

Here's your BLM Pop Quiz for the day: What do "Critical Race Theory", "The 1619 Project", and Homeland Security's "White Supremacist" warning tell us about what's going on in America today?

They point to deeply-embedded racism that shapes the behavior of white people They suggest that systemic racism cannot be overcome by merely changing attitudes and laws They alert us to the fact that unresolved issues are pushing the country towards a destructive race war They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are inciting racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to office in 2016 and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to transform America into a tyrannical third-world "shithole".

Which of these four statements best explains what's going on in America today?

If you chose Number 4, you are right. We are not experiencing a sudden and explosive outbreak of racial violence and mayhem. We are experiencing a thoroughly-planned, insurgency-type operation that involves myriad logistical components including vast, nationwide riots, looting and arson, as well as an extremely impressive ideological campaign. "Critical Race Theory", "The 1619 Project", and Homeland Security's "White Supremacist" warning are as much a part of the Oligarchic war on America as are the burning of our cities and the toppling of our statues. All three, fall under the heading of "ideology", and all three are being used to shape public attitudes on matters related to our collective identity as "Americans".

The plan is to overwhelm the population with a deluge of disinformation about their history, their founders, and the threats they face, so they will submissively accept a New Order imposed by technocrats and their political lackeys. This psychological war is perhaps more important than Operation BLM which merely provides the muscle for implementing the transformative "Reset" that elites want to impose on the country. The real challenge is to change the hearts and minds of a population that is unwaveringly patriotic and violently resistant to any subversive element that threatens to do harm to their country. So, while we can expect this propaganda saturation campaign to continue for the foreseeable future, we don't expect the strategy will ultimately succeed. At the end of the day, America will still be America, unbroken, unflagging and unapologetic.

Let's look more carefully at what is going on.

On September 4, the Department of Homeland Security issued a draft report stating that "White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States". According to an article in Politico:

" all three draft (versions of the document) describe the threat from white supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S. , listed above the immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups . John Cohen, who oversaw DHS's counterterrorism portfolio from 2011 to 2014, said the drafts' conclusion isn't surprising.

"This draft document seems to be consistent with earlier intelligence reports from DHS, the FBI, and other law enforcement sources: that the most significant terror-related threat facing the US today comes from violent extremists who are motivated by white supremac y and other far-right ideological causes," he said .

"Lone offenders and small cells of individuals motivated by a diverse array of social, ideological, and personal factors will pose the primary terrorist threat to the United States," the draft reads. "Among these groups, we assess that white supremacist extremists will pose the most persistent and lethal threat."..(" DHS draft document: White supremacists are greatest terror threat " Politico)

This is nonsense. White supremacists do not pose the greatest danger to the country, that designation goes to the left-wing groups that have rampaged through more than 2,000 US cities for the last 100 days. Black Lives Matter and Antifa-generated riots have decimated hundreds of small businesses, destroyed the lives and livelihoods of thousands of merchants and their employees, and left entire cities in a shambles. The destruction in Kenosha alone far exceeds the damage attributable to the activities of all the white supremacist groups combined.

So why has Homeland Security made this ridiculous and unsupportable claim? Why have they chosen to prioritize white supremacists as "the most persistent and lethal threat" when it is clearly not true?

There's only one answer: Politics.

The officials who concocted this scam are advancing the agenda of their real bosses, the oligarch puppet-masters who have their tentacles extended throughout the deep-state and use them to coerce their lackey bureaucrats to do their bidding. In this case, the honchos are invoking the race card ("white supremacists") to divert attention from their sinister destabilization program, their looting of the US Treasury (for their crooked Wall Street friends), their demonizing of the mostly-white working class "America First" nationalists who handed Trump the 2016 election, and their scurrilous scheme to establish one-party rule by installing their addlepated meat-puppet candidate (Biden) as president so he can carry out their directives from the comfort of the Oval Office. That's what's really going on.

DHS's announcement makes it possible for state agents to target legally-armed Americans who gather with other gun owners in groups that are protected under the second amendment. Now the white supremacist label will be applied more haphazardly to these same conservatives who pose no danger to public safety. The draft document should be seen as a warning to anyone whose beliefs do not jibe with the New Liberal Orthodoxy that white people are inherently racists who must ask forgiveness for a system they had no hand in creating (slavery) and which was abolished more than 150 years ago.

The 1619 Project" is another part of the ideological war that is being waged against the American people. The objective of the "Project" is to convince readers that America was founded by heinous white men who subjugated blacks to increase their wealth and power. According to the World Socialist Web Site:

"The essays featured in the magazine are organized around the central premise that all of American history is rooted in race hatred -- specifically, the uncontrollable hatred of "black people" by "white people." Hannah-Jones writes in the series' introduction: "Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country. "

This is a false and dangerous conception. DNA is a chemical molecule that contains the genetic code of living organisms and determines their physical characteristics and development . Hannah-Jones's reference to DNA is part of a growing tendency to derive racial antagonisms from innate biological processes .where does this racism come from? It is embedded, claims Hannah-Jones, in the historical DNA of American "white people." Thus, it must persist independently of any change in political or economic conditions .

. No doubt, the authors of The Project 1619 essays would deny that they are predicting race war, let alone justifying fascism. But ideas have a logic; and authors bear responsibility for the political conclusions and consequences of their false and misguided arguments." ("The New York Times's 1619 Project: A racialist falsification of American and world history", World Socialist Web Site)

Clearly, Hannah-Jones was enlisted by big money patrons who needed an ideological foundation to justify the massive BLM riots they had already planned as part of their US color revolution. The author –perhaps unwittingly– provided the required text for vindicating widespread destruction and chaos carried out in the name of "social justice."

As Hannah-Jones says, "Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country", which is to say that it cannot be mitigated or reformed, only eradicated by destroying the symbols of white patriarchy (Our icons, our customs, our traditions and our history.), toppling the existing government, and imposing a new system that better reflects the values of the burgeoning non-Caucasian majority. Simply put, The Project 1619 creates the rationale for sustained civil unrest, deepening political polarization and violent revolution.

All of these goals conveniently coincide with the aims of the NWO Oligarchs who seek to replace America's Constitutional government with a corporate Superstate ruled by voracious Monopolists and their globalist allies. So, while Hannah-Jones treatise does nothing to improve conditions for black people in America, it does move the country closer to the dystopian dream of the parasite class; Corporate Valhalla.

Then there is "Critical Race Theory" which provides the ideological icing on the cake. The theory is part of the broader canon of anti-white dogma which is being used to indoctrinate workers. White employees are being subjected to "reeducation" programs that require their participation as a precondition for further employment . The first rebellion against critical race theory, took place at Sandia Labs which is a federally-funded research agency that designs America's nuclear weapons. According to journalist Christopher F. Rufo:

"Senator @HawleyMO and @SecBrouillette have launched an inspector general investigation, but Sandia executives have only accelerated their purge against conservatives."

Sandia executives have made it clear: they want to force critical race theory, race-segregated trainings, and white male reeducation camps on their employees -- and all dissent will be severely punished. Progressive employees will be rewarded; conservative employees will be purged." (" There is a civil war erupting at @SandiaLabs ." Christopher F Rufo)

It all sounds so Bolshevik. Here's more info on how this toxic indoctrination program works:

"Treasury Department

The Treasury Department held a training session telling employees that "virtually all White people contribute to racism" and demanding that white staff members "struggle to own their racism" and accept their "unconscious bias, White privilege, and White fragility."

The National Credit Union Administration

The NCUA held a session for 8,900 employees arguing that America was "founded on racism" and "built on the blacks of people who were enslaved. " Twitter thread here and original source documents here .

Sandia National Laboratories

Last year, Sandia National Labs -- which produces our nuclear arsenal -- held a three-day reeducation camp for white males, teaching them how to deconstruct their "white male culture" and forcing them to write letters of apology to women and people of color . Whistleblowers from inside the labs tell me that critical race theory is now endangering our national security. Twitter thread here and original source documents here .

Argonne National Laboratories

Argonne National Labs hosts trainings calling on white lab employees to admit that they "benefit from racism" and atone for the "pain and anguish inflicted upon Black people. " Twitter thread here .

Department of Homeland Security

The Department of Homeland Security hosted a Training on "microaggressions, microinequities, and microassaults" where white employees were told that they had been "socialized into oppressor roles. " Twitter thread here and original source documents here ." (" Summary of Critical Race Theory Investigations" , Christopher F Rufo)

On September 4, Donald Trump announced his administration "would prohibit federal agencies from subjecting government employees to "critical race theory" or "white privilege" seminar. ..

"It has come to the President's attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date 'training' government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda ," read a Friday memo from the Office of Budget and Management Director Russ Vought. "These types of 'trainings' not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce The President has directed me to ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions."

The next day, September 5, Trump announced that the Department of Education was going to see whether the New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project was being used in school curricula and– if it was– then those schools would be ineligible for federal funding. Conservative pundits applauded Trump's action as a step forward in the "culture wars", but it's really much more than that. Trump is actually foiling an effort by the domestic saboteurs who continue look for ways to undermine democracy, reduce the masses of working-class people to grinding poverty and hopelessness, and turn the country into a despotic military outpost ruled by bloodsucking tycoons, mercenary autocrats and duplicitous elites. Alot of thought and effort went into this malign ideological project. Trump derailed it with a wave of the hand. That's no small achievement.

Bottom line: "Critical Race Theory", "The 1619 Project", and Homeland Security's "White Supremacist" warning represent the ideological foundation upon which the war on America is based. The "anti-white" dogma is the counterpart to the massive riots that have rocked the country. These phenomena are two spokes on the same wheel. They are designed to work together to achieve the same purpose. The goal is create a "racial" smokescreen that conceals the vast and willful destruction of the US economy, the $5 trillion dollar wealth-transfer that was provided to Wall Street, and the ferocious attack on the emerging, mainly-white working class "populist" movement that elected Trump and which rejects the globalist plan to transform the world into a borderless free trade zone ruled by cutthroat monopolists and their NWO allies.

This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look beyond the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows. There lies the cancer that must be eradicated.


Verymuchalive , says: September 8, 2020 at 2:47 pm GMT

A good article, but no mention of who exactly these oligarchs are. Or why so many of them are Jewish.
Or why so many Zionist organisations support BLM and other such groups.
Mike, not mentioning these things will not save you. You will still be cancelled by Progressive Inc.

Justvisiting , says: September 9, 2020 at 3:08 am GMT
@lloyd

This "all whites are racist" meme seems to be a variation on the Christian doctrine of "original sin".

I reject all of it as obscene nonsense used by sociopaths (the actual folks who were born with original sin) in an attempt to control us.

exiled off mainstreet , says: September 9, 2020 at 3:23 am GMT

This seems like a good explanation of what is happening. I wonder whether too many people will fall for the propaganda, though. It is the classic effort to get the turkeys to support thanksgiving.

sonofman , says: September 9, 2020 at 3:26 am GMT

The deserved progress and concessions achieved by the civil rights struggles for the Black community is in danger of deteriorating because Black leadership will not stand up and vehemently condemn the rioting and destruction and killing, and declare that the BLM movement does not represent the majority of the Black American culture and that the overexaggerated accusations of "racism" do not necessitate the eradication and revision of history, nor does it require European Americans to feel guilt or shame. There is no need for a cultural revolution. The ideology and actions of BLM are offensive and inconsistent with American values, and Black leaders should be saying this every day, and should be admonishing about the consequences. They should also use foresight to see how this is going to end, because the BLM and their supporters are being used to fight a war that they can never win. And when it's over, what perception will the rest of America have of Black people?

TG , says: September 9, 2020 at 4:13 am GMT

"This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war."

Quadruple kudos! Yes! Because of this ending statement, I have no quibbles! Yes!

Redman , says: September 9, 2020 at 4:40 am GMT
@sonofman g to TPTB. Better to have an amorphous slogan to donate money to than an actual organization with humans, goals and ideas which can be held up to the light and critically examined.

The whole sudden race thing is a fraud to eliminate the electoral support Trump had amassed among blacks before Corona and Fentanyl Floyd. In line with what Whitney says, the globalists need to take down Trump. And the race card has always been the first tool in the DNC's toolkit. When all else fails, go nuclear with undefined claims of racism.

Almost every big magazine has a black person on the cover this month. Probably will in October too. Coincidence? Sure it is.

TimeTraveller , says: September 9, 2020 at 4:52 am GMT

They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are inciting racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to office in 2016 and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to transform America into a tyrannical third-world "shithole".

I'm shocked that they're trying to sell this Q-tier bullshit about Trump fighting the deep state.

The reality about Trump is that he is the release valve, the red herring designed to keep whitey pacified while massive repossessions and foreclosures take place, permanently impoverishing a large part of the white population, and shutting down the Talmudic service-based economy, which is all that is really left. It is Trump's DHS that declared a large part of his white trashionalist base to be terrorists.

The populist majority never had anyone to vote for. This system will never give them one. They aren't bright enough to make it happen.

Tony Hall , says: September 9, 2020 at 5:14 am GMT
@sonofman

Agree. Barack Obama in particular will go down in history a real disgrace to the legacy of the US presidency. He is violating the sacred trust that the people of the United States invested in him. What a fraud!

omegabooks , says: September 9, 2020 at 5:23 am GMT

Good post Mr. Whitney especially about "white supremacy" garbage .which has only been going on since the 90s! You know, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Elohim City and Okie City, militias, "patriot groups," etc. This really is nothing new. And, since so many remember the "white supremacy" crapola was crapola back in the 90s, I'd say everyone pretty much regardless of race over the age of 40 knows there is, as it says in Ecclesiastes in the Bible, "there is nothing new under the sun." And, if you home schooled your kids back then, then you kids know it as well. Fact is this: the DHS as with every other govt. agency is forced to blame "white supremacy" for every problem in this country because who the heck else can they blame? Jews? Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahh when pigs fly After all, Noahide just might be around the corner ..

Dr. Doom , says: September 9, 2020 at 5:25 am GMT

BLM is funded almost entirely by George Soros...

No Friend Of The Devil , says: September 9, 2020 at 5:33 am GMT

BLM is just one of the tools in their bag, in addition to AIPAC, ADL, NOW, in addition to dozens of others.

Typical divide and conquer ploy...

Dube , says: September 9, 2020 at 5:35 am GMT
@TG

"This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war."

Elegant.

Mefobills , says: September 9, 2020 at 6:28 am GMT

Sheriffs have a lot of legal power. Ultimately, the battle is privatized money power vs Joe Citizen/Sheriffs.

This sheriff is working a Constitutional angle that says: Local Posse (meaning you.. Joe citizen) working with the Sheriff department to protect your local community. Richard Mack is teaching other Sheriffs and (some Police) what their Constitutional power is, and that power doesn't include doing bidding of Oligarchs.

Sheriffs are elected, and their revenue stream is outside of Oligarchy:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5DFtE4ihWrs?feature=oembed

Exalted Cyclops , says: September 9, 2020 at 6:31 am GMT

So Donald Trump suddenly discovers that racial Bolshevism is the official policy of his own executive branch – a mere 3 years and 8 months after assuming the position

... Looks like the same old flim-flam they pull every four years. No matter who wins, the Davos folks continue to run the circus and fleece the suckers dry.

Miro23 , says: September 9, 2020 at 6:37 am GMT

It all sounds so Bolshevik.

Because it is. Substitute "the ethnic Russian middle class are class enemies" for "Anglo-American are all racists" and there you have it. Permission for a small organized minority to eliminate a whole class on ideological grounds...

idealogus , says: Website September 9, 2020 at 6:48 am GMT

I live in a former communist country in Eastern Europe with corrupt politicians, oligarchs and organized crime.
America was a country with a minor corruption and in which the oligarchs, although influential, were not united in a small group with decisive force. Now America is slowly slipping into the situation of a second-hand shit-hole country.
Is that I can see the situation more clearly than an American citizen who still has the American perception of his contry the way it was 30 years ago.
Essential thing:
1) The current situation cannot exist without the complicity of the secret services and the police. The heads of the secret services are either part of the cabal or close their eyes in fear .
2) There can be no single oligarch. It must be a larger group but very united by fear and a common goal. This can only be achieved if they are all Jews or Masons. Or both under a larger umbrella like some kind of pedo-ritual killing-satan worshiper. Soros can't do it alone.
3) Of course politicians are corrupt and complicit but usually they are not the leaders
4) BLM are exactly the brown shirts of the new Hitler.
Soon we will se the new Hitler/Stalin/ in plain light.

Wally , says: September 9, 2020 at 6:59 am GMT
@Verymuchalive i>

Thirty black children murdered recently; zero by police / BLM & 'the media' say nothing:
https://www.outkick.com/blm-101-volume-7-the-lives-of-innocent-black-kids-do-not-matter/
BTW:
– Last year, the nationwide total for all US police forces was 47 killings of unarmed criminals by police during arrest procedures.
– 8 were black, 19 were white.
Though blacks, relative to their numbers, committed a vastly higher number of crimes, hence their immensely greater arrest rate.

animalogic , says: September 9, 2020 at 8:00 am GMT
@Justvisiting urally, it is nonsense -- nasty, power-hungry, censorious nonsense.
It is the opposite of scientific or empirical thought -- science can not accept theories which are not capable of falsification. (Take astrology -- actually, don't ! -- what ever conclusion it comes to can never be wrong : Dick or Jane didn't find love ? Well, one of Saturn's moons was retrograde & Mercury declensed Venus (I don't know what it means either) . or Dick went on a bender & Jane had a whole bad hair week.
Frankly, to play these pre-modern tricks on us is just grotesquely insulting. That some are falling for it is grotesquely depressing.
Digital Samizdat , says: September 9, 2020 at 9:58 am GMT

Another ringer from Mike Whitney! Keep 'em comin', brother.

We are not experiencing a sudden and explosive outbreak of racial violence and mayhem. We are experiencing a thoroughly-planned, insurgency-type operation that involves myriad logistical components including vast, nationwide riots, looting and arson, as well as an extremely impressive ideological campaign.

Yup. TPTB have been grooming BLM/Antifa for this moment for at least 3-4 years now, if not longer. Here's a former BLMer who quit speaking out three years ago about the organization's role in the present 'race war':

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ULJtBdI7Aj0?feature=oembed

Franz , says: September 9, 2020 at 10:43 am GMT

Honesty at last!

Department of Homeland Security was a ... Trojan Horse from the start.

Aristotle , says: September 9, 2020 at 12:06 pm GMT
@anonymous

It is very clever politics and (war) propaganda. You break down and demoralise your enemies at the same time as assuring your own side of it's own righteous use of violence.

SimplePseudonymicHandle , says: September 9, 2020 at 1:17 pm GMT

This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look beyond the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows.

Nailing it.

4. They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are inciting racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to office in 2016 and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to transform America into a tyrannical third-world "shithole".

Which of these four statements best explains what's going on in America today?

If you chose Number 4, you are right.

If we believe this – we need to act like it. These are "enemies, foreign and domestic ". This isn't ordinary politics, it arguably transcends politics.

What hope is there without organization?

And whatever is done – don't give them ammunition. The resistance must not be an ethno-resistance.

Ilya G Poimandres , says: September 9, 2020 at 2:42 pm GMT
@Mefobills

Trump is ignorant, but not unwilling to learn.

The action on critical race theory happened a day (or so) after Tucker Carlson had a 6 minute segment on it.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/rBXRdWflV7M?feature=oembed

He definitely doesn't dither.

But he is either naive or a bad manager, as his hires are deadly to his aims. And the management criticism is big, because as a leader that is mostly what he does.

That he gets information to affect US policy for good, from outside of his circle of trusted personnel, is a sad state of affairs.

Justvisiting , says: September 9, 2020 at 2:54 pm GMT
@idealogus class="comment-text">

America was a country with a minor corruption

That is not correct–you have been misled by the mass media.

As Michael said in Godfather III,

All my life I was trying to get up in society where everything is legal, but the higher I go the more crooked it becomes.

I first "saw the light" years ago after reading this book:

https://read.amazon.com/kp/card?preview=inline&linkCode=kpd&ref_=k4w_oembed_EkhZDCHOQSUcFd&asin=1561712493&tag=kpembed-20

Later in life I had the "opportunity" to be "in the room" where the big crooks play–nasty nasty stuff.

Anonymous [125] Disclaimer , says: September 9, 2020 at 2:58 pm GMT
@Robert Dolan ds that it would have ended on day one were it not officially sanctioned and the rioters protected from prosecution. Why hasn't the Janet Rosenberg/Thousand Currents/Tides Foundation connection with the BLM/DNC/MSM cabal, as well as with Antifa and social media, been the major investigation on Fox News? Why haven't Zuckerberg, Zucker, et al been arrested for incitement to commit federal crimes, including capital treason to overthrow the duly elected president? (Just a few rhetorical questions for the hell of it.) What's so galling is that the cops and federal agents are being used as just so many patsies who are deployed, not to protect, but deployed to look like fools and be held up for mockery as pathetic exemplars of white disempowerment.
EdwardM , says: September 9, 2020 at 3:07 pm GMT

The officials who concocted this scam are advancing the agenda of their real bosses, the oligarch puppet-masters who have their tentacles extended throughout the deep-state and use them to coerce their lackey bureaucrats to do their bidding.

Agree, but where is President Trump? He was supposed to appoint undersecretaries and assistant secretaries and deputy undersecretaries and Schedule C whippersnappers on whose desks such outrages are supposed to die.

I've thought from the beginning that this lack of attention to "personnel as policy" -- with Trump overestimating the ability of the ostensible CEO to overcome such intransigence -- was one of his major failures. I am sympathetic, as there are not many people he could trust to be loyal to his agenda, much less to him, but this is a disaster in every agency

Iva , says: September 9, 2020 at 3:23 pm GMT

Few years ago I watch a clip secretly recorded in Ukrainian synagogue where Rabi said "first we have to fight Catholics and with Muslims it will be an easy job" ...

anonymous [400] Disclaimer , says: September 9, 2020 at 3:31 pm GMT

Thanks to Mr Whitney for being able to cut through the fog and see what's going on behind it. The term "white supremacist" wasn't much in public use at all until the day Trump was elected then suddenly it was all over the place. It's like one of those massive ad campaigns whose jingle is everywhere as if some group decided on it as a theme to be pushed. They're really afraid that the white working class population will wake up and see how the country is being sold out from underneath their feet hence the need to keep it divided and intimidated. Like all the other color revolutions everywhere else they strike at the weak links within the country to create conflict, in the US case it's so-called diversity. There's billions available to be spent in this project so plenty of traitors can be found, unwitting or otherwise, to carry out their assignments. The billionaire class own most of the media and much else and see the US as their farm. They have no loyalty whatsoever and outsource everything to China or anywhere else they can squeeze everything out of the workers. They want a global dictatorship and admire the Chinese government for the way it can order its citizens around.

David Erickson , says: September 9, 2020 at 4:19 pm GMT
@TimeTraveller

You are exactly right. Trump is doing his part (knowingly or unknowingly, but probably knowingly) to accomplish the NWO objectives. He was not elected in 2016 in spite of NWO desires, as most Trump supporters think, but rather precisely BECAUSE of NWO desires.

The NWO probably also wants him to win again this year, and if so then he will win. The reason the NWO wanted him in 2016 (and probably wants him to win again) was primarily to neutralize the (armed) Right in this country so they wouldn't effectively resist the COVID-19 scamdemic lockdown tyranny and BLM/Antifa riots.

Chet Roman , says: September 9, 2020 at 4:20 pm GMT
@Trinity While I tend to agree with you that it looks like a race war, the question is why is it happening now? If it were just a race war promoted by radicals in BLM and Antifa, it does not explain the nationwide coordination (let's face it the faces of BLM and Antifa are not that smart or connected), the support and censorship of the violence by the MSM and the support of Marxist BLM by corporations to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. This is a color revolution in the making and may come to a peak after Nov. 3rd. Whitney is on to something, there is much more going on behind the "smoke and mirrors" and AG Barr (if he's not part of it) should be investigating it.
Tommy Thompson , says: September 9, 2020 at 5:09 pm GMT

They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are inciting racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to office in 2016 and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to transform America into a tyrannical third-world "shithole".

I keep reading such nonsense in the comments above. the so-called populist majority does not get it, Trump is not placed here to stop the Globalist agenda, that is an electioneering stunt. Look at what he has actually and really done.

How has he stopped the Globalist move forward?? By the Covid plandemic being allowed to circle the globe and shut down the US economy and social norm? By moving our high tech companies to Israel? Giving Israel and their Wall Street allies what is left of US credit wealth? Draining the swamp with even more Zio-Neocon Swamp creatures in the govt than ever? Moving the embassy to Jerusalem and all requests per Netanyahu's wish list? A real anti-Globalist stand? Looting the Federal Reserve for the Wall Street high fliers, who garnered more wealth during the crash test run of March-April and are sure to make out with even more for the coming big crash?

Phoney stunts of stopping immigration or bashing China. Really? China is still rising propelled by Wall Street and Banker funds. I have not seen any jobs coming home, lost more than ever in US history this year. Only lost homes for the working and middle classes.

How is Populist America standing up for their constitutional rights which is being shredded a little more each day? Standing up for their Real Interests, which are eroded and stolen on an almost daily basis by Trump's NY Mafia and Wall Street Oligarchs. Jobs gone for good and government assistance to the needy disappearing, as that is against the phoney Republic individualism, that you must make it on your own. Right just like the big goverment assistance always going to the big money players and banks, remember as they are too big to let fail!

Dreaming that Trump is going to save White America from the Gobalists is just bull corn . From whom BLM? Proven street theatre that will disappear on command. I actually have come to learn that some Black leaders are speaking out intelligently for street calm and distancing themselves from BLM.

Problem with the USA is the general population is so very dumbed down by 60 years of MSM – TV s and Hollywood mind control programming that the public prefers professional actors like Reagan and Trump over real politicians, and surely never chose a Statesman or real Patriotic leader. the public political narrative is still set by Fox , CNN and MSNBC .

The deep state is so infiltrated and overwhelmed with Zio and Globalist agents, that it is now almost hopeless to fix. Sorry to point out but Trump is best described as the Dummy sitting on his Ventriloquist's lap (Jared Kushner).

Situation is near hopeless as even here on Ron Unz Review the comments are so disappointing, almost 80% are focused on the Race as the prime issue and supportive of Trump fakery (not that I support Biden and Zio slut Kamil Harris either).

In sum, beyond putting their MAGA hats on, White America is more focused more on playing Cowboy with their toy guns, AR's and all than really getting involved politically to sort things out to get American onto a better track. Of course, this is not taken seriously as it might call for reaching out to other American communities that are even more disenfranchised: African- Americans and Latinos.

TimeTraveller , says: September 9, 2020 at 5:11 pm GMT
@David Erickson nted him in 2016 (and probably wants him to win again) was primarily to neutralize the (armed) Right in this country so they wouldn't effectively resist the COVID-19 scamdemic lockdown tyranny and BLM/Antifa riots.

Covid and BLM/ANTIFA are just window dressing for the financial turmoil. "Look over here whitey, there's a pandemic" and "look over here whitey, there's a riot" is much preferred to whitey shooting the sheriff who comes to take his stuff.

Wave the flag and bible while spreading love for the cops, and the repossessions and evictions should go off without a hitch. Yes, Trump is a knowing participant.

SunBakedSuburb , says: September 9, 2020 at 5:55 pm GMT
@Commentator Mike

"My impression is that BLM, Antifa and other protestors are well aware of this"

Like all good Maoists the cult white kids of antifa rigidly adhere to the mission statement and stick the inconvenient truth in the back of their mushy minds. BLM ... is a mercenary.

Trinity , says: September 9, 2020 at 10:26 pm GMT

Can you imagine any other groups rioting and destroying American cities for over 3 months? Imagine if the Hells Angels or some other White biker gang was doing what Antifa and BLM are doing? Hell, imagine if it were a bunch of Hare Krishnas pulling this shit off? Hell, I think the local mayors, police, and other law enforcement employees wouldn't even take this much shit even if the rioters were Girl Scouts. We are talking 3-4 months of lawlessness, assaults, rapes, murders ( cold blooded premeditated murders at that) and still the people in charge let this shit go on night and day. IF the POTUS doesn't have the authority or the power to stop shit like this from going on then what the hell do we even vote for anyhow? Granted, I see the reason for not being ruled by a dictatorship, but who in the hell can justify letting these riots go on? One can only assume that both the republicants and the demsheviks are fine with these riots because no one seems in a hurry to shut them down or arrest the hombres funding these riots. Who is housing and feeding the rioters? Who is paying their travel expenses? I'm sure most everyone in Washington knows who the people are behind these riots but don't expect any action anytime soon.

Dick French , says: September 9, 2020 at 10:29 pm GMT

This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look beyond the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows. There lies the cancer that must be eradicated.

That's true to a large degree, but

It is indeed an attempt to liquidate the working and lower middle class. Most of the American working and lower middle class, obviously not all, is White. So predictably we have these calls for White Genocide. Agreed and good to see the tie-in with the Coronavirus Hoax lock downs, too, which also spread the devastation into minority communities under the guise of public safety.

The one question that remains unanswered is why the major cities were targeted for destruction. Obviously these are the playgrounds of the oligarchs and have been decimated. We will learn soon enough.

Skeptikal , says: September 10, 2020 at 12:07 am GMT
@Redman

The Reverend William Barber is the only genuine black leader I am aware of.
And he makes a pointn of not speaking only for blacks, but for all disadvantaged communities, including poor whites. IMO he is the real deal, and I very much hope he takes the lead in articulating genuine community values of respect and equality for all, including basics such as decent health care and food access.

The pressure exerted on someone like Barber by the BLM forces in the media and other institutions is enormous.

I wish Ron Unz would invite him to write something for the UR.

[Sep 06, 2020] Extremes meet: the way that BLM are acting now they could almost be called pro-White activists. They certainly don't make diversity look like a strength or something that would be in any way shape or form desirable.

Sep 06, 2020 | www.unz.com

Whitewolf , says: September 6, 2020 at 3:53 am GMT

@KenH

BLM is all about anti-white activism, black supremacy and the forcible transfer of white wealth to blacks but Tucker Carlson keeps insisting that BLM is a smokescreen for class struggle.

The way that BLM are acting now they could almost be called pro-White activists. They certainly don't make diversity look like a strength or something that would be in any way shape or form desirable.

[Aug 27, 2020] Awan Brothers Helped Schultz Threaten Election Fraud Lawyers

Jul 30, 2017 | newspunch.com
July 30, 2017 Sean Adl-Tabatabai News

https://newspunch.com/awan-brothers-wasserman-schultz-threats/

The Awan Brothers aided former DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz in making threatening voice modulated phone calls to attorneys suing the DNC for election fraud.

Lt. Colonel Tony Schaffer told Fox News that Schultz ordered the Awan Brothers to scare off the lawyers due to the threat they pose in exposing widespread election fraud committed by the Democratic Party in 2016.

Disobedientmedia.com reports: If substantiated, the claims may have significance for the DNC fraud lawsuit proceedings, and add to the growing controversy surrounding the recent arrest of Imran Awan on bank fraud charges.

Jared Beck, and attorney litigating the DNC Fraud Lawsuit noted on Twitter :

[Aug 24, 2020] I think its economy, stupid! in 2020 and it will decide the elections

Aug 24, 2020 | angrybearblog.com
Likbez, August 24, 2020 10:58 pm

I think "its' economy, stupid!" in 2020.

To be clear; none more deserving of dignity than the working people of America; they keep the nation running; they are America's better angels; and, they deserve to be better paid.

Those are lofty words. But what to do when there is not enough cookies for everybody. That's when economic ruptures occur (with one form being Minsky moments)

IMHO we need another Keynes now. Here is a quote from Keynesianism, Social Conflict and Political Economy, By Massimo De Angelis

In a sense, going back to Joan Robinson, the idea of rupture within the notion of historical time can also be found in Keynes, although with an important difference. Here the emphasis put on irreversibility implies of course qualitative change, and indeed the emphasis is put on the changing conditions underlying economic phenomena. Thus, for example, Joan Robinson discusses the notion of scarcity in relation to historical time:

The question of scarce means with alternative uses becomes self‐ contradictory when it is set in historical time, where today is an ever-moving break between the irrevocable past and the unknown future. At any moment, certainly, resources are scarce, but they have hardly any range of alternative uses.

The workers available to be employed are not a supply of "labor", but a number of carpenters or coal miners. The uses of land depend largely on transport; industrial equipment was created to assist the output of particular products.

To change the use of resources requires investment and training, which alters the resources themselves. As for choice among investment projects, this involves the whole analysis of the nature of capitalism and of its evolution through time. (Robinson 1977: 8)

Although the emphasis on rupture is introduced, in this historical time, "where today is an ever moving break between the irrevocable past and the unknown future," the sense of the "break," of rupture, is confined within the problems of capitalist accumulation, of the problems posed by the right proportions of, following Robinson's example, carpenters and coal miners.

History here does not present alternatives and defines itself clearly and simply as "historical objectivism" in the continuum of the capitalist relation, as contemplation of "what really was," that is, the "irrevocable [capitalist] past," and speculations about an "unknown [capitalist] future."

In Keynes, the unknown character of this future is translated in the status of the long run expectations of the investors which, to emphasize the difficulty of their modeling, in turn depends on their "animal spirits."

In Keynes, rupture as revolutionary, transcendental, rupture exists only in the form of a threat, implicit in the theoretical apparatus, in the difficulty to endogenize variables, in the reliance on "psychological factors," on investors' animal spirits which mysteriously respond to hints of this historical rupture, in the recognition of the difficulty to model behavioral functions, etc.

This threat is recognized through the status of long run expectations of the investors.

In the case of the liquidity trap, in which the infinitely elastic demand for money curve is used to portray a situation of hoarding that is, of capital's refusal to put people to work the threat is hanging over investors who perceive a gloomy future without hope for their profit.

The truly unknown future from the capitalists' perspective, the true moment of rupture in their temporal dimension, is recognized in order to be avoided, to organize the rescue of the capitalist relation of work. For this reason Keynes is not talking about given functional relations, and is presupposing a moving marginal efficiency of capital schedule (Minsky 1975.

The future is there to puzzle the investors in the present. The aim of economic theory is to inform economic policy to limit the puzzle within the borders of the capitalist relation of work. Although Keynes' theoretical apparatus is presupposing uncertainty for the future, this uncertainty is seen with the sense of urgency typical of a world in transition. In the discussion of the postwar Keynesian orthodoxy, it will be seen how this sense of urgency was lost, and the concept of time in economic theory changed, although it was far from returning to the "timeless models" of the classical period.

[Aug 24, 2020] Another rolling stone that illuminates the US necrotic process...unregulated dumping of radwaste onthe roads

Aug 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Walter , Aug 24 2020 14:11 utc | 99

@ 95 another rolling stone that illuminates the US necrotic process...unregulated dumping of radwaste

tinyurl[dot]com/v3pva55

Evidently they actually spray the stuff on roads and, well, it's puckininsane stupid.

"..thing in this stuff and ingesting it are the worst types of exposure," Stolz continues. "You are irradiating your tissues from the inside out." The radioactive particles fired off by radium can be blocked by the skin, but radium readily attaches to dust,..."

(Honestly, I know it's hard to believe, but several immediate neighbors, possibly 1/3 of the town, actually expect to be levitated to heaven in "rapture". Thus, according to their a priori assumption, the poisoning is perfectly ok."

Anyway, both the bizarre beliefs and the idiotic actions (including with radwaste) are, like Trump, a product, a manifestation. We agree.

About Rockefeller - Corbett Report has a very deep examination of that family and their less well-known policy set.

[Aug 22, 2020] Kamala is a MIC marionette

Highly recommended!
Aug 22, 2020 | www.unz.com

Realist , says: August 21, 2020 at 12:17 pm GMT

It took balls for Carlson to have Anya Parampil on his show last night. He has had her on before, so he knows what she is like she tells it like it is. He will get shit for that.

I don't think he agrees with everything she said but agrees with some of it.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_UuJB0l1YUY?feature=oembed

[Aug 21, 2020] American mainstream media is not informing and reporting but is actually Goebbels-like propaganda for the neoliberals of both parties

Aug 21, 2020 | www.unz.com

Derer , says: August 21, 2020 at 5:07 am GMT

American main stream media is not informing and reporting but is actually Goebbels-like propaganda for the Democrats. Fox is only retaliating with opposing views. Imagine Walter Cronkite being advocate for one party – that would be scandalous. However the present insects on CNN, MSNBC, NYT or WP and other dishonest outlets have no guts to stand up against their owners disloyalty to this country.

mark green , says: August 21, 2020 at 10:11 am GMT

Insightful overview. Giraldi explores the most important topic in American life. And one of the most neglected: MSM distortions, omissions, sanctimony, propaganda, deception and gaslighting. Stomach-turning drek –all of it.

Americans are in a half-Zombie state because of what they see on TV, and cannot discuss on social media.

Hollywood, elite media, and Big Tech are the gatekeepers [ of the neoliberal power].

... ... ....

Really No Shit , says: August 21, 2020 at 10:31 am GMT

The shysters at WPO and NYT think that once they have misdirected the voters for their goal into voting for Joe Biden, it can pick up things where they left off and fix it without any problems but what they don't realize is that the train has left the station and now it's barreling down the dark abyss from where there is no return to safety.

Realist , says: August 21, 2020 at 12:17 pm GMT

It took balls for Carlson to have Anya Parampil on his show last night. He has had her on before, so he knows what she is like she tells it like it is. He will get shit for that.

I don't think he agrees with everything she said but agrees with some of it.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_UuJB0l1YUY?feature=oembed

Realist , says: August 21, 2020 at 12:22 pm GMT
@No Friend Of The Devil

The Deep State has unbelievable amounts of money to buy these corrupt, avaricious assholes.

anon [240] Disclaimer , says: August 21, 2020 at 12:50 pm GMT
@Dr. H. Fhaunrich

a one party state, entirely run by the far left in tandem with major corporations.

Only stupid Americans would confuse the Uniparty as a "far left". It's the Uniparty of the Rich People, but this idiot thinks it is "far left".

RoatanBill , says: August 21, 2020 at 12:57 pm GMT
@Tommy Thompson he military is responsible for or how Israel is treated, how corporations are handed free billions upon billions, etc, and its largely business as usual. All the noise about Trump the disruptor is just that, noise. He hasn't disrupted anything of note.

As long as the two political parties exist, voting is for people who want to believe a lie. Deep down they know, absolutely know, that the system is rigged but they can't let themselves fully believe that because that would mean there is no hope. They would realize that they live in a sophisticated soft military dictatorship that has stolen $21 Trillion dollars and is the actual gov't of the country. That realization is unpalatable and hence rejected.

Miro23 , says: August 21, 2020 at 1:53 pm GMT
@Derer

However the present insects on CNN, MSNBC, NYT or WP and other dishonest outlets have no guts to stand up against their owners disloyalty to this country.

It's not a simple as that. All the media people know that it's a rotten system, but if they step out of line – they lose their jobs – and make themselves unemployable anywhere else.

IMO it's not a question of standing up – which is pointless – but using organized subversion. After all, this is what Jewry have been doing for decades in targeting Anglo run organizations and it works. It's your friend and collaborator who is really your enemy.

[Aug 21, 2020] Warren's DNC Speech was more appropriate for Republican's convention

Aug 21, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

hough it was quickly overshadowed by the big-ticket appearances of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren's Tuesday address to the Democratic National Convention deserves some consideration.

A probable VP nominee before the events of the summer made race the deciding factor, Warren is an able representative of what might be called the "non-socialist populist" branch of the Democratic Party. Her economic populism -- though it does have an unmistakably left-wing flavor -- has caught the eye of Tucker Carlson, who offered glowing praise of her 2003 book The Two-Income Trap ; her call for "economic nationalism" during the primary campaign earned mockery from some corners of the Left and a bit of hesitant sympathy from the Right. A few days ago in Crisis , Michael Warren Davis referred to her (tongue at least somewhat in cheek) as " reactionary senator Elizabeth Warren ."

There is some good reason for all of this.

As I watched the first half of Warren's speech (before she descended into the week's secondary theme of blaming the virus on Donald Trump) I couldn't help but think that it belonged at the Republican National Convention. Or, rather, that a GOP convention that drove home the themes addressed by Senator Warren on Tuesday would be immensely more effective than the circus I'm expecting to see next week.

Amid a weeklong hurricane of identity politics sure to drive off a good number of moderates and independents, Warren offered her party an electoral lifeline: a policy-heavy pitch gift-wrapped as the solution to a multitude of troubles facing average Americans, especially families.

It was rhetorically effective in a way that few other moments in the convention have been. Part of this is due to the format: a teleconferenced convention left most speakers looking either like bargain-bin Orwell bogeymen or like Pat Sajak presenting a tropical vacation as a prize on Wheel of Fortune. But Warren, for one reason or another, looks entirely at home in a pre-school classroom.

The content, however, is crucial too. Warren grounded her comments in experiences that have been widely shared by millions of Americans these last few months: the loss of work, the loss of vital services like childcare, the stress and anxiety that dominate pandemic-era life. She makes a straightforward case for Biden: his policies will make everyday life better for the vast majority of American families. She focuses on the example of childcare, which Biden promises to make freely available to Americans who need it. This, she claims, will give families a better go of things and make struggling parents' lives a whole lot easier.

It's hard not to be taken in. It's certainly a more compelling sales pitch than, "You're all racist. Make up for it by voting for this old white guy." It's the kind of thing that a smart campaign would spend the next three months broadcasting and repeating every chance they get. (The jury is still out as to whether Biden's campaign is a smart one.) This -- convincing common people that you're going to do right by them -- is the kind of thing that wins elections.

But there's more than a little mistruth in the pitch. Warren shares a touching story from her own experience as a young parent, half a century ago:

When I had babies and was juggling my first big teaching job down in Texas, it was hard. But I could do hard. The thing that almost sank me? Child care.

One night my Aunt Bee called to check in. I thought I was fine, but then I just broke down and started to cry. I had tried holding it all together, but without reliable childcare, working was nearly impossible. And when I told Aunt Bee I was going to quit my job, I thought my heart would break.

Then she said the words that changed my life: "I can't get there tomorrow, but I'll come on Thursday." She arrived with seven suitcases and a Pekingese named Buddy and stayed for 16 years. I get to be here tonight because of my Aunt Bee.

I learned a fundamental truth: nobody makes it on their own. And yet, two generations of working parents later, if you have a baby and don't have an Aunt Bee, you're on your own.

Are we not supposed to ask about the fundamental difference between Elizabeth Warren's experience decades ago and the experience of struggling parents now? Hint: she had a strong extended family to support her, and her kids had a broad family network to help raise them. Not too long ago, any number of people would have been involved in the raising of a single child. ("It takes a village," but not in the looney Clinton way.) Now, an American kid is lucky to have just two people helping him along the way. As we've all been reminded a hundred times, the chances that he'll be raised by only one increase astronomically in poor or black communities.

Shouldn't we be talking about that? Shouldn't we be talking about the policies that contributed to the shift? It's a complex crisis, and we can't pin it down to any one cause. But a slew of left-wing programs are certainly caught up in it. An enormous and fairly lax welfare state has reduced the necessity of family ties in day-to-day life to almost nil. Diverse economic pressures have made stay-at-home parents a near-extinct breed, and left even two-income households struggling to make ends meet. (Warren literally wrote the book on it.) Not to mention that the Democrats remain the party more forcefully supportive of abortion and more ferociously opposed to the institution of marriage (though more than a few Republicans are trying real hard to catch up).

Progressive social engineering has ravaged the American family for decades, and this proposal only offers more of the same. It's trying to outsource childcare to government-bankrolled professionals without asking the important question: Whatever happened to Aunt Bee?

Republicans need an answer. We need to be carefully considering what government has done to accelerate the decline of the family -- and what it can do to reverse it. Some of the reformers and realigners in the party have already begun this project in earnest. But it needs to be taken more seriously. It needs to be a central effort of the party's mainstream, and a constant element of the party's message. Grand, nationalistic narratives about Making America Great Again mean nothing if that revival isn't actually felt by people in their lives and in their homes.

If we're confident in our family policy -- and while it needs a good deal of work, it's certainly better than the Democrats' -- we shouldn't be afraid to take the fight to them. We should be pointing out, for instance, that Warren's claim that Biden will afford greater bankruptcy protections to common people is hardly borne out by the facts: Biden spent a great deal of time and effort in his legislative career doing exactly the opposite. We should be pointing out that dozens of Democratic policies have been hurting American families for decades, and will continue to do so if we let them. We should sell ourselves as the better choice for American families -- and be able to mean it when we say it.

If we let the Democrats keep branding themselves as the pro-family party -- a marketing ploy that has virtually no grounding in reality -- we're going to lose in November. And we're going to keep losing for a long, long time.

[Aug 20, 2020] 'Can't make this up'- Photos of Bill Clinton being MASSAGED by Epstein 'sex slave' surface just in time for Dem convention speech

Did Bill slept with Maxwell? You can expect anything from this sex addict...
Notable quotes:
"... During a fueling stop at a small airport in Portugal, Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell urged Davies to give the former president a massage. ..."
Aug 20, 2020 | www.rt.com

As if it weren't awkward enough for the party that bills itself as a defender of women to feature Bill Clinton at its convention, photos of the ex-president with one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims surfaced on the day of his speech.

The UK's Daily Mail published exclusive pictures on Tuesday showing Clinton receiving a massage in 2002 from 22-year-old Chauntae Davies, who was allegedly raped by billionaire Epstein repeatedly over a period of four years. The massage occurred while Clinton, along with actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, flew with Epstein on the pedophile's infamous private jet, nicknamed the Lolita Express, on a humanitarian trip to Africa.

According to the newspaper, Clinton complained of having a stiff neck after falling asleep on the plane. During a fueling stop at a small airport in Portugal, Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell urged Davies to give the former president a massage. Clinton, who was 56 at the time, then allegedly said to Davies, "Would you mind giving it a crack?" The photos show Davies massaging Clinton's neck and shoulders as he leans back in his seat at what looks to be a small airport lounge.

Davies, who worked for Epstein as a masseuse, said Clinton was a "perfect gentleman during the trip and I saw absolutely no foul play involving him."

ALSO ON RT.COM Bill Clinton hung out with Epstein because of affair with late financier's madame Maxwell, new book alleges

Nevertheless, the images serve as an untimely reminder of the many sexual misconduct allegations made against Clinton during his years in politics and of his relationship with Epstein, a convicted sex offender who allegedly killed himself last year at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York while awaiting trial on new sex trafficking charges.

A Clinton spokesman has said the former president knew nothing about Epstein's crimes and flew on the financier's jet only four times, but flight logs showed that he traveled on the plane dozens of times in 2002 and 2003. Davies and other alleged victims said in a 2020 Netflix documentary on Epstein that he had secret surveillance cameras at his properties to gather blackmail-worthy dirt on his powerful friends.

"The question is, why were they taking pictures of Bill Clinton receiving a massage?" UK journalist Paul Joseph Watson said on Tuesday on Twitter. "And we already know the answer."

The Daily Mail didn't say where it obtained the exclusive photos. Maxwell is currently in jail in New York awaiting trial on charges that she facilitated Epstein's abuse of girls as young as 14.

ALSO ON RT.COM Clintons & Obamas headline DNC speaker list, showing Democrats gazing backward not forward

Other Twitter users suggested that far more incriminating pictures are being held back. "Epstein took pics and videos of everything, and the FBI has it all," one said. Another said: "If they took pictures of this, there are most definitely worse things recorded just waiting to come out against people."

Others said Clinton should be kept away from the Democratic National Convention, including one who tweeted: "Bruh, no way they can let this man speak tonight." Another said: "And this guy is headlining the DNC tonight. Can't make this up."

[Aug 19, 2020] GOP Donors Vs. GOP Voters

Feb 17, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

From J.D. Vance's appearance last night on Tucker Carlson Tonight Vance has just said that the donor elites of the GOP are out of touch with the party's base. More:

CARLSON: But more broadly, what you are saying, I think is, that the Democratic Party understands what it is and who it represents and affirmatively represents them. They do things for their voters, but the Republican Party doesn't actually represent its own voters very well.

VANCE: Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, look at who the Democratic Party is and look, I don't like the Democratic Party's policies.

CARLSON: Yes.

VANCE: Most of the times, I disagree with them. But I at least admire that they recognize who their voters are and they actually just as raw cynical politics do a lot of things to serve those voters.

Now, look at who Republican voters increasingly are. They are people who disproportionately serve in the military, but Republican foreign policy has been a disaster for a lot of veterans. They are disproportionately folks who want to have more children. They are people who want to have more single earner families. They are people who don't necessarily want to go to college but they want to work in an economy where if you play by the rules, you can you actually support a family on one income.

CARLSON: Yes.

VANCE: Have Republicans done anything for those people really in the last 15 or 20 years? I think can you point to some policies of the Trump administration. Certainly, instinctively, I think the President gets who his voters are and what he has to do to service those folks. But at the end of the day, the broad elite of the party, the folks who really call the shots, the think tank intellectuals, the people who write the policy, I just don't think they realize who their own voters are.

Now, the slightly more worrying implication is that maybe some of them do realize who their voters are, they just don't actually like those voters much.

CARLSON: Well, that's it. So I watch the Democratic Party and I notice that if there is a substantial block within it, it's this unstable coalition, all of these groups have nothing in common, but the one thing they have in common is the Democratic Party will protect them.

VANCE: Yes.

CARLSON: You criticize a block of Democratic Voters and they are on you like a wounded wombat. They will bite you. The Republicans, watch their voters come under attack and sort of nod in agreement, "Yes, these people should be attacked."

VANCE: Yes, that's absolutely right. I mean, if you talk to people who spent their lives in D.C. I know you live in D.C.

CARLSON: Yes.

VANCE: I've spent a lot of my life here. The people who spend their time in D.C. who work on Republican campaigns, who work at conservative think tanks, now this isn't true of everybody, but a lot of them actually don't like the people who are voting for Republican candidates these days.

[Aug 19, 2020] How Covid-19 Signals the End of the American Era - Rolling Stone

Aug 19, 2020 | www.rollingstone.com

The Unraveling of America

Anthropologist Wade Davis on how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era

By WADE DAVIS ,

[Aug 08, 2020] Russia-China -Dedollarization- Reaches -Breakthrough Moment- As Countries Ditch Greenback For Bilateral Trade -

Aug 08, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Russia-China "Dedollarization" Reaches "Breakthrough Moment" As Countries Ditch Greenback For Bilateral Trade by Tyler Durden Thu, 08/06/2020 - 21:55 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Late last year, data released by the PBOC and the Russian Central Bank shone a light on a disturbing - at least, for the US - trend: As the Trump Administration ratcheted up sanctions pressure on Russia and China, both countries and their central banks have substantially "diversified" their foreign-currency reserves, dumping dollars and buying up gold and each other's currencies.

Back in September, we wrote about the PBOC and RCB building their reserves of gold bullion to levels not seen in years. The Russian Central Bank became one of the world's largest buyers of bullion last year (at least among the world's central banks). At the time, we also introduced this chart.

We've been writing about the impending demise of the greenback for years now, and of course we're not alone. Some well-regarded economists have theorized that the fall of the greenback could be a good thing for humanity - it could open the door to a multi-currency basket, or better yet, a global current (bitcoin perhaps?) - by allowing us to transition to a global monetary system with with less endemic instability.

Though, to be sure, the greenback is hardly the first "global currency".

Falling confidence in the greenback has been masked by the Fed's aggressive buying, as central bankers in the Eccles Building now fear that the asset bubbles they've blown are big enough to harm the real economy, so we must wait for exactly the right time to let the air out of these bubbles so they don't ruin people's lives and upset the global economic apple cart. As the coronavirus outbreak has taught us, that time may never come.

But all the while, Russia and China have been quietly weening off of the dollar, and instead using rubles and yuan to settle transnational trade.

Since we live in a world where commerce is directed by the whims of the free market (at least, in theory), the Kremlin can just make Russian and Chinese companies substitute yuan and rubles for dollars with the flip of a switch: as Russian President Vladimir Putin once exclaimed , the US's aggressive sanctions policy risks destroying the dollar's reserve status by forcing more companies from Russia and China to search for alternatives to transacting in dollars, if for no other reason than to keep costs down (international economic sanctions can make moving money abroad difficult).

In 2019, Putin gleefully revealed that Russia had reduced the dollar holdings of its central bank by $101 billion, cutting the total in half.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890

And according to new data from the Russian Central Bank and Federal Customs Service, the dollar's share of bilateral trade between Russia and China fell below 50% for the first time in modern history.

Businesses only used the greenback for roughly 46% of settlements between the two countries. Over the same period, the euro constituted an all-time high of 30%. While other national currencies accounted for 24%, also a new high.

As one 'expert' told the Nikkei Asian Review, it's just the latest sign that Russia and China are forming a "de-dollarization alliance" to diminish the economic heft of Washington's sanctions powers, and its de facto control of SWIFT, the primary inter-bank messaging service via which banks move money from country to country.

The shift is happening much more quickly than the US probably expected. As recently as 2015, more than 90% of bilateral trade between China and Russia was conducted in dollars.

Alexey Maslov, director of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the Nikkei Asian Review that the Russia-China "dedollarization" was approaching a "breakthrough moment" that could elevate their relationship to a de facto alliance.

"The collaboration between Russia and China in the financial sphere tells us that they are finally finding the parameters for a new alliance with each other," he said. "Many expected that this would be a military alliance or a trading alliance, but now the alliance is moving more in the banking and financial direction, and that is what can guarantee independence for both countries."

Dedollarization has been a priority for Russia and China since 2014, when they began expanding economic cooperation following Moscow's estrangement from the West over its annexation of Crimea. Replacing the dollar in trade settlements became a necessity to sidestep U.S. sanctions against Russia.

"Any wire transaction that takes place in the world involving U.S. dollars is at some point cleared through a U.S. bank," explained Dmitry Dolgin, ING Bank's chief economist for Russia. "That means that the U.S. government can tell that bank to freeze certain transactions."
The process gained further momentum after the Donald Trump administration imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods. Whereas previously Moscow had taken the initiative on dedollarization, Beijing came to view it as critical, too.

"Only very recently did the Chinese state and major economic entities begin to feel that they might end up in a similar situation as our Russian counterparts: being the target of the sanctions and potentially even getting shut out of the SWIFT system," said Zhang Xin, a research fellow at the Center for Russian Studies at Shanghai's East China Normal University.

[Aug 02, 2020] Cancel culture my ass by Roy Edroson

Aug 02, 2020 | edroso.substack.com

Examples given show quite clearly that "cancel mob" is an established form of the political struggle. And in this case the reasons behind the particular attack of the "cancel mob" is far from charitable.

Cancel culture my ass Justice for Brad Hamilton Roy Edroso Jul 14 38 30

You remember way back before social media and Thomas Chatterton Williams , when Phil Donahue lost his MSNBC show because he opposed the War in Iraq ? And the Dixie Chicks got the pre-Twitter equivalent of Twitter-mobbed for criticizing George W. Bush? ("Toby Keith famously joined the fray by performing in front of a backdrop that featured a gigantic image of Natalie Maines beside Saddam Hussein.") Ah, those carefree, pre-cancel-culture days!

Might's well also flash forward to 2001, NFL.com :

Mendenhall loses endorsement deal over bin Laden tweets

[Steelers running back] Rashard Mendenhall's candid tweets about Osama bin Laden's death and the 9/11 terror attacks cost him an endorsement deal.

NFL.com senior analyst Vic Carucci says Rashard Mendenhall has become an example of the risks that social media can present to outspoken pro athletes.

Athletic apparel manufacturer Champion announced Thursday that it had dropped the Pittsburgh Steelers running back after he questioned the celebrations of bid Laden's death and expressed his uncertainty over official accounts of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York, suburban Washington and Pennsylvania.

Things haven't gotten any better. I've already written about Springfield, Mass. police detective Florissa Fuentes, who got fired this year for reposting her niece's pro-Black Lives Matter Instagram photo. Fuentes is less like Donohue, the Chicks, and Mendenhall, though, and more like most of the people who get fired for speech in this country, in that she is not rich, and getting fired was for her a massive blow.

Speaking of Black Lives Matter, here's one from 2019 :

The controversy began after [Lisa] Durden's appearance [on Tucker Carlson], during which she defended the Black Lives Matter movement's decision to host a Memorial Day celebration in New York City to which only black people were invited. On the show, Durden's comments included, "You white people are angry because you couldn't use your white privilege card to get invited to the Black Lives Matter's all-black Memorial Day Celebration," and "We want to celebrate today. We don't want anybody going against us today."

Durden was then an adjunct professor at Essex County College, but not for long because sure enough, they fired her for what she said on the show. (Bet Carlson, a racist piece of shit , was delighted!) The college president defended her decision, saying she'd received "feedback from students, faculty and prospective students and their families expressing frustration, concern and even fear that the views expressed by a college employee (with influence over students) would negatively impact their experience on the campus..."

Sounds pretty snowflakey to me. I went looking in the works of the signatories of the famous Harper's letter against cancel culture for some sign that any of them had acknowledged Durden's case. Shockingly, such free speech warriors as Rod Dreher and Bret Stephens never dropped a word on it.

Dreher does come up in other free-speech-vs-employment cases, though -- for example, from 2017, Chronicle of Higher Education :

Tommy Curry, an associate professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University at College Station, about five years ago participated in a YouTube interview in which he discussed race and violence. Those remarks resurfaced in May in a column titled "When Is It OK to Kill Whites?" by Rod Dreher in The American Conservative.

Mr. Curry said of that piece that he wasn't advocating for violence and that his remarks had been taken out of context. He told The Chronicle that online threats had arrived in force shortly after that. Some were racial in nature.

At the same time the president of the university, Michael K. Young, issued a statement in which he appeared to rebuke the remarks made by Mr. Curry...

In his column on Curry , Dreher said, "I wonder what it is like to be a white student studying under Dr. Curry in his classroom?" Imagine worrying for the safety of white people at Texas Fucking A&M!

Curry got to keep his job, but only after he "issued a new statement apologizing for how his remarks had been received," the Chronicle reported:

"For those of you who considered my comments disparaging to certain types of scholarly work or in any way impinging upon the centrality of academic freedom at this university," [Curry] wrote, "I regret any contributions that I may have made to misunderstandings in this case, including to those whose work is contextualized by understanding the historical perspectives of events that have often been ignored."

Sound like show-trial stuff, doesn't it -- the kind of show-trial stuff Dreher is always claiming liberals are bringing to the United States . (Though he doesn't seem to mind when Vladimir Putin does it .) Yet I never heard him or any conservative lament this shameful episode.

Bottom line: Most of us who work for a living are at-will employees -- basically, the boss can fire us if they don't like the way we look at them or if they don't like what they discover we feel about the events of the day. There are some protections -- for example, if you and your work buddies are talking about work stuff and the boss gets mad, then that may be considered " concerted activity " and protected -- but as Lisa Guerin wrote at the nolo.com legal advice site, "political views aren't covered by [Civil Rights] laws and the laws of most states. This means employers are free to consider political views and affiliations in making job decisions."

Basically we employees have no free speech rights at all. But people like Stephens and Dreher and Megan McArdle who cry over how "the mob" is coming after them don't care about us. For window dressing, they'll glom onto rare cases where a non-rich, non-credentialed guy gets in trouble for allegedly racist behavior that he didn't really do -- Emmanuel Cafferty, it's your time to shine ! -- but their real concern isn't Cafferty's "free speech" or that of any other peon, it's their own miserable careers.

Because they know people are starting to talk back to them. It's not like back in the day when Peggy Noonan and George F. Will mounted their high horses and vomited their wisdom onto the rabble and maybe some balled-up Letters to the Editor might feebly come back at them but that was it. Now commoners can go viral! People making fun of Bari Weiss might reach as many people as Bari Weiss herself! The cancel culture criers may have wingnut welfare sinecures, cushy pundit gigs, and the respect of all the Right People, but they can't help but notice that when they glide out onto their balconies and emit their received opinions a lot of people -- mostly younger, and thoroughly hip that these worthies are apologists for the austerity debt servitude to which they've been condemned for life -- are not just coughing "bullshit" into their fists, but shouting it out loud.

This, the cancel culture criers cry, is the mob! It threatens civilization!

Yet they cannot force us to pay attention or buy their shitty opinions. The sound and smell of mockery disturbs their al fresco luncheons and weddings at the Arboretum . So they rush to their writing desks and prepare sternly-worded letters. Their colleagues will read and approve! Also, their editors and relatives! And maybe also some poor dumb kids who know so little of the world that they'll actually mistake these overpaid prats for victims and feel sorry for them.

Well, you've already heard what I think about it elsewhere: Protect workers' free speech rights for real, I say -- let them be as woke, as racist, or as obstreperous they wish off the clock and the boss can't squawk. The cancel culture criers won't go for that deal; in fact such a thing has never entered their minds -- free-speech is to protect their delicate sensibilities, not the livelihoods of people who work with their hands!

And in the new tradition of the working class asking for more rather than less of what they want, I'll go further: I give not one flaming fuck if these assholes suffocate under a barrage of rotten tomatoes, and I think Brad in Fast Times at Ridgemont High got a raw deal from All-American Burger and should be reinstated with full back pay: That customer deserved to have 100% of his ass kicked!

likbez 08.01.20 at 7:00 pm

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

@Jason Weidner 07.31.20 at 9:29 pm (73)

This is a brilliant response to the idea of "cancel culture": https://edroso.substack.com/p/cancel-culture-my-ass?fbclid=IwAR30mrg9sIVo6RqRbNDHGgNIcj2OgELyb9mg_mydF12a-5d5Ht6q9oCkWk4

Examples given show quite clearly that "cancel mob" is an established, albeit somewhat dirty, form of the political struggle. Often the reasons behind the particular attack of the "cancel mob" is far from charitable. Orwell's 1984 describes an extreme form of the same.

[Aug 02, 2020] James Murdoch departs ..

Notable quotes:
"... Case in point, reporting today on the newly disclosed Ghisline Maxwell documents only mentioned Prince Andrew and not a word about Bill Clinton ..."
"... believe James Murdoch was part of the "we are all gonna die in <11 years" Green New Deal school of thought. ..."
Aug 02, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"James Murdoch, the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from the board of News Corporation citing "disagreements over editorial content".

In a filing to US regulators, he said he also disagreed with some "strategic decisions" made by the company.

The exact nature of the disagreements was not detailed.

... ... ..,

I watch a lot of TeeVee news on all the major networks including the two Foxnews channels.

It has become apparent to me over the last year or so that there is an internal ideology contest at Fox between the hard core conservatives like Dobbs. Carlson, Mark Levin, Bartiromo, Degan McDowell, etc. and a much more liberal set of people like Chris Wallace, Cavuto and the newer reporters at the White House. I expect that the departure of James Murdoch will result in more uniformly conservative reporting and commentary on Fox. I say that presuming that James Murdoch was a major force in trying to push Foxnews toward the left.

I am surprised that Murdoch sent his son to Harvard. pl

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53617966

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


Deap , 01 August 2020 at 12:19 PM

Been noticing a lot of irresponsible reporting of late in the WSJ - not on the opinion page, but in some pretty sloppy reporting with a lot of editorial bias in what is included and what is intentionally left out.

Case in point, reporting today on the newly disclosed Ghisline Maxwell documents only mentioned Prince Andrew and not a word about Bill Clinton . Doesn't WSJ know its readers draw from multiple media sources that have provided original content? Everyday there are several similar, bias by omission, articles.

One can only hope newly constituted management team will finally get rid of Peggy Noonan.

Deap , 01 August 2020 at 12:22 PM

I believe James Murdoch was part of the "we are all gonna die in <11 years" Green New Deal school of thought.

[Jul 31, 2020] Tucker Carlson calls Obama 'one of the sleaziest and most dishonest figures' in US political history

Highly recommended!
So Obama managed to beat Clinton? Incredible achievement !
BTW Gen. Flynn case goes 'all the way to the top' to Obama: Rep. Jordan
Jul 31, 2020 | www.msn.com

Tucker Carlson described former President Obama as "one of the sleaziest and most dishonest figures in the history of American politics" after his eulogy at the funeral of civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) on Thursday.

© The Hill tucker Carlson

Carlson, who also described the former president as "a greasy politician" for calling on Congress to pass a new Voting Rights Act and to eliminate the filibuster, which Obama described as a relic of the Jim Crow era that disenfranchised Black Americans, in order to do so.

me marginwidth=

"Barack Obama, one of the sleaziest and most dishonest figures in the history of American politics, used George Floyd's death at a funeral to attack the police," Carlson said before showing a segment of Obama's remarks.

Watch the latest video at foxnews.com

[Jul 31, 2020] The Democratic Dark Money Behind These 'Local Newspapers' -

Notable quotes:
"... Cardinal & Pine ..."
"... The American Conservative ..."
"... The American Conservative. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The American Conservative ..."
"... Citizen's United ..."
Jul 31, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

he non-profit that sent the Democratic Party haywire during the Iowa Caucus earlier this year has a new strategy: creating partisan news outlets in key states across the country ahead of the 2020 election. With the financial backing of Hollywood, hedge fund managers, and Silicon Valley, Acronym's Courier Newsroom may just change local journalism and politics forever.

Courier Newsroom , created by the dark-money (not required to disclose donors) progressive non-profit Acronym, states that they were created to restore trust in journalism by helping to rebuild local media across the country. The opposite of this is true. Their true goal? Winning elections in key states.

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

Acronym CEO Tara McGowan, in a leaked memo obtained by Vice, has stated that the goal of establishing Courier Newsroom is to defeat Republicans on the new frontier of Internet political advertising. McGowan attributes Trump's 2016 success to the campaign's ability to "shape and drive mainstream media coverage" through an influx of internet spending. Courier seeks to counter this by challenging Trump on social media. By definition, Courier serves as a political advertising operation for the Democratic Party rather than a legitimate media source.

Calling for a new approach to political advertising, McGowan lambasted Hillary Clinton's failed media strategy for its over-reliance on spending on traditional media, "In 2016, the Hillary Clinton for President campaign raised an estimated $800 million online -- and spent a large majority of it on television and radio advertisements." The 2016 election has proven to be the reason for the creation of Courier Newsroom.

McGowan explicitly states that the papers are being used to boost political results, " The Dogwood will not only function to support the flipping of both State House and State Senate chambers in Virginia this November, but will serve as a vehicle to test, learn from and scale best practices to new sites as we grow." The Dogwood , as of the time of the writing of the leaked memo, was intended to be the prototype for future courier new sites.

Courier has established news sites across key 2020 states including: Copper Courier (Arizona), The Dogwood (Virginia), Up North News (Wisconsin), The Gander (Michigan), Cardinal & Pine (North Carolina), The Keystone (Pennsylvania), and The Americano (nationwide, intended for Latino audiences). Courier extensively utilizes social media to promote stories made by the publications, generating clicks in order to shape public voter opinion.

me title=

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.400.1_en.html#goog_884035211 Ad ends in 15s Next Video × Next Video J.d. Vance Remarks On A New Direction For Pro-worker, Pro-family Conservatism, Tac Gala, 5-2019 Cancel Autoplay is paused

Courier stories are written with the intent of mobilizing women and young people. McGowan writes that Courier does this by "framing issues from health care to economic security in a way that provides these voters with more personal and local relevance than they are often targeted through traditional political ads." While these are real stories, they are packaged with the intent on provoking a positive reaction from certain demographics of the population, in order to spur them to vote for the Democratic Party this November. Courier itself has conceded that they exist solely to challenge Republicans on social media.

Courier Newsroom Editor-in-Chief Lindsay Schrupp disagreed with the concerns regarding journalistic integrity of its writers and service. Schrupp told The American Conservative the following,

Courier Newsroom and its affiliated sites are independent from ACRONYM. We maintain an editorial firewall, just like any other media company, and the managing editor of each site, in addition to me as editor in chief, has ultimate discretion and control over content published. Painting all partisan-leaning outlets with the same brush is dangerous and too often creates false equivalency between very different types of newsrooms. All outlets in the Courier Newsroom network operate with integrity and adhere to traditional journalistic standards. It's offensive to our journalists -- many of whom have won state, regional and national awards for their reporting -- to try to make a direct comparison to partisan outlets on the right that often don't publish bylines, don't hire experienced or even local reporters, don't comply with basic fact-checking standards, and don't do original reporting in the regions where they operate. Courier aims to combat the misinformation spread by such right-wing sites pretending to be "local news" by providing readers with transparently progressive local reporting.

According to data from Facebook Ad Library, between May 2018 and July 12, 2020 Courier Newsroom spent $1,478,784 on Facebook ads on topics that include social issues, elections or politics. Conservative alternatives , such as the Daily Wire or Breitbart, have spent considerably less money on Facebook advertising. Breitbart spent $11,404 since March 2018 and the Daily Wire spent $418,578 since March 2018 according to Facebook's ad library.

Courier's political agenda is obvious. By looking into their Facebook ad-buys, Courier Newsroom has spent extensively on vulnerable Democrats who came into office in the 2018 midterms. These pieces, while factual, highlight the accomplishments of narrowly elected Democrats.

Among those that are frequently featured in mass ad-buys on Facebook are:

Reps. Cindy Axne , AbbyFinkenauer , Lauren Underwood , Andy Kim, Elissa Slotkin , Antonio Delgado , and Jared Golden . These Representatives all represent crucial swing-districts; all but Rep. Fikenauer's district voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Americans for Public Trust reported that Rep. Andy Kim received at least $40,000 dollars worth of positive Facebook advertising by Courier ad-buys. Other highlighted candidates likely have received a similar amount in positive coverage.

"Courier Newsroom's goal is to help elect Democrats. The site doesn't say that, but its founder, Tara McGowan, has made this clear." Gabby Deutch of Newsguard, a journalism watchdog focused on identifying fake news, tells The American Conservative. Deutch claims that Courier is different from other partisan news outlets because their intentions are not clearly stated. Courier instead argues that they are seeking to fill a void left in local journalism.

According to The New York Times in a story published in 2019, 1 in 5 local newspapers have been forced to shut down forever. Political groups, such as Acronym, are poised to revitalize local journalism with a new twist -- political advertising. Deutch warned The American Conservative of this worrying development, "With fewer local newspapers -- a decline that's gotten even worse due to the financial havoc wreaked by the pandemic -- there's room for political groups to fill the void, playing off people's trust in local news. So they make a site that looks like local news but has few (if any) reporters in the state, and then create content to woo voters."

There are examples on the right side of the spectrum too, she points out, including the conservative Star network (Michigan Star and Tennessee Star are two examples) and AlphaNewsMN, a conservative Minnesota site. "Readers deserve to know the agenda of the websites where they get their news."

Browsing North Carolina's Courier news site Cardinal & Pine, one finds it brands itself as "local news for the NC community." Newsguard' s assessment of Courier, is indeed true, with the overwhelming majority of stories highlighting the successes of North Carolina Democrats such as Governor Roy Cooper, attacking Republicans such as vulnerable Senator Thom Tillis, and promoting Democratic policy positions -- notably as it relates to COVID-19 and BLM social justice protests. Similarly, Virginia's Courier news site, The Dogwood, did not publish an article detailing Virginia's biggest scandal of 2019: Governor Northam's controversial blackface yearbook photo. Nor can one find any reference of Tara Reade, Joe Biden's sexual assault accuser who entered the public eye earlier this spring.

Even more striking, is that as a 501(c)(4), Acronym is not required to disclose donors. Acronym in 2018 received $250,000 from New Venture Fund which is managed by Arabella. Through its dark-money ties, Arabella has raised $2.4 billion dollars since 2006, making it one of the largest financiers in American politics. Arabella's influence came into the limelight during the 2018 mid-term elections, in which they raised the most ever by a left-leaning political non-profit. Courier Newsroom is, in other words, entirely funded by secret donors that likely have significant ties to the Democratic Party and the Super PACs bankrolling the 2020 election.

Acronym has invested millions of dollars to establish these papers across the country with plans to continue their expansion into local media across the country in preparation for the 2020 election and beyond. Acronym has claimed that they are separate from Courier and allow the creators to produce their own independent ideas, although, tax documents have revealed them to be full owners .

"This is all probably legal," says Bradley Smith, former Chairman of the FEC and foremost scholar on campaign finance. "What surprises me is that more entities–especially on the conservative side, since the majority of traditional media already lean left–don't do this. But there are examples on the right–for example, NRA Radio." Donors can be kept secret, as under Citizen's United , the 'periodicals' of 501(c)(4) groups do not have to be filed with FECA. (Federal Election Campaign Act) Smith believes organizations such as Courier will likely be a part of a greater trend in local journalism across the country.

Pacronym, also under the Acronym umbrella, is a Democratic Super-PAC charged with the single goal of electing Joe Biden. Pacronym ads present similar content to what one would see on a Courier publication, focusing heavily on the failures of Trump's handling of COVID-19, the struggling of small-businesses across key-swing states (North Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), and Joe Biden's proposed response to the virus.

Courier, with the same goal, repurposes ideas by PACs and the Democratic Party by attaching a 'news' label for legitimacy. "The anti-Trump ads from Courier focus on the same points as Pacronym and other Democratic political groups, but if they look like news articles, the audience sees them differently than the same content coming from a politician," According to Deutch at Newsguard.

Pacronym donors are publicly disclosed, and may have present a clue into Courier Newsroom's finances. Some notable financiers of Pacronym include billionaire hedge fund manager Seth Klarman, Hollywood icon Steven Spielberg and his wife Kate Kapshaw, a billionaire heiress to the Levi Strauss brand Mimi Haas, and silicon valley's very own LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. Pacronym has targeted a $75 million-dollar digital ad campaign, primarily using Facebook, against President Trump for the upcoming election.

Acronym is also involved in another scandal, notably the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus. Shadow Inc, also operating under Acronym's umbrella, was established with the purpose of digitally registering and mobilizing voters. Shadow Inc's leadership primarily consisted of 2016 ex-Clinton campaign staff. Shadow Inc received a contract by the Iowa Democratic Party for $63,183 to develop an application to help count votes in the Iowa Caucus. Shadow Inc's application, the IowaReporterApp, failed to properly report the caucus, leading to a delayed result. Campaigns, pundits, and election officials were confused due to the inconsistencies found in the results.

Candidate Pete Buttigieg claimed victory despite the caucus results not having been properly released. According to data by the FEC, Pete Buttigieg's campaign paid Shadow Inc. $21,250 for "software rights and subscriptions" in July 2019. Acronym CEO Tara McGowan's husband, Michael Halle, was a senior strategist for the Pete Buttigieg campaign. Michael Halle's brother, Ben Halle, was Pete Buttigieg's Iowa Communications Director. Many have suspected foul play, or at least incompetence.

Courier Newsroom is distinct from both fake-news and astro-turf operations that came into the public eye during the 2016 election. Rather than produce fake content with the intent to mislead, Courier articles are legitimate and are written by real writers. In the leaked Acronym memo, CEO Tara McGowan claimed that the Democratic Party was losing "the media war."

In 2014 the National Republican Congressional Committee established fake news websites and paid to boost them on Google. These websites were deceptive with the intent on defeating the opposing candidate. Although, these websites publicly disclosed that they were paid for by the committee at the bottom of the article. Courier's funding remains undisclosed.

PACs, in tandem with a surge in online political advertising, have weaponized newsrooms to present misleading news for electoral success.
Alberto Bufalino is a student at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and TAC's summer editorial intern.


M Orban a day ago

Good on them. That's how the game is played.

Tom Riddle M Orban 20 hours ago

I don't know . . . It's bad enough that the republic has to deal with a broad swath of people getting their news from terrible facebook feeds. It's why America has a president selling beans and promoting demon sperm doctors, and why it's one of the few countries that can't keep covid down despite it's resources.

I don't think trying to get the rest of getting our news from people that operate at the level of Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, and Breitbart is praiseworthy.

M Orban Tom Riddle 20 hours ago • edited

You are right in principle.
We have this six hundred pound Citizens United crapping all over the room though.
I too wish that the game was played by different rules. But this is not Switzerland and we need to win first.

Tom Riddle M Orban 18 hours ago

Is it clear though that repealing Citizens United would change this? The Double Plus Wealthy are already funding the top online websites to the tune of millions of dollars a year, and the funders of the Federalist are famously anonymous despite the Federalist basically being an arm of the Republican party/embarrassment to thinking.

I am happy though that the anonymous funders of the Courier are not sponsoring fake news that makes their readers dumber, unlike *checks the article** the National Republican Congressional Committee . Yowza.

Baruch Dreamstalker Tom Riddle 11 hours ago

Repeal of Citizens United would make it possible to regulate who funds whom. It would not guarantee the outing of arrangements like Courier. Give me a leaked memo any day.

[Jul 30, 2020] U.S. Officials Disseminate Disinformation About 'Virus Disinformation'

Notable quotes:
"... Associated Press ..."
"... OneWorld.press ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
Jul 30, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

U.S. Officials Disseminate Disinformation About 'Virus Disinformation' Getald , Jul 29 2020 17:44 utc | 1

In another round of their anti-Russian disinformation campaign 'U.S. government officials' claim that some websites loosely connected to Russia are spreading 'virus disinformation'.

However, no 'virus disinformation' can be found on those sites.

The Associated Press as well as the New York Times were briefed by the 'officials' and provided write ups.

AP : US officials: Russia behind spread of virus disinformation

Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow's military intelligence service known as the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort meant to reach American and Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link between the sites and Russian intelligence.

Between late May and early July, one of the officials said, the websites singled out Tuesday published about 150 articles about the pandemic response, including coverage aimed either at propping up Russia or denigrating the U.S.

Among the headlines that caught the attention of U.S. officials were "Russia's Counter COVID-19 Aid to America Advances Case for Détente," which suggested that Russia had given urgent and substantial aid to the U.S. to fight the pandemic, and "Beijing Believes COVID-19 is a Biological Weapon," which amplified statements by the Chinese.

The first mentioned piece, Russia's Counter-COVID Aid To America Advances The Case For A New Detente , is by the well known author Andrew Korybko, a U.S. political analyst living in Moscow. It was published at OneWorld.press . The essay discussed the Russian Coronavirus aid flown in early April from Russia to the U.S. The analyst concludes that such aid can be seen as the beginning of a new détente between the U.S. and Russia.

There is zero 'virus disinformation' in the Korybko piece. The aid flight did happen and was widely reported. In a response to the allegations the proprietors of O neWorld point out that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a recent Q&A also alluded to a new détente with Russia. Was that also 'virus disinformation'?

The second piece the 'officials' pointed out, Beijing believes COVID-19 is a biological weapon , was written In March by Lucas Leiroz, a "research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro". It is an exaggerating analysis of the comments and questions a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry had made about the possible sources of the Coronavirus.

The original spokesperson quote is in the piece. Referring to additional sources the author's interpretation may go a bit beyond the quote's meaning. But it is certainly not 'virus disinformation' to raise the same speculative question about the potential sources of the virus which at that time many others were also asking.

The piece was published by InfoBRICS.org, a "BRICS information portal" which publishes in the languages of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). It is presumably financed by some or all of those countries.

Another website the 'U.S. officials' have pointed out is InfoRos.ru which publishes in Russian and English. The AP notes of it:

A headline Tuesday on InfoRos.ru about the unrest roiling American cities read "Chaos in the Blue Cities," accompanying a story that lamented how New Yorkers who grew up under the tough-on-crime approach of former Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg "and have zero street smarts" must now "adapt to life in high-crime urban areas."

Another story carried the headline of "Ukrainian Trap for Biden," and claimed that "Ukrainegate" -- a reference to stories surrounding Biden's son Hunter's former ties to a Ukraine gas company -- "keeps unfolding with renewed vigor."

U.S. officials have identified two of the people believed to be behind the sites' operations. The men, Denis Valeryevich Tyurin and Aleksandr Gennadyevich Starunskiy, have previously held leadership roles at InfoRos but have also served in a GRU unit specializing in military psychological intelligence and maintain deep contacts there, the officials said.

InfoRos calls itself a 'news agency' and has some rather boring general interest stuff on its site. But how is its writing in FOX News style about unrest in U.S. cities and about Biden's escapades in the Ukraine 'virus disinformation'? I fail to find any on that site.

In 2018 some "western intelligence agency" told the Washington Post , without providing any evidence, that InfoRos is related to the Russian military intelligence service GU (formerly GRU):

Unit 54777 has several front organizations that are financed through government grants as public diplomacy organizations but are covertly run by the GRU and aimed at Russian expatriates, the intelligence officer said. Two of the most significant are InfoRos and the Institute of the Russian Diaspora.

So InfoRos is getting some public grants and was allegedly previously run by two people who before that worked for the GU. What does that say about the current state and the content it provides? Nothing.

The NYT adds that hardly anyone is reading the websites the 'U.S. officials' pointed out but that their content is at times copied by more prominent aggregator sites:

"What we have seen from G.R.U. operations is oftentimes the social media component is a flop, but the narrative content that they write is shared more broadly through the niche media ecosystem," said Renee DiResta, a research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who has studied the G.R.U. and InfoRos ties and propaganda work.

There are plenty of sites who copy content from various outlets and reproduce it under their name. But that does not turn whatever they publish into disinformation.

All the pieces mentioned by AP and NYT and attributed to the 'Russian' sites are basically factual and carry no 'virus disinformation'. That makes the 'U.S.officials' claims that they do such the real disinformation campaign.

And the AP and NYT are willingly falling for it.

People being prepared for Russia having the worlds first covid19 vaccine, the US will of course say it was stolen from them. Infantile politicians create infantile press to feed infantile articles to adult children. Critical thinking skills do not exist in the US population.

vk , Jul 29 2020 17:44 utc | 2

There's a corporativist aspect to all of this.

The development of propagation of information/disinformation through the internet eroded the power of the old newspapers/news agencies. It's not that this or that particular website is getting more views, but that the web of communications - the the imperialistic blunders + decline of capitalism post-2008 -, as a whole, weakened what seemed to be an unshakeable trust on the MSM (the very fact that this term exists already is historical evidence of their loss of power).

And this process manifests itself not only in loss of power, but also loss of money: this is particularly evident in the social media, where Facebook (Whatsapp + Facebook proper) and Google are beginning to siphon advertisement money from both TV and the traditional newspapers (printed press). When those traditional printed newspapers went digital, they behaved badly, by using paywalls - this marketing blunder only accelerated their decline in readership and thus further advertisement money, generating a vicious cycle for them.

The loss of influence of public opinion for the MSM also inaugurated another very important societal shift: the middle class' loss of monopoly over opinion and formation of opinion. Historically, it was the role of the middle class to be highly educated, to go to academia (college) and, most importantly, to daily read the newspapers while eating the breakfast. The middle class was the class of the intellectuals by definition, thus served as the clerical class of the capitalist class, the priests of capitalism. With the popularization of the internet, the smartphone and social media, this sanctity was broken or, at least, begun to deteriorate. We can attest this class conflict phenomenon by studying the rise of the term "expert" as a pejorative one. In the West's case, this shift begun through the far-right side of the political spectrum, but the shift is there.

The popularization of what was once a privilege is nothing new in capitalism. The problem here is that capitalism depends on infinite growth to merely exist (i.e. it can't survive on zero growth, it is mathematically impossible), so it has to "monetize" what still isn't monetize in order to find/create more vital space (Lebensraum - a term coined by the hyper-capitalist Nazis) for its expansion and thus survival. Hence the popularization of college education in the USA (then in Europe). Hence the popularization of daily news through the internet/social media. This process, of course, has its positives and negatives (as is the case with every dialectical process) - the fall of the MSM is one of the positives.

So, in fact, when the likes of AP, Reuters, NYT, WaPo, Guardian, Fox, CNN spread disinformation against "alt-media", they are really just protecting their market share - the fact that it implies in suppression of freedom of speech and to mass disinformation and, ultimately, to war and destruction, is merely collateral damage of the business they operate in. They are, after all, capitalist enterprises above all.

bevin , Jul 29 2020 18:16 utc | 3
Excellent analysis, as always, by b. And vk's points are very pertinent too. One tiny quibble: I doubt that the Nazis coined, though they certainly popularised, the term lebensraum.
There is an air of desperation about these campaigns against "Russian" "disinformation" massive changes are occurring, and, because they are so vast, they are moving relatively slowly.
The old media model, now totally outdated, was the first thing to fall. Now capitalism itself is collapsing as a result of the primary contradiction that, left to itself, the marketplace will solve all problems.
As Washington, where magical thinking is sovereign, is demonstrating, left to itself the hidden hand will bring only misery, famine, death and the Apocalypse. This was once very well understood, as a brief look at the history of the founding of the UN will show, now it is the subject of frantic denial by capitalism's priesthood who have grown to enjoy the glitter and sensuality of life in a brothel. It is a sign of their mental decay that they can do no better than to blame Russians.
jayc , Jul 29 2020 18:23 utc | 4
One should presume the anonymous officials responsible for this ground-breaking report (sarc) are close to the various "combatting Russian disinformation" NGOs. They are merely living up to the mission statements of their benefactors. AP and NYTimes are being unprofessional and spreading fake news by failing to reveal their sources. It's mind-numbing - the BS one must wade through.
donkeytale , Jul 29 2020 18:42 utc | 5
VK @ 2

Good point however with one glaring contradiction in your thinking.

You make valid a very criticism of capitalism yet you tend to applaud Chinese capitalist growth (although you tend to deny Chinese capitalist growth is capitalist, a feat of breathtaking magical thinking).

The great Chinese wealth is fully 75% invested in bubblicious real estate valuations of non-commercial real estate built on a mountain of construction debt. Sound familiar?

The irony is Chinese growth since 2008 has been goosed along entirely by the very same financialized hyper capitalist traits as US: great gobs of debt creating supply-side "growth", huge amounts of middle wealth tied to asset inflated bubbles, and of course the resulting income and wealth inequality that rivals US inequality and continues to increase over time.

I snorted coffee out my nose when Gruff tried to totally excuse Chinese income inequality for being only slightly less than US level....how about the truth? Chinese inequality is heinous, only slightly less than the also heinous US level.

The diseased working class in China only has an an arm and two legs hacked off while the diseased US working class is fully quadriplegic. Much, much better to be a fucked over by globalization Chinese citizen! Lmao

psychohistorian , Jul 29 2020 19:19 utc | 6
@ b who ended his posting with
"
And the AP and NYT are willingly falling for it.
"

Sorry b, but AP and NYT are active participants in the disinformation campaign of failing empire and are not falling for anything

The folks that are falling for it are the American public that has lost its ability to discriminate with the fire hose volume of lies told to them on a daily basis.

Empire is in the process of defeating itself which is the only safe way of ending the tyranny of global private finance. I commend China and Russia for having the patience and fortitude to hold the safe space for the dysfunctional social contract having private control of the lifeblood of human commerce to self destruct.

JohnH , Jul 29 2020 19:21 utc | 7
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information when most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the CDC, which spent months discrediting the effectiveness of face masks!!!

Theses propagandists need to get real jobs dealing with real world problems.

JohnH , Jul 29 2020 19:21 utc | 8
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information when most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the CDC, which spent months discrediting the effectiveness of face masks!!!

Theses propagandists need to get real jobs dealing with real world problems.

jason , Jul 29 2020 19:25 utc | 9
there has been no national response to coronavirus but there must be a national acceptance that this national non-response is China's fault. and any sources reporting truthfully about the US or disseminating statements easily found elsewhere, as long as they are Russian, Chinese, Venezuelan, Cuban, Iranian, etc., is pure disinformation. How brittle and weak the US is. Where's the Pericles to say to the Spartans, "enter our city and inspect our defenses"? The US is a nation of heavily-armed mice and sheep.

btw, the China love on display around here is pretty funny. in that the Chinese government has mounted a national response to a very serious threat, China is a nation in a way that the US is not. There is no US or we would not have 50 states doing different things in response to the corona outbreak. the US is already dead. But China is a thoroughly authoritarian capitalist state. they are who they are in a dialectic competition with the US and other capitalist powers, not because of some Maoist-Confucian amalgam that inspires such wisdom in their brilliant leaders, who are just as quick to destroy their environment for capitalist gain as anyone on this planet is. The decline of the US will not make China or Russia or any "emerging" power less authoritarian or violent. au quite the contraire. They are Shylocks who will try to better instruction.

However, none of this is of concern to people in the US, whose only concern is the Nazi spawn who've been running "the West" for much longer than the last 75 years. but it's time to kill the bitch, not let it keep screwing us and breeding.

div> Russia's rush to have the first COVID vaccine will be viewed by the propagandists as just another evil attempt by Putin to embarrass the US. Should it prove safe and effective, you can bet that it will be banned in USA, because anything Russian is by definition bad.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-hopes-register-worlds-first-covid-19-vaccine-aug-12

Posted by: JohnH , Jul 29 2020 19:30 utc | 10

Russia's rush to have the first COVID vaccine will be viewed by the propagandists as just another evil attempt by Putin to embarrass the US. Should it prove safe and effective, you can bet that it will be banned in USA, because anything Russian is by definition bad.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-hopes-register-worlds-first-covid-19-vaccine-aug-12

Posted by: JohnH | Jul 29 2020 19:30 utc | 10

Clueless Joe , Jul 29 2020 19:46 utc | 11
As others already said, this is a bit rich, considering that virus disinformation comes from Trump himself, both live and on Twitter, quoting genuine hacks and megalomaniac doctors, depending on the week.
Reality check: Russians will be able to travel across the world way before Americans, for obvious healthcare reasons.
dh , Jul 29 2020 19:50 utc | 12
@2 I would think adblocking has a lot to do with it too. I'm always surprised that it has been allowed to continue.
moon , Jul 29 2020 20:13 utc | 13
Posted by: bevin | Jul 29 2020 18:16 utc | 3

Bevin, I agree, I once had a short exchange on Mondoweiss about the term Lebensraum, it had been used in some type of marketing by my favorite Swizz supermarket. Which then, apparently caused an uproar. The term Lebensraum on its own is rather innocent. Leben (life) Raum (space), a noun compound. Context matters. And I am sure I checked it, and Micros definitively did not use it in any type of world conquering settler context. I haven't stumbled yet across a Micros supermarket anywhere outside Switzerland, ;)

Here is link to the German Wiki entry via Google translate:
https://tinyurl.com/Wikipedia-Lebensraum

vk , Jul 29 2020 20:24 utc | 14
@ Posted by: donkeytale | Jul 29 2020 18:42 utc | 5; Posted by: jason | Jul 29 2020 19:25 utc | 9

Err... this post is not about China.

I think you are the rabid ideologues seeing ghosts, not me.

Perimetr , Jul 29 2020 20:34 utc | 15
AGREE with psychohistorian @ 6

The NTT no longer qualifies as "the paper of record". More like toilet paper if nothing better can be found.

Perimetr , Jul 29 2020 20:35 utc | 16
apologies, meant NYT, i.e. New York Times
barovsky , Jul 29 2020 20:38 utc | 17
I'm under the impression that Info Ros is a Russian government-funded, supported, backed, site, it certainly looks like it and its reportage is decidedly 'neutral'.
donkeytale , Jul 29 2020 20:40 utc | 18
VK @ 14

Actually my comment illustrated the inconsistency of your critique of capitalism post-2008 but nice slide away. Two thumbs up. Way up.

blum , Jul 29 2020 20:41 utc | 19
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information when most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the CDC, which spent months discrediting ...
Posted by: JohnH | Jul 29 2020 19:21 utc | 8

This is close to my overall take on matters. But I wouldn't put so much emphasis on face masks but on something along the lines of Covid is notthing but a flu. Face masks were initially discussed quite controversially everywhere.

For Georgio Agamben too, strictly a favorite of mine, it was simply another State of Exception too. Suppressive biopolitics:
https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/coronavirus-and-philosophers/

************

Were it gets interesting is here:
A report published last month by a second, nongovernmental organization, Brussels-based EU DisinfoLab, examined links between InfoRos and One World to Russian military intelligence. The researchers identified technical clues tying their websites to Russia and identified some financial connections between InfoRos and the government.

Gotta add that institution to my link list collection on matters.
EU disinfo Lab
https://www.disinfo.eu/publications/how-two-information-portals-hide-their-ties-to-the-russian-news-agency-inforos

They have a competitor which seems Bruxelles based too, Patrick Armstrong alerted me to a while ago:
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/
EUvsDisinfo is the flagship project of the European External Action Service's East StratCom Task Force

************

But yes, on first sight InfoRos seems to be neatly aligned with US alt-Right-Media in basic outlook. More than with the US MSM.

And now I first have to read what has been on Andrew Korybko's mind lately. ;)

blum , Jul 29 2020 20:42 utc | 20

sorry didn't close html tag.
uncle tungsten , Jul 29 2020 21:20 utc | 21
Integrity Initiative strikes again. AP and NYT rush faithfully to print. Journalist gets an extra dime.
Rutherford82 , Jul 29 2020 22:13 utc | 22
Many Americans of all walks of life do not trust their own government, yet most people here seem to have faith that their media outlets are telling the truth. How do you break through to the public that has utter faith in whatever newspaper or television channel they prefer and highlight the lies in a way which gains real traction?

I believe it takes leadership, which, for Americans, mean celebrities have to endorse the idea or it likely won't be taken seriously. This cult of celebrity is mirrored on social media platforms, where millions flock to be a part of some beautiful person's beautiful photograph or some known personalities acceptable opinion du jour.

There is a great bond gripping the minds of American media consumers. They have trained their entire lives to worship at the cult of celebrity and this is the key to breaking the entire media landscape down for them.

This also is the key to unlocking the voices of those who know better with regards to media lies, but keep silent out of fear.

Will a Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson be able to break the spell? I think it will never happen based on how Hollywood gatekeeps celebrity and based on how hopelessly apathetic most are to Julian Assange.

Ben Barbour , Jul 29 2020 22:36 utc | 23
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told what to write. I was allowed to write a piece about Russia where I was critical of their policy of backing the STC in Yemen (I thought it was bad to divide Yemen). No one makes anybody tow any specific line. I decided not to publish my piece on Russia and the STC in Yemen because I didn't find the topic interesting enough, but I was 100% allowed to be critical of Russia.

If it's a GRU outfit then it's a bad one.

Hoarsewhisperer , Jul 29 2020 23:14 utc | 24
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told what to write.
...
Posted by: Ben Barbour | Jul 29 2020 22:36 utc | 23

Is it possible that you're just the in-house joke at OW?
If they don't care that you'd write "tow" instead of "toe" or that you're too lazy/thoughtless to reproduce the full name of the entity for which STC is an acronym, before using the acronym, then it suggests that One World's Editorial Standards are as lax as your own :-)

Jen , Jul 29 2020 23:29 utc | 25
"... Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow's military intelligence service known as the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort meant to reach American and Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly ..."

Of course GRU agents always work in pairs, guided only by the mysterious telepathic powers of the Russian President and no-one or nothing else, as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov did in Salisbury in March 2018 when they supposedly tried to assassinate or send a warning to Sergei Skripal, and as Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy did in London in November 2006 when they apparently put polonium in a pot of tea served to Alexander Litvinenko in full view of patrons and staff at a hotel restaurant. It's as if each agent carries only half a brain and each half is connected to its complement by the corpus callosum that is Lord Vlademort Putin's thoughts beaming oing-yoing-yoing-like through the atmosphere until they find their targets.

And of course US government officials always speak on condition of anonymity.

As Agence Presse News puts it:

"... The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link between the sites and Russian intelligence ..."

So if US government officials can now freely discuss declassified news, why do they insist on being anonymous? This would be the sort of news announced at a US national press club meeting with Matt Lee in the front row asking awkward and discomfiting questions.

norecovery , Jul 29 2020 23:35 utc | 26
The malicious cultivation (including Gain of Function research) and implantation of this biowarfare agent (and other ones such as Swine Fever) by the U.S. Intelligence services in various places around the world (especially in China and Iran), the intentional faulty responses and deceptive statistics administered by the monopoly-controlled medical establishment, the feigned inability to provide adequate testing, care, and treatment, along with planned economic destruction as a means of restoring investor losses and control of populations through stifling of dissent, are at the heart of the deflection and projection of blame. That broadly-based subject is barely discussed in alternative media and is totally obfuscated in MSM, because the "denier-debunkers" dispute the possibility of such extreme malice existing in our institutions, in spite of previous experience with events such as 9/11 and the '08 financial crisis.
Hoarsewhisperer , Jul 29 2020 23:48 utc | 27
...
So if US government officials can now freely discuss declassified news, why do they insist on being anonymous?
...
Posted by: Jen | Jul 29 2020 23:29 utc | 25

Precisely.
My guess is that they don't know when to quit.
and/or
They embrace the Mythbusters motto...
"If a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."

Benson Barbour , Jul 29 2020 23:54 utc | 28
"Is it possible that you're just the in-house joke at OW?
If they don't care that you'd write "tow" instead of "toe" or that you're too lazy/thoughtless to reproduce the full name of the entity for which STC is an acronym, before using the acronym, then it suggests that One World's Editorial Standards are as lax as your own :-)"

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jul 29 2020 23:14 utc | 24

Fair point on tow vs toe. That's why editing exists when writing articles. As for the STC part, that is common knowledge if you follow basic geopolitics. When making a post in a comment thread, should I write out "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" before using the acronym ISIS? If I am posting in a comment thread about Iran, do I need to write out "Mujahedin-e Khalq" instead of just using MEK?

It just displays a massive level of ignorance on your part. Nice try though.

Hoarsewhisperer , Jul 30 2020 0:29 utc | 29
...
It just displays a massive level of ignorance on your part. Nice try though.
Posted by: Benson Barbour | Jul 29 2020 23:54 utc | 28

Thanks. Do you realise that you've just wasted 50+ words explaining why BB didn't bother writing the 3 words that STC stands for?

VietnamVet , Jul 30 2020 0:59 utc | 30
Global media moguls are blaming the 1,000 American deaths per day from the Wuhan coronavirus on Donald Trump to finally get him out of the way. But they are silent on their and the Democrats complicity in the death toll due to the lack of a national public health system or the funding to pay for it.

The USA is going to hell. A scapegoat is needed. For the media and Democrats, Russia is to blame. Anybody else rather than themselves, the true culprits. Donald Trump blames China for the pandemic if he acknowledges it at all but that is where all of Tim Cook's iPhones are made. Blaming China is globalist heresy.

Jackrabbit , Jul 30 2020 1:03 utc | 31
norecovery @Jul29 23:35 #26

I think there's a reasonable case to be made that this is what has occurred.

And, if true, it is covered up by sly suggestions that nCov-19 was man-made with hints or a smug attitude that convey the message that China created the virus. As well as a virtual black-out in Western media of Chinese suggestions that the virus may have started in USA or been planted in Wuhan.

But then, I already stand accused of attributing magical powers of self-interested foresight and boldness to US Deep-State due to my belief that Trump was their choice to lead USA in 2016. And so I expect you're theory will receive the same derision. Yet Empires have not been shy about killing millions when it was in their interest to do so.

In any case, I've written many times that USA/West's unwillingness to fight the virus has been dressed up as innocent mistakes. Even if the West wasn't the source of the virus they have much to answer for. Yet very few have taken note of the way that USA/West have played the pandemic to advance their interests - from lining the pockets of Big Pharma to blaming China for their own "incompetence" (a misnomer: the power-elite are very competent at advancing their interests!).

Inconvenient Truths:


!!
Kay Fabe , Jul 30 2020 1:29 utc | 32
It seems disinformation has been redefined to mean information that counters someone else's (yours) belief. We pretend to be in an Age of Reason but really, we have just replaced religious beliefs with secular beliefs. Science has been taken over by pseudoscientists that have replaced priests. The conflict of interest by the science/priests who profit from their deceptions is beyond criminal.

To know what is the truth you just have to look at whats being censored. Nobody being censored for supporting mask mandates, claiming vaccines are safe, and not questioning the blatant data manipulation of COVID cases that anyone with an open mind and IQ of 100 , and who reads the data, definitions and studies can see through.

It seems people on both sides of the fence have replaced their brains with their chosen ideology. Its like watching a Christian, Jew and Muslim arguing which is the best or true religion. No point in it.

james , Jul 30 2020 1:33 utc | 33
thanks b!

so, lets say GRU agents are feeding russian propaganda sites... how does that compare to all the CIA-FBI agents and has been hacks working for the western msm?? seems a bit rich for the pot to be calling a kettle black, even if they are lying thru their teeth! i am sure if someone did a story on how many CIA - m16 people are presently working with the western msm, they would have a story with some legs... this shite from anonymous usa gov't officials is just that - shite..

@ Ben, or Benson Barbour .. thanks for your comments!

Prof K , Jul 30 2020 1:50 utc | 34
Anyone notice that the Democrats still haven't presented any plan whatsoever to flatten the curve in the US? They are just as bad as Trump.
Seer , Jul 30 2020 1:55 utc | 35
Ben Barbou @ 23
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told what to write. I was allowed to write a piece about Russia where I was critical of their policy of backing the STC in Yemen (I thought it was bad to divide Yemen). No one makes anybody tow any specific line. I decided not to publish my piece on Russia and the STC in Yemen because I didn't find the topic interesting enough, but I was 100% allowed to be critical of Russia.

There's such a thing as self-censorship. Mainstream US news has effectively brought up folks to be this way: stay in line or become unemployed- doesn't need to be stated. Not aimed at you, but it needs to be said (und understood).

Ben Barbour , Jul 30 2020 3:14 utc | 36
@35 That's a very good point. I completely agree. Self-censorship and group think are two of the biggest problems in modern journalism/analysis. One World consistently publishes pro-Pakistan and pro-China articles. When I was first sending them submissions, I did a piece on US vs China in Sudan and South Sudan. I considered omitting China's culpability in escalating the conflicts, and instead focus on laying the blame squarely at the feet of the US. In the end I told the truth about both countries' imperialist escalations (to the best of my ability).

There is a lot of incentive to self-censor at just about any outlet. It's more comfortable to fit in with a site's brand.

In the case of the Russia-STC article, I really just found the subject matter to be thin. Russia's support of the STC is mostly just diplomatic. Not a lot to write about.

AntiSpin , Jul 30 2020 3:55 utc | 37
Think you can't possibly be more outraged than you already are?

Try this --
The Government's Weapon Against Reality Winner: COVID-19
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
27 July 20
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/64239-the-governments-weapon-against-reality-winner-covid-19

One Too Many , Jul 30 2020 4:09 utc | 38
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jul 30 2020 0:29 utc | 29

Google or duckduckgo "STC in Yemen". First hit, it's not that hard.

J W , Jul 30 2020 5:39 utc | 39
Posted by: james | Jul 30 2020 1:33 utc | 33

Small wonder that food from Anglozionists is so bad, they love being in the kitchen but they can't stand the heat.

ak74 , Jul 30 2020 5:40 utc | 40
The Americans are increasingly unhinged in their spittle-flecked accusations against not only Russia, but also China, Iran, Venezuela, etc.

It's so pathetic as to be humorous.

Underlying the USA's Two Minutes of Hate campaigns, however, is a deeper disease that defines Americans as a nation and as a people.

Namely, Americans have an inbred fundamentalist belief in their own Moral Superiority as the Beacon of Liberty, Land of the Free, blah, blah, blah--no matter how many nations they have bombed back to the Stone Age, invaded, colonized, regime changed, sanctioned, or economically raped in the name of Freedom and Democracy™.

Donald Trump is half correct.

The United States of America is truly a great nation alright--but great only in terms of its deceit, great in terms of its delusions, and great in terms of the horrors that it has inflicted on much of the world.

Comparing America to the Nazis would be a high insult ... to Nazi Germany, as the Third Reich only lasted about 12 years, while the American Reich has unfortunately lasted well over 200 years and gotten away with its crimes against humanity by possessing what are likely the greatest propaganda machine and political deception in human history: the American Free Press and the world historic lie called "American Freedom."

Harold Pinter in his 2005 Nobel Literature Prize speech briefly but powerfully exposes this heart of American darkness:

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner."

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2005/pinter/25621-harold-pinter-nobel-lecture-2005/

Blue Dotterel , Jul 30 2020 6:23 utc | 41
And the disinformation in the USA continues.
https://www.rt.com/usa/496578-fauci-coronavirus-eye-protection/

"Top US immunologist Dr Anthony Fauci is now saying citizens are not "complete" in protecting themselves from the Covid-19 pandemic unless they go beyond wearing a mask and add in eye protection like goggles, too."

More provocation from the oligarchy. Now, that masks are becoming less controversial, time to step up the provocation, division and control.

Fauci is also behind the anti-hydroxychloroquine propaganda, as well, that even b has swallowed. This, despite it being used effectively in other countries. All of this simply because Trump supports it (ergo, it must be bad) and Big Pharma (who control Fauci,
CDC abd WHO) can't profit significantly from its use.

Of course vacines are still an issue:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/kennedy-jr-warns-parents-about-danger-using-largely-untested-covid-vaccines-kids/5719566

"During the course of the debate, Kennedy also talked about the regular vaccines most people take, from Hepatitis B to the flu shot, emphasizing that no proper testing had ever been done, which is mandatory for any other medication. Vaccines "are the only medical product that does not have to be safety-tested against a placebo," he explained."

Kennedy said

"it's not hypothetical that vaccines cause injury, and that injuries are not rare. The vaccine courts have paid out four billion dollars" over the past three decades, "and the threshold for getting back into a vaccine court and getting a judgment – [the Department of Health and Human Services] admits that fewer than one percent of people who are injured ever even get to court."

So, how well has the Russian vaccine been tested? Does anyone know?


Blue Dotterel , Jul 30 2020 6:40 utc | 42
It is interesting how USAians are being played by the oligarchy.

On foreign policy, the dems and reps are in basic agreement and the propaganda is to bring the masses together to hate Russia, Chaina and anyone else who the Western (US) oligarchy has targeted.

Domestically, unity is the enemy of the oligarchy. The masses must be controlled through division and diversion, so the dems and reps play good cop, bad cop (bad and good being relative to the supporter) to ensure the masses are diverted from important oligarch issues to issues of irrelevance to the oligarchs, but easily manipulated emotionnally by the oligarchs for the beast.

It seems so obvious, and yet, works so well.

vato , Jul 30 2020 7:31 utc | 43
Posted by: VietnamVet | Jul 30 2020 0:59 utc | 30

"[...]Donald Trump blames China for the pandemic if he acknowledges it at all but that is where all of Tim Cook's iPhones are made. Blaming China is globalist heresy."


Then why do you phrase it the "Wuhan coronavius" yourself?

Jams O'Donnell , Jul 30 2020 7:59 utc | 44
Posted by: ak74 | Jul 30 2020 5:40 utc | 40

Thanks for that link.

Mark2 , Jul 30 2020 9:32 utc | 45
For those interested in corona virus truth,
I am interested in the question -- - was it spread by negligence or deliberately?
That question must be relivant to this debate on MOA.
I ask this now becouse -- --
Tonight on bbc 'panorama' there investigating the spread of the virus from Hospital to care homes !! I'm told there is some pretty shocking information exposed.
Some may wish to catch that prog. Heads up.

I just add an obversation. -- western psychopathic disinformation and projection has led to a confused public. A public deciding to disengage with politics. To the gain of the psychopaths.

H.Schmatz , Jul 30 2020 10:41 utc | 46
A new candidate to the demonization and disinfo operations has been added...Germany...which has been labeled "delinquent" by the POTUS...in a clear exercise of projection...

https://www.rt.com/news/496584-germany-withdrawl-troops-gas/

Of course, to not be insulted or labeled delinquent, you must act as these other countries enumerated by Southcom commander, to work for the US ( not your country...) and moreover pay for it....Typical mafia extortion, isn´t it?

https://twitter.com/kopamaros/status/1285292016885215237

uncle tungsten , Jul 30 2020 10:49 utc | 47
norecovery #26
That broadly-based subject is barely discussed in alternative media and is totally obfuscated in MSM, because the "denier-debunkers" dispute the possibility of such extreme malice existing in our institutions, in spite of previous experience with events such as 9/11 and the '08 financial crisis.

YES to that and thank you for that post. That the institutions of state and private sectors are the incubators and propagators of extreme malice is axiomatic in the UKUSAI and its five eyed running dogs is beyond doubt. They attack and scorn any critic or unbeliever. They assault and pillory truth speakers and those who might question 'their narrative'.

Then if all that fails the hunt them down and make preposterous claims about them being anti semitic of anti religion or anti their nation.

Mendacity is the currency of the permanent state and its minions and they need to be outed and shamed and challenged at every opportunity.

uncle tungsten , Jul 30 2020 11:00 utc | 48
VietnamVet #30

Wuhan coronavirus you say?

Fort Detrick coronavirus would be on the mark and as you most likely know, you cannot trust the USA lying eyes once you have served them in their killing fields.

Even that right wing ex special forces advocate Steve Pieczenic testifies to the fact of a deadly virus in USA in November/December plus his beloved bloggers say way earlier than that around Maryland etc. Then there is the small problem of the 'vaping' illness that generated lots of pneumonia like fatalities in June/July. And then the instant closure of Fort Detrick due to its leaking all over the place through a totally inadequate waste water treatment plant that couldn't scrub a turd let alone a virus.

Fort Detrick Virus is closer to the reality imo.

William Gruff , Jul 30 2020 11:00 utc | 49
The problem with presstitutes, possibly including Ben Barbour , (disclaimer: I've never read any media products that particular individual generated) goes beyond the point made by Seer @35 . To be sure, there is no chance that a presstitute would bite the hand that feeds it, but there is more depth to the problem of why they all suck so badly, at least the ones in the US. While journalism degrees are the university equivalent of Special Education (nowadays referred to as "Exceptional Student Education" , which is very fitting for students from such an "exceptional" nation), they still prepare the future presstitute to understand that their capitalist employers have interests beyond their immediately apparent ones. That is, more important to a capitalist employer than tomorrow's sales and profits is the preservation of capitalism itself.

But the problem is deeper still. The presstitute that is successfully employed by a capitalist enterprise will invariably be one that knows not to criticize the employer's business, the capitalist system it depends upon, and the empire that improves that employer's profitability. More importantly, that successful hireling will additionally have been brainwashed from infancy that all of these things are good and necessary aspects of the modern world that need to be ideologically defended. The prospective presstitute will be one that not only voluntarily, but eagerly serves its capitalist masters varied interests. After all, when there are plenty of whores to choose from, would you hire one that requires explicit instructions on every last thing you expect from them and just follows those instructions mechanically or the the one that puts effort into figuring out what would please you and delivers that with enthusiasm? Keeping this dynamic in mind will allow one to better understand the capitalist mass media's products.

Steve , Jul 30 2020 11:24 utc | 50
The contempt at which the American ruling class hold their citizens is galling. The US corporate media operates as if their targeted audience are all morons.
moon , Jul 30 2020 11:37 utc | 51
you cannot trust the USA lying eyes once you have served them in their killing fields. ...
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 30 2020 11:00 utc | 48

that's not a good argument, uncle t. But yes I wondered to to what extent VV or good old VietnamVet has been won over to the Trump diction.

blum , Jul 30 2020 11:39 utc | 52
I wondered to to
I wondered too to what extent VV seemingly has been ...
William Gruff , Jul 30 2020 12:00 utc | 53
Mark2 @45: "...was it [ novel coronavirus] spread by negligence or deliberately?"

Most likely both.

There is evidence to suggest that the virus was circulating in the US prior to it being discovered in China. While it is possible this could have been the results of testing the transmissibility of the virus, it seems more probable that it was an accidental release from Fort Detrick. This would explain the facility being shut down last year. Military facilities are never shut down simply for breaking a few rules but because those rule violations led to something unpleasant.

An accidental release, coupled with the fact that the synthetic origin of the virus would become apparent to scientists worldwide, resulted in a need to quickly establish an alternate explanation for the virus. Since the US was losing its trade war with China, and use of a bioweapon to turn the tide was already gamed out and on the table anyway, the virus (or possibly a very similar strain that had been pre-selected for the attack) was deliberately sprayed around a market in Wuhan.

The CDC and CIA probably thought that the virus was contained in the West and that since it was a surprise to the Chinese it would run rampant there and result in their economy shutting down and their borders being closed, decoupling China from the world. With the Chinese treating the virus as a bio attack and defeating its spread, followed by the virus rampaging through the West, the dynamic changed. Now in order for the virus to decouple China it must become endemic in the West. The Chinese must be made to close their borders in fear of becoming infected from the rest of the world. To make this backup plan a reality, and to get the economies moving again as fast as possible, some western leaders have decided to accelerate the spread in the hopes of quickly developing "herd immunity" . Taking out some retirees whom the capitalists view as a burden on the economy is just some nice icing on the cake.

Mark2 , Jul 30 2020 12:04 utc | 54
@ 51 & @ 52
I'd say not ! I'm confided Vietnam Vet is doing 'balenced' Reporting ! The subject of this post. Take another look at both this post and his comment. A lesson in how to be unbiased but truthfull.
Soooo any one got a definition of fake news.
Mine would be Truth before personal agenda.
oldhippie , Jul 30 2020 12:18 utc | 55
Self censorship works well.

Straight cash payoffs work well too.

CIA has had total control of media for 70 years now. It was a priority when they set up shop.

Mark2 , Jul 30 2020 12:19 utc | 56
William Gruff @ 53
I think yours is just about the most clear and concise summary of this whole virus catastrophe that I have seen so far. And that's a hell of a statement !
Unrelated I wonder what would have happened if the Chinese whistle blower had not blown the whistle ? Now that's one to ponder ? As bad as this all is world wide, where would be right now ? Dose not bare thinking about.
vig , Jul 30 2020 12:21 utc | 57
Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 30 2020 12:04 utc | 54

What are you trying to tell me? Anyone that does not acknowledge the virus originated in China and that China didn't respond as fast as it could have? And more polemically: there is some kind of African Marxist heading WHO who obfuscated China's late information to the WHO?

There is a dot of truth in everything. There is also a dot of truth in the fact that Trump or his relevant admin was informed early enough.

Mark2 , Jul 30 2020 12:27 utc | 58
Big @ 57
What ?
jadan , Jul 30 2020 12:35 utc | 59
We've been acquainted with this virus about 7 months or so and it is difficult to separate reliable information from disinformation. We know very little about it, eg, we don't know whether those who recover can be reinfected. Is it like the common cold, against which there is no immunity? We just have to assume that the Trump virus has infected every level of the administration so that there is ignorance and unadulterated stupidity from the lowest level in the ministry of propaganda to the secretary of state and, of course, the president himself currently celebrating the wisdom of an animist/Christian hybrid doctor from Africa spewing the foulest disinformation one can imagine.
vig , Jul 30 2020 12:46 utc | 60
Big @ 57
What ?
Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 30 2020 12:27 utc | 58

babbling: look if this is the good old VV from SST, I wouldn't want to nail him on the usage of Wuhan virus. But on the larger content of his comment, I am wondering.

Full discovery: I entered the US conspiracy universe shortly after 9/11. I'll probably never forget there was this one commenter that completely out of then current preoccupations within the diverse theories, you recall?, suggested that the Chinese were approaching via the Southern borders.

There surely should be a way how the US and Russia

vig , Jul 30 2020 12:48 utc | 61
There surely should be a way how the US and Russia

There surely should be a way how the US and Russia repartition their claims. After all historically the Russian had some type of partly real Yellow threat too ... :)

Mark2 , Jul 30 2020 12:54 utc | 62
Vig @ 60
Thanks for clearing that up. Cheers
Hannibal , Jul 30 2020 12:56 utc | 63
Can probably trace this back to the "integrity initiative" and/ or the Atlantic Council. That's a web worth untangling with transparency.

Spot on James @ 33

One Too Many , Jul 30 2020 13:05 utc | 64
Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 30 2020 12:19 utc | 56

Except the "whistle blower" was not a whistle blower since local, provincial, and nations institutions were already advised or in the process of being advised. Dr Wenliang posted his information in a private chatroom with other medical professionals on December 30th. Timeline of events:

Dec 27 -- Dr. Zhang Jixian, director of the respiratory and critical care medicine department of Hubei Provincial Hospital, files a report to the hospital stating that an unknown pneumonia has developed in three patients and they are not responding to influenza treatment.

Dec 29 -- Hubei Provincial Hospital convened a panel of 10 experts to discuss the now seven cases. Their conclusion that the situation was extraordinary, plus information of two similar cases in other hospitals, prompted the hospital to report directly to the municipal and provincial health authorities.

Dec 30 -- The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an urgent notification to medical institutions under its jurisdiction, ordering efforts to appropriately treat patients with pneumonia of unknown cause.

Dec 31 -- The National Health Commission (NHC) made arrangements in the wee hours, sending a working group and an expert team to Wuhan to guide epidemic response and conduct on-site investigations. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released a briefing on its website about the pneumonia outbreak in the city, confirming 27 cases and telling the public not to go to enclosed public places or gather. It suggested wearing face masks when going out. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released briefings on the pneumonia outbreak in accordance with the law. WHO's Country Office in the PRC relayed the information to the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office, then to the international level headquarters.

Jan 1 -- The NHC set up a leading group to determine the emergency response to the epidemic. The group convened meetings on a daily basis since then.

Jan 2 -- The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) received the first batch of samples of four patients from Hubei Province and began pathogen identification. The NHC came up with a set of guidelines on early discovery, early diagnosis and early quarantine for the prevention and control of the viral pneumonia of unknown cause.

Jan 3 -- Dr. Wenliang signs a statement not to post unsubstantiated rumors.

There's no "whistle blowing" as the information of the cases were already going up the chain of command. These are facts that can be sourced by multiple media outlets. I can't believe this fallacy keeps floating and doesn't flush.

Lurk , Jul 30 2020 13:52 utc | 65
In retrospective analyses, SARS-COV-2 was found in routinely collected samples of European sewage water dating back to at least december 2019. A french doctor reviewed archived medical samples and imagery from patients who had fallen mysteriously ill in the latter half of 2019 and also found that some had been early cases of COVID-19.

The real coronavirus whistle-blower is a doctor in Washington state USA who tested for the virus in Januari 2020 and was silenced by USA medical and federal authorities.

I am afraid that there will never be a sincere investigation into the real cause of the "vaping disease" that caused many deaths from sudden respiratory failure in the USA in the summer of 2019. Tell me again when Ft. Detrick labs was shut down exactly?

Lurk , Jul 30 2020 13:59 utc | 66
@ Hannibal | Jul 30 2020 12:56 utc | 63

Don't forget to mention Mark2's employer, the 77th brigade . We're in an information war , after all.

Piotr Berman , Jul 30 2020 14:00 utc | 67
What are you trying to tell me? Anyone that does not acknowledge the virus originated in China and that China didn't respond as fast as it could have? And more polemically: there is some kind of African Marxist heading WHO who obfuscated China's late information to the WHO?

There is a dot of truth in everything. There is also a dot of truth in the fact that Trump or his relevant admin was informed early enough.

Posted by: vig | Jul 30 2020 12:21 utc | 57

vig repeats widely spread arguments, basically, the "official propaganda" from offices related to an orange-American (excessive time spend on golf courses changes skin color, perhaps in combination with sunscreen, without sunscreen you would get a "redneck look").

1. Origin: somewhat debatable, but any virus has to originate somewhere. Every country was on receiving end of pathogens from other countries.

2. China did not respond as fast as it could have. Now, how fast and effective was USA? One has to note that clusters of fatal lung infections happen regularly, but this is because of mutations that increase impact on health, while separate mutations increase (or decrease) the transmission. Draconian measures are necessary if you get both, but you do not lock cities, provinces, introduce massive quarantine programs until you know that they are necessary. For the same reasons, the response in Western Europe and USA was not as fast as it could have.

3. "African Marxist heading WHO mislead poor naive Americans". What is the budget of American intelligence, and American disease control? Do they collect information, do they have experts? In particular, American authorities knew pretty much what Chinese authorities knew, and they had benefit of several weeks of extra time to devise wise strategy. Giving this benefit to people with limited mental capacities has a limited value. Perhaps China is at fault here too, Pompeo reported about pernicious impact of Chinese Communist Party on PPT meeting in USA, that could have deleterious impact on education and thus on mental capacities.

Pompeo himself may be a victim. He excelled as a West Point student, but if the content of education was crappy, diligence impacted his brain deeper and not for the better. But nobody attempts to blame CCP for that.

vk , Jul 30 2020 14:17 utc | 68
@ Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 30 2020 12:19 utc | 56

It would've changed nothing.

For starters, the "whistleblower" wasn't a whistleblower at all: he thought he had found a resurgence of SARS, not a new pandemic. Secondly, the head of respiratory diseases at the region already was investigating some cases of a "mysterious pneumonia" since end of November or mid-December - so the investigation already was well under way.

Discovering a new disease is not magic: a doctor cannot simply go the market, see a random person, and claim he/she discovered a new virus. Doctors are not gods: they can only diagnose the patients under their care.

The point of discord that the Western MSM capitalized upon was the fact that some random officer from the local police intercepted his private social media and made him sign a letter of reprimand. No Law is ever perfect, and these episodes of false triggers do happen even in Western Democracies.

Little known fact (one which the Western MSM censored) is that the so-called "whistleblower" was a member of the CCP. After knowing the details of the situation (including that the disease was already being investigated), he quickly realized the state-of-the-art and went to the frontlines to fight the pandemic - as any member of the CCP would've done. Revolutionary communist parties have this tradition that comes since the Bolshevik Party, where the leadership always leads by example. The Bolsheviks themselves lost the vast majority of their elite in the Civil War, as they always led in the front (vanguard). Fidel Castro himself led his army in the front when the invasion of the Bay of Pigs begun. So, it is not surprising this doctor, once having the facts on the field, quickly shut up and went to the frontline as a vanguard soldier.

After the whole truth came to the forefront, the Western MSM quickly begun to meltdown over the fake story they fantasized, and the Taiwanese MSM invented a story of some another whistleblower who had discovered the virus "at the end of November". That one never truly gained traction, and silently died out.

But all of this is moot point for the West, because Trump and the other European liberal powers refused to believe either that the virus was real or that it could reach them until February the next year.

But all of this

Den lille abe , Jul 30 2020 14:17 utc | 69
I think it is OK that b nails the US makes yet another display of stupidity.... on the other hand I presume that b also has other things to care about, I mean exposing the US as a "fake" nation is a full time job!
Americans have at least the last 50 years been known for fails, even Churchill commented something like "the Americans will fail numerous times, but eventually they will get it right" well that was back then! Today it is fail upon fail. I know that there must be bright people over there, but it is my sincere impression, that they are a very small minority. Maybe their schooling system has all gone bonkers ?
"3% of all Americans believe the Earth is flat! WTF!!!
America is on a steep slope downward.
Den lille abe , Jul 30 2020 14:31 utc | 70
I am personally not worried much about Covid 19, although I am 63 and live in Sweden, the "black Sheep" in Europe because of our rather lax restrictions, the Swedes themselves are rather good at keeping distance and using common sense.
I am much more worried that the American culture of ignorance, brain farts, stupidity and low IQ media will infest my country further and maybe completely ruin it.
Especially by the junk that comes out of Hollywood, pure Sh*t served nice and hot!
I am happy I know, I have not got to endure further 30 years of this.
Prof K , Jul 30 2020 14:52 utc | 71
A few months ago, b posted a link to a Canadian vlogger who lives in Nanning, China. The vlogger took us on a tour of a so called Wet Market. Here, the vlogger takes us to another Wet Market tour. He does a good job dispelling racist stereotypes and showing real life in China.

https://youtu.be/ppIbzX8JfEw

Mark2 , Jul 30 2020 14:56 utc | 72
One to many @ 64
Thanks ! So there was a group of whistle blowers then. It's down to definitions again. Perhaps mine is a little more loose. But it's of no concern.
For the sake of this excellent thread, perhaps we could all be a little less pedantic. VK ?
cirsium , Jul 30 2020 15:19 utc | 73
@uncle tungsten, 11:00 Jul 30

Also relevant - Crimson Contagion - the pandemic simulation run by the US government from January to August 2019 and was based on an infectious coronavirus coming from a food market in China

PleaseBeleafMe , Jul 30 2020 15:23 utc | 74
@Dla 69,70

Everywhere u go in this world you'll find some version or an "murican" in every country. Even a country like modern first world Switzerland has its "mountain folk".
In my personal experience with Americans I'm most often pleasantly surprised at their levels of sophistication and introspection over their American experiences. An enjoyable and as pleasant a people as anywhere. This may be clouded by mostly meeting these people outside of the US where unless tourists are well educated and travelled and by default more aware of a negative view of their homeland that exists outside of the US. For some reason most of these Americans I've met abroad are decidedly non republican in nature and are mostly
from California and North and North Eastern States. Fellow future Canadians I would call them.
The other side of the coin is when I've travelled to the states. Texas, Florida, Arizona. Whew! What a difference. I've learned that talking politics is impossible and the natives are almost entirely ignorant of anything outside their bubble. Outside of talking points there is no information behind their arguments. Their knowledge of the outside world is incredibly lacking and the view of the US in it is overwhelmingly positive.
It isn't Americans its America and its leadership, its influences, systems and all the other shit that make the US the salad it is. The people r redeemable.

William Gruff , Jul 30 2020 15:34 utc | 75
Calling the professionals doing their jobs in China "whistleblowers" is inaccurate. "Whistleblower" implies revealing information that others are trying to hide. In this case the suggestion is that the Chinese government was trying to hide the outbreak. This is nonsense as the Chinese government was unaware of an outbreak until after the relevant professionals had determined that there was an outbreak. There is no way the Chinese government could have known about an outbreak before the outbreak was identified by the professionals tasked with identifying outbreaks. The only ones who knew about the outbreak before the outbreak occurred were the US "intelligence community" .

[Jul 03, 2020] The world s economy is in contraction. Although capital, what actual capital exists, will have to try and do something productive, it is confronted by this fact, that everything is facing contraction.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... I agree that globalism is/will be heading into the dumpers, but I see no chance that US-based manufacturing is going to make any significant come-back. ..."
"... What market will there be for US-manufactured goods? US "consumers" are heavily in debt and facing continued downward pressures on income. ..."
"... There will certainly be, especially given the eye-opener of COVID-19, a big push to have medical (which includes associated tech) production capacities reinvigorated in the US. ..."
"... More "disposable" income goes toward medical expenditures. Less money goes toward creating export items; wealth creation only occurs through a positive increase in balance of trade. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, death, the US will likely continue, for the mid-term, to export weaponry; but, don't expect enough growth here to mean much (margins will drop as competition increases, so figure downward pressure on net export $$). ..."
"... the planet cannot comply with our economic model's dependency on perpetual growth: there can NOT be perpetual growth on a finite planet. US manufacturing requires, as it always has, export markets; requires ever-increasing exports: this is really true for all others. Higher standards of living in the US (and add in increasing medical costs which factor into cost of goods sold) means that the price of US-manufactured goods will be less affordable to peoples outside of the US. ..."
"... I'll also note that the notion of there being a cycle, a parabolic curve, in civilizations is well noted/documented in Sir John Glubb's The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival (you can find electronic bootlegged copies on the Internet)- HIGHLY recommended reading! ..."
"... All of this is pretty much reflected in Wall Street companies ramp-ups in stock-buy-backs. That's money that's NOT put in R&D or expansion. I'm pretty sure that the brains in all of this KNOW what the situation is: growth is never coming back. ..."
"... Make no mistake, what we're facing is NOT another recession or depression, it's not part of what we think as a downturn in the "business cycle," as though we'll "pull out of it," it's basically an end to the super-cycle ..."
"... We are at the peak (slightly past peak, but not far enough to realize it yet) and there is no returning. Per-capita income and energy consumption have peaked. There's not enough resources and not enough new demand (younger people, people that have wealth) to keep the perpetual growth machine going. ..."
Jul 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Seer , Jul 3 2020 10:34 utc | 125

NemesisCalling @ 28

I agree that globalism is/will be heading into the dumpers, but I see no chance that US-based manufacturing is going to make any significant come-back.

The world's economy is in contraction. Although capital, what actual capital exists, will have to try and do something "productive," it is confronted by this fact, that everything is facing contraction. During times of contraction it's a game of acquisition rather than expanding capacity: the sum total is STILL contraction; and the contraction WILL be a reduction in excess, excess manufacturing and labor.

What market will there be for US-manufactured goods? US "consumers" are heavily in debt and facing continued downward pressures on income. China is self-sufficient (enough) other than energy (which can be acquired outside of US markets). Most every other country is in a position of declining wealth (per capita income levels peaked and in decline). And manufacturing continues to increase its automation (less workers means less consumers).

There will certainly be, especially given the eye-opener of COVID-19, a big push to have medical (which includes associated tech) production capacities reinvigorated in the US. One has to look at this in The Big Picture of what it means, and that's that the US population is aging (and in poor health).

More "disposable" income goes toward medical expenditures. Less money goes toward creating export items; wealth creation only occurs through a positive increase in balance of trade. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, death, the US will likely continue, for the mid-term, to export weaponry; but, don't expect enough growth here to mean much (margins will drop as competition increases, so figure downward pressure on net export $$).

Lastly, and it's the reason why global trade is being knocked down, is that the planet cannot comply with our economic model's dependency on perpetual growth: there can NOT be perpetual growth on a finite planet. US manufacturing requires, as it always has, export markets; requires ever-increasing exports: this is really true for all others. Higher standards of living in the US (and add in increasing medical costs which factor into cost of goods sold) means that the price of US-manufactured goods will be less affordable to peoples outside of the US.

And here too is the fact that other countries' populations are also aging. Years ago I dove into the demographics angle/assessment to find out that ALL countries ramp and age and that you can see countries' energy consumption rise and their their net trade balance swing negative- there's a direct correlation: go to the CIA's Factbook and look at demographics and energy and the graphs tell the story.

I'll also note that the notion of there being a cycle, a parabolic curve, in civilizations is well noted/documented in Sir John Glubb's The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival (you can find electronic bootlegged copies on the Internet)- HIGHLY recommended reading!

All of this is pretty much reflected in Wall Street companies ramp-ups in stock-buy-backs. That's money that's NOT put in R&D or expansion. I'm pretty sure that the brains in all of this KNOW what the situation is: growth is never coming back.

MANY years ago I stated that we will one day face "economies of scale in reverse." We NEVER considered that growth couldn't continue forever. There was never a though about what would happen with the reverse "of economies of scale."

Make no mistake, what we're facing is NOT another recession or depression, it's not part of what we think as a downturn in the "business cycle," as though we'll "pull out of it," it's basically an end to the super-cycle.

We will never be able to replicate the state of things as they are. We are at the peak (slightly past peak, but not far enough to realize it yet) and there is no returning. Per-capita income and energy consumption have peaked. There's not enough resources and not enough new demand (younger people, people that have wealth) to keep the perpetual growth machine going.

[Jun 29, 2020] Gilead Will Charge More Than $3,000 For A Course Of COVID-19 Drug Remdesivir

Highly recommended!
Corrupt Fauci, stupid customers. IT the same neoliberal story of profiteering as a virtue all over again.
The government bought by Big Pharma, and Big Pharma out or control with questionable drugs and methods are two side of the same coin
Jun 29, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

On Monday, Gilead disclosed its pricing plan for Gilead as it prepares to begin charging for the drug at the beginning of next month (several international governments have already placed orders). Given the high demand, thanks in part due to the breathless media coverage despite the drug's still-questionable study data, Gilead apparently feels justified in charging $3,120 for a patient getting the shorter, more common, treatment course, and $5,720 for the longer course for more seriously ill patients. These are the prices for patients with commercial insurance in the US, according to Gilead's official pricing plan.

As per usual, the price charged to those on government plans will be lower, and hospitals will also receive a slight discount. Additionally, the US is the only developed country where Gilead will charge two prices, according to Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day. In much of Europe and Canada, governments negotiate drug prices directly with drugmakers (in the US, laws dictate that drug makers must "discount" their drugs for Medicare and Medicaid plans).

But according to O'Day, the drug is priced "far below the value it brings" to the health-care system.

However, we'd argue that this actually isn't true. Remdesivir was developed by Gilead to treat Ebola, but the drug was never approved by the FDA for this use, which caused Gilead to shelve the drug until COVID-19 presented another opportunity. Even before the first study had finished, the company was already pushing propaganda about the promising nature of the drug. Meanwhile, the CDC, WHO and other organizations were raising doubts about the effectiveness of steroid medications.

Months later, the only study on the steroid dexomethasone, a cheap steroid that costs less than $50 for a 100-dose regimen, has shown that dexomethasone is the only drug so far that has proven effective at lowering COVID-19 related mortality. Remdesivir, despite the fact that it has been tested in several high quality trials, has not.

So, why is the American government in partnership with Gilead still pushing this questionable, and staggeringly expensive, medication on the public?

[Jun 23, 2020] Identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ( soft neoliberals ) to counter the defection of trade union members from the party

Highly recommended!
divide and conquer 1. To gain or maintain power by generating tension among others, especially those less powerful, so that they cannot unite in opposition.
Notable quotes:
"... In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal, but I'm hoping I can say something new. ..."
"... The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies. As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy. ..."
"... Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity. ..."
"... If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members, who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump. ..."
Dec 28, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

likbez 12.27.19 at 10:21 pm

John,

I've been thinking about the various versions of and critiques of identity politics that are around at the moment. In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal, but I'm hoping I can say something new.

You missed one important line of critique -- identity politics as a dirty political strategy of soft neoliberals.

See discussion of this issue by Professor Ganesh Sitaraman in his recent article (based on his excellent book The Great Democracy ) https://newrepublic.com/article/155970/collapse-neoliberalism

To be sure, race, gender, culture, and other aspects of social life have always been important to politics. But neoliberalism's radical individualism has increasingly raised two interlocking problems. First, when taken to an extreme, social fracturing into identity groups can be used to divide people and prevent the creation of a shared civic identity. Self-government requires uniting through our commonalities and aspiring to achieve a shared future.

When individuals fall back onto clans, tribes, and us-versus-them identities, the political community gets fragmented. It becomes harder for people to see each other as part of that same shared future.

Demagogues [more correctly neoliberals -- likbez] rely on this fracturing to inflame racial, nationalist, and religious antagonism, which only further fuels the divisions within society. Neoliberalism's war on "society," by pushing toward the privatization and marketization of everything, thus indirectly facilitates a retreat into tribalism that further undermines the preconditions for a free and democratic society.

The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies. As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy.

Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity.

Of course, the result is to leave in place political and economic structures that harm the very groups that inclusionary neoliberals claim to support. The foreign policy adventures of the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists haven't fared much better than economic policy or cultural politics. The U.S. and its coalition partners have been bogged down in the war in Afghanistan for 18 years and counting. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a liberal democracy, nor did the attempt to establish democracy in Iraq lead to a domino effect that swept the Middle East and reformed its governments for the better. Instead, power in Iraq has shifted from American occupiers to sectarian militias, to the Iraqi government, to Islamic State terrorists, and back to the Iraqi government -- and more than 100,000 Iraqis are dead.

Or take the liberal internationalist 2011 intervention in Libya. The result was not a peaceful transition to stable democracy but instead civil war and instability, with thousands dead as the country splintered and portions were overrun by terrorist groups. On the grounds of democracy promotion, it is hard to say these interventions were a success. And for those motivated to expand human rights around the world, it is hard to justify these wars as humanitarian victories -- on the civilian death count alone.

Indeed, the central anchoring assumptions of the American foreign policy establishment have been proven wrong. Foreign policymakers largely assumed that all good things would go together -- democracy, markets, and human rights -- and so they thought opening China to trade would inexorably lead to it becoming a liberal democracy. They were wrong. They thought Russia would become liberal through swift democratization and privatization. They were wrong.

They thought globalization was inevitable and that ever-expanding trade liberalization was desirable even if the political system never corrected for trade's winners and losers. They were wrong. These aren't minor mistakes. And to be clear, Donald Trump had nothing to do with them. All of these failures were evident prior to the 2016 election.

If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members, who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump.

Initially Clinton calculation was that trade union voters has nowhere to go anyways, and it was correct for first decade or so of his betrayal. But gradually trade union members and lower middle class started to leave Dems in droves (Demexit, compare with Brexit) and that where identity politics was invented to compensate for this loss.

So in addition to issues that you mention we also need to view the role of identity politics as the political strategy of the "soft neoliberals " directed at discrediting and the suppression of nationalism.

The resurgence of nationalism is the inevitable byproduct of the dominance of neoliberalism, resurgence which I think is capable to bury neoliberalism as it lost popular support (which now is limited to financial oligarchy and high income professional groups, such as we can find in corporate and military brass, (shrinking) IT sector, upper strata of academy, upper strata of medical professionals, etc)

That means that the structure of the current system isn't just flawed which imply that most problems are relatively minor and can be fixed by making some tweaks. It is unfixable, because the "Identity wars" reflect a deep moral contradictions within neoliberal ideology. And they can't be solved within this framework.

[Jun 15, 2020] Do Deep State Elements Operate within the Protest Movement? by Mike Whitney

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "The extraordinary destruction of white and Asian businesses in many instances wiping out a family's lifetime work, the looting of national businesses whose dumbshit CEOs support the looters, the merciless gang beatings of whites and Asians who attempted to defend their persons and their property, the egging on of the violence by politicians in both parties and by the entirely of the media including many alternative media websites, shows a country undergoing collapse. ..."
"... This is why it is not shown in national media . Some local media show an indication of the violent destruction in their community, but it is not accumulated and presented to a national audience. Consequently, Americans think the looting and destruction is only a local occurrence I just checked CNN and the BBC and there is nothing about the extraordinary economic destruction and massive thefts." ..."
"... Why has the media failed to show the vast destruction of businesses and private property? Why have they minimized the effects of vandalism, looting and arson? Why have they fanned the flames of social unrest from the very beginning, shrugging off the ruin and devastation while cheerleading the demonstrations as a heroic struggle for racial justice? Is this is the same media that supported every bloody war, every foreign intervention, and every color-revolution for the last 5 decades? Are we really expected to believe that they've changed their stripes and become an energized proponent of social justice? ..."
"... The scale and coordination alone suggests that elements in the deep state are probably involved. We know from evidence uncovered during the Russiagate probe, that the media works hand-in-glove with the Intel agencies and FBI while–at the same time– serving as a mouthpiece for elites. ..."
"... That hasn't changed, in fact, it's gotten even worse. The uniformity of the coverage suggests that that same perception management strategy is being employed here as well. Even at this late date, the determination to remove Trump from office is as strong as ever even though, in the present case, it has been combined with the broader political strategy of inciting fratricidal violence, obliterating urban areas, and spreading anarchy across the count ..."
"... This isn't about racial justice or police brutality, it's about regime change, internal destabilization, and martial law. ..."
"... What the Black Lives Matter movement does not understand is that they are being used by the billionaire white capitalists who are fighting to push the working class even lower ..."
"... The rightful grievance over racism against blacks is now used to get Trump since Russia Gate, Impeachment, the corona scandal ..."
"... The protests are merely a fig leaf for a "color revolution" that bears a striking resemblance to the more than 50 CIA-backed coups launched on foreign governments in the last 70 years ..."
"... "Use a grievance that the local population has against the system, identify and support those who oppose the current government, infiltrate and strengthen opposition movements, fund them with millions of dollars, organize protests that seem legitimate and have paid political instigators dress up in regular clothes to blend in." ..."
"... "The logistical capabilities of antifa+ are also impressive. They can move people around the country with ease, position pallet loads of new brick, 55 gallon new trash cans of frozen water bottles and other debris suitable for throwing on gridded patterns around cities in a well thought out distribution pattern. Who pays for this? Who plans this? Who coordinates these plans and gives "execute orders?" ..."
"... Antifa+ can create massive propaganda campaigns that fit their agenda. These campaigns are fully supported by the MSM and by many in the Congressional Democratic Party. The present meme of "Defund the Police" is an example. This appeared miraculously, and simultaneously across the country. I am impressed. Yesterday the frat boy type who is mayor of Minneapolis was booed out of a mass meeting of radicals in that fair city because he refused to endorse abolishing the police force. ..."
"... Colonel Lang is not the only one to marvel at Antifa's "logistical capabilities". The United States has never experienced two weeks of sustained protests in hundreds of its cities at the same time. ..."
"... it points to extensive coordination with groups across the country, a comprehensive media strategy (that probably preceded the killing of George Floyd), a sizable presence on social media (to put people on the street), and agents provocateur whose task is to incite violence, loot and create mayhem. ..."
"... This a destabilization campaign similar to the CIA's color revolutions designed to topple the regime (Trump), install a puppet government (Biden), impose "shock therapy" on the economy ..."
"... "The BLM represents the forefront of an effort to divide Americans along racial and political lines, thus keeping race and identity-based barbarians safely away from more critical issues of importance to the elite, most crucially a free hand to plunder and ransack natural resources, minerals, crude oil, and impoverish billions of people whom the ruling elite consider unproductive useless eaters and a hindrance to the drive to dominate, steal, and murder . ..."
"... The protest movement is the mask that conceals the maneuvering of elites. The real target of this operation is the Constitutional Republic itself ..."
"... that explains why anti-fa attack Yellow Vests in Germany. The Yellow Vests are the true people's movement and as shown in the video below it is not about the left and the right for the yellow vest but common people fed up with the system ..."
"... Watch every frame of this. It shows the government-media complex and their little thugs, ANTIFA, in perfect collusion to interfere with the regular Germans trying to stop the Satanic communist-Globo homo project. ..."
"... My bro is one of the few people flying, for work. He says the only people on the airlines are antifa thugs moving all around the country. ..."
"... Won't these riots create a wave of revulsion among the silent majority and consolidate Trump's support base? ..."
"... Is Antifa a group of deep state agitators? That's the question. In the Sunday edition of the New York Times– the official propaganda organ of US elites– an article is entirely devoted to creating "plausible deniability" that Antifa is behind the violence in the protests that have swept the country. ..."
Jun 15, 2020 | www.unz.com

"Revolutions are often seen as spontaneous. It looks like people just went into the street. But it's the result of months or years of preparation. It is very boring until you reach a certain point, where you can organize mass demonstrations or strikes. If it is carefully planned, by the time they start, everything is over in a matter of weeks." Foreign Policy Journal

Does anyone believe the nationwide riots and looting are a spontaneous reaction to the killing of George Floyd?

It's all too coordinated, too widespread, and too much in-sync with the media narrative that applauds the "mainly peaceful protests" while ignoring the vast destruction to cities across the country. What's that all about? Do the instigators of these demonstrations want to see our cities reduced to urban wastelands where street gangs and Antifa thugs impose their own harsh justice? That's where this is headed, isn't it?

Of course there are millions of protesters who honestly believe they're fighting racial injustice and police brutality. And more power to them. But that certainly doesn't mean there aren't hidden agendas driving these outbursts. Quite the contrary. It seems to me that the protest movement is actually the perfect vehicle for affecting dramatic social changes that only serve the interests of elites. For example, who benefits from defunding the police? Not African Americans, that's for sure. Black neighborhoods need more security not less. And yet, the New York Times lead editorial on Saturday proudly announces, " Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police–Because reform won't happen." Check it out:

"We can't reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police .There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people. Policing in the South emerged from the slave patrols in the 1700 and 1800s that caught and returned runaway slaves. In the North, the first municipal police departments in the mid-1800s helped quash labor strikes and riots against the rich. Everywhere, they have suppressed marginalized populations to protect the status quo.

So when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man's neck until he dies, that's the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job " (" Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police–Because reform won't happen" , New York Times)

So, according to the Times, the problem isn't single parent families, or underfunded education or limited job opportunities or fractured neighborhoods, it's the cops who have nothing to do with any of these problems. Are we supposed to take this seriously, because the editors of the Times certainly do. They'd like us to believe that there is groundswell support for this loony idea, but there isn't. In a recent poll, more than 60% of those surveyed, oppose the idea of defunding the police. So why would such an unpopular, wacko idea wind up as the headline op-ed in the Saturday edition? Well, because the Times is doing what it always does, advancing the political agenda of the elites who hold the purse-strings and dictate which ideas are promoted and which end up on the cutting room floor. That's how the system works. Check out this excerpt from an article by Paul Craig Roberts:

"The extraordinary destruction of white and Asian businesses in many instances wiping out a family's lifetime work, the looting of national businesses whose dumbshit CEOs support the looters, the merciless gang beatings of whites and Asians who attempted to defend their persons and their property, the egging on of the violence by politicians in both parties and by the entirely of the media including many alternative media websites, shows a country undergoing collapse.

This is why it is not shown in national media . Some local media show an indication of the violent destruction in their community, but it is not accumulated and presented to a national audience. Consequently, Americans think the looting and destruction is only a local occurrence I just checked CNN and the BBC and there is nothing about the extraordinary economic destruction and massive thefts." (" The Real Racists", Paul Craig Roberts, Unz Review)

Roberts makes a good point, and one that's worth mulling over. Why has the media failed to show the vast destruction of businesses and private property? Why have they minimized the effects of vandalism, looting and arson? Why have they fanned the flames of social unrest from the very beginning, shrugging off the ruin and devastation while cheerleading the demonstrations as a heroic struggle for racial justice? Is this is the same media that supported every bloody war, every foreign intervention, and every color-revolution for the last 5 decades? Are we really expected to believe that they've changed their stripes and become an energized proponent of social justice?

Nonsense. The media's role in concealing the damage should only convince skeptics that the protests are just one part of a much larger operation. What we're seeing play out in over 400 cities across the US, has more to do with toppling Trump and sowing racial division than it does with the killing of George Floyd. The scale and coordination alone suggests that elements in the deep state are probably involved. We know from evidence uncovered during the Russiagate probe, that the media works hand-in-glove with the Intel agencies and FBI while–at the same time– serving as a mouthpiece for elites.

That hasn't changed, in fact, it's gotten even worse. The uniformity of the coverage suggests that that same perception management strategy is being employed here as well. Even at this late date, the determination to remove Trump from office is as strong as ever even though, in the present case, it has been combined with the broader political strategy of inciting fratricidal violence, obliterating urban areas, and spreading anarchy across the country.

This isn't about racial justice or police brutality, it's about regime change, internal destabilization, and martial law. Take a look at this article at The Herland Report:

"What the Black Lives Matter movement does not understand is that they are being used by the billionaire white capitalists who are fighting to push the working class even lower and end the national sovereignty principles that president Trump stands for in America .

The rightful grievance over racism against blacks is now used to get Trump since Russia Gate, Impeachment, the corona scandal and nothing else has worked. The aim is to end democracy in the United States, control Congress and politics and assemble the power into the hands of the very few

It is all about who will own the United States and have free access to its revenues: Either the American people under democracy or globalist billionaire individuals." (" Politicized USA Gene Sharp riots is another attempted coup d'etat – New Left Tyranny" The Herland Report

That sounds about right to me. The protests are merely a fig leaf for a "color revolution" that bears a striking resemblance to the more than 50 CIA-backed coups launched on foreign governments in the last 70 years. Have the chickens have come home to roost? It certainly looks like it. Here's more from the same article:

"Use a grievance that the local population has against the system, identify and support those who oppose the current government, infiltrate and strengthen opposition movements, fund them with millions of dollars, organize protests that seem legitimate and have paid political instigators dress up in regular clothes to blend in."

So, yes, the grievances are real, but that doesn't mean that someone else is not steering the action. And just as the media is shaping the narrative for its own purposes, so too, there are agents within the movement that are inciting the violence. All of this suggests the existence of some form of command-control that provides logistical support and assists in communications. Check out this excerpt from a post at Colonel Pat Lang's website Sic Semper Tyrannis:

"The logistical capabilities of antifa+ are also impressive. They can move people around the country with ease, position pallet loads of new brick, 55 gallon new trash cans of frozen water bottles and other debris suitable for throwing on gridded patterns around cities in a well thought out distribution pattern. Who pays for this? Who plans this? Who coordinates these plans and gives "execute orders?"

Antifa+ can create massive propaganda campaigns that fit their agenda. These campaigns are fully supported by the MSM and by many in the Congressional Democratic Party. The present meme of "Defund the Police" is an example. This appeared miraculously, and simultaneously across the country. I am impressed. Yesterday the frat boy type who is mayor of Minneapolis was booed out of a mass meeting of radicals in that fair city because he refused to endorse abolishing the police force.

Gutting the civil police forces has long been a major goal of the far left, but now, they have the ability to create mass hysteria over it when they have an excuse ." ("My take on the present situation", Sic Semper Tyrannis)

Colonel Lang is not the only one to marvel at Antifa's "logistical capabilities". The United States has never experienced two weeks of sustained protests in hundreds of its cities at the same time. It's beyond suspicious, it points to extensive coordination with groups across the country, a comprehensive media strategy (that probably preceded the killing of George Floyd), a sizable presence on social media (to put people on the street), and agents provocateur whose task is to incite violence, loot and create mayhem.

None of this has anything to do with racial justice or police brutality. America is being destabilized and sacked for other purposes altogether. This a destabilization campaign similar to the CIA's color revolutions designed to topple the regime (Trump), install a puppet government (Biden), impose "shock therapy" on the economy pushing tens of millions of Americans into homelessness and destitution, and leave behind a broken, smoldering shell of a country easily controlled by Federal shock troops and wealthy globalist mandarins. Here's a short excerpt from an article by Kurt Nimmo at his excellent blog "Another Day in the Empire":

"The BLM represents the forefront of an effort to divide Americans along racial and political lines, thus keeping race and identity-based barbarians safely away from more critical issues of importance to the elite, most crucially a free hand to plunder and ransack natural resources, minerals, crude oil, and impoverish billions of people whom the ruling elite consider unproductive useless eaters and a hindrance to the drive to dominate, steal, and murder .

It is sad to say BLM serves the elite by ignoring or remaining ignorant of the main problem -- boundless predation by a neoliberal criminal project that considers all -- black, white, yellow, brown -- as expliotable and dispensable serfs. " (" 2 Million Arab Lives Don't Matter ", Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire)

The protest movement is the mask that conceals the maneuvering of elites. The real target of this operation is the Constitutional Republic itself. Having succeeded in using the Lockdown to push the economy into severe recession, the globalists are now inciting a fratricidal war that will weaken the opposition and prepare the country for a new authoritarian order.


Godfree Roberts , says: Website Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 3:39 am GMT

the media narrative that applauds the "mainly peaceful protests" while ignoring the vast destruction to Hong Kong where there was neither police violence nor racial discrimination. Look like the same organizing principles were used in both places.
Malla , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 6:33 am GMT
Of course that explains why anti-fa attack Yellow Vests in Germany. The Yellow Vests are the true people's movement and as shown in the video below it is not about the left and the right for the yellow vest but common people fed up with the system, a true grass roots movement of the people. And Anti-fa, the Whores of the Satanic elites attack them. Why would anti-fascists attack the common man?

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/raZCHzKjrjA/

Watch every frame of this. It shows the government-media complex and their little thugs, ANTIFA, in perfect collusion to interfere with the regular Germans trying to stop the Satanic communist-Globo homo project.

PetrOldSack , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 1:14 pm GMT
Few arguments in contra of the article. Can any-one conceive of there being a competition between BLM rioting organizing and covertly supporting, and Corona-19, where the elites were very cohesive internationally in the face.

The target, Trump, the man with no policies, the implement nothing, is it such a worthy target to a fraction of the power elites? That would speak for shallowness on their behalf. Creating back-ground noise to fade out the re-organizing of society, regardless of actors as Trump could be an acceptable explanation. "Keep the surplus population busy. Keep the attention on the streets".

There is a trade-off. The international elites see the exposure of the US internal policies, the expenditure of energy, do they regard the situation as something to copy-paste, an interesting experiment, or as weakness to be taken advantage of? Probably the first, then BLM covert support chains perfectly with Corona-19, and scales things up.

nickels , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 1:36 pm GMT
My bro is one of the few people flying, for work. He says the only people on the airlines are antifa thugs moving all around the country.
ICD , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 1:39 pm GMT
"Black neighborhoods need more security not less."

Police are not security, they're repression. Anybody of any color who thinks they're safer with heavily armed bureaucrats blundering around is a moron.

And since when does reductions in guard labor equal austerity? There are several economic rights that should not be derogated, but assholes with guns impounding cars is not one of them. If the residents of a community are asking for more cops, that's one thing. They are not. Law enforcement budgets are stuffed up the ass of residents and often municipalities. Look into e.g. the MA "strong chief" enabling acts. States have massive unfunded pension liabilities in large part because of police featherbedding. That's what's being pushed by the "deep state" (you mean CIA.) The evident CIA use of provocateurs is aimed at justifying further increases in repressive capacity.

anonymous [299] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 2:34 pm GMT
Now this is the ideal solution:

https://www.lawofficer.com/america-we-are-leaving/

OK bye! Don't let the door hit your fat ass on the way out! Stupid and delusional though pigs are, it's dimly dawning on them that America considers them crooked loudmouthed violent assholes. Here's a typical one exercising what Gore Vidal called the core competence of police, whining.

Boo hoo hoo, asshole, go home and beat your wife or eat a gun or whatever it is you dream of doing in retirement, cause the states can't afford your crooked unions' pensions in this induced depression. Cut these white man's welfare jobs.

Escher , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 3:48 pm GMT
Won't these riots create a wave of revulsion among the silent majority and consolidate Trump's support base?
Mike Whitney , says: Website Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 3:51 pm GMT
Is Antifa a group of deep state agitators? That's the question. In the Sunday edition of the New York Times– the official propaganda organ of US elites– an article is entirely devoted to creating "plausible deniability" that Antifa is behind the violence in the protests that have swept the country.

Why is the Times so concerned that its readers might have a different opinion on this matter? Why do they want to convince people that the protests-riots are merely spontaneous outbursts of anti-racist sentiment? Could it be because the Times job is to create a version of events that suits the interests of the elites it serves? Here's a few excerpts from today's piece titled "Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests":

While anarchists and anti-fascists openly acknowledged being part of the immense crowds, they call the scale, intensity and durability of the protests far beyond anything they might dream of organizing. Some tactics used at the protests, like the wearing of all black and the shattering of store windows, are reminiscent of those used by anarchist groups, say those who study such movements. (plausible deniability)

Anarchists and others accuse officials of trying to assign blame to extremists rather than accept the idea that millions of Americans from a variety of political backgrounds have been on the streets demanding change. Numerous experts also called the participation of extremist organizations overstated. (plausible deniability)

"A significant number of people in positions of authority are pushing a false narrative about antifa being behind a lot of this activity," said J.M. Berger, the author of the book "Extremism" and an authority on militant movements. "These are just unbelievably large protests at a time of great turmoil in this country, and there is surprisingly little violence given the size of this movement.".. (plausible deniability)

In New York, the police briefed reporters on May 31, claiming that radical anarchists from outside the state had plotted ahead of protests by setting up encrypted communications systems, arranging for street medics and collecting bail funds.

Within five days, however, Dermot F. Shea, the city's police commissioner, acknowledged that most of the hundreds of people arrested at the protests in New York were actually New Yorkers who took advantage of the chaos to commit crimes and were not motivated by political ideology . John Miller, the police official who had briefed reporters, told CNN that most looting in New York had been committed by "regular criminal groups." (plausible deniability)

Kit O'Connell, a longtime radical leftist activist and community organizer in Austin, said that shortly after Mr. Trump's election, the group took part in anti-fascist protests in the city against a local white supremacist group and scuffled separately with Act for America, an anti-Muslim organization.

"They've been an influence at the protests but they're not in charge -- no one's really in charge," Mr. O'Connell said. (plausible deniability)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/us/antifa-protests-george-floyd.html

Why is the Times acting like Antifa's attorney? Why are the trying to minimize the role of professional agitators? Why is the Times so determined to shape the public's thinking on this matter?

Doesn't this suggest that Antifa and other groups operating within the protest movement are actually linked to agencies in the deep state that are conducting another operation against the American people?

Brian Reilly , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 4:00 pm GMT
@anonymous anonymous, I have been encouraging cops to quit for a long time. They are protecting the wrong people, being used to protect people in the ruling class that hate and despise cops just a little less than they hate and despise the rest of us civilians.

To the issue at hand, black people should only be policed, arrested, charged, prosecuted, defended, judged, and (if found guilty) punished by other blacks. No white person should have anything to do with it. Any white person policing negros in America is making a huge mistake, and should immediately quit.

The pensions are not going to be paid, and the crazy, Soros paid for black people are going to make it impossible for a white cop pretty soon anyway. Might as well walk before they make you run.

anonymous [263] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 4:13 pm GMT
Don't worry about BLM, which is corporate phoney bullshit protest, easter parades and internet posturing. The blacks in the street don't fall for that shit. Look what happens when coopted oreos try to herd everybody back to tame marching:

https://www.blackagendareport.com/ooh-la-la-atlantas-mayor-keisha-and-civil-rights-myths-black-mecca

Fuck Killer Mike
Fuck TI
Fuck KKKeisha

The provocateurs are not influencing them. The sellout house negroes are not influencing them. They know what they want. The regime is shitting its pants. If they scapegoat Trump and purge him, Biden will inherit the same problem only worse.

botazefa , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 4:53 pm GMT
@Escher

Won't these riots create a wave of revulsion among the silent majority and consolidate Trump's support base?

That's what I am wondering too. It makes more sense to me that the elites driving these BLM riots are those who support Trump. Terrify people and threaten the existence of police is a good way to get elderly white voters out of their covid lockdowns on election day.

botazefa , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 5:03 pm GMT
@Mike Whitney

Doesn't this suggest that Antifa and other groups operating within the protest movement are actually linked to agencies in the deep state that are conducting another operation against the American people?

Do we really want to suggest the CIA is committing treason against the American people? Isn't it more likely that the Times is agitating against the CIA for other reasons? Reasons Carlos Slim could explain?

Mike Whitney , says: Website Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 5:13 pm GMT
For those who haven't read Pepe Escobar's latsest on BLM, here's a couple clips:

Black Lives Matter, founded in 2013 by a trio of middle class, queer black women very vocal against "hetero-patriarchy", is a product of what University of British Columbia's Peter Dauvergne defines as "corporatization of activism".

Over the years, Black Lives Matter evolved as a marketing brand, like Nike (which fully supports it). The widespread George Floyd protests elevated it to the status of a new religion. Yet Black Lives Matter carries arguably zero, true revolutionary appeal. This is not James Brown's "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud". And it does not get even close to Black Power and the Black Panthers' "Power to the People".

Black Lives Matter profited in 2016 from a humongous $100 million grant from the Ford Foundation and other philanthropic capitalism stalwarts such as JPMorgan Chase and the Kellogg Foundation.

The Ford Foundation is very close to the U.S. Deep State. The board of directors is crammed with corporate CEOs and Wall Street honchos. In a nutshell; Black Lives Matter, the organization, today is fully sanitized; largely integrated into the Democratic Party machine; adored by mainstream media; and certainly does not represent a threat to the 0.001%.

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/syria-in-seattle-commune-defies-the-u-s-regime/

I rest my case.

Brás Cubas , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 5:16 pm GMT
Mike is one of the more interesting writers in Unz. He occasionally writes some irreflected lines, though:

Of course there are millions of protesters who honestly believe they're fighting racial injustice and police brutality. And more power to them.

Those "honest" people are actually useful idiots, and the last thing I want is to give them more power.

anonymous [306] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 5:20 pm GMT
IMO the best evidence for state provocation is this traditional strange-fruit lynching,

https://www.rt.com/usa/491698-robert-fuller-hanging-tree-california/

an evident ham-handed attempt to make this all about race. The real threat to this police state is racial and international solidarity against state predation – the stuff that got Fred Hampton killed,

"when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism."

or Angela Davis and the Che-Lumumba club. BAP is right back on this and the resonating international demonstrations show that that's the right track. The whole world sees what this is about, except for a few fucked-over US whites.

anbonymous , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 5:31 pm GMT
botazefa, of course the CIA is committing treason against the American people. Where were you when they whacked JFK, then RFK? Where were you when they blew up OKC? Where were you when they released anthrax on the Senate, infiltrated and protected 9/11 terrorists, assigned more terrorists to MITRE to blind NORAD, blew up the WTC for the second time, and exfiltrated the Saudi logisticians?

Anybody unaware that CIA has been pure treason from inception is (1) retarded XOR (2) a CIA traitor.

Do you really want to tell us trust the CIA?

obwandiyag , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 6:05 pm GMT
Sorry. The assholes on this asshole site will not let you say that what is important is how the super-billionaires control us. They are going to insist that it's niggerniggernigger all the way home and that's all there is to it. You would think they were paid. Or really, really stupid.
Realist , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 6:19 pm GMT
@botazefa

Do we really want to suggest the CIA is committing treason against the American people?

Oh, hell yes the FBI and a significant portion of the federal government.

Juliette Kayyem , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 6:29 pm GMT
When Gina, she-wolf of Udon Thani, got busted for trying to overthrow the United States government with Russiagate, she hung onto her job by rigging the succession with all the Brennan traitors who ran the Russiagate coup.

https://gosint.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/one-year-ago-cia-new-order-of-succession-june-14-2019/#more-21679

So we should expect that Gina will now stage a couple massacres like Kent State and Jackson State, because that's how CIA ratfucked Nixon when he didn't knuckle under.

Gina's extra motivated to stay on top because she's criminally culpable for systematic and widespread torture:

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence-torture-archive/2018-04-26/gina-haspels-cia-torture-file

CIA wanted a DCI who would kill another president (even after JFK and Reagan) to preserve CIA's impunity.

Realist , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 6:29 pm GMT
@Mike Whitney Excellent article and I believe excellent analysis of the situation.

Where we may differ is with Trump's complicity in Deep State efforts. I believe Trump is a minion of the Deep State. His actions and inactions can not be explained any other way.

Mike Whitney , says: Website Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 7:28 pm GMT
Let's assume for a minute, that Pepe Escobar is correct when he says this:

"Black Lives Matter profited in 2016 from a humongous $100 million grant from the Ford Foundation and other philanthropic capitalism stalwarts such as JPMorgan Chase and the Kellogg Foundation .

The Ford Foundation is very close to the U.S. Deep State. The board of directors is crammed with corporate CEOs and Wall Street honchos. In a nutshell; Black Lives Matter, the organization, today is fully sanitized; largely integrated into the Democratic Party machine; adored by mainstream media; and certainly does not represent a threat to the 0.001%.

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/syria-in-seattle-commune-defies-the-u-s-regime/

If this is true–and I believe it is– then Black Lives Matter is no different than USAID or any of the other NGOs that are used to incite revolution around the world. If this is true, then there is likely a CIA link to these protests, the main purpose of which is to remove Trump from office.

So Black Lives Matter= activist NGO linked to US Intel agencies= Regime Change Operation

But there is something else going on here too, (that many readers might have noticed) that is, the way social media has been manipulated to put millions of young people on the street in order to promote the agenda of elites.

How did they manage that?

How did they get millions of young people to come out day after day (14 days so far) in over 400 cities to protest an issue about which they know very little aside from the media's irritating reiteration of "systemic racism", (a claim that is not supported by the data.)

IMO, we are seeing the first successful social media saturation campaign launched probably by the Pentagon's Office Strategic Communications or a similar outfit within the CIA. Having already taken control over the entire mainstream media complex, the intel agencies and their friends at the Pentagon are now wrapping their tentacles around internet communications in order to achieve their goal of complete tyrannical social control.

As always, the target of these massive covert operations is the American people who had better pull their heads out of the sand pronto and come up with a plan for countering this madness.

Anon [184] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 7:29 pm GMT
@anonymous The elephant in the room, that seems to be ignored by all is the simple fact that Hispanics are working class heroes. And they outnumber the blacks, and hate their guts for the most part. Not the scrawny punks withe Che t-shirts, but the actual working types that are less than thrilled to deal with the weak. Notice how no Hispanic barrios have EVER been f ** ked with, no matter when the race riot? There is an open fatwa from La Eme regarding blacks that has never been rescinded. Has a lot to do with the kneegro exodus from the LA area, which correlates with the lack of looting in the formerly black areas. Which the MSM prefers to ignore. The happy idiots are mugging for the cameras on a daily basis in Hollywood, but the Hispanic run Sheriff's office has no problem with popping gas and defending businesses. Also note that the MSM only reports on areas when a local government craters to the mob. LA County was under curfew for 7 days due to a mob of looters that numbered perhaps 2000. If that Jew mayor (with the Italian surname) had not allowed the looting, then we would have seen the kind of 36 hour turnaround like we had with Rodney King. The ethnic group that ignores the MSM and stands up for its own people will win in the end. Right now we are looking more toward the kind of Celtic/Meso-American alliance that is well known in the penal system. These groups can exist side by side, with each ignoring the other. Blacks, on the other paw seem to be unable to keep to themselves, at least on the ghetto level, and will always be an issue for civilization. It's time we stop calling for a generic and all-inclusive White establishment. The race traitors and weaklings forfeit that right. When Celts, Italians, Germans, etc. were proud and independent, there was strength. It's time to return to that ideal. Only the negroid actually lumps all whites together, which the Jews use as a divisive tool. Strength should be idolized, rather than weakness exploited.

Hail Victory

botazefa , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 7:30 pm GMT
@anbonymous

Do you really want to tell us trust the CIA?

I'm saying that the NYT is not necessarily mouthpiece *only* for the Deep State. As for your JFK assassination – Senate Anthrax – 9/11 etc, those are considered conspiracy theories and I've never been persuaded otherwise. I've read up on the theories and they are not strong.

I don't know what a retarded XOR is except as it relates to logic diagrams and I don't work for the CIA.

botazefa , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 7:32 pm GMT
@Realist

Oh, hell yes the FBI and a significant portion of the federal government

Fair enough.

Priss Factor , says: Website Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 8:02 pm GMT

Do Deep State Elements Operate Within the Protest Movement?

It's called Jewish lawfare for Antifa, Jewish control of media, and Jewish cult of Magic Negro.

Even though Jews led the Gentric Cleansing campaigns against blacks by using mass immigration, globo-homo celebration, and white middle class return to cities, the Jews are now pretending be with the blacks and throwing the immigrants, white middle class, and homos to the black mobs.

Priss Factor , says: Website Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 8:05 pm GMT
@obwandiyag Super billionaires control nations, but an average person is more likely to get mugged, raped, or murdered by a Negro.
schnellandine , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 9:47 pm GMT
@Anon

simple fact that Hispanics are working class heroes

Some are. Most aren't. And the 'not'% grows with selective Americanization (not assimilation). Still, I'll take them over the blacks, even with their generally inferior (to White) culture.

Whites are better with separation from them along with blacks. Whatever the prime driver, both groups have poisoned America, likely beyond repair. Conquistador gonnna conquistador.

Stepinfetchit has a dream , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 10:07 pm GMT
M. Whitney in comment 21 clarifies his view of BLM as the impetus for this rebellion. That does not square with the reports of people on the street.

BLM is exactly analogous to BDS: a controlled opposition of feckless halfassed gestures designed to distract from the real movement. You hear BLM apparatchiks whining about getting their movement hijacked because people in the streets show solidarity with oppressed groups worldwide – and youe hear BLM getting booed by the people they're trying to corral. BLM's mission is putting words in the protestors' mouths. You hear Democrat BLM spokesmodels trying to distort calls for police abolition and no more impunity. And real protestors call bullshit.

BLM works on dumb white guys: hating on BLM makes them feel very edgy and defiant. Black Lives Matter! Blue Lives Matter! Black! Blue! Black! Blue! Catnip for dumbshits, courtesy of CIA. Keeps them away from the really subversive stuff, which makes perfect sense for whites too.

https://blackagendareport.com/

Cause CIA's fucking us all. They're hostis humani generis.

R.C. , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 10:47 pm GMT
Do Deep State Elements Operate Within the Protest Movement?
Does a one legged duck swim in circles?
Ann Nonny Mouse , says: Show Comment June 14, 2020 at 11:42 pm GMT
@ICD Look into whether the training of cops has been outsourced and privatized. Or simply shortened to save money.

And ask why the police are even armed when in Communist China they are not, and traditionally in the non-American West they were not, now are in imitation of America.

ICD , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 12:18 am GMT
Ann Nonny Mouse, truer words were never spoken. Chinese cops have these cute little nightsticks, and sometimes they will bop a guy and the guy just stands there and says Ow and the cops continue to reason with him, no restraint, incapacitation, any of that shit. British cops used to be that way, they used to reason with you. Now they're all American style Assholes, if not Israeli concentration camp guards. Just nuke FOP HQ in Memphis.

Koch sees privatization as a future profit center and a chance to control the cops himself. They're not trainable, they're too fucking stupid. We all did fine without pigs up through most of the 19th century. Hue and cry works fine. Fire all the cops and replace them with unarmed women social workers. That's all they are, prodigiously incompetent social workers.

ThreeCranes , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 12:46 am GMT
Too, those many businesses with all that unsold inventory sitting around gathering dust due to Covid isolation will benefit from insurance payments covering their losses due to looting. The cherry on top.
niteranger , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 1:18 am GMT
@Mike Whitney Whitney:

Are you just clueless or what? Did you notice the names of the Antifa leaders that have been exposed? They are Amish Right? They are Jews and they will always be Jews! Soros and other Jews have been running this game for a long time. Where have you been? SDS in Chicago no Jews there right!

The CIA and the FBI overwhelmed with Jews can you count? All the professors who have been destroying whites with their fake studies blaming everything wrong in the world on Whites and Western Civilization. The entire Media owned by who?

Either you were dropped out of a spaceship a few days ago or you are a total idiot and can't see the forest before trees.

Try this: The Percentage of all Ivy League Presidents, top adminstrators, deans etc take a guess then go count them and see which group they belong to.

Loup-Bouc , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 1:38 am GMT

Does anyone believe the nationwide riots and looting are a spontaneous reaction to the killing of George Floyd?

It's all too coordinated, too widespread, and too much in-sync with the media narrative .

* * *

This a destabilization campaign similar to the CIA's color revolutions designed to topple the regime (Trump), install a puppet government (Biden), impose "shock therapy" on the economy pushing tens of millions of Americans into homelessness and destitution, and leave behind a broken, smoldering shell of a country easily controlled by Federal shock troops and wealthy globalist mandarins.

One must wonder: How could the CIA and the U.S. Democrat establishment foment and coordinate all of the Black Lives Matter protests occurring in Canada, several nations of South and Central America, the U.K., Ireland, throughout the European Union, and in Switzerland, the Middle East (Turkey, Iran ), and in Asia (Korea, Japan .) and New Zealand, Australia, and Africa?

Mr. Whitney: Neither magic nor bigotry-induced hallucinations can forge a tenable conspiracy theory.

Biff , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 1:43 am GMT
@botazefa

and I don't work for the CIA.

Plausible deniability

MrFoSquare , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:12 am GMT
I think the primary reason the mainstream media doesn't want the general public, especially those living outside the major cities, to understand the extent of the destruction and violence that spread in a highly-coordinated fashion across America, is that this would be cause for alarm among a majority of Americans who would demand more Law & Order, which would redound to Trump's benefit.

Notice Trump is countering by tweeting "LAW & ORDER!"

Here is Trump tweeting "Does anyone notice how little the Radical Left takeover of Seattle is being discussed in the Fake News Media[?] That is very much on purpose "

Does anyone notice how little the Radical Left takeover of Seattle is being discussed in the Fake News Media. That is very much on purpose because they know how badly this weakness & ineptitude play politically. The Mayor & Governor should be ashamed of themselves. Easily fixed!

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2020

The outcome of the election in November could hinge on the urgency the public places on the issue of Law & Order. Hence the media's all out effort to minimize the extent of the Anarchy and Violence and the financial sponsorship, planning, and coordination behind it.

Loup-Bouc , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:18 am GMT
@Mike Whitney Mr. Whitney:

Please see my comment of June 15, 2020 at 1:38 am GMT (comment # 34). I must apologize for that comment's insufficiency (owed to my posting that comment before I happened upon your comment to which this comment replies). Had I encountered your comment earlier, my June 15, 2020 at 1:38 am GMT comment (comment # 34) would have observed that you are triumphantly illogical as you are a world class crackpot.

obwandiyag , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:42 am GMT
@ICD You said it. Police Departments country-wide are stuffed up the wazoo with more cash than they can spend. But what do they cry? Poor us. Poor us. We ain't got no money.

This is what they, and by they, I mean all our owners and their overseers, always do. They cry poverty when they are rolling in loot.

That way you get more loot!

Duh.

Biff , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 3:08 am GMT

Do Deep State Elements Operate Within the Protest Movement?

Yes, and the left(unwittingly) will help them with their cause, and the right will cowardly hide right behind the deep state as protection from the violent left.

Revolutions made easy!

Brought to you by the blob incorporated.

JohnPlywood , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 5:01 am GMT
@Priss Factor You are extremely unlikely to receive any of those things from a "Negro". 90% of Americans are unlikely to even see more than ten black people in their entire lives.

I wish you psychotic fucking female idiots on this website who are constantly blathering about black people could realize how annoying you are to the 90% of white people who are not living in or next to black ghettos. Please STFU and allow discourse to trend in more pertinent directions, and move away from black people if you're so paranoid about them.

Robert Dolan , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 5:57 am GMT
Of course Antifa works for the deep state jews.

It was obvious after C 'ville.

Antifa has the full support of all of the 3 letter agencies;
ADL
FBI
CIA
DNC
DOJ

This is the very same Bolshevik scum the poor Germans had to deal with.

Al Liguori , says: Website Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 6:01 am GMT
@Mike Whitney The (((media))) have an uphill battle in convincing us to deny the evidence of our eyes -- black-hooded white punks throwing bricks through storefronts then inviting joggers to loot.

That is why so many platforms, even "free speech" GAB, are wildly censoring counter-narratives.

Thomasina , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 6:37 am GMT
@Brian Reilly Stephen Molyneux said that police forces were originally geared to operate under white Christian societies where there was a high level of trust and people were law-abiding. I remember when I was a kid, we didn't even lock our doors. Our bikes were left out on the front lawn, sometimes for days, weeks, and nobody took them. Nobody locked their car doors. People just didn't steal other people's stuff. When a cop tried to pull you over, you didn't hit the gas pedal and take off. You didn't run from the cops; you were polite to them and they were polite to you.

Tucker Carlson said that Blacks are now asking for their own hospitals (I forget what city this was) and their own doctors and nurses. Blacks schools, Black police forces.

Tribes don't mix. Their culture is different than our culture. Why should they change for us, and why should we change for them?

It is a marriage that does not work. Either send them back to Africa (best solution) or give them Mississippi and put up a big wall. Then let them pay for their own upkeep – all of it. Good luck with that.

Sean , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 6:47 am GMT

Yesterday the frat boy type who is mayor of Minneapolis was booed out of a mass meeting of radicals in that fair city because he refused to endorse abolishing the police force.

Mayor Jacob Frey got elected at his extremely young age by flanking on the Left with anti police rhetoric, He is the the originator of this crisis; as soon as the video of Floyd's death was public Frey publicly and literally called the four cops murderers and said he was powerless to have them arrested. That was a false accusation of police impunity, because the supposedly powerless Frey was able to order the police to vacate their own station thus letting the demonstrators take over and burn it. Yet to draw back a bit the Deep State if worried about other states.

That event Frey largely created was the key moment of this whole thing. Trump could have nipped it in the bud by had sending in troops immediately the Minneapolis 3rd Precinct was burnt down. Crushing the riots in that city and preventing the example infecting the demonstrations in other cities. and turning them into cover for riots. Trump did not want to be seen as Draconian although it would not have been at all violent, because no one is going to challenge the army's awesome presence once it arrived on the streets,as worked in the Rodney King riots.

The real target of this operation is the Constitutional Republic itself. Having succeeded in using the Lockdown to push the economy into severe recession, the globalists are now inciting a fratricidal war that will weaken the opposition and prepare the country for a new authoritarian order.

George Floyd had foam visible at the corners of his mouth when the police arrived. Autopsy tests revealed Fentanyl and COVID-19: both from Wuhan. I Can't Breath is America gearing up to confront and settle accounts with Xi's totalitarian state.

Current events might seem to be a setback for the US, but provide the opportunity for a re-set with the black community, with a potential outcome of resolving race tensions that have been a cause of dissension and internal weakness, just as during the Cold War racial integration was thought essential by anti communists like Nixon. America is gearing up to settle accounts with China, which is a Deep State new Cold War. While it is a possibility that whites could lose control of their society, and see it fall into the hands of an explicitly anti -acist elite/ minorities alliance, the Deep State is not the same as the hyper capitalist elite whose growing wealth depends on China.

Do Deep State Elements Operate Within the Protest Movement?

Yes, and it is a good thing.

Thomasina , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 7:56 am GMT
@Mike Whitney The Duran did an excellent video titled "Social Media 'Unchecked Power'" where they talk about Trump and Barr going after the tech companies and their virtual monopolies with an executive order.

At 33:45 they state that Microsoft (Bill Gates) invested $1 billion and the CIA invested $16 million into Facebook when it was still operating as a university network. The CIA were one of the first investors in Facebook.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/OwPVQ8N8hhk?feature=oembed

Why the hell was the CIA investing $16 million to get Facebook off the ground? Hmmm. Could it be because Facebook would be instrumental in controlling the narrative?

The young people, who have no experience and no real knowledge of history, are being taken in by these social media companies who are playing on their emotions. Any dissenting opinions are blocked or banned. Very dangerous.

Gast , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 8:12 am GMT
@Loup-Bouc Well, the "deep state" is just an euphemism for the jewish power structure, and all those places you named are run be jews. That jews cooperate in extended conspiracies without regard of borders should be common knowledge for every observer of history and current politics. I see nothing far-fetched. Honestly, my mind would boggle if I should explain, how the Antifa gets away with those things it always gets away with, if it wasn't controlled by the "deep state". And I couldn't explain the international cooperation either.
GMC , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 8:15 am GMT
As Pepe' Escobar said – Americans looting is a natural thing – just look at how the US Military has stolen the gaz and oil from Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. and is trying like hell for the Venezuelan oil fields. Not to mention where all their gold, silver and billions of dollars have gone. The list of the USG looting criminal record is unprecedented . It's a Family Tradition. Enjoyed the article !
Thomasina , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 8:37 am GMT
@MrFoSquare The Capitol Hill area of Seattle that has been taken over as an "autonomous zone" by the protesters is really rather laughable.

One of the first things they did was put up what they called "light fencing". Oh, so when THEY put up walls, that's perfectly fine. When Trump tries to do it, that's evil and racist. Borders are A-okay when they're doing it.

They've colonized an area for themselves. I thought the Progressive Left was against colonialism, taking someone else's property. Isn't that what they've done? They've taken over whole neighborhoods.

And they've got armed patrol guards checking people as they enter. If you're not in agreement with their ideology, you're not allowed to enter. So apparently it's okay to have border controls when they're running the world.

They're doing everything they profess to be against. Hilarious.

Thomasina , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 8:48 am GMT
@niteranger Along with the tech and social media companies, Hollywood, State Department, Department of Justice.
Some Guy sdfsdfs , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 8:59 am GMT
@Brian Reilly "anonymous, I have been encouraging cops to quit for a long time."

Dude, why? I don't want to get jacked by some thug or some immigrant policeman from Honduras. And I can't defend myself because it would be a hate crime.

Thank God for white cops.

peter mcloughlin , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 9:02 am GMT
There are underlying motives, or "hidden agendas", beneath the authentic struggle for justice. The greatest motive is for power: either to retain it or gain it. The need or desire for power can be identified in every conflict in history.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Thomasina , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 9:23 am GMT
@Realist So you think that everything they've done to Trump has been one big show and he's been in on it? The pussy tape, Stormy Daniels, spying on his campaign, the leaking, the Steele Dossier, Russiagate, Ukrainegate, his impeachment, lying to the FISA Courts by the FBI, CIA's involvement, Mueller Report, DNC server, Clinton and Loretta Lynch on the tarmac, fake news media, sanctuary cities, courts disobeying his executive orders, Covid-19, protests – all of it has been a ruse to fool us into thinking that Trump is a legitimate opposition?

What, it's better to have the citizens split politically 50/50? That way there's never a majority who start throwing their weight around and making trouble for the elite looters? Keep the people fighting among each other and divided?

Trump has gone through all of this, but he's just faking it? Are we Truman from the Truman Show?

I guess you could be right, but what if you're not? What if Trump is actually an outsider? He's never really ever been part of the elite, not really. If he is truly an outsider, then these people have been a party to an attempted coup against a duly-elected President.

And if so, then that's sedition and they should hang.

Just a random Polish guy , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 9:35 am GMT
@PetrOldSack Trump is just a puppet, well maybe a bit more, of the part of the MIC and Deep State that apparently has a different agenda. This is not to say that they are "good people" but they seem to want to keep the US as a functioning republic and a major power. Maybe they have some plans re the other group(s) in the elites that are extremely dangerous for those groups. Which would explain why those groups ("globalists") want to remove those elements of influence people behind Trump get from the fact that he is the president. This explains why fake Covid-19 was so pumped by the media and when that apparently did not work they moved on to BLM "color revolution". It is interesting how all of this plays out, as it will decide the fate of the world. Ironically, Xi, Putin and other leaders that represent groups wanting to maintain (some) sovereignty of their states have a common enemy, even as their states are in competition, namely "globalist" elements within their own power structures.
James N. Kennett , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 9:39 am GMT
One of the goals of the British security service, MI5, is to control the leader or deputy leader of any subversive organisation larger than a football team. The same is likely true in every country.

The typical criticism of MI5 is that it is too passive, and does not use its knowledge to close down hostile groups. In Algeria, the opposite happened: the Algerian security service infiltrated the most extreme Islamist group in the 1990s and aggravated the country's civil war by committing massacres, with the goal of creating public revulsion for the Islamists.

This range of possibilities makes it hard to figure out what the Deep State and other manipulators are doing.

Thomasina , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 9:47 am GMT
@Sean Frey is a weak Leftist. The equally weak Governor (another Leftie) needed to handle the situation. He didn't. Trump told him that the feds would help if he asked; he didn't.

This is all on the state and local governments. They did nothing except to tell the cops to stand down while the city got looted and burned.

If Trump had sent in the military, they would have screamed blue murder. They probably would have called for his impeachment. Of course, that's what they wanted Trump to do. Thank goodness Trump didn't fall for their trap.

Commentator Mike , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 9:58 am GMT
So the NYT has joined the vanguard af the American People's Revolution?! People change sides and not all organisations are uniform, even the CIA. There has to be some organisation to these protests and whoever is providing it, I doubt the protesters are complaining, but want even more of it, and for it to be more effective, widespread and to grow. And finding protesters is no problem now or in the future considering the state of the economy, business closures, rising unemployment, expensive education. What are all these young people supposed to do? Sit at home playing video games, surfing porn, watching TV? Or go on a holiday? Now in these circumstances? I guess they're bored with all that so they may as well hit the streets and stay on the streets as they'll be on the streets anyway when they get evicted because they can't pay the rent. And as they're being impoverished they may as well steal what they can. And obviously they don't fear arrest and are happy to get a criminal record since even a clean sheet won't get them a job in the failing economy, and they know that. I'm sure many want a solution that will provide for their future. But who is providing it? So it's on them to create it. Of course politicians will want to use them and manipulate them for their own ends. And the elites, and the deep state too. And sure there are Jews in it as in anything. And sure they're fat, ugly, and degenerate – they're Americans reflecting their own society. But where it goes nobody knows
Commentator Mike , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 10:12 am GMT
@Sean So the Chinks killed George Floyd, and not the cops. LOL.
animalogic , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 10:55 am GMT
@Mike Whitney "Is Antifa a group of deep state agitators? That's the question."
99% of them wouldn't have a clue as to any larger strategic direction. Sorry,
but to repeat myself: "useful idiots".
onebornfree , says: Website Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 11:01 am GMT
"Do Deep State Elements Operate Within the Protest Movement?"

Well, duh! It seems likely that the entire George Floyd murder on camera was a staged event, its even possible that he/it was never really killed. See:

PSYOP? George Floyd "death" was faked by crisis actors to engineer revolutionary riots, video authors say

" Numerous videos are now surfacing that directly question the authenticity of the claimed "death" of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Several trending videos appear to reveal striking inconsistencies in the official explanations behind the reported death of Floyd. These videos appear to reinforce the idea that the George Floyd incident was, if not entirely falsified, most definitely planned and rigged in advance. It is already confirmed that the Obama Foundation was tweeting about George Floyd more than a week before he is claimed to have died. "

"Obviously, since Barack Obama doesn't own a time machine, the only way the Obama Foundation could have tweeted about George Floyd a week before his death is it the entire event was planned in advanced.

Note: We do not endorse every claim in each of the videos shown below, but we believe the public has the right to hear dissenting views that challenge the official narratives, and we believe public debate that incorporates views from all sides of a particular issue offers inherent merit for public discourse.

Numerous video authors are now spotting stunning inconsistencies in the viral videos that claim to show white cops murdering George Floyd in broad daylight. Without exception, these video authors, many of whom are black, believe:

at least one of the "police officers" was actually a hired crisis actor who has appeared in other staged events in recent years.

that the black man depicted in the viral videos is not, in fact, an individual named George Floyd.
that the responding medical personnel were not EMTs but were in fact mere crisis actors wearing police costumes.

Each of the video authors shown below reveals still images and video clips that they say support their claims. Here's an overview of some of the most intriguing videos and the summary of what those videos are saying: .":

https://jamesfetzer.org/2020/06/mike-adams-psyop-george-floyd-death-was-faked-by-crisis-actors-to-engineer-revolutionary-riots-video-authors-say/

Regards, onebornfree

animalogic , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 11:05 am GMT
@Mike Whitney I think you are correct Mike. IF blm got $100 million from anyone it follows that they are beholden -- & the only entities capable of such "generosity" are "establishment" it therefore follows that BLM are beholden (controlled) by the establishment ( .the deep state .)
Really No Shit , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 11:09 am GMT
Now the New York Times thinks that the black, brown, white and yellow lives are dispensable does it mean their own GRAY lives matter more to the rest of us? No, it does not!
Christophe GJ , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 11:09 am GMT

The scale and coordination alone suggests that elements in the deep state are probably involved.

It seems right and logical.
But what I don't understand, is why the deep state elite don't understand that in the end the collapse of the "traditional society" will touch them too in their private life. In the long run the ruining of the US will ruin everybody in the US including them. Don't they get it ? Maybe they are intoxicated by their own lies are are begining to lose their lucidity. Like Al Pacino intoxicated by his own coke in scarface.

Digital Samizdat , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 11:10 am GMT
@obwandiyag Meanwhile, who's paying for BLM and Antifa?
Biff , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 11:22 am GMT
@JohnPlywood Triggered troll
animalogic , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 11:33 am GMT
@MrFoSquare What we need are some solid numbers:
How many arrested? (& who are they?)
How many properties destroyed?
Dollars worth of damage?
Which cities had the worst damage?
A social media "history" of protest/riot posting ?
Where/who are responsible for brick/frozen water bottle stashes?
Travel histories of notable offenders?
Links between "protesters" & the media ?
Money? Who/what/when/how was all this funded on a day-to-day basis.
And so on.
John Thurloe , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 11:48 am GMT
Mike Whitney doesn't know the first thing. It takes a lot of organizing time and personnel to properly prepare and lead in the field any large public protest. There are people experienced in this. Getting them together and deploying their capability is required.

These protests are classic unplanned, spontaneous actions. At least the first major wave of them. Only after some time will parties try to lead, organize. Or manipulate.

First thing, it's like trying to herd cats. So, you need marshals. Lots of them. Ably led, and clearly seen. Just to try and steer a protest down one street or to some point. You need first aid available, provision for seniors and children. Water. Knowledgeable people to deal with the media.

People who know what they're doing to deal with senior police. With city transit, buses, taxis. Hospitals, road construction, fire departments. A good protest cleans itself up too so provide the means for that. Loudspeakers, music – all this an more has to be organized. By some people.

And 100% of this or even a hint of organizing is not evident at these protests. And the evidence is easy to see. Organizers advertise too for volunteers. Everything in plain sight for those with eyes to see.

If you are stupid enough to think that some handful of fruitcakes from some official agency could even find their way to a protest, actually have a clue how to conduct themselves and not get laughed at or just ignored – there's no hope for you. You know nothing about protests and are pedalling fantasy.

Gryunt Linglebrunt, 7th Level Bard , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 12:13 pm GMT
@obwandiyag As usual, you're completely delusional. Most police departments are in the exact same boat as the municipalities that fund them: one downturn (like, say, a public lockdown followed by public disorder and looting) from going right to the wall.

There won't be any need to "defund" police; most of America's cities and towns are soon to be on the bread line, looking for those Ctrl-P federal dollars. Quarterly deficits of twenty trillion, here we come!

Uomiem , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 12:33 pm GMT
@Thomasina The power elite have different factions and they fight each other to a point, but they do not try to expose each other. This is why none of Trump enemies are going to be put in prison.

This is why Trump supports don't know what Genie Engery is, not that they would care.

The scum Trump appointed should tell you what side he's on.

Dr. X , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 12:39 pm GMT
I don't know if Antifa is run directly by the three-letter FedGov agencies. But I do know that the university is the breeding ground for these vermin, and all universities, even "private" ones, are largely funded by the governmnent, and are tax exempt.

So yes, the government is behind Antifa.

Niebelheim , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 12:42 pm GMT
@schnellandine The Hispanics in America are similar to waves of Italians in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, except the numbers are far larger and never ending, which impacts assimilation. The Hispanics are the ones doing the hard physical labor for low pay, and they are the ones in American society to invest in learning the skill to perform some of those backbreaking, low paying jobs well. They are the Super Marios of today. Many of them ply their trades as small businessmen. They are thankful for their jobs and the people they serve.
Many are loving, salt-of-the-earth type people who genuinely love their blanco friends. Howard Stern thinks their music sucks but at least they sing songs about el corazon, music of the heart and of love. (No one is comparable to the Italians in that department, but what do you suppose happened to the beautiful love music produced by black male vocalists as late as a generation ago?) Except for the fact that Hispanics come from countries with long traditions of corrupt, El Patron governments which unfortunately they want to enact here as a social safety net, they are often traditional in their attitudes about religion and family. Of course, they get in drunken brawls, abuse their women, and the graft and incompetence in their institutions can be outrageous. The reason they flee here is because the world they've created themselves in the shithole places they've leaving isn't as good as the West created by Caucasian cultures. The law abiding, decent family people I'm speaking of prosper alongside of whites and many come to recognize that whites and Hispanics can build a common destiny that's far preferable to the direction black agitators are taking blacks in America.
Realist , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 12:45 pm GMT
@Thomasina

So you think that everything they've done to Trump has been one big show and he's been in on it? The pussy tape, Stormy Daniels, spying on his campaign, the leaking, the Steele Dossier, Russiagate, Ukrainegate, his impeachment, lying to the FISA Courts by the FBI, CIA's involvement, Mueller Report, DNC server, Clinton and Loretta Lynch on the tarmac, fake news media, sanctuary cities, courts disobeying his executive orders, Covid-19, protests – all of it has been a ruse to fool us into thinking that Trump is a legitimate opposition?

Absolutely.

Keep the people fighting among each other and divided?

Yes, but the elite do not fear the majority they are in complete control through insouciance and stupidity on the majority.

I guess you could be right, but what if you're not? What if Trump is actually an outsider?

He's not his actions and inactions are impossible to logically explain away he is a minion of the Deep State.

Old and Grumpy , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 12:49 pm GMT
@botazefa Does either Trump or the GOP strike you as opposition when all they do is snivel. This operation is about demoralizing the silent majority.
Desert Fox , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 12:50 pm GMT
The protest movement is directed and controlled by the same zionists who control the government and their goal is the destruction of America and they are being allowed to do the wrecking and destruction that they are doing, as this helps full fill the zionist communist takeover of America.

To see where this is leading read up on the bolshevik-communist revolution in Russia and the communist revolution in China and Cuba and Cambodia, and there is the future of America.

Realist , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 12:55 pm GMT
@John Thurloe You are gullibility personified or a troll.
Old and Grumpy , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 1:02 pm GMT
@Christophe GJ They enjoy human suffering. Who knows maybe their compensation is linked to dead bodies. The deep state types will dwell in gate communities that will never be breached. The perks of owning both segments of the "opposition." As for the CIA's owners, a sharp depopulation has been their goal for some time. Why it has to be so ghoulish and prolong is anyone's guess.
Avalanche , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 1:06 pm GMT
@Brian Reilly "To the issue at hand, black people should only be policed, arrested, charged, prosecuted, defended, judged, and (if found guilty) punished by other blacks."

Yeah, some city tried that. To try to satisfy the "Get White police out of our neighborhoods" they did -- they re-orged and sent only black cops into black neighborhoods, and let the White cops police the White neighborhoods. And the BLACK POLICE SUED to end that! They were, they claimed (and legitimately, too!) being treated unfairly by making THEM police the most violent, the most dangerous, the most deadly neighborhoods, and "protecting" the White cops from that duty by letting only the White cops work the nice neighborhoods. They WON too!

This commenter gets it when he wrote the following. http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/2015/05/will-last-white-person-to-leave.html

(note: "IKAGO" = "I know a good one." the all-too-often excuse from the unawakened!)
=====================
I don't mourn the loss of Baltimore. Or Detroit, Chicago, Gary, Atlanta, etc etc etc.

It is ultimately a huge benefit to have Negroes concentrated in these huge teeming Petri dishes.

As always I advocate the complete White withdrawal from these horrible urban sh_tholes, and as always I advocate that since Negroes do not want to be policed, to immediately stop policing them.

And to anyone who might be naive enough to say "hey, there are good people in those neighborhoods, who try to work and raise their kids, who obey the law and who abhor the lawlessness and rioting as much as anyone" . my response is that these same IKAGO's voted for a Negro president, for Negro mayors, Negro city council members, Negro police chiefs and Negro school superintendents, and now they are getting exactly what they deserve, good and effing hard.

I have ZERO sympathy for blacks.
=====================

And the new rule:
Remember when seconds count, the police are not even obligated to respond.

jadan , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 1:11 pm GMT
Of course "deep state elements" operate in protests! What A STUPID question, Whitney. All kinds of political tricksters, manipulators, provocateurs, idiots, fools, people suffering from ennui, you name it Mike, they're involved. And yes, the murder of the black man in Minneapolis was the trigger.

That's not the only cause of social unrest. There are lots of reasons that drive the displeasure of the mass of people and it's not the silly "deep state". Before you use that term, if you want any sort of salute from intelligent people, you need to define your terms. Or are just just waving a red flag so you can attract a bunch of stupid Trumpsters?

There's a whole lot of deep state out there, good buddy. Just examine the federal budget and whatever money you cannot assign to a particular institution or specific purpose, that is funding your your "deep state". It's billions and billions. But there is no Wizard of Oz behind the curtain to spend it all on nefarious purposes. Sure, the deep state destroyed the WTC and killed a few thousand people. These hidden operators can do things civilians can only imagine, but they cannot create movements, Whitney. You just can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Are you having a touch of brain degeneration, Mike, like dear autocrat in the White House?

Chet Roman , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 1:15 pm GMT
A great article. While Trump may have some ties to the Deep State, I doubt very much that he is their puppet. He won the nomination because he was against some of the Deep States key policies. He even tried to implement his policies but mostly failed due to traitors in his administration and all the coordinated coup attempts.

One recent development that causes me to think that this article is spot on is the blatant attacks by retired generals and even currently serving generals against a sitting president. Even Defense Sec. Esper (the Raytheon lobbyist) criticized Trump's comments on the Insurrection Act, which was totally unnecessary since Trump only said that he had the authority to use it.

The coordinated criticism of the generals just reminds me of how similar it is to the coordinated effort by the CIA, FBI, State Department and NSA to use the Russiagate hoax and impeachment hoax to remove Trump. The riots, the money funneled from BLM to Biden 2020, support of Antifa by the MSM and the generals treasonous actions are not coincidences.

the_old_one , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 1:28 pm GMT
I'm surprised by the generally low level of the responses.

Mr. Whitney:

There haven't been 'millions' of protestors, maybe some thousands.
Please list the "valid grievances" that negros hold concerning the cops; are the cops supposed to raise black IQ? These riots need to be suppressed pronto; don't waste your time waiting for the fat orange buffoon to do anything.

Negros have no 'communities', and never will.

I'm wondering why Mr. Unz thinks he is required to let leftists like Whitney post here.

(1)-There is a 'deep state'
(2)-(1) does NOT imply that negros are a noble race.

You may now resume sympathizing with rioters.

Justvisiting , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 1:39 pm GMT
@botazefa The international protests are what is called a _clue_.

Protesting white supremacy in Japan–really?

https://globalnews.ca/news/7064204/george-floyd-protesters-japan-new-zealand/

This is obviously international deep state activity–they are up to no good.

Digital Samizdat , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:11 pm GMT
@Thomasina CHAZ sounds a bit like a second Israel, doesn't it!
anonymous [400] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:18 pm GMT
The opening statement is quite true. They've apparently been organizing under the radar for some years now. Diversity is our greatest weakness and these fissures that run through the country can be exploited. Blacks have been weaponized and used as the spearpoint along with the more purposeful real Antifa (lots of wannabes walking around clad in black). Everything has really been well coordinated and the Gene Sharp playbook followed. These 'color revolution' employees are actually all over the globe, funded by various front groups and NGOs. The money trail often leads to various billionaires like the ubiquitous Soros but people like that may just be acting as fronts themselves. Supposed leftists working against the interests of the value producing working class?
onebornfree , says: Website Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:19 pm GMT
@onebornfree ATTENTION!

The George Floyd murder was a obviously a wholly staged Deep State event, complete with the usual crisis actors, as this video summary clearly illustrates :

Bitchute video "CRISIS ACTOR TRIGGERS RACE WAR":


https://www.bitchute.com/embed/OItT0WD55x0w/

Regards., onebornfree

Neoconned , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:19 pm GMT
CHP officers & feds were noted at the Occupy protests in 2011:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/26/occupy-oakland-veteran-critical-condition

And later during the 2016 BLM protests.

Johnny Smoggins , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:20 pm GMT
@Brian Reilly "To the issue at hand, black people should only be policed, arrested, charged, prosecuted, defended, judged, and (if found guilty) punished by other blacks. No white person should have anything to do with it. "

And when these same blacks attack or steal from a White person, which they often do, do you think they'll get a just punishment from their fellow blacks or a high five?

The solution to the black problem is complete separation, there is no other way.

Digital Samizdat , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:22 pm GMT
@John Thurloe The protests may well have been spontaneous and sincere, but the riots are not. The latter are definitely getting help from above.
gay troll , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:23 pm GMT
@Mike Whitney But why do you assume the CIA wants to get rid of Trump? Isn't that tantamount to judging a book by its cover? Americans have been on to the evil shenanigans of the intelligence community for decades. Trump is nothing more than controlled opposition and a false sense of security for "patriots". One needs look no further than the prognostications of Q to see that Trump is the beneficiary of deep state propaganda. The CIA's modus operandi, together with the rest of the IC, is to deceive. So if they appear to be doing one thing (fighting Trump) you can be sure they intend the opposite.

Americans are nose deep in false dichotomies, and Trump is a pole par excellence. Despite his flagrant history as an NYC liberal, putative fat cat, swindler, and network television superstar, he is now depicted as either a populist outsider, or a literal Nazi. The simple fact is that he is an actor and confidence artist. He is playing a role, and he is playing to both sides of the aisle, and his work is to deceive the entirety of the American public, together with the mockingbird media, which is merely the yin to his pathetic yang.

Too many Americans think they have a choice, or a chance, by simply minding their own business, consuming their media of choice, and voting. In fact, Americans are face to face with the end of their history, as the country has been systematically looted for decades, and will soon be demolished as it is no longer profitable to the oligarchs who manage the globe. Obama-Trump is a 1-2 knockout punch.

Digital Samizdat , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:27 pm GMT
@Uomiem That's a good point, and it's of the main problems I do have with Trump: his cabinet picks and financial backers (Adelsen, Singer, et al.). But in fairness, what happens when he tries to pick someone who's not approved by the system? Well, if they're cabinet officers, they'll never get approved by the senate. And even if they're not, they will be driven out of the White House somehow–just like Gen. Flynn and Steve Bannon. In short, when it comes to staffing, Trump's choices are limited by the same swamp he's fighting. Sad but true
Chet Roman , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:27 pm GMT
@Thomasina Interesting comments by the Duran but I cannot find any evidence of a direct investment by the CIA in Facebook. The CIA's investment arm, In-Q-Tel, did invest in early Facebook investor Peter Theil's company Palantir and other companies. Also, Graylock Partners were also early investors in Facebook along with Peter Theil and the head of Graylock is Howard Cox who served on In-Q-Tel's board of directors. But these are indirect inferences.

Unlike the clear and direct investment of the CIA in the company that was eventually purchased by Google and is now called Google Earth, I can't find any evidence of a direct investment by the CIA in Facebook. I have no doubt it's true since it's a perfect tool for data gathering. Do you have any direct evidence of such an investment?

Beavertales , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:40 pm GMT
Is the Deep State stage-managing the "BLM" protests to further an agenda? Absolutely.

The main influence of the Deep State is felt in its complete dominance of the controlled media.

Like mantras handed down by the commissars, the mainstream media keep repeating key phrases to narrowly define what's happening: "mostly peaceful protests", "anti-black racism".

The media is an organ of the Deep State. The Deep State will decide when the protests will end, and when that day arrives, the media will suddenly pivot on cue like a school of fish or a flock of birds.

Realist , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 2:53 pm GMT
Perhaps some non believers in the Deep State would like to explain why the multi trillion dollar corporations in America are supporting BLM, Antifa and other anarchy groups since on the face of it anarchy would be antithetical to these corporations?

Hint: The wealthy and powerful (aka Deep State) know that anarchy divides a populous thereby removing their ability to resist their true enemy and even more draconian laws. The die is being cast at this moment and the complete subjugation of the American people will, probably, be effectuate by the end of this year. A full court press is under way and life is about to change for 99% of the American people.
If you disagree with my hint correct it.

Realist , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 3:15 pm GMT
@gay troll

Too many Americans think they have a choice, or a chance, by simply minding their own business, consuming their media of choice, and voting. In fact, Americans are face to face with the end of their history, as the country has been systematically looted for decades, and will soon be demolished as it is no longer profitable to the oligarchs who manage the globe. Obama-Trump is a 1-2 knockout punch.

Your points are excellent. All tragic, devastating events in the last, at least, 20 years have been staged or played to facilitate the total control by the Deep State.

See my comment #90 below.

DaveE , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 3:27 pm GMT
The problem is power – and the nature of those who lust for it. The police are very powerful, by necessity and the nature of police work is the exercise of power – on the street.

Not to mention the fact that police forces, like every other institution, are managed from the top. Sgt. Bernstein back at the station calls the shots, gets to decide who is hired / fired and generally runs the department like a CEO runs a company. Not all cops are rotten, but if Sgt. Bernstein is a scumbag, the whole department tends to behave as a scumbag.

I'll give you two guesses, the second one doesn't count, as to which tribe of psychopaths – who call themselves "chosen" – have mastered the art of playing both sides against the middle, using the police as a very powerful tool to accomplish an ancient agenda of world-domination, straight out of The Torah.

The police are just another sad story of the destruction of America, by Shlomo.

James Scott , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 3:34 pm GMT
@Mike Whitney Any explanation that ignores that the catalyst for what is happening is the Federal Reserve Notes free fall is not a good explanation.

This is a failed Communist Putsch. The people pushing it have enough control of major cities to keep it alive but not enough to push it into the heartland. 400 million guns and a few billion bullets are protecting freedom in the USA just like they were intended to.

All failed communist revolutions end in fascism taking power. The Yahoo news comments sections are way to big to censor properly and they are already taking on a Fascist tone with almost half the posters. This is only just beginning and most people are beginning to understand that these lies non whites tell about the fake systemic racism are too dangerous to go unchallenged. The idea that the protests ,the protests not the riots, have no foundation in truth is starting to work its way to the forefront of white peoples minds.

Non whites are coddled by the establishment in the USA and no real racists have any power in the USA so this whole thing is and has been for 50 years based on lies.

The jew mob is going to lose all their economic power over the next year or so as the Fed Note hyper-inflates. The mob knows this and made a grab for ideological power using low IQ ungrateful non whites they have been inculcating with anti white ideals for decades as their foot soldiers.

They are screwed because the places they control are parasitic just like they are. Cities are full of people making nothing and pretty much just doing service jobs for each other. All the things needed to keep cities going come from outside the cities and the jew mob is not in charge in the places that actually produce things. Not like they are in the cities anyway.

Ignoring the currency rises makes you dishonest Mike.

Alfred , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 3:43 pm GMT
I think the leadership and tactics of the police are deplorable. I can only surmise that the local political leadership in many cities is on the inside of this latest scam.

The police should be able to launch attacks on the crowd to single out those who are Antifa activists. That is what the riot police in France would do. They should try to ignore the rabble behind which these activists are sheltering.

By remaining on the defensive and without using the element of surprise to capture these activists, the police are sitting ducks.

My dad told me what it was like in Cairo when the centre of the city was destroyed in 1952. I was tiny at that time and remember my mother carrying me. We watched Cairo burning in the distance. We were on the roof of the huge house of my Egyptian grandfather in Heliopolis.

The looters and arsonists were well-equipped. It was not by any means spontaneous. They smashed the locks on the draw-down shutters of the shops with sledge hammers. Next, they looted the shop. Lastly, they tossed in Molotov cocktails. The commercial heart of Cairo was largely destroyed in a few hours. Cinemas and the Casino were burnt. Cairo was a very pleasant metropolis in those days. It became prosperous during WW2 by supplying the Allies.

My family's small factory was in the very centre of Cairo – in Abbassia. My father rounded up his workers to defend the factory. Many lived on the premises. They were all tough Sa'idi from Upper Egypt. Many were Coptic Christians. They all had large staffs that they knew how to use. The arsonists and looters kept well clear.

Cairo fire 1952

SunBakedSuburb , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 4:03 pm GMT
@Priss Factor "Jewish cult of Magic Negro"

The Temple of the Sacred Black Body is really a worship of golems.

Agent76 , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 4:03 pm GMT
JUNE 9, 2020 CityLab University: A Timeline of U.S. Police Protests

The latest protests against police violence toward African Americans didn't appear out of nowhere. They're rooted in generations of injustice and systemic racism.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/06/american-history-protest-police-brutality-black-lives-racism/612445/

Jun 2, 2020 Brick Pallets For Riots From ACME BRICK CO Own By Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett & Bill Gates

https://www.youtube.com/embed/VqhgO9Dz7Rc?feature=oembed

Wally , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 4:05 pm GMT
@Sean said:
"While it is a possibility that whites could lose control of their society, and see it fall into the hands of an explicitly anti -[r]acist elite/ minorities alliance,"

"Anti-racist?

The entire matter is "explicit" racism directed against Euro-whites.

SunBakedSuburb , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 4:16 pm GMT
@gay troll "But why do you assume the CIA wants to get rid of Trump?"

John Brennan collaborated with James Comey on the Russian collusion narrative. Brennan is indicative of the upper-echelon CIA and its orientation towards the globalist billionaire class.

Wizard of Oz , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 4:20 pm GMT
@Loup-Bouc Maybe you also noticed that the opening pages of the article suggested that the author was unhinged when he made so much of an alleged editorial in the NYT which wasn't an editorial but an opinion piece by an activist. And what about the spontaneous eruptions of protest all round the world? Masterminded by the US "Deep State"? Absurd.

Mr. Whitney may have got to an age when he can no longer understand the young and their latest fashionable fatuities and follies.

jbwilson24 , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 4:47 pm GMT
@obwandiyag " The assholes on this asshole site will not let you say that what is important is how the super-billionaires control us. "

Nonsense, I rant against the largely Jewish super-billionaires all the time.

Truth is that blacks and working class whites are in relatively similar positions compared to the 1%. We should be seeking alliances with people like Rev. Farrakhan, but instead, for some curious reason, big Jewish money is pouring into keeping racial grievances alive and kicking. It looks very much like a divide and conquer strategy.

Where did the antiwar and Occupy Wall Street movements go after Obama's election? My guess is that the financial elite saw the danger of having OWS ask questions about the bailouts, so they devoted a ton of time and energy into pushing racial grievance politics, gender neutral bathrooms and the like. Their co-ethnics in the media collaborated with them in making sure only one perspective made the news.

PS: if you don't like the website, simply avoid visiting it. Trust me, no one will miss your inane posts.

Nancy Pelosi's Latina Maid , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 4:52 pm GMT
@JohnPlywood

"90% of Americans are unlikely to even see more than ten black people in their entire lives."

I sure hope you're talking about IRL, because I see more than ten black people in any commercial break on any TV show on any cable or network TV station every hour of every day. In fact, it's at least 50/50 B/W and it feels more like 60/40 B/W. And it's always the blacks who are in charge, the whites spill chips all over the kitchen floor

JimDandy , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 5:05 pm GMT
After all the nonsensical rumors that this guy was a cop fell away, why didn't anyone look at this guy in the context that this article explores?

https://heavy.com/news/2020/05/jacob-pederson-auto-zone-cop-not-umbrella-man/

gay troll , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 5:23 pm GMT
@SunBakedSuburb 15 seasons of The Apprentice on NBC is indicative of Trump's orientation towards the globalist billionaire class. It sure was nice of NBC to thus rehabilitate Trump's image after it became clear he was a cheat who could not even hold down a casino. From fake wrestler to fake boardroom CEO, Trump has ALWAYS been made for TV.

As for Russiagate, it was a transparent crock of shit from the moment Clapper sent his uncorrobated assertions under the aegis of "17 intelligence agencies". You assume the point of the charade was to "get Trump", but really Russiagate was designed to deceive "liberals" just as Q was designed to deceive "conservatives". It is the appearance of conflict that serves to divide Americans into two camps who both believe the other is at fault for all of society's ills. In fact, it is the Zionists and bankers who are to blame for society's ills, and like the distraction of black vs. white, Democrat vs. Republican keeps everybody's attention away from the real chauvinists and criminals.

Brás Cubas , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 5:31 pm GMT
@Sean Well, I can't deny that yours is an extremely original interpretation. It sure made me think. I can't say I'm convinced, though it doesn't seem to have any conspicuous a priori inconsistency with facts. I guess time will tell.
schnellandine , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 5:35 pm GMT
@JimDandy

After all the nonsensical rumors that this guy was a cop

The alleged nonsensical rumors were that he was a specific cop. The sensible assumption was that he was a cop or similar state sludge.

Alden , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 5:40 pm GMT
@Realist Agree. Someone posted he had a friend at Minneapolis airport. Incoming planes were full of antifa types the day after Floyd died.

They are very well organized. They are notorious around universities. Well, not universities in dangerous black neighborhoods. They live like students in crowded apartments and organize all their movements. Plenty of dumb kids to recruit. Plenty of downwardly mobile White grads who can't get jobs or into grad s hook because they're White. Those Whites go into liberal rabble rousing instead of rabble rousing against affirmative action, so brainwashed are they. Portland is a college town. That's why antifa is so well organized there. Seattle's a college town too as is Chicago.

AnonFromTN , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 5:41 pm GMT

Do Deep State Elements Operate Within the Protest Movement?

Silly question. Of course, they do. Just look at the MSM coverage, full of blatant lies.

Iva , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 5:49 pm GMT
Why ANTIFA doesn't loot banks, doesn't stand in front od Soros home, JPMorgan headquarters, big corporations, Bezos business .etc? Because rich are paying for riots ..the same way they payed to support Hitler during WWII.
anon8383892 , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 6:06 pm GMT
@Anon Thanks for highlighting the complex racial politics -- in this case between Hispanics and Africans. That was something Ron Unz got right as well -- independently of the numerology -- in the other article; basically saying that there have been a lot of various social-engineering projects going on.
Naturally I'm liable for everything else you said ;/ no comment, no contest,

I think it will be alright if we can get back to basics, natural rights, republican representative organization, pluralism, etc The corporate nightmare has everyone crammed into a vat of human resources. Undo that, see how it goes, then take it from there.

Alden , says: Show Comment June 15, 2020 at 6:11 pm GMT
@Mike Whitney The reason most of the rioters arrested were native New Yorkers is that they were the useful idiots designated fall guys.

The organizers are adept at changing clothes hats and sunglasses. Their job is to get things started by smashing windows of a Nike's store and running away letting a few looters be arrested.

I remember something written by an Indian communist, not Indian nationalist How To Start a Riot in the 1920s.

1 Start rumors about abuse of Indians by British.
2. Decide where to start the riots.
3 Best place is in the open air markets around noon. The merchants will have collected substantial money. The local lay abouts will be up and about.
4 Instigators start fights with the merchants raid cash boxes overturn tables and the riot is on.

The ancient Roman politicians started riots that way. It's standard procedure in every country in every era. All this fuss and discussion by the idiot intelligentsia is ridiculous as is everything the idiot intelligentsia thinks, writes and does.

We Americans experience a black riot every few years, just as we experience floods, droughts, blizzards , earthquakes, forest fires, tornadoes floods and hurricanes.

As long as we have blacks and liberal alleged intellectuals we'll have riots.

[Jun 11, 2020] History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce: The replay on the new level of slogans Viva proletarian science. Down with Bourgeoisie lackeys in academia

Politicized science makes a strong comeback.
Notable quotes:
"... Who is Amy Siskind going to call to arrest Tucker Carlson and bring him to a tribunal? The defunded police? ..."
Jun 11, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Look at what's happening to Harald Uhlig, a prominent University of Chicago economist, who posted:

Harald Uhlig @haralduhlig

Too bad, but # blacklivesmatter per its core organization @ Blklivesmatter just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of # defundthepolice : "We call for a national defunding of police." Suuuure. They knew this is non-starter, and tried a sensible Orwell 1984 of saying,

603 11:43 PM - Jun 8, 2020 Twitter Ads info and privacy

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Uhlig now faces a social media campaign, led by a prominent University of Michigan economist, to get him booted as editor of the Journal of Political Economy . Here is another leader of the professional lynch mob:

Max Auffhammer @auffhammer

I am calling for the resignation of Harald Uhlig ( @ haralduhlig ) as the editor of the Journal of Political Economy. If you would like to add your name to this call, it is posted at https:// forms.gle/9uiJVqCAXBDBg6 8N9 . It will be delivered by end of day 6/10 (tomorrow).

Letter calling for the resignation of Harald Uhlig as Editor of the Journal of Political Economy

To: The editors of the Journal of Political Economy and President of The University of Chicago Press We, the undersigned, call for the resignation of Harald Uhlig, the Bruce Allen and Barbara...

docs.google.com
413 5:34 PM - Jun 9, 2020 Twitter Ads info and privacy

216 people are talking about this

These are academics.


Jack 19 hours ago

Amy Siskind sounds like a Pol Pot in waiting.

Civis Romanus Sum 19 hours ago

There has been a rash of firings of editors this week. One interesting thing - judging by the publications listed and by the cringing, groveling apologies given by these editors, they are liberals who are being eaten by up-and-coming radicals. It's like the liberals had no idea what hit them.

Wilfred 18 hours ago

I used to worry the future would be like "1984". Then the Soviet Union fell, things seemed OK tor awhile. After 9/11, I worried the future would be like "Khartoum". But now, it looks like it is going to be a weird combination of "Invasion of the Body-Snatchers" and "Planet of the Apes".

Seoulite 18 hours ago

Now seeing reports on Twitter that the Seattle Autonomous Zone now has its first warlord. America truly is a diverse place. You have hippie communes, religious sects, semi-autonomous Indian reservations, a gerontocracy in Washington, and now your very own Africa style fiefdom complete with warlord.

I really am sorry. This must be so depressing to watch as an American.

RBH 18 hours ago • edited

Arizona State journalism school retracts offer to new dean because of an "insensitive" tweets and comments - by insensitive we mean, not sufficiently zealous and not hip to the full-spectrum wokeness. Online student petitions follow, and you know the rest of the story.

This is madness. The true late stages of a revolution where they start eating their own.

https://www.azcentral.com/s...

SatirevFlesti 18 hours ago

Those tweets above (and countless others like them) just demonstrate the absolute intellectual and moral rot that now reigns in academia. I saw one yesterday by an attorney for a prominent activist organization who said he couldn't understand why the Constitution isn't interpreted as "requiring" the demolition of the Robert E. Lee statue in Virginia, and others like it. I'm having a harder time understanding how he ever graduated from an accredited law school.

Forget "defund the police," perhaps "defund universities" would be the best place to start healing what ails contemporary culture. The rot started there, not only with the "anti-racist" (as opposed to "mere" non-racism) cant, it with gender ideology (Judith Butler), Cultural Marxism, etc. When "pc" first became a common term in the early '90s I thought it passing fad. We now see the result of the decades long radical march through the institutions bearing fruit, and it's more strange and rotten fruit than ever.

Raskolnik 17 hours ago

Woke leftists are the people who believe in the myth of aggregate Black intellectual parity with Whites and Asians the least. That's why they constantly do absolutely everything in their power to juke the statistics, like allowing Black students to not have to take exams, which is really just an extension of this same principle at work in "affirmative action."

lohengrin 17 hours ago • edited

The French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, the Khmer Rouge--100,000,000 people were murdered in the name of extreme egalitarianism across the 20th century. When leftism gets out of control, tragedy happens.

I have no idea why you believe hard totalitarian methods aren't coming. I'm not sure what the answer is. We can expect no help from the Republican party. That much is certain. A disturbing number of people have not yet awoken from their dogmatic slumber.

Mr. Karamazov 17 hours ago

People are going to have to stand up to these bullies. If you back down they will just beat you up again tomorrow.

Fyodor D 16 hours ago

Who is Amy Siskind going to call to arrest Tucker Carlson and bring him to a tribunal? The defunded police?

It seems to me that the left has gone about this bassackwards. First you ashcan the Second Amendment, THEN you take away their First Amendment Rights. You most certainly do not go around silencing people with political correctness, then go around announcing your intention to kulak an entire group of very well-armed people. But that's just my opinion...

Rod, I disagree that a "soft totalitarianism" is what awaits us if these barbarians are allowed to run around unopposed. The notion of human rights is a product of the religion they despise, so I see no reason why they would respect this ideal when dealing with vile white wreckers of the multi-cultural utopia they have envisioned.

[Jun 06, 2020] You shouldn't be taking televisions, but I can't tell people how to react to this

Tucker: "Is our nation being ripped apart by a total and complete lie, a provable lie? A lie used by cynical media manipulators and unscrupulous politicians who understand that racial strife -- race hatred -- is their path to power, even if it destroys the country."
Jun 06, 2020 | www.foxnews.com

Bakari Sellers, CNN political commentator: People worry about the protesters and the looters. And it is just people who are frustrated.

Don Lemon, CNN anchor: They are frustrated, and they are angry, and they are out there. And they're upset. You shouldn't be taking televisions, but I can't tell people how to react to this.

Sen. Chuck Schumer , D-N.Y.: I'm proud of the protests, and I think it is part of the tradition of New York. The violence is bad, reprehensible, and it should be condemned, but it is not the overwhelming picture in New York.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times: Destroying property which can be replaced is not violence.

Chris Cuomo, CNN anchor Too many see the protests as the problem. Please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.

[Jun 04, 2020] The Gig Economy: WTF? Precarity and Work under Neoliberalism

Highly recommended!
"The gig economy is just a way for corporations to cut the cost of employees, by turning them into subcontractors. They blur the line between employee and subcontractors by having tight rules like an employer, and since most people have a employee mentality, the company nurtures the idea that they somehow are more like employees, then they get mostly good workers, working hard for very little compensation. The Gig economy is just another sign of our failing way of life."
Notable quotes:
"... The gig economy would be great if we lived in a society where health care is free, food is cheap, housing is common, and nobody suffers from economic Issues Which is not what we are living in ..."
"... Neo-liberals - we support freedom and stuff. Removes mask Is actually corporation lapdogs. ..."
Jun 04, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Unlike most developments in the employment market, the Gig Economy has received a great deal of press attention and established itself firmly as a point of reference in the popular consciousness. In recent years, increasing numbers of people have turned to services such as Uber, Lyft, Deliveroo, Just Eat, TaskRabbit and Fiverr as either a side hustle or their main source of income.

Following on from my video on neoliberalism and neoliberal capitalism, in today's episode of What the Theory?, we look deeper into how the gig economy (or sharing economy) works and what differentiates it from the rest of the economy. We ask whether the gig economy is truly an opportunity for those wanting a more flexible work arrangement or whether it is simply a means for multinational corporations to circumvent hard-won workers rights and labour laws.

Finally, we also consider whether there might be some historical precedents to the sharing economy in the early industrial period and look at some of the challenges facing those attempting to organise Deliveroo riders, Uber drivers and other gig economy workers into trade unions in order to negotiate for better rates of pay and conditions.

If you'd like to support my channel then please do check out my Patreon page at http://patreon.com/tomnicholas


Simple Things , 5 months ago

Unregulated capitalism? You mean like child labor and passing the hat when a worker dies in an accident? They don't want workers. They want people who are desperate.

Tom Nicholas , 5 months ago

Well, how far it all goes is something that remains to be seen. I don't think we'll get as far as child labour but the curation of dependence is something that's definitely in progress.

memeoverlord 2010 , 5 months ago

They don't want people who are desperate, they want slaves.

Tyler Potts , 4 months ago

Tom Nicholas but if they could they would have kids gigging. The gig economy is a scam, I'd rather pay more for an Uber and have unionized drivers.

Tyler Potts , 4 months ago

Daxton Lyon except the majority of entrepreneurs and business owners didn't come Into their business ownership via merit. You are forgetting that most of these people are born into a situation where they have access to capital, access to legal services and education. Sure there are a minority of people who make it from nothing but that number is diminishingly small.

John Jourdan , 3 months ago

I notice not one of you mentioned immigrants. lol

EYTPS , 2 months ago

Daxton Lyon "You don't like the gig? Do something else." Too bad the economy is currently setup to where around half of individuals are limited to gig and don't have the resources and money to do anything else.

EYTPS , 2 months ago

Daxton Lyon "If any of you did, your panzy responses regarding corporate greed would be squashed!" No, they wouldn't, but keep performing those red herrings and hasty, extremely-worshipping generalizations about entrepreneurship to distract from the point; I'm sure they'll catch on.

Justin Goretoy , 5 months ago

Neoliberalism is the religious belief that markets are magical and will regulate themselves.

User Name , 4 months ago

The gig economy would be great if we lived in a society where health care is free, food is cheap, housing is common, and nobody suffers from economic Issues Which is not what we are living in

memeoverlord 2010 , 5 months ago

Neo-liberals - we support freedom and stuff. Removes mask Is actually corporation lapdogs.

[May 29, 2020] Trump's Tax Cuts Get an "F" for enriching the Globalist Elite by Michael Cuenco

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Instead of reining in the "globalist elites" he so vociferously ran against or those corporations "who have no loyalty to America," his one legislative achievement has been to award them a massive tax cut. Through it, he has maintained their favorite mix of low revenue intake and high deficits which gives Republicans a pretext to "starve the beast" and induce fiscal anorexia. ..."
"... Trump ran as a populist firebrand -- a fusion of Huey Long and Ross Perot -- and while he never abandoned that style, he has governed for the most part as a milquetoast free market Republican in perfect tandem with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, one whose solution to everything is more tax cuts and deregulation: a kind of turbo-charged "high-energy Jeb." ..."
"... With the outbreak of COVID-19, many on the reformist right are hoping for the emergence of the President Trump they thought they were promised, a leader just as ready to break out of the donor-enforced "small government" straitjacket while in power as he was during the campaign. ..."
"... The heightened rhetoric against China will continue -- the one thing Trump is good at -- but it is unlikely to be matched with the required policy ..."
"... If neoliberalism excused inequality at home by extolling the equalization of incomes across the globe (millions of Chinese raised from poverty, while millions of American workers fall back into it!), the new position must shift emphasis back to ensuring a more equitable domestic distribution of wealth and opportunity across all classes and communities in this country. ..."
"... It is worth pondering what might have happened if the administration had gone the other way and followed the last piece of policy advice given by Steve Bannon before his ouster in August 2017. Bannon suggested raising the top marginal income tax rate to 44 percent while "arguing that it would actually hit left-wing millionaires in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street, and in Hollywood." ..."
"... It might well have put Trump on the path to becoming what Daniel Patrick Moynihan once proposed as a model for Richard Nixon when he gifted the 37th president a biography of Disraeli, namely a Tory Republican who could outsmart the left by crafting broad popular coalitions based on a blending of patriotic cultural conservatism with class-conscious economic and social policy. ..."
"... Then and even more so now, the idea resonates: a Reuters/Ipsos poll from January found that 64 percent of Americans support a wealth tax, a majority of Republicans included. Poll after poll has reaffirmed this. It seems as if there is right-wing populist support for taxing the rich more. ..."
"... There is one more thing to be said about the significance of taxing the rich. Up until very recently, there has been a prevailing tendency among the reformist right (with some important exceptions) to couch criticism of the elites primarily or even exclusively in cultural terms. There seems to have been a polite hesitation at taking the cultural critique to its logical economic conclusions. It is easy to excoriate the excesses of elite identity politics, the "woke" part of woke capitalism; it's something all conservatives -- and indeed growing numbers of liberals and socialists -- agree on. Fish in a barrel. ..."
"... But to challenge the capitalism part, i.e. free market orthodoxy, not in a secondary or tertiary way, but head on and in specific policy terms as Lofgren and a few others have done, would involve confronting difficult truths, namely that the biggest beneficiaries of tax cuts and Reaganite economic policy in general, which most conservatives enthusiastically promoted for four decades, are the selfsame decadent coastal elites they claim to oppose. It is they who more than anyone else thrive on financialized globalization, arbitrage and offshoring. ..."
"... In other words, it amounts to an honest recognition of the complicity of conservatism in the mess we're in, which is perhaps a psychological bridge too far for too many on the right, reformist or not. (Trigger Warning!) This separation of culture and economics has led to the farce of a self-styled nationalist president lining the pockets of his nominal enemies, the globalist ruling class. ..."
"... A conservative call to tax the rich would signal that the right is ready to end this charade and chart a course toward a more patriotic, public-spirited and yes, proudly hyphenated capitalism. ..."
"... Michael Cuenco is a writer on politics and policy. He has also written for American Affairs. ..."
May 26, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

They also left worker wages stagnant and increased the deficit. Where is our more nationalist economic policy?

Much has been written about the disappointment of certain segments of the right in the apparent capitulation of Donald Trump to the agenda of the conservative establishment.

Instead of reining in the "globalist elites" he so vociferously ran against or those corporations "who have no loyalty to America," his one legislative achievement has been to award them a massive tax cut. Through it, he has maintained their favorite mix of low revenue intake and high deficits which gives Republicans a pretext to "starve the beast" and induce fiscal anorexia.

The president has granted them as well their ideal labor market through an ingenious formula: double down on mostly symbolic raids (as opposed to systemic solutions like Mandatory E-Verify) and ramp up the rhetoric about "shithole countries" to distract the media, but keep the supply of cheap, exploitable low-skill labor (legal and illegal) intact for the business lobby.

Trump ran as a populist firebrand -- a fusion of Huey Long and Ross Perot -- and while he never abandoned that style, he has governed for the most part as a milquetoast free market Republican in perfect tandem with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, one whose solution to everything is more tax cuts and deregulation: a kind of turbo-charged "high-energy Jeb."

With the outbreak of COVID-19, many on the reformist right are hoping for the emergence of the President Trump they thought they were promised, a leader just as ready to break out of the donor-enforced "small government" straitjacket while in power as he was during the campaign.

Despite signs of progress, what's more likely is a return to business as usual. Already the GOP's impulse for austerity and parsimony is proving to be stronger than any willingness to think and act outside the box.

The heightened rhetoric against China will continue -- the one thing Trump is good at -- but it is unlikely to be matched with the required policy, such as a long-term plan to reshore U.S. industry (that doesn't just rely on blindly giving corporations the benefit of the doubt). At this point, we already know where the president's priorities lie when given a choice between the advancement of America's workers or continued labor arbitrage and carte blanche corporate handouts.

Lest they be engulfed by it like everyone else, the reformist right should ask: is there any way to stand athwart the supply-side swamp yelling Stop?

Many of these conservatives lament the Trump tax cut not just because it was a disaster that failed to spark reinvestment, left wages stagnant, needlessly blew up the deficit and served as a slush fund for stock buybacks, but more fundamentally because it betrayed the overwhelming intellectual inertia and lack of imagination that characterizes conservative policymaking.

More than in any other issue then, a distinct position on taxes would make the new conservatism truly worth distinguishing from the old: tax cuts were after all the defining policy dogma of the neoliberal Reagan era.

If neoliberalism excused inequality at home by extolling the equalization of incomes across the globe (millions of Chinese raised from poverty, while millions of American workers fall back into it!), the new position must shift emphasis back to ensuring a more equitable domestic distribution of wealth and opportunity across all classes and communities in this country.

A reformulation of fiscal policy along populist economic nationalist lines can help with that.

It is worth pondering what might have happened if the administration had gone the other way and followed the last piece of policy advice given by Steve Bannon before his ouster in August 2017. Bannon suggested raising the top marginal income tax rate to 44 percent while "arguing that it would actually hit left-wing millionaires in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street, and in Hollywood."

Such a move would have been nothing short of revolutionary: it would have been a faithful and full-blown expression of the populist economic nationalism Trump ran on; it would have presented a genuine material threat to the elite ruling class of both parties, and likely would have pre-empted the shock value of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposing a 70 percent top marginal rate.

It might well have put Trump on the path to becoming what Daniel Patrick Moynihan once proposed as a model for Richard Nixon when he gifted the 37th president a biography of Disraeli, namely a Tory Republican who could outsmart the left by crafting broad popular coalitions based on a blending of patriotic cultural conservatism with class-conscious economic and social policy.

Not that Trump would have needed to go back to Nixon or Disraeli for instruction on the matter. In 1999, long before Elizabeth Warren came along on the national scene, a presidential candidate eyeing the Reform Party nomination contemplated the imposition of a 14.25 percent wealth tax on America's richest citizens in order to pay off the national debt: his name was Donald Trump.

What ever happened to that guy? The Trump of 1999 was onto something. Maybe this could be a way to deal with our post-pandemic deficits.

Then and even more so now, the idea resonates: a Reuters/Ipsos poll from January found that 64 percent of Americans support a wealth tax, a majority of Republicans included. Poll after poll has reaffirmed this. It seems as if there is right-wing populist support for taxing the rich more.

To the common refrain, "the rich are just going to find ways to shelter their income or relocate it offshore," I have written elsewhere about the concrete policy measures countries can and have taken to clip the wings of mobile global capital and prevent such an outcome.

I have written as well about how taxing the rich and tightening the screws on tax enforcement have implications that go beyond the merely redistributive approach to fiscal policy conventionally favored by the left; about how it can be a form of leverage against an unaccountable investor class used to shopping at home and abroad for the most opaque assets in which to hoard vast amounts of essentially idle capital.

A deft administration would use aggressive fiscal policy as an inducement for this irresponsible class to make things right by reinvesting in such priorities as the wages and well-being of workers, the vitality of communities, the strength of strategic industries and the productivity of the real economy – or else Uncle Sam will tax their wealth and do it for them.

It would also be an assertion of national sovereignty against globalization's command for countries to stay "competitive" by immiserating their citizens with ever-lower taxes on capital holders and ever more loose and "flexible" labor markets in a never-ending race to the bottom.

Mike Lofgren has penned a marvelous essay in these pages about the virtual secession of the rich from the American nation, "with their prehensile greed, their asocial cultural values, and their absence of civic responsibility."

What better way to remind them that they are still citizens of a country and members of a society -- and not just floating streams of deracinated capital -- than by making them perform that most basic of civic duties, paying one's fair share and contributing to the commonweal? America need not revert to the 70-90 percent top marginal rates of the bolshevik administrations of Truman, Eisenhower or Kennedy, but proposals for modest moves in that direction would be welcome.

There is one more thing to be said about the significance of taxing the rich. Up until very recently, there has been a prevailing tendency among the reformist right (with some important exceptions) to couch criticism of the elites primarily or even exclusively in cultural terms. There seems to have been a polite hesitation at taking the cultural critique to its logical economic conclusions. It is easy to excoriate the excesses of elite identity politics, the "woke" part of woke capitalism; it's something all conservatives -- and indeed growing numbers of liberals and socialists -- agree on. Fish in a barrel.

But to challenge the capitalism part, i.e. free market orthodoxy, not in a secondary or tertiary way, but head on and in specific policy terms as Lofgren and a few others have done, would involve confronting difficult truths, namely that the biggest beneficiaries of tax cuts and Reaganite economic policy in general, which most conservatives enthusiastically promoted for four decades, are the selfsame decadent coastal elites they claim to oppose. It is they who more than anyone else thrive on financialized globalization, arbitrage and offshoring.

In other words, it amounts to an honest recognition of the complicity of conservatism in the mess we're in, which is perhaps a psychological bridge too far for too many on the right, reformist or not. (Trigger Warning!) This separation of culture and economics has led to the farce of a self-styled nationalist president lining the pockets of his nominal enemies, the globalist ruling class.

Already, the White House is proposing yet another gigantic corporate tax cut. Using the exact same discredited logic as the last one, senior economic advisor Larry Kudlow wants Americans to trust him when he says that halving the already lowered 2017 rate to 10.5 percent will encourage these eminently reasonable multinationals to reinvest. There he goes again.

A conservative call to tax the rich would signal that the right is ready to end this charade and chart a course toward a more patriotic, public-spirited and yes, proudly hyphenated capitalism.

Michael Cuenco is a writer on politics and policy. He has also written for American Affairs.


Kent 3 days ago

"America need not revert to the 70-90 percent top marginal rates of the bolshevik administrations of Truman, Eisenhower or Kennedy, but proposals for modest moves in that direction would be welcome."

Those tax rates were offset by direct investment in the US economy. So if I invested in the stock market, I'd get a 90% tax rate because that doesn't produce actual wealth. On the other hand, if I invested in building factories that created thousands of jobs for American citizens, my tax rate may fall to 0%. And those policies created a fantastic economy that we oldsters remember as the golden age. That wasn't bolshevism, it was competitive capitalism. What we have today is libertarianism. And as long as conservatives are going to let the libertarian boogey-man's nose under the tent, we are going to have this ugly, bifurcated economy. Your choice. Man up.

Winston Nevis Kent 3 days ago • edited
You ever tell hear of sarcasm, bud? I think that's what the author was going for. Don't think he was trying to say that Ike and Truman were Bolsheviks but was rather making fun of libertarians who hyperbolically associate high tax rates with socialism and Soviet Communism...
K squared Winston Nevis 3 days ago
Plenty of goldwater's supporters in 1964 called President Eisenhower a communist
GAguilar K squared 2 days ago
Particularly the John Birchers, including my parents!
SKPeterson Kent 3 days ago • edited
We absolutely do not have libertarianism operating in this country today. There is simply no evidence that there is any sort of libertarian economic or political system in place. Oh sure, you'll whine "but globalism without actually defining what globalism is, or what is wrong about precisely, but just that it's somehow wrong and that libertarians are to blame for it. There's a good word for such an argument: bullshit.
We have an economy that is extraordinarily dominated by the state via mandates, regulations, and monetary interference that is most decidedly not libertarian in any way whatsoever. The current system though does create and perpetuate a system of rent-seeking cronies who conform rather nicely to the descriptions of said actors by Buchanan and Tullock. The problems of the modern economy are the result of state interference, not its absence, and Cuenco's sorry policy prescriptions do nothing to minimize the state but instead just create a different set of rent-seeking cronies for which the wealth and incomes of the nation are to be expropriated.
marku52 SKPeterson 3 days ago
O dear, No True Scotsman....
SKPeterson marku52 2 days ago
If you can point to how the current situation is in any way "libertarian" without creating your own perfect little lazy straw man definition then by all means do so. Until then your retort is without
substance (you see a no true Scotsman reply doesn't work if the facts are in the favor of the person supposedly making such an argument. Here you fail to establish why what I said is such a case; saying it doesn't make it so). When Kent makes some throwaway comment that we're somehow living in some sort of libertarian era he's full of it, you know it, and all you can do is provide some weak "no true Scotsman" defense? Come on and man up, stop appealing to artificial complaints of fallacious argumentation, and give me an actual solid argument with evidence beyond "this is so libertarian" that we're living in some libertarian golden age that's driving the oppression of the masses.
cka2nd SKPeterson 3 days ago
Busted unions, contracting out and privatization, deregulation of vast swaths of the economy since the late 1970's (Jimmy Carter has gotten kudos from libertarian writers for his de-regulatory efforts), lowered tax rates, especially on financial speculation and concentrated wealth, a blind eye or shrugged shoulder to anti-trust law and corporate consolidation. Yeah, nothing to see here, no partial victories for the libertarian wings of the ruling class or the GOP, at all. The Koch Brothers accomplished nothing, absolutely nothing, since David was the Libertarian Party's nominee for Vice President in 1980; all that money gone to waste. Sure.
SKPeterson cka2nd 2 days ago
So, now some sort of "partial victory" means we're living in some sort of libertarian era? And what exactly was so wonderful about all the things you listed being perpetuated? So, union "busting" is terrible, but union corruption was a great part of our national solidarity and should have been protected? Deregulation of vast swathes of the economy? You mean the elimination of government controlled cartels in the form of trucking and airlines? You mean the sorts of things that have enabled the working class folks you supposedly favor to travel to places that were previously out of reach for them and only accessible to the rich for their vacations? Yes, that's truly terrible. Again, you're on the side of the little guy, right? Lowered taxes? Are you seriously going to argue that the traditional conservative position has been for high tax rates? What are taxes placed upon? People and property. What do conservatives want to protect? People and property. So... arguing for higher taxes or saying that low taxes are bad or even especially, libertarian, is really going off the rails. That's just bad reasoning. And regarding financialization, those weren't especially libertarian in their enacting, but rather flow directly out of the consequences of the modern Progressive implementation of neo-Keynesian monetary and fiscal policy. Suffice it to say, I don't think you'll find too many arguments from libertarians that the policies encouraging financialization were good or followed libertarian economic policy prescriptions. Moreover, they led entirely to the repulsive "too big to fail" situation and if there's one thing that libertarians hold to is that there is no such thing (or shouldn't be) as "too big to fail." The objection to anti-trust law is that it was regularly abused and actually created government-protected firms that harmed consumers. If you think anti-trust laws are good things and should be supported by conservatives then by all means encourage Joe Biden to have Elizabeth Warren as his vice-presidential running mate and go vote Democrat this fall.
Blood Alcohol SKPeterson 3 days ago
"The problems of the modern economy are the result of state interference, not its absence". That's because the "state interference" is working as proxy for the interests of vulture capitalist.

What we have today is vulture capitalism as opposed to free enterprise capitalism.

DUNK Blood Alcohol 2 days ago • edited
You could also call it "crony capitalism" or "inverted totalitarianism".

Chris Hedges: "Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism" (November 2, 2015)

GAguilar DUNK 2 days ago
Princeton professor Sheldon Wolin's excellent book is entitled, "Democracy Incorporated."

He lays out how we're living in a totalitarian, capitalist surveillance state, as if that's not already obvious to most people around here.

SKPeterson Blood Alcohol 2 days ago
Exactly. The existence of a vulture capitalist or crony capitalist economy, which we have in many sectors, is evidence that "libertarianism" is nothing more than a convenient totem to invoke as a rationale for complaint against the outcomes of the existing crony capitalist state of affairs. My contention is that Cuenco, et al are simply advocating for a replacement of the cronies and vultures.
1701 3 days ago
A very similar article(but probably coming at it from a slightly different angle) wouldn't look out of place in a socialist publication.
The culture war really is a pointless waste of time that keeps working class people from working towards a common solution to shared problems.
bumbershoot 3 days ago
Trump wants to "keep the supply of cheap, exploitable low-skill labor (legal and illegal) intact for the business lobby."

Well of course he does -- otherwise how would he staff Mar-A-Lago and other Trump Organization businesses?

SKPeterson 3 days ago
I used to think that conservatism was about protecting private property and not, like Cuenco, in coming up with ever more excuses for expropriating it.
Kent SKPeterson 3 days ago
No, that's libertarianism (or more properly propertarianism). Conservatism is first and foremost about responsibility to God, community, family and self. Property is only of value in its utility towards a means.
GAguilar Kent 2 days ago • edited
As I see it, here are examples of how "conservatives" have actually practiced their "responsibility to God, community, family and self":

The genocide of Native Americans
The slavery and murder of blacks

Their opposition to child labor laws, to womens' suffrage, etc.
Their support of Jim Crow laws
Their opposition to ending slavery and opposition to desegregation
Opposition to Civil Liberties Laws

Willingness to block, or curtail, voting rights.

Hyping the "imminent threat" of an ever more powerful communist menace bearing
down on us from the late 40s to the "unanticipated" collapse of the
USSR in '91. All of which was little more than endless "threat inflation" used
by our defense industry-corporate kleptocrats to justify monstrous increases
in deficits that have been "invested" in our meddlesome, murderous militarism all around the world, with the torture and deaths of millions from S. E. Asia, to Indonesia, to Latin America, to the Middle East, to Africa, etc.

Violations of privacy rights (conservative hero J. Edgar Hoover's illegal domestic surveillance and acts of domestic terrorism, "justified" by
his loopy paranoia about commies on every corner and under every bed.)

Toppling of democracies to install totalitarian despots in Iran
("Ike" '53), Guatemala (Ike, again, '54), Chile (Nixon '73), Brazil (LBJ, '64) and many, many more countries.

Strong support of the Vietnam War, the wars in Laos and Cambodia, and the Iraq War, which, according to conservative W. Bush, God had inspired.

The myriad "dirty wars" we've fought around the world, and not only in Latin America.

With a few, notable exceptions, conservatives have routinely been on the wrong side of these issues. For the most part, it has been the left, particularly the "hard left," that has gotten it right.

AdmBenson SKPeterson 2 days ago
"conservatism was about protecting private property"

You're conflating conservatism and libertarianism. Conservatives realize they are citizens of a country. Libertarians wish they weren't.

SKPeterson AdmBenson 2 days ago
So conservatism should be entirely about taking people's property "for the good of the country"? That the purpose of a country is to loot the people? That the people exist for the government and not the government for the people? Seems Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk would like to have a word with you Adm.

To quote Kirk as just one example of your fundamental error:

Seventh, conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked . [Apparently, Adm. you dispute Kirk's assertion and accuse him thereby of conflating libertarianism and conservatism. Yes, I know Kirk was a hater of the idea of patriotism, but he was such a raging libertarian what else could he do?] Separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Upon the foundation of private property, great civilizations are built. The more widespread is the possession of private property, the more stable and productive is a commonwealth. Economic levelling [this is the outcome of Cuenco's policy prescriptions by the way] , conservatives maintain, is not economic progress. Getting and spending are not the chief aims of human existence; but a sound economic basis for the person, the family, and the commonwealth is much to be desired.

So, either "Mr. Conservative" Russell Kirk wasn't really a conservative but a man who horribly conflated libertarianism and conservatism, or we can say that Kirk was a conservative and that he recognized the protection of private property as crucial in minimizing the control and reach of the Leviathan state. If the latter holds, then maybe what we've established is that AdmBenson isn't particularly conservative.

Winston Nevis SKPeterson 2 days ago • edited
"The more widespread is the possession of private property, the more stable and productive is a commonwealth." This status quo has produced precisely the opposite of this. Wealth, assets, capital has been captured by the elite. The pitchforks are coming. See this CBO chart: View Hide
AdmBenson SKPeterson 2 days ago
Conservatives accept taxes as a part of citizenship. Since taxes can't be avoided, a conservative insists on democratic representation and has a general desire to get maximum bang for their taxpayer buck.

Libertarians, on the other hand, see everything through the lens of an individual's property rights. Taxes and regulation are infringements on those rights, so a libertarian is always at war with their own government. They're not interested in bang for their taxpayer buck, they just want the government to go away. I can't fault people for believing this way, but I can point out that it is severely faulty as the operating philosophy beyond anything but a small community.

As for me not being particularly conservative, ya got me. It really depends on time of day and the level of sunspot activity.

SKPeterson AdmBenson 2 days ago
Sunspots, eh? And here I thought it was your reliance on tinfoil.
AdmBenson SKPeterson 2 days ago
The tinfoil and the mask were scaring people. The tinfoil had to go, but that's had side effects.
SKPeterson AdmBenson 2 days ago
I should have put the /s on my reply, but your response did give me a good chuckle. Besides, for that finger pointing at you, there were three more pointing back at me.
JMWB 3 days ago
And somehow people continually fall for the Trickle Down economic theory. George HW Bush was correct when he called this VooDoo economics. Fiscal irresponsibility at it's finest.
Victor_the_thinker JMWB 3 days ago
Nah people don't fall for it, republicans do. The rest of us know this stuff doesn't work. We didn't need an additional datapoint to realize that. The Tax Cuts and Jobs act was the single most unpopular piece of legislation to ever pass since polling began. It never had support outside of the Republican Party which is why it's never had majority support.

https://news.gallup.com/pol...

Blood Alcohol JMWB 3 days ago
John Kenneth Galbraith called Trickle Down "economics", "Oats and Horse Economics". If you feed the horse a lot of oats, eventually some be left on the road...
Nelson 3 days ago
The leader of Republicans isn't Trump. It's Mitch McConnell.
J Villain Nelson 3 days ago
Mitch is fully owned by Trump as is every republican that holds office except Romney. Mitch can't go to the bathroom with out asking Trumps permission.
Nelson J Villain 3 days ago
Mitch is owned by corporations and he likes it that way. He basically says as much whenever campaign finance reform pops up and he defends the status quo.
aha! Nelson 2 hours ago
Yep. The guy who declared war on the Tea Party. The guy who changed his tune entirely about China when he married into the family of a shipping magnate.
SeekingTruth 3 days ago
I'm eagerly awaiting a GOP plan for economic restructuring. I've been waiting for decade(s). Surely there is someone in the entire body of think tanks, congressional staffers, and political class that can propose a genuine and comprehensive plan for how to rebalance production, education, and technology for the better of ALL Americans. Surely...
Tradcon SeekingTruth 3 days ago
American Affairs (the policy journal this author writes for) and The American Compass are both very good.
cka2nd SeekingTruth 3 days ago
I honestly wonder if Jack Kemp might have had a "Road to Damascus" conversion away from his pseudo-libertarian and supply side economic convictions if he had lived through the decade after the Great Recession. Probably not, given his political and economic activity up until his death.
Barry_II 3 days ago
"They also left worker wages stagnant and increased the deficit. Where is our more nationalist economic policy?"

In your dreams, just like those many large projects which Trump drove into bankruptcy.

Right alongside the money owed to the many people he's stiffed.

Name 3 days ago
So after 30 years or more of " globalism" , the GOP is adopting Bernie Sanderism?
Johnny Larue Name 3 days ago
Uh, no.
Name Johnny Larue 2 days ago
Uh, it seems so. Did you even read?
TheSnark 3 days ago • edited
Trump pushed the tax cut because it saves him at least $20 million each year in taxes, probably closer to $50 million. That's the only reason he does anything, because he benefits personally.
kouroi 3 days ago
Thank you very much for posting the link to the wonderful essay by Mike Lofgren. Written 8 years ago it feels even more actual than then. I have bookmarked it for future reference.

Looking at the US it always comes to my mind the way Rome and then Byzantium fell: a total erosion of the tax-base the rich refused to pay anything to the imperial coffers, and then some of the rich had land bigger than some modern countries... And then the barbarians came...

Kent kouroi 3 days ago
And, by then, the population welcomed the barbarians.
kouroi Kent 3 days ago
Likely true, with some exceptions... The Huns - and on that one I keep wondering if there isn't a whiff of "Yellow Peril" smell in all that outcry...
Ray Woodcock kouroi 2 days ago • edited
Lofgren: "What I mean by secession is a withdrawal into enclaves, an internal immigration, whereby the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place to extract loot."

That was in 2012, but that was what struck me about my well-to-do classmates when I transferred from Cal State Long Beach to Columbia University in 1977 . Suddenly I was among people who saw America, American laws, and a shared sense of civic responsibility as quaint, bothersome, rather tangential to the project of promoting oneself and/or one's special interest.

kouroi Ray Woodcock 2 days ago
Cold, eh mate? Reptiles, lizards...?
Adriana Pena 3 days ago
Did you ever hope that Trump would do what you wanted? You are adorable
sam 3 days ago
The only way that factories would come back is when Americans start buying made in America. We can't wait for ANY government to bring those factories and jobs ( and technology) . Only people voting with their pocketbooks can do it.
J Villain 3 days ago
Still waiting for the day the first American asks "What have WE done wrong?" Rather than just following in Trumps step and playing the victim card every step of the way and wondering why nothing gets better.
Blood Alcohol J Villain 3 days ago
nuffsaid. The blood is on everyone's hands.

[May 16, 2020] Tucker Susan Rice and the origins of the Russia investigation

May 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Ed , 4 days ago (edited)

Farkas; "I'll come on the show any time and explain what you're missing."

Tucker: "You're invited on tonight."

Farkas: "Tonight? Oh, I can't make it tonight. Got a million other things to do. I'd come on any other time... But tonight?"

[May 16, 2020] Putin's Call For A New System and the 1944 Battle Of Bretton Woods

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Our Job in the Pacific ..."
"... "supposed the President was more literate, economically speaking." ..."
"... General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money ..."
"... "contemplates the dismantling of the British and Dutch empires." ..."
May 16, 2020 | off-guardian.org

On the one side, figures allied to American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vision for an anti-Imperial world order lined up behind FDR's champion Harry Dexter White while those powerful forces committed to maintaining the structures of a bankers' dictatorship (Britain was always primarily a banker's empire) lined up behind the figure of John Maynard Keynes[ 1 ].

John Maynard Keynes was a leading Fabian Society controller and treasurer of the British Eugenics Association (which served as a model for Hitler's Eugenics protocols before and during the war). During the Bretton Woods Conference, Keynes pushed hard for the new system to be premised upon a one world currency controlled entirely by the Bank of England known as the Bancor. He proposed a global bank called the Clearing Union to be controlled by the Bank of England which would use the Bancor (exchangeable with national currencies) and serve as unit of account to measure trade surpluses or deficits under the mathematical mandate of maintaining "equilibrium" of the system.

Harry Dexter White, on the other hand, fought relentlessly to keep the City of London out of the drivers' seat of global finance and instead defended the institution of national sovereignty and sovereign currencies based on long term scientific and technological growth.

Although White and FDR demanded that US dollars become the reserve currency in the new world system of fixed exchange rates, it was not done to create a "new American Empire" as most modern analysts have assumed, but rather was designed to use America's status as the strongest productive global power to ensure an anti-speculative stability among international currencies which entirely lacked stability in the wake of WWII.

Their fight for fixed exchange rates and principles of "parity pricing" were designed by FDR and White strictly around the need to abolish the forms of chaotic flux of the un-regulated markets which made speculation rampant under British Free Trade and destroyed the capacity to think and plan for the sort of long term development needed to modernize nation states. Theirs was not a drive for "mathematical equilibrium" but rather a drive to "end poverty" through REAL physical economic growth of colonies who would thereby win real economic independence.

As figures like Henry Wallace (FDR's loyal Vice President and 1948 3rd party candidate), Representative Wendell Wilkie (FDR's republican lieutenant and New Dealer), and Dexter White all advocated repeatedly, the mechanisms of the World Bank, IMF, and United Nations were meant to become drivers of an internationalization of the New Deal which transformed America from a backwater cesspool in 1932 to becoming a modern advanced manufacturing powerhouse 12 years later. All of these Interntional New Dealers were loud advocates of US-Russia –China leadership in the post war world which is a forgotten fact of paramount importance.

In his 1944 book Our Job in the Pacific , Wallace said:

It is vital to the United States, it is vital to China and it is vital to Russia that there be peaceful and friendly relations between China and Russia, China and America and Russia and America. China and Russia Complement and supplement each other on the continent of Asia and the two together complement and supplement America's position in the Pacific.

Contradicting the mythos that FDR was a Keynesian, FDR's assistant Francis Perkins recorded the 1934 interaction between the two men when Roosevelt told her:

"I saw your friend Keynes. He left a whole rigmarole of figures. He must be a mathematician rather than a political economist."

In response Keynes, who was then trying to coopt the intellectual narrative of the New Deal stated he had "supposed the President was more literate, economically speaking."

In his 1936 German edition of his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money , Keynes wrote:

For I confess that much of the following book is illustrated and expounded mainly with reference to the conditions existing in the Anglo Saxon countries. Nevertheless, the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state.

While Keynes represented the "soft imperialism" for the "left" of Britain's intelligentsia, Churchill represented the hard unapologetic imperialism of the Old, less sophisticated empire that preferred the heavy fisted use of brute force to subdue the savages. Both however were unapologetic racists and fascists (Churchill even wrote admiringly of Mussolini's black shirts) and both represented the most vile practices of British Imperialism.

FDR's Forgotten Anti-Colonial Vision Revited

FDR's battle with Churchill on the matter of empire is better known than his differences with Keynes whom he only met on a few occasions. This well documented clash was best illustrated in his son/assistant Elliot Roosevelt's book As He Saw It (1946) who quoted his father:

I've tried to make it clear that while we're [Britain's] allies and in it to victory by their side, they must never get the idea that we're in it just to help them hang on to their archaic, medieval empire ideas I hope they realize they're not senior partner; that we are not going to sit by and watch their system stultify the growth of every country in Asia and half the countries in Europe to boot.

[ ]

The colonial system means war. Exploit the resources of an India, a Burma, a Java; take all the wealth out of these countries, but never put anything back into them, things like education, decent standards of living, minimum health requirements – all you're doing is storing up the kind of trouble that leads to war. All you're doing is negating the value of any kind of organizational structure for peace before it begins.

Writing from Washington in a hysteria to Churchill, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden said that Roosevelt "contemplates the dismantling of the British and Dutch empires."

Unfortunately for the world, FDR died on April 12, 1945. A coup within the Democratic establishment, then replete with Fabians and Rhodes Scholars, had already ensured that Henry Wallace would lose the 1944 Vice Presidency in favor of Anglophile Wall Street Stooge Harry Truman.

Truman was quick to reverse all of FDR's intentions, cleansing American intelligence of all remaining patriots with the shutdown of the OSS and creation of the CIA, the launching of un-necessary nuclear bombs on Japan and establishment of the Anglo-American special relationship.

Truman's embrace of Churchill's New World Order destroyed the positive relationship with Russia and China which FDR, White and Wallace sought and soon America had become Britain's dumb giant.

The Post 1945 Takeover of the Modern Deep State

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.

Indeed this is exactly what occurred. Dexter White's three year run as head of the International Monetary Fund was clouded by his constant attacks as being a Soviet stooge which haunted him until the day he died in 1948 after a grueling inquisition session at the House of Un-American Activities.

White had previously been supporting the election of his friend Wallace for the presidency alongside fellow patriots Paul Robeson and Albert Einstein.

Today the world has captured a second chance to revive the FDR's dream of an anti-colonial world . In the 21st century, this great dream has taken the form of the New Silk Road, led by Russia and China (and joined by a growing chorus of nations yearning to exit the invisible cage of colonialism).

If western nations wish to survive the oncoming collapse, then they would do well to heed Putin's call for a New International system, join the BRI, and reject the Keynesian technocrats advocating a false "New Bretton Woods" and "Green New Deal" .

Originally published on The Saker

[1] You may be thinking "wait! Wasn't FDR and his New Deal premised on Keynes' theories??" How could Keynes have represented an opposing force to FDR's system if this is the case? This paradox only exists in the minds of many people today due to the success of the Fabian Society's and Round Table Movement's armada of revisionist historians who have consistently created a lying narrative of history to make it appear to future generations trying to learn from past mistakes that those figures like FDR who opposed empire were themselves following imperial principles.

Another example of this sleight of hand can be seen by the sheer number of people who sincerely think themselves informed and yet believe that America's 1776 revolution was driven by British Imperial philosophical thought stemming from Adam Smith, Bentham and John Locke.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , a BRI Expert on Tactical talk , regular author with Strategic Culture, the Duran and Fort Russ and has authored 3 volumes of 'Untold History of Canada' book series. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation and can be reached at [email protected]

[May 16, 2020] Tucker Adam Schiff should resign

Highly recommended!
This act of sedition goes as high as (or as low as) Obama himself.
Notable quotes:
"... He should do more than resign. He should be prosecuted for his role in an attempted coup. Schiff for prisoner 2020. ..."
"... There's no willpower in the house to take action against him. ..."
May 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com

warchant59 , 1 week ago

He should do more than resign. He should be prosecuted for his role in an attempted coup. Schiff for prisoner 2020.

Shannon Moore , 2 days ago

Schiff probably practice his lies in his mirror every morning so he can convince himself of Russian interference. Biggest liar in America Adam Schifty schiff. Needs to be arrested immediately for treason and lying under oath. But as usual nothing will happen. These people are above the law. And are untouchable. Its enough to frustrate the hell out of normal sain Americans. 4 more years of Donald Trump

D LE , 3 days ago

Every person that went on television and knowingly lied should be tried for treason , sedition and attempted over throw of Trumps presidency.

TheFoolinthe rainn , 3 days ago

Folks need to take a much closer look at your own state legislature, district attorney, prosecutors, public defenders, social workers... especially your own town councils and school boards. They're stealing your lives and children at the Grassroots local level.

Norita Sanders , 5 days ago

Bill and Hillary Clinton sold the U.S. out years ago with the North American free trade agreement. And obama finished us off during g his last term.

CAPT. RICK ALLEN , 2 days ago

They should throw Schiff in jail and then give everything he owns to his victims who lost everything.

Joe Merkel , 1 day ago

Schiff absolutely SHOULD resign but he won't. Not only will he not but he'll cheat and win re-election along with his mom, Nancy Pelosi.

Tim Coleman , 3 days ago

Adam Schiff is not resigning. He's doubling down yet again! If you "want" him to resign, you need to understand he's staying in office until voted out. There's no willpower in the house to take action against him.

[May 10, 2020] Neoliberalims with probably survive COVI-19 with minor modifications

Highly recommended!
May 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

likbez , May 10 2020 3:51 utc | 50

@bevin | May 9 2020 21:17 utc | 28

>The capitalists have painted themselves into a corner. There is no way out from this crisis which does not
> involve the end of fifty years of neo-liberalism (and two centuries of the liberal Political Economy).

I thought the same in 2008. Did not happen.

> Neo-liberalism, allied to warmongering in the MIC and dominating the political process through its ownership
> of both its own party and the Opposition's, has so dominated US life that the kind of reforms that Keynes saw
> as necessary to preserve the system from itself are unthinkable.

That's true but neoliberalism evolved in different direction: Trumpism ("national neoliberalism") is essentially neoliberalism without neoliberal globalization. Domestically it looks more and more like a unique "Americanized" flavor of neofascism. The latter historically proved to be a resilient social system (Spain)

> The current policy of giving money in unlimited quantities to corporations, virtually without condition,
> and invoicing the working class by pledging future tax revenues to repay the cost of financing, is unsustainable.

OK. But what is the countervailing force ? There is none. By definition creating a viable political opposition in a national security state is impossible. Note that the USSR crumbled only when KGB changed sides. And that Nazi Germany did not crumbed until Soviets took Berlin, and, despite all the misery of the last year of war, there were fierce fight for Berlin (and heavy losses for Soviets)

> Neo-liberalism, the ideology of capitalist rule, has had its chance. The crisis that we are in
> is showing how useless it is, how dangerous a society devoted to the profit of a few, rather than the welfare
> of the many is. With every new twist and turn it demonstrates its inability to govern.

Neoliberalism will most probably survive COVID-19 epidemic like it survived the crisis of 2008. You can argue whether quarantine was necessary or not and about the level of incompetence of Trump administration, but you can't deny that the measures taken by the USA government somewhat softened the blow and the social system remains intact.

Again, there is no viable countervailing force to MIC and financial oligarchy, and the two party system is very resilient and essentially guarantee that the internal political situation will stay this way. Looks like only external shocks or disintegration of the country under the pressure from far right nationalists can crumble this system.

> What this adds up to- mass unemployment and increasing immiseration with no organised voice to represent tens
> of millions of desperate workers and their families is the likelihood of a series of explosions, riots,
> strikes, boycotts and direct actions.

In the USA the family of three can survive when each of the adults earn just $10 per hour (which means income around $40K a year). Real misery is reserved mostly to single mothers and unemployed. You can't compare the situation in the USA to the situation in "neoliberalized" xUSSR countries where it is really about physical survival and large percentage of population live of ~$2 a day. Do we see riots in those countries ?

> There is nobody to press reforms on the ruling class

Now you are on something.

[May 04, 2020] Neoliberalism and neoconservatism are the two sides of the one political coin that Americans are allowed to choose

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... the nations CEO's become sort of one big club, and the top of the club is the head parasites pulling the strings on the stock market (outfits like Goldman Sachs). ..."
"... NO ONE wants to cross the head parasites, the corrupt political class turns to them as their economic brain trust, and the propaganda class (MSM) spin narratives that comport to the corrupt political class' interests and the corrupt status quo. ..."
May 04, 2020 | www.unz.com

Chris Moore says: Website Show Comment April 30, 2020 at 7:38 pm GMT 400 Words

As our guest puts it, the recently passed Trump "Bank and Landlord Relief" bill, mistakenly named the Coronavirus bill, starts by providing banks with an even larger giveaway of wealth than they received from Obama in 2008. Helping the banks, financial and real estate sectors in a so-called free market system is conflated with helping the industrial economy and general living standards for most Americans. The essence of a parasite is not only to drain the host's nourishment, but to dull the host's brain so that it does not recognize that the parasite is there.

One of the ways it does this is to entice most of the biggest companies onto the stock markets, which in turn subordinates them to the financial sector -- more specifically, the investment bankers. And then the nations CEO's become sort of one big club, and the top of the club is the head parasites pulling the strings on the stock market (outfits like Goldman Sachs).

NO ONE wants to cross the head parasites, the corrupt political class turns to them as their economic brain trust, and the propaganda class (MSM) spin narratives that comport to the corrupt political class' interests and the corrupt status quo.

This is why [neo]liberalism and neoconservatism are the two sides of the one political coin that Americans are allowed to choose. Lean left? You'll get a liberal who mostly uses identity politics to divide and rule. Lean right? You'll get a neocon who mostly uses foreign affairs to divide and rule. But increasingly, the two cross-over, hence you'll see liberals harping 24/7 about Russiagate and neocons harping 24/7 about Iran, Islam and now China.

None of this is to say that Russia, China and Iran aren't competitors, because they are. But the liberal and neocon fanatics turn them into existential, kill or be killed competitors...

... ... ...

[Apr 11, 2020] The country that glorifies profit at any cost and ruthless unethical competition will fare bad in case of any virus epidemic. That includes "Typhoid Mary" cases of selfish anti-social behaviour

Highly recommended!
Ideologically COVID-19 is another nail in the coffin of neoliberalism.
Apr 11, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
bevin , Apr 10 2020 23:06 utc | 92
Diane Johnstone gets it right:

"...Today, quite a number of alternative media commentators are ready to believe in the absolute power not of God but of Mammon, of the powers of Wall Street and its partners in politics, the media and the military. In this view, nothing major happens that hasn't been planned by earthly powers for their own selfish interest.

"Mammon is wrecking the economy so a few oligarchs will own everything. Or else Mammon created the hoax Coronavirus 19 in order to lock us all up and deprive us of what little is left of our freedom. Or finally Mammon is using a virus in order to have a pretext to vaccinate us all with secret substances and turn us all into zombies.

"Is this credible? In one sense, it is. We know that Mammon is unscrupulous, morally capable of all crimes. But things do happen that Mammon did not plan, such as earthquakes, floods and plagues. Dislike of our ruling class combined with dislike of being locked up leads to the equation: They are simply using this (fake) crisis in order to lock us up!

"But what for? To whom is there any advantage in locking down the population? For the pleasure of telling themselves, "Aha, we've got them where we want them, all stuck at home!" Is this intended to suppress popular revolt? What popular revolt? Why repress people who aren't doing anything that needs to be repressed?...

"What is the use of locking up a population – and I think especially of the United States – that is disunited, disorganized, profoundly confused by generations of ideological indoctrination telling them that their country is "the best" in every way, and thus unable to formulate coherent demands on a system that exploits them ruthlessly? Do you need to lock up your faithful Labrador so he won't bite you?...

"....Mammon is blinded by its own hubris, often stupid, incompetent, dumbed down by getting away with so much so easily. Take a look at Mike Pompeo or Mike Pence – are these all-powerful geniuses? No, they are semi-morons who have been able to crawl up a corrupt system contemptuous of truth, virtue or intelligence – like the rest of the gangsters in power in a system devoid of any ethical or intellectual standards.

"The power of creatures like that is merely the reflection of the abdication of social responsibility by whole populations whose disinterest in politics has allowed the scum to rise to the top.

The lockdown decreed by our Western governments reveals helplessness rather than power. They did not rush to lock us down. The lockdown is disastrous for the economy which is their prime concern. They hesitated and did so only when they had to do something and were ill-equipped to do anything else. They saw that China had done so with good results. But smart Asian governments did even more, deploying masks, tests and treatments Western governments did not possess..."

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/10/covid-19-coronavirus-and-civilization/

[Apr 11, 2020] 'Never in my country': COVID-19 and American exceptionalism by Jeanne Morefield

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the "Third World." ..."
"... In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70 nations – more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases, listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military personnel working in approximately 160 countries. ..."
"... Since then, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow the governments of approximately 50 countries, many of which (e.g. Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, and Chile) had elected leaders willing to nationalize their natural resources and industries. Often these interventions took the form of covert operations. Less frequently, the United States went to war to achieve these same ends (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq). ..."
"... In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget and over half of all discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit. ..."
Apr 07, 2020 | responsiblestatecraft.org

This March, as COVID-19's capacity to overwhelm the American healthcare system was becoming obvious, experts marveled at the scenario unfolding before their eyes. "We have Third World countries who are better equipped than we are now in Seattle," noted one healthcare professional, her words echoed just a few days later by a shocked doctor in New York who described "a third-world country type of scenario." Donald Trump could similarly only grasp what was happening through the same comparison. "I have seen things that I've never seen before," he said . "I mean I've seen them, but I've seen them on television and faraway lands, never in my country."

At the same time, regardless of the fact that "Third World" terminology is outdated and confusing, Trump's inept handling of the pandemic has itself elicited more than one "banana republic" analogy, reflecting already well-worn, bipartisan comparisons of Trump to a " third world dictator " (never mind that dictators and authoritarians have never been confined solely to lower income countries).

And yet, while such comparisons provoke predictably nativist outrage from the right, what is absent from any of these responses to the situation is a sense of reflection or humility about the "Third World" comparison itself. The doctor in New York who finds himself caught in a "third world" scenario and the political commentators outraged when Trump behaves "like a third world dictator" uniformly express themselves in terms of incredulous wonderment. One never hears the potential second half of this comparison: "I am now experiencing what it is like to live in a country that resembles the kind of nation upon whom the United States regularly imposes broken economies and corrupt leaders."

Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the "Third World."

In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70 nations – more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases, listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military personnel working in approximately 160 countries. This is a globe-spanning military and security apparatus organized into regional commands that resemble the "proconsuls of the Roman empire and the governors-general of the British." In other words, this apparatus is built not for deterrence, but for primacy.

The U.S.'s global primacy emerged from the wreckage of World War II when the United States stepped into the shoes vacated by European empires. Throughout the Cold War, and in the name of supporting "free peoples," the sprawling American security apparatus helped ensure that 300 years of imperial resource extraction and wealth distribution – from what was then called the Third World to the First – remained undisturbed, despite decolonization.

Since then, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow the governments of approximately 50 countries, many of which (e.g. Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, and Chile) had elected leaders willing to nationalize their natural resources and industries. Often these interventions took the form of covert operations. Less frequently, the United States went to war to achieve these same ends (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq).

In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget and over half of all discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit.

Trump's claim that Obama had "hollowed out" defense spending was not only grossly untrue, it masked the consistency of the security budget's metastasizing growth since the Vietnam War, regardless of who sits in the White House. At $738 billion dollars, Trump's security budget was passed in December with the overwhelming support of House Democrats.

And yet, from the perspective of public discourse in this country, our globe-spanning, resource-draining military and security apparatus exists in an entirely parallel universe to the one most Americans experience on a daily level. Occasionally, we wake up to the idea of this parallel universe but only when the United States is involved in visible military actions. The rest of the time, Americans leave thinking about international politics – and the deaths, for instance, of 2.5 million Iraqis since 2003 – to the legions of policy analysts and Pentagon employees who largely accept American military primacy as an "article of faith," as Professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham Patrick Porter has said .

Foreign policy is routinely the last issue Americans consider when they vote for presidents even though the president has more discretionary power over foreign policy than any other area of American politics. Thus, despite its size, impact, and expense, the world's military hegemon exists somewhere on the periphery of most Americans' self-understanding, as though, like the sun, it can't be looked upon directly for fear of blindness.

Why is our avoidance of the U.S.'s weighty impact on the world a problem in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic? Most obviously, the fact that our massive security budget has gone so long without being widely questioned means that one of the soundest courses of action for the U.S. during this crisis remains resolutely out of sight.

The shock of discovering that our healthcare system is so quickly overwhelmed should automatically trigger broader conversations about spending priorities that entail deep and sustained cuts in an engorged security budget whose sole purpose is the maintenance of primacy. And yet, not only has this not happened, $10.5 billion of the coronavirus aid package has been earmarked for the Pentagon, with $2.4 billion of that channeled to the "defense industrial base." Of the $500 billion aimed at corporate America, $17.5 billion is set aside "for businesses critical to maintaining national security" such as aerospace.

To make matters worse, our blindness to this bloated security complex makes it frighteningly easy for champions of American primacy to sound the alarm when they even suspect a dip in funding might be forthcoming. Indeed, before most of us had even glanced at the details of the coronavirus bill, foreign policy hawks were already issuing dark prediction s about the impact of still-imaginary cuts in the security budget on the U.S.'s "ability to strike any target on the planet in response to hostile actions by any actor" – as if that ability already did not exist many times over.

On a more existential level, a country that is collectively engaged in unseeing its own global power cannot help but fail to make connections between that power and domestic politics, particularly when a little of the outside world seeps in. For instance, because most Americans are unaware of their government's sponsorship of fundamentalist Islamic groups in the Middle East throughout the Cold War, 9/11 can only ever appear to have come from nowhere, or because Muslims hate our way of life.

This "how did we get here?" attitude replicates itself at every level of political life making it profoundly difficult for Americans to see the impact of their nation on the rest of the world, and the blowback from that impact on the United States itself. Right now, the outsized influence of American foreign policy is already encouraging the spread of coronavirus itself as U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran severely hamper that country's ability to respond to the virus at home and virtually guarantee its spread throughout the region.

Closer to home, our shock at the healthcare system's inept response to the pandemic masks the relationship between the U.S.'s imposition of free-market totalitarianism on countries throughout the Global South and the impact of free-market totalitarianism on our own welfare state .

Likewise, it is more than karmic comeuppance that the President of the United States now resembles the self-serving authoritarians the U.S. forced on so many formerly colonized nations. The modes of militarized policing American security experts exported to those authoritarian regimes also contributed , on a policy level, to both the rise of militarized policing in American cities and the rise of mass incarceration in the 1980s and 90s. Both of these phenomena played a significant role in radicalizing Trump's white nationalist base and decreasing their tolerance for democracy.

Most importantly, because the U.S. is blind to its power abroad, it cannot help but turn that blindness on itself. This means that even during a pandemic when America's exceptionalism – our lack of national healthcare – has profoundly negative consequences on the population, the idea of looking to the rest of the world for solutions remains unthinkable.

Senator Bernie Sanders' reasonable suggestion that the U.S., like Denmark, should nationalize its healthcare system is dismissed as the fanciful pipe dream of an aging socialist rather than an obvious solution to a human problem embraced by nearly every other nation in the world. The Seattle healthcare professional who expressed shock that even "Third World countries" are "better equipped" than we are to confront COVID-19 betrays a stunning ignorance of the diversity of healthcare systems within developing countries. Cuba, for instance, has responded to this crisis with an efficiency and humanity that puts the U.S. to shame.

Indeed, the U.S. is only beginning to feel the full impact of COVID-19's explosive confrontation with our exceptionalism: if the unemployment rate really does reach 32 percent, as has been predicted, millions of people will not only lose their jobs but their health insurance as well. In the middle of a pandemic.

Over 150 years apart, political commentators Edmund Burke and Aimé Césaire referred to this blindness as the byproduct of imperialism. Both used the exact same language to describe it; as a "gangrene" that "poisons" the colonizing body politic. From their different historical perspectives, Burke and Césaire observed how colonization boomerangs back on colonial society itself, causing irreversible damage to nations that consider themselves humane and enlightened, drawing them deeper into denial and self-delusion.

Perhaps right now there is a chance that COVID-19 – an actual, not metaphorical contagion – can have the opposite effect on the U.S. by opening our eyes to the things that go unseen. Perhaps the shock of recognizing the U.S. itself is less developed than our imagined "Third World" might prompt Americans to tear our eyes away from ourselves and look toward the actual world outside our borders for examples of the kinds of political, economic, and social solidarity necessary to fight the spread of Coronavirus. And perhaps moving beyond shock and incredulity to genuine recognition and empathy with people whose economies and democracies have been decimated by American hegemony might begin the process of reckoning with the costs of that hegemony, not just in "faraway lands" but at home. In our country.

[Apr 10, 2020] Tucker: In crisis, nothing is more important than staying connected to reality

Highly recommended!
Tucker comments on Fauci above face with estimating the number of deaths: first around 3 million, not less then 60K.
Hospitals are staying half empty. So much for Fauci flattening the curve efforts
Apr 10, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Mike Jordan , 14 hours ago

Being "connected" is a huge part of the cause of this mess, before internet propaganda was limited to newspapers and magazines, it was much slower and manageable.

Don Nix , 9 hours ago

I do find it funny how wealthy folks spread the "don't worry WE will all be fine" garbage. WE....no, tell that to someone who has lost their business and has dependents.

Karel Moulík , 10 hours ago

When everything can be solved by propaganda it's time for revolution.

Massive-Headwound Harry , 12 hours ago

I hate the "We're going to be ok. We're all in this together" ads. All of them celebrities, pro athletes, and actors. Not one has to worry about whether they'll be able to buy food next week. Elites telling the little people everything's ok.

Joe Shaloom , 14 hours ago

It's really sad when Tucker Carlson is the only person who ever admitted he was wrong on Fox News. Hannity still claims he never called the virus a hoax even though he did it on TV.

[Mar 29, 2020] Why Didn't We Test Our Trade's 'Antifragility' Before COVID-19 by Gene Callahan and Joe Norman

Highly recommended!
Mar 28, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

On April 21, 2011, the region of Amazon Web Services covering eastern North America crashed. The crash brought down the sites of large customers such as Quora, Foursquare, and Reddit. It took Amazon over a week to bring its system fully back online, and some customer data was lost permanently.

But one company whose site did not crash was Netflix. It turns out that Netflix had made themselves "antifragile" by employing software they called "Chaos Monkey," which regularly and randomly brought down Netflix servers. By continually crashing their own servers, Netflix learned how to nevertheless keep other portions of their network running. And so when Amazon US-East crashed, Netflix ran on, unfazed.

This phenomenon is discussed by Nassim Taleb in his book Antifragile : a system that depends on the absence of change is fragile. The companies that focused on keeping all of their servers up and running all the time went completely offline when Amazon crashed from under them. But the company that had exposed itself to lots of little crashes could handle the big crash. That is because the minor, "undesirable" changes stress the system in a way that can make it stronger.

The idea of antifragility does not apply only to computer networks. For instance, by trying to eliminate minor downturns in the economy, central bank policy can make that economy extremely vulnerable to a major recession. Running only on treadmills or tracks makes the joints extremely vulnerable when, say, one steps in a pothole in the sidewalk.

What does this have to do with trade policy? For many reasons, such as the recent coronavirus outbreak, flows of goods are subject to unexpected shocks.

Both a regime of "unfettered" free trade, and its opposite, that of complete autarchy, are fragile in the face of such shocks. A trade policy aimed not at complete free trade or protectionism, but at making an economy better at absorbing and adapting to rapid change, is more sane and salutary than either extreme. Furthermore, we suggest practicing for shocks can help make an economy antifragile.

Amongst academic economists, the pure free-trade position is more popular. The case for international trade, absent the artificial interference of government trade policy, is generally based upon the "principle of comparative advantage," first formulated by the English economist David Ricardo in the early 19th century. Ricardo pointed out, quite correctly, that even if, among two potential trading partners looking to trade a pair of goods, one of them is better at producing both of them, there still exist potential gains from trade -- so long as one of them is relatively better at producing one of the goods, and the other (as a consequence of this condition) relatively better at producing the other. For example, Lebron James may be better than his local house painter at playing basketball, and at painting houses, given his extreme athleticism and long reach. But he is so much more "better" at basketball that it can still make sense for him to concentrate on basketball and pay the painter to paint his house.

And so, per Ricardo, it is among nations: even if, say, Sweden can produce both cars and wool sweaters more efficiently than Scotland, if Scotland is relatively less bad at producing sweaters than cars, it still makes sense for Scotland to produce only wool sweaters, and trade with Sweden for the cars it needs.

When we take comparative advantage to its logical conclusion at the global scale, it suggests that each agent (say, nation) should focus on one major industry domestically and that no two agents should specialize in the same industry. To do so would be to sacrifice the supposed advantage of sourcing from the agent who is best positioned to produce a particular good, with no gain for anyone.

Good so far, but Ricardo's case contains two critical hidden assumptions: first, that the prices of the goods in question will remain more or less stable in the global marketplace, and second that the availability of imported goods from specialized producers will remain uninterrupted, such that sacrificing local capabilities for cheaper foreign alternatives.

So what happens in Scotland if the Swedes suddenly go crazy for yak hair sweaters (produced in Tibet) and are no longer interested in Scottish sweaters at all? The price of those sweaters crashes, and Scotland now finds itself with most of its productive capacity specialized in making a product that can only be sold at a loss.

Or what transpires if Scotland is no longer able, for whatever reason, to produce sweaters, but the Swedes need sweaters to keep warm? Swedes were perhaps once able to make their own sweaters, but have since funneled all their resources into making cars, and have even lost the knowledge of sweater-making. Now to keep warm, the Swedes have to rapidly build the infrastructure and workforce needed to make sweaters, and regain the knowledge of how to do so, as the Scots had not only been their sweater supplier, but the only global sweater supplier.

So we see that the case for extreme specialization, based on a first-order understanding of comparative advantage, collapses when faced with a second-order effect of a dramatic change in relative prices or conditions of supply.

That all may sound very theoretical, but collapses due to over-specialization, prompted by international agencies advising developing economies based on naive comparative-advantage analysis, have happened all too often. For instance, a number of African economies, persuaded to base their entire economy on a single good in which they had a comparative advantage (e.g, gold, cocoa, oil, or bauxite), saw their economies crash when the price of that commodity fell. People who had formerly been largely self-sufficient found themselves wage laborers for multinationals in good times, and dependents on foreign charity during bad times.

While the case for extreme specialization in production collapses merely by letting prices vary, it gets even worse for the "just specialize in the single thing you do best" folks once we add in considerations of pandemics, wars, extreme climate change, and other such shocks. We have just witnessed how relying on China for such a high percentage of our medical supplies and manufacturing has proven unwise when faced with an epidemic originating in China.

On a smaller scale, the great urban theorist Jane Jacobs stressed the need for economic diversity in a city if it is to flourish. Detroit's over-reliance on the automobile industry, and its subsequent collapse when that industry largely deserted it, is a prominent example of Jacobs' point. And while Detroit is perhaps the most famous example of a city collapsing due to over-specialization, it is far from the only one .

All of this suggests that trade policy, at any level, should have, as its primary goal, the encouragement of diversity in that level's economic activity. To embrace the extremes of "pure free trade" or "total self-sufficiency" is to become more susceptible to catastrophe from changing conditions. A region that can produce only a few goods is fragile in the face of an event, like the coronavirus, that disrupts the flow of outside goods. On the other hand, turning completely inward, and cutting the region off from the outside, leaves it without outside help when confronting a local disaster, like an extreme drought.

To be resilient as a social entity, whether a nation, region, city, or family, will have a diverse mix of internal and external resources it can draw upon for sustenance. Even for an individual, total specialization and complete autarchy are both bad bets. If your only skill is repairing Sony Walkmen, you were probably pretty busy in 2000, but by today you likely don't have much work. Complete individual autarchy isn't ever really even attempted: if you watch YouTube videos of supposedly "self-reliant" people in the wilderness, you will find them using axes, radios, saws, solar panels, pots and pans, shirts, shoes, tents, and many more goods produced by others.

In the technical literature, having such diversity at multiple scales is referred to as "multiscale variety." In a system that displays multiscale variety, no single scale accounts for all of the diversity of behavior in the system. The practical importance of this is related to the fact that shocks themselves come at different scales. Some shocks might be limited to a town or a region, for instance local weather events, while others can be much more widespread, such as the coronavirus pandemic we are currently facing.

A system with multiscale variety is able to respond to shocks at the scale at which they occur: if one region experiences a drought while a neighboring region does not, agricultural supplementation from the currently abundant region can be leveraged. At a smaller scale, if one field of potatoes becomes infested with a pest, while the adjacent cows in pasture are spared, the family who owns the farm will still be able to feed themselves and supply products to the market.

Understanding this, the question becomes how can trade policy, conceived broadly, promote the necessary variety and resiliency to mitigate and thrive in the face of the unexpected? Crucially, we should learn from the tech companies: practice disconnecting, and do it randomly. In our view there are two important components to the intentional disruption: (1) it is regular enough to generate "muscle memory" type responses; and (2) it is random enough that responses are not "overfit" to particular scenarios.

For an individual or family, implementing such a policy might create some hardships, but there are few institutional barriers to doing so. One week, simply declare, "Let's pretend all of the grocery stores are empty, and try getting by only on what we can produce in the yard or have stockpiled in our house!" On another occasion, perhaps, see if you can keep your house warm for a few days without input from utility companies.

Businesses are also largely free of institutional barriers to practicing disconnecting. A company can simply say, "We are awfully dependent on supplier X: this week, we are not going to order from them, and let's see what we can do instead!" A business can also seek out external alternatives to over-reliance on crucial internal resources: for instance, if your top tech guy can hold your business hostage, it is a good idea to find an outside consulting firm that could potentially fill his role.

When we get up to the scale of the nation, things become (at least institutionally) trickier. If Freedonia suddenly bans the import of goods from Ruritania, even for a week, Ruritania is likely to regard this as a "trade war," and may very well go to the WTO and seek relief. However, the point of this reorientation of trade policy is not to promote hostility to other countries, but to make one's own country more resilient. A possible solution to this problem is that a national government could periodically, at random times, buy all of the imports of some good from some other country, and stockpile them. Then the foreign supplier would have no cause for complaint: its goods are still being purchased! But domestic manufacturers would have to learn to adjust to a disappearance of the supply of palm oil from Indonesia, or tin from China, or oil from Norway.

Critics will complain that such government management of trade flows, even with the noble aim of rendering an economy antifragile, will inevitably be turned to less pure purposes, like protecting politically powerful industrialists. But so what? It is not as though the pursuit of free trade hasn't itself yielded perverse outcomes, such as the NAFTA trade agreement that ran to over one thousand pages. Any good aim is likely to suffer diversion as it passes through the rough-and-tumble of political reality. Thus, we might as well set our sites on an ideal policy, even though it won't be perfectly realized.

We must learn to deal with disruptions when success is not critical to survival. The better we become at responding to unexpected shocks, the lower the cost will be each time we face an event beyond our control that demands an adaptive response. To wait until adaptation is necessary makes us fragile when a real crisis appears. We should begin to develop an antifragile economy today, by causing our own disruptions and learning to overcome them. Deliberately disrupting our own economy may sound crazy. But then, so did deliberately crashing one's own servers, until Chaos Monkey proved that it works.

Gene Callahan teaches at the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University. Joe Norman is a data scientist and researcher at the New England Complex Systems Institute.

My Gana 20 hours ago
Most disruptive force is own demographic change of which govts have known for decades. Caronovirus challenge is nothing compared to what will happen because US ed system discriminated against the poor who will be the majority!
PierrePaul 12 hours ago
What Winston Churchill once said about the Americans is in fact true of all humans: "Americans always end up doing
the right thing once they have exhausted all other options". That's just as true of the French (I write from France) since our government stopped stocking a strategic reserve of a billion breathing-masks in 2013 because "we could buy them in Chine for a lower costs". Now we can't produce enough masks even for our hospitals.

[Mar 21, 2020] Tulsi Gabbard says insider traders should be 'investigated prosecuted,' as Left and Right team up on profiteering senator

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "better prepared than ever ..."
"... "akin to the 1918 pandemic." ..."
"... "Congress/staff who dumped stocks after private briefings on impending coronavirus epidemic should be investigated and prosecuted for insider trading," ..."
"... "Members of Congress should not be allowed to own stocks." ..."
"... "stomach churning," ..."
"... "For a public servant it's pretty hard to imagine many things more immoral than doing this," ..."
"... "Richard Burr had critical information that might have helped the people he is sworn to protect. But he hid that information and helped only himself." ..."
"... "If you find out about a nation-threatening pandemic and your first move is to adjust your stock portfolio you should probably not be in a job that serves the public interest," ..."
"... "calling for immediate investigations" ..."
"... "for possible violations of the STOCK Act and insider trading laws." ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
Mar 21, 2020 | www.rt.com

In a rare moment of bipartisanship, commenters from all sides have demanded swift punishment for US senators who dumped stock after classified Covid-19 briefings. Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has called for criminal prosecution. As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) has received daily briefings on the threat posed by Covid-19 since January. Burr insisted to the public that America was ready to handle the virus, but sold up to $1.5 million in stocks on February 13, less than a week before the stock market nosedived, according to Senate filings . Immediately before the sale, Burr wrote an op-ed assuring Americans that their government is "better prepared than ever " to handle the virus.

Also on rt.com Liberal icon Sean Penn wants a 'compassionate' army deployment to fight Covid-19

After the sale, NPR reported that he told a closed-door meeting of North Carolina business leaders that the virus actually posed a threat "akin to the 1918 pandemic." Burr does not dispute the NPR report.

In a tweet on Saturday, former 2020 presidential candidate and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard called for criminal investigations. "Congress/staff who dumped stocks after private briefings on impending coronavirus epidemic should be investigated and prosecuted for insider trading," she wrote.

"Members of Congress should not be allowed to own stocks."

Congress/staff who dumped stocks after private briefings on impending coronavirus epidemic should be investigated & prosecuted for insider trading (the STOCK Act). It is illegal & abuse of power. Members of Congress should not be allowed to own stocks. https://t.co/rbVfJxrk3r

-- Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) March 21, 2020

Burr was not the only lawmaker on Capitol Hill to take precautions, it was reported. Fellow Intelligence Committee member Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and her husband sold off more than a million dollars of shares in a biotech company five days later, while Oklahoma's Jim Inhofe (R) made a smaller sale around the same time. Both say their sales were routine.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Georgia) attended a Senate Health Committee briefing on the outbreak on January 24. The very same day, she began offloading stock, dropping between $1.2 and $3.1 million in shares over the following weeks. The companies whose stock she sold included airlines, retail outlets, and Chinese tech firm Tencent.

She did, however, invest in cloud technology company Oracle, and Citrix, a teleworking company whose value has increased by nearly a third last week, as social distancing measures forced more and more Americans to work from home. All of Loeffler's transactions were made with her husband, Jeff Sprecher, CEO of the New York Stock Exchange.

Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) and Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) have joined the clamor of voices demanding punishment. Ocasio-Cortez described the sales as "stomach churning," while Omar reached across the aisle to side with Fox News' Tucker Carlson in calling for Burr's resignation.

I am 💯 with him on this 😱 https://t.co/Gbi3i2BagY

-- Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 20, 2020

"For a public servant it's pretty hard to imagine many things more immoral than doing this," Carlson said during a Friday night monolog. "Richard Burr had critical information that might have helped the people he is sworn to protect. But he hid that information and helped only himself."

As of Saturday, there are nearly 25,000 cases of Covid-19 in the US, with the death toll heading towards 300. Now both sides of the political aisle seem united in disgust at the apparent profiteering of Burr, Loeffler, and Feinstein.

Right-wing news outlet Breitbart savaged Burr for voting against the STOCK Act in 2012, a piece of legislation that would have barred members of Congress from using non-public information to profit on the stock market. At the same time, a host of Democratic figures - including former presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Kirsten Gillibrand - weighed in with their own criticism too.

"If you find out about a nation-threatening pandemic and your first move is to adjust your stock portfolio you should probably not be in a job that serves the public interest," Yang tweeted on Friday.

If you find out about a nation-threatening pandemic and your first move is to adjust your stock portfolio you should probably not be in a job that serves the public interest.

-- Andrew Yang🧢 (@AndrewYang) March 20, 2020

Watchdog group Common Cause has filed complaints with the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee "calling for immediate investigations" of Burr, Loeffler, Feinstein and Inhofe "for possible violations of the STOCK Act and insider trading laws."

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

[Mar 21, 2020] Tucker Senator Burr sold shares after virus briefing

Highly recommended!
Mar 21, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Bowhead31 , 5 hours ago

The problem is these people no longer see themselves as public servants.

Maria Summers , 6 hours ago

The Georgia Senator is just as guilty as the rest of them, regarding "Insider Trading".

shane passey , 3 hours ago

She's a crook just like the rest of the politicians. They say they be there for the people. But they're really there to make themselves rich

[Mar 09, 2020] Tucker Carlson was correct when pointed out that Biden Super Tuesday victory was cruel and unusual punishment of Dem voters on the part of the DNC

DNC installing a man with obvious cognitive impairment is a staggering display of arrogance. While Bush and Obama were empty suits this is completly another level.
In way I think Stupor Tuesday was a huge win for Trump.
Mar 09, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Vegetius , 07 March 2020 at 03:48 PM

The oldest organized political party on the planet is advancing a senile globalist meatpuppet (with a son known to be a philandering crackhead) to handle nuclear launch codes.
Mathias Alexander , 08 March 2020 at 04:37 AM
Choosing Biden hands the election to Trump and that's a deal that has already been made. The DNC don't like Sanders because they are adraid he might win, not because they are afraid he might loose.
Jack , 07 March 2020 at 03:56 PM

I agree with you that it is not going to be a slam dunk for Trump. Just like Trump wasn't damaged by the Access Hollywood tapes, Biden's not going to be damaged by his senility, gaffes and his prior plagiarism, Wall St cronyism and corruption. The vote for the "lesser evil" mindset will consolidate along traditional lines. The Obama machine will run Biden's campaign and consolidate the Democrat support. The election will hinge on a few states in particular Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

.... ... ...

[Mar 09, 2020] "What's the difference between a cannibal and a neoliberal like Senator Warren?"

Mar 09, 2020 | nymag.com

"A cannibal doesn't eat his friends."

[Mar 09, 2020] COVID-19 and the Working Class by Jack Rasmus

Highly recommended!
Mar 09, 2020 | www.counterpunch.org

US politicians and media are reporting approximately 500 cases of the virus in the US as of March 8. The actual number is almost certainly much higher, however. Perhaps as much as 10-fold that number, according to some sources. Why?

There's the problem of reporting only tested cases so far, and there's still a lack of available tests even to test and to verify all those infected without symptoms.. And even those showing symptoms may have been determined initially as not infected by the tests, since reportedly many of the early test kits were defective. Meanwhile, those without symptoms or pre-symptomatic are not being tested at all.

The Fiction of Voluntary Quarantine

Then there's the policy of voluntary quarantining those who have come into contact with someone who was tested and found infected. It's not working very well. Those who have come in contact with carriers of the virus are asked simply to stay home. But do they? There's no way to know, or even enforce that. The case example why voluntary quarantining doesn't work well is Italy.

Most of the northern Lombardy region, including the financial center of Milan in that country, is in 'lock down' right now. But all that means is voluntary quarantining. People are asked not to leave their town, or the larger region. But is that stopping them traveling around their town in public places? Or within the larger region? And spreading the virus there? Apparently not. Reportedly, infection for those tested have risen in just two weeks to more than 6,000 in Northern Italy. CNBC reports that, in just one day this weekend, that number increased by 1200! So much for voluntary quarantines. There's no way, no sufficient personnel, not even accepted procedures, with which to daily check on those (in Italy that means hundreds of thousands) in voluntary quarantine.

The Real Costs to Workers

Average working class folks cannot afford to voluntary quarantine themselves. Or to stay home from work for any reason. Even if they have symptoms. They will continue going to work. They have to, in order to economically survive.

Consider the typical scenario in the US: there are literally tens of millions of workers who have no more than $400 for an emergency. As many perhaps as half of the work force of 165 million. They live paycheck to paycheck. They can't afford to miss any days of work. Millions of them have no paid sick leave. The US is the worst of all advanced economies in terms of providing paid sick leave. Even union workers with some paid sick leave in their contracts have, at best, only six days on average. If they stay home sick, they'll be asked by their employer the reason for doing so in order to collect that paid sick leave. And even when they don't have sick leave. Paid leave or not, many will be required to provide a doctor's slip indicating the nature of the illness. But doctors are refusing to hold office visits for patients who may have the virus. They can't do anything about it, so they don't want them to come in and possibly contaminate others or themselves. So a worker sick has to go to the hospital emergency room.

That raises another problem. A trip to the emergency room costs on average at least a $1,000. More if special tests are done. If the worker has no health insurance (30 million still don't), that's an out of pocket cost he/she can't afford. They know it. So they don't go to the hospital emergency room, and they can't get an appointment at the doctor's office. Result: they don't get tested, refuse to go get tested, and they continue to go to work. The virus spreads.

Even if they have health insurance coverage, the deductible today is usually $500 to $2000. Most don't have that kind of savings to spend either. Not to mention copays. So even those insured take a pass on going to the hospital to get tested, even if they have symptoms.

The media doesn't help here either. Reports are typically that those who are young, middle age, and in reasonable good health and without other complicating conditions don't die. It's the older folks, retirees with Medicare, or with serious other conditions, that typically die from the virus. Workers hear this and that supports their decision not to go to the hospital or get tested as well.

Then there's the further complication concerning employment if they do go to the hospital. The hospital will (soon) test them. If found infected, they will send them home for voluntary quarantine for 14 days! Now the financial crises really begins. The hospital will inform their employer. Staying at home for 14 days will result in financial disaster, since the employer has no obligation to continue to pay them their wages while not at work, unless they have some minimal paid sick leave which, as noted, the vast majority don't have. Nor does the employer have any obligation legally to even keep them employed for 14 days (or even less) if the employer determines they are not likely to return to work after 14 days (or even less). They therefore get fired if they go to the hospital after it reports to the employer they have the virus. Just another good reason not to go to the hospital.

In other words, here's all kind of major economic disincentives to keep an illness confidential, to go to work, not go to the hospital (and can't go to the doctor). That risks passing on the highly contagion bug to others–which has been happening and will continue to happen.

Here's another financial hit for the working class: child care. Schools are beginning to shut down. Even where no cases are yet confirmed. Stanford University just decided to discontinue all in class sessions and revert to all online education. But what about K-6 and pre-school? Or even Jr. high schools? When they shut down, kids must stay at home. But most working class parents can't afford nannys or baby-sitters. Not everyone works in an occupation or company where they can 'work from home'. Do they send the young kids to grandma's and grandpa's, who are more susceptible to the virus? With their kids required to stay home, they must miss work, and risk even losing their jobs. We're talking about millions of families with 6 to 12 year olds. And who knows how long the schools will remain shut down.

In short, wages lost due to self-quarantining, forced voluntary quarantining after hospital testing, the cost of hospital emergency room visits (whether insured or not), the unknown cost of the tests themselves (the government says it will reimburse them but they don't have the $1,000 or more cash out of pocket in the first place), the cost of paying for nannys or baby-sitters for young school age children when schools shut down–i.e. all result in a massive out of pocket expense for most workers that they don't have.

Workers figure all these possibilities of financial disaster pretty quick and know that the virus will mean a big financial hit if they miss a day's work, or even if they don't. So they keep working, hoping they'll recover on their own, refusing to get tested because of the potential loss of work, wages, and income, and crossing their fingers that their kids' school districts don't shut down.

Economic Contagion Channels: Supply Chains, Demand, Asset Deflation, Defaults & Credit Crunch

What this all means for the US economy is obvious. Household consumption was already weakening at the end of last year. Most of consumption was driven by accelerating stock valuations, which affect those in the top 10% who own stocks; or by taking on more credit–credit cards, which affects the middle class and below.

Over $1 trillion in credit card debt is what has been largely driving middle income and below consumption. Mainstream economists argue that defaults on credit card debt are only 3% or so, and thus not a problem. But that's a gross average across all 130 million households. When this data are broken down, middle income and below family credit card debt is around 9%, a very high number more like 2007 when the last economic recession began.

Then there's auto debt. As of 2018, reportedly 7 million turned in their keys on their auto loans. As in the case of credit cards, auto debt defaults will rise as well in 2020. Then there's student debt, over $1.6 Trillion now. Defaults there are much higher than reported as well, since actual defaults (defined as failure to pay either principal or interest) have been redefined to something else other than actual default.

Add to all this the likelihood is very high that job layoffs will now begin by April, as the global supply chain crisis due to virus-related cuts in production and trade. More job loss means less wage income and thus less household spending and more inability to deal with the costs of the virus for most working class families.

Let's not also forget the price gouging for certain products that is beginning now to appear, both online and in stores. That reduces working class real incomes and thus consumption too. Meanwhile, certain industries are already taking a big hit and layoffs are looming in travel companies of all kinds (airlines, cruise ships, hotels, entertainment). In places where the virus effect is already large, a big decline in restaurant, sports and concerts, movies, etc. has also begun.

The two big economic contagion channels impacting employment thus far are supply chain production and distribution reductions, and local demand for certain services (travel, retail, hospitality, etc.).

But a third major channel has just begun to emerge: that's financial asset deflation in stocks, oil & commodity futures, junk bonds & leveraged loans, and currency devaluations.

Stocks' price collapse leads to business shelving investment and even cutting back production. That means more job loss, reduced wage incomes, less spending, and economic slowdown.

Oil and commodity prices now collapsing also lead to energy industry layoffs. More importantly, in turn that will lead to energy junk bond market collapse–potentially spreading to all junk bonds, leveraged loans, and even BBB grade corporate bonds (which are really redefined junk bonds not investment grade bonds).

In other words, the collapse of supply chains, production-distribution, and industry by industry demand in the US may become even worse should the financial markets price collapse can lead to a general credit crunch. And that translates into a general economic real contraction. That's precisely what happened in 2008, in a similar chain reaction from financial crisis to real economic crisis.

Workers are aware of all this possibly leading to longer run economic stress. In the short run, they consider possible wages loss if they reveal or report they have the virus, or get tested: i.e. lost wage incomes: the cost of immediate medical care; the cost of child care, etc. Better to tough it through and continue to go to work is a typical, and rational, response.

This is already going on. Hundreds of thousands with, and without, symptoms are not being tested; nor will most of them volunteer to be. Except for those on cruise ships who are forced to be tested (and they're mostly retirees and elderly), few workers can afford to allow themselves to be. The infection rate is thus already much higher and will continue to rise. Voluntary quarantining doesn't work much (again just look at Italy, or even Germany, where in one week cases (tested) rose from 66 to more than 1000). So out of economic necessity and to avoid personal economic devastation, they continue to work. But that doesn't have to be.

US Policy Response: No Help for Working Class

US policy has been, is, and will continue to be a disaster. Trump's cuts to health and human services in the past seriously hampered the US initial response. Tests had to be sent to Atlanta and the CDC for processing. Early test kits often failed. Only now are they getting to the states–to late to have a positive initial effect on the spread. Those suspected of exposure to others confirmed infected were simply sent home for 'voluntary quarantine'. Initial legislation of $8.3 billion just passed by Congress provides for 'reimbursement' for voluntary testing, with no clarification if that covers the $1,000 hospital visit as well or just the cost of the actual test!

There could be, however, a government response that financially supports workers and allows them to be properly tested and treated.

An Alternative Policy Response

Why doesn't the government simply say 'go get tested for free' and the hospital will bill the government for the costs? Not the worker pay up front with money he/she likely doesn't have. Why isn't there emergency legislation by Congress or the states to require employers to provide at least 14 days of paid sick leave, like other countries? And law guaranteeing employers can't fire a worker sick with the virus for any reason? Or tax credits to working class families for the full cost of child care–paid to a nanny or to the worker–if they have to stay home in the event of a school district shutdown?

While business-investor tax cuts will almost certainly be the official government response, few of the above measures for working class Americans are likely. In America working class folks always get the short end of the economic stick. Congress and presidents pass trillions of dollars in tax cut legislation ($15 trillion since 2001 to investors, businesses and the 1%), but have raised taxes on the working class. Companies with billions of dollars in annual profits pay nothing in taxes–and actually get a subsidy check from the government to boot. Just ask Amazon, IBM, many big banks, pharmaceutical companies and more!

It can be expected the virus will have a large negative impact the standard of living and wages of millions of working class families. They will have to bear the burden of the cost with little help from their government. Meanwhile, businesses and investors will get bailed out, 'made whole', once again. In the process Consumption spending–the only area holding up the economy in 2019–will take a big hit. That means recession starting next quarter is more than a 50-50 likelihood.

In fact, the investment bank, Goldman Sachs, has just forecast that the effect on the US economy in the coming second quarter of this year will be a collapse of GDP to 0% growth.

Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Jack Rasmus

Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book, 'Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression', Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. His website is http://kyklosproductions.com .

[Mar 06, 2020] Warren presidential campaign postmortem

Notable quotes:
"... The Pow Wow Chow Native American Cookbook ..."
Mar 06, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

. In the spirit of charity, we should give credit where it's due: Warren really did become the " unity candidate " that she always proclaimed herself to be. She displayed an astounding capacity to bring together a polarized country around their shared distaste for her candidacy.

Compiling a complete discography of Warren's detractors would be an impossible feat, but for the sake of partisan schadenfreude, we should briefly revisit the greatest hits. These include the Native American tribal leaders who weren't particularly fond of a wealthy white Harvard professor claiming their ethnicity for personal gain (even co-authoring a cooking guide titled The Pow Wow Chow Native American Cookbook ), the Bernie Sanders supporters infuriated by Warren's cynical attempts to paint their candidate as a woman-hating misogynist, police unions offended by Warren's open dishonesty about violence in law enforcement, religious conservatives who found her contemptuous dismissal of anyone with traditionalist views of sexual morality to be in profoundly bad taste, and pro-lifers (who still comprise 34 percent of the Democratic electorate ) for whom Warren's radically pro-abortion policy objectives were unconscionable.

It's worth noting, of course, that this is just a small slice of the groups that found Warren enormously unlikeable. The senator's casual-at-best relationship with the truth ( listing herself as as "woman of color" in Harvard's faculty listing, claiming that she was fired from a teaching position for being pregnant, refusing to admit that her various spending plans would require raising taxes on the middle class, and so on) probably didn't help. And shockingly, her painfully contrived attempts at catering to the woke activist base (vocal support for reparations, pledging to let a transgender child pick her secretary of education, endorsing affirmative action for non-binary people) paired with her technocratically manicured professorial wonkiness -- she's got a plan for that! -- never caught fire in the blue-collar neighborhoods in the Midwest and South.

... ... ...

Senator Warren, we hardly knew ye.

Nate Hochman is an undergraduate student at Colorado College and a Young Voices contributor. You can follow him at Twitter @njhochman .

[Mar 04, 2020] Donna Brazile who among other things gave Hillary the question for presidential debate in advance just told the @GOPChairwoman to "go to hell" for suggesting that the Democratic establishment was once again worked to manipulate a nominee into frontrunner status

Mar 04, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Former DNC chairman who gave Hillary Clinton debate questions in advance during the 2016 election, exclaimed on Fox News that Biden's victory was "the most impressive 72 hours I've ever seen in U.S. politics," and told another analyst to " go to hell " for suggesting that the Democratic establishment was once again working to manipulate a nominee into frontrunner status.

The Democrats are in chaos and melting down on live TV.

Donna Brazile just told the @GOPChairwoman to "go to hell" when asked about the chaos.

Best of luck, Donna! Meanwhile, Republicans are more unified than ever! pic.twitter.com/hCwotuF9tx

-- Trump War Room - Text EMPOWER to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) March 3, 2020

[Mar 03, 2020] Super Tuesday Bernie vs The DNC Round Two

Highly recommended!
Mar 03, 2020 | off-guardian.org

No matter who comes away with the nomination, it has to be asked "was any of this process legitimate?". We know from a plethora of examples that US elections are not fair. They border on meaningless most of the time. The DNC's doubly so, having argued in court they have no duty to be fair.

Any result, then, you could safely assume was contrived, for one reason or another.

If the Buttigieg-Klobuchar-Biden gambit works, we end up with Trump vs. Biden. And, realistically, that means a second Trump term.

Biden is possibly senile and definitely creepy . Watching him shuffle and stutter through a Presidential campaign would be almost cruel.

Politically, he has all of Hillary's weaknesses, being a big-time establishment type with a pro-war record, without even the "I have a vagina" card to play.

He'll get massacred.

Is that the plan?

There's more than enough signs that Trump has abandoned all the policies that made him any kind of threat to the political establishment. Four years on: no wars ended, no walls built, no swamp drained. Just more of the same. He's an idiot who talked big and got co-opted. It happens.

The Senate and other institutions might talk about Trump being a criminal or an idiot or a "Nazi", but the reality is he's barely perceptibly different from any other POTUS this side of JFK.

#TheResistance was a puppet show. A weak game played for toy money. When it really counts, they're all in it together. Biden getting on the ticket would be a public admittance of that. It would mean the DNC is effectively throwing the fight. Trump is a son of a bitch, but he's their son of a bitch. And that's much better than even the idea of President Bernie.

... ... ...

falcemartello ,

Does it really matter?
Empire of kaos will never move one inch to change the status quo.
The quaisi fascist state that most western /antlantacist nations have become it will make no difference
Gianbattista Vico"Their will always be an elite class" Punto e basta.
Name me one politico that made any difference to we the sheeple in the modern era.
If someone were to mention FDR I will scream.
Aldo Moro got murdered by the deep state for only suggesting to make a pact with Berlinguer the head of Il Partito Communista Italiano.

[Feb 25, 2020] The Economic Anxiety Hypothesis has Become Absurd(er)

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The key promise of neoliberalism, which came to power in the USA in 1980 with the election of Reagan (aka "the Quiet Coup") was that "the rising tide lifts all boats." -- the redistribution of the wealth up somehow will lift the standard of living of lower strata of the population too. This was a false promise from the very beginning (like everything about neoliberalism, which is based on lies and fake economics in any case). So anger accumulated and now became the key factor in elections. This anger is directed against the neoliberal establishment. ..."
"... The anger toward immigrants is, in fact, a displaced and projected anger against the elimination of meaningful and well-paid jobs and replacing them with McJobs, the process that was the key factor in lowering the standard of living of the bottom 80% of the population. ..."
"... The other part of this anger is directed toward the USA financial oligarchy (personified by such passionately hated figures as Lloyd "we are doing God's" Blankfein, private equity sharks, and figures like Wexner/Epstein) and "political establishment" the key figures of which many people would like to see hanging from street lamp posts (remember "Lock her up" movement in 2016). ..."
"... That's why the neoliberal establishment was forced to use to dirty tricks like Russiagate to patch the cracks in the neoliberal façade. ..."
"... In Marxist terms, the USA entered the period called the "revolutionary situation" when the ruling neoliberal elite couldn't govern "as usual" and "the deplorable" do not want to live "as usual". The situation when according to Hegel, "quantity turns into quality," or as Marx said "ideas become a material force when they grip the mind of the masses." ..."
Feb 25, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

I am old enough to remember when many very serious people ascribed the rise of Donald Trump to economic anxiety. The hypthesis never fit the facts (his supporters had higher incomes on average than Clinton's) but it has become absurd. The level of self reported economic anxiety is extraordinarily low

Gallup reports "Record High optimism about Personal Finances in U.S." with 74% predicting they will be better off next year.

Yet now the Democratic party has an insurgent candidate candidate in the lead. I hasten to stress that I am not saying Sanders supporters have much in common with Trump supporters (young vs old, strong hispanic support vs they hate Trump etc etc etc). But both appeal to anger and advocate a radical break with business as usual. Both reject party establishments. Also Warren if a little bit less so.

Trump's 2016 angry supporters still support him *and* they are still angry. He remains unpopular in spite of an economy performing very well (and perceived to be performing very well).

Whatever is going on in 2020, it sure isn't economic anxiety.

Yet there is clearly anger and desire for radical change.

I don't pretend to understand it, but I think it probably has a lot to do with relative economic performance and increased inequality. I can't understand why the reaction of so many Americans to this would be to hate immigrants and vote for Trump, but, then I don't watch Fox News.

One other thing which it isn't is rejection of the guy who came before Trump. Obama has a Real Clear Politics average favorable rating of 59% and unfavorable of 36.1 % vastly vastly better than any currently active politician. (Sanders is doing relatively very well at net -2.7 compared to Obama's + 22.9) He is not rejected. He is not considered a failure. Yet only a small majority is interested in any sort of going back to the way things were.


likbez , February 25, 2020 12:37 am

Robert ,

Trump's 2016 angry supporters still support him *and* they are still angry.

Many Trump "angry supporters" in 2016 used to belong to "anybody but Hillary" class (and they included a noticeable percentage of Bernie supporters, who felt betrayed by DNC) .

They are lost for Trump as he now in many aspects represents the "new Hillary" and the slogan "anybody but Trump" is growing in popularity. Even among Republicans: Trump definitely already lost a large part of anti-war Republicans and independents. As well as. most probably, a part of working class as he did very little for them outside of effects of military Keynesianism.

I suspect he also lost a part of military voters, those who supported Tulsi. They will never vote for Trump.

He also lost a part of "technocratic" voters resentful of the rule of financial oligarchy (anti-swampers), as his incompetence is now an undisputable fact.

He also lost Ron Paul's libertarians, who voted for him in 2016.

How "Coronavirus recession", if any, might affect 2020 elections is difficult to say, but in any case this is an unfavorable for Trump event.

EMichael , February 25, 2020 10:39 am

"I can't understand why the reaction of so many Americans to this would be to hate immigrants and vote for Trump, but, then I don't watch Fox News."

Coming to you since 1965. It's just that immigrants are now added to blacks. Trump took 50 years of the Southern Strategy, took the dogwhistles completely out of the closet and wore his racism right on his chest. Helped that he had over 50 years of experience as a racist, it came naturally to him.

And he attracted a new rw base, those who were not satisfied with dog whistles and/or did not hear them.

likbez , February 25, 2020 12:19 pm

I don't pretend to understand it, but I think it probably has a lot to do with relative economic performance and increased inequality.

It is actually very easy to understand: the middle class fared very poorly since 1991. See https://www.cnbc.com/id/44962589 . Now "the chickens come home to roost," so to speak.

The key promise of neoliberalism, which came to power in the USA in 1980 with the election of Reagan (aka "the Quiet Coup") was that "the rising tide lifts all boats." -- the redistribution of the wealth up somehow will lift the standard of living of lower strata of the population too. This was a false promise from the very beginning (like everything about neoliberalism, which is based on lies and fake economics in any case). So anger accumulated and now became the key factor in elections. This anger is directed against the neoliberal establishment.

The anger toward immigrants is, in fact, a displaced and projected anger against the elimination of meaningful and well-paid jobs and replacing them with McJobs, the process that was the key factor in lowering the standard of living of the bottom 80% of the population.

The other part of this anger is directed toward the USA financial oligarchy (personified by such passionately hated figures as Lloyd "we are doing God's" Blankfein, private equity sharks, and figures like Wexner/Epstein) and "political establishment" the key figures of which many people would like to see hanging from street lamp posts (remember "Lock her up" movement in 2016).

Resentment against spending huge amounts of money for wars for sustaining and enlarging the global USA-centered neoliberal empire is another factor. In this sense, impoverishment and shrinking of the middle class in the USA is similar to the same impoverishment during the last days of the British colonial empire.

That's why the neoliberal establishment was forced to use to dirty tricks like Russiagate to patch the cracks in the neoliberal façade.

In Marxist terms, the USA entered the period called the "revolutionary situation" when the ruling neoliberal elite couldn't govern "as usual" and "the deplorable" do not want to live "as usual". The situation when according to Hegel, "quantity turns into quality," or as Marx said "ideas become a material force when they grip the mind of the masses."

In 2016 that resulted in the election of Trump.

Add to this the fact that the neoliberal establishment (represented by both parties) now is clearly anti-social (the fact that a private equity shark Romney was a presidential candidate and then was elected as senator tells a lot about the level of degradation) and is unwilling to solve burning problems with medical insurance, minimal wage and other "the New Deal" elements of social infrastructure.

Democratic Party platform now is to the right of Eisenhower republicans.

That dooms the party candidates like CIA-democrat Major Pete, or "the senator from the credit card companies" Biden, and create an opening for political figures like Sanders (which are passionately hated by DNC)

[Feb 24, 2020] Seven signs of the neoliberal apocalypse by Van Badham

Highly recommended!
Yes, neo-McCarthyism is a sign of the collapse of neoliberal ideology and the crisis within the neoliberal ruling elite, which is trying to patch the cracks int he neoliberal facade of the US society and require the control over the population (which rejected neoliberalism at voting booth in 2016) with Russophobia
Apr 26, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

5. The reds are back under the beds

There's always a bit of judgment and vengeance inherent to the factional shenanigans of Australia's Liberal party, but its refreshed vocabulary warrants inclusion as the fifth sign. Michael Sukkar, the member for Deakin, has been recorded in a dazzling rant declaring war on a "socialist" incursion into a party whose leader is a former merchant banker who pledged to rule for "freedom, the individual and the market" the very day he was anointed.

Sukkar's insistence is wonderful complement to the performance art monologues of former Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop on Sky, where she weekly decries socialism is to blame for everything from alcoholism to energy prices.

The reds may not be under the beds quite yet, but if Sukkar's convinced some commie pinkos are already gatecrashing cocktail events with the blue-tie set, they're certainly on his mind.

[Feb 20, 2020] Fratricide in Las Vegas - Six dwarfs mud fight should be fun all the way to November

Looks like it will Oligarch vs Oligarch Wrestling World Championship match again ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... These six dwarves will probably persist in their quest for the brass ring all the way to the convention ..."
Feb 20, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Some particulars:

  1. Bloomberg is revealed as having said in public that all the disposable income of the poor should be taxed away so that they will not have funds with which to do mischief like buying fast food or sugary drinks.
  2. Bloomberg described Sanders as a Communist who cannot be elected. In this he was correct.
  3. Bloomberg was described by Warren as a cold-hearted and insulting man who openly scorns women, gays and minorities.
  4. Mayor Pete mocked Klobuchar for her inability to remember the name of the president of Mexico. She asked if he was calling her "stupid."

These six dwarves will probably persist in their quest for the brass ring all the way to the convention. In the mayhem there, the "winner" will probably have to choose one of the "losers" to be his VP running mate.

This should be fun all the way to November. pl

[Feb 19, 2020] During the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a "neoliberal revolution from above" was staged in the USA by "managerial elite" which like Soviet nomenklatura (which also staged a neoliberal coup d' tat) changed sides and betrayed the working class

Highly recommended!
This was an outright declaration of "class war" against working-class voters by a "university-credentialed overclass" -- "managerial elite" which changed sides and allied with financial oligrchy. See "The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite" by Michael Lind
Notable quotes:
"... By canceling the class compromise that governed the capitalist societies after World War II, the neoliberal elite saws the seed of the current populist backlash. The "soft neoliberal" backbone of the Democratic Party (Clinton wing) were incapable of coming to terms with Hillary Clinton's defeat -- the rejection of the establishment candidate by the US population and first of all by the working class. The result has been the neo-McCarthyism campaign and the attempt to derail Trump via color revolution spearheaded by Brennan-Obama factions in CIA and FBI. ..."
Feb 19, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

likbez , February 19, 2020 12:31 pm

Does not matter.

It looks like Bloomberg is finished. He just committed political suicide with his comments about farmers and metal workers.

BTW Bloomberg's plan is highly hypocritical -- like is Bloomberg himself.

During the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a "neoliberal revolution from above" was staged in the USA by "managerial elite" which like Soviet nomenklatura (which also staged a neoliberal coup d'état) changed sides and betrayed the working class.

So those neoliberal scoundrels reversed the class compromise embodied in the New Deal.

The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the neoliberal managerial class and financial oligarchy who got to power via the "Quiet Coup" was the global labor arbitrage in which production is outsourced to countries with lower wage levels and laxer regulations.

So all those "improving education" plans are, to a large extent, the smoke screen over the fact that the US workers now need to compete against highly qualified and lower cost immigrants and outsourced workforce.

The fact is that it is very difficult to find for US graduates in STEM disciplines a decent job, and this is by design.

Also, after the "Reagan neoliberal revolution" ( actually a coup d'état ), profits were maximized by putting downward pressure on domestic wages through the introduction of the immigrant workforce (the collapse of the USSR helped greatly ). They push down wages and compete for jobs with their domestic counterparts, including the recent graduates. So the situation since 1991 was never too bright for STEM graduates.

By canceling the class compromise that governed the capitalist societies after World War II, the neoliberal elite saws the seed of the current populist backlash. The "soft neoliberal" backbone of the Democratic Party (Clinton wing) were incapable of coming to terms with Hillary Clinton's defeat -- the rejection of the establishment candidate by the US population and first of all by the working class. The result has been the neo-McCarthyism campaign and the attempt to derail Trump via color revolution spearheaded by Brennan-Obama factions in CIA and FBI.

See also recently published "The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite" by Michael Lind.

One of his quotes:

The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.

[Feb 19, 2020] On Michael Lind's "The New Class War" by Gregor Baszak

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... To writer Michael Lind, Trump's victory, along with Brexit and other populist stirrings in Europe, was an outright declaration of "class war" by alienated working-class voters against what he calls a "university-credentialed overclass" of managerial elites. ..."
"... Lind cautions against a turn to populism, which he believes to be too personality-centered and intellectually incoherent -- not to mention, too demagogic -- to help solve the terminal crisis of "technocratic neoliberalism" with its rule by self-righteous and democratically unaccountable "experts" with hyperactive Twitter handles. Only a return to what Lind calls "democratic pluralism" will help stem the tide of the populist revolt. ..."
"... Many on the left have been incapable of coming to terms with Hillary Clinton's defeat. The result has been the stifling climate of a neo-McCarthyism, in which the only explanation for Trump's success was an unholy alliance of "Putin stooges" and unrepentant "white supremacists." ..."
"... To Lind, the case is much more straightforward: while the vast majority of Americans supports Social Security spending and containing unskilled immigration, the elites of the bipartisan swamp favor libertarian free trade policies combined with the steady influx of unskilled migrants to help suppress wage levels in the United States. Trump had outflanked his opponents in the Republican primaries and Clinton in the general election by tacking left on the economy (he refused to lay hands on Social Security) and right on immigration. ..."
"... Then, in the 1930s, while the world was writhing from the consequences of the Great Depression, a series of fascist parties took the reigns in countries from Germany to Spain. To spare the United States a similar descent into barbarism, President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented the New Deal, in which the working class would find a seat at the bargaining table under a government-supervised tripartite system where business and organized labor met seemingly as equals and in which collective bargaining would help the working class set sector-wide wages. ..."
"... This class compromise ruled unquestioned for the first decades of the postwar era. It was made possible thanks to the system of democratic pluralism, which allowed working-class and rural constituencies to actively partake in mass-membership organizations like unions as well as civic and religious institutions that would empower these communities to shape society from the ground up. ..."
"... But then, amid the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a "neoliberal revolution from above" set in that sought to reverse the class compromise. The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the newly emboldened managerial class was "global labor arbitrage" in which production is outsourced to countries with lower wage levels and laxer regulations; alternatively, profits can be maximized by putting downward pressure on domestic wages through the introduction of an unskilled, non-unionized immigrant workforce that competes for jobs with its unionized domestic counterparts. By one-sidedly canceling the class compromise that governed the capitalist societies after World War II, Lind concludes, the managerial elite had brought the recent populist backlash on itself. ..."
"... American parties are not organized parties built around active members and policy platforms; they are shifting coalitions of entrepreneurial candidate campaign organizations. Hence, the Democratic and Republican Parties are not only capitalist ideologically; they are capitalistically run enterprises. ..."
"... In the epigraph to the book, Lind cites approvingly the 1949 treatise The Vital Center by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. who wrote that "class conflict, pursued to excess, may well destroy the underlying fabric of common principle which sustains free society." Schlesinger was just one among many voices who believed that Western societies after World War II were experiencing the "end of ideology." From now on, the reasoning went, the ideological battles of yesteryear were settled in favor of a more disinterested capitalist (albeit New Deal–inflected) governance. This, in turn, gave rise to the managerial forces in government, the military, and business whose unchecked hold on power Lind laments. The midcentury social-democratic thinker Michael Harrington had it right when he wrote that "[t]he end of ideology is a shorthand way of saying the end of socialism." ..."
"... A cursory glance at the recent impeachment hearings bears witness to this, as career bureaucrats complained that President Trump unjustifiably sought to change the course of an American foreign policy that had been nobly steered by them since the onset of the Cold War. In their eyes, Trump, like the Brexiteers or the French yellow vest protesters, are vulgar usurpers who threaten the stability of the vital center from polar extremes. ..."
Jan 08, 2020 | lareviewofbooks.org

A FEW DAYS AFTER Donald Trump's electoral upset in 2016, Club for Growth co-founder Stephen Moore told an audience of Republican House members that the GOP was "now officially a Trump working class party." No longer the party of traditional Reaganite conservatism, the GOP had been converted instead "into a populist America First party." As he uttered these words, Moore says, "the shock was palpable" in the room.

The Club for Growth had long dominated Republican orthodoxy by promoting low tax rates and limited government. Any conservative candidate for political office wanting to reap the benefits of the Club's massive fundraising arm had to pay homage to this doctrine. For one of its formerly leading voices to pronounce the transformation of this orthodoxy toward a more populist nationalism showed just how much the ground had shifted on election night.

To writer Michael Lind, Trump's victory, along with Brexit and other populist stirrings in Europe, was an outright declaration of "class war" by alienated working-class voters against what he calls a "university-credentialed overclass" of managerial elites. The title of Lind's new book, The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite , leaves no doubt as to where his sympathies lie, though he's adamant that he's not some sort of guru for a " smarter Trumpism ," as some have labeled him.

Lind cautions against a turn to populism, which he believes to be too personality-centered and intellectually incoherent -- not to mention, too demagogic -- to help solve the terminal crisis of "technocratic neoliberalism" with its rule by self-righteous and democratically unaccountable "experts" with hyperactive Twitter handles. Only a return to what Lind calls "democratic pluralism" will help stem the tide of the populist revolt.

The New Class War is a breath of fresh air. Many on the left have been incapable of coming to terms with Hillary Clinton's defeat. The result has been the stifling climate of a neo-McCarthyism, in which the only explanation for Trump's success was an unholy alliance of "Putin stooges" and unrepentant "white supremacists."

To Lind, the case is much more straightforward: while the vast majority of Americans supports Social Security spending and containing unskilled immigration, the elites of the bipartisan swamp favor libertarian free trade policies combined with the steady influx of unskilled migrants to help suppress wage levels in the United States. Trump had outflanked his opponents in the Republican primaries and Clinton in the general election by tacking left on the economy (he refused to lay hands on Social Security) and right on immigration.

The strategy has since been successfully repeated in the United Kingdom by Boris Johnson, and it looks, for now, like a foolproof way for conservative parties in the West to capture or defend their majorities against center-left parties that are too beholden to wealthy, metropolitan interests to seriously attract working-class support. Berating the latter as irredeemably racist certainly doesn't help either.

What happened in the preceding decades to produce this divide in Western democracies? Lind's narrative begins with the New Deal, which had brought to an end what he calls "the first class war" in favor of a class compromise between management and labor. This first class war is the one we are the most familiar with: originating in the Industrial Revolution, which had produced the wretchedly poor proletariat, it soon led to the rise of competing parties of organized workers on the one hand and the liberal bourgeoisie on the other, a clash that came to a head in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Then, in the 1930s, while the world was writhing from the consequences of the Great Depression, a series of fascist parties took the reigns in countries from Germany to Spain. To spare the United States a similar descent into barbarism, President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented the New Deal, in which the working class would find a seat at the bargaining table under a government-supervised tripartite system where business and organized labor met seemingly as equals and in which collective bargaining would help the working class set sector-wide wages.

This class compromise ruled unquestioned for the first decades of the postwar era. It was made possible thanks to the system of democratic pluralism, which allowed working-class and rural constituencies to actively partake in mass-membership organizations like unions as well as civic and religious institutions that would empower these communities to shape society from the ground up.

But then, amid the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a "neoliberal revolution from above" set in that sought to reverse the class compromise. The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the newly emboldened managerial class was "global labor arbitrage" in which production is outsourced to countries with lower wage levels and laxer regulations; alternatively, profits can be maximized by putting downward pressure on domestic wages through the introduction of an unskilled, non-unionized immigrant workforce that competes for jobs with its unionized domestic counterparts. By one-sidedly canceling the class compromise that governed the capitalist societies after World War II, Lind concludes, the managerial elite had brought the recent populist backlash on itself.

Likewise, only it can contain this backlash by returning to the bargaining table and reestablishing the tripartite system it had walked away from. According to Lind, the new class peace can only come about on the level of the individual nation-state because transnational treaty organizations like the EU cannot allow the various national working classes to escape the curse of labor arbitrage. This will mean that unskilled immigration will necessarily have to be curbed to strengthen the bargaining power of domestic workers. The free-market orthodoxy of the Club for Growth will also have to take a backseat, to be replaced by government-promoted industrial strategies that invest in innovation to help modernize their national economies.

Under which circumstances would the managerial elites ever return to the bargaining table? "The answer is fear," Lind suggests -- fear of working-class resentment of hyper-woke, authoritarian elites. Ironically, this leaves all the agency with the ruling class, who first acceded to the class compromise, then canceled it, and is now called on to forge a new one lest its underlings revolt.

Lind rightly complains all throughout the book that the old mass-membership based organizations of the 20th century have collapsed. He's coy, however, about who would reconstitute them and how. At best, Lind argues for a return to the old system where party bosses and ward captains served their local constituencies through patronage, but once more this leaves the agency with entities like the Republicans and Democrats who have a combined zero members. As the third-party activist Howie Hawkins remarked cunningly elsewhere ,

American parties are not organized parties built around active members and policy platforms; they are shifting coalitions of entrepreneurial candidate campaign organizations. Hence, the Democratic and Republican Parties are not only capitalist ideologically; they are capitalistically run enterprises.

Thus, they would hardly be the first options one would think of to reinvigorate the forces of civil society toward self-rule from the bottom up.

The key to Lind's fraught logic lies hidden in plain sight -- in the book's title. Lind does not speak of "class struggle ," the heroic Marxist narrative in which an organized proletariat strove for global power; no, "class war " smacks of a gloomy, Hobbesian war of all against all in which no side truly stands to win.

In the epigraph to the book, Lind cites approvingly the 1949 treatise The Vital Center by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. who wrote that "class conflict, pursued to excess, may well destroy the underlying fabric of common principle which sustains free society." Schlesinger was just one among many voices who believed that Western societies after World War II were experiencing the "end of ideology." From now on, the reasoning went, the ideological battles of yesteryear were settled in favor of a more disinterested capitalist (albeit New Deal–inflected) governance. This, in turn, gave rise to the managerial forces in government, the military, and business whose unchecked hold on power Lind laments. The midcentury social-democratic thinker Michael Harrington had it right when he wrote that "[t]he end of ideology is a shorthand way of saying the end of socialism."

Looked at from this perspective, the break between the postwar Fordist regime and technocratic neoliberalism isn't as massive as one would suppose. The overclass antagonists of The New Class War believe that they derive their power from the same "liberal order" of the first-class peace that Lind upholds as a positive utopia. A cursory glance at the recent impeachment hearings bears witness to this, as career bureaucrats complained that President Trump unjustifiably sought to change the course of an American foreign policy that had been nobly steered by them since the onset of the Cold War. In their eyes, Trump, like the Brexiteers or the French yellow vest protesters, are vulgar usurpers who threaten the stability of the vital center from polar extremes.

A more honest account of capitalism would also acknowledge its natural tendencies to persistently contract and to disrupt the social fabric. There is thus no reason to believe why some future class compromise would once and for all quell these tendencies -- and why nationalistically operating capitalist states would not be inclined to confront each other again in war.

Gregor Baszak is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His Twitter handle is @gregorbas1.

Stourley Kracklite 20 days ago • edited ,

Reagan was a free-trader and a union buster. Lind's people jumped the Democratic ship to vote for Reagan in (lemming-like) droves. As Republicans consolidated power over labor with cheap goods from China and the meth of deficit spending Democrats struggled with being necklaced as the party of civil rights.
The idea that people who are well-informed ought not to govern is a sad and sick cover story that the culpable are forced to chant in their caves until their days are done, the reckoning being too great.

[Feb 14, 2020] This is Jimmy Dore of Tucker Carlson show FoxTV.

Feb 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

uncle tungsten , Feb 13 2020 4:10 utc | 114

This is Jimmy Dore of Tucker Carlson show FoxTV.

You would not ever have seen this on Fox at the last election. Best high voltage spit by Jimmy Dore I have seen.
Tucker shows a great smirk especially when Jimmy dumps on Guaido.

five minutes of mirth

[Feb 09, 2020] Trump demand for 50% of Iraq oil revenue sound exactly like a criminal mob boss

Highly recommended!
Jan 21, 2020 | www.unz.com

Tucker , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 12:27 pm GMT

I've heard and read about a claim that Trump actually called PM Abdul Mahdi and demanded that Iraq hand over 50 percent of their proceeds from selling their oil to the USA, and then threatened Mahdi that he would unleash false flag attacks against the Iraqi government and its people if he did not submit to this act of Mafia-like criminal extortion. Mahdi told Trump to kiss his buttocks and that he wasn't going to turn over half of the profits from oil sales.

This makes Trump sound exactly like a criminal mob boss, especially in light of the fact that the USA is now the world's #1 exporter of oil – a fact that the arrogant Orange Man has even boasted about in recent months. Can anyone confirm that this claim is accurate? If so, then the more I learn about Trump the more sleazy and gangster like he becomes.

I mean, think about it. Bush and Cheney and mostly jewish neocons LIED us into Iraq based on bald faced lies, fabricated evidence, and exaggerated threats that they KNEW did not exist. We destroyed that country, captured and killed it's leader – who used to be a big buddy of the USA when we had a use for him – and Bush's crime gang killed close to 2 million innocent Iraqis and wrecked their economy and destroyed their infrastructure. And, now, after all that death, destruction and carnage – which Trump claimed in 2016 he did not approve of – but, now that Trump is sitting on the throne in the Oval office – he has the audacity and the gall to demand that Iraq owes the USA 50 percent of their oil profits? And, that he won't honor and respect their demand to pull our troops out of their sovereign nation unless they PAY US back for the gigantic waste of tax payers money that was spent building permanent bases inside their country?

Not one Iraqi politician voted for the appropriations bill that financed the construction of those military bases; that was our mistake, the mistake of our US congress whichever POTUS signed off on it.

melpol , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 1:41 pm GMT
...Trump learned the power of the purse on the streets of NYC, he survived by playing ball with the Jewish and Italian Mafia. Now he has become the ultimate Godfather, and the world must listen to his commands. Watch and listen as the powerful and mighty crumble under US Hegemony.
World War Jew , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 1:42 pm GMT
Right TG, traditionally, as you said up there first, and legally too, under the supreme law of the land. Economic sanctions are subject to the same UNSC supervision as forcible coercion.

UN Charter Article 41: "The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations."

https://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/index.html

US "sanctions" require UNSC authorization. Unilateral sanctions are nothing but illegal coercive intervention, as the non-intervention principle is customary international law, which is US federal common law.

The G-192, that is, the entire world, has affirmed this law. That's why the US is trying to defund UNCTAD as redundant with the WTO (UNCTAD is the G-192's primary forum.) In any case, now that the SCO is in a position to enforce this law at gunpoint with its overwhelmingly superior missile technology, the US is going to get stomped and tased until it complies and stops resisting.

Charlie , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 7:53 pm GMT
@Tucker This idea that the US is any sort of a net petroleum exporter is just another lie.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=268&t=6

In 2018 total US petroleum production was under 18 million barrels per day, total consumption north of 20 mmb/d. What does it matter if the US exports a bunch of super light fracked product the US itself can't refine if it turns around and imports it all back in again and then some.

The myths we tell ourselves, like a roaring economy that nevertheless generates a $1 trillion annual deficit, will someday come back to bite us. Denying reality is not a winning game plan for the long run.

Christophe GJ , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 8:00 pm GMT
I long tought that US foreign policies were mainly zionist agenda – driven, but the Venezuelan affair and the statements of Trump himself about the syrian oil (ta be "kept" (stolen)) make you think twice.

Oil seems to be at least very important even if it's not the main cause of middle east problems

So maybe it's the cause of illegal and cruel sanctions against Iran : Get rid of competitor to sell shale oil everywhere ?( think also of Norstream 2 here)

Watch out US of A. in the end there is something sometimes referred to as the oil's curse . some poor black Nigerians call oil "the shit of the devil", because it's such a problem – related asset Have you heard of it ? You get your revenues from oil easily, so you don't have to make effort by yourself. And in the end you don't keep pace with China on 5G ? Education fails ? Hmm
Becommig a primary sector extraction nation sad destiny indeed, like africans growing cafe, bananas and cacao for others. Not to mention environmental problems
What has happened to the superb Nation that send the first man on the moon and invented modern computers ?
Disapointment
Money for space or money for war following the Zio. Choose Uncle Sam !
Difficult to have both

OverCommenter , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 8:24 pm GMT
Everyone seems to forget how we avoided war with Syria all those years ago It was when John Kerry of all people gaffed, and said "if Assad gives up all his chemical weapons." That was in response to a reporter who asked "is there anything that can stop the war?" A intrepid Russian ambassador chimed in loud enough for the press core to hear his "OK" and history was averted. Thinking restricting the power of the President will stop brown children from dying at the hands of insane US foreign policy is a cope. "Bi-partisanship" voted to keep troops in Syria, that was only a few months ago, have you already forgotten? Dubya started the drone program, and the magical African everyone fawns over, literally doubled the remote controlled death. We are way past pretending any elected official from either side is actually against more ME war, or even that one side is worse than the other.

The problem with the supporters Trump has left is they so desperately want to believe in something bigger than themselves. They have been fed propaganda for their whole lives, and as a result can only see the world in either "this is good" or "this is bad." The problem with the opposition is that they are insane. and will say or do anything regardless of the truth. Trump could be impeached for assassinating Sulimani, yet they keep proceeding with fake and retarded nonsense. Just like keeping troops in Syria, even the most insane rabid leftoids are just fine with US imperialism, so long as it's promoting Starbucks, Marvel and homosex, just like we see with support for HK. That is foreign meddling no matter how you try to justify it, and it's not even any different messaging than the hoax "bring democracyhumanrightsfreedom TM to the poor Arabs" justification that was used in Iraq. They don't even have to come up with a new play to run, it's really quite incredible.

Just passing through , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 8:44 pm GMT
@OverCommenter A lot of right-wingers also see military action in the Middle East as a way for America to flex its muscles and bomb some Arabs. It also serves to justify the insane defence budget that could be used to build a wall and increase funding to ICE.

US politics has become incredibly bi-partisan, criticising Trump will get you branded a 'Leftist' in many circles. This extreme bipartisanship started with the Obama birth certificate nonsense which was being peddled by Jews like Orly Taitz, Philip J. Berg, Robert L. Shulz, Larry Klayman and Breitbart news – most likely because Obama was pursuing the JCPOA and not going hard enough on Iran – and continued with the Trump Russian agent angle.

Now many Americans cannot really think critically, they stick to their side like a fan sticks to their sports team.

Weston Waroda , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 9:11 pm GMT
The first person I ever heard say sanctions are acts of war was Ron Paul. The repulsive Madeleine Albright infamously said the deaths of 500,000 Iranian children due to US sanctions was worth it. She ought to be tried as a war criminal. Ron Paul ought to be Secretary of State.

[Jan 31, 2020] Tucker John Bolton has always been a snake

Bolton was appointed by Adelson.
Jan 27, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Bolton's tell-all book leaks during Senate trial. #FoxNews


Yamaha Venture , 3 days ago

Mitt Romney is a joke.

Michael Harvey , 2 days ago

John Bolton wants war everywhere to line his pockets with money.

Stephen C , 1 day ago

The "right" gets the left, but doesn't agree with them. The "left" doesn't understand the "right".

Citizen Se7en , 2 days ago

"Bolton's resignation was one of the highlights of the president's first term." Truer words have never been spoken.

Jack Albright , 2 days ago

This story is also called "the scorpion and the frog".

Ragnar Lothbrok , 3 days ago

John Bolton should be given a helmet and a gun and sent to the next war. Let's see how he likes it.

Stratchona , 1 day ago

Trump.." I don't know John Bolton,never met him,don't know what he does."

Jaret Glenn , 2 days ago

Time to investigate Romney's son working for the oil company in the Ukraine.

Regan Orr , 2 days ago

Romney's Holy Underwear is Cutting off the Blood Supply to his Deep St Brain!

Marjo , 2 days ago (edited)

I never liked Bolton. I sensed he was out for himself, at anyone's expense. War monger too. He had many people fooled.

Shara Kirkby , 3 days ago

Bolton wants war anywhere and forever!

David Dorrell , 1 day ago (edited)

Frickin' Globalist peckerwoods. John Bolton and his pal, Mitt Romney.

Olivier Bolton , 2 days ago

Bolton wanted war so he got the boot...the fact he brings out his book now just looks like vengean$$

Max Liftoff , 2 days ago

2:30 Because Bolton never served in the military he truly passionately loved war :)) LMAO Tucker nailed it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , 1 day ago

The left's championing of John Bolton is further proof that TDS has made their minds turn to sludge.

j abe , 3 days ago

Can someone expaine to me how mit romney is still geting votes from ppl

Mark Whitley , 2 days ago

Bolton is a war mongering narcissist that wanted his war, didn't get it, & is now acting like a spoilt child that didn't get his way & is laying on the floor kicking & screaming!

Tim Fronimos , 2 days ago

Regarding John Bolton's book, is this the first book that he's colored. just curious

newuserandhiscrew 22 , 2 days ago

Everyone: Bolton: "take me in oh tender woman, take me in for heaven's sake"

Brittany Ward , 1 day ago

I can't fathom that people actually believe everything the media says!

[Jan 31, 2020] What's going on right now with Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton is the beginning of sticking the knife back into Bernie's back by Bill Martin What follows originates in some notes I made in response to one such woman who supports Bernie. There are two main points.

Highly recommended!
Jan 31, 2020 | off-guardian.org

1. What's going on right now with Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton is the beginning of sticking the knife back into Bernie's back. These two played a major role in doing that in 2016, and now they're getting the band back together again. Okay, that's no mystery.

The real question is, What are Bernie supporters and those who (one way or another) support the Democrats, going to do about it? When and if Warren and Clinton succeed in taking Bernie down–and of course Biden and the Obamas are onboard for this, as well–will Democrats (and Dem-supporting "leftists," etc.) be so blinded by TDS that they'll just say,

"Oh well, we still have to vote for " Warren, Biden, etc.?

I think this runs parallel to what some have said about "letting the CIA help with the impeachment"–it's truly delusional, reactionary stuff. Likewise, people getting in a huff because "Bernie called her a liar on national television." No problem, apparently, that Warren first called Bernie a liar. Even more, no problem that Warren's whole life and career is based on a lie–a lie that, even now, she justifies with bullshit about how she "just loves her family so much." Indeed, Hillary's intervention in the following days was very likely intended to take attention away from Warren's attack on Sanders, as well as, of course, to once again put HRC out there as the potential savior at the convention.

It seems to me that the lesson here is that, if Bernie doesn't get the nomination, no other candidate (from among the frontrunners) is acceptable, especially because of the role they will have played in taking down Bernie and his movement.

I have two basic reasons for hoping Sanders can get the nomination and that there could be a Trump/Sanders election:

i. For Sanders to get the nomination there will have to be a very strong, dedicated, and focused movement, which will essentially have to defeat the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party and in whatever one wants to call the agglomeration of power mechanisms that form the establishment and the State. Sanders will have to do what Trump did with the Republican Party in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be up against (and with which he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much harder. I really don't think it can happen -- and we're seeing major moves in this effort toward eliminating Bernie just in the week that has passed since I started writing this. However, this does mean that, if Bernie can build (much further) and lead the movement to seriously address these power structures, and even beat them in some significant ways, then something tremendous will have been accomplished -- "the harder they come, the harder they fall," or at least I hope so. ii. Despite what you and many others say and (I feel) are a bit too desperate to think, Sanders does have some things in common with Trump, at least thematically -- and a lot of my arguments in my articles have to do with the importance of these themes being out there, in a way that they never would have been with any other Republican, Hillary Clinton or any of the other current frontrunners besides Sanders, and any of the other media with the very important exceptions of Tucker Carlson, Steve Hilton, and perhaps a couple others on Fox News (perhaps Laura Ingram) -- and this is not only something that the anti-Trumpers absolutely hate, they hate it so much that they can't even think about it.

That is, Trump and Sanders have in common that they 1) profess that they want to do things that improve the lives of ordinary working people, and 2) profess that they want to draw back militarism.

What I emphasize is that these terms would not even be on the table if it weren't for Trump -- and yes, to some extent if it weren't for Bernie, but there is a way in which Bernie can only be out there at all because Trump has put these things on the table.

A lot of blowback against my articles has been against my argument that getting these terms and the discourse around them on the table is very important, a real breakthrough, and a breakthrough that both clarifies the larger terms of things and disrupts the "smooth functioning" (I take this from Marcuse) of the neoliberal-neoconservative compact around economics and military intervention.

Okay, maybe I'm right about this importance, maybe I'm not -- that's an argument I've dealt with extensively in my articles and that I'll try to deal with definitively in further writing -- but certainly a very important part of not letting Sanders be taken down by the other frontrunners (and HRC, and other nefarious forces, with Warren playing a special "feminist" and Identity Politics role here -- a role that does nothing to help, and indeed does much to hurt, ordinary working people of all colors, genders, etc.) will be to further sharpen the general understanding of the importance of these themes.

Significantly, there is a third theme which has emerged since the unexpected election of Donald Trump -- unexpected at least by the establishment and the nefarious powers (though they were thinking of an "insurance policy"); on this theme, I don't know that Sanders can do much -- working with the Democratic Party, he is too implicated in this issue, and he does not have whatever "protection" Trump has here.

What I am referring to are those nefarious powers behind the establishment and the ruling class, and that have taken on a life of their own -- I don't mind calling this the Deep State, but one can just think about the "intelligence community" and especially the CIA.

Whatever -- the point is that Trump has had to call them out and expose them in ways that they obviously do not like, and also his agenda of a world where the U.S. gets along well-enough with China and Russia at least not to risk WWIII, or, perhaps more realistically, not to tip the balance of things such that Russia goes completely over to a full alliance with China, a "Eurasian Union," which both Putin and Xi have spoken about, is not to their liking.

Whether Sanders would call out these nefarious factors if he were in a position to do so, I don't know -- I don't have great confidence that he would -- but it is also the case that he is not in a position to do so, these powers can easily dispose of Sanders in ways that they haven't been able to, so far, with Trump.

If one does think these themes are important, especially the first two (with further discussion reserved regarding the powers-behind-the-powers), then I wish that Trump-haters would open their minds for a moment and think about what it apparently takes in our social system to even begin to get these themes on the table.

In any case, regarding Sanders, the movement he is building will have to go even further with the first two themes if Sanders is nominated, and at least go some distance in taking on the third theme. This applies even more if Sanders were to be elected. (This is where you might take a look at the 1988 mini-series, A Very British Coup -- except that how things go down in the U.S. will not be so "British.") Here again, though, if Sanders is to build a movement that can openly address these questions, this will be tremendous, a great thing.

So this is it in a nutshell: If Sanders were to be nominated, then there is the possibility, which everyone ought to work to make a reality, that we could have an election based around the questions, What can be done to improve the lives of ordinary working people?, and, What can be done to curb militarism and end the endless interventions and wars?


Antonym ,

Bernie is a nice guy – too nice: no match for the shark pools from Fairfax county, Lower Manhattan or the Clinton clan . The 2016 DNC candidate selection revelations proved this.

The only untainted strong Democratic candidate is Tulsi Gabbard, but she has all Establishments against her.

Fair dinkum ,

Since Reagan's Presidency, all US elections have been about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The ship may be sinking slowly, but the outcome will be the same.

Gall ,

I'd say it was long before Ronnie got elected to office. Remember it was Carter and Zyb who got involved in the imperial quick sand of Afghanistan (mixing metaphors here) that is after being run out of 'Nam by a bunch of angry natives who had gotten tired of America "being a force for good" by reining "freedom and democracy" on them from the bomb bays of B 52s which I think is going to a be similar situation to what will soon happen in Iraq if we dawdle too long.

Elections have in reality become all pomp with no circumstance. Flip a coin and it always comes up heads. It's a stacked deck that public are asked to play every two years thinking the odds are in their favor when it never really is. Might as well head to Vegas following the dusty trail of Hunter S Thompson.

Charlotte Russe ,

It's not all that complicated Obama laid the groundwork ensuring Bernie's defeat when he interfered in deciding who would Chair the DNC. Tom Perez was Obama's pick. Bernie wanted Keith Ellison. Perez guaranteed neoliberal centrist Dems would maintain control. Tom Perez didn't disappoint– his nominations for the 2020 Democratic Convention standing committees are a like a who's who of centrism. Most of the folks on this "A list" would fit quite nicely in the Republican Party.

Bernie a FDR Democrat, is considered too radical by the wealthy who enjoy their Trumpian tax cuts and phony baloney stock market profits. If Trump, was just a bit less crude and not so overtly racist he'd be perfectly acceptable. Bernie, who thinks the working-poor are entitled to a living wage, healthcare, a college education, and clean drinking water is anathema to the affluent liberals who like everything just the way it is. They long for the Obama days when two wars were quietly expanded to seven, when the Wall Street crooks got a pass, and when health insurance lobbyists had their way with the federal government–the CIA was absolutely ecstatic with Obama. Trump was a bit of a speed bump for the security state, but nothing really threatening as he stuffed the pockets of the arms industry and the surveillance state with billions of working-class tax dollars. The Orangeman is having a few internecine battles with the intelligence agencies, but in the end they thoroughly had their way with the buffoon.

Bernie on the other hand, is a bit more complex. He can't be as easily attacked. Of course, the mainstream media news has all the usual Corbyn tricks in their bag, and Bernie could fall to the wayside like Corbyn if he's incapable of unapologetically fighting back. Bernie's working-class supporters want to see him give his attackers the one-two-punch and knock them out before the DNC Convention.

If Bernie manages to win numerous primaries the threat won't come from Warren or Hillary that's so 2016. The new insidious "Bernie enemy" is billionaire Bloomberg. Who is waiting in the wings If Biden takes a deep dive, Daddy Warbucks will make a play to cause a brokered convention. And that's when Perez and his Republican/Dems will takedown Bernie. Bernie's followers MUST come out swinging and not capitulate like they did last time. They have to force the issue, create a stir and threaten to abandon the Dems to start a Workers Third Party. Young progressives have this one big shot at making a difference, and they can't allow themselves to be sheepdogged into voting for another neoliberal who's
intent on maintaining the status quo. Remember, if you don't move forward you're actually moving backward into planetary ecocide.

Gall ,

Hey check this out. Seems the DNC is shaking in their boots about the possibility of a third party hijacking their "base":

https://www.mintpressnews.com/liberal-establishment-warning-third-parties-not-to-ruin-2020-election/264460/

Here's one from Whitney implying that they needn't worry because plans are in the works to install King Cyrus II as the permanent ruler with the help of his Zionist friends in the Department of Hebrew Security:

https://www.mintpressnews.com/liberal-establishment-warning-third-parties-not-to-ruin-2020-election/264460/

Even so it looks like Trump has decided to get rid of us noninterventionist and antiwar naysayers by fully bringing in the Dispensationalist Armageddon rapture embracing nut jobs who stand with the Talmudic genocidal racists in Israel who believe that Jesus Christ is boiling for an eternity in excrement and that his mother Mary was a whore:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52918.htm

I wish that this insanity was fantasy.

mark cutts ,

Hi Bill

we have witnessed in the UK the defamation of Corbyn the ' Left Disrupter ' as he wanted to throw back the normal state of political play.

He and the well meaning Labour Party was headed off at the pass.

We have to remember that the Ruling Class have to have fall back positions and that Biden is better than Bernie as is Warren and so on.

It appears to me that the DNC also has its fallback positions too and Bernie will be chopped by the Super Delegates once again on the altar of ' electabilty ' ( read any form of Socialism – American or British is not acceptatble to the PTB ) and that is how it may end.

The battle at the moment in the UK Labour Party is which leader will back up and support extra Parliamentary action in resistance to this very right wing Tory government?

In the US the thing is the same if Bernie doesn't get the nomination.

Personally I would think that he would be a plus ( despite his foreign policy views ) but remember that Trump was a maverick Republican yet I'm not sure that Sanders would veer over to that position.

If he did then the " action " part of the steep learning curve would have to kick in to defend him and more to the point his genuinely progressive policies.

In the UK now Corbyn as the personification of ' Socialist ' threat is no longer doorstepped by the British media.

Instead the installation of a Leftish Centrist by the media ( i.e. a person that is -no threat to the existing order ) is a requirement.

This is all under the guise of a " Strong Opposition " to the right wing government.

Warren – not Biden seems to be that kind of favourite for the Ruling Class should Trump fall.

We had Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair – you in the US will get Warren.

I wish Bernie and his backers weel but I don't see it happening.

Maybe Tulsi Gabbard in another 4 years?

She and AOC are very good But this is not their time.

Not yet.

Richard Le Sarc ,

When I think of how Corbyn refused to fight back against ENTIRELY mendacious and filthy vilification as an 'antisemite', I think it might be possible that the MOSSAD told him that if he resisted he might end up, dead in his bath, like John Smith.

bevin ,

Where the world weary gather to tell us how they have been let down.
Bill nails it here:
" i. For Sanders to get the nomination there will have to be a very strong, dedicated, and focused movement, which will essentially have to defeat the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party and in whatever one wants to call the agglomeration of power mechanisms that form the establishment and the State. Sanders will have to do what Trump did with the Republican Party in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be up against (and with which he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much harder ."

Anyone who believes that elections, as such, lead to great changes needs a keeper. And one who can read the US Constitution aloud for preference.
But this is not to say that at a time like this-and there have been very few of them in US history- when there is the possibility of a major candidate challenging some of the bases of the ruling ideology-albeit by doing little more than running on a platform of refurbished Progressivism- there is really no excuse for not insisting that the challenge be made and the election played out.
Sanders is not just challenging the verities of neo-liberalism but, implicitly undermining the political consensus that has supported the Warfare State since 1948.
The thing about Bernie is that he is authenticated by the enemies that he has enrolled against him and the dramatic measures that they are taking against him. Among those enemies are the Black Misleadership Class, and the various other faux progressives who are revealing themselves to be last ditch defenders of the MIC, Israel- AIPAC is now 'all in' in Iowa and New Hampshire- and the Insurance industry. It is an indication of the simplicity of Bernie's political task that no section of Congress gives more support to the Healthcare scammers than the representatives of the community most deprived by the current system. If he manages to get through to the people and persuade them that he will fight for Free Healthcare for all and other basic and long overdue social and economic reforms he can break the hold that the political parties have over a system everyone understands is designed to make the rich-who own both parties- richer and the great majority poorer. That has been the way that things have been going in the USA for at least 45 years.

Gall ,

Here's the point you've missed here Bill and that Bernie had a mass appeal to the Independents that is until he sold out to the "Democratic" establishment which out of the two parties has to be the least democratic since it adopted the elitist and plutocratic Super Delegate system that can ride roughshod over the actual democratic will of the voters.

Of course a cosmetic change has been made that these delegates aren't allowed to vote until the Convention but as I said it is "cosmetic" since that was originally the way this undemocratic system was set up in the "Democratic" party until Hillary Clinton used it as a psychological weapon during that sham called a "primary" to convince the hoi polo that her nomination or more accurately coronation was already a foregone conclusion.

There is also another factor that most voters are not aware of and that is the so called "Democratic" party has come up with a dictatorial "by law" that can nullify the result of the primary if the candidate isn't considered "democratic" enough by the Chairman of the DNC which in Bernie's case is very possible since technically he is an Independent running as a "Democrat". This is what Lee Camp the "Nuclear Option".

Explained here in his inimitable style:

https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/lee-camp-the-dncs-secret-nuclear-option-to-stop-bernie-sanders-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/

Personally I gave up on Bernie after he sold out and shilled for that warmongering harpy Hillary who if elected would accept it as a mandate to launch WW III while ironically trying to convince us all that the "noninterventionist", "antiwar" candidate was actually the greater of the two evils.

Yeah right.

Anyway no longer have any faith in the two party system. As far as I'm concerned they can both go to hell. I've already made my choice:

https://www.markcharles2020.com

He probably needs to adjust his message more to appeal to those of us who tend to be more Libertarian and is not exactly a Russell Means but with a little help from the American Indian Movement and others can probably "triangulate" his appeal to cover a broader political spectrum. Instead of what has been traditionally known as the "left".

Greg Bacon ,

After Obama, the golden liar and mass-murderer and now Tubby the Grifter, another liar and mass-murderer, I have no desire to vote in 2020, unless Tulsi is on the ticket.

If Sanders is smart and survives another back-alley mugging by the DNC and the Wicked Witch of the East, and gets the nod, he'll take on Tulsi–Mommy–as his VP.
If he does that, then Trump, Jared the Snake and Princess Bimbo will have to find another racket in 2021.

Gall ,

Yeah Trumpenstein is a far cry from the Silver Tongued Devil O-Bomb-em. Even so both of them sold us a bill of goods that neither of them delivered on.

But hey that's politics in America at least since Neoliberal prototype Wilson which is lie your ass off until you get elected at least.

Willem ,

Much magical thinking here.

If we act now and support Sanders things will change for the better?

I surely hope so, but hope and change is soo 2008.

And if the Hildebeast enters the race, life on earth will end?

Don't think so.

Perhaps we should do this different this time. Get away from the identity politics, look what is really needed, and demand for that, not caring about 'leadership'. You know, French yellow vests style. Actually if you look a little bit outside of the MSM bubble, you see demonstrations and people demanding better treatment from the government and corporations everywhere.

The US 2020 elections, will be a nothing burger I predict. Like all elections are nothing burgers and if they are not they will fake it, or call it 'populism' that needs to be stopped (and will be stopped).

I would have voted Sanders though, if I could vote for Sanders, Similar as I would have voted for Corbyn if I could have voted for Corbyn. Voting is a tic, a habit, an addiction that is difficult to get rid of, but deadly in the end since we have nothing to vote for, except to vote for more for them at the cost of everyone else, no matter what politicians say

It's liberating to lose some of your illusions and silly reflexes, although a bit painful in the beginning as is with all addictions. The story used to 'feel' so good.

See also https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem/

Richard Le Sarc ,

If voting changed anything, it would be outlawed.

[Jan 29, 2020] Campaign Promises and Ending Wars

Highly recommended!
Jan 29, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

lizabeth Warren wrote an article outlining in general terms how she would bring America's current foreign wars to an end. Perhaps the most significant part of the article is her commitment to respect Congress' constitutional role in matters of war:

We will hold ourselves to this by recommitting to a simple idea: the constitutional requirement that Congress play a primary role in deciding to engage militarily. The United States should not fight and cannot win wars without deep public support. Successive administrations and Congresses have taken the easy way out by choosing military action without proper authorizations or transparency with the American people. The failure to debate these military missions in public is one of the reasons they have been allowed to continue without real prospect of success [bold mine-DL].

On my watch, that will end. I am committed to seeking congressional authorization if the use of force is required. Seeking constrained authorizations with limited time frames will force the executive branch to be open with the American people and Congress about our objectives, how the operation is progressing, how much it is costing, and whether it should continue.

Warren's commitment on this point is welcome, and it is what Americans should expect and demand from their presidential candidates. It should be the bare minimum requirement for anyone seeking to be president, and any candidate who won't commit to respecting the Constitution should never be allowed to have the powers of that office. The president is not permitted to launch attacks and start wars alone, but Congress and the public have allowed several presidents to do just that without any consequences. It is time to put a stop to illegal presidential wars, and it is also time to put a stop to open-ended authorizations of military force. Warren's point about asking for "constrained authorizations with limited time frames" is important, and it is something that we should insist on in any future debate over the use of force. The 2001 and 2002 AUMFs are still on the books and have been abused and stretched beyond recognition to apply to groups that didn't exist when they were passed so that the U.S. can fight wars in countries that don't threaten our security. Those need to be repealed as soon as possible to eliminate the opening that they have provided the executive to make war at will.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is unimpressed with Warren's rhetoric:

But what has Warren offered to do differently, or better? She's made no notable break with the class of experts who run our failing foreign policy. Unlike Bernie Sanders, and like Trump or Obama, she hasn't hired a foreign-policy staff committed to a different vision. And so her promise to turn war powers back to Congress should be considered as empty as Obama's promise to do the same. Her promise to bring troops home would turn out to be as meaningless as a Trump tweet saying the same.

We shouldn't discount Warren's statements so easily. When a candidate makes specific commitments about ending U.S. wars during a campaign, that is different from making vague statements about having a "humble" foreign policy. Bush ran on a conventional hawkish foreign policy platform, and there were also no ongoing wars for him to campaign against, so we can't say that he ever ran as a "dove." Obama campaigned against the Iraq war and ran on ending the U.S. military presence there, and before his first term was finished almost all U.S. troops were out of Iraq. It is important to remember that he did not campaign against the war in Afghanistan, and instead argued in support of it. His subsequent decision to commit many more troops there was a mistake, but it was entirely consistent with what he campaigned on. In other words, he withdrew from the country he promised to withdraw from, and escalated in the country where he said the U.S. should be fighting. Trump didn't actually campaign on ending any wars, but he did talk about "bombing the hell" out of ISIS, and after he was elected he escalated the war on ISIS. His anti-Iranian obsession was out in the open from the start if anyone cared to pay attention to it. In short, what candidates commit to doing during a campaign does matter and it usually gives you a good idea of what a candidate will do once elected.

If Warren and some of the other Democratic candidates are committing to ending U.S. wars, we shouldn't assume that they won't follow through on those commitments because previous presidents proved to be the hawks that they admitted to being all along. Presidential candidates often tell us exactly what they mean to do, but we have to be paying attention to everything they say and not just one catchphrase that they said a few times. If voters want a more peaceful foreign policy, they should vote for candidates that actually campaign against ongoing wars instead of rewarding the ones that promise and then deliver escalation. But just voting for the candidates that promise an end to wars is not enough if Americans want Congress to start doing its job by reining in the executive. If we don't want presidents to run amok on war powers, there have to be political consequences for the ones that have done that and there needs to be steady pressure on Congress to take back their role in matters of war. Voters should select genuinely antiwar candidates, but then they also have to hold those candidates accountable once they're in office.

[Jan 23, 2020] An incredible level of naivety of people who still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?

Highly recommended!
The deep state clearly is running the show (with some people unexpected imput -- see Trump ;-)
Elections now serve mainly for the legitimizing of the deep state rule; election of a particular individual can change little, although there is some space of change due to the power of executive branch. If the individual stray too much form the elite "forign policy consensus" he ether will be JFKed or Russiagated (with the Special Prosecutor as the fist act and impeachment as the second act of the same Russiagate drama)
But a talented (or reckless) individual can speed up some process that are already under way. For example, Trump managed to speed up the process of destruction of the USA-centered neoliberal empire considerably. Especially by launching the trade war with China. He also managed to discredit the USA foreign policy as no other president before him. Even Bush II.
Jan 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Trailer Trash , Jan 23 2020 18:30 utc | 44
>This is the most critical U.S. election in our lifetime
> Posted by: Circe | Jan 23 2020 17:46 utc | 36

Hmmm, I've been hearing the same siren song every four years for the past fifty. How is it that people still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?

Bureaucracies are reactionary and conservative by nature, so any new and more repressive policy Trumpy wants is readily adapted, as shown by the continuing barbarity of ICE and the growth of prisons and refugee concentration camps. Policies that go against the grain are easily shrugged off and ignored using time-tested passive-aggressive tactics.

One of Trump's insurmountable problems is that he has no loyal organization behind him whose members he can appoint throughout the massive Federal bureaucracy. Any Dummycrat whose name is not "Biden" has the same problem. Without a real mass-movement political party to pressure reluctant bureaucrats, no politician of any name or stripe will ever substantially change the direction of US policy.

But the last thing Dummycrats want is a real mass movement, because they might not be able to control it. Instead Uncle Sam will keep heading towards the cliff, which may be coming into view...


Per/Norway , Jan 23 2020 19:31 utc | 62

The amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me.
HOW IS IT POSSIBLE to believe A politician will/can change anything and give your consent to war criminals and traitors?
NO person(s) WILL EVER get to the top in imperial/vassal state politics without being on the rentier class side, the cognitive dissonans in voting for known liars, war criminals and traitors would kill me or fry my brain. TINA is a lie and "she" is a real bitch that deserves to be thrown on the dump off history, YOUR vote is YOUR consent to murder, theft and treason.
DONT be a rentier class enabler STOP voting and start making your local communities better and independent instead.

Per
Norway

Piotr Berman , Jan 23 2020 20:19 utc | 82
The amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me. <- Norway

Of course, There Is Another Way, for example, kvetching. We can boldly show that we are upset, and pessimistic. One upset pessimists reach critical mass we will think about some actions.

But being upset and pessimistic does fully justify inactivity. In particular, given the nature of social interaction networks, with spokes and hubs, dominating the network requires the control of relatively few nodes. The nature of democracy always allows for leverage takeover, starting from dominating within small to the entire nation in few steps. As it was nicely explained by Prof. Overton, there is a window of positions that the vast majority regards as reasonable, non-radical etc. One reason that powers to be invest so much energy vilifying dissenters, Russian assets of late, is to keep them outside the Overton window.

Having a candidate elected that the curators of Overton window hate definitely shakes the situation with the potential of shifting the window. There were some positive symptoms after Trump was elected, but negatives prevail. "Why not we just kill him" idea entered the window, together with "we took their oil because we have guts and common sense".

From that point of view, visibility of Tulsi and election of Sanders will solve some problems but most of all, it will make big changes in Overton window.

[Jan 21, 2020] Warren as Lizzie-Faire Capitalist.

Jan 21, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

none , January 21, 2020 at 12:46 am

Warren will never endorse Bernie. She is not a progressive and the Republican in her is back in operation. But, there is a new Jeep named after her:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOuTYRlXsAg151I.jpg

Henry Moon Pie , January 21, 2020 at 1:41 am

But we already had the Tin Lizzie.

ambrit , January 21, 2020 at 6:30 am

I can't resist. What we have here is an old fashioned "Lizzie-Faire Capitalist."

John Zelnicker , January 21, 2020 at 10:28 am

@ambrit
January 21, 2020 at 6:30 am
-- -- -

"Strike three! A sizzling fast ball over the middle of the plate, while the batter just looked dumbfounded"

[Jan 21, 2020] WaPo columnist endorses all twelve candidates

Highly recommended!
Are WaPo and NYT both encouraging their readerships to split the 'Anybody But Bernie' vote six ways from Super Tuesday? Fantastic!
Jan 21, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

Cassiodorus on Mon, 01/20/2020 - 11:44am Alexandra Petri tells us:

In a break from tradition, I am endorsing all 12 Democratic candidates.

Of course, this is a parody of the NYT's endorsement of Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren , trying to encourage the "who cares about policy we want an identity-politics win" vote. Petri's funniest moment is:

One of two things is wrong with America: Either the entire system is broken or is on the verge of breaking, and we need someone to bring about radical, structural change, or -- we don't need that at all! Which is it? Who can say? Certainly not me, and that is why I am telling you now which candidate to vote for.

[Jan 19, 2020] With "help" like this from CNN, one struggles to imagine what sabotage might look like.

Is Warren Warren the Jussie Smollet of politics. I wonder if she claims Bernie attacked her while wearing a red hat and screaming, "A woman can't win! This is MAGA country!"
Jan 18, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Connecticut Farmer a day ago

SCENARIO I

Joe is conservative, libertarian or possibly both.
Joe opposes Bernie Sanders on ideological grounds.
Ergo, Joe and Bernie have a different worldview.

SCENARIO II

Joe is conservative, libertarian or possibly both.
Joe opposes Liz Warren on ideological grounds.
Ergo, Joe is an unprincipled sexist.

esquimaux 11 hours ago
Being one of Liz' constituents and familiar with her career and her base (consisting of people like me,) I think she faces so little consequence for her "embellishments" at least in part because "we" (her base) inhabit an environment in which, with ease, we adjust facts and perceptions to conform to whatever our self-serving narrative of the moment may be.

We know that Liz will say anything she imagines will be to her advantage and it's okay with "us" that she does. In a way, she's our ideal candidate and media darling because she reflects and affirms our plastic values.

[Jan 18, 2020] The US China Phase 1 Deal Interpeted: Break Thing, Claim to Fix Thing, Repeat

Highly recommended!
Jan 18, 2020 | econbrowser.com

...if nothing had happened in the US-China trade war. Well, me might have gotten to where we are supposed to be with the deal

..a honest question. In terms of the environment and global climate, is it a good thing that farmers will be producing more monoculture grains, dairy, beef and pork for export?

[Jan 12, 2020] Luongo Fears "An Abyss Of Losses" As Iraq Becomes MidEast Battleground

Highly recommended!
Jan 12, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog,

The future of the U.S.'s involvement in the Middle East is in Iraq. The exchange of hostilities between the U.S. and Iran occurred wholly on Iraqi soil and it has become the site on which that war will continue.

Israel continues to up the ante on Iran, following President Trump's lead by bombing Shia militias stationed near the Al Bukumai border crossing between Syria and Iraq.

The U.S. and Israel are determined this border crossing remains closed and have demonstrated just how far they are willing to go to prevent the free flow of goods and people across this border.

The regional allies of Iran are to be kept weak, divided and constantly under harassment.

Iraq is the battleground because the U.S. lost in Syria. Despite the presence of U.S. troops squatting on Syrian oil fields in Deir Ezzor province or the troops sitting in the desert protecting the Syrian border with Jordan, the Russians, Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds forces continue to reclaim territory previously lost to the Syrian government.

Now with Turkey redeploying its pet Salafist head-choppers from Idlib to Libya to fight General Haftar's forces there to legitimize its claim to eastern Mediterannean gas deposits, the restoration of Syria's territorial integrity west of the Euphrates River is nearly complete.

The defenders of Syria can soon transition into the rebuilders thereof, if allowed. And they didn't do this alone, they had a silent partner in China the entire time.

And, if I look at this situation honestly, it was China stepping out from behind the shadows into the light that is your inciting incident for this chapter in Iraq's story.

China moving in to sign a $10.1 billion deal with the Iraqi government to begin the reconstruction of its ruined oil and gas industry in exchange for oil is of vital importance.

It doubles China's investment in Iraq while denying the U.S. that money and influence.

This happened after a massive $53 billion deal between Exxon-Mobil and Petrochina was put on hold after the incident involving Iran shooting down a U.S. Global Hawk drone in June.

With the U.S balking over the Exxon/Petrochina big deal, Iraqi Prime Minster Adel Abdul Mahdi signed the new one with China in October. Mahdi brought up the circumstances surrounding that in Iraqi parliaments during the session in which it passed the resolution recommending removal of all foreign forces from Iraq.

Did Trump openly threaten Mahdi over this deal as I covered in my podcast on this? Did the U.S. gin up protests in Baghdad, amplifying unrest over growing Iranian influence in the country?

And, if not, were these threats simply implied or carried by a minion (Pompeo, Esper, a diplomat)? Because the U.S.'s history of regime change operations is well documented. Well understood color revolution tactics used successfully in places like Ukraine , where snipers were deployed to shoot protesters and police alike to foment violence between them at the opportune time were on display in Baghdad.

Mahdi openly accused Trump of threatening him, but that sounds more like Mahdi using the current impeachment script to invoke the sinister side of Trump and sell his case.

It's not that I don't think Trump capable of that kind of threat, I just don't think he's stupid enough to voice it on an open call. Donald Trump is capable of many impulsive things, openly threatening to remove an elected Prime Minister on a recorded line is not one of them.

Mahdi has been under the U.S.'s fire since he came to power in late 2018. He was the man who refused Trump during Trump's impromptu Christmas visit to Iraq in 2018 , refusing to be summoned to a clandestine meeting at the U.S. embassy rather than Trump visit him as a head of state, an equal.

He was the man who declared the Iraqi air space closed after Israeli air attacks on Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) positions in September.

And he's the person, at the same time, being asked by Trump to act as a mediator between Saudi Arabia and Iran in peace talks for Yemen.

So, the more we look at this situation the more it is clear that Abdul Madhi, the first Iraqi prime minister since the 2003 U.S. invasion push for more Iraqi sovereignty, is emerging as the pivotal figure in what led up to the attack on General Soleimani and what comes after Iran's subsequent retaliation.

It's clear that Trump doesn't want to fight a war with Iran in Iran. He wants them to acquiesce to his unreasonable demands and begin negotiating a new nuclear deal which definitively stops the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon, and as P atrick Henningsen at 21st Century Wire thinks ,

Trump now wants a new deal which features a prohibition on Iran's medium range missiles , and after events this week, it's obvious why. Wednesday's missile strike by Iran demonstrates that the US can no longer operate in the region so long as Iran has the ability to extend its own deterrence envelope westwards to Syria, Israel, and southwards to the Arabian Peninsula, and that includes all US military installations located within that radius.

Iraq doesn't want to be that battlefield. And Iran sent the message with those two missile strikes that the U.S. presence in Iraq is unsustainable and that any thought of retreating to the autonomous Kurdish region around the air base at Erbil is also a non-starter.

The big question, after this attack, is whether U.S. air defenses around the Ain al Assad airbase west of Ramadi were active or not. If they were then Trump's standing down after the air strikes signals what Patrick suggests, a new Middle East in the making.

If they were not turned on then the next question is why? To allow Iran to save face after Trump screwed up murdering Soleimani?

I'm not capable of believing such Q-tard drivel at this point. It's far more likely that the spectre of Russian electronics warfare and radar evasion is lurking in the subtext of this story and the U.S. truly now finds itself after a second example of Iranian missile technology in a nascent 360 degree war in the region.

It means that Iran's threats against the cities of Haifa and Dubai were real.

In short, it means the future of the U.S. presence in Iraq now measures in months not years.

Because both China and Russia stand to gain ground with a newly-united Shi'ite Iraqi population. Mahdi is now courting Russia to sell him S-300 missile defense systems to allow him to enforce his demands about Iraqi airspace.

Moqtada al-Sadr is mobilizing his Madhi Army to oust the U.S. from Iraq. Iraq is key to the U.S. presence in the region. Without Iraq the U.S. position in Syria is unsustainable.

If the U.S. tries to retreat to Kurdish territory and push again for Masoud Barzani and his Peshmerga forces to declare independence Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will go ballistic.

And you can expect him to make good on his threat to close the Incerlik airbase, another critical logistical juncture for U.S. force projection in the region.

But it all starts with Mahdi's and Iraq's moves in the coming weeks. But, with Trump rightly backing down from escalating things further and not following through on his outlandish threats against Iran, it may be we're nearing the end of this intractable standoff.

Back in June I told you that Iran had the ability to fight asymmetrically against the U.S., not through direct military confrontation but through the after-effects of a brief, yet violent period of war in which all U.S., Israeli and Arab assets in the Middle East come under fire from all directions.

It sent this same message then that by attacking oil tankers it could make the transport of oil untenable and not insurable. We got a taste of it back then and Trump, then, backed down.

And the resultant upheaval in the financial markets creating an abyss of losses, cross-asset defaults, bank failures and government collapses.

Trump has no real option now but to negotiate while Iraq puts domestic pressure on him to leave and Russia/China come in to provide critical economic and military support to assist Mahdi rally his country back towards some semblance of sovereignty

* * *

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MalteseFalcon , 3 minutes ago link

OK kids,

Play time is over.

China needs Iraqi oil to build the BRI.

Last one into Africom is a rotten egg!!!!

daveeemc2 , 14 minutes ago link

This is the most delicious of irony

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

The american imperial style of intervention is dead.

China debt trap model of belt and road is the path forward.

They will win hearts and minds, and not a single shot fired.

USA gets debt from paying war machine and killed and maimed soldiers whose personal psychiatry will haunt them for an entire lifetime.

In the end, Americans get nothing but debt and risk their own soverignty as a population ages and infrastructure crumbles....kinda like now.

MalteseFalcon , 1 minute ago link

The last 30 years of American foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster.

yerfej , 26 minutes ago link

How about "what is the goal?" There is none of course. The assholes in the Washington/MIC just need war to keep them relevant. What if the US were to closed down all those wars and foreign bases? THEN the taxpayer could demand some accounting for the trillions that are wasted on complete CRAP. There are too many old leftovers from the cold war who seem to think there is benefit to fighting wars in shithole places just because those wars are the only ones going on right now. The stupidity of the ****** in the US military/MIC/Washington is beyond belief. JUST LEAVE you ******* idiots.

Rusticus2.0 , 22 minutes ago link

Your comment should have been directed at Trump, the commander in chief.

I guess that's still a bridge too far, but sooner than later you're going to have to cross it.

BobEore , 29 minutes ago link

Excellent Smithers, excellent:

Sometimes, in treading thru the opaque, sandstorm o ******** swept wastes of the ' desert of the really real '...

one must rely upon a marking... some kind of guidepost, however tenuous, to show you to be still... on the trail, not lost in the vast haunted reaches of post-reality. And you know, Tommy is that sort of guide; the sort of guy who you take to the fairgrounds, set him up with the 'THROW THE BALL THRU THE HOOP... GUARANTEED PRIZE TO SCOOP' kiosk...

and he misses every time. Just by watching Tom run through his paces here... zeroing in on the exact WRONG interpretation of events ... every dawg gone time... one resets their compass to tru course and relaxes into the flow agin! Thanks Tom! Let's break down ... the Schlitzy shopping list of sloppy errors:

Israel continues to up the ante on Iran, f ollowing President Trump's lead by bombing Shia militias stationed near the Al Bukumai border crossing between Syria and Iraq. Urusalem.. and its pathetically obedient dogsbody USSA ... are busy setting up RIMFISTAN Tom.. you really need to start expanding your reading list; On both sides of that border you mention .. they will be running - and guarding - pipeline running to the mothership. Shia miitias and that project just don't mix. Nobody gives a frying fluck bout your imaginary 'land bridge to the Med'... except you and the gomers. And you and they aren't ANYWHERES near to here.

  • Abdul Madhi, the first Iraqi prime minister since the 2003 U.S. invasion push for more Iraqi sovereignty, is emerging as the pivotal figure in what led up to the attack on General Soleimani and what comes after Iran's subsequent retaliation.
  • Ok... this is getting completely embarrassing. The man is a 'caretaker' Tom... that's similar to a 'janitor' - he's on the way out. If you really think thats' being pivotal... I'm gonna suggest that you've 'pivoted' on one of your goats too many times.

Look, Tom... I did sincerely undertake to hold your arm, and guide you through this to a happier place. But you... are underwater my man. And that's quite an accomplishment, since we be traveling through the deserts of the really real. You've enumerated a list of things which has helped me to understand just how completely distorted is the picture of the situation here in mudded east.. is... in the minds of the myriad victims of your alt-media madness. And I thank you for that. But its time we part company.

These whirring klaidescope glasses I put on, in order to help me see how you see things, have given me a bit of a headache. Time to return to seeing the world... as it really works!

simpson seers , 14 minutes ago link

says the yankee chicken ******......

Fireman , 32 minutes ago link

Like Ukraine, everything the anglozionazi empire of **** smear$...turns to ****.

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

https://theduran.com/ukranian-whistleblower-reveals-mh-17-tragedy-was-orchestrated-by-poroshenko-and-british-secret-service/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=wR1NFI6TBH0

BGO , 39 minutes ago link

The whole *target and destroy* Iran (and Iraq) clusterfuck has always been about creating new profit scenarios, profit theaters, for the MIC.

If the US govt was suddenly forced to stop making and selling **** designed to kill people... if the govt were forced to stopping selling **** to other people so they can kill people... if the govt were forced to stop stockpiling **** designed to kill people just so other people would stop building and stockpiling **** designed to kill people... first the US then the world would collapse... everyone would finally see... the US is a nation of people that allows itself to be propped up by the worst sort of people... an infinitesimally small group of gangsters who legally make insane amounts of money... by creating in perpetuity... forever new scenarios that allow them to kill other people.

Jesus ******* Christ ZeroHedge software ******* sucks.

Fireman , 40 minutes ago link

Understanding why Agent Orange is a meat puppet.

The following has been known to cure T.D.S.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/NJF06yjvdErM/

Wantoknow , 44 minutes ago link

Why has Trump no real option? What do you believe are the limits of Trump's options that assure he must negotiate? Perhaps all out war is not yet possible politically in the US, but public sentiment has been manipulated before. Why not now?

One must not yet reject the idea that the road to Moscow and Beijing does not run through Iran. Throwing the US out of the Middle East would be a grievous failure for the deep state which has demonstrated itself to be absolutely ruthless. It is hard to believe the US will leave without a much more serious war forcing the issue.

So far Trump has appeared artless and that may continue but that artlessness may well bring a day when Trump will not back down.

Fireman , 39 minutes ago link

Why has Trump no real option?

Ask the towel girls at Maralago and Jeffrey Pedovore.

Rusticus2.0 , 49 minutes ago link

The motivation behind Trump pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action wasn't because, after careful analytical study of the plan, he decided it was a bad deal. It was because Israel demanded it as it didn't fit into their best interests and, as with the refreezing of relationships with Cuba, it was a easier way to undo Obama policy rather than tackling Obamacare. Hardly sound judgement.

The war will continue in Iraq as the Shia majority mobilize against an occupying force that has been asked to leave, but refuse. What will quickly become apparent is that this war is about to become far more multifaceted with Iraqi and Iranian proxies targeting American interests across numerous fronts.

Trump is the head of a business empire; Downsizing is not a strategy that he's ever employed; His business history is a case study in go big or go bust.

not-me---it-was-the-dog , 32 minutes ago link

so it will work like this....

trump's zionist overlords have demanded he destroy iran.

as a simple lackey, he agreed, but he does need political cover to do so.

thus the equating of any attack or threat of attack by any group of any political persuasion as originating from iran.

any resistance by the shia in iraq will be considered as being directed from iran, thus an attack on iran is warranted.

any resistance by the currect governement of iraq will be considered as being directed from iran, thus an attack on iran is warranted.

any resistance by the sunni in iraq will be considered subversion by iran, or a false flag by iran, thus an attack on iran is warranted.

trump's refusal to follow the SOFA agreement, and heed the call of the democratic government we claim to have gone in to install, is specifically designed to lead to more violence, which in turn can be blamed on iran's "malign" influence, which gives the entity lackeys cover to spread more democracy.

MIGA!

Brazen Heist II , 55 minutes ago link

America is a nation of imbeciles. They have meddled in Iraq since the 1980s and still can't subdue the place to their content.

Dey hate us for our freedumbs!

Ghost who Walks , 54 minutes ago link

I'm more positive that Iraq can resolve its issues without starting a Global War.

The information shared by the Iraqi Prime Minister goes part way to awakening the population as to what is happening and why.

Once more information starts to leak out (and it will from those individuals who want to avoid extinction) the broad mass of the global population can take action to protect themselves from the psychopaths.

new game , 1 hour ago link

This is what empires in decline do. Hubris...

meanwhile China rises with Strategic economic investment.

And the econ hitmen aren't done yet...

moar war...

Arising , 1 hour ago link

China moving in to sign a $10.1 billion deal with the Iraqi government to begin the reconstruction of its ruined oil and gas industry in exchange for oil is of vital importance.

Come on Tom, you should know better than that: the U.S will destroy any agreements between China and the people of Iraq.

The oil will continue to be stolen and sent to Occupied Palestine to administer and the people of Iraq will be in constant revolt, protest mode and subjugation- but they will never know they are being manipulated by the thieving zionists in D.C and Tel aviv.

Ms No , 1 hour ago link

Agreed. It will take nothing short of a miracle to stop this. Time isnt on their side though so they better get on it. They will do something big to get it going.

RoyalDraco , 14 minutes ago link

This isn't "humanity." Few people are psychopathic killers. It is being run by a small cliche of Satanists who are well on their way to enslaving humanity in a dystopia even George Orwell could not imagine. They control most of the levers of power and influence and have done so for centuries.

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

- Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring's testimony before the Nuremberg tribunal on crimes against humanity

[Nov 24, 2019] Despair is a very powerful factor in the resurgence of far right forces. Far right populism probably will be the decisive factor in 2020 elections.

Highly recommended!
Nov 24, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

likbez 11.25.19 at 2:56 am 46

Glen Tomkins 11.24.19 at 5:26 pm @43

And again, if we do win despite all the structural injustices in the system the Rs inherited and seek to expand, well, those injustices don't really absolutely need to be corrected, because we will still have gotten the right result from the system as is.

This is a pretty apt description of the mindset of Corporate Democrats. Thank you !

May I recommend you to listen to Chris Hedge 2011 talk On Death of the Liberal Class At least to the first part of it.

Corporate Dems definitely lack courage, and as such are probably doomed in 2020.

Of course, the impeachment process will weight on Trump, but the Senate hold all trump cards, and might reverse those effects very quickly and destroy, or at lease greatly diminish, any chances for Corporate Demorats even complete on equal footing in 2020 elections. IMHO Pelosi gambit is a really dangerous gambit, a desperate move, a kind of "Heil Mary" pass.

Despair is a very powerful factor in the resurgence of far right forces. And that's what happening right now and that's why I suspect that far right populism probably will be the decisive factor in 2020 elections.

IMHO Chris explains what the most probable result on 2020 elections with be with amazing clarity.

[Nov 14, 2019] Neoliberalism Paved the Way for Authoritarian Right-Wing Populism by Henry A. Giroux

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism became an incubator for a growing authoritarian populism fed largely by economic inequality. ..."
"... This apocalyptic populism was rooted in a profound discontent for the empty promises of a neoliberal ideology that made capitalism and democracy synonymous, and markets the model for all social relations. In addition, the Democratic proponents of neoliberalism, such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, participated in the dismantling of the social contract, widening economic inequality, and burgeoning landscapes of joblessness, misery, anger and despair. ..."
"... Liberal democracies across the globe appeared out of touch with not only the misery and suffering caused by neoliberal policies, they also produced an insular and arrogant group of politicians who regarded themselves as an enlightened political formation that worked " on behalf of an ignorant public ." ..."
"... As a regime of affective management, neoliberalism created a culture in which everyone was trapped in his or her own feelings, emotions and orbits of privatization. One consequence was that legitimate political claims could only be pursued by individuals and families rather than social groups. ..."
Sep 26, 2019 | truthout.org

Part of the Series The Public Intellectual

Talk of a looming recession is heating up as the global economy slows and President Trump's tiff with China unsettles financial markets. As world trade contracts, stock markets drop, the manufacturing sector in the United States is in decline for the first time in a decade , and farmers and steel workers continue losing their income and jobs.

Rumors of a coming recession accentuate fears about the further deterioration of conditions faced by workers and the poor, who are already suffering from precarious employment, poverty, lack of meaningful work and dwindling pensions. A global economic slump would make living standards for the poor even worse. As Ashley Smith points out , levels of impoverishment in the United States are already shocking, with "four out of every ten families [struggling] to meet the costs of food, housing, health care, and utilities every month."

Just as the 2008 global economic crisis revealed the failures of liberal democracy and the scourge of neoliberalism, a new economic recession in 2019 could also reveal how institutions meant to serve the public interest and offer support for a progressive politics now serve authoritarian ideologies and a ruling elite that views democracy as the enemy of market-based freedoms and white nationalism.

What has not been learned from the 2008 crisis is that an economic crisis neither unites those most affected in favor of a progressive politics nor does it offer any political guarantees regarding the direction of social change. Instead, the emotions that fueled massive public anger toward elites and globalization gave rise to the celebration of populist demagogues and a right-wing tsunami of misdirected anger, hate and violence toward undocumented immigrants, refugees, Muslims and people of color.

The 2008 financial crisis wreaked havoc in multiple ways. Yet there was another crisis that received little attention: a crisis of agency. This crisis centered around matters of identity, self-determination and collective resistance, which were undermined in profound ways, giving rise to and legitimating the emergence of authoritarian populist movements in many parts of the world, such as United States, Hungary, Poland and Brazil.

At the heart of this shift was the declining belief in the legitimacy of both liberal democracy and its pledges about trickle-down wealth, economic security and broadening equal opportunities preached by the apostles of neoliberalism. In many ways, public faith in the welfare state, quality employment opportunities, institutional possibilities and a secure future for each generation collapsed. In part, this was a consequence of the post-war economic boom giving way to massive degrees of inequality, the off-shoring of wealth and power, the enactment of cruel austerity measures, an expanding regime of precarity, and a cut-throat economic and social environment in which individual interests and needs prevailed over any consideration of the common good. As liberalism aligned itself with corporate and political power, both the Democratic and Republican Parties embraced financial reforms that increased the wealth of the bankers and corporate elite while doing nothing to prevent people from losing their homes, being strapped with chronic debt, seeing their pensions disappear, and facing a future of uncertainty and no long-term prospects or guarantees.

Neoliberalism became an incubator for a growing authoritarian populism fed largely by economic inequality.

In an age of economic anxiety, existential insecurity and a growing culture of fear, liberalism's overheated emphasis on individual liberties "made human beings subordinate to the market, replacing social bonds with market relations and sanctifying greed," as noted by Pankaj Mishra. In this instance, neoliberalism became an incubator for a growing authoritarian populism fed largely by economic inequality. The latter was the outcome of a growing cultural and political polarization that made "it possible for haters to come out from the margins, form larger groups and make political trouble." This toxic polarization and surge of right-wing populism produced by casino capitalism was accentuated with the growth of fascist groups that shared a skepticism of international organizations, supported a militant right-wing nationalism, and championed a surge of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic values.

This apocalyptic populism was rooted in a profound discontent for the empty promises of a neoliberal ideology that made capitalism and democracy synonymous, and markets the model for all social relations. In addition, the Democratic proponents of neoliberalism, such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, participated in the dismantling of the social contract, widening economic inequality, and burgeoning landscapes of joblessness, misery, anger and despair.

At the same time, they enacted policies that dismantled civic culture and undermined a wide range of democratic institutions that extended from the media to public goods such as public and higher education. Under such circumstances, democratic narratives, values and modes of solidarity, which traded in shared responsibilities and shared hopes, were replaced by a market-based focus on a regressive notion of hyper-individualism, ego-centered values and a view of individual responsibility that eviscerated any broader notion of social, systemic, and corporate problems and accountability.

Ways of imagining society through a collective ethos became fractured, and a comprehensive understanding of politics as inclusive and participatory morphed into an anti-politics marked by an investment in the language of individual rights, individual choice and the power of rights-bearing individuals.

Under the reign of neoliberalism, language became thinner and more individualistic, detached from history and more self-oriented, all the while undermining viable democratic social spheres as spaces where politics bring people together as collective agents and critically engaged citizens. Neoliberal language is written in the discourse of economics and market values, not ethics. Under such circumstances, shallowness becomes an asset rather than a liability. Increasingly, the watered-down language of liberal democracy, with its over-emphasis on individual rights and its neoliberal coddling of the financial elite, gave way to a regressive notion of the social marked by rising authoritarian tendencies, unchecked nativism, unapologetic expressions of bigotry, misdirected anger and the language of resentment-filled revolt. Liberal democracies across the globe appeared out of touch with not only the misery and suffering caused by neoliberal policies, they also produced an insular and arrogant group of politicians who regarded themselves as an enlightened political formation that worked " on behalf of an ignorant public ."

The ultimate consequence was to produce later what Wolfgang Merkel describes as "a rebellion of the disenfranchised." A series of political uprisings made it clear that neoliberalism was suffering from a crisis of legitimacy further accentuated by the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, the election of Donald Trump, support for the National Rally ( formerly known as the National Front ) in France, and the emergence of powerful right-wing populist movements across the globe.

What has been vastly underestimated in the rise of right-wing populism is the capture of the media by authoritarian populists.

As a regime of affective management, neoliberalism created a culture in which everyone was trapped in his or her own feelings, emotions and orbits of privatization. One consequence was that legitimate political claims could only be pursued by individuals and families rather than social groups. In this instance, power was removed from the social sphere and placed almost entirely in the hands of corporate and political demagogues who used it to enrich themselves for their own personal gain.

Power was now used to produce muscular authority in order "to secure order, boundaries, and to divert the growing anger of a declining middle and working-class," Wendy Brown observes . Both classes increasingly came to blame their economic and political conditions that produced their misery and ravaged ways of life on "'others': immigrants, minority races, 'external' predators and attackers ranging from terrorists to refugees." Liberal-individualistic views lost their legitimacy as they refused to indict the underlying structures of capitalism and its winner-take-all ethos.

Functioning largely as a ruthless form of social Darwinism, economic activity was removed from a concern with social costs, and replaced by a culture of cruelty and resentment that disdained any notion of compassion or ethical concern for those deemed as "other" because of their class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion. This is a culture marked by gigantic hypocrisies, "the gloomy tabulation of unspeakable violent events," widespread viciousness, "great concentrations of wealth," "surveillance overkill," and the "unceasing despoliation of biospheres for profit."

George Monbiot sums up well some of the more toxic elements of neoliberalism, which remained largely hidden since it was in the mainstream press less as an ideology than as an economic policy. He writes :

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimized, public services should be privatized. The organization of labor and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

In the neoliberal worldview, those who are unemployed, poor consumers or outside of the reach of a market in search of insatiable profits are considered disposable. Increasingly more people were viewed as anti-human, unknowable, faceless and symbols of fear and pathology. This included undocumented immigrants in the United States and refugees in Europe, as well as those who were considered of no value to a market society, and thus eligible to be deprived of the most basic rights and subject to the terror of state violence.

Marking selected groups as disposable in both symbolic and material forms, the neoliberal politics of disposability became a machinery of political and social death -- producing spaces where undesirable members are abused, put in cages , separated from their children and subject to a massive violation of their human rights. Under a neoliberal politics of disposability, people live in spaces of ever-present danger and risk where nothing is certain; human beings considered excess are denied a social function and relegated to what Étienne Balibar calls the "death zones of humanity." These are the 21st century workstations designed for the creation and process of elimination; a death-haunted mode of production rooted in the "absolute triumph of irrationality."

Economic and cultural nationalism has become a rallying cry to create the conditions for merging a regressive neoliberalism and populism into a war machine.

Within this new political formation, older forms of exploitation are now matched, if not exceeded, by a politics of racial and social cleansing, as entire populations are removed from ethical assessments, producing zones of social abandonment. In this new world, there is a merging of finance capital and a war culture that speaks to a moral and political collapse in which the welfare state is replaced by forms of economic nationalism and a burgeoning carceral state .

Furthermore, elements of this crisis can be seen in the ongoing militarization of everyday life as more and more institutions take on the model of the prison. Additionally, there is also the increased arming of the police, the criminalization of a wide range of behaviors related to social problems, the rise of the surveillance state, and the ongoing war on youth, undocumented immigrants, Muslims and others deemed enemies of the state.

Under the aegis of a neoliberal war culture, we have witnessed increasing immiseration for the working and middle classes, massive tax cuts for the rich, the outsourcing of public services, a full-fledged attack on unions, the defunding of public goods, and the privatization of public services extending from health and education to roads and prisons. This ongoing transfer of public resources and services to the rich, hedge fund managers, and corporate elite was matched by the corporate takeover of the commanding institutions of culture, including the digital, print and broadcast media. What has been vastly underestimated in the rise of right-wing populism is the capture of the media by authoritarian populists and its flip side, which amounts to a full-fledged political attack on independent digital, online and oppositional journalists.

While it is generally acknowledged that neoliberalism was responsible for the worldwide economic crisis of 2008, what is less acknowledged is that structural crisis produced by a capitalism on steroids was not matched by subjective crisis and consequently gave rise to new reactionary political populist movements. As economic collapse became visceral, people's lives were upended and sometimes destroyed. Moreover, as the social contract was shredded along with the need for socially constructed roles, norms and public goods, the "social" no longer occupied a thick and important pedagogical space of solidarity, dialogue, political expression, dissent and politics.

As public spheres disappeared, communal bonds were weakened and social provisions withered. Under neoliberalism, the social sphere regresses into a privatized society of consumers in which individuals are atomized, alienated, and increasingly removed from the variety of social connections and communal bonds that give meaning to the degree to which societies are good and just.

Establishment politics lost its legitimacy, as voters rejected the conditions produced by financialized capitalism.

People became isolated, segregated and unable " to negotiate democratic dilemmas in a democratic way " as power became more abstract and removed from public participation and accountability. As the neoliberal net of privilege was cast wider without apology for the rich and exclusion of others, it became more obvious to growing elements of the public that appeals to liberal democracy had failed to keep its promise of a better life for all. It could no longer demand, without qualification, that working people should work harder for less, and that democratic participation is exclusively about elections. What could not be hidden from many disenfranchised groups was that ruling elites produced what Adam Tooze describes as "a disastrous slide from the hypocrisies and compromises of the previous status quo into something even [more dangerous]."

As the global crisis has intensified since 2008, elements of a political and moral collapse at the heart of an authoritarian society are more obvious and find their most transparent expression of ruthlessness, greed and unchecked power in the rule of Donald Trump. As Chris Hedges points out :

The ruling corporate elites no longer seek to build. They seek to destroy. They are agents of death. They crave the unimpeded power to cannibalize the country and pollute and degrade the ecosystem to feed an insatiable lust for wealth, power and hedonism. Wars and military "virtues" are celebrated. Intelligence, empathy and the common good are banished. Culture is degraded to patriotic kitsch . Those branded as unproductive or redundant are discarded and left to struggle in poverty or locked away in cages.

The slide into authoritarianism was made all the easier by the absence of a broad-based left mass movement in the United States, which failed to provide both a comprehensive vision of change and an alignment of single-issue groups and smaller movements into one mass movement. Nancy Fraser rightly observes that following Occupy, "potential links between labour and new social movements were left to languish. Split off from one another, those indispensable poles of a viable left were miles apart, waiting to be counterposed as antithetical."

Since the 1970s, there has been a profound backlash by economic, financial, political and religious fundamentalists and their allied media establishments against labor, an oppositional press, people of color and others who have attempted to extend the workings of democracy and equality.

As the narrative of class and class struggle disappeared along with the absence of a vibrant socialist movement, the call for democracy no longer provided a unifying narrative to bring different oppressed groups together. Instead, economic and cultural nationalism has become a rallying cry to create the conditions for merging a regressive neoliberalism and populism into a war machine. Under such circumstances, politics is imagined as a form of war, repelling immigrants and refugees who are described by President Trump as "invaders," "vermin" and "rapists." The emergence of neoliberalism as a war machine is evident in the current status of the Republican Party and the Trump administration, which wage assaults on anything that does not mimic the values of the market. Such assaults take the form of fixing whole categories of people as disposable, as enemies, and force them into conditions of extreme precarity -- and in increasingly more instances, conditions of danger. Neoliberal capitalism radiates violence, evident in its endless instances of mass shooting, such as those that took place most recently in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. This should not be surprising for a society that measures power by the speed that it removes itself from any sense of ethical and social responsibility. As Beatrix Campbell puts it ,

The richest society on the planet is armed. And it invests in one of the largest prison systems in the world. Violence circulates between state and citizen. Drilled to kill, doomed to die: mastery and martyrdom is the heartbreaking dialectic of the manufacture of militarized, violent masculinity . The making and maintaining of militarised masculinities is vital to these new modes of armed conflict that are proliferating across the flexible frontiers of globalized capitalism, between and within states.

What has become clear is that the neoliberal agenda has been a spectacular failure . Moreover, it has mobilized on a global level the violent political, social, racial and economic energies of a resurgent fascist politics. Across the globe, right-wing modes of governance are appearing in which the line collapses between "outside foreign enemies" such as refugees and undocumented immigrants, on the one hand, and on the other, inside "dangerous" or "treasonous" classes such as critical journalists, educators and dissidents.

As neoliberal economies increasingly resort to violence and repression, fear replaces any sense of shared responsibilities, as violence is not only elevated to an organizing principle of society, but also expands a network of extreme cruelty. Imagining politics as a war machine, more and more groups are treated as excess and inscribed in an order of power as disposable, enemies, and [forced] into conditions of extreme precarity. This is a particularly vicious form of state violence that undermines and constrains agency, and subjects individuals to zones of abandonment, as evident in the growth of immigrant jails and an expanding carceral complex in the United States and other countries, such as Hungary.

As neoliberalism's promise of social mobility and expanding economic progress collapsed, it gave way to an authoritarian right-wing populism looking for narratives on which to pin the hatred of governing elites who, as Paul Mason notes , "capped health and welfare spending, [imposed] punitive benefit withdraws [that] forced many families to rely on food banks [and] withdraw sickness and disability benefits from one million former workers below retirement age."

Across the globe, a series of uprisings have appeared that signal new political formations that rejected the notion that there was no alternative to neoliberal hegemony. This was evident not only with the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, but also with the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and support for popular movements such as the National Rally in France. Establishment politics lost its legitimacy, as voters rejected the conditions produced by financialized capitalism.

In the United States, both major political parties were more than willing to turn the economy over to the bankers and hedge fund managers while producing policies that shaped radical forms of industrial and social restructuring, all of which caused massive pain, suffering and rage among large segments of the working class and other disenfranchised groups. Right-wing populist leaders across the globe recognized that national economies were in the hands of foreign investors, a mobile financial elite and transnational capital. In a masterful act of political diversion, populist leaders attacked all vestiges of liberal capitalism while refusing to name neoliberal inequities in wealth and power as a basic threat to their societies. Instead of calling for an acceleration of the democratic ideals of popular sovereignty and equality, right-wing populist leaders, such as Trump, Bolsonaro and Hungary's Viktor Orbán defined democracy as the enemy of those who wish for unaccountable power. They also diverted genuine popular anger into the abyss of cultural chauvinism, anti-immigrant hatred, a contempt of Muslims and a targeted attack on the environment, health care, education, public institutions, social provisions and other basic life resources. As Arjun Appadurai observes , such authoritarian leaders hate democracy, capture the political emotions of those treated as disposable, and do everything they can to hide the deep contradictions of neoliberal capitalism.

In this scenario, we have the resurgence of a fascist politics that capitalizes on the immiseration, fears and anxieties produced by neoliberalism without naming the underlying conditions that create and legitimate its policies and social costs. While such populists comment on certain elements of neoliberalism such as globalization, they largely embrace those ideological and economic elements that concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a political, corporate and financial elite, thus reinforcing in the end an extreme form of capitalism. Moreover, right-wing populists may condemn globalization, but they do so by blaming those considered outside the inclusive boundaries of a white homeland even though the same forces victimize them . At the same time, such leaders mobilize passions that deny critical understanding while simultaneously creating desires and affects that produce toxic and hypermasculine forms of identification.

Authoritarian leaders hate democracy and do everything they can to hide the deep contradictions of neoliberal capitalism.

In this instance, an oppressive form of education becomes central to politics and is used as a tool of power in the struggle over power, agency and politics. What is at stake here is not simply a struggle between authoritarian ideas and democratic ideals, but also a fierce battle on the part of demagogues to destroy the institutions and conditions that make critical thought and oppositional accounts of power possible. This is evident, for example, in Trump's constant attack on the critical media, often referring to them as "'the enemy of the people' pushing 'Radical Left Democrat views,'" even as journalists are subject to expulsion, mass jailing and assassination across the world by some of Trump's allies.

Waging war on democracy and the institutions that produce it, neoliberalism has tapped into a combination of fear and cathartic cruelty that has once again unleashed the mobilizing passions of fascism, especially the historically distinct registers of extreme nationalism, nativism, white supremacy, racial and ethnic cleansing, voter suppression, and an attack on a civic culture of critique and resistance. The result is a new political formation that I have called neoliberal fascism, in which the principles and practices of a fascist past and neoliberal present have merged, connecting the worst dimensions and excesses of gangster capitalism with the fascist ideals of white nationalism and racial supremacy associated with the horrors of a fascist past.

Neoliberal fascism hollows out democracy from within, breaks down the separation of power while increasing the power of the presidency, and saturates cultural and social life with its ideology of self-interest, a survival-of-the-fittest ethos, and regressive notions of freedom and individual responsibility.

What needs to be acknowledged is that neoliberalism as an extreme form of capitalism has produced the conditions for a fascist politics that is updated to serve the interest of a concentrated class of financial elite and a rising tide of political demagogues across the globe.

The mass anger fueling neoliberal fascism is a diversion of genuine resistance into what amounts to a pathology, which empties politics of any substance. This is evident also in its support of a right-wing populism and its focus on the immigrants and refugees as "dangerous outsiders," which serves to eliminate class politics and camouflage its own authoritarian ruling class interests and relentless attacks on social welfare.

A new economic slump would further fuel forces of repression and strengthen the forces of white supremacy.

In the face of a looming global recession, it is crucial to understand the connection between the rise of right-wing populism and neoliberalism, which emerged in the late 1970s as a commanding ideology fueling a punitive form of globalization. This historical moment is marked by unique ideological, economic and political formations produced by ever-increasing brutal forms of capitalism, however diverse.

Governing economic and political thinking everywhere, neoliberalism's unprecedented concentration of economic and political power has produced a toxic state modeled after the models of finance and unchecked market forces. It has also produced a profound shift in human consciousness, agency and modes of identification. The consequences have become familiar and include cruel austerity measures, adulation of self-regulating markets, the liberating of capital from any constraints, deregulation, privatization of public goods, the commodification of everyday life and the gutting of environmental, health and safety laws. It has also paved the way for a merging of extreme market principles and the sordid and mushrooming elements of white supremacy, racial cleansing and ultranationalism that have become specific to updated forms of fascist politics.

Such policies have produced massive inequities in wealth, power and income, while further accelerating mass misery, human suffering, the rise of state-sanctioned violence and ever-expanding sites of terminal exclusion in the forms of walls, detention centers and an expanding carceral state. An impending recession accentuates the antagonisms, instabilities and crisis produced by the long history and reach of neoliberal ideologies and policies.

A new economic slump would further fuel forces of repression and strengthen the forces of white supremacy, Islamophobia, nativism and misogyny. In the face of such reactionary forces, it is crucial to unite various progressive forces of opposition into a powerful anti-capitalist movement that speaks not only to the range of oppressions exacerbated by neoliberalism, but also to the need for new narratives that speak to overturning a system steeped in the machineries of war, militarization, repression and death.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education (Haymarket 2014), The Violence of Organized Forgetting (City Lights 2014), Dangerous Thinking in the Age of the New Authoritarianism (Routledge, 2015), America's Addiction to Terrorism (Monthly Review Press, 2016), America at War with Itself (City Lights, 2017), The Public in Peril (Routledge, 2018) and American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism (City Lights, 2018) and The Terror of the Unforeseen (LARB Books, 2019). Giroux is also a member of Truthout 's Board of Directors.

[Nov 13, 2019] The End of Neoliberalism and the Rebirth of History by Joseph E. Stiglitz

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The credibility of neoliberalism's faith in unfettered markets as the surest road to shared prosperity is on life-support these days. And well it should be. The simultaneous waning of confidence in neoliberalism and in democracy is no coincidence or mere correlation. Neoliberalism has undermined democracy for 40 years. ..."
"... The effects of capital-market liberalization were particularly odious: If a leading presidential candidate in an emerging market lost favor with Wall Street, the banks would pull their money out of the country. Voters then faced a stark choice: Give in to Wall Street or face a severe financial crisis. It was as if Wall Street had more political power than the country's citizens. 1 ..."
"... Even in rich countries, ordinary citizens were told, "You can't pursue the policies you want" – whether adequate social protection, decent wages, progressive taxation, or a well-regulated financial system – "because the country will lose competitiveness, jobs will disappear, and you will suffer." 1 ..."
"... How can wage restraint – to attain or maintain competitiveness – and reduced government programs possibly add up to higher standards of living? Ordinary citizens felt like they had been sold a bill of goods. They were right to feel conned. ..."
"... If the 2008 financial crisis failed to make us realize that unfettered markets don't work, the climate crisis certainly should: neoliberalism will literally bring an end to our civilization. But it is also clear that demagogues who would have us turn our back on science and tolerance will only make matters worse. ..."
"... The sad truth is, human nature is selfish, and the elites will always do whatever it takes to protect their own interests. With this being the basis of all political systems, it only comes down to how the elites can best serve their own interests. In democracies, it relies on creating an illusion of people's power. ..."
Nov 04, 2019 | www.project-syndicate.org

For 40 years, elites in rich and poor countries alike promised that neoliberal policies would lead to faster economic growth, and that the benefits would trickle down so that everyone, including the poorest, would be better off. Now that the evidence is in, is it any wonder that trust in elites and confidence in democracy have plummeted?

NEW YORK – At the end of the Cold War, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a celebrated essay called " The End of History? " Communism's collapse, he argued, would clear the last obstacle separating the entire world from its destiny of liberal democracy and market economies. Many people agreed.

Today, as we face a retreat from the rules-based, liberal global order, with autocratic rulers and demagogues leading countries that contain well over half the world's population, Fukuyama's idea seems quaint and naive. But it reinforced the neoliberal economic doctrine that has prevailed for the last 40 years.

The credibility of neoliberalism's faith in unfettered markets as the surest road to shared prosperity is on life-support these days. And well it should be. The simultaneous waning of confidence in neoliberalism and in democracy is no coincidence or mere correlation. Neoliberalism has undermined democracy for 40 years.

The form of globalization prescribed by neoliberalism left individuals and entire societies unable to control an important part of their own destiny, as Dani Rodrik of Harvard University has explained so clearly , and as I argue in my recent books Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited and People, Power, and Profits . The effects of capital-market liberalization were particularly odious: If a leading presidential candidate in an emerging market lost favor with Wall Street, the banks would pull their money out of the country. Voters then faced a stark choice: Give in to Wall Street or face a severe financial crisis. It was as if Wall Street had more political power than the country's citizens. 1

Even in rich countries, ordinary citizens were told, "You can't pursue the policies you want" – whether adequate social protection, decent wages, progressive taxation, or a well-regulated financial system – "because the country will lose competitiveness, jobs will disappear, and you will suffer." 1

In rich and poor countries alike, elites promised that neoliberal policies would lead to faster economic growth, and that the benefits would trickle down so that everyone, including the poorest, would be better off. To get there, though, workers would have to accept lower wages, and all citizens would have to accept cutbacks in important government programs.

The elites claimed that their promises were based on scientific economic models and "evidence-based research." Well, after 40 years, the numbers are in: growth has slowed, and the fruits of that growth went overwhelmingly to a very few at the top. As wages stagnated and the stock market soared, income and wealth flowed up, rather than trickling down.

How can wage restraint – to attain or maintain competitiveness – and reduced government programs possibly add up to higher standards of living? Ordinary citizens felt like they had been sold a bill of goods. They were right to feel conned.

We are now experiencing the political consequences of this grand deception: distrust of the elites, of the economic "science" on which neoliberalism was based, and of the money-corrupted political system that made it all possible.

The reality is that, despite its name, the era of neoliberalism was far from liberal. It imposed an intellectual orthodoxy whose guardians were utterly intolerant of dissent. Economists with heterodox views were treated as heretics to be shunned, or at best shunted off to a few isolated institutions. Neoliberalism bore little resemblance to the "open society" that Karl Popper had advocated. As George Soros has emphasized , Popper recognized that our society is a complex, ever-evolving system in which the more we learn, the more our knowledge changes the behavior of the system. 2

Nowhere was this intolerance greater than in macroeconomics, where the prevailing models ruled out the possibility of a crisis like the one we experienced in 2008. When the impossible happened, it was treated as if it were a 500-year flood – a freak occurrence that no model could have predicted. Even today, advocates of these theories refuse to accept that their belief in self-regulating markets and their dismissal of externalities as either nonexistent or unimportant led to the deregulation that was pivotal in fueling the crisis. The theory continues to survive, with Ptolemaic attempts to make it fit the facts, which attests to the reality that bad ideas, once established, often have a slow death. 3

If the 2008 financial crisis failed to make us realize that unfettered markets don't work, the climate crisis certainly should: neoliberalism will literally bring an end to our civilization. But it is also clear that demagogues who would have us turn our back on science and tolerance will only make matters worse.

The only way forward, the only way to save our planet and our civilization, is a rebirth of history. We must revitalize the Enlightenment and recommit to honoring its values of freedom, respect for knowledge, and democracy.

Follow Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University, is the co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize, former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, and former Chief Economist of the World Bank. His most recent book is People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent .

[Nov 10, 2019] Liz Warren's Trans Train Whistlestop

At least Warren offers me something positive along with usual neoliberal "identity wedge" idiocy ;-).
Nov 10, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Thank you, @BlackWomxnFor ! Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people are the backbone of our democracy and I don't take this endorsement lightly. I'm committed to fighting alongside you for the big, structural change our country needs. https://t.co/KqWsVoRYMb

-- Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 7, 2019

Well, that's clarifying. "Backbone of our democracy." That's about what you would expect a Harvard faculty member to say.

JoeMerl 2 days ago • edited

People need to remember that we literally didn't even have democracy until the trans movement started and finally brought us to The Right Side of History.

[Oct 28, 2019] National Neolibralism destroyed the World Trade Organisation by John Quiggin

Highly recommended!
Highly recommended !
Notable quotes:
"... Trying to head off redivision of the world into nationalist trade blocks by removing Trump via dubiously democratic upheavals (like color revolutions) with more or less fictional quasi-scandals as pro-Russian treason or anti-Ukrainian treason (which is "Huh?" on the face of it,) is futile. It stems from a desire to keep on "free" trading despite the secular stagnation that has set in, hoping that the sociopolitical nowhere (major at least) doesn't collapse until God or Nature or something restores the supposedly natural order of economic growth without end/crisis. ..."
"... I think efforts to keep the neoliberal international WTO/IMF/World Bank "free" trading system is futile because the lower orders are being ordered to be satisfied with a permanent, rigid class system ..."
"... If the pie is to shrink forever, all the vile masses (the deplorables) are going to hang together in their various ways, clinging to shared identity in race or religion or nationality, which will leave the international capitalists hanging, period. "Greed is good" mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive. Saying "Greed is good," then expecting selflessness from the lowers is not high-minded but self-serving. Redistribution of wealth upward has been terribly destructive to social cohesion, both domestically and in the sense of generosity towards foreigners. ..."
"... The pervasive feeling that "we" are going down and drastic action has to be taken is probably why there hasn't been much traction for impeachment til now. If Biden, shown to be shady in regards to Hunter, is nominated to lead the Democratic Party into four/eight years of Obama-esque promise to continue shrinking the status quo for the lowers, Trump will probably win. Warren might have a better chance to convince voters she means to change things (despite the example of Obama,) but she's not very appealing. And she is almost certainly likely to be manipulated like Trump. ..."
"... I *think* that's more or less what likbez, said, though obviously it's not the way likbez wanted to express it. I disagree strenuously on some details, like Warren's problem being a schoolmarm, rather than being a believer in capitalism who shares Trump's moral values against socialism, no matter what voters say. ..."
Oct 27, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

...what replaces it will be even worse. That's the (slightly premature) headline for my recent article in The Conversation .

The headline will become operative in December, if as expected, the Trump Administration maintains its refusal to nominate new judges to the WTO appellate panel . That will render the WTO unable to take on new cases, and bring about an effective return to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) which preceded the WTO .

An interesting sidelight is that Brexit No-Dealers have been keen on the merits of trading "on WTO terms", but those terms will probably be unenforceable by the time No Deal happens (if it does).

likbez 10.27.19 at 11:22 pm

That's another manifestation of the ascendance of "national neoliberalism," which now is displacing "classic neoliberalism."

Attempts to remove Trump via color revolution mechanisms (Russiagate, Ukrainegate) are essentially connected with the desire of adherents of classic neoliberalism to return to the old paradigm and kick the can down the road until the cliff. I think it is impossible because the neoliberal elite lost popular support (aka support of deplorables) and now is hanging in the air. "Greed is good" mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive.

That's why probably previous attempts to remove Trump were unsuccessful. And if corrupt classic neoliberal Biden wins Neoliberal Dem Party nomination, the USA probably will get the second term of Trump. Warren might have a chance as "Better Trump then Trump" although she proved so far to be pretty inept politician, and like "original" Trump probably can be easily coerced by the establishment, if she wins.

All this weeping and gnashing of teeth by "neoliberal Intelligentsia" does not change the fact that neoliberalism entered the period of structural crisis demonstrated by "secular stagnation," and, as such, its survival is far from certain. We probably can argue only about how long it will take for the "national neoliberalism" to dismantle it and what shape or form the new social order will take.

That does not mean that replacing the classic neoliberalism the new social order will be better, or more just. Neoliberalism was actually two steps back in comparison with the New Deal Capitalism that it replaced. It clearly was a social regress.

John Quiggin 10.28.19 at 3:00 am ( 2 )
Exactly right!
Matt 10.28.19 at 6:28 am ( 3 )
John, I am legitimate curious what you find "exactly right" in the comment above. Other than the obvious bit in the last line about new deal vs neoliberalism, I would say it is completely wrong, band presenting an amazingly distorted view of both the last few years and recent history.
reason 10.28.19 at 8:58 am ( 5 )
I agree with Matt.

In fact, I see the problem as more nuanced.

Neo-liberalism is not a unified thing. Right wing parties are not following the original (the value of choice) paradigm of Milton Friedman that won the argument during the 1970s inflation panic, but have implemented a deceitful bait and switch strategy, followed by continually shifting the goalposts – claiming – it would of worked but we weren't pure enough.

But parts of what Milton Friedman said (for instance the danger of bad micro-economic design of welfare systems creating poverty traps, and the inherent problems of high tariff rates) had a kernel of truth. (Unfortunately, Friedman's macro-economics was almost all wrong and has done great damage.)

Tim Worstall 10.28.19 at 12:39 pm (no link) 6

"In that context it felt free to override national governments on any issue that might affect international trade, most notably environmental policies."

Not entirely sure about that. The one case where I was informed enough to really know detail was the China and rare earths WTO case. China claimed that restrictions on exports of separated but otherwise unprocessed rare earths were being made on environmental grounds. Rare earth mining is a messy business, especially the way they do it.

Well, OK. And if such exports were being limited on environmental grounds then that would be WTO compliant. Which is why the claim presumably.

It was gently or not pointed out that exports of things made from those same rare earths were not limited in any sense. Therefore that environmental justification might not be quite the real one. Possibly, it was an attempt to suck RE using industry into China by making rare earths outside in short supply, but the availability for local processing being unrestricted? Certainly, one customer of mine at the time seriously considered packing up the US factory and moving it.

China lost the WTO case. Not because environmental reasons aren't a justification for restrictions on trade but because no one believed that was the reason, rather than the justification.

I don't know about other cases – shrimp, tuna – but there is at least the possibility that it's the argument, not the environment, which wasn't sufficient justification?

Jim Harrison 10.28.19 at 5:20 pm ( 9 )
Neoliberalism gets used as a generalized term of abuse these days. Not every political and institutional development of the last 40 years comes down to the worship of the free market.

In the EU, East Asia, and North America, some of what has taken place is the rationalization of bureaucratic practices and the weakening of archaic localisms. Some of these developments have been positive.

In this respect, neoliberalism in the blanket sense used by Likbez and many others is like what the the ancien regime was, a mix of regressive and progressive tendencies. In the aftermath of the on-going upheaval, it is likely that it will be reassessed and some of its features will be valued if they manage to persist.

I'm thinking of international trade agreements, transnational scientific organizations, and confederations like the European Union.

steven t johnson 10.29.19 at 12:29 am

If I may venture to translate @1?

Right-wing populism like Orban, Salvini, the Brexiteers are sweeping the globe and this is more of the same.

Trying to head off redivision of the world into nationalist trade blocks by removing Trump via dubiously democratic upheavals (like color revolutions) with more or less fictional quasi-scandals as pro-Russian treason or anti-Ukrainian treason (which is "Huh?" on the face of it,) is futile. It stems from a desire to keep on "free" trading despite the secular stagnation that has set in, hoping that the sociopolitical nowhere (major at least) doesn't collapse until God or Nature or something restores the supposedly natural order of economic growth without end/crisis.

I think efforts to keep the neoliberal international WTO/IMF/World Bank "free" trading system is futile because the lower orders are being ordered to be satisfied with a permanent, rigid class system .

If the pie is to shrink forever, all the vile masses (the deplorables) are going to hang together in their various ways, clinging to shared identity in race or religion or nationality, which will leave the international capitalists hanging, period. "Greed is good" mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive. Saying "Greed is good," then expecting selflessness from the lowers is not high-minded but self-serving. Redistribution of wealth upward has been terribly destructive to social cohesion, both domestically and in the sense of generosity towards foreigners.

The pervasive feeling that "we" are going down and drastic action has to be taken is probably why there hasn't been much traction for impeachment til now. If Biden, shown to be shady in regards to Hunter, is nominated to lead the Democratic Party into four/eight years of Obama-esque promise to continue shrinking the status quo for the lowers, Trump will probably win. Warren might have a better chance to convince voters she means to change things (despite the example of Obama,) but she's not very appealing. And she is almost certainly likely to be manipulated like Trump.

Again, despite the fury the old internationalism is collapsing under stagnation and weeping about it is irrelevant. Without any real ideas, we can only react to events as nationalist predatory capitals fight for their new world.

I'm not saying the new right wing populism is better. The New Deal/Great Society did more for America than its political successors since Nixon et al. The years since 1968 I think have been a regression and I see no reason–alas–that it can't get even worse.

I *think* that's more or less what likbez, said, though obviously it's not the way likbez wanted to express it. I disagree strenuously on some details, like Warren's problem being a schoolmarm, rather than being a believer in capitalism who shares Trump's moral values against socialism, no matter what voters say.

likbez 10.29.19 at 2:46 am 13

fausutsnotes 10.28.19 at 8:27 am @4

> What on earth is "national neoliberalism."

It is a particular mutation of the original concept similar to mutation of socialism into national socialism, when domestic policies are mostly preserved (including rampant deregulation) and supplemented by repressive measures (total surveillance) , but in foreign policy "might make right" and unilateralism with the stress on strictly bilateral regulations of trade (no WTO) somewhat modifies "Washington consensus". In other words, the foreign financial oligarchy has a demoted status under the "national neoliberalism" regime, while the national financial oligarchy and manufactures are elevated.

And the slogan of "financial oligarchy of all countries, unite" which is sine qua non of classic neoliberalism is effectively dead and is replaced by protection racket of the most political powerful players (look at Biden and Ukrainian oligarchs behavior here ;-)

> I think every sentence in that comment is either completely wrong or at least debatable. And is likbez actually John Hewson, because that comment reads like one of John Hewson's commentaries

I wish ;-). But it is true in the sense of sentiment expressed in his article A few bank scalps won't help unless they change their rotten culture That's a very similar approach to the problem.

politicalfootball 10.28.19 at 1:19 pm @8

> Most obviously, to define Warren and Trump as both being neoliberals drains the term of any meaning

You are way too fast even for a political football forward ;-).

Warren capitalizes on the same discontent and the feeling of the crisis of neoliberalism that allowed Trump to win. Yes, she is a much better candidate than Trump, and her policy proposals are better (unless she is coerced by the Deep State like Trump in the first three months of her Presidency).

Still, unlike Sanders in domestic policy and Tulsi in foreign policy, she is a neoliberal reformist at heart and a neoliberal warmonger in foreign policy. Most of her policy proposals are quite shallow, and are just a band-aid.

"Warren's "I have a plan" mantra sounds an awful lot like a dog whistle to Clinton voters" Elizabeth Warren's
Plan-itis Excessive Lobbying Case Study naked capitalism

Jim Harrison 10.28.19 at 5:20 pm @9

> Neoliberalism gets used as a generalized term of abuse these days. Not every political and institutional development of the last 40 years comes down to the worship of the free market.

This is a typical stance of neoliberal MSM, a popular line of attack on critics of neoliberalism.

Yes, of course, not everything political and institutional development of the last 40 years comes down to the worship of the "free market." But how can it be otherwise? Notions of human agency, a complex interaction of politics and economics in human affairs, technological progress since 1970th, etc., all play a role. But a historian needs to be able to somehow integrate the mass of evidence into a coherent and truthful story.

And IMHO this story for the last several decades is the ascendance and now decline of "classic neoliberalism" with its stress on the neoliberal globalization and opening of the foreign markets for transnational corporations (often via direct or indirect (financial) pressure, or subversive actions including color revolutions and military intervention) and replacement of it by "national neoliberalism" -- domestic neoliberalism without (or with a different type of) neoliberal globalization.

Defining features of national neoliberalism along with the rejection of neoliberal globalization and, in particular, multiparty treaties like WTO is massive, overwhelming propaganda including politicized witch hunts (via neoliberal MSM), total surveillance of citizens by the national security state institutions (three-letter agencies which now acquired a political role), as well as elements of classic nationalism built-in.

The dominant ideology of the last 30 years was definitely connected with "worshiping of free markets," a secular religion that displaced alternative views and, for several decades (say 1976 -2007), dominated the discourse. So worshiping (or pretense of worshiping) of "free market" (as if such market exists, and is not a theological construct -- a deity of some sort) is really defining feature here.

[Oct 27, 2019] DNC is converting the debates into a farce: Andr a Mitchell as a moderator as it MadCow presence is not enough to turn it into a farce.

The parade of neocons. Yes the same Andrea Mitchell, who pushed Iraq war...
Oct 27, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
The Debate

"MSNBC names four renowned female journalists as moderators for November debate" [ NBC ]. "Moderating the Nov. 20 event, which is being co-hosted by MSNBC and The Washington Post, will be Rachel Maddow, host of "The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC; Andrea Mitchell, host of "Andrea Mitchell Reports" on MSNBC and NBC News' chief foreign affairs correspondent; Kristen Welker, NBC News' White House correspondent; and Ashley Parker, a White House reporter for The Washington Post." • The count of journalists is off by at least one.

[Oct 23, 2019] Neoconservatism Is An Omnicidal Death Cult, And It Must Be Stopped by Caitlin Johnstone

Highly recommended!
Neocons are lobbyists for MIC, the it is MIC that is the center of this this cult. People like Kriston, Kagan and Max Boot are just well paid prostituttes on MIC, which includes intelligence agencies as a very important part -- the bridge to Wall Street so to speak.
Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member or a child molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives.
Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Neoconservatism is a psychopathic death cult whose relentless hyper-hawkishness is a greater threat to the survival of our species than anything else in the world right now. These people are traitors to humanity, and their ideology needs to be purged from the face of the earth forever. I'm not advocating violence of any kind here, but let's stop pretending that this is okay. Let's start calling these people the murderous psychopaths that they are whenever they rear their evil heads and stop respecting and legitimizing them. There should be a massive, massive social stigma around what these people do, so we need to create one. They should be marginalized, not leading us. ..."
Jul 18, 2017 | medium.com

Glenn Greenwald has just published a very important article in The Intercept that I would have everyone in America read if I could. Titled "With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons", Greenwald's excellent piece details the frustratingly under-reported way that the leaders of the neoconservative death cult have been realigning with the Democratic party.

This pivot back to the party of neoconservatism's origin is one of the most significant political events of the new millennium, but aside from a handful of sharp political analysts like Greenwald it's been going largely undiscussed. This is weird, and we need to start talking about it. A lot. Their willful alignment with neoconservatism should be the very first thing anyone ever talks about when discussing the Democratic party.

When you hear someone complaining that the Democratic party has no platform besides being anti-Trump, your response should be, "Yeah it does. Their platform is the omnicidal death cult of neoconservatism."

It's absolutely insane that neoconservatism is still a thing, let alone still a thing that mainstream America tends to regard as a perfectly legitimate set of opinions for a human being to have. As what Dr. Paul Craig Roberts rightly calls "the most dangerous ideology that has ever existed," neoconservatism has used its nonpartisan bloodlust to work with the Democratic party for the purpose of escalating tensions with Russia on multiple fronts, bringing our species to the brink of what could very well end up being a world war with a nuclear superpower and its allies.

This is not okay. Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member or a child molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives. Check out leading neoconservative Bill Kristol's response to the aforementioned Intercept article:

... ... ...

Okay, leaving aside the fact that this bloodthirsty psychopath is saying neocons "won" a Cold War that neocons have deliberately reignited by fanning the flames of the Russia hysteria and pushing for more escalations , how insane is it that we live in a society where a public figure can just be like, "Yeah, I'm a neocon, I advocate for using military aggression to maintain US hegemony and I think it's great," and have that be okay? These people kill children. Neoconservatism means piles upon piles of child corpses. It means devoting the resources of a nation that won't even provide its citizens with a real healthcare system to widespread warfare and all the death, destruction, chaos, terrorism, rape and suffering that necessarily comes with war. The only way that you can possibly regard neoconservatism as just one more set of political opinions is if you completely compartmentalize away from the reality of everything that it is.

This should not happen. The tensions with Russia that these monsters have worked so hard to escalate could blow up at any moment; there are too many moving parts, too many things that could go wrong. The last Cold War brought our species within a hair's breadth of total annihilation due to our inability to foresee all possible complications which can arise from such a contest, and these depraved death cultists are trying to drag us back into another one. Nothing is worth that. Nothing is worth risking the life of every organism on earth, but they're risking it all for geopolitical influence.

... ... ...

I've had a very interesting last 24 hours. My article about Senator John McCain (which I titled "Please Just Fucking Die Already" because the title I really wanted to use seemed a bit crass) has received an amount of attention that I'm not accustomed to, from CNN to USA Today to the Washington Post . I watched Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar talking about me on The View . They called me a "Bernie Sanders person." It was a trip. Apparently some very low-level Republican with a few hundred Twitter followers went and retweeted my article with an approving caption, and that sort of thing is worthy of coast-to-coast mainstream coverage in today's America.

This has of course brought in a deluge of angry comments, mostly from people whose social media pages are full of Russiagate nonsense , showing where McCain's current support base comes from. Some call him a war hero, some talk about him like he's a perfectly fine politician, some defend him as just a normal person whose politics I happen to disagree with.

This is insane. This man has actively and enthusiastically pushed for every single act of military aggression that America has engaged in, and some that it hasn't , throughout his entire career. He makes Hillary "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton look like a dove. When you look at John McCain, the very first thing you see should not be a former presidential candidate, a former POW or an Arizona Senator; the first thing you see should be the piles of human corpses that he has helped to create. This is not a normal kind of person, and I still do sincerely hope that he dies of natural causes before he can do any more harm.

Can we change this about ourselves, please? None of us should have to live in a world where pushing for more bombing campaigns at every opportunity is an acceptable agenda for a public figure to have. Neoconservatism is a psychopathic death cult whose relentless hyper-hawkishness is a greater threat to the survival of our species than anything else in the world right now. These people are traitors to humanity, and their ideology needs to be purged from the face of the earth forever. I'm not advocating violence of any kind here, but let's stop pretending that this is okay. Let's start calling these people the murderous psychopaths that they are whenever they rear their evil heads and stop respecting and legitimizing them. There should be a massive, massive social stigma around what these people do, so we need to create one. They should be marginalized, not leading us.

-- -- --

I'm a 100 percent reader-funded journalist so if you enjoyed this, please consider helping me out by sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following me on Twitter , or throwing some money into my hat on Patreon .

[Oct 19, 2019] Strange things that happen of Fox due to Tucker Carlson's show

Oct 19, 2019 | www.unz.com

Mikhail , says: Website October 4, 2019 at 8:33 am GMT

@Ron Unz Thanks to Tucker Carlson's show, some folks on the left like Cohen, Mate and Greenwald, are more likely to get air time on Fox News than MSNBC and CNN.

[Oct 10, 2019] Trump, Impeachment Forgetting What Brought Him to the White House by Andrew J. Bacevich

Highly recommended!
The term "centrist" is replaced by a more appropriate term "neoliberal oligarchy"
Notable quotes:
"... Furthermore, Donald Trump might well emerge from this national ordeal with his reelection chances enhanced. Such a prospect is belatedly insinuating itself into public discourse. For that reason, certain anti-Trump pundits are already showing signs of going wobbly, suggesting , for instance, that censure rather than outright impeachment might suffice as punishment for the president's various offenses. Yet censuring Trump while allowing him to stay in office would be the equivalent of letting Harvey Weinstein off with a good tongue-lashing so that he can get back to making movies. Censure is for wimps. ..."
"... So if Trump finds himself backed into a corner, Democrats aren't necessarily in a more favorable position. And that aren't the half of it. Let me suggest that, while Trump is being pursued, it's you, my fellow Americans, who are really being played. The unspoken purpose of impeachment is not removal, but restoration. The overarching aim is not to replace Trump with Mike Pence -- the equivalent of exchanging Groucho for Harpo. No, the object of the exercise is to return power to those who created the conditions that enabled Trump to win the White House in the first place. ..."
"... For many of the main participants in this melodrama, the actual but unstated purpose of impeachment is to correct this great wrong and thereby restore history to its anointed path. ..."
"... In a recent column in The Guardian, Professor Samuel Moyn makes the essential point: Removing from office a vulgar, dishonest and utterly incompetent president comes nowhere close to capturing what's going on here. To the elites most intent on ousting Trump, far more important than anything he may say or do is what he signifies. He is a walking, talking repudiation of everything they believe and, by extension, of a future they had come to see as foreordained. ..."
"... Moyn styles these anti-Trump elites as "neoliberal oligarchy", members of the post-Cold War political mainstream that allowed ample room for nominally conservative Bushes and nominally liberal Clintons, while leaving just enough space for Barack Obama's promise of hope-and-(not-too-much) change. ..."
"... These "neoliberal oligarchy" share a common worldview. They believe in the universality of freedom as defined and practiced within the United States. They believe in corporate capitalism operating on a planetary scale. They believe in American primacy, with the United States presiding over a global order as the sole superpower. They believe in "American global leadership," which they define as primarily a military enterprise. And perhaps most of all, while collecting degrees from Georgetown, Harvard, Oxford, Wellesley, the University of Chicago, and Yale, they came to believe in a so-called meritocracy as the preferred mechanism for allocating wealth, power and privilege. All of these together comprise the sacred scripture of contemporary American political elites. And if Donald Trump's antagonists have their way, his removal will restore that sacred scripture to its proper place as the basis of policy. ..."
"... "For all their appeals to enduring moral values," Moyn writes, "the "neoliberal oligarchy" are deploying a transparent strategy to return to power." Destruction of the Trump presidency is a necessary precondition for achieving that goal. ""neoliberal oligarchy" simply want to return to the status quo interrupted by Trump, their reputations laundered by their courageous opposition to his mercurial reign, and their policies restored to credibility." Precisely. ..."
"... how does such misconduct compare to the calamities engineered by the "neoliberal oligarchy" who preceded him? ..."
"... Trump's critics speak with one voice in demanding accountability. Yet virtually no one has been held accountable for the pain, suffering, and loss inflicted by the architects of the Iraq War and the Great Recession. Why is that? As another presidential election approaches, the question not only goes unanswered, but unasked. ..."
"... To win reelection, Trump, a corrupt con man (who jumped ship on his own bankrupt casinos, money in hand, leaving others holding the bag) will cheat and lie. Yet, in the politics of the last half-century, these do not qualify as novelties. (Indeed, apart from being the son of a sitting U.S. vice president, what made Hunter Biden worth $50Gs per month to a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch? I'm curious.) That the president and his associates are engaging in a cover-up is doubtless the case. Yet another cover-up proceeds in broad daylight on a vastly larger scale. "Trump's shambolic presidency somehow seems less unsavory," Moyn writes, when considering the fact that his critics refuse "to admit how massively his election signified the failure of their policies, from endless war to economic inequality." Just so. ..."
"... Exactly. Trump is the result of voter disgust with Bush III vs Clinton II, the presumed match up for a year or more leading up to 2016. Now Democrats want to do it again, thinking they can elect anybody against Trump. That's what Hillary thought too. ..."
"... Trump won for lack of alternatives. Our political class is determined to prevent any alternatives breaking through this time either. They don't want Trump, but even more they want to protect their gravy train of donor money, the huge overspending on medical care (four times the defense budget) and of course all those Forever Wars. ..."
"... Trump could win, for the same reasons as last time, even though the result would be no better than last time. ..."
"... I wish the slick I.D. politics obsessed corporate Dems nothing but the worst, absolute worst. They reap what they sow. If it means another four years of Trump, so be it. It's the price that's going to have to be paid. ..."
"... At a time when a majority of U.S. citizens cannot muster up $500 for an emergency dental bill or car repair without running down to the local "pay day loan" lender shark (now established as legitimate businesses) the corporate Dems, in their infinite wisdom, decide to concoct an impeachment circus to run simultaneously when all the dirt against the execrable Brennan and his intel minions starts to hit the press for their Russiagate hoax. Nice sleight of hand there corporate Dems. ..."
Oct 10, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

There is blood in the water and frenzied sharks are closing in for the kill. Or so they think.

From the time of Donald Trump's election, American elites have hungered for this moment. At long last, they have the 45th president of the United States cornered. In typically ham-handed fashion, Trump has given his adversaries the very means to destroy him politically. They will not waste the opportunity. Impeachment now -- finally, some will say -- qualifies as a virtual certainty.

No doubt many surprises lie ahead. Yet the Democrats controlling the House of Representatives have passed the point of no return. The time for prudential judgments -- the Republican-controlled Senate will never convict, so why bother? -- is gone for good. To back down now would expose the president's pursuers as spineless cowards. The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC would not soon forgive such craven behavior.

So, as President Woodrow Wilson, speaking in 1919 put it, "The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God." Of course, the issue back then was a notably weighty one: whether to ratify the Versailles Treaty. That it now concerns a " Mafia-like shakedown " orchestrated by one of Wilson's successors tells us something about the trajectory of American politics over the course of the last century and it has not been a story of ascent.

The effort to boot the president from office is certain to yield a memorable spectacle. The rancor and contempt that have clogged American politics like a backed-up sewer since the day of Trump's election will now find release. Watergate will pale by comparison. The uproar triggered by Bill Clinton's " sexual relations " will be nothing by comparison. A de facto collaboration between Trump, those who despise him, and those who despise his critics all but guarantees that this story will dominate the news, undoubtedly for months to come.

As this process unspools, what politicians like to call "the people's business" will go essentially unattended. So while Congress considers whether or not to remove Trump from office, gun-control legislation will languish, the deterioration of the nation's infrastructure will proceed apace, needed healthcare reforms will be tabled, the military-industrial complex will waste yet more billions, and the national debt, already at $22 trillion -- larger, that is, than the entire economy -- will continue to surge. The looming threat posed by climate change, much talked about of late, will proceed all but unchecked. For those of us preoccupied with America's role in the world, the obsolete assumptions and habits undergirding what's still called " national security " will continue to evade examination. Our endless wars will remain endless and pointless.

By way of compensation, we might wonder what benefits impeachment is likely to yield. Answering that question requires examining four scenarios that describe the range of possibilities awaiting the nation.

The first and most to be desired (but least likely) is that Trump will tire of being a public piñata and just quit. With the thrill of flying in Air Force One having worn off, being president can't be as much fun these days. Why put up with further grief? How much more entertaining for Trump to retire to the political sidelines where he can tweet up a storm and indulge his penchant for name-calling. And think of the "deals" an ex-president could make in countries like Israel, North Korea, Poland, and Saudi Arabia on which he's bestowed favors. Cha-ching! As of yet, however, the president shows no signs of taking the easy (and lucrative) way out.

The second possible outcome sounds almost as good but is no less implausible: a sufficient number of Republican senators rediscover their moral compass and "do the right thing," joining with Democrats to create the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump and send him packing. In the Washington of that classic 20th-century film director Frank Capra, with Jimmy Stewart holding forth on the Senate floor and a moist-eyed Jean Arthur cheering him on from the gallery, this might have happened. In the real Washington of "Moscow Mitch" McConnell , think again.

The third somewhat seamier outcome might seem a tad more likely. It postulates that McConnell and various GOP senators facing reelection in 2020 or 2022 will calculate that turning on Trump just might offer the best way of saving their own skins. The president's loyalty to just about anyone, wives included, has always been highly contingent, the people streaming out of his administration routinely making the point. So why should senatorial loyalty to the president be any different? At the moment, however, indications that Trump loyalists out in the hinterlands will reward such turncoats are just about nonexistent. Unless that base were to flip, don't expect Republican senators to do anything but flop.

That leaves outcome No. 4, easily the most probable: while the House will impeach, the Senate will decline to convict. Trump will therefore stay right where he is, with the matter of his fitness for office effectively deferred to the November 2020 elections. Except as a source of sadomasochistic diversion, the entire agonizing experience will, therefore, prove to be a colossal waste of time and blather.

Furthermore, Donald Trump might well emerge from this national ordeal with his reelection chances enhanced. Such a prospect is belatedly insinuating itself into public discourse. For that reason, certain anti-Trump pundits are already showing signs of going wobbly, suggesting , for instance, that censure rather than outright impeachment might suffice as punishment for the president's various offenses. Yet censuring Trump while allowing him to stay in office would be the equivalent of letting Harvey Weinstein off with a good tongue-lashing so that he can get back to making movies. Censure is for wimps.

Besides, as Trump campaigns for a second term, he would almost surely wear censure like a badge of honor. Keep in mind that Congress's approval ratings are considerably worse than his. To more than a few members of the public, a black mark awarded by Congress might look like a gold star.

Restoration Not Removal

So if Trump finds himself backed into a corner, Democrats aren't necessarily in a more favorable position. And that aren't the half of it. Let me suggest that, while Trump is being pursued, it's you, my fellow Americans, who are really being played. The unspoken purpose of impeachment is not removal, but restoration. The overarching aim is not to replace Trump with Mike Pence -- the equivalent of exchanging Groucho for Harpo. No, the object of the exercise is to return power to those who created the conditions that enabled Trump to win the White House in the first place.

Just recently, for instance, Hillary Clinton declared Trump to be an "illegitimate president." Implicit in her charge is the conviction -- no doubt sincere -- that people like Donald Trump are not supposed to be president. People like Hillary Clinton -- people possessing credentials like hers and sharing her values -- should be the chosen ones. Here we glimpse the true meaning of legitimacy in this context. Whatever the vote in the Electoral College, Trump doesn't deserve to be president and never did.

For many of the main participants in this melodrama, the actual but unstated purpose of impeachment is to correct this great wrong and thereby restore history to its anointed path.

In a recent column in The Guardian, Professor Samuel Moyn makes the essential point: Removing from office a vulgar, dishonest and utterly incompetent president comes nowhere close to capturing what's going on here. To the elites most intent on ousting Trump, far more important than anything he may say or do is what he signifies. He is a walking, talking repudiation of everything they believe and, by extension, of a future they had come to see as foreordained.

Moyn styles these anti-Trump elites as "neoliberal oligarchy", members of the post-Cold War political mainstream that allowed ample room for nominally conservative Bushes and nominally liberal Clintons, while leaving just enough space for Barack Obama's promise of hope-and-(not-too-much) change.

These "neoliberal oligarchy" share a common worldview. They believe in the universality of freedom as defined and practiced within the United States. They believe in corporate capitalism operating on a planetary scale. They believe in American primacy, with the United States presiding over a global order as the sole superpower. They believe in "American global leadership," which they define as primarily a military enterprise. And perhaps most of all, while collecting degrees from Georgetown, Harvard, Oxford, Wellesley, the University of Chicago, and Yale, they came to believe in a so-called meritocracy as the preferred mechanism for allocating wealth, power and privilege. All of these together comprise the sacred scripture of contemporary American political elites. And if Donald Trump's antagonists have their way, his removal will restore that sacred scripture to its proper place as the basis of policy.

"For all their appeals to enduring moral values," Moyn writes, "the "neoliberal oligarchy" are deploying a transparent strategy to return to power." Destruction of the Trump presidency is a necessary precondition for achieving that goal. ""neoliberal oligarchy" simply want to return to the status quo interrupted by Trump, their reputations laundered by their courageous opposition to his mercurial reign, and their policies restored to credibility." Precisely.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

The U.S. military's "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad at the start of the Iraq War, as broadcast on CNN.

For such a scheme to succeed, however, laundering reputations alone will not suffice. Equally important will be to bury any recollection of the catastrophes that paved the way for an über -qualified centrist to lose to an indisputably unqualified and unprincipled political novice in 2016.

Holding promised security assistance hostage unless a foreign leader agrees to do you political favors is obviously and indisputably wrong. Trump's antics regarding Ukraine may even meet some definition of criminal. Still, how does such misconduct compare to the calamities engineered by the "neoliberal oligarchy" who preceded him? Consider, in particular, the George W. Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 (along with the spin-off wars that followed). Consider, too, the reckless economic policies that produced the Great Recession of 2007-2008. As measured by the harm inflicted on the American people (and others), the offenses for which Trump is being impeached qualify as mere misdemeanors.

Honest people may differ on whether to attribute the Iraq War to outright lies or monumental hubris. When it comes to tallying up the consequences, however, the intentions of those who sold the war don't particularly matter. The results include thousands of Americans killed; tens of thousands wounded, many grievously, or left to struggle with the effects of PTSD; hundreds of thousands of non-Americans killed or injured ; millions displaced ; trillions of dollars expended; radical groups like ISIS empowered (and in its case even formed inside a U.S. prison in Iraq); and the Persian Gulf region plunged into turmoil from which it has yet to recover. How do Trump's crimes stack up against these?

The Great Recession stemmed directly from economic policies implemented during the administration of President Bill Clinton and continued by his successor. Deregulating the banking sector was projected to produce a bonanza in which all would share. Yet, as a direct result of the ensuing chicanery, nearly 9 million Americans lost their jobs, while overall unemployment shot up to 10 percent. Roughly 4 million Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. The stock market cratered and millions saw their life savings evaporate. Again, the question must be asked: How do these results compare to Trump's dubious dealings with Ukraine?

Trump's critics speak with one voice in demanding accountability. Yet virtually no one has been held accountable for the pain, suffering, and loss inflicted by the architects of the Iraq War and the Great Recession. Why is that? As another presidential election approaches, the question not only goes unanswered, but unasked.

Sen. Carter Glass (D–Va.) and Rep. Henry B. Steagall (D–Ala.-3), the co-sponsors of the 1932 Glass–Steagall Act separating investment and commercial banking, which was repealed in 1999. (Wikimedia Commons)

To win reelection, Trump, a corrupt con man (who jumped ship on his own bankrupt casinos, money in hand, leaving others holding the bag) will cheat and lie. Yet, in the politics of the last half-century, these do not qualify as novelties. (Indeed, apart from being the son of a sitting U.S. vice president, what made Hunter Biden worth $50Gs per month to a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch? I'm curious.) That the president and his associates are engaging in a cover-up is doubtless the case. Yet another cover-up proceeds in broad daylight on a vastly larger scale. "Trump's shambolic presidency somehow seems less unsavory," Moyn writes, when considering the fact that his critics refuse "to admit how massively his election signified the failure of their policies, from endless war to economic inequality." Just so.

What are the real crimes? Who are the real criminals? No matter what happens in the coming months, don't expect the Trump impeachment proceedings to come within a country mile of addressing such questions.

Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular , is president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft . His new book, " The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory ," will be published in January.

This article is from TomDispatch.com .


Mark Thomason , October 9, 2019 at 17:03

Exactly. Trump is the result of voter disgust with Bush III vs Clinton II, the presumed match up for a year or more leading up to 2016. Now Democrats want to do it again, thinking they can elect anybody against Trump. That's what Hillary thought too.

Now the Republicans who lost their party to Trump think they can take it back with somebody even more lame than Jeb, if only they could find someone, anyone, to run on that non-plan.

Trump won for lack of alternatives. Our political class is determined to prevent any alternatives breaking through this time either. They don't want Trump, but even more they want to protect their gravy train of donor money, the huge overspending on medical care (four times the defense budget) and of course all those Forever Wars.

Trump could win, for the same reasons as last time, even though the result would be no better than last time.

LJ , October 9, 2019 at 17:01

Well, yeah but I recall that what won Trump the Republican Nomination was first and foremost his stance on Immigration. This issue is what separated him from the herd of candidates . None of them had the courage or the desire to go against Governmental Groupthink on Immigration. All he then had to do was get on top of low energy Jeb Bush and the road was clear. He got the base on his side on this issue and on his repeated statement that he wished to normalize relations with Russia . He won the nomination easily. The base is still on his side on these issues but Governmental Groupthink has prevailed in the House, the Senate, the Intelligence Services and the Federal Courts. Funny how nobody in the Beltway, especially not in media, is brave enough to admit that the entire Neoconservative scheme has been a disaster and that of course we should get out of Syria . Nor can anyone recall the corruption and warmongering that now seem that seems endemic to the Democratic Party. Of course Trump has to wear goat's horns. "Off with his head".

Drew Hunkins , October 9, 2019 at 16:00

I wish the slick I.D. politics obsessed corporate Dems nothing but the worst, absolute worst. They reap what they sow. If it means another four years of Trump, so be it. It's the price that's going to have to be paid.

At a time when a majority of U.S. citizens cannot muster up $500 for an emergency dental bill or car repair without running down to the local "pay day loan" lender shark (now established as legitimate businesses) the corporate Dems, in their infinite wisdom, decide to concoct an impeachment circus to run simultaneously when all the dirt against the execrable Brennan and his intel minions starts to hit the press for their Russiagate hoax. Nice sleight of hand there corporate Dems.

Of course, the corporate Dems would rather lose to Trump than win with a progressive-populist like Bernie. After all, a Bernie win would mean an end to a lot of careerism and cushy positions within the establishment political scene in Washington and throughout the country.

Now we even have the destroyer of Libya mulling another run for the presidency.

Forget about having a job the next day and forget about the 25% interest on your credit card or that half your income is going toward your rent or mortgage, or that you barely see your kids b/c of the 60 hour work week, just worry about women lawyers being able to make partner at the firm, and trans people being able to use whatever bathroom they wish and male athletes being able to compete against women based on genitalia (no, wait, I'm confused now).

Either class politics and class warfare comes front and center or we witness a burgeoning neo-fascist movement in our midst. It's that simple, something has got to give!

[Oct 09, 2019] Ukrainegate as the textbook example of how the neoliberal elite manipulates the MSM and the narrative for purposes of misdirecting attention and perception of their true intentions and objectives -- distracting the electorate from real issues

Highly recommended!
Oct 09, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

EMichael , October 09, 2019 at 02:07 PM

His entire life trump has been a deadbeat.

"The president is dropping by the city on Thursday for one of his periodic angry wank-fests at the Target Center, which is the venue in which this event will be inflicted upon the Twin Cities. (And, just as an aside, given the events of the past 10 days, this one should be a doozy.) Other Minneapolis folk are planning an extensive unwelcoming party outside the arena, which necessarily would require increased security, which is expensive. So, realizing that it was dealing with a notorious deadbeat -- in keeping with his customary business plan, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago has stiffed 10 cities this year for bills relating to security costs that total almost a million bucks -- the company that provides the security for the Target Center wants the president*'s campaign to shell out more than $500,000.

This has sent the president* into a Twitter tantrum against Frey, who seems not to be that impressed by it. Right from when the visit was announced, Frey has been jabbing at the president*'s ego. From the Star-Tribune:

"Our entire city will stand not behind the President, but behind the communities and people who continue to make our city -- and this country -- great," Frey said. "While there is no legal mechanism to prevent the president from visiting, his message of hatred will never be welcome in Minneapolis."

It is a mayor's lot to deal with out-of-state troublemakers. Always has been."

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a29416840/trump-feud-minneapolis-mayor-security-rally/

ilsm , October 09, 2019 at 03:03 PM
When it comes to Trump not going full Cheney war monged in Syria Krugman is a Bircher!l
likbez , October 09, 2019 at 03:22 PM
This is not about Trump. This is not even about Ukraine and/or foreign powers influence on the US election (of which Israel, UK, and Saudi are three primary examples; in this particular order.)

Russiagate 2.0 (aka Ukrainegate) is the case, textbook example if you wish, of how the neoliberal elite manipulates the MSM and the narrative for purposes of misdirecting attention and perception of their true intentions and objectives -- distracting the electorate from real issues.

An excellent observation by JohnH (October 01, 2019 at 01:47 PM )

"It all depends on which side of the Infowars you find yourself. The facts themselves are too obscure and byzantine."

There are two competing narratives here:

1. NARRATIVE 1: CIA swamp scum tried to re-launch Russiagate as Russiagate 2.0. This is CIA coup d'état aided and abetted by CIA-democrats like Pelosi and Schiff. Treason, as Trump aptly said. This is narrative shared by "anti-Deep Staters" who sometimes are nicknamed "Trumptards". Please note that the latter derogatory nickname is factually incorrect: supporters of this narrative often do not support Trump. They just oppose machinations of the Deep State. And/or neoliberalism personified by Clinton camp, with its rampant corruption.

2. NARRATIVE 2: Trump tried to derail his opponent using his influence of foreign state President (via military aid) as leverage and should be impeached for this and previous crimes. ("Full of Schiff" commenters narrative, neoliberal democrats, or demorats.) Supporters of this category usually bought Russiagate 1.0 narrative line, hook and sinker. Some of them are brainwashed, but mostly simply ignorant neoliberal lemmings without even basic political education.

In any case, while Russiagate 2.0 is probably another World Wrestling Federation style fight, I think "anti-Deep-staters" are much closer to the truth.

What is missing here is the real problem: the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA (and elsewhere).

So this circus serves an important purpose (intentionally or unintentionally) -- to disrupt voters from the problems that are really burning, and are equal to a slow-progressing cancer in the US society.

And implicitly derail Warren (being a weak politician she does not understand that, and jumped into Ukrainegate bandwagon )

I am not that competent here, so I will just mention some obvious symptoms:

  1. Loss of legitimacy of the ruling neoliberal elite (which demonstrated itself in 2016 with election of Trump);
  2. Desperation of many working Americans with sliding standard of living; loss of meaningful jobs due to offshoring of manufacturing and automation (which demonstrated itself in opioids abuse epidemics; similar to epidemics of alcoholism in the USSR before its dissolution.
  3. Loss of previously available freedoms. Loss of "free press" replaced by the neoliberal echo chamber in major MSM. The uncontrolled and brutal rule of financial oligarchy and allied with the intelligence agencies as the third rail of US politics (plus the conversion of the state after 9/11 into national security state);
  4. Coming within this century end of the "Petroleum Age" and the global crisis that it can entail;
  5. Rampant militarism, tremendous waist of resources on the arms race, and overstretched efforts to maintain and expand global, controlled from Washington, neoliberal empire. Efforts that since 1991 were a primary focus of unhinged after 1991 neocon faction US elite who totally controls foreign policy establishment ("full-spectrum dominance). They are stealing money from working people to fund an imperial project, and as part of neoliberal redistribution of wealth up

Most of the commenters here live a comfortable life in the financially secured retirement, and, as such, are mostly satisfied with the status quo. And almost completely isolated from the level of financial insecurity of most common Americans (healthcare racket might be the only exception).

And re-posting of articles which confirm your own worldview (echo chamber posting) is nice entertainment, I think ;-)

Some of those posters actually sometimes manage to find really valuable info. For which I am thankful. In other cases, when we have a deluge of abhorrent neoliberal propaganda postings (the specialty of Fred C. Dobbs) which often generate really insightful comments from the members of the "anti-Deep State" camp.

Still it would be beneficial if the flow of neoliberal spam is slightly curtailed.

[Sep 22, 2019] Neoliberalism Political Success, Economic Failure Portside by Robert Kuttner

Highly recommended!
The key to the success of neoliberal was a bunch on bought intellectual prostitutes like Milton Friedman and the drive to occupy economic departments of the the universities using money from the financial elite. which along with think tank continued mercenary army of neoliberalism who fought and win the battle with weakened New Del capitalism supporters. After that neoliberalism was from those departments like the centers of infection via indoctrination of each new generation of students. Which is a classic mixture of Bolsheviks methods and Trotskyite theory adapted tot he need of financial oligarchy.
Essentially we see the tragedy of Lysenkoism replayed in the USA. When false theory supported by financial oligarchy and then state forcefully suppressed all other economic thought and became the only politically correct theory in the USA and Western Europe.
Notable quotes:
"... The neoliberal counterrevolution, in theory and policy, has reversed or undermined nearly every aspect of managed capitalism -- from progressive taxation, welfare transfers, and antitrust, to the empowerment of workers and the regulation of banks and other major industries. ..."
"... Neoliberalism's premise is that free markets can regulate themselves; that government is inherently incompetent, captive to special interests, and an intrusion on the efficiency of the market; that in distributive terms, market outcomes are basically deserved; and that redistribution creates perverse incentives by punishing the economy's winners and rewarding its losers. So government should get out of the market's way. ..."
"... Now, after nearly half a century, the verdict is in. Virtually every one of these policies has failed, even on their own terms. ..."
"... Economic power has resulted in feedback loops of political power, in which elites make rules that bolster further concentration. ..."
"... The culprit isn't just "markets" -- some impersonal force that somehow got loose again. This is a story of power using theory. The mixed economy was undone by economic elites, who revised rules for their own benefit. They invested heavily in friendly theorists to bless this shift as sound and necessary economics, and friendly politicians to put those theories into practice. ..."
"... The grand neoliberal experiment of the past 40 years has demonstrated that markets in fact do not regulate themselves. Managed markets turn out to be more equitable and more efficient. ..."
"... The British political economist Colin Crouch captured this anomaly in a book nicely titled The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism . Why did neoliberalism not die? As Crouch observed, neoliberalism failed both as theory and as policy, but succeeded superbly as power politics for economic elites. ..."
"... The neoliberal ascendance has had another calamitous cost -- to democratic legitimacy. As government ceased to buffer market forces, daily life has become more of a struggle for ordinary people. ..."
"... After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, ours was widely billed as an era when triumphant liberal capitalism would march hand in hand with liberal democracy. But in a few brief decades, the ostensibly secure regime of liberal democracy has collapsed in nation after nation, with echoes of the 1930s. ..."
"... As the great political historian Karl Polanyi warned, when markets overwhelm society, ordinary people often turn to tyrants. In regimes that border on neofascist, klepto-capitalists get along just fine with dictators, undermining the neoliberal premise of capitalism and democracy as complements. ..."
"... Classically, the premise of a "free market" is that government simply gets out of the way. This is nonsensical, since all markets are creatures of rules, most fundamentally rules defining property, but also rules defining credit, debt, and bankruptcy; rules defining patents, trademarks, and copyrights; rules defining terms of labor; and so on. Even deregulation requires rules. In Polanyi's words, "laissez-faire was planned." ..."
"... Around the same time, the term neoconservative was used as a self-description by former liberals who embraced conservatism, on cultural, racial, economic, and foreign-policy grounds. Neoconservatives were neoliberals in economics. ..."
"... Lavishly funded centers and tenured chairs were underwritten by the Olin, Scaife, Bradley, and other far-right foundations to promote such variants of free-market theory as law and economics, public choice, rational choice, cost-benefit analysis, maximize-shareholder-value, and kindred schools of thought. These theories colonized several academic disciplines. All were variations on the claim that markets worked and that government should get out of the way. ..."
"... Market failure was dismissed as a rare special case; government failure was said to be ubiquitous. Theorists worked hand in glove with lobbyists and with public officials. But in every major case where neoliberal theory generated policy, the result was political success and economic failure. ..."
"... For example, supply-side economics became the justification for tax cuts, on the premise that taxes punished enterprise. ..."
"... Robert Bork's "antitrust paradox," holding that antitrust enforcement actually weakened competition, was used as the doctrine to sideline the Sherman and Clayton Acts. Supposedly, if government just got out of the way, market forces would remain more competitive because monopoly pricing would invite innovation and new entrants to the market. In practice, industry after industry became more heavily concentrated. ..."
"... Human capital theory, another variant of neoliberal application of markets to partly social questions, justified deregulating labor markets and crushing labor unions. Unions supposedly used their power to get workers paid more than their market worth. Likewise minimum wage laws. But the era of depressed wages has actually seen a decline in rates of productivity growth ..."
"... Financial deregulation is neoliberalism's most palpable deregulatory failure, but far from the only one ..."
"... Air travel has been a poster child for advocates of deregulation, but the actual record is mixed at best. Airline deregulation produced serial bankruptcies of every major U.S. airline, often at the cost of worker pay and pension funds. ..."
"... Ticket prices have declined on average over the past two decades, but the traveling public suffers from a crazy quilt of fares, declining service, shrinking seats and legroom, and exorbitant penalties for the perfectly normal sin of having to change plans. ..."
"... A similar example is the privatization of transportation services such as highways and even parking meters. In several Midwestern states, toll roads have been sold to private vendors. The governor who makes the deal gains a temporary fiscal windfall, while drivers end up paying higher tolls often for decades. Investment bankers who broker the deal also take their cut. Some of the money does go into highway improvements, but that could have been done more efficiently in the traditional way via direct public ownership and competitive bidding. ..."
"... The Affordable Care Act is a form of voucher. But the regulated private insurance markets in the ACA have not fully lived up to their promise, in part because of the extensive market power retained by private insurers and in part because the right has relentlessly sought to sabotage the program -- another political feedback loop. The sponsors assumed that competition would lower costs and increase consumer choice. But in too many counties, there are three or fewer competing plans, and in some cases just one. ..."
"... In practice, this degenerates into an infinite regress of regulator versus commercial profit-maximizer, reminiscent of Mad magazine's "Spy versus Spy," with the industry doing end runs to Congress to further rig the rules. Straight-ahead public insurance such as Medicare is generally far more efficient. ..."
"... Several forms of deregulation -- of airlines, trucking, and electric power -- began not under Reagan but under Carter. Financial deregulation took off under Bill Clinton. Democratic presidents, as much as Republicans, promoted trade deals that undermined social standards. Cost-benefit analysis by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) was more of a choke point under Barack Obama than under George W. Bush. ..."
"... Dozens of nations, from Latin America to East Asia, went through this cycle of boom, bust, and then IMF pile-on. Greece is still suffering the impact. ..."
"... In fact, Japan, South Korea, smaller Asian nations, and above all China had thrived by rejecting every major tenet of neoliberalism. Their capital markets were tightly regulated and insulated from foreign speculative capital. They developed world-class industries as state-led cartels that favored domestic production and supply. East Asia got into trouble only when it followed IMF dictates to throw open capital markets, and in the aftermath they recovered by closing those markets and assembling war chests of hard currency so that they'd never again have to go begging to the IMF ..."
"... The basic argument of neoliberalism can fit on a bumper sticker. Markets work; governments don't . If you want to embellish that story, there are two corollaries: Markets embody human freedom. And with markets, people basically get what they deserve; to alter market outcomes is to spoil the poor and punish the productive. That conclusion logically flows from the premise that markets are efficient. Milton Friedman became rich, famous, and influential by teasing out the several implications of these simple premises. ..."
"... The failed neoliberal experiment also makes the case not just for better-regulated capitalism but for direct public alternatives as well. Banking, done properly, especially the provision of mortgage finance, is close to a public utility. Much of it could be public. ..."
Aug 25, 2019 | portside.org
The invisible hand is more like a thumb on the scale for the world's elites. That's why market fundamentalism has been unmasked as bogus economics but keeps winning politically. This article appears in the Summer 2019 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here .

Since the late 1970s, we've had a grand experiment to test the claim that free markets really do work best. This resurrection occurred despite the practical failure of laissez-faire in the 1930s, the resulting humiliation of free-market theory, and the contrasting success of managed capitalism during the three-decade postwar boom.

Yet when growth faltered in the 1970s, libertarian economic theory got another turn at bat. This revival proved extremely convenient for the conservatives who came to power in the 1980s. The neoliberal counterrevolution, in theory and policy, has reversed or undermined nearly every aspect of managed capitalism -- from progressive taxation, welfare transfers, and antitrust, to the empowerment of workers and the regulation of banks and other major industries.

Neoliberalism's premise is that free markets can regulate themselves; that government is inherently incompetent, captive to special interests, and an intrusion on the efficiency of the market; that in distributive terms, market outcomes are basically deserved; and that redistribution creates perverse incentives by punishing the economy's winners and rewarding its losers. So government should get out of the market's way.

By the 1990s, even moderate liberals had been converted to the belief that social objectives can be achieved by harnessing the power of markets. Intermittent periods of governance by Democratic presidents slowed but did not reverse the slide to neoliberal policy and doctrine. The corporate wing of the Democratic Party approved.

Now, after nearly half a century, the verdict is in. Virtually every one of these policies has failed, even on their own terms. Enterprise has been richly rewarded, taxes have been cut, and regulation reduced or privatized. The economy is vastly more unequal, yet economic growth is slower and more chaotic than during the era of managed capitalism. Deregulation has produced not salutary competition, but market concentration. Economic power has resulted in feedback loops of political power, in which elites make rules that bolster further concentration.

The culprit isn't just "markets" -- some impersonal force that somehow got loose again. This is a story of power using theory. The mixed economy was undone by economic elites, who revised rules for their own benefit. They invested heavily in friendly theorists to bless this shift as sound and necessary economics, and friendly politicians to put those theories into practice.

Recent years have seen two spectacular cases of market mispricing with devastating consequences: the near-depression of 2008 and irreversible climate change. The economic collapse of 2008 was the result of the deregulation of finance. It cost the real U.S. economy upwards of $15 trillion (and vastly more globally), depending on how you count, far more than any conceivable efficiency gain that might be credited to financial innovation. Free-market theory presumes that innovation is necessarily benign. But much of the financial engineering of the deregulatory era was self-serving, opaque, and corrupt -- the opposite of an efficient and transparent market.

The existential threat of global climate change reflects the incompetence of markets to accurately price carbon and the escalating costs of pollution. The British economist Nicholas Stern has aptly termed the worsening climate catastrophe history's greatest case of market failure. Here again, this is not just the result of failed theory. The entrenched political power of extractive industries and their political allies influences the rules and the market price of carbon. This is less an invisible hand than a thumb on the scale. The premise of efficient markets provides useful cover.

The grand neoliberal experiment of the past 40 years has demonstrated that markets in fact do not regulate themselves. Managed markets turn out to be more equitable and more efficient. Yet the theory and practical influence of neoliberalism marches splendidly on, because it is so useful to society's most powerful people -- as a scholarly veneer to what would otherwise be a raw power grab. The British political economist Colin Crouch captured this anomaly in a book nicely titled The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism . Why did neoliberalism not die? As Crouch observed, neoliberalism failed both as theory and as policy, but succeeded superbly as power politics for economic elites.

The neoliberal ascendance has had another calamitous cost -- to democratic legitimacy. As government ceased to buffer market forces, daily life has become more of a struggle for ordinary people. The elements of a decent middle-class life are elusive -- reliable jobs and careers, adequate pensions, secure medical care, affordable housing, and college that doesn't require a lifetime of debt. Meanwhile, life has become ever sweeter for economic elites, whose income and wealth have pulled away and whose loyalty to place, neighbor, and nation has become more contingent and less reliable.

Large numbers of people, in turn, have given up on the promise of affirmative government, and on democracy itself. After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, ours was widely billed as an era when triumphant liberal capitalism would march hand in hand with liberal democracy. But in a few brief decades, the ostensibly secure regime of liberal democracy has collapsed in nation after nation, with echoes of the 1930s.

As the great political historian Karl Polanyi warned, when markets overwhelm society, ordinary people often turn to tyrants. In regimes that border on neofascist, klepto-capitalists get along just fine with dictators, undermining the neoliberal premise of capitalism and democracy as complements. Several authoritarian thugs, playing on tribal nationalism as the antidote to capitalist cosmopolitanism, are surprisingly popular.

It's also important to appreciate that neoliberalism is not laissez-faire. Classically, the premise of a "free market" is that government simply gets out of the way. This is nonsensical, since all markets are creatures of rules, most fundamentally rules defining property, but also rules defining credit, debt, and bankruptcy; rules defining patents, trademarks, and copyrights; rules defining terms of labor; and so on. Even deregulation requires rules. In Polanyi's words, "laissez-faire was planned."

The political question is who gets to make the rules, and for whose benefit. The neoliberalism of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman invoked free markets, but in practice the neoliberal regime has promoted rules created by and for private owners of capital, to keep democratic government from asserting rules of fair competition or countervailing social interests. The regime has rules protecting pharmaceutical giants from the right of consumers to import prescription drugs or to benefit from generics. The rules of competition and intellectual property generally have been tilted to protect incumbents. Rules of bankruptcy have been tilted in favor of creditors. Deceptive mortgages require elaborate rules, written by the financial sector and then enforced by government. Patent rules have allowed agribusiness and giant chemical companies like Monsanto to take over much of agriculture -- the opposite of open markets. Industry has invented rules requiring employees and consumers to submit to binding arbitration and to relinquish a range of statutory and common-law rights.

Neoliberalism as Theory, Policy, and Power

It's worth taking a moment to unpack the term "neoliberalism." The coinage can be confusing to American ears because the "liberal" part refers not to the word's ordinary American usage, meaning moderately left-of-center, but to classical economic liberalism otherwise known as free-market economics. The "neo" part refers to the reassertion of the claim that the laissez-faire model of the economy was basically correct after all.

Few proponents of these views embraced the term neoliberal . Mostly, they called themselves free-market conservatives. "Neoliberal" was a coinage used mainly by their critics, sometimes as a neutral descriptive term, sometimes as an epithet. The use became widespread in the era of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

To add to the confusion, a different and partly overlapping usage was advanced in the 1970s by the group around the Washington Monthly magazine. They used "neoliberal" to mean a new, less statist form of American liberalism. Around the same time, the term neoconservative was used as a self-description by former liberals who embraced conservatism, on cultural, racial, economic, and foreign-policy grounds. Neoconservatives were neoliberals in economics.

Beginning in the 1970s, resurrected free-market theory was interwoven with both conservative politics and significant investments in the production of theorists and policy intellectuals. This occurred not just in well-known conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage, Cato, and the Manhattan Institute, but through more insidious investments in academia. Lavishly funded centers and tenured chairs were underwritten by the Olin, Scaife, Bradley, and other far-right foundations to promote such variants of free-market theory as law and economics, public choice, rational choice, cost-benefit analysis, maximize-shareholder-value, and kindred schools of thought. These theories colonized several academic disciplines. All were variations on the claim that markets worked and that government should get out of the way.

Each of these bodies of sub-theory relied upon its own variant of neoliberal ideology. An intensified version of the theory of comparative advantage was used not just to cut tariffs but to use globalization as all-purpose deregulation. The theory of maximizing shareholder value was deployed to undermine the entire range of financial regulation and workers' rights. Cost-benefit analysis, emphasizing costs and discounting benefits, was used to discredit a good deal of health, safety, and environmental regulation. Public choice theory, associated with the economist James Buchanan and an entire ensuing school of economics and political science, was used to impeach democracy itself, on the premise that policies were hopelessly afflicted by "rent-seekers" and "free-riders."

Click here to read how Robert Kuttner has been unmasking the fallacies of neoliberalism for decades

Market failure was dismissed as a rare special case; government failure was said to be ubiquitous. Theorists worked hand in glove with lobbyists and with public officials. But in every major case where neoliberal theory generated policy, the result was political success and economic failure.

For example, supply-side economics became the justification for tax cuts, on the premise that taxes punished enterprise. Supposedly, if taxes were cut, especially taxes on capital and on income from capital, the resulting spur to economic activity would be so potent that deficits would be far less than predicted by "static" economic projections, and perhaps even pay for themselves. There have been six rounds of this experiment, from the tax cuts sponsored by Jimmy Carter in 1978 to the immense 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed by Donald Trump. In every case some economic stimulus did result, mainly from the Keynesian jolt to demand, but in every case deficits increased significantly. Conservatives simply stopped caring about deficits. The tax cuts were often inefficient as well as inequitable, since the loopholes steered investment to tax-favored uses rather than the most economically logical ones. Dozens of America's most profitable corporations paid no taxes.

Robert Bork's "antitrust paradox," holding that antitrust enforcement actually weakened competition, was used as the doctrine to sideline the Sherman and Clayton Acts. Supposedly, if government just got out of the way, market forces would remain more competitive because monopoly pricing would invite innovation and new entrants to the market. In practice, industry after industry became more heavily concentrated. Incumbents got in the habit of buying out innovators or using their market power to crush them. This pattern is especially insidious in the tech economy of platform monopolies, where giants that provide platforms, such as Google and Amazon, use their market power and superior access to customer data to out-compete rivals who use their platforms. Markets, once again, require rules beyond the benign competence of the market actors themselves. Only democratic government can set equitable rules. And when democracy falters, undemocratic governments in cahoots with corrupt private plutocrats will make the rules.

Human capital theory, another variant of neoliberal application of markets to partly social questions, justified deregulating labor markets and crushing labor unions. Unions supposedly used their power to get workers paid more than their market worth. Likewise minimum wage laws. But the era of depressed wages has actually seen a decline in rates of productivity growth. Conversely, does any serious person think that the inflated pay of the financial moguls who crashed the economy accurately reflects their contribution to economic activity? In the case of hedge funds and private equity, the high incomes of fund sponsors are the result of transfers of wealth and income from employees, other stakeholders, and operating companies to the fund managers, not the fruits of more efficient management.

There is a broad literature discrediting this body of pseudo-scholarly work in great detail. Much of neoliberalism represents the ever-reliable victory of assumption over evidence. Yet neoliberal theory lived on because it was so convenient for elites, and because of the inertial power of the intellectual capital that had been created. The well-funded neoliberal habitat has provided comfortable careers for two generations of scholars and pseudo-scholars who migrate between academia, think tanks, K Street, op-ed pages, government, Wall Street, and back again. So even if the theory has been demolished both by scholarly rebuttal and by events, it thrives in powerful institutions and among their political allies.

The Practical Failure of Neoliberal Policies

Financial deregulation is neoliberalism's most palpable deregulatory failure, but far from the only one. Electricity deregulation on balance has increased monopoly power and raised costs to consumers, but has failed to offer meaningful "shopping around" opportunities to bring down prices. We have gone from regulated monopolies with predictable earnings, costs, wages, and consumer protections to deregulated monopolies or oligopolies with substantial pricing power. Since the Bell breakup, the telephone system tells a similar story of re-concentration, dwindling competition, price-gouging, and union-bashing.

Air travel has been a poster child for advocates of deregulation, but the actual record is mixed at best. Airline deregulation produced serial bankruptcies of every major U.S. airline, often at the cost of worker pay and pension funds.

Ticket prices have declined on average over the past two decades, but the traveling public suffers from a crazy quilt of fares, declining service, shrinking seats and legroom, and exorbitant penalties for the perfectly normal sin of having to change plans. Studies have shown that fares actually declined at a faster rate in the 20 years before deregulation in 1978 than in the 20 years afterward, because the prime source of greater efficiency in airline travel is the introduction of more fuel-efficient planes.

The roller-coaster experience of airline profits and losses has reduced the capacity of airlines to purchase more fuel-efficient aircraft, and the average age of the fleet keeps increasing. The use of "fortress hubs" to defend market pricing power has reduced the percentage of nonstop flights, the most efficient way to fly from one point to another.

Robert Bork's spurious arguments that antitrust enforcement hurt competition became the basis for dismantling antitrust. Massive concentration resulted. Charles Tasnadi/AP Photo

In addition to deregulation, three prime areas of practical neoliberal policies are the use of vouchers as "market-like" means to social goals, the privatization of public services, and the use of tax subsides rather than direct outlays. In every case, government revenues are involved, so this is far from a free market to begin with. But the premise is that market disciplines can achieve public purposes more efficiently than direct public provision.

The evidence provides small comfort for these claims. One core problem is that the programs invariably give too much to the for-profit middlemen at the expense of the intended beneficiaries. A related problem is that the process of using vouchers and contracts invites corruption. It is a different form of "rent-seeking" -- pursuit of monopoly profits -- than that attributed to government by public choice theorists, but corruption nonetheless. Often, direct public provision is far more transparent and accountable than a web of contractors.

A further problem is that in practice there is often far less competition than imagined, because of oligopoly power, vendor lock-in, and vendor political influence. These experiments in marketization to serve social goals do not operate in some Platonic policy laboratory, where the only objective is true market efficiency yoked to the public good. They operate in the grubby world of practical politics, where the vendors are closely allied with conservative politicians whose purposes may be to discredit social transfers entirely, or to reward corporate allies, or to benefit from kickbacks either directly or as campaign contributions.

Privatized prisons are a case in point. A few large, scandal-ridden companies have gotten most of the contracts, often through political influence. Far from bringing better quality and management efficiency, they have profited by diverting operating funds and worsening conditions that were already deplorable, and finding new ways to charge inmates higher fees for necessary services such as phone calls. To the extent that money was actually saved, most of the savings came from reducing the pay and professionalism of guards, increasing overcrowding, and decreasing already inadequate budgets for food and medical care.

A similar example is the privatization of transportation services such as highways and even parking meters. In several Midwestern states, toll roads have been sold to private vendors. The governor who makes the deal gains a temporary fiscal windfall, while drivers end up paying higher tolls often for decades. Investment bankers who broker the deal also take their cut. Some of the money does go into highway improvements, but that could have been done more efficiently in the traditional way via direct public ownership and competitive bidding.

Housing vouchers substantially reward landlords who use the vouchers to fill empty houses with poor people until the neighborhood gentrifies, at which point the owner is free to quit the program and charge market rentals. Thus public funds are used to underwrite a privately owned, quasi-social housing sector -- whose social character is only temporary. No permanent social housing is produced despite the extensive public outlay. The companion use of tax incentives to attract passive investment in affordable housing promotes economically inefficient tax shelters, and shunts public funds into the pockets of the investors -- money that might otherwise have gone directly to the housing.

The Affordable Care Act is a form of voucher. But the regulated private insurance markets in the ACA have not fully lived up to their promise, in part because of the extensive market power retained by private insurers and in part because the right has relentlessly sought to sabotage the program -- another political feedback loop. The sponsors assumed that competition would lower costs and increase consumer choice. But in too many counties, there are three or fewer competing plans, and in some cases just one.

As more insurance plans and hospital systems become for-profit, massive investment goes into such wasteful activities as manipulation of billing, "risk selection," and other gaming of the rules. Our mixed-market system of health care requires massive regulation to work with tolerable efficiency. In practice, this degenerates into an infinite regress of regulator versus commercial profit-maximizer, reminiscent of Mad magazine's "Spy versus Spy," with the industry doing end runs to Congress to further rig the rules. Straight-ahead public insurance such as Medicare is generally far more efficient.

An extensive literature has demonstrated that for-profit voucher schools do no better and often do worse than comparable public schools, and are vulnerable to multiple forms of gaming and corruption. Proprietors of voucher schools are superb at finding ways of excluding costly special-needs students, so that those costs are imposed on what remains of public schools; they excel at gaming test results. While some voucher and charter schools, especially nonprofit ones, sometimes improve on average school performance, so do many public schools. The record is also muddied by the fact that many ostensibly nonprofit schools contract out management to for-profit companies.

Tax preferences have long been used ostensibly to serve social goals. The Earned Income Tax Credit is considered one of the more successful cases of using market-like measures -- in this case a refundable tax credit -- to achieve the social goal of increasing worker take-home pay. It has also been touted as the rare case of bipartisan collaboration. Liberals get more money for workers. Conservatives get to reward the deserving poor, since the EITC is conditioned on employment. Conservatives get a further ideological win, since the EITC is effectively a wage subsidy from the government, but is experienced as a tax refund rather than a benefit of government.

Recent research, however, shows that the EITC is primarily a subsidy of low-wage employers, who are able to pay their workers a lot less than a market-clearing wage. In industries such as nursing homes or warehouses, where many workers qualified for the EITC work side by side with ones not eligible, the non-EITC workers get substandard wages. The existence of the EITC depresses the level of the wages that have to come out of the employer's pocket.

Neoliberalism's Influence on Liberals

As free-market theory resurged, many moderate liberals embraced these policies. In the inflationary 1970s, regulation became a scapegoat that supposedly deterred salutary price competition. Some, such as economist Alfred Kahn, President Carter's adviser on deregulation, supported deregulation on what he saw as the merits. Other moderates supported neoliberal policies opportunistically, to curry favor with powerful industries and donors. Market-like policies were also embraced by liberals as a tactical way to find common ground with conservatives.

Several forms of deregulation -- of airlines, trucking, and electric power -- began not under Reagan but under Carter. Financial deregulation took off under Bill Clinton. Democratic presidents, as much as Republicans, promoted trade deals that undermined social standards. Cost-benefit analysis by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) was more of a choke point under Barack Obama than under George W. Bush.

"Command and control" became an all-purpose pejorative for disparaging perfectly sensible and efficient regulation. "Market-like" became a fashionable concept, not just on the free-market right but on the moderate left. Cass Sunstein, who served as Obama's anti-regulation czar,uses the example of "nudges" as a more market-like and hence superior alternative to direct regulation, though with rare exceptions their impact is trivial. Moreover, nudges only work in tandem with regulation.

There are indeed some interventionist policies that use market incentives to serve social goals. But contrary to free-market theory, the market-like incentives first require substantial regulation and are not a substitute for it. A good example is the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which used tradable emission rights to cut the output of sulfur dioxide, the cause of acid rain. This was supported by both the George H.W. Bush administration and by leading Democrats. But before the trading regime could work, Congress first had to establish permissible ceilings on sulfur dioxide output -- pure command and control.

There are many other instances, such as nutrition labeling, truth-in-lending, and disclosure of EPA gas mileage results, where the market-like premise of a better-informed consumer complements command regulation but is no substitute for it. Nearly all of the increase in fuel efficiency, for example, is the result of command regulations that require auto fleets to hit a gas mileage target. The fact that EPA gas mileage figures are prominently disclosed on new car stickers may have modest influence, but motor fuels are so underpriced that car companies have success selling gas-guzzlers despite the consumer labeling.

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Bill Clinton and his Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, were big promoters of financial deregulation.

Politically, whatever rationale there was for liberals to make common ground with libertarians is now largely gone. The authors of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made no attempt to meet Democrats partway; they excluded the opposition from the legislative process entirely. This was opportunistic tax cutting for elites, pure and simple. The right today also abandoned the quest for a middle ground on environmental policy, on anti-poverty policy, on health policy -- on virtually everything. Neoliberal ideology did its historic job of weakening intellectual and popular support for the proposition that affirmative government can better the lives of citizens and that the Democratic Party is a reliable steward of that social compact. Since Reagan, the right's embrace of the free market has evolved from partly principled idealism into pure opportunism and obstruction.

Neoliberalism and Hyper-Globalism

The post-1990 rules of globalization, supported by conservatives and moderate liberals alike, are the quintessence of neoliberalism. At Bretton Woods in 1944, the use of fixed exchange rates and controls on speculative private capital, plus the creation of the IMFand World Bank, were intended to allow member countries to practice national forms of managed capitalism, insulated from the destructive and deflationary influences of short-term speculative private capital flows. As doctrine and power shifted in the 1970s, the IMF, the World Bank, and later the WTO, which replaced the old GATT, mutated into their ideological opposite. Rather than instruments of support for mixed national economies, they became enforcers of neoliberal policies.

The standard package of the "Washington Consensus" of approved policies for developing nations included demands that they open their capital markets to speculative private finance, as well as cutting taxes on capital, weakening social transfers, and gutting labor regulation and public ownership. But private capital investment in poor countries proved to be fickle. The result was often excessive inflows during the boom part of the cycle and punitive withdrawals during the bust -- the opposite of the patient, long-term development capital that these countries needed and that was provided by the World Bank of an earlier era. During the bust phase, the IMF typically imposes even more stringent neoliberal demands as the price of financial bailouts, including perverse budgetary austerity, supposedly to restore the confidence of the very speculative capital markets responsible for the boom-bust cycle.

Dozens of nations, from Latin America to East Asia, went through this cycle of boom, bust, and then IMF pile-on. Greece is still suffering the impact. After 1990, hyper-globalism also included trade treaties whose terms favored multinational corporations. Traditionally, trade agreements had been mainly about reciprocal reductions of tariffs. Nations were free to have whatever brand of regulation, public investment, or social policies they chose. With the advent of the WTO, many policies other than tariffs were branded as trade distorting, even as takings without compensation. Trade deals were used to give foreign capital free access and to dismantle national regulation and public ownership. Special courts were created in which foreign corporations and investors could do end runs around national authorities to challenge regulation for impeding commerce.

At first, the sponsors of the new trade regime tried to claim the successful economies of East Asia as evidence of the success of the neoliberal recipe. Supposedly, these nations had succeeded by pursuing "export-led growth," exposing their domestic economies to salutary competition. But these claims were soon exposed as the opposite of what had actually occurred. In fact, Japan, South Korea, smaller Asian nations, and above all China had thrived by rejecting every major tenet of neoliberalism. Their capital markets were tightly regulated and insulated from foreign speculative capital. They developed world-class industries as state-led cartels that favored domestic production and supply. East Asia got into trouble only when it followed IMF dictates to throw open capital markets, and in the aftermath they recovered by closing those markets and assembling war chests of hard currency so that they'd never again have to go begging to the IMF. Enthusiasts of hyper-globalization also claimed that it benefited poor countries by increasing export opportunities, but as the success of East Asia shows, there is more than one way to boost exports -- and many poorer countries suffered under the terms of the global neoliberal regime.

Nor was the damage confined to the developing world. As the work of Harvard economist Dani Rodrik has demonstrated, democracy requires a polity. For better or for worse, the polity and democratic citizenship are national. By enhancing the global market at the expense of the democratic state, the current brand of hyper-globalization deliberately weakens the capacity of states to regulate markets, and weakens democracy itself.

When Do Markets Work?

The failure of neoliberalism as economic and social policy does not mean that markets never work. A command economy is even more utopian and perverse than a neoliberal one. The practical quest is for an efficient and equitable middle ground.

The neoliberal story of how the economy operates assumes a largely frictionless marketplace, where prices are set by supply and demand, and the price mechanism allocates resources to their optimal use in the economy as a whole. For this discipline to work as advertised, however, there can be no market power, competition must be plentiful, sellers and buyers must have roughly equal information, and there can be no significant externalities. Much of the 20th century was practical proof that these conditions did not describe a good part of the actual economy. And if markets priced things wrong, the market system did not aggregate to an efficient equilibrium, and depressions could become self-deepening. As Keynes demonstrated, only a massive jolt of government spending could restart the engines, even if market pricing was partly violated in the process.

Nonetheless, in many sectors of the economy, the process of buying and selling is close enough to the textbook conditions of perfect competition that the price system works tolerably well. Supermarkets, for instance, deliver roughly accurate prices because of the consumer's freedom and knowledge to shop around. Likewise much of retailing. However, when we get into major realms of the economy with positive or negative externalities, such as education and health, markets are not sufficient. And in other major realms, such as pharmaceuticals, where corporations use their political power to rig the terms of patents, the market doesn't produce a cure.

The basic argument of neoliberalism can fit on a bumper sticker. Markets work; governments don't . If you want to embellish that story, there are two corollaries: Markets embody human freedom. And with markets, people basically get what they deserve; to alter market outcomes is to spoil the poor and punish the productive. That conclusion logically flows from the premise that markets are efficient. Milton Friedman became rich, famous, and influential by teasing out the several implications of these simple premises.

It is much harder to articulate the case for a mixed economy than the case for free markets, precisely because the mixed economy is mixed. The rebuttal takes several paragraphs. The more complex story holds that markets are substantially efficient in some realms but far from efficient in others, because of positive and negative externalities, the tendency of financial markets to create cycles of boom and bust, the intersection of self-interest and corruption, the asymmetry of information between company and consumer, the asymmetry of power between corporation and employee, the power of the powerful to rig the rules, and the fact that there are realms of human life (the right to vote, human liberty, security of one's person) that should not be marketized.

And if markets are not perfectly efficient, then distributive questions are partly political choices. Some societies pay pre-K teachers the minimum wage as glorified babysitters. Others educate and compensate them as professionals. There is no "correct" market-derived wage, because pre-kindergarten is a social good and the issue of how to train and compensate teachers is a social choice, not a market choice. The same is true of the other human services, including medicine. Nor is there a theoretically correct set of rules for patents, trademarks, and copyrights. These are politically derived, either balancing the interests of innovation with those of diffusion -- or being politically captured by incumbent industries.

Governments can in principle improve on market outcomes via regulation, but that fact is complicated by the risk of regulatory capture. So another issue that arises is market failure versus polity failure, which brings us back to the urgency of strong democracy and effective government.

After Neoliberalism

The political reversal of neoliberalism can only come through practical politics and policies that demonstrate how government often can serve citizens more equitably and efficiently than markets. Revision of theory will take care of itself. There is no shortage of dissenting theorists and empirical policy researchers whose scholarly work has been vindicated by events. What they need is not more theory but more influence, both in the academy and in the corridors of power. They are available to advise a new progressive administration, if that administration can get elected and if it refrains from hiring neoliberal advisers.

There are also some relatively new areas that invite policy innovation. These include regulation of privacy rights versus entrepreneurial liberties in the digital realm; how to think of the internet as a common carrier; how to update competition and antitrust policy as platform monopolies exert new forms of market power; how to modernize labor-market policy in the era of the gig economy; and the role of deeper income supplements as machines replace human workers.

The failed neoliberal experiment also makes the case not just for better-regulated capitalism but for direct public alternatives as well. Banking, done properly, especially the provision of mortgage finance, is close to a public utility. Much of it could be public. A great deal of research is done more honestly and more cost-effectively in public, peer-reviewed institutions such as the NIH than by a substantially corrupt private pharmaceutical industry.

Social housing often is more cost-effective than so-called public-private partnerships. Public power is more efficient to generate, less prone to monopolistic price-gouging, and friendlier to the needed green transition than private power. The public option in health care is far more efficient than the current crazy quilt in which each layer of complexity adds opacity and cost. Public provision does require public oversight, but that is more straightforward and transparent than the byzantine dance of regulation and counter-regulation.

The two other benefits of direct public provision are that the public gets direct evidence of government delivering something of value, and that the countervailing power of democracy to harness markets is enhanced. A mixed economy depends above all on a strong democracy -- one even stronger than the democracy that succumbed to the corrupting influence of economic elites and their neoliberal intellectual allies beginning half a century ago. The antidote to the resurrected neoliberal fable is the resurrection of democracy -- strong enough to tame the market in a way that tames it for keeps.


Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University's Heller School. His latest book is The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy . In addition to writing for the Prospect, he writes for HuffPost, The Boston Globe, and The New York Review of Books.

Read the original article at Prospect.org.

Used with the permission. © The American Prospect, Prospect.org, 2019. All rights reserved.

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[Sep 22, 2019] It was neoliberalism that won the cold war

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... As for the USSR, the Soviet elite changed sides. I think Putin once said that Soviet system was "unviable" to begin with. And that's pretty precise diagnosis: as soon as the theocratic elite degenerates, it defects; and the state and the majority of the population eventually fall on their own sword. ..."
"... And the USSR clearly was a variation of a theocratic state. That explain also a very high, damaging the economy, level of centralization (the country as a single corporation) and the high level of ideology/religion-based repression (compare with Iran and Islamic state jihadists.) ..."
"... So after the WWII the ideology of Bolshevism was dead as it became clear that Soviet style theocratic state is unable to produce standard of living which Western social democracies were able to produce for their citizens. Rapid degeneration of the theocratic Bolshevik elite (aka Nomenklatura) also played an important role. ..."
"... It is important to understand that the Soviet elite changed sides completely voluntarily. Paradoxically it was high level of KGB functionaries who were instrumental in conversion to neoliberalism, starting with Andropov. It was Andropov, who created the plan of transition of the USSR to neoliberalism, the plan that Gorbachov tried to implement and miserably failed. ..."
"... So the system exploded from within because the Party elite became infected with neoliberalism (which was stupid, but reflects the level of degeneration of the Soviet elite). ..."
"... The major USA contribution other then supplying the new ideology for the Soviet elite was via CIA injecting God know how much money to bribe top officials. ..."
"... As Gorbachov was a second rate (if not the third rate) politician, he allowed the situation to run out of control. And the efforts to "rock" the system were fueled internally by emerging (as the result of Perestroika; which was a reincarnation of Lenin's idea of NEP) class of neoliberal Nouveau riche (which run the USSR "shadow economy" which emerged under Brezhnev) and by nationalist sentiments (those element were clearly supported by the USA and other Western countries money as well as via subversive efforts of national diaspora residing in the USA and Canada) and certain national minorities within the USSR. ..."
"... The brutal economic rape of the xUSSR space and generally of the whole former Soviet block by the "collective neoliberal West" naturally followed. Which had shown everybody that the vanguard of Perestroika were simply filthy compradors, who can't care less about regular citizens and their sufferings. ..."
"... BTW this huge amount of loot postponed the internal crisis of neoliberalism which happened in the USA in 2008 probably by ten years. And it (along with a couple of other factors such as telecommunication revolution) explain relative prosperity of Clinton presidency. Criminal Clinton presidency I should say. ..."
"... BTW few republics in former USSR space managed to achieve the standard of living equal to the best years of the USSR (early 80th I think) See https://web.williams.edu/Economics/brainerd/papers/ussr_july08.pdf ..."
"... Generally when the particular ideology collapses, far right nationalism fills the void. We see this now with the slow collapse of neoliberalism in the USA and Western Europe. ..."
"... Chinese learned a lot from Gorbachov's fatal mistakes and have better economic results as the result of the conversion to the neoliberalism ("from the above"), although at the end Chinese elite is not that different from Soviet elite and also is corruptible and can eventually change sides. ..."
"... But they managed to survive the "triumphal march of neoliberalism" (1980-2000) and now the danger is less as neoliberalism is clearly the good with expired "use by" date: after 2008 the neoliberal ideology was completely discredited and entered "zombie" state. ..."
Sep 08, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

likbez -> ilsm... , September 08, 2019 at 08:20 PM

This is a very complex issue. And I do not pretend that I am right, but I think Brad is way too superficial to be taken seriously.

IMHO it was neoliberalism that won the cold war. That means that the key neoliberal "scholars" like Friedman and Hayek and other intellectual prostitutes of financial oligarchy who helped to restore their power. Certain democratic politicians like Carter also were the major figures. Carter actually started neoliberalization of the USA, continued by Reagan,

Former Trotskyites starting from Burnham which later became known as neoconservatives also deserve to be mentioned.

It is also questionable that the USA explicitly won the cold war. Paradoxically the other victim of the global neoliberal revolution was the USA, the lower 90% of the USA population to be exact.
So there was no winners other the financial oligarchy (the transnational class.)

As for the USSR, the Soviet elite changed sides. I think Putin once said that Soviet system was "unviable" to begin with. And that's pretty precise diagnosis: as soon as the theocratic elite degenerates, it defects; and the state and the majority of the population eventually fall on their own sword.

And the USSR clearly was a variation of a theocratic state. That explain also a very high, damaging the economy, level of centralization (the country as a single corporation) and the high level of ideology/religion-based repression (compare with Iran and Islamic state jihadists.)

The degeneration started with the death of the last charismatic leader (Stalin) and the passing of the generation which remembers that actual warts of capitalism and could relate them to the "Soviet socialism" solutions.

So after the WWII the ideology of Bolshevism was dead as it became clear that Soviet style theocratic state is unable to produce standard of living which Western social democracies were able to produce for their citizens. Rapid degeneration of the theocratic Bolshevik elite (aka Nomenklatura) also played an important role.

With bolshevism as the official religion, which can't be questioned, the society was way too rigid and suppressed "entrepreneurial initiative" (which leads to enrichment of particular individuals, but also to the benefits to the society as whole), to the extent that was counterproductive. The level of dogmatism in this area was probably as close to the medieval position of Roman Catholic Church as we can get; in this sense it was only national that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became a pope John Paul II -- he was very well prepared indeed ;-).

It is important to understand that the Soviet elite changed sides completely voluntarily. Paradoxically it was high level of KGB functionaries who were instrumental in conversion to neoliberalism, starting with Andropov. It was Andropov, who created the plan of transition of the USSR to neoliberalism, the plan that Gorbachov tried to implement and miserably failed.

So the system exploded from within because the Party elite became infected with neoliberalism (which was stupid, but reflects the level of degeneration of the Soviet elite).

The major USA contribution other then supplying the new ideology for the Soviet elite was via CIA injecting God know how much money to bribe top officials.

As Gorbachov was a second rate (if not the third rate) politician, he allowed the situation to run out of control. And the efforts to "rock" the system were fueled internally by emerging (as the result of Perestroika; which was a reincarnation of Lenin's idea of NEP) class of neoliberal Nouveau riche (which run the USSR "shadow economy" which emerged under Brezhnev) and by nationalist sentiments (those element were clearly supported by the USA and other Western countries money as well as via subversive efforts of national diaspora residing in the USA and Canada) and certain national minorities within the USSR.

Explosion of far right nationalist sentiments without "Countervailing ideology" as Bolshevism was not taken seriously anymore was the key factor that led to the dissolution of the USSR.

Essentially national movements allied with Germany that were defeated during WWII became the winners.

The brutal economic rape of the xUSSR space and generally of the whole former Soviet block by the "collective neoliberal West" naturally followed. Which had shown everybody that the vanguard of Perestroika were simply filthy compradors, who can't care less about regular citizens and their sufferings.

And the backlash created conditions for Putin coming to power.

BTW this huge amount of loot postponed the internal crisis of neoliberalism which happened in the USA in 2008 probably by ten years. And it (along with a couple of other factors such as telecommunication revolution) explain relative prosperity of Clinton presidency. Criminal Clinton presidency I should say.

BTW few republics in former USSR space managed to achieve the standard of living equal to the best years of the USSR (early 80th I think) See https://web.williams.edu/Economics/brainerd/papers/ussr_july08.pdf

The majority of the xUSSR space countries have now dismal standard of living and slided into Latin American level of inequality and corruption (not without help of the USA).

Several have civil wars in the period since getting independence, which further depressed the standard living. Most deindustrialize.

Generally when the particular ideology collapses, far right nationalism fills the void. We see this now with the slow collapse of neoliberalism in the USA and Western Europe.

Chinese learned a lot from Gorbachov's fatal mistakes and have better economic results as the result of the conversion to the neoliberalism ("from the above"), although at the end Chinese elite is not that different from Soviet elite and also is corruptible and can eventually change sides.

But they managed to survive the "triumphal march of neoliberalism" (1980-2000) and now the danger is less as neoliberalism is clearly the good with expired "use by" date: after 2008 the neoliberal ideology was completely discredited and entered "zombie" state.

So in the worst case it is the USA which might follow the path of the USSR and eventually disintegrate under the pressure of internal nationalist sentiments. Such a victor...

Even now there are some visible difference between former Confederacy states and other states on the issues such as immigration and federal redistributive programs.

[Sep 11, 2019] Let us hope Pence is not consulted on Bolton's successor

Sep 11, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

catherine , 10 September 2019 at 08:48 PM

I don't usually find much value at the Atlantic but this article (written before Trump even fired Bolton) about Trump's FP timeline (and flip flops) and Bolton who was acting like he was President is very, very good.
It will allow Trump loyalist to more easily support Trump and give everyone else a tad bit of hope that Trump really won't go bonkers and start any wars.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/trump-tries-to-fix-his-foreign-policy-without-bolton/593284/

different clue , 11 September 2019 at 01:08 AM
Since President Trump appears to talk about things and stuff with Tucker Carlson, perhaps he should ask Tucker Carlson to spend a week thinking . . . and then offer the President some names and the reasoning for offering those names.

If the President asks the same Establishment who gave him Bolton, he will just be handed another Bolton. "Establishment" include Pence, who certainly supported Bolton's outlook on things and would certainly recommend another "Bolton" figure if asked. Let us hope Pence is not consulted on Bolton's successor.

confusedponderer said in reply to different clue... , 11 September 2019 at 09:10 AM
different clue,
re "Let us hope Pence is not consulted on Bolton's successor."

Understandable point of view but then, Trump still is Trump. He can just by himself and beyond advice easily find suboptimal solutions of his own.

Today I read that Richard Grenell was mentioned as a potential sucessor.

As far as that goes, go for it. Many people here will be happy when he "who always only sais what the Whitehouse sais" is finally gone.

And with Trump's biggest military budget in the world he can just continue the arms sale pitches that are and were such a substantial part of his job as a US ambassador in Germany.

That said, they were that after blathering a lot about that we should increase our military budget by 2%, 4%, 6% or 10%, buy US arms, now, and of course the blathering about Northstream 1 & 2 and "slavedom to russian oil & gas" and rather buy US frack gas of course.

He could then also take a side job for the fracking industry in that context. And buy frack gas and arms company stocks. Opportunities, opportunities ...

[Sep 10, 2019] Is John Bolton's Time Up

Notable quotes:
"... But Bolton coupled the Fox and AEI sinecures with gnarlier associations -- for one, the Gatestone Institute, a, let's say Islam-hostile outfit, associated with the secretive, influential Mercer billionaires. ..."
"... Bolton appeared the leading light of a neoconservative revival, of sorts, until he didn't. ..."
"... It doesn't matter whether Bolton's "time is up" or not, because his departure wouldn't change anything. If he goes, Trump will replace him with some equally slimy neocon interventionist. ..."
"... It won't end until we muck out the White House next year. Dumping Trump is Job One. ..."
"... Oh. Yes. You want to get rid of Trump's partially neocon administration, so that you could replace it with your own, entirely neocon one. Wake me up when the DNC starts allowing people like Tulsi Gabbard to get nominated. But they won't. So your party will just repeat its merry salsa on the same set of rakes as in 2016. ..."
Sep 10, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

No major politician, not even Barack Obama, excoriated the Iraq war more fiercely than did Trump during the primaries. He did this in front of a scion of the house of Bush and in the deep red state of South Carolina. He nevertheless went on to win that primary, the Republican nomination and the presidency on that antiwar message.

And so, to see Bolton ascend to the commanding heights of the Trump White House shocked many from the time it was first rumored. "I shudder to think what would happen if we had a failed presidency," Scott McConnell, TAC' s founding editor, said in late 2016 at our foreign policy conference, held, opportunely, during the presidential transition. "I mean, John Bolton?"

At the time, Bolton was a candidate for secretary of state, a consideration scuttled in no small part because of the opposition of Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul. As McConnell wrote in November of that year: "Most of the upper-middle-level officials who plotted the Iraq War have retreated quietly into private life, but Bolton has kept their flame alive." Bolton had already been passed over for NSA, losing out early to the doomed Michael Flynn. Rex Tillerson beat him for secretary of state. Bolton was then passed over for the role of Tillerson's deputy. When Flynn flamed out of the White House the following February, Trump chose a general he didn't know at all, H.R. McMaster, to replace him.

Bolton had been trying to make a comeback since late 2006, after failing to hold his job as U.N. ambassador (he had only been a recess appointment). His landing spots including a Fox News contributorship and a post at the vaunted American Enterprise Institute. Even in the early days of the Trump administration, Bolton was around, and accessible. I remember seeing him multiple times in Washington's Connecticut Avenue corridor, decked out in the seersucker he notoriously favors during the summer months. Paired with the familiar mustache, the man is the Mark Twain of regime change.

But Bolton coupled the Fox and AEI sinecures with gnarlier associations -- for one, the Gatestone Institute, a, let's say Islam-hostile outfit, associated with the secretive, influential Mercer billionaires. He also struck a ferocious alliance with the Center for Security Policy, helmed by the infamous Frank Gaffney, and gave paid remarks to the National Council for the Resistance of Iran, the lynchpin organization of the People's Mujahideen of Iran, or MEK. The latter two associations have imbued the spirit of this White House, with Gaffney now one of the most underrated power players in Washington, and the MEK's "peaceful" regime change mantra all but the official line of the administration.

More than any of these gigs, Bolton benefited from two associations that greased the wheels for his joining the Trump administration.

The first was Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist. If you want to understand the administration's Iran policy under Bolton to date, look no further than a piece by the then-retired diplomat in conservative mainstay National Review in August 2017, days after Bannon's departure from the White House: "How to Get Out of the Iran Deal." Bolton wrote the piece at Bannon's urging. Even out of the administration, the former Breitbart honcho was an influential figure.

"We must explain the grave threat to the U.S. and our allies, particularly Israel," said Bolton. "The [Iran Deal's] vague and ambiguous wording; its manifest imbalance in Iran's direction; Iran's significant violations; and its continued, indeed, increasingly, unacceptable conduct at the strategic level internationally demonstrate convincingly that [the Iran deal] is not in the national-security interests of the United States."

Then Bolton, as I documented , embarked on a campaign of a media saturation to make a TV-happy president proud. By May Day the next year, he would have a job, a big one, and one that Senator Paul couldn't deny him: national security advisor. That wasn't the whole story, of course. Bolton's ace in the hole was Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who has helped drive Trump's Israel policy. If Trump finally moves against Bolton, it will likely be because Adelson failed to strenuously object.

So will Trump finally do it? Other than White House chief of staff, a position Mick Mulvaney has filled in an acting capacity for the entire calendar year, national security advisor is the easiest, most senior role to change horses.

A bombshell Washington Post story lays out the dire truth: Bolton is so distrusted on the president's central prerogatives, for instance Afghanistan, that he's not even allowed to see sensitive plans unsupervised.

Bolton has also come into conflict with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to three senior State Department officials. Pompeo is the consummate politician. Though an inveterate hawk, the putative Trump successor does not want to be the Paul Wolfowitz of the Iran war. Bolton is a bureaucratic arsonist, agnostic on the necessity of two of the institutions he served in -- Foggy Bottom and the United Nations. Pompeo, say those around him, is keen to be beloved, or at least tolerated, by career officials in his department, in contrast with Bolton and even Tillerson.

The real danger Bolton poses is to the twin gambit Trump hopes to pull off ahead of, perhaps just ahead of, next November -- a detente deal with China to calm the markets and ending the war in Afghanistan. Over the weekend, the president announced a scuttled meeting with the Taliban at Camp David, which would have been an historic, stunning summit. Bolton was reportedly instrumental in quashing the meet. Still, there is a lot of time between now and next autumn, and the cancellation is likely the latest iteration of the president's showman diplomacy.

Ending America's longest war would be a welcome rebuttal to Democrats who will, day in and day out, charge that Trump is a fraud. But to do so, he will likely need a national security advisor more in sync with the vision. Among them: Tucker Carlson favorite Douglas Macgregor, Stephen Biegun, the runner-up previously, or the hawkish, but relatively pragmatic retired General Jack Keane.

Bolton seems to be following the well-worn trajectory of dumped Trump deputies. Jeff Sessions, a proto-Trump and the first senator to endorse the mogul, became attorney general and ideological incubator of the new Right's agenda only to become persona non grata in the administration. The formal execution came later. Bannon followed a less dramatic, but no less explosive ebb and flow. James Mattis walked on water until he didn't.

And Bolton appeared the leading light of a neoconservative revival, of sorts, until he didn't.

Curt Mills is senior writer


Laurelite a day ago
"Pompeo is the consummate politician."

You confuse "politician" and "liar" here, whereas he is "consummate" at neither politics nor lying. His politicking has been as botched as his diplomacy; his lying has been prodigious but transparent.

Taras77 a day ago
Bolton has been on the way out now for how many months? I will believe this welcome news when I see his sorry ___ out the door.
I think much of America and the world will feel the same way.
Bordentown a day ago
It doesn't matter whether Bolton's "time is up" or not, because his departure wouldn't change anything. If he goes, Trump will replace him with some equally slimy neocon interventionist.

It won't end until we muck out the White House next year. Dumping Trump is Job One.

Alex (the one that likes Ike) Bordentown 19 hours ago • edited
Oh. Yes. You want to get rid of Trump's partially neocon administration, so that you could replace it with your own, entirely neocon one. Wake me up when the DNC starts allowing people like Tulsi Gabbard to get nominated. But they won't. So your party will just repeat its merry salsa on the same set of rakes as in 2016.

[Sep 10, 2019] Trump Fires John Bolton After Disagreeing Strongly With His Suggestions

Trump whole administration is just a bunch of rabid neocons who will be perfectly at home (and some were) in Bush II administration. So firing of Bolton while a step in the right direction is too little, too late.
Notable quotes:
"... Whatever the reason for Bolton's departure, this means one less warmongering neocon is left in the DC swamp, and is a prudent and long overdue move by Trump, one which even Trump's liberals enemies will have no choice but to applaud. ..."
"... Ending America's longest war would be a welcome rebuttal to Democrats who will, day in and day out, charge that Trump is a fraud. But to do so, he will likely need a national security advisor more in sync with the vision. Among them: Tucker Carlson favorite Douglas Macgregor, Stephen Biegun, the runner-up previously, or the hawkish, but relatively pragmatic retired General Jack Keane. ..."
"... War-mongering Ziocons - 0; Peace-loving Humanity - 1 ..."
Sep 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

While there was some feverish speculation as to what an impromptu presser at 1:30pm with US Secretary of State Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and National Security Adviser Bolton would deliver, that was quickly swept aside moments later when Trump unexpectedly announced that he had effectively fired Bolton as National Security Advisor, tweeting that he informed John Bolton "last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House" after " disagreeing strongly with many of his suggestions. "

... ... ...

Whatever the reason for Bolton's departure, this means one less warmongering neocon is left in the DC swamp, and is a prudent and long overdue move by Trump, one which even Trump's liberals enemies will have no choice but to applaud.

While we await more details on this strike by Trump against the military-industrial complex-enabling Deep State, here is a fitting closer from Curt Mills via the American Conservative:

Ending America's longest war would be a welcome rebuttal to Democrats who will, day in and day out, charge that Trump is a fraud. But to do so, he will likely need a national security advisor more in sync with the vision. Among them: Tucker Carlson favorite Douglas Macgregor, Stephen Biegun, the runner-up previously, or the hawkish, but relatively pragmatic retired General Jack Keane.

Bolton seems to be following the well-worn trajectory of dumped Trump deputies. Jeff Sessions, a proto-Trump and the first senator to endorse the mogul, became attorney general and ideological incubator of the new Right's agenda only to become persona non grata in the administration. The formal execution came later. Bannon followed a less dramatic, but no less explosive ebb and flow. James Mattis walked on water until he didn't.

And Bolton appeared the leading light of a neoconservative revival, of sorts, until he didn't.

White Nat , 9 minutes ago link

War-mongering Ziocons - 0; Peace-loving Humanity - 1

[Sep 10, 2019] Neoliberal Capitalism at a Dead End by Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik

Highly recommended!
This is a Marxist critique of neoliberalism. Not necessary right but they his some relevant points.
Notable quotes:
"... The ideology of neoliberal capitalism was the promise of growth. But with neoliberal capitalism reaching a dead end, this promise disappears and so does this ideological prop. ..."
"... The ex ante tendency toward overproduction arises because the vector of real wages across countries does not increase noticeably over time in the world economy, while the vector of labor productivities does, typically resulting in a rise in the share of surplus in world output. ..."
"... While the rise in the vector of labor productivities across countries, a ubiquitous phenomenon under capitalism that also characterizes neoliberal capitalism, scarcely requires an explanation, why does the vector of real wages remain virtually stagnant in the world economy? The answer lies in the sui generis character of contemporary globalization that, for the first time in the history of capitalism, has led to a relocation of activity from the metropolis to third world countries in order to take advantage of the lower wages prevailing in the latter and meet global demand. ..."
"... The current globalization broke with this. The movement of capital from the metropolis to the third world, especially to East, South, and Southeast Asia to relocate plants there and take advantage of their lower wages for meeting global demand, has led to a desegmentation of the world economy, subjecting metropolitan wages to the restraining effect exercised by the third world's labor reserves. Not surprisingly, as Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out, the real-wage rate of an average male U.S. worker in 2011 was no higher -- indeed, it was marginally lower -- than it had been in 1968. 5 ..."
"... This ever-present opposition becomes decisive within a regime of globalization. As long as finance capital remains national -- that is, nation-based -- and the state is a nation-state, the latter can override this opposition under certain circumstances, such as in the post-Second World War period when capitalism was facing an existential crisis. But when finance capital is globalized, meaning, when it is free to move across country borders while the state remains a nation-state, its opposition to fiscal deficits becomes decisive. If the state does run large fiscal deficits against its wishes, then it would simply leave that country en masse , causing a financial crisis. ..."
"... The state therefore capitulates to the demands of globalized finance capital and eschews direct fiscal intervention for increasing demand. It resorts to monetary policy instead since that operates through wealth holders' decisions, and hence does not undermine their social position. But, precisely for this reason, monetary policy is an ineffective instrument, as was evident in the United States in the aftermath of the 2007–09 crisis when even the pushing of interest rates down to zero scarcely revived activity. 6 ..."
"... If Trump's protectionism, which recalls the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1931 and amounts to a beggar-my-neighbor policy, does lead to a significant export of unemployment from the United States, then it will invite retaliation and trigger a trade war that will only worsen the crisis for the world economy as a whole by dampening global investment. Indeed, since the United States has been targeting China in particular, some retaliatory measures have already appeared. But if U.S. protectionism does not invite generalized retaliation, it would only be because the export of unemployment from the United States is insubstantial, keeping unemployment everywhere, including in the United States, as precarious as it is now. However we look at it, the world would henceforth face higher levels of unemployment. ..."
"... The second implication of this dead end is that the era of export-led growth is by and large over for third world economies. The slowing down of world economic growth, together with protectionism in the United States against successful third world exporters, which could even spread to other metropolitan economies, suggests that the strategy of relying on the world market to generate domestic growth has run out of steam. Third world economies, including the ones that have been very successful at exporting, would now have to rely much more on their home market ..."
"... In other words, we shall now have an intensification of the imperialist stranglehold over third world economies, especially those pushed into unsustainable balance-of-payments deficits in the new situation. By imperialism , here we do not mean the imperialism of this or that major power, but the imperialism of international finance capital, with which even domestic big bourgeoisies are integrated, directed against their own working people ..."
"... In short, the ideology of neoliberal capitalism was the promise of growth. But with neoliberal capitalism reaching a dead end, this promise disappears and so does this ideological prop. To sustain itself, neoliberal capitalism starts looking for some other ideological prop and finds fascism. ..."
"... The first is the so-called spontaneous method of capital flight. Any political formation that seeks to take the country out of the neoliberal regime will witness capital flight even before it has been elected to office, bringing the country to a financial crisis and thereby denting its electoral prospects. And if perchance it still gets elected, the outflow will only increase, even before it assumes office. The inevitable difficulties faced by the people may well make the government back down at that stage. The sheer difficulty of transition away from a neoliberal regime could be enough to bring even a government based on the support of workers and peasants to its knees, precisely to save them short-term distress or to avoid losing their support. ..."
"... The third weapon consists in carrying out so-called democratic or parliamentary coups of the sort that Latin America has been experiencing. Coups in the old days were effected through the local armed forces and necessarily meant the imposition of military dictatorships in lieu of civilian, democratically elected governments. Now, taking advantage of the disaffection generated within countries by the hardships caused by capital flight and imposed sanctions, imperialism promotes coups through fascist or fascist-sympathizing middle-class political elements in the name of restoring democracy, which is synonymous with the pursuit of neoliberalism. ..."
"... And if all these measures fail, there is always the possibility of resorting to economic warfare (such as destroying Venezuela's electricity supply), and eventually to military warfare. Venezuela today provides a classic example of what imperialist intervention in a third world country is going to look like in the era of decline of neoliberal capitalism, when revolts are going to characterize such countries more and more. ..."
"... Despite this opposition, neoliberal capitalism cannot ward off the challenge it is facing for long. It has no vision for reinventing itself. Interestingly, in the period after the First World War, when capitalism was on the verge of sinking into a crisis, the idea of state intervention as a way of its revival had already been mooted, though its coming into vogue only occurred at the end of the Second World War. 11 Today, neoliberal capitalism does not even have an idea of how it can recover and revitalize itself. And weapons like domestic fascism in the third world and direct imperialist intervention cannot for long save it from the anger of the masses that is building up against it. ..."
Aug 25, 2019 | portside.org
Originally from: Monthly Review printer friendly
The ideology of neoliberal capitalism was the promise of growth. But with neoliberal capitalism reaching a dead end, this promise disappears and so does this ideological prop.

Harry Magdoff's The Age of Imperialism is a classic work that shows how postwar political decolonization does not negate the phenomenon of imperialism. The book has two distinct aspects. On the one hand, it follows in V. I. Lenin's footsteps in providing a comprehensive account of how capitalism at the time operated globally. On the other hand, it raises a question that is less frequently discussed in Marxist literature -- namely, the need for imperialism. Here, Magdoff not only highlighted the crucial importance, among other things, of the third world's raw materials for metropolitan capital, but also refuted the argument that the declining share of raw-material value in gross manufacturing output somehow reduced this importance, making the simple point that there can be no manufacturing at all without raw materials. 1

Magdoff's focus was on a period when imperialism was severely resisting economic decolonization in the third world, with newly independent third world countries taking control over their own resources. He highlighted the entire armory of weapons used by imperialism. But he was writing in a period that predated the onset of neoliberalism. Today, we not only have decades of neoliberalism behind us, but the neoliberal regime itself has reached a dead end. Contemporary imperialism has to be discussed within this setting.

Globalization and Economic Crisis

There are two reasons why the regime of neoliberal globalization has run into a dead end. The first is an ex ante tendency toward global overproduction; the second is that the only possible counter to this tendency within the regime is the formation of asset-price bubbles, which cannot be conjured up at will and whose collapse, if they do appear, plunges the economy back into crisis. In short, to use the words of British economic historian Samuel Berrick Saul, there are no "markets on tap" for contemporary metropolitan capitalism, such as had been provided by colonialism prior to the First World War and by state expenditure in the post-Second World War period of dirigisme . 2

The ex ante tendency toward overproduction arises because the vector of real wages across countries does not increase noticeably over time in the world economy, while the vector of labor productivities does, typically resulting in a rise in the share of surplus in world output. As Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy argued in Monopoly Capital , following the lead of Michał Kalecki and Josef Steindl, such a rise in the share of economic surplus, or a shift from wages to surplus, has the effect of reducing aggregate demand since the ratio of consumption to income is higher on average for wage earners than for those living off the surplus. 3 Therefore, assuming a given level of investment associated with any period, such a shift would tend to reduce consumption demand and hence aggregate demand, output, and capacity utilization. In turn, reduced capacity utilization would lower investment over time, further aggravating the demand-reducing effect arising from the consumption side.

While the rise in the vector of labor productivities across countries, a ubiquitous phenomenon under capitalism that also characterizes neoliberal capitalism, scarcely requires an explanation, why does the vector of real wages remain virtually stagnant in the world economy? The answer lies in the sui generis character of contemporary globalization that, for the first time in the history of capitalism, has led to a relocation of activity from the metropolis to third world countries in order to take advantage of the lower wages prevailing in the latter and meet global demand.

Historically, while labor has not been, and is still not, free to migrate from the third world to the metropolis, capital, though juridically free to move from the latter to the former, did not actually do so , except to sectors like mines and plantations, which only strengthened, rather than broke, the colonial pattern of the international division of labor. 4 This segmentation of the world economy meant that wages in the metropolis increased with labor productivity, unrestrained by the vast labor reserves of the third world, which themselves had been caused by the displacement of manufactures through the twin processes of deindustrialization (competition from metropolitan goods) and the drain of surplus (the siphoning off of a large part of the economic surplus, through taxes on peasants that are no longer spent on local artisan products but finance gratis primary commodity exports to the metropolis instead).

The current globalization broke with this. The movement of capital from the metropolis to the third world, especially to East, South, and Southeast Asia to relocate plants there and take advantage of their lower wages for meeting global demand, has led to a desegmentation of the world economy, subjecting metropolitan wages to the restraining effect exercised by the third world's labor reserves. Not surprisingly, as Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out, the real-wage rate of an average male U.S. worker in 2011 was no higher -- indeed, it was marginally lower -- than it had been in 1968. 5

At the same time, such relocation of activities, despite causing impressive growth rates of gross domestic product (GDP) in many third world countries, does not lead to the exhaustion of the third world's labor reserves. This is because of another feature of contemporary globalization: the unleashing of a process of primitive accumulation of capital against petty producers, including peasant agriculturists in the third world, who had earlier been protected, to an extent, from the encroachment of big capital (both domestic and foreign) by the postcolonial dirigiste regimes in these countries. Under neoliberalism, such protection is withdrawn, causing an income squeeze on these producers and often their outright dispossession from their land, which is then used by big capital for its various so-called development projects. The increase in employment, even in countries with impressive GDP growth rates in the third world, falls way short of the natural growth of the workforce, let alone absorbing the additional job seekers coming from the ranks of displaced petty producers. The labor reserves therefore never get used up. Indeed, on the contrary, they are augmented further, because real wages continue to remain tied to a subsistence level, even as metropolitan wages too are restrained. The vector of real wages in the world economy as a whole therefore remains restrained.

Although contemporary globalization thus gives rise to an ex ante tendency toward overproduction, state expenditure that could provide a counter to this (and had provided a counter through military spending in the United States, according to Baran and Sweezy) can no longer do so under the current regime. Finance is usually opposed to direct state intervention through larger spending as a way of increasing employment. This opposition expresses itself through an opposition not just to larger taxes on capitalists, but also to a larger fiscal deficit for financing such spending. Obviously, if larger state spending is financed by taxes on workers, then it hardly adds to aggregate demand, for workers spend the bulk of their incomes anyway, so the state taking this income and spending it instead does not add any extra demand. Hence, larger state spending can increase employment only if it is financed either through a fiscal deficit or through taxes on capitalists who keep a part of their income unspent or saved. But these are precisely the two modes of financing state expenditure that finance capital opposes.

Its opposing larger taxes on capitalists is understandable, but why is it so opposed to a larger fiscal deficit? Even within a capitalist economy, there are no sound economic theoretical reasons that should preclude a fiscal deficit under all circumstances. The root of the opposition therefore lies in deeper social considerations: if the capitalist economic system becomes dependent on the state to promote employment directly , then this fact undermines the social legitimacy of capitalism. The need for the state to boost the animal spirits of the capitalists disappears and a perspective on the system that is epistemically exterior to it is provided to the people, making it possible for them to ask: If the state can do the job of providing employment, then why do we need the capitalists at all? It is an instinctive appreciation of this potential danger that underlies the opposition of capital, especially of finance, to any direct effort by the state to generate employment.

This ever-present opposition becomes decisive within a regime of globalization. As long as finance capital remains national -- that is, nation-based -- and the state is a nation-state, the latter can override this opposition under certain circumstances, such as in the post-Second World War period when capitalism was facing an existential crisis. But when finance capital is globalized, meaning, when it is free to move across country borders while the state remains a nation-state, its opposition to fiscal deficits becomes decisive. If the state does run large fiscal deficits against its wishes, then it would simply leave that country en masse , causing a financial crisis.

The state therefore capitulates to the demands of globalized finance capital and eschews direct fiscal intervention for increasing demand. It resorts to monetary policy instead since that operates through wealth holders' decisions, and hence does not undermine their social position. But, precisely for this reason, monetary policy is an ineffective instrument, as was evident in the United States in the aftermath of the 2007–09 crisis when even the pushing of interest rates down to zero scarcely revived activity. 6

It may be thought that this compulsion on the part of the state to accede to the demand of finance to eschew fiscal intervention for enlarging employment should not hold for the United States. Its currency being considered by the world's wealth holders to be "as good as gold" should make it immune to capital flight. But there is an additional factor operating in the case of the United States: that the demand generated by a bigger U.S. fiscal deficit would substantially leak abroad in a neoliberal setting, which would increase its external debt (since, unlike Britain in its heyday, it does not have access to any unrequited colonial transfers) for the sake of generating employment elsewhere. This fact deters any fiscal effort even in the United States to boost demand within a neoliberal setting. 7

Therefore, it follows that state spending cannot provide a counter to the ex ante tendency toward global overproduction within a regime of neoliberal globalization, which makes the world economy precariously dependent on occasional asset-price bubbles, primarily in the U.S. economy, for obtaining, at best, some temporary relief from the crisis. It is this fact that underlies the dead end that neoliberal capitalism has reached. Indeed, Donald Trump's resort to protectionism in the United States to alleviate unemployment is a clear recognition of the system having reached this cul-de-sac. The fact that the mightiest capitalist economy in the world has to move away from the rules of the neoliberal game in an attempt to alleviate its crisis of unemployment/underemployment -- while compensating capitalists adversely affected by this move through tax cuts, as well as carefully ensuring that no restraints are imposed on free cross-border financial flows -- shows that these rules are no longer viable in their pristine form.

Some Implications of This Dead End

There are at least four important implications of this dead end of neoliberalism. The first is that the world economy will now be afflicted by much higher levels of unemployment than it was in the last decade of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first, when the dot-com and the housing bubbles in the United States had, sequentially, a pronounced impact. It is true that the U.S. unemployment rate today appears to be at a historic low, but this is misleading: the labor-force participation rate in the United States today is lower than it was in 2008, which reflects the discouraged-worker effect . Adjusting for this lower participation, the U.S. unemployment rate is considerable -- around 8 percent. Indeed, Trump would not be imposing protection in the United States if unemployment was actually as low as 4 percent, which is the official figure. Elsewhere in the world, of course, unemployment post-2008 continues to be evidently higher than before. Indeed, the severity of the current problem of below-full-employment production in the U.S. economy is best illustrated by capacity utilization figures in manufacturing. The weakness of the U.S. recovery from the Great Recession is indicated by the fact that the current extended recovery represents the first decade in the entire post-Second World War period in which capacity utilization in manufacturing has never risen as high as 80 percent in a single quarter, with the resulting stagnation of investment. 8

If Trump's protectionism, which recalls the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1931 and amounts to a beggar-my-neighbor policy, does lead to a significant export of unemployment from the United States, then it will invite retaliation and trigger a trade war that will only worsen the crisis for the world economy as a whole by dampening global investment. Indeed, since the United States has been targeting China in particular, some retaliatory measures have already appeared. But if U.S. protectionism does not invite generalized retaliation, it would only be because the export of unemployment from the United States is insubstantial, keeping unemployment everywhere, including in the United States, as precarious as it is now. However we look at it, the world would henceforth face higher levels of unemployment.

There has been some discussion on how global value chains would be affected by Trump's protectionism. But the fact that global macroeconomics in the early twenty-first century will look altogether different compared to earlier has not been much discussed.

In light of the preceding discussion, one could say that if, instead of individual nation-states whose writ cannot possibly run against globalized finance capital, there was a global state or a set of major nation-states acting in unison to override the objections of globalized finance and provide a coordinated fiscal stimulus to the world economy, then perhaps there could be recovery. Such a coordinated fiscal stimulus was suggested by a group of German trade unionists, as well as by John Maynard Keynes during the Great Depression in the 1930s. 9 While it was turned down then, in the present context it has not even been discussed.

The second implication of this dead end is that the era of export-led growth is by and large over for third world economies. The slowing down of world economic growth, together with protectionism in the United States against successful third world exporters, which could even spread to other metropolitan economies, suggests that the strategy of relying on the world market to generate domestic growth has run out of steam. Third world economies, including the ones that have been very successful at exporting, would now have to rely much more on their home market.

Such a transition will not be easy; it will require promoting domestic peasant agriculture, defending petty production, moving toward cooperative forms of production, and ensuring greater equality in income distribution, all of which need major structural shifts. For smaller economies, it would also require their coming together with other economies to provide a minimum size to the domestic market. In short, the dead end of neoliberalism also means the need for a shift away from the so-called neoliberal development strategy that has held sway until now.

The third implication is the imminent engulfing of a whole range of third world economies in serious balance-of-payments difficulties. This is because, while their exports will be sluggish in the new situation, this very fact will also discourage financial inflows into their economies, whose easy availability had enabled them to maintain current account deficits on their balance of payments earlier. In such a situation, within the existing neoliberal paradigm, they would be forced to adopt austerity measures that would impose income deflation on their people, make the conditions of their people significantly worse, lead to a further handing over of their national assets and resources to international capital, and prevent precisely any possible transition to an alternative strategy of home market-based growth.

In other words, we shall now have an intensification of the imperialist stranglehold over third world economies, especially those pushed into unsustainable balance-of-payments deficits in the new situation. By imperialism , here we do not mean the imperialism of this or that major power, but the imperialism of international finance capital, with which even domestic big bourgeoisies are integrated, directed against their own working people.

The fourth implication is the worldwide upsurge of fascism. Neoliberal capitalism even before it reached a dead end, even in the period when it achieved reasonable growth and employment rates, had pushed the world into greater hunger and poverty. For instance, the world per-capita cereal output was 355 kilograms for 1980 (triennium average for 1979–81 divided by mid–triennium population) and fell to 343 in 2000, leveling at 344.9 in 2016 -- and a substantial amount of this last figure went into ethanol production. Clearly, in a period of growth of the world economy, per-capita cereal absorption should be expanding, especially since we are talking here not just of direct absorption but of direct and indirect absorption, the latter through processed foods and feed grains in animal products. The fact that there was an absolute decline in per-capita output, which no doubt caused a decline in per-capita absorption, suggests an absolute worsening in the nutritional level of a substantial segment of the world's population.

But this growing hunger and nutritional poverty did not immediately arouse any significant resistance, both because such resistance itself becomes more difficult under neoliberalism (since the very globalization of capital makes it an elusive target) and also because higher GDP growth rates provided a hope that distress might be overcome in the course of time. Peasants in distress, for instance, entertained the hope that their children would live better in the years to come if given a modicum of education and accepted their fate.

In short, the ideology of neoliberal capitalism was the promise of growth. But with neoliberal capitalism reaching a dead end, this promise disappears and so does this ideological prop. To sustain itself, neoliberal capitalism starts looking for some other ideological prop and finds fascism. This changes the discourse away from the material conditions of people's lives to the so-called threat to the nation, placing the blame for people's distress not on the failure of the system, but on ethnic, linguistic, and religious minority groups, the other that is portrayed as an enemy. It projects a so-called messiah whose sheer muscularity can somehow magically overcome all problems; it promotes a culture of unreason so that both the vilification of the other and the magical powers of the supposed leader can be placed beyond any intellectual questioning; it uses a combination of state repression and street-level vigilantism by fascist thugs to terrorize opponents; and it forges a close relationship with big business, or, in Kalecki's words, "a partnership of big business and fascist upstarts." 10

Fascist groups of one kind or another exist in all modern societies. They move center stage and even into power only on certain occasions when they get the backing of big business. And these occasions arise when three conditions are satisfied: when there is an economic crisis so the system cannot simply go on as before; when the usual liberal establishment is manifestly incapable of resolving the crisis; and when the left is not strong enough to provide an alternative to the people in order to move out of the conjuncture.

This last point may appear odd at first, since many see the big bourgeoisie's recourse to fascism as a counter to the growth of the left's strength in the context of a capitalist crisis. But when the left poses a serious threat, the response of the big bourgeoisie typically is to attempt to split it by offering concessions. It uses fascism to prop itself up only when the left is weakened. Walter Benjamin's remark that "behind every fascism there is a failed revolution" points in this direction.

Fascism Then and Now

Contemporary fascism, however, differs in crucial respects from its 1930s counterpart, which is why many are reluctant to call the current phenomenon a fascist upsurge. But historical parallels, if carefully drawn, can be useful. While in some aforementioned respects contemporary fascism does resemble the phenomenon of the 1930s, there are serious differences between the two that must also be noted.

First, we must note that while the current fascist upsurge has put fascist elements in power in many countries, there are no fascist states of the 1930s kind as of yet. Even if the fascist elements in power try to push the country toward a fascist state, it is not clear that they will succeed. There are many reasons for this, but an important one is that fascists in power today cannot overcome the crisis of neoliberalism, since they accept the regime of globalization of finance. This includes Trump, despite his protectionism. In the 1930s, however, this was not the case. The horrors associated with the institution of a fascist state in the 1930s had been camouflaged to an extent by the ability of the fascists in power to overcome mass unemployment and end the Depression through larger military spending, financed by government borrowing. Contemporary fascism, by contrast, lacks the ability to overcome the opposition of international finance capital to fiscal activism on the part of the government to generate larger demand, output, and employment, even via military spending.

Such activism, as discussed earlier, required larger government spending financed either through taxes on capitalists or through a fiscal deficit. Finance capital was opposed to both of these measures and it being globalized made this opposition decisive . The decisiveness of this opposition remains even if the government happens to be one composed of fascist elements. Hence, contemporary fascism, straitjacketed by "fiscal rectitude," cannot possibly alleviate even temporarily the economic crises facing people and cannot provide any cover for a transition to a fascist state akin to the ones of the 1930s, which makes such a transition that much more unlikely.

Another difference is also related to the phenomenon of the globalization of finance. The 1930s were marked by what Lenin had earlier called "interimperialist rivalry." The military expenditures incurred by fascist governments, even though they pulled countries out of the Depression and unemployment, inevitably led to wars for "repartitioning an already partitioned world." Fascism was the progenitor of war and burned itself out through war at, needless to say, great cost to humankind.

Contemporary fascism, however, operates in a world where interimperialist rivalry is far more muted. Some have seen in this muting a vindication of Karl Kautsky's vision of an "ultraimperialism" as against Lenin's emphasis on the permanence of interimperialist rivalry, but this is wrong. Both Kautsky and Lenin were talking about a world where finance capital and the financial oligarchy were essentially national -- that is, German, French, or British. And while Kautsky talked about the possibility of truces among the rival oligarchies, Lenin saw such truces only as transient phenomena punctuating the ubiquity of rivalry.

In contrast, what we have today is not nation-based finance capitals, but international finance capital into whose corpus the finance capitals drawn from particular countries are integrated. This globalized finance capital does not want the world to be partitioned into economic territories of rival powers ; on the contrary, it wants the entire globe to be open to its own unrestricted movement. The muting of rivalry between major powers, therefore, is not because they prefer truce to war, or peaceful partitioning of the world to forcible repartitioning, but because the material conditions themselves have changed so that it is no longer a matter of such choices. The world has gone beyond both Lenin and Kautsky, as well as their debates.

Not only are we not going to have wars between major powers in this era of fascist upsurge (of course, as will be discussed, we shall have other wars), but, by the same token, this fascist upsurge will not burn out through any cataclysmic war. What we are likely to see is a lingering fascism of less murderous intensity , which, when in power, does not necessarily do away with all the forms of bourgeois democracy, does not necessarily physically annihilate the opposition, and may even allow itself to get voted out of power occasionally. But since its successor government, as long as it remains within the confines of the neoliberal strategy, will also be incapable of alleviating the crisis, the fascist elements are likely to return to power as well. And whether the fascist elements are in or out of power, they will remain a potent force working toward the fascification of the society and the polity, even while promoting corporate interests within a regime of globalization of finance, and hence permanently maintaining the "partnership between big business and fascist upstarts."

Put differently, since the contemporary fascist upsurge is not likely to burn itself out as the earlier one did, it has to be overcome by transcending the very conjuncture that produced it: neoliberal capitalism at a dead end. A class mobilization of working people around an alternative set of transitional demands that do not necessarily directly target neoliberal capitalism, but which are immanently unrealizable within the regime of neoliberal capitalism, can provide an initial way out of this conjuncture and lead to its eventual transcendence.

Such a class mobilization in the third world context would not mean making no truces with liberal bourgeois elements against the fascists. On the contrary, since the liberal bourgeois elements too are getting marginalized through a discourse of jingoistic nationalism typically manufactured by the fascists, they too would like to shift the discourse toward the material conditions of people's lives, no doubt claiming that an improvement in these conditions is possible within the neoliberal economic regime itself. Such a shift in discourse is in itself a major antifascist act . Experience will teach that the agenda advanced as part of this changed discourse is unrealizable under neoliberalism, providing the scope for dialectical intervention by the left to transcend neoliberal capitalism.

Imperialist Interventions

Even though fascism will have a lingering presence in this conjuncture of "neoliberalism at a dead end," with the backing of domestic corporate-financial interests that are themselves integrated into the corpus of international finance capital, the working people in the third world will increasingly demand better material conditions of life and thereby rupture the fascist discourse of jingoistic nationalism (that ironically in a third world context is not anti-imperialist).

In fact, neoliberalism reaching a dead end and having to rely on fascist elements revives meaningful political activity, which the heyday of neoliberalism had precluded, because most political formations then had been trapped within an identical neoliberal agenda that appeared promising. (Latin America had a somewhat different history because neoliberalism arrived in that continent through military dictatorships, not through its more or less tacit acceptance by most political formations.)

Such revived political activity will necessarily throw up challenges to neoliberal capitalism in particular countries. Imperialism, by which we mean the entire economic and political arrangement sustaining the hegemony of international finance capital, will deal with these challenges in at least four different ways.

The first is the so-called spontaneous method of capital flight. Any political formation that seeks to take the country out of the neoliberal regime will witness capital flight even before it has been elected to office, bringing the country to a financial crisis and thereby denting its electoral prospects. And if perchance it still gets elected, the outflow will only increase, even before it assumes office. The inevitable difficulties faced by the people may well make the government back down at that stage. The sheer difficulty of transition away from a neoliberal regime could be enough to bring even a government based on the support of workers and peasants to its knees, precisely to save them short-term distress or to avoid losing their support.

Even if capital controls are put in place, where there are current account deficits, financing such deficits would pose a problem, necessitating some trade controls. But this is where the second instrument of imperialism comes into play: the imposition of trade sanctions by the metropolitan states, which then cajole other countries to stop buying from the sanctioned country that is trying to break away from thralldom to globalized finance capital. Even if the latter would have otherwise succeeded in stabilizing its economy despite its attempt to break away, the imposition of sanctions becomes an additional blow.

The third weapon consists in carrying out so-called democratic or parliamentary coups of the sort that Latin America has been experiencing. Coups in the old days were effected through the local armed forces and necessarily meant the imposition of military dictatorships in lieu of civilian, democratically elected governments. Now, taking advantage of the disaffection generated within countries by the hardships caused by capital flight and imposed sanctions, imperialism promotes coups through fascist or fascist-sympathizing middle-class political elements in the name of restoring democracy, which is synonymous with the pursuit of neoliberalism.

And if all these measures fail, there is always the possibility of resorting to economic warfare (such as destroying Venezuela's electricity supply), and eventually to military warfare. Venezuela today provides a classic example of what imperialist intervention in a third world country is going to look like in the era of decline of neoliberal capitalism, when revolts are going to characterize such countries more and more.

Two aspects of such intervention are striking. One is the virtual unanimity among the metropolitan states, which only underscores the muting of interimperialist rivalry in the era of hegemony of global finance capital. The other is the extent of support that such intervention commands within metropolitan countries, from the right to even the liberal segments.

Despite this opposition, neoliberal capitalism cannot ward off the challenge it is facing for long. It has no vision for reinventing itself. Interestingly, in the period after the First World War, when capitalism was on the verge of sinking into a crisis, the idea of state intervention as a way of its revival had already been mooted, though its coming into vogue only occurred at the end of the Second World War. 11 Today, neoliberal capitalism does not even have an idea of how it can recover and revitalize itself. And weapons like domestic fascism in the third world and direct imperialist intervention cannot for long save it from the anger of the masses that is building up against it.

Notes
  1. Harry Magdoff, The Age of Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969).
  2. Samuel Berrick Saul, Studies in British Overseas Trade, 1870–1914 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1960).
  3. Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966).
  4. One of the first authors to recognize this fact and its significance was Paul Baran in The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957).
  5. Joseph E. Stiglitz, " Inequality is Holding Back the Recovery ," New York Times , January 19, 2013.
  6. For a discussion of how even the recent euphoria about U.S. growth is vanishing, see C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh, " Vanishing Green Shoots and the Possibility of Another Crisis ," The Hindu Business Line , April 8, 2019.
  7. For the role of such colonial transfers in sustaining the British balance of payments and the long Victorian and Edwardian boom, see Utsa Patnaik, "Revisiting the 'Drain,' or Transfers from India to Britain in the Context of Global Diffusion of Capitalism," in Agrarian and Other Histories: Essays for Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri , ed. Shubhra Chakrabarti and Utsa Patnaik (Delhi: Tulika, 2017), 277-317.
  8. Federal Reserve Board of Saint Louis Economic Research, FRED, "Capacity Utilization: Manufacturing," February 2019 (updated March 27, 2019), http://fred.stlouisfed.org .
  9. This issue is discussed by Charles P. Kindleberger in The World in Depression, 1929–1939 , 40th anniversary ed. (Oakland: University of California Press, 2013).
  10. Michał Kalecki, " Political Aspects of Full Employment ," Political Quarterly (1943), available at mronline.org.
  11. Joseph Schumpeter had seen Keynes's The Economic Consequences of the Peace as essentially advocating such state intervention in the new situation. See his essay, "John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)," in Ten Great Economists (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1952).

Utsa Patnaik is Professor Emerita at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her books include Peasant Class Differentiation (1987), The Long Transition (1999), and The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays (2007). Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His books include Accumulation and Stability Under Capitalism (1997), The Value of Money(2009), and Re-envisioning Socialism(2011).

[Sep 10, 2019] It s all about Gene Sharp and seeping neoliberal regime change using Western logistical support, money, NGO and intelligence agencies and MSM as the leverage

Highly recommended!
What democracy they are talking about? Democracy for whom? This Harvard political prostitutes are talking about democracy for oligarchs which was the nest result of EuroMaydan and the ability of Western companies to buy assets for pennies on the dollar without the control of national government like happen in xUSSR space after dissolution of the USSR, which in retrospect can be classified as a color revolution too, supported by financial injection, logistical support and propaganda campaign in major Western MSM.
What Harvard honchos probably does not understand or does not wish to understand is that neoliberalism as a social system lost its attraction and is in irreversible decline. The ideology of neoliberalism collapsed much like Bolsheviks' ideology. As Politician like Joe Boden which still preach neoliberalism are widely viewed as corrupt or senile (or both) hypocrites.
The "Collective West" still demonstrates formidable intelligence agencies skills (especially the USA and GB), but the key question is: "What they are fighting for?"
They are fighting for neoliberalism which is a lost case. Which looks like KGB successes after WWIII. They won many battles and lost the Cold war.
Not that Bolsheviks in the USSR was healthy or vibrant. Economics was a deep stagnation, alcoholism among working class was rampant, the standard of living of the majority of population slides each year, much like is the case with neoliberalism after, say, 1991. Hidden unemployment in the USSR was high -- at least in high teens if not higher. Like in the USA now good jobs were almost impossible to obtain without "extra help". Medical services while free were dismal, especially dental -- which were horrible. Hospitals were poor as church rats as most money went to MIC. Actually, like in the USA now, MIC helped to strangulate the economy and contributed to the collapse. It was co a corrupt and decaying , led by completely degenerated leadership. To put the person of the level of Gorbachov level of political talent lead such a huge and complex country was an obvious suicide.
But the facts speak for themselves: what people usually get as the result of any color revolution is the typical for any county which lost the war: dramatic drop of the standard of living due to economic rape of the country.
While far form being perfect the Chinese regime at least managed to lift the standard of living of the majority of the population and provide employment. After regime change China will experience the same economic rape as the USSR under Yeltsin regime. So in no way Hong Cong revolution can be viewed a progressive phenomenon despite all the warts of neoliberalism with Chenese characteristics in mainland China (actually this is a variant of NEP that Gorbachov tried to implement in the USSR, but was to politically incompetent to succeed)
Aug 31, 2019 | Chris Fraser @ChrisFraser_HKU • Aug 27 \z

Replying to @edennnnnn_ @AMFChina @lihkg_forum

A related resource that deserves wide circulation:

Why nonviolent resistance beats violent force in effecting social, political change – Harvard Gazette

CHENOWETH: I think it really boils down to four different things. The first is a large and diverse participation that's sustained.

The second thing is that [the movement] needs to elicit loyalty shifts among security forces in particular, but also other elites. Security forces are important because they ultimately are the agents of repression, and their actions largely decide how violent the confrontation with -- and reaction to -- the nonviolent campaign is going to be in the end. But there are other security elites, economic and business elites, state media. There are lots of different pillars that support the status quo, and if they can be disrupted or coerced into noncooperation, then that's a decisive factor.

The third thing is that the campaigns need to be able to have more than just protests; there needs to be a lot of variation in the methods they use.

The fourth thing is that when campaigns are repressed -- which is basically inevitable for those calling for major changes -- they don't either descend into chaos or opt for using violence themselves. If campaigns allow their repression to throw the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they're essentially co-signing what the regime wants -- for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they're probably going to get totally crushed.

Wai Sing-Rin @waisingrin • Aug 27

Replying to @ChrisFraser_HKU @edennnnnn_ and 2 others

Anyone who watched the lone frontliner (w translator) sees the frontliners are headed for disaster. They're fighting just to fight with no plans nor objectives.
They see themselves as heroes protecting the HK they love. No doubt their sincerity, but there are 300 of them left.

[Sep 09, 2019] What's the True Unemployment Rate in the US? by Jack Rasmus

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The real unemployment rate is probably somewhere between 10%-12%. ..."
"... The U-6 also includes what the labor dept. calls involuntary part time employed. It should include the voluntary part time as well, but doesn't (See, they're not actively looking for work even if unemployed). ..."
"... But even the involuntary part time is itself under-estimated. I believe the Labor Dept. counts only those involuntarily part time unemployed whose part time job is their primary job. It doesn't count those who have second and third involuntary part time jobs. That would raise the U-6 unemployment rate significantly. The labor Dept's estimate of the 'discouraged' and 'missing labor force' is grossly underestimated. ..."
"... The labor dept. also misses the 1-2 million workers who went on social security disability (SSDI) after 2008 because it provides better pay, for longer, than does unemployment insurance. That number rose dramatically after 2008 and hasn't come down much (although the government and courts are going after them). ..."
"... The way the government calculates unemployment is by means of 60,000 monthly household surveys but that phone survey method misses a lot of workers who are undocumented and others working in the underground economy in the inner cities (about 10-12% of the economy according to most economists and therefore potentially 10-12% of the reported labor force in size as well). ..."
"... The SSDI, undocumented, underground, underestimation of part timers, etc. are what I call the 'hidden unemployed'. And that brings the unemployed well above the 3.7%. ..."
Sep 09, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

The real unemployment rate is probably somewhere between 10%-12%. Here's why: the 3.7% is the U-3 rate, per the labor dept. But that's the rate only for full time employed. What the labor dept. calls the U-6 includes what it calls discouraged workers (those who haven't looked for work in the past 4 weeks). Then there's what's called the 'missing labor force'–i.e. those who haven't looked in the past year. They're not calculated in the 3.7% U-3 unemployment rate number either. Why? Because you have to be 'out of work and actively looking for work' to be counted as unemployed and therefore part of the 3.7% rate.

The U-6 also includes what the labor dept. calls involuntary part time employed. It should include the voluntary part time as well, but doesn't (See, they're not actively looking for work even if unemployed).

But even the involuntary part time is itself under-estimated. I believe the Labor Dept. counts only those involuntarily part time unemployed whose part time job is their primary job. It doesn't count those who have second and third involuntary part time jobs. That would raise the U-6 unemployment rate significantly. The labor Dept's estimate of the 'discouraged' and 'missing labor force' is grossly underestimated.

The labor dept. also misses the 1-2 million workers who went on social security disability (SSDI) after 2008 because it provides better pay, for longer, than does unemployment insurance. That number rose dramatically after 2008 and hasn't come down much (although the government and courts are going after them).

The way the government calculates unemployment is by means of 60,000 monthly household surveys but that phone survey method misses a lot of workers who are undocumented and others working in the underground economy in the inner cities (about 10-12% of the economy according to most economists and therefore potentially 10-12% of the reported labor force in size as well). The labor dept. just makes assumptions about that number (conservatively, I may add) and plugs in a number to be added to the unemployment totals. But it has no real idea of how many undocumented or underground economy workers are actually employed or unemployed since these workers do not participate in the labor dept. phone surveys, and who can blame them.

The SSDI, undocumented, underground, underestimation of part timers, etc. are what I call the 'hidden unemployed'. And that brings the unemployed well above the 3.7%.

Finally, there's the corroborating evidence about what's called the labor force participation rate. It has declined by roughly 5% since 2007. That's 6 to 9 million workers who should have entered the labor force but haven't. The labor force should be that much larger, but it isn't. Where have they gone? Did they just not enter the labor force? If not, they're likely a majority unemployed, or in the underground economy, or belong to the labor dept's 'missing labor force' which should be much greater than reported. The government has no adequate explanation why the participation rate has declined so dramatically. Or where have the workers gone. If they had entered the labor force they would have been counted. And their 6 to 9 million would result in an increase in the total labor force number and therefore raise the unemployment rate.

All these reasons–-i.e. only counting full timers in the official 3.7%; under-estimating the size of the part time workforce; under-estimating the size of the discouraged and so-called 'missing labor force'; using methodologies that don't capture the undocumented and underground unemployed accurately; not counting part of the SSI increase as unemployed; and reducing the total labor force because of the declining labor force participation-–together means the true unemployment rate is definitely over 10% and likely closer to 12%. And even that's a conservative estimate perhaps." Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Jack Rasmus

Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book, 'Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression', Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. His website is http://kyklosproductions.com .

[Sep 02, 2019] Is it Cynical to Believe the System is Corrupt by Bill Black

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... A new opinion poll released by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal last Sunday shows that 70% of Americans are "angry" because our political system seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power. Both Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren have also reflected on this sentiment during their campaigns. Sanders has said that we live in a "corrupt political system designed to protect the wealthy and the powerful." Warren said it's a "rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else." ..."
Aug 31, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

A new opinion poll released by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal last Sunday shows that 70% of Americans are "angry" because our political system seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power. Both Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren have also reflected on this sentiment during their campaigns. Sanders has said that we live in a "corrupt political system designed to protect the wealthy and the powerful." Warren said it's a "rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else."

A New York Times opinion article written by the political scientist Greg Weiner felt compelled to push back on this message, writing a column with the title, The Shallow Cynicism of 'Everything Is Rigged'. In his column, Weiner basically makes the argument that believing everything is corrupt and rigged is a cynical attitude with which it is possible to dismiss political opponents for being a part of the corruption. In other words, the Sanders and Warren argument is a shortcut, according to Weiner, that avoids real political debate.

Joining me now to discuss whether it makes sense to think of a political system as rigged and corrupt, and whether the cynical attitude is justified, is someone who should know a thing or two about corruption: Bill Black. He is a white collar criminologist, former financial regulator, and associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He's also the author of the book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. Thanks for joining us again, Bill.

BILL BLACK: Thank you.

GREG WILPERT: As I mentioned that the outset, it seems that Sanders and Warren are in effect taking an open door, at least when it comes to the American public. That is, almost everyone already believes that our political and economic system is rigged. Would you agree with that sentiment that the system is corrupt and rigged for the rich and against pretty much everyone else but especially the poor? What do you think?

BILL BLACK: One of the principal things I study is elite fraud, corruption and predation. The World Bank sent me to India for months as an anti-corruption alleged expert type. And as a financial regulator, this is what I dealt with. This is what I researched. This is a huge chunk of my life. So I wouldn't use the word, if I was being formal in an academic system, "the system." What I would talk about is specific systems that are rigged, and they most assuredly are rigged.

Let me give you an example. One of the most important things that has transformed the world and made it vastly more criminogenic, much more corrupt, is modern executive compensation. This is not an unusual position. This is actually the normal position now, even among very conservative scholars, including the person who was the intellectual godfather of modern executive compensation, Michael Jensen. He has admitted that he spawned unintentionally a monster because CEOs have rigged the compensation system. How do they do that? Well, it starts even before you get hired as a CEO. This is amazing stuff. The standard thing you do as a powerful CEO is you hire this guy, and he specializes in negotiating great deals for CEOs. His first demand, which is almost always given into, is that the corporation pay his fee, not the CEO. On the other side of the table is somebody that the CEO is going to be the boss of negotiating the other side. How hard is he going to negotiate against the guy that's going to be his boss? That's totally rigged.

Then the compensation committee hires compensation specialists who–again, even the most conservative economists agree it is a completely rigged system. Because the only way they get work is if they give this extraordinary compensation. Then, everybody in economics admits that there's a clear way you should run performance pay. It should be really long term. You get the big bucks only after like 10 years of success. In reality, they're always incredibly short term. Why? Because it's vastly easier for the CEO to rig the short-term reported earnings. What's the result of this? Accounting profession, criminology profession, economics profession, law profession. We've all done studies and all of them say this perverse system of compensation causes CEOs to (a) cheat and (b) to be extraordinarily short term in their perspective because it's easier to rig the short-term reported results. Even the most conservative economists agree that's terrible for the economy.

What I've just gone through is a whole bunch of academic literature from over 40-plus years from top scholars in four different fields. That's not cynicism. That's just plain facts if you understand the system. People like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, they didn't, as you say, kick open an open door. They made the open door. It's not like Elizabeth Warren started talking about this six months ago when she started being a potential candidate. She has been saying this and explaining in detail how individual systems are rigged in favor of the wealthy for at least 30 years of work. Bernie Sanders has been doing it for 45 years. This is what the right, including the author of this piece who is an ultra-far right guy, fear the most. It's precisely what they fear, that Bernie and Elizabeth are good at explaining how particular systems are rigged. They explain it in appropriate detail, but they're also good in making it human. They talk the way humans talk as opposed to academics.

That's what the right fear is more than anything, that people will basically get woke. In this, it's being woke to how individual systems have been rigged by the wealthy and powerful to create a sure thing to enrich them, usually at our direct expense.

GREG WILPERT: I think those are some very good examples. They're mostly from the realm of economics. I want to look at one from the realm of politics, which specifically Weiner makes. He cites Sanders, who says that the rich literally buy elections, and Weiner counters this by saying that, "It is difficult to identify instances in American history of an electoral majority wanting something specific that it has not eventually gotten." That's a pretty amazing statement actually, I think, for him to say when you look at the actual polls of what people want and what people get. He then also adds, "That's not possible to dupe the majority with advertising all of the time." What's your response to that argument?

BILL BLACK: Well, actually, that's where he's trying to play economist, and he's particularly bad at economics. He was even worse at economics than he is at political science, where his pitch, by the way is–I'm not overstating this–corruption is good. The real problem with Senator Sanders and Senator Warren is that they're against corruption.

Can you fool many people? Answer: Yes. We have good statistics from people who actually study this as opposed to write op-eds of this kind. In the great financial crisis, one of the most notorious of the predators that targeted blacks and Latinos–we actually have statistics from New Century. And here's a particular scam. The loan broker gets paid more money the worse the deal he gets you, the customer, and he gets paid by the bank. If he can get you to pay more than the market rate of interest, then he gets a kickback, a literal kickback. In almost exactly half of the cases, New Century was able to get substantially above market interest rates, again, targeted at blacks and Latinos.

We know that this kind of predatory approach can succeed, and it can succeed brilliantly. Look at cigarettes. Cigarettes, if you use them as intended, they make you sick and they kill you. It wasn't that very long ago until a huge effort by pushback that the tobacco companies, through a whole series of fake science and incredible amounts of ads that basically tried to associate if you were male, that if you smoked, you'd have a lot of sex type of thing. It was really that crude. It was enormously successful with people in getting them to do things that almost immediately made them sick and often actually killed them.

He's simply wrong empirically. You can see it in US death rates. You can see it in Hell, I'm overweight considerably. Americans are enormously overweight because of the way we eat, which has everything to do with how marketing works in the United States, and it's actually gotten so bad that it's reducing life expectancy in a number of groups in America. That's how incredibly effective predatory practices are in rigging the system. That's again, two Nobel Laureates in economics have recently written about this. George Akerlof and Shiller, both Nobel Laureates in economics, have written about this predation in a book for a general audience. It's called Phishing with a P-H.

GREG WILPERT: I want to turn to the last point that Weiner makes about cynicism. He says that calling the system rigged is actually a form of cynicism. And that cynicism, the belief that everything and everyone is bad or corrupt avoids real political arguments because it tires everyone you disagree with as being a part of that corruption. Would you say, is the belief that the system is rigged a form of cynicism? And if it is, wouldn't Weiner be right that cynicism avoids political debate?

BILL BLACK: He creates a straw man. No one has said that everything and everyone is corrupt. No one has said that if you disagree with me, you are automatically corrupt. What they have given in considerable detail, like I gave as the first example, was here is exactly how the system is rigged. Here are the empirical results of that rigging. This produces vast transfers of wealth to the powerful and wealthy, and it comes at the expense of nearly everybody else. That is factual and that needs to be said. It needs to be said that politicians that support this, and Weiner explicitly does that, says, we need to go back to a system that is more openly corrupt and that if we have that system, the world will be better. That has no empirical basis. It's exactly the opposite. Corruption kills. Corruption ruins economies.

The last thing in the world you want to do is what Weiner calls for, which he says, "We've got to stop applying morality to this form of crime." In essence, he is channeling the godfather. "Tell the Don it wasn't personal. It was just business." There's nothing really immoral in his view about bribing people. I'm sorry. I'm a Midwesterner. It wasn't cynicism. It was morality. He says you can't compromise with corruption. I hope not. Compromising with corruption is precisely why we're in this situation where growth rates have been cut in half, why wage growth has been cut by four-fifths, why blacks and Latinos during the great financial crisis lost 60% to 80% of their wealth in college-educated households. That's why 70% of the public is increasingly woke on this subject.

GREG WILPERT: Well, we're going to leave it there. I was speaking to Bill Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Thanks again, Bill, for having joined us today.

BILL BLACK: Thank you.

GREG WILPERT: And thank you for joining The Real News Network.

fdr-fan , August 31, 2019 at 2:13 am

Well, Sanders certainly knows that elections are rigged. But he's not quite right when he says that money does the rigging. It would be more accurate to say that powerful people are powerful because they're criminals, and they're rich because they're criminals.

Money is a side effect, not the driver. Specific example: Hillary and Bernie are in the same category of net worth, but Bernie isn't powerful. The difference is that Bernie ISN'T willing to commit murder and blackmail to gain power.

Lambert Strether , August 31, 2019 at 3:31 am

> Hillary and Bernie are in the same category of net worth

Clinton's net worth (says Google) is $45 million; Sanders $2.5 million. So, an order of magnitude difference. I guess that puts Sanders in the 1% category, but Clinton is much closer to the 0.1% category than Sanders.

Steve H. , August 31, 2019 at 6:57 am

There's also a billion-dollar foundation in the mix.

We had our choice of two New York billionaires in the last presidential election. How is this not accounted for? It's like the bond market, the sheer weight carries its own momentum.

Very similar to CEO's. I may not own a private jet, but if the company does, and I control the company, I have the benefit of a private jet. I don't need to own the penthouse to live in it.

Bugs Bunny , August 31, 2019 at 4:18 am

I despise HRC as well but those kinds of accusations would need some real evidence to back them up. Not a helpful comment.

Sorry, but I had to call that out.

Ian Perkins , August 31, 2019 at 10:26 am

"We came, we saw, he died. Tee hee hee!"
"Did it have anything to do with your visit?"
"I'm sure it did."
From a non-legal perspective at least, that makes her an accessory to murder, doesn't it?

Oh , August 31, 2019 at 10:18 am

"Money talks and everything else walks". Don't kid yourself; money is the driver.

Susan the other` , August 31, 2019 at 11:38 am

there's a solution for that

Leroy , August 31, 2019 at 11:53 am

Perhaps you can elaborate on the "murder and blackmail" Mr. Trump !!

vlade , August 31, 2019 at 2:15 am

In the treaser, it says "prevents evidence", I don't think Bill would do that :)

Off The Street , August 31, 2019 at 10:45 am

Treaser -- > Treason
+1

Tyronius , August 31, 2019 at 2:57 am

Is it fair to say the entire system is rigged when enough interconnected parts of it are rigged that no matter where one turns, one finds evidence of corruption? Because like it or not, that's where we are as a country.

Spoofs desu , August 31, 2019 at 7:15 am

Indeed well said

Susan the other` , August 31, 2019 at 11:42 am

Yes. And it is also fair to say, and has been said by lots of cynics over the centuries, that both democracy and capitalism sow the seeds of their own destruction.

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , August 31, 2019 at 3:44 am

Burns me to see yet another "water is not wet" argument being foisted by the NYT, hard to imagine another reason the editorial board pushed for this line *except* to protect the current corrupt one percenters who call their shots. Once Liz The Marionette gets appointed we might get some fluff but the rot will persist, eventually rot becomes putrefaction and the polity dies. Gore Vidal called America and Christianity "death cults".

Oh , August 31, 2019 at 10:21 am

Apt description of Liz.
"I'm a marionette, I'm a marionette, just pull the string" – ABBA

Bugs Bunny , August 31, 2019 at 4:23 am

Another instance where the top comments "Reader Picks" in a NYT op-ed are much more astute than the NYT picks

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/25/opinion/trump-warren-sanders-corruption.html#commentsContainer

People get it.

inode_buddha , August 31, 2019 at 8:28 am

"Due to technical difficulties, comments are unavailable"

Pisses me off that I gave the propaganda rag of note a click and didn't even get the joy of the comments section. I'm sure there's some cynical reason why

Ian Perkins , August 31, 2019 at 10:28 am

I got there first time. No doubt some cynical reason

Barbara , August 31, 2019 at 10:56 am

NYT PicksReader PicksAll

Ronald Weinstein commented August 26

Ronald Weinstein
New YorkAug. 26
Times Pick

Shallow cynicism vs profound naivete. I don't know what to chose.
57 Recommend

Jeff W , August 31, 2019 at 11:41 am

People do get it. That struck me, too.

The other thing is that the NYT runs this pretty indefensible piece by a guy who is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Just how often does NYT -- whose goal, according to its executive editor, "should be to understand different views" -- run a piece from anyone who is leftwing? What's the ratio of pro-establishment, pro-Washington consensus pieces to those that are not? Glenn Greenwald points out that the political spectrum at the NYT op-ed page "spans the small gap from establishment centrist Democrats to establishment centrist Republicans." That, in itself, is consistent with the premise that the system is, indeed, rigged.

Spoofs desu , August 31, 2019 at 7:09 am

I think we have to drill down another level and ask ourselves a more fundamental question "why is cynicism necessarily bad to begin with?" Black's response of parsing to individual systems as being corrupt is playing into the NYT authors trap, sort to speak.

This NYT article is another version of the seemingly obligatory attribute of the american character; we must ultimately be optimistic and have hope. Why is that useful? Or maybe more importantly, to whom is that useful? What is the point?

In my mind (and many a philosopher), cynicism is a very healthy, empowering response to a world whose institutional configuration is such that it will to fuck you over whenever it is expedient to do so.

Furthermore, the act of voting lends legitimacy to an institution that is clearly not legitimate. The institution is very obviously very corrupt. If you really want to change the "system" stop giving it legitimacy; i.e. be cynical, don't vote. The whole thing is a ruse. Boycott it .

Some may say, in a desperate attempt to avoid being cynical, "well, the national level is corrupt but we need to increase engagement at the community level via local elections ", or something like that. This is nothing more than rearranging the chairs on the deck of the titanic. And collecting signature isn't going to help anymore than handing out buckets on the titanic would.

So, to answer my own rhetorical question above, "to whom is it useful to not be cynical?" It is useful to those who want things to continue as they currently are.

So, be cynical. Don't vote. It is an empowering and healthy way to kinda say "fuck you" to the corrupt and not become corrupted yourself by legitimizing it. The best part about it is that you don't have to do anything.

Viva la paz (Hows that for a non cynical salutation?)

jrs , August 31, 2019 at 11:29 am

Uh this sounds like the ultimate allowing things to continue as they currently are, do you really imagine the powers that be are concerned about a low voting rate, and we have one, they don't care, they may even like it that way. Do you really imagine they care about some phantom like perceived legitimacy? Where is the evidence of that?

kiwi , August 31, 2019 at 12:08 pm

Politicians do care about staying in office and will respond on some issues that will cost them enough votes to get booted from office. But it has to be those particular issues in their own backyard; otherwise, they just kind of limp along with the lip service collecting their paychecks.

IMO, it is sheer idiocy to not vote. If you are a voter, politicians will pay some attention to you at least. If you don't vote, you don't even exist to them.

inode_buddha , August 31, 2019 at 7:37 am

"I don't think it should be legal at ALL to become a corporate lobbyist if you've served in Congress," said Ocasio-Cortez. "At minimum there should be a long wait period."
"If you are a member of Congress + leave, you shouldn't be allowed to turn right around&leverage your service for a lobbyist check.
I don't think it should be legal at ALL to become a corporate lobbyist if you've served in Congress."

–AOC, as reported by NakedCapitalism on May 31, 2019

Which is worse - bankers or terrorists , August 31, 2019 at 11:45 am

I bet she opens up her lobbying shop in December 2020.

inode_buddha , August 31, 2019 at 7:52 am

It isn't cynical if it is real. Truth is the absolute defense.

Bugs Bunny , August 31, 2019 at 7:58 am

A shrink friend once said "cynicism is the most logical reaction to despair".

Off The Street , August 31, 2019 at 10:52 am

I try to be despairing, but I can't keep up.
Attributed to a generation or two after Lily Tomlin's quote about cynicism.

Out of curiosity, would it be cynical to question that political scientist's grant funding or other sources of income? These days, I feel inclined to look at what I'll call the Sinclair Rule* , added to Betteridge's, Godwin's and all those other, ahem, modifications to what used to be an expectation that communication was more or less honest.

* Sinclair Rule, where you add a interpretive filter based on Upton's famous quote: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

jrs , August 31, 2019 at 11:43 am

It's good to look at funding sources. But it's kind of a slander to those who must work for a living when assuming it's paychecks (which we need to live in this system) that corrupt people.

If it's applied to the average working person, maybe it's often true, maybe it has a tendency to push in that direction, but if you think there are no workers that realize the industry they are working in might be destructive, that they may be exploited by such systems but have little choice etc. etc., come now there are working people who are politically aware and do see a larger picture, they just don't have a lot of power to change it much of the time. Does the average working person's salary depend on his not understanding though? No, of course not, it merely depends on him obeying. And obeying enough to keep a job, not always understanding, is what a paycheck buys.

timbers , August 31, 2019 at 7:57 am

With all the evidence of everyday life (airplanes, drug prices, health insurance, Wall Street, CEO pay, the workforce changes in the past 20 years if you've been working those years etc) this Greg better be careful as he might be seen as a Witch to be hanged and burned in Salem, Ma a few hundred years ago.

It's cynical to say it's cynical to believe the system is corrupt.

Greg Weiner is cynic, and his is using his cynicism to dismiss the political arguments of people he disagrees with.

MyMoneysNotGreenAnymore , August 31, 2019 at 8:17 am

And just this week, I found out I couldn't even buy a car unless I'd be willing to sign a mandatory binding arbitration agreement. I was ready to pay and sign all the paperwork, and they lay a document in front of me that reserves for the dealer the right to seek any remedy against me if I harm the dealer (pay with bad check, become delinquent on loan, fail to provide clean title on my trade); but forces me to accept mandatory binding arbitration, with damages limited to the value of the car, for anything the dealer might do wrong.

It is not cynical at all when even car dealers now want a permission slip for any harm they might do to me.

Donald , August 31, 2019 at 8:24 am

Three words -- climate change denial.

Okay, a few more. We are literally facing the possibility of a mass extinction in large part because of dishonesty on the par of oil companies, politicians, and people paid to make bad arguments.

Donald , August 31, 2019 at 8:35 am

A few more words

"Saddam Hussein has WMD's."

"Assad (and by implication Assad's forces alone) killed 500,000 Syrians."

"Israel is just defending itself."

I can't squeeze the dishonesty about the war in Yemen into a short slogan, but I know from personal experience that getting liberals to care when it was Obama's war was virtually impossible. Even under Trump it was hard, until Khashoggi's murder. On the part of politicians and think tanks this was corruption by Saudi money. With ordinary people it was the usual partisan tribal hypocrisy.

dearieme , August 31, 2019 at 11:11 am

Two words: Goebbels Warming.

pretzelattack , August 31, 2019 at 12:36 pm

a lot of gibberish in those 2 words, dearie. are you going to grace us with your keen scientific insights on the issue?

jfleni , August 31, 2019 at 8:30 am

Conclusion: Even before they dress in the AM, they S C R E A M,
G I M M E!!

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell , August 31, 2019 at 8:45 am

The motivator is " Gap Psychology ," the human desire to distance oneself from those below (on any scale), and to come nearer to those above.

The rich are rich because the Gap below them is wide, and the wider the Gap, the richer they are .

And here is the important point: There are two ways the rich widen the Gap: Either gain more for themselves or make sure those below have less.

That is why the rich promulgate the Big Lie that the federal government (and its agencies, Social Security and Medicare) is running short of dollars. The rich want to make sure that those below them don't gain more, as that would narrow the Gap.

Off The Street , August 31, 2019 at 10:56 am

Negative sum game, where one wins but the other has to lose more so the party of the first part feels even better about winning. There is an element of sadism, sociopathy and a few other behaviors that the current systems allow to be gamed even more profitably. If you build it, or lobby to have it built, they will come multiple times.

The Rev Kev , August 31, 2019 at 9:07 am

A successful society should be responsive to both threats and opportunities. Any major problems to that society are assessed and changes are made, usually begrudgingly, to adapt to the new situation. And this is where corruption comes into it. It short circuits the signals that a society receives so that it ignores serious threats and elevates ones that are relatively minor but which benefit a small segment of that society. If you want an example of this at work, back in 2016 you had about 40,000 Americans dying to opioids each and every year which was considered only a background issue. But a major issue about that time was who gets to use what toilets. Seriously. If it gets bad enough, a society gets overwhelmed by the problems that were ignored or were deferred to a later time. And I regret to say that the UK is going to learn this lesson in spades.

Ian Perkins , August 31, 2019 at 10:37 am

'Sanders has said that we live in a "corrupt political system designed to protect the wealthy and the powerful." Warren said it's a "rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else."'
Yet the rest of the article focuses almost entirely on internal US shenanigans. When it comes to protecting wealth and power, George Kennan hit the nail on the head in 1948, with "we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity." This, which has underpinned US policy ever since, may not be corrupt in the sense of illegal, but it certainly seems corrupt in the sense of morally repugnant to me.

dearieme , August 31, 2019 at 11:16 am

Warren said it's a "rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else."

Is she referring to the system of race privilege that she exploited by making a false claim to be a Cherokee, or some other rigged system?

Still, compared to some of the gangsters who have been president I suppose she's been pretty small time in her nefarious activities. So far as I know.

Susan the other` , August 31, 2019 at 12:07 pm

About Kennan's comment. That's interesting because no one questioned the word "wealth". Even tho' we had only 6.3% of the world's population we had 50% of the wealth. The point of that comment had to be that we should "spread the wealth" and we did do just that. Until we polluted the entire planet. I'd like some MMT person to take a long look at that attitude because it is so simplistic. And not like George Kennan at all who was sophisticated to the bone. But that's just more proof of a bred-in-the-bone ignorance about what money really is. In this case Kennan was talking about money, not wealth. He never asked Nepal for advice on gross national happiness, etc. Nor did he calculate the enormous debt burden we would incur for our unregulated use and abuse of the environment. That debt most certainly offsets any "wealth" that happened.

shinola , August 31, 2019 at 11:09 am

Approaching from the opposite direction, if someone were to say "I sincerely believe that the USA has the most open & honest political system and the fairest economic system in human history" would you not think that person to be incredibly naive (or, cynically, a liar)?

There has been, for at least the last couple of decades. a determined effort to do away with corruption – by defining it away. "Citizens United" is perhaps the most glaring example but the effort is ongoing; that Weiner op-ed is a good current example.

jef , August 31, 2019 at 11:34 am

What is cynical is everyone's response when point out that the system is corrupt. They all say " always has been, always will be so just deal with it ".

Susan the other` , August 31, 2019 at 12:14 pm

Strawmannirg has got to be the most cynical behavior in the world. Weiner is the cynic. I think Liz's "the system is rigged " comment invites discussion. It is not a closed door at all. It is a plea for good capitalism. Which most people assume is possible. It's time to define just what kind of capitalism will work and what it needs to continue to be, or finally become, a useful economic ideology. High time.

Susan the other` , August 31, 2019 at 12:25 pm

Another thing. Look how irrational the world, which is now awash in money, has become over lack of liquidity. There's a big push now to achieve an optimum flow of money by speeding up transaction time. The Fed is in the midst of designing a new real-time digital payments system. A speedy accounting and record of everything. Which sounds like a very good idea.

But the predators are busy keeping pace – witness the frantic grab by Facebook with Libra. Libra is cynical. To say the least. The whole thing a few days ago on the design of Libra was frightening because Libra has not slowed down; it has filed it's private corporation papers in Switzerland and is working toward a goal of becoming a private currency – backed by sovereign money no less! Twisted. So there's a good discussion begging to be heard: The legitimate Federal Reserve v. Libra. The reason we are not having this discussion is because the elite are hard-core cynics.

[Aug 21, 2019] Trump's Deficit Economy is bonanza for large coporation but not for the US workers. Fiscal stimulus now is just pushing on the string

Highly recommended!
The US economy has not been working for most Americans, whose incomes have been stagnating – or worse – for decades. These adverse trends are reflected in declining life expectancy. The Trump tax bill made matters worse by compounding the problem of decaying infrastructure, weakening the ability of the more progressive states to support education, depriving millions more people of health insurance, and, when fully implemented, leading to an increase in taxes for middle-income Americans, worsening their plight.
Notable quotes:
"... Long ago, John Maynard Keynes recognized that while a sudden tightening of monetary policy, restricting the availability of credit, could slow the economy, the effects of loosening policy when the economy is weak can be minimal. Even employing new instruments such as quantitative easing can have little effect, as Europe has learned. In fact, the negative interest rates being tried by several countries may, perversely, weaken the economy as a result of unfavorable effects on bank balance sheets and thus lending. ..."
"... The lower interest rates do lead to a lower exchange rate. Indeed, this may be the principal channel through which Fed policy works today. But isn't that nothing more than "competitive devaluation," for which the Trump administration roundly criticizes China? ..."
"... But, at another level, the Fed action spoke volumes. The US economy was supposed to be "great." Its 3.7% unemployment rate and first-quarter growth of 3.1% should have been the envy of the advanced countries. But scratch a little bit beneath the surface, and there was plenty to worry about. Second-quarter growth plummeted to 2.1%. Average hours worked in manufacturing in July sank to the lowest level since 2011. Real wages are only slightly above their level a decade ago, before the Great Recession. Real investment as a percentage of GDP is well below levels in the late 1990s, despite a tax cut allegedly intended to spur business spending, but which was used mainly to finance share buybacks instead. ..."
"... America should be in a boom, with three enormous fiscal-stimulus measures in the past three years. The 2017 tax cut, which mainly benefited billionaires and corporations, added some $1.5-2 trillion to the ten-year deficit. An almost $300 billion increase in expenditures over two years averted a government shutdown in 2018. And at the end of July, a new agreement to avoid another shutdown added another $320 billion of spending. If it takes trillion-dollar annual deficits to keep the US economy going in good times, what will it take when things are not so rosy? ..."
"... Redistribution from the bottom to the top – the hallmark not only of Trump's presidency, but also of preceding Republican administrations – reduces aggregate demand, because those at the top spend a smaller fraction of their income than those below. This weakens the economy in a way that cannot be offset even by a massive giveaway to corporations and billionaires. And the enormous Trump fiscal deficits have led to huge trade deficits, far larger than under Obama, as the US has had to import capital to finance the gap between domestic savings and investment. ..."
"... Trump promised to get the trade deficit down, but his profound lack of understanding of economics has led to it increasing, just as most economists predicted it would. Despite Trump's bad economic management and his attempt to talk the dollar down, and the Fed's lowering of interest rates, his policies have resulted in the US dollar remaining strong, thereby discouraging exports and encouraging imports ..."
Aug 10, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne , August 10, 2019 at 06:18 AM

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-trade-and-fiscal-deficits-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-2019-08

August 9, 2019

Trump's Deficit Economy

Economists have repeatedly tried to explain to Donald Trump that trade agreements may affect which countries the US buys from and sells to, but not the magnitude of the overall deficit. But, as usual, Trump believes what he wants to believes, leaving those who can least afford it to pay the price.
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

NEW YORK – In the new world wrought by US President Donald Trump, where one shock follows another, there is never time to think through fully the implications of the events with which we are bombarded. In late July, the Federal Reserve Board reversed its policy of returning interest rates to more normal levels, after a decade of ultra-low rates in the wake of the Great Recession. Then, the United States had another two mass gun killings in under 24 hours, bringing the total for the year to 255 – more than one a day. And a trade war with China, which Trump had tweeted would be "good, and easy to win," entered a new, more dangerous phase, rattling markets and posing the threat of a new cold war.

At one level, the Fed move was of little import: a 25-basis-point change will have little consequence. The idea that the Fed could fine-tune the economy by carefully timed changes in interest rates should by now have long been discredited – even if it provides entertainment for Fed watchers and employment for financial journalists. If lowering the interest rate from 5.25% to essentially zero had little impact on the economy in 2008-09, why should we think that lowering rates by 0.25% will have any observable effect? Large corporations are still sitting on hoards of cash: it's not a lack of liquidity that's stopping them from investing.

Long ago, John Maynard Keynes recognized that while a sudden tightening of monetary policy, restricting the availability of credit, could slow the economy, the effects of loosening policy when the economy is weak can be minimal. Even employing new instruments such as quantitative easing can have little effect, as Europe has learned. In fact, the negative interest rates being tried by several countries may, perversely, weaken the economy as a result of unfavorable effects on bank balance sheets and thus lending.

The lower interest rates do lead to a lower exchange rate. Indeed, this may be the principal channel through which Fed policy works today. But isn't that nothing more than "competitive devaluation," for which the Trump administration roundly criticizes China? And that, predictably, has been followed by other countries lowering their exchange rate, implying that any benefit to the US economy through the exchange-rate effect will be short-lived. More ironic is the fact that the recent decline in China's exchange rate came about because of the new round of American protectionism and because China stopped interfering with the exchange rate – that is, stopped supporting it.

But, at another level, the Fed action spoke volumes. The US economy was supposed to be "great." Its 3.7% unemployment rate and first-quarter growth of 3.1% should have been the envy of the advanced countries. But scratch a little bit beneath the surface, and there was plenty to worry about. Second-quarter growth plummeted to 2.1%. Average hours worked in manufacturing in July sank to the lowest level since 2011. Real wages are only slightly above their level a decade ago, before the Great Recession. Real investment as a percentage of GDP is well below levels in the late 1990s, despite a tax cut allegedly intended to spur business spending, but which was used mainly to finance share buybacks instead.

America should be in a boom, with three enormous fiscal-stimulus measures in the past three years. The 2017 tax cut, which mainly benefited billionaires and corporations, added some $1.5-2 trillion to the ten-year deficit. An almost $300 billion increase in expenditures over two years averted a government shutdown in 2018. And at the end of July, a new agreement to avoid another shutdown added another $320 billion of spending. If it takes trillion-dollar annual deficits to keep the US economy going in good times, what will it take when things are not so rosy?

The US economy has not been working for most Americans, whose incomes have been stagnating – or worse – for decades. These adverse trends are reflected in declining life expectancy. The Trump tax bill made matters worse by compounding the problem of decaying infrastructure, weakening the ability of the more progressive states to support education, depriving millions more people of health insurance, and, when fully implemented, leading to an increase in taxes for middle-income Americans, worsening their plight.

Redistribution from the bottom to the top – the hallmark not only of Trump's presidency, but also of preceding Republican administrations – reduces aggregate demand, because those at the top spend a smaller fraction of their income than those below. This weakens the economy in a way that cannot be offset even by a massive giveaway to corporations and billionaires. And the enormous Trump fiscal deficits have led to huge trade deficits, far larger than under Obama, as the US has had to import capital to finance the gap between domestic savings and investment.

Trump promised to get the trade deficit down, but his profound lack of understanding of economics has led to it increasing, just as most economists predicted it would. Despite Trump's bad economic management and his attempt to talk the dollar down, and the Fed's lowering of interest rates, his policies have resulted in the US dollar remaining strong, thereby discouraging exports and encouraging imports. Economists have repeatedly tried to explain to him that trade agreements may affect which countries the US buys from and sells to, but not the magnitude of the overall deficit.

In this as in so many other areas, from exchange rates to gun control, Trump believes what he wants to believe, leaving those who can least afford it to pay the price.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University.

[Aug 20, 2019] Trump Promised Massive Infrastructure Projects -- Instead We ve Gotten Nothing>

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... So far, that wager has netted Americans nothing. No money. No deal. No bridges, roads or leadless water pipes. And there's nothing on the horizon since Trump stormed out of the most recent meeting. That was a three-minute session in May with Democratic leaders at which Trump was supposed to discuss the $2 trillion he had proposed earlier to spend on infrastructure. In a press conference immediately afterward, Trump said if the Democrats continued to investigate him, he would refuse to keep his promises to the American people to repair the nation's infrastructure. ..."
"... Candidate Donald Trump knew it was no joke. On the campaign trail, he said U.S. infrastructure was "a mess" and no better than that of a "third-world country. " When an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia in 2015, killing eight and injuring about 200 , he tweeted , "Our roads, airports, tunnels, bridges, electric grid -- all falling apart." Later, he tweeted , "The only one to fix the infrastructure of our country is me." ..."
"... Donald Trump promised to make America great again. And that wouldn't be possible if America's rail system, locks, dams and pipelines -- that is, its vital organs -- were "a mess." Trump signed what he described as a contract with American voters to deliver an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his administration. ..."
"... He mocked his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton's proposal to spend $275 billion. "Her number is a fraction of what we're talking about. We need much more money to rebuild our infrastructure," he told Fox News in 2016 . "I would say at least double her numbers, and you're going to really need a lot more than that." ..."
"... In August of 2016, he promised , "We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports and airports that our country deserves. American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas. American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring. We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation." ..."
"... That contract Trump signed with American voters to produce an infrastructure plan in the first 100 days: worthless. It never happened. He gave Americans an Infrastructure Week in June of 2017, though, and at just about the 100-day mark, predicted infrastructure spending would "take off like a rocket ship." Two more Infrastructure Weeks followed in the next two years, but no money. ..."
"... This year, by which time the words Infrastructure Week had become a synonym for promises not kept, Trump met on April 30 with top Democratic leaders and recommended a $2 trillion infrastructure investment. Democrats praised Trump afterward for taking the challenge seriously and for agreeing to find the money. ..."
"... Almost immediately, Trump began complaining that Democrats were trying to hoodwink him into raising taxes to pay for the $2 trillion he had offered to spend. ..."
"... Trump and the Republicans relinquished one way to pay for infrastructure when they passed a tax cut for the rich and corporations in December of 2017. As a result, the rich and corporations pocketed hundreds of billions -- $1 trillion over 10 years -- and Trump doesn't have that money to invest in infrastructure. Corporations spent their tax break money on stock buybacks, further enriching the already rich. They didn't invest in American manufacturing or worker training or wage increases. ..."
"... I have seen this movie before. A State builds a highway, it then leases that highway to a corporation for a bucket of cash which it uses to bribe the electorate to win the next election or two. The corporation shoves brand new toll booths on the highway charging sky high rates which puts a crimp in local economic activity. After the lease is up after twenty years, the State gets to take over the highway again to find that the corporation cut back on maintenance so that the whole highway has to be rebuilt again. Rinse and repeat. ..."
"... Promises by any narcissist mean nothing. You cannot hang your hat on any word that Trump speaks, because it's not about you or anyone else, but about him and only him. ..."
"... Here is a heads up. If any infrastructure is done it will be airports. The elite fly and couldn't give a crap about the suspension and wheel destroying potholes we have to slalom around every day. They also don't care that the great unwashed waste thousands of hours stuck in traffic when a bridge is closed or collapses. ..."
Jul 26, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Yves here. In a bit of synchronicity, when a reader was graciously driving me to the Department of Motor Vehicles (a schlepp in the wilds of Shelby County), she mentioned she'd heard local media reports that trucks had had their weight limits lowered due to concern that some overpasses might not be able to handle the loads. Of course, a big reason infrastructure spending has plunged in the US is that it's become an excuse for "public-private partnerships," aka looting, when those deals take longer to get done and produce bad results so often that locals can sometimes block them.

By Tom Conway, the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW) . Produced by the Independent Media Institute

Bad news about infrastructure is as ubiquitous as potholes. Failures in a 108-year-old railroad bridge and tunnel cost New York commuters thousands of hours in delays. Illinois doesn't regularly inspect , let alone fix, decaying bridges. Flooding in Nebraska caused nearly half a billion dollars in road and bridge damage -- just this year.

No problem, though. President Donald Trump promised to fix all this. The great dealmaker, the builder of eponymous buildings, the star of "The Apprentice," Donald Trump, during his campaign, urged Americans to bet on him because he'd double what his opponent would spend on infrastructure. Double, he pledged!

So far, that wager has netted Americans nothing. No money. No deal. No bridges, roads or leadless water pipes. And there's nothing on the horizon since Trump stormed out of the most recent meeting. That was a three-minute session in May with Democratic leaders at which Trump was supposed to discuss the $2 trillion he had proposed earlier to spend on infrastructure. In a press conference immediately afterward, Trump said if the Democrats continued to investigate him, he would refuse to keep his promises to the American people to repair the nation's infrastructure.

The comedian Stephen Colbert described the situation best, saying Trump told the Democrats: "It's my way or no highways."

The situation, however, is no joke. Just ask the New York rail commuters held up for more than 2,000 hours over the past four years by bridge and tunnel breakdowns. Just ask the American Society of Civil Engineers , which gave the nation a D+ grade for infrastructure and estimated that if more than $1 trillion is not added to currently anticipated spending on infrastructure, "the economy is expected to lose almost $4 trillion in GDP , resulting in a loss of 2.5 million jobs in 2025."

Candidate Donald Trump knew it was no joke. On the campaign trail, he said U.S. infrastructure was "a mess" and no better than that of a "third-world country. " When an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia in 2015, killing eight and injuring about 200 , he tweeted , "Our roads, airports, tunnels, bridges, electric grid -- all falling apart." Later, he tweeted , "The only one to fix the infrastructure of our country is me."

Donald Trump promised to make America great again. And that wouldn't be possible if America's rail system, locks, dams and pipelines -- that is, its vital organs -- were "a mess." Trump signed what he described as a contract with American voters to deliver an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his administration.

He mocked his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton's proposal to spend $275 billion. "Her number is a fraction of what we're talking about. We need much more money to rebuild our infrastructure," he told Fox News in 2016 . "I would say at least double her numbers, and you're going to really need a lot more than that."

In August of 2016, he promised , "We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports and airports that our country deserves. American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas. American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring. We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation."

In his victory speech and both of his State of the Union addresses, he pledged again to be the master of infrastructure. "We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, school, hospitals. And we will put millions of our people to work," he said the night he won.

That sounds excellent. That's exactly what 75 percent of respondents to a Gallup poll said they wanted. That would create millions of family-supporting jobs making the steel, aluminum, concrete, pipes and construction vehicles necessary to accomplish infrastructure repair. That would stimulate the economy in ways that benefit the middle class and those who are struggling.

That contract Trump signed with American voters to produce an infrastructure plan in the first 100 days: worthless. It never happened. He gave Americans an Infrastructure Week in June of 2017, though, and at just about the 100-day mark, predicted infrastructure spending would "take off like a rocket ship." Two more Infrastructure Weeks followed in the next two years, but no money.

Trump finally announced a plan in February of 2018 , at a little over the 365-day mark, to spend $1.5 trillion on infrastructure. It went nowhere because it managed to annoy both Democrats and Republicans.

It was to be funded by only $200 billion in federal dollars -- less than what Hillary Clinton proposed. The rest was to come from state and local governments and from foreign money interests and the private sector. Basically, the idea was to hand over to hedge fund managers the roads and bridges and pipelines originally built, owned and maintained by Americans. The fat cats at the hedge funds would pay for repairs but then toll the assets in perpetuity. Nobody liked it.

That was last year. This year, by which time the words Infrastructure Week had become a synonym for promises not kept, Trump met on April 30 with top Democratic leaders and recommended a $2 trillion infrastructure investment. Democrats praised Trump afterward for taking the challenge seriously and for agreeing to find the money.

"It couldn't have gone any better," Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal , D-Mass., told the Washington Post, even though Neal was investigating Trump for possible tax fraud.

Almost immediately, Trump began complaining that Democrats were trying to hoodwink him into raising taxes to pay for the $2 trillion he had offered to spend.

Trump and the Republicans relinquished one way to pay for infrastructure when they passed a tax cut for the rich and corporations in December of 2017. As a result, the rich and corporations pocketed hundreds of billions -- $1 trillion over 10 years -- and Trump doesn't have that money to invest in infrastructure. Corporations spent their tax break money on stock buybacks, further enriching the already rich. They didn't invest in American manufacturing or worker training or wage increases.

Three weeks after the April 30 meeting, Trump snubbed Democrats who returned to the White House hoping the president had found a way to keep his promise to raise $2 trillion for infrastructure. Trump dismissed them like naughty schoolchildren. He told them he wouldn't countenance Democrats simultaneously investigating him and bargaining with him -- even though Democrats were investigating him at the time of the April meeting and one of the investigators -- Neal -- had attended.

Promise not kept again.

Trump's reelection motto, Keep America Great, doesn't work for infrastructure. It's still a mess. It's the third year of his presidency, and he has done nothing about it. Apparently, he's saving this pledge for his next term.

In May, he promised Louisianans a new bridge over Interstate 10 -- only if he is reelected. He said the administration would have it ready to go on "day one, right after the election." Just like he said he'd produce an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his first term.

He's doubling down on the infrastructure promises. His win would mean Americans get nothing again.

Arizona Slim , July 26, 2019 at 6:26 am

Paging Bernie Sanders: You need to be all over this Trump-fail. And sooner, rather than later.

The Rev Kev , July 26, 2019 at 6:40 am

The whole thing seems so stupid. The desperate need is there, the people are there to do the work, the money spent into the infrastructure would give a major boost to the real economy, the completed infrastructure would give the real economy a boost for years & decades to come – it is win-win right across the board. But the whole thing is stalled because the whole deal can't be rigged to give a bunch of hedge fund managers control of that infrastructure afterwards. If it did, the constant rents that Americans would have to pay to use this infrastructure would bleed the economy for decades to come.

I have seen this movie before. A State builds a highway, it then leases that highway to a corporation for a bucket of cash which it uses to bribe the electorate to win the next election or two. The corporation shoves brand new toll booths on the highway charging sky high rates which puts a crimp in local economic activity. After the lease is up after twenty years, the State gets to take over the highway again to find that the corporation cut back on maintenance so that the whole highway has to be rebuilt again. Rinse and repeat.

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956, can you imagine how history would have gone if they had been handed over to a bunch of corporations who would have built toll booths over the whole network? Would have done wonders for the American economy I bet.

Wukchumni , July 26, 2019 at 6:48 am

One of the things discussed at our town hall meeting the other night, was a much needed $481k public bathroom, and that was the low bid.

It has to be ADA compliant with ramps, etc.

$48,100 seems like it'd be plenty to get 'r done, as you can build a house with a couple of bathrooms, and a few bedrooms, a kitchen and living room for maybe $200k.

Ignacio , July 26, 2019 at 8:58 am

And if toll revenues don't come as high as expected, mother state will come to the rescue of those poor fund managers. I find it amazing that Trump uses the stupid Russia, Russia, Russia! fixation of democrats as an excuse to do nothing about infrastructure. Does this work with his electorate?

cnchal , July 26, 2019 at 7:09 am

Tom, grow up.

Promises by any narcissist mean nothing. You cannot hang your hat on any word that Trump speaks, because it's not about you or anyone else, but about him and only him.

Here is a heads up. If any infrastructure is done it will be airports. The elite fly and couldn't give a crap about the suspension and wheel destroying potholes we have to slalom around every day. They also don't care that the great unwashed waste thousands of hours stuck in traffic when a bridge is closed or collapses.

Carla , July 26, 2019 at 7:47 am

Well, fix the airports and you've still got Boeing, self-destructing as fast as it can. And Airbus can't fill all the orders no matter how hard it tries. Guess everybody will just have to . stay home.

WheresOurTeddy , July 26, 2019 at 7:16 am

Are all the coal jobs back? How about the manufacturing? NAFTA been repealed and replaced with something better yet? How's the wall coming and has Mexico sent the check yet? Soldiers back from Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria yet?

Got that tax cut for rich people and a ton of conservative judges through though, didn't he?

Katniss Everdeen , July 26, 2019 at 8:17 am

"It couldn't have gone any better," Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal, D-Mass., told the Washington Post, even though Neal was investigating Trump for possible tax fraud.

What a surprise. It's simply "amazing" that the insane status quo jihad that has been waged against Trump since he announced his candidacy had real consequences for the country. Who would have thought that calling ANY president ignorant, ugly, fat, a liar, a traitor, a cheater, an agent of Putin, a racist, a misogynist, a xenophobe, a bigot, an isolationist and an illegitimate occupant of the White House 24/7 since he or she won the election would make actual accomplishment nearly impossible.

The mere mention of his name on college campuses has even been legitimized as a fear-inducing, "safety"-threatening "microagression."

It's just so rich that having determined to prevent Trump from doing absolutely anything he promised during the campaign by any and all means, regardless of what the promise was or how beneficial it may have been, his numerous, bilious "critics" now have the gonads to accuse him of not getting anything done.

With all due respect to the author of this piece, the result he laments was exactly the point of this relentless nightmare of Trump derangement to which the nation has been subjected for three years. I tend to think that the specific promise most targeted for destruction was his criticism of NATO and "infrastructure" was collateral damage, but that's neither here nor there.

The washington status quo has succeeded in its mission to cripple a president it could not defeat electorally, and now tries to blame him for their success. Cutting off your nose to spite your face has always been a counterproductive strategy.

[Aug 20, 2019] Trump is about the agony. The agony of the US centered global neoliberal empire.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The current neoliberal order failed to suppress China development enough to block her from becoming the competitor (and the second largest economy.) ..."
"... That's why a faction of the USA elite decided to adopt "might makes right" policies (essentially piracy instead of international law) in a hope that it will prolong the life of the US-centered neoliberal empire. ..."
"... As much as Trump proved to be inapt politician and personally and morally despicable individual (just his known behavior toward Melania tells a lot about him; we do not need possible Epstein revelations for that) he does represent a faction of the US elite what wants this change. ..."
"... All his pro working class and pro lower middle class rhetoric was a bluff -- he is representative of faction of the US elite that is hell bent on maintaining the imperial superiority achieved after the collapse of the USSR, whatever it takes. At the expense of common people as Pentagon budget can attest. ..."
"... That also explains the appointment of Bolton and Pompeo. That are birds of the feather, not some maniacs (although they are ;-) accidentally brought into Trump administration via major donors pressure. ..."
"... In this sense Russiagate was not only a color revolution launched to depose Trump by neoliberal wing of Democratic Party and rogue, Obama-installed elements within intelligence agencies (Brennan, Comey, McCabe, etc.) , but also part of the struggle between the faction of the US elite that wants "muscular" policy of preservation of the empire (Trump supporters faction so to speak) and the faction that still wants to kick the can down the road via "classic neoliberalism" path (Clinton supporters faction so to speak.) ..."
Aug 20, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

likbez -> anne... August 04, 2019 at 04:14 PM

It is not about the strategy. It's about the agony. The agony of the US centered global neoliberal empire.

Trump and forces behind him realized that current set of treaties does not favor the preservation of the empire and allows new powerful players to emerge despite all institutionalized looting via World Bank and IMF and the imposition of Washington Consensus. The main danger here are Germany (and EU in general) and, especially, China.

The current neoliberal order failed to suppress China development enough to block her from becoming the competitor (and the second largest economy.)

That's why a faction of the USA elite decided to adopt "might makes right" policies (essentially piracy instead of international law) in a hope that it will prolong the life of the US-centered neoliberal empire.

As much as Trump proved to be inapt politician and personally and morally despicable individual (just his known behavior toward Melania tells a lot about him; we do not need possible Epstein revelations for that) he does represent a faction of the US elite what wants this change.

All his pro working class and pro lower middle class rhetoric was a bluff -- he is representative of faction of the US elite that is hell bent on maintaining the imperial superiority achieved after the collapse of the USSR, whatever it takes. At the expense of common people as Pentagon budget can attest.

That also explains the appointment of Bolton and Pompeo. That are birds of the feather, not some maniacs (although they are ;-) accidentally brought into Trump administration via major donors pressure.

In this sense Russiagate was not only a color revolution launched to depose Trump by neoliberal wing of Democratic Party and rogue, Obama-installed elements within intelligence agencies (Brennan, Comey, McCabe, etc.) , but also part of the struggle between the faction of the US elite that wants "muscular" policy of preservation of the empire (Trump supporters faction so to speak) and the faction that still wants to kick the can down the road via "classic neoliberalism" path (Clinton supporters faction so to speak.)

[Aug 04, 2019] Neoliberalism Political Success, Economic Failure

Highly recommended!
Neoliberalism is an amazing ideological construct: secular religion designed for the rich. The level of brainwashing of population under neoliberalism probably exceeds achievable in a long run under Bolshevism and Nazism.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism's premise is that free markets can regulate themselves; that government is inherently incompetent, captive to special interests, and an intrusion on the efficiency of the market; that in distributive terms, market outcomes are basically deserved; and that redistribution creates perverse incentives by punishing the economy's winners and rewarding its losers. So government should get out of the market's way. ..."
"... By the 1990s, even moderate liberals had been converted to the belief that social objectives can be achieved by harnessing the power of markets. Intermittent periods of governance by Democratic presidents slowed but did not reverse the slide to neoliberal policy and doctrine. The corporate wing of the Democratic Party approved. ..."
"... Now, after nearly half a century, the verdict is in. Virtually every one of these policies has failed, even on their own terms. Enterprise has been richly rewarded, taxes have been cut, and regulation reduced or privatized. The economy is vastly more unequal, yet economic growth is slower and more chaotic than during the era of managed capitalism. Deregulation has produced not salutary competition, but market concentration. Economic power has resulted in feedback loops of political power, in which elites make rules that bolster further concentration. ..."
"... The grand neoliberal experiment of the past 40 years has demonstrated that markets in fact do not regulate themselves. Managed markets turn out to be more equitable and more efficient. Yet the theory and practical influence of neoliberalism marches splendidly on, because it is so useful to society's most powerful people -- as a scholarly veneer to what would otherwise be a raw power grab. The British political economist Colin Crouch captured this anomaly in a book nicely titled The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism . Why did neoliberalism not die? As Crouch observed, neoliberalism failed both as theory and as policy, but succeeded superbly as power politics for economic elites. ..."
"... As the great political historian Karl Polanyi warned, when markets overwhelm society, ordinary people often turn to tyrants. In regimes that border on neofascist, klepto-capitalists get along just fine with dictators, undermining the neoliberal premise of capitalism and democracy as complements. Several authoritarian thugs, playing on tribal nationalism as the antidote to capitalist cosmopolitanism, are surprisingly popular. ..."
"... The theory of maximizing shareholder value was deployed to undermine the entire range of financial regulation and workers' rights. Cost-benefit analysis, emphasizing costs and discounting benefits, was used to discredit a good deal of health, safety, and environmental regulation. Public choice theory, associated with the economist James Buchanan and an entire ensuing school of economics and political science, was used to impeach democracy itself, on the premise that policies were hopelessly afflicted by "rent-seekers" and "free-riders." ..."
"... Human capital theory, another variant of neoliberal application of markets to partly social questions, justified deregulating labor markets and crushing labor unions. Unions supposedly used their power to get workers paid more than their market worth. Likewise minimum wage laws. But the era of depressed wages has actually seen a decline in rates of productivity growth. Conversely, does any serious person think that the inflated pay of the financial moguls who crashed the economy accurately reflects their contribution to economic activity? In the case of hedge funds and private equity, the high incomes of fund sponsors are the result of transfers of wealth and income from employees, other stakeholders, and operating companies to the fund managers, not the fruits of more efficient management. ..."
"... Financial deregulation is neoliberalism's most palpable deregulatory failure, but far from the only one. Electricity deregulation on balance has increased monopoly power and raised costs to consumers, but has failed to offer meaningful "shopping around" opportunities to bring down prices. We have gone from regulated monopolies with predictable earnings, costs, wages, and consumer protections to deregulated monopolies or oligopolies with substantial pricing power. Since the Bell breakup, the telephone system tells a similar story of re-concentration, dwindling competition, price-gouging, and union-bashing. ..."
"... As regards clear language and definitions, I much prefer Michael Hudson's insistence that, to the liberal economists, free markets were markets free from rent seeking, while to the neoliberals free markets are free from government regulation. ..."
"... In a political system where the reputedly "labor" party would rather lose with their bribe-taking warmongering Goldwater girl than win with a people's advocate, Houston we have a problem. ..."
"... "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." ..."
"... Neoliberalism gave liberals an excuse to sell out in the name of "fresh thinking." Meanwhile the vast working class had become discredited Archie Bunkers in the eyes of the intellectuals after Vietnam and the Civil Rights struggles. ..."
"... I'd add two other consequences of neoliberalism. One is the increasing alienation of citizens from the mechanism for provision of the basic necessities of life. ..."
"... As Phillip Mirowski patiently explains in Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, neoliberalism is not laissez faire. Neoliberal desire a strong government to implement their market based nirvana, as long as they control government. ..."
Aug 04, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

By Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect. Reposted from Alternet .

Since the late 1970s, we've had a grand experiment to test the claim that free markets really do work best. This resurrection occurred despite the practical failure of laissez-faire in the 1930s, the resulting humiliation of free-market theory, and the contrasting success of managed capitalism during the three-decade postwar boom.

Yet when growth faltered in the 1970s, libertarian economic theory got another turn at bat. This revival proved extremely convenient for the conservatives who came to power in the 1980s. The neoliberal counterrevolution, in theory and policy, has reversed or undermined nearly every aspect of managed capitalism -- from progressive taxation, welfare transfers, and antitrust, to the empowerment of workers and the regulation of banks and other major industries.

Neoliberalism's premise is that free markets can regulate themselves; that government is inherently incompetent, captive to special interests, and an intrusion on the efficiency of the market; that in distributive terms, market outcomes are basically deserved; and that redistribution creates perverse incentives by punishing the economy's winners and rewarding its losers. So government should get out of the market's way.

By the 1990s, even moderate liberals had been converted to the belief that social objectives can be achieved by harnessing the power of markets. Intermittent periods of governance by Democratic presidents slowed but did not reverse the slide to neoliberal policy and doctrine. The corporate wing of the Democratic Party approved.

Now, after nearly half a century, the verdict is in. Virtually every one of these policies has failed, even on their own terms. Enterprise has been richly rewarded, taxes have been cut, and regulation reduced or privatized. The economy is vastly more unequal, yet economic growth is slower and more chaotic than during the era of managed capitalism. Deregulation has produced not salutary competition, but market concentration. Economic power has resulted in feedback loops of political power, in which elites make rules that bolster further concentration.

The culprit isn't just "markets" -- some impersonal force that somehow got loose again. This is a story of power using theory. The mixed economy was undone by economic elites, who revised rules for their own benefit. They invested heavily in friendly theorists to bless this shift as sound and necessary economics, and friendly politicians to put those theories into practice.

Recent years have seen two spectacular cases of market mispricing with devastating consequences: the near-depression of 2008 and irreversible climate change. The economic collapse of 2008 was the result of the deregulation of finance. It cost the real U.S. economy upwards of $15 trillion (and vastly more globally), depending on how you count, far more than any conceivable efficiency gain that might be credited to financial innovation. Free-market theory presumes that innovation is necessarily benign. But much of the financial engineering of the deregulatory era was self-serving, opaque, and corrupt -- the opposite of an efficient and transparent market.

The existential threat of global climate change reflects the incompetence of markets to accurately price carbon and the escalating costs of pollution. The British economist Nicholas Stern has aptly termed the worsening climate catastrophe history's greatest case of market failure. Here again, this is not just the result of failed theory. The entrenched political power of extractive industries and their political allies influences the rules and the market price of carbon. This is less an invisible hand than a thumb on the scale. The premise of efficient markets provides useful cover.

The grand neoliberal experiment of the past 40 years has demonstrated that markets in fact do not regulate themselves. Managed markets turn out to be more equitable and more efficient. Yet the theory and practical influence of neoliberalism marches splendidly on, because it is so useful to society's most powerful people -- as a scholarly veneer to what would otherwise be a raw power grab. The British political economist Colin Crouch captured this anomaly in a book nicely titled The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism . Why did neoliberalism not die? As Crouch observed, neoliberalism failed both as theory and as policy, but succeeded superbly as power politics for economic elites.

The neoliberal ascendance has had another calamitous cost -- to democratic legitimacy. As government ceased to buffer market forces, daily life has become more of a struggle for ordinary people. The elements of a decent middle-class life are elusive -- reliable jobs and careers, adequate pensions, secure medical care, affordable housing, and college that doesn't require a lifetime of debt. Meanwhile, life has become ever sweeter for economic elites, whose income and wealth have pulled away and whose loyalty to place, neighbor, and nation has become more contingent and less reliable.

Large numbers of people, in turn, have given up on the promise of affirmative government, and on democracy itself. After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, ours was widely billed as an era when triumphant liberal capitalism would march hand in hand with liberal democracy. But in a few brief decades, the ostensibly secure regime of liberal democracy has collapsed in nation after nation, with echoes of the 1930s.

As the great political historian Karl Polanyi warned, when markets overwhelm society, ordinary people often turn to tyrants. In regimes that border on neofascist, klepto-capitalists get along just fine with dictators, undermining the neoliberal premise of capitalism and democracy as complements. Several authoritarian thugs, playing on tribal nationalism as the antidote to capitalist cosmopolitanism, are surprisingly popular.

It's also important to appreciate that neoliberalism is not laissez-faire. Classically, the premise of a "free market" is that government simply gets out of the way. This is nonsensical, since all markets are creatures of rules, most fundamentally rules defining property, but also rules defining credit, debt, and bankruptcy; rules defining patents, trademarks, and copyrights; rules defining terms of labor; and so on. Even deregulation requires rules. In Polanyi's words, "laissez-faire was planned."

The political question is who gets to make the rules, and for whose benefit. The neoliberalism of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman invoked free markets, but in practice the neoliberal regime has promoted rules created by and for private owners of capital, to keep democratic government from asserting rules of fair competition or countervailing social interests. The regime has rules protecting pharmaceutical giants from the right of consumers to import prescription drugs or to benefit from generics. The rules of competition and intellectual property generally have been tilted to protect incumbents. Rules of bankruptcy have been tilted in favor of creditors. Deceptive mortgages require elaborate rules, written by the financial sector and then enforced by government. Patent rules have allowed agribusiness and giant chemical companies like Monsanto to take over much of agriculture -- the opposite of open markets. Industry has invented rules requiring employees and consumers to submit to binding arbitration and to relinquish a range of statutory and common-law rights.

Neoliberalism as Theory, Policy, and Power

It's worth taking a moment to unpack the term "neoliberalism." The coinage can be confusing to American ears because the "liberal" part refers not to the word's ordinary American usage, meaning moderately left-of-center, but to classical economic liberalism otherwise known as free-market economics. The "neo" part refers to the reassertion of the claim that the laissez-faire model of the economy was basically correct after all.

Few proponents of these views embraced the term neoliberal . Mostly, they called themselves free-market conservatives. "Neoliberal" was a coinage used mainly by their critics, sometimes as a neutral descriptive term, sometimes as an epithet. The use became widespread in the era of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

To add to the confusion, a different and partly overlapping usage was advanced in the 1970s by the group around the Washington Monthly magazine. They used "neoliberal" to mean a new, less statist form of American liberalism. Around the same time, the term neoconservative was used as a self-description by former liberals who embraced conservatism, on cultural, racial, economic, and foreign-policy grounds. Neoconservatives were neoliberals in economics.

Beginning in the 1970s, resurrected free-market theory was interwoven with both conservative politics and significant investments in the production of theorists and policy intellectuals. This occurred not just in well-known conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage, Cato, and the Manhattan Institute, but through more insidious investments in academia. Lavishly funded centers and tenured chairs were underwritten by the Olin, Scaife, Bradley, and other far-right foundations to promote such variants of free-market theory as law and economics, public choice, rational choice, cost-benefit analysis, maximize-shareholder-value, and kindred schools of thought. These theories colonized several academic disciplines. All were variations on the claim that markets worked and that government should get out of the way.

Each of these bodies of sub-theory relied upon its own variant of neoliberal ideology. An intensified version of the theory of comparative advantage was used not just to cut tariffs but to use globalization as all-purpose deregulation. The theory of maximizing shareholder value was deployed to undermine the entire range of financial regulation and workers' rights. Cost-benefit analysis, emphasizing costs and discounting benefits, was used to discredit a good deal of health, safety, and environmental regulation. Public choice theory, associated with the economist James Buchanan and an entire ensuing school of economics and political science, was used to impeach democracy itself, on the premise that policies were hopelessly afflicted by "rent-seekers" and "free-riders."

Click here to read how Robert Kuttner has been unmasking the fallacies of neoliberalism for decades

Market failure was dismissed as a rare special case; government failure was said to be ubiquitous. Theorists worked hand in glove with lobbyists and with public officials. But in every major case where neoliberal theory generated policy, the result was political success and economic failure.

For example, supply-side economics became the justification for tax cuts, on the premise that taxes punished enterprise. Supposedly, if taxes were cut, especially taxes on capital and on income from capital, the resulting spur to economic activity would be so potent that deficits would be far less than predicted by "static" economic projections, and perhaps even pay for themselves. There have been six rounds of this experiment, from the tax cuts sponsored by Jimmy Carter in 1978 to the immense 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed by Donald Trump. In every case some economic stimulus did result, mainly from the Keynesian jolt to demand, but in every case deficits increased significantly. Conservatives simply stopped caring about deficits. The tax cuts were often inefficient as well as inequitable, since the loopholes steered investment to tax-favored uses rather than the most economically logical ones. Dozens of America's most profitable corporations paid no taxes.

Robert Bork's "antitrust paradox," holding that antitrust enforcement actually weakened competition, was used as the doctrine to sideline the Sherman and Clayton Acts. Supposedly, if government just got out of the way, market forces would remain more competitive because monopoly pricing would invite innovation and new entrants to the market. In practice, industry after industry became more heavily concentrated. Incumbents got in the habit of buying out innovators or using their market power to crush them. This pattern is especially insidious in the tech economy of platform monopolies, where giants that provide platforms, such as Google and Amazon, use their market power and superior access to customer data to out-compete rivals who use their platforms. Markets, once again, require rules beyond the benign competence of the market actors themselves. Only democratic government can set equitable rules. And when democracy falters, undemocratic governments in cahoots with corrupt private plutocrats will make the rules.

Human capital theory, another variant of neoliberal application of markets to partly social questions, justified deregulating labor markets and crushing labor unions. Unions supposedly used their power to get workers paid more than their market worth. Likewise minimum wage laws. But the era of depressed wages has actually seen a decline in rates of productivity growth. Conversely, does any serious person think that the inflated pay of the financial moguls who crashed the economy accurately reflects their contribution to economic activity? In the case of hedge funds and private equity, the high incomes of fund sponsors are the result of transfers of wealth and income from employees, other stakeholders, and operating companies to the fund managers, not the fruits of more efficient management.

There is a broad literature discrediting this body of pseudo-scholarly work in great detail. Much of neoliberalism represents the ever-reliable victory of assumption over evidence. Yet neoliberal theory lived on because it was so convenient for elites, and because of the inertial power of the intellectual capital that had been created. The well-funded neoliberal habitat has provided comfortable careers for two generations of scholars and pseudo-scholars who migrate between academia, think tanks, K Street, op-ed pages, government, Wall Street, and back again. So even if the theory has been demolished both by scholarly rebuttal and by events, it thrives in powerful institutions and among their political allies.

The Practical Failure of Neoliberal Policies

Financial deregulation is neoliberalism's most palpable deregulatory failure, but far from the only one. Electricity deregulation on balance has increased monopoly power and raised costs to consumers, but has failed to offer meaningful "shopping around" opportunities to bring down prices. We have gone from regulated monopolies with predictable earnings, costs, wages, and consumer protections to deregulated monopolies or oligopolies with substantial pricing power. Since the Bell breakup, the telephone system tells a similar story of re-concentration, dwindling competition, price-gouging, and union-bashing.

Air travel has been a poster child for advocates of deregulation, but the actual record is mixed at best. Airline deregulation produced serial bankruptcies of every major U.S. airline, often at the cost of worker pay and pension funds. Ticket prices have declined on average over the past two decades, but the traveling public suffers from a crazy quilt of fares, declining service, shrinking seats and legroom, and exorbitant penalties for the perfectly normal sin of having to change plans. Studies have shown that fares actually declined at a faster rate in the 20 years before deregulation in 1978 than in the 20 years afterward, because the prime source of greater efficiency in airline travel is the introduction of more fuel-efficient planes. The roller-coaster experience of airline profits and losses has reduced the capacity of airlines to purchase more fuel-efficient aircraft, and the average age of the fleet keeps increasing. The use of "fortress hubs" to defend market pricing power has reduced the percentage of nonstop flights, the most efficient way to fly from one point to another.

In addition to deregulation, three prime areas of practical neoliberal policies are the use of vouchers as "market-like" means to social goals, the privatization of public services, and the use of tax subsides rather than direct outlays. In every case, government revenues are involved, so this is far from a free market to begin with. But the premise is that market disciplines can achieve public purposes more efficiently than direct public provision.

The evidence provides small comfort for these claims. One core problem is that the programs invariably give too much to the for-profit middlemen at the expense of the intended beneficiaries. A related problem is that the process of using vouchers and contracts invites corruption. It is a different form of "rent-seeking" -- pursuit of monopoly profits -- than that attributed to government by public choice theorists, but corruption nonetheless. Often, direct public provision is far more transparent and accountable than a web of contractors.

A further problem is that in practice there is often far less competition than imagined, because of oligopoly power, vendor lock-in, and vendor political influence. These experiments in marketization to serve social goals do not operate in some Platonic policy laboratory, where the only objective is true market efficiency yoked to the public good. They operate in the grubby world of practical politics, where the vendors are closely allied with conservative politicians whose purposes may be to discredit social transfers entirely, or to reward corporate allies, or to benefit from kickbacks either directly or as campaign contributions.

Privatized prisons are a case in point. A few large, scandal-ridden companies have gotten most of the contracts, often through political influence. Far from bringing better quality and management efficiency, they have profited by diverting operating funds and worsening conditions that were already deplorable, and finding new ways to charge inmates higher fees for necessary services such as phone calls. To the extent that money was actually saved, most of the savings came from reducing the pay and professionalism of guards, increasing overcrowding, and decreasing already inadequate budgets for food and medical care.

A similar example is the privatization of transportation services such as highways and even parking meters. In several Midwestern states, toll roads have been sold to private vendors. The governor who makes the deal gains a temporary fiscal windfall, while drivers end up paying higher tolls often for decades. Investment bankers who broker the deal also take their cut. Some of the money does go into highway improvements, but that could have been done more efficiently in the traditional way via direct public ownership and competitive bidding.

Housing vouchers substantially reward landlords who use the vouchers to fill empty houses with poor people until the neighborhood gentrifies, at which point the owner is free to quit the program and charge market rentals. Thus public funds are used to underwrite a privately owned, quasi-social housing sector -- whose social character is only temporary. No permanent social housing is produced despite the extensive public outlay. The companion use of tax incentives to attract passive investment in affordable housing promotes economically inefficient tax shelters, and shunts public funds into the pockets of the investors -- money that might otherwise have gone directly to the housing.

The Affordable Care Act is a form of voucher. But the regulated private insurance markets in the ACA have not fully lived up to their promise, in part because of the extensive market power retained by private insurers and in part because the right has relentlessly sought to sabotage the program -- another political feedback loop. The sponsors assumed that competition would lower costs and increase consumer choice. But in too many counties, there are three or fewer competing plans, and in some cases just one.

As more insurance plans and hospital systems become for-profit, massive investment goes into such wasteful activities as manipulation of billing, "risk selection," and other gaming of the rules. Our mixed-market system of health care requires massive regulation to work with tolerable efficiency. In practice, this degenerates into an infinite regress of regulator versus commercial profit-maximizer, reminiscent of Mad magazine's "Spy versus Spy," with the industry doing end runs to Congress to further rig the rules. Straight-ahead public insurance such as Medicare is generally far more efficient.

An extensive literature has demonstrated that for-profit voucher schools do no better and often do worse than comparable public schools, and are vulnerable to multiple forms of gaming and corruption. Proprietors of voucher schools are superb at finding ways of excluding costly special-needs students, so that those costs are imposed on what remains of public schools; they excel at gaming test results. While some voucher and charter schools, especially nonprofit ones, sometimes improve on average school performance, so do many public schools. The record is also muddied by the fact that many ostensibly nonprofit schools contract out management to for-profit companies.

Tax preferences have long been used ostensibly to serve social goals. The Earned Income Tax Credit is considered one of the more successful cases of using market-like measures -- in this case a refundable tax credit -- to achieve the social goal of increasing worker take-home pay. It has also been touted as the rare case of bipartisan collaboration. Liberals get more money for workers. Conservatives get to reward the deserving poor, since the EITC is conditioned on employment. Conservatives get a further ideological win, since the EITC is effectively a wage subsidy from the government, but is experienced as a tax refund rather than a benefit of government.

Recent research, however, shows that the EITC is primarily a subsidy of low-wage employers, who are able to pay their workers a lot less than a market-clearing wage. In industries such as nursing homes or warehouses, where many workers qualified for the EITC work side by side with ones not eligible, the non-EITC workers get substandard wages. The existence of the EITC depresses the level of the wages that have to come out of the employer's pocket.

Neoliberalism's Influence on Liberals

As free-market theory resurged, many moderate liberals embraced these policies. In the inflationary 1970s, regulation became a scapegoat that supposedly deterred salutary price competition. Some, such as economist Alfred Kahn, President Carter's adviser on deregulation, supported deregulation on what he saw as the merits. Other moderates supported neoliberal policies opportunistically, to curry favor with powerful industries and donors. Market-like policies were also embraced by liberals as a tactical way to find common ground with conservatives.

Several forms of deregulation -- of airlines, trucking, and electric power -- began not under Reagan but under Carter. Financial deregulation took off under Bill Clinton. Democratic presidents, as much as Republicans, promoted trade deals that undermined social standards. Cost-benefit analysis by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) was more of a choke point under Barack Obama than under George W. Bush.

"Command and control" became an all-purpose pejorative for disparaging perfectly sensible and efficient regulation. "Market-like" became a fashionable concept, not just on the free-market right but on the moderate left. Cass Sunstein, who served as Obama's anti-regulation czar,uses the example of "nudges" as a more market-like and hence superior alternative to direct regulation, though with rare exceptions their impact is trivial. Moreover, nudges only work in tandem with regulation.

There are indeed some interventionist policies that use market incentives to serve social goals. But contrary to free-market theory, the market-like incentives first require substantial regulation and are not a substitute for it. A good example is the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which used tradable emission rights to cut the output of sulfur dioxide, the cause of acid rain. This was supported by both the George H.W. Bush administration and by leading Democrats. But before the trading regime could work, Congress first had to establish permissible ceilings on sulfur dioxide output -- pure command and control.

There are many other instances, such as nutrition labeling, truth-in-lending, and disclosure of EPA gas mileage results, where the market-like premise of a better-informed consumer complements command regulation but is no substitute for it. Nearly all of the increase in fuel efficiency, for example, is the result of command regulations that require auto fleets to hit a gas mileage target. The fact that EPA gas mileage figures are prominently disclosed on new car stickers may have modest influence, but motor fuels are so underpriced that car companies have success selling gas-guzzlers despite the consumer labeling.

Politically, whatever rationale there was for liberals to make common ground with libertarians is now largely gone. The authors of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made no attempt to meet Democrats partway; they excluded the opposition from the legislative process entirely. This was opportunistic tax cutting for elites, pure and simple. The right today also abandoned the quest for a middle ground on environmental policy, on anti-poverty policy, on health policy -- on virtually everything. Neoliberal ideology did its historic job of weakening intellectual and popular support for the proposition that affirmative government can better the lives of citizens and that the Democratic Party is a reliable steward of that social compact. Since Reagan, the right's embrace of the free market has evolved from partly principled idealism into pure opportunism and obstruction.

Neoliberalism and Hyper-Globalism

The post-1990 rules of globalization, supported by conservatives and moderate liberals alike, are the quintessence of neoliberalism. At Bretton Woods in 1944, the use of fixed exchange rates and controls on speculative private capital, plus the creation of the IMFand World Bank, were intended to allow member countries to practice national forms of managed capitalism, insulated from the destructive and deflationary influences of short-term speculative private capital flows. As doctrine and power shifted in the 1970s, the IMF, the World Bank, and later the WTO, which replaced the old GATT, mutated into their ideological opposite. Rather than instruments of support for mixed national economies, they became enforcers of neoliberal policies.

The standard package of the "Washington Consensus" of approved policies for developing nations included demands that they open their capital markets to speculative private finance, as well as cutting taxes on capital, weakening social transfers, and gutting labor regulation and public ownership. But private capital investment in poor countries proved to be fickle. The result was often excessive inflows during the boom part of the cycle and punitive withdrawals during the bust -- the opposite of the patient, long-term development capital that these countries needed and that was provided by the World Bank of an earlier era. During the bust phase, the IMFtypically imposes even more stringent neoliberal demands as the price of financial bailouts, including perverse budgetary austerity, supposedly to restore the confidence of the very speculative capital markets responsible for the boom-bust cycle.

Dozens of nations, from Latin America to East Asia, went through this cycle of boom, bust, and then IMF pile-on. Greece is still suffering the impact. After 1990, hyper-globalism also included trade treaties whose terms favored multinational corporations. Traditionally, trade agreements had been mainly about reciprocal reductions of tariffs. Nations were free to have whatever brand of regulation, public investment, or social policies they chose. With the advent of the WTO, many policies other than tariffs were branded as trade distorting, even as takings without compensation. Trade deals were used to give foreign capital free access and to dismantle national regulation and public ownership. Special courts were created in which foreign corporations and investors could do end runs around national authorities to challenge regulation for impeding commerce.

At first, the sponsors of the new trade regime tried to claim the successful economies of East Asia as evidence of the success of the neoliberal recipe. Supposedly, these nations had succeeded by pursuing "export-led growth," exposing their domestic economies to salutary competition. But these claims were soon exposed as the opposite of what had actually occurred. In fact, Japan, South Korea, smaller Asian nations, and above all China had thrived by rejecting every major tenet of neoliberalism. Their capital markets were tightly regulated and insulated from foreign speculative capital. They developed world-class industries as state-led cartels that favored domestic production and supply. East Asia got into trouble only when it followed IMFdictates to throw open capital markets, and in the aftermath they recovered by closing those markets and assembling war chests of hard currency so that they'd never again have to go begging to the IMF. Enthusiasts of hyper-globalization also claimed that it benefited poor countries by increasing export opportunities, but as the success of East Asia shows, there is more than one way to boost exports -- and many poorer countries suffered under the terms of the global neoliberal regime.

Nor was the damage confined to the developing world. As the work of Harvard economist Dani Rodrik has demonstrated, democracy requires a polity. For better or for worse, the polity and democratic citizenship are national. By enhancing the global market at the expense of the democratic state, the current brand of hyper-globalization deliberately weakens the capacity of states to regulate markets, and weakens democracy itself.

When Do Markets Work?

The failure of neoliberalism as economic and social policy does not mean that markets never work. A command economy is even more utopian and perverse than a neoliberal one. The practical quest is for an efficient and equitable middle ground.

The neoliberal story of how the economy operates assumes a largely frictionless marketplace, where prices are set by supply and demand, and the price mechanism allocates resources to their optimal use in the economy as a whole. For this discipline to work as advertised, however, there can be no market power, competition must be plentiful, sellers and buyers must have roughly equal information, and there can be no significant externalities. Much of the 20th century was practical proof that these conditions did not describe a good part of the actual economy. And if markets priced things wrong, the market system did not aggregate to an efficient equilibrium, and depressions could become self-deepening. As Keynes demonstrated, only a massive jolt of government spending could restart the engines, even if market pricing was partly violated in the process.

Nonetheless, in many sectors of the economy, the process of buying and selling is close enough to the textbook conditions of perfect competition that the price system works tolerably well. Supermarkets, for instance, deliver roughly accurate prices because of the consumer's freedom and knowledge to shop around. Likewise much of retailing. However, when we get into major realms of the economy with positive or negative externalities, such as education and health, markets are not sufficient. And in other major realms, such as pharmaceuticals, where corporations use their political power to rig the terms of patents, the market doesn't produce a cure.

The basic argument of neoliberalism can fit on a bumper sticker. Markets work; governments don't . If you want to embellish that story, there are two corollaries: Markets embody human freedom. And with markets, people basically get what they deserve; to alter market outcomes is to spoil the poor and punish the productive. That conclusion logically flows from the premise that markets are efficient. Milton Friedman became rich, famous, and influential by teasing out the several implications of these simple premises.

It is much harder to articulate the case for a mixed economy than the case for free markets, precisely because the mixed economy is mixed. The rebuttal takes several paragraphs. The more complex story holds that markets are substantially efficient in some realms but far from efficient in others, because of positive and negative externalities, the tendency of financial markets to create cycles of boom and bust, the intersection of self-interest and corruption, the asymmetry of information between company and consumer, the asymmetry of power between corporation and employee, the power of the powerful to rig the rules, and the fact that there are realms of human life (the right to vote, human liberty, security of one's person) that should not be marketized.

And if markets are not perfectly efficient, then distributive questions are partly political choices. Some societies pay pre-K teachers the minimum wage as glorified babysitters. Others educate and compensate them as professionals. There is no "correct" market-derived wage, because pre-kindergarten is a social good and the issue of how to train and compensate teachers is a social choice, not a market choice. The same is true of the other human services, including medicine. Nor is there a theoretically correct set of rules for patents, trademarks, and copyrights. These are politically derived, either balancing the interests of innovation with those of diffusion -- or being politically captured by incumbent industries.

Governments can in principle improve on market outcomes via regulation, but that fact is complicated by the risk of regulatory capture. So another issue that arises is market failure versus polity failure, which brings us back to the urgency of strong democracy and effective government.

After Neoliberalism

The political reversal of neoliberalism can only come through practical politics and policies that demonstrate how government often can serve citizens more equitably and efficiently than markets. Revision of theory will take care of itself. There is no shortage of dissenting theorists and empirical policy researchers whose scholarly work has been vindicated by events. What they need is not more theory but more influence, both in the academy and in the corridors of power. They are available to advise a new progressive administration, if that administration can get elected and if it refrains from hiring neoliberal advisers.

There are also some relatively new areas that invite policy innovation. These include regulation of privacy rights versus entrepreneurial liberties in the digital realm; how to think of the internet as a common carrier; how to update competition and antitrust policy as platform monopolies exert new forms of market power; how to modernize labor-market policy in the era of the gig economy; and the role of deeper income supplements as machines replace human workers.

The failed neoliberal experiment also makes the case not just for better-regulated capitalism but for direct public alternatives as well. Banking, done properly, especially the provision of mortgage finance, is close to a public utility. Much of it could be public. A great deal of research is done more honestly and more cost-effectively in public, peer-reviewed institutions such as the NIHthan by a substantially corrupt private pharmaceutical industry. Social housing often is more cost-effective than so-called public-private partnerships. Public power is more efficient to generate, less prone to monopolistic price-gouging, and friendlier to the needed green transition than private power. The public option in health care is far more efficient than the current crazy quilt in which each layer of complexity adds opacity and cost. Public provision does require public oversight, but that is more straightforward and transparent than the byzantine dance of regulation and counter-regulation.

The two other benefits of direct public provision are that the public gets direct evidence of government delivering something of value, and that the countervailing power of democracy to harness markets is enhanced. A mixed economy depends above all on a strong democracy -- one even stronger than the democracy that succumbed to the corrupting influence of economic elites and their neoliberal intellectual allies beginning half a century ago. The antidote to the resurrected neoliberal fable is the resurrection of democracy -- strong enough to tame the market in a way that tames it for keeps.

Arthur Littwin , August 4, 2019 at 7:36 am

Excellent article and very much appreciated so I can share with confused Liberal friends (mostly older) who think that they are now, somehow, Neoliberal. As far as market failure is concerned: I think Boeing is an incredible case in point. When one of the nation's flagship enterprises captures regulatory processes so completely that it produces a product that cannot accomplish its one aim: to fly. Btw: I am seeing a lot of use of the "populist" to describe what might be more correctly described as nativist, xenophobic, anti-democratic, authoritarian, or even outright fascist leaders. Keep the language clear and insist on precise definitions.

Ian Perkins , August 4, 2019 at 10:16 am

Excellent article, I agree. As regards clear language and definitions, I much prefer Michael Hudson's insistence that, to the liberal economists, free markets were markets free from rent seeking, while to the neoliberals free markets are free from government regulation.

"As governments were democratized, especially in the United States, liberals came to endorse a policy of active public welfare spending and hence government intervention, especially on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged. neoliberalism sought to restore the centralized aristocratic and oligarchic rentier control of domestic politics."

http://michael-hudson.com/2014/01/l-is-for-land/ – "Liberal"

bwilli123 , August 4, 2019 at 7:44 am

"The economic collapse of 2008 was the result of the deregulation of finance. It cost the real U.S. economy upwards of $15 trillion (and vastly more globally), depending on how you count, far more than any conceivable efficiency gain that might be credited to financial innovation ."
That High Priest of neo-Liberalism Alan Greenspan once said, "The only thing useful banks have invented in 20 years is the ATM "

vern lyon , August 4, 2019 at 8:33 am

Sorry, the ATM quote was Paul Volker not Greenspan.

paul , August 4, 2019 at 8:23 am

In my worthless opinion: The private sector is great for what you do not need

The public sector(direction not implementation) is the only way to provide what we all need. 2.5 up maslow's pyramid would suit many.

If you are short of links tomorrow: Craig Murray would be worth a look

Divadab , August 4, 2019 at 8:23 am

Hard to see how the federal government can be gotten back from the cartels at this point- the whole thing is so corrupt. And the "socialism is bad" mantra has captured a lot of easily led brains.

In a political system where the reputedly "labor" party would rather lose with their bribe-taking warmongering Goldwater girl than win with a people's advocate, Houston we have a problem.

As with anthropogenic climate change, the cause is systemic- the political system is based on money control and the economic system is based on unsustainable energy use. Absent a crash, crisis, systematic chaos and destruction I don't see much changing other than at the margins- the corruption is too entrenched.

Watt4Bob , August 4, 2019 at 9:28 am

We were warned about the situation you describe.

The following is a portion of an op-ed piece that appeared in the New York Times On April 4, 1944 . It was written by Henry Wallace, FDR's vice president;

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. They are doing this even in those cases where they hope to have profitable connections with German chemical firms after the war ends. They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.

The European brand of fascism will probably present its most serious postwar threat to us via Latin America. The effect of the war has been to raise the cost of living in most Latin American countries much faster than the wages of labor. The fascists in most Latin American countries tell the people that the reason their wages will not buy as much in the way of goods is because of Yankee imperialism. The fascists in Latin America learn to speak and act like natives. Our chemical and other manufacturing concerns are all too often ready to let the Germans have Latin American markets, provided the American companies can work out an arrangement which will enable them to charge high prices to the consumer inside the United States. Following this war, technology will have reached such a point that it will be possible for Germans, using South America as a base, to cause us much more difficulty in World War III than they did in World War II. The military and landowning cliques in many South American countries will find it attractive financially to work with German fascist concerns as well as expedient from the standpoint of temporary power politics.

Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself.

The full text is quite useful in understanding that there is no question as to how and why we find ourselves in the present predicament, it is the logical outcome of a process that was well understood during FDR's tenure.

That understanding has since been deliberately eradicated by the powerful interests that control our media.

John Zelnicker , August 4, 2019 at 12:04 pm

@Watt4Bob
August 4, 2019 at 9:28 am
-- -- -

Thank you for posting this excerpt.

Very enlightening.

There was a lot of wisdom put forth during and shortly after WWII in both politics (see above) and economics.

For example, there was a Treasury official, whose name I can't remember right now, who understood that the Federal government has no real need to collect taxes. And, Keynesianism prevailed until Milton Friedman and the Chicago School came along and turned everything upside down with Monetarism.

mle in detroit , August 4, 2019 at 12:54 pm

Wow, does Wallace's second paragraph describe today or what?

Ian Perkins , August 4, 2019 at 2:52 pm

My thoughts exactly.

Amfortas the hippie , August 4, 2019 at 10:00 am

"absent a crash " I reckon "unsustainable" is an important word to remember. None of it is sustainable all those spinning plates and balls in the air .and the grasshopper god demands that they keep adding more and more plates and balls.

All based on a bunch of purposefully unexamined assumptions.

... ... ...

Ian Perkins , August 4, 2019 at 10:34 am

Or Edward Abbey: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

I did an A-level (UK exam for 18 year olds) in economics years ago, and despite passing with an A, I not only couldn't understand this underlying assumption of continued exponential growth forever, I also couldn't understand why anyone couldn't understand its obvious absurdity.
Sustainability was a bit of a new word in those days, but when I discovered it, it summed up my problems with (over-) developed economies.

Carolinian , August 4, 2019 at 9:32 am

To add to the confusion, a different and partly overlapping usage was advanced in the 1970s by the group around the Washington Monthly magazine. They used "neoliberal" to mean a new, less statist form of American liberalism. Around the same time, the term neoconservative was used as a self-description by former liberals who embraced conservatism, on cultural, racial, economic, and foreign-policy grounds. Neoconservatives were neoliberals in economics.

This commenter has been scolded in the past for invoking Charlie Peters and the Washington Monthly rather than Friedman, Hayek etc. But what Peters' highly influential magazine (and the transformed New Republic that followed) did was to bring the Democrats into the neoliberal fold and that may be the real reason it's a beast that can't be killed.

Neoliberalism gave liberals an excuse to sell out in the name of "fresh thinking." Meanwhile the vast working class had become discredited Archie Bunkers in the eyes of the intellectuals after Vietnam and the Civil Rights struggles.

It's possible that what really changed the country was the rise of that middle class that Kuttner now mourns. Suggesting that it was all the result of a rightwing plan is too easy although that was certainly part of it.

David , August 4, 2019 at 10:06 am

I'd add two other consequences of neoliberalism. One is the increasing alienation of citizens from the mechanism for provision of the basic necessities of life. Before the 1980s, for example, water, gas, electricity etc. were provided by publicly-owned utilities with local offices, recognisable local and national structures, and responsible to an elected Minister.

If you had a serious problem, then in the final analysis you could write a letter to your MP, who would take it up with the Minister. Now, you are no longer a citizen but a consumer, and your utilities are provided by some weird private sector thing, owned by another company, owned by some third company, frequently based abroad, and with its customer services outsourced to yet another company which could be anywhere in the world all. All this involves significant transaction costs for individuals, who are expected to conduct sophisticated cost-effectiveness comparisons between providers, when in fact they just want to turn on the tap and have water come out.

The other is that government (and hence the citizen) loses any capacity for strategic planning. Most nationalized industries in Britain were either created because the private sector wasn't interested, or picked up when the private sector went bankrupt (the railways for example). But without ownership, the capacity to decide what you want and get it is much reduced. You can see that with the example of the Minitel – a proto-internet system given away free by the French government through the state-owned France Telecom in the early 1980s, and years ahead of anything else. You literally couldn't do anything similar now.

John Merryman. , August 4, 2019 at 10:35 am

Taking Michael Hudson's work into account, there is a much deeper and older dynamic at work, of which neoliberalism is just the latest itineration.
A possible explanation goes to the nature of money.

As the accounting device that enables mass societies to function, it amounts to a contract between the individual and the community, with one side an asset and the other a debt. Yet as we experience it as quantified hope, we try to save and store it. Consequently, in order to store the asset, similar amounts of debt have to be created.

Which results in a centripedial effect, as positive feedback draws the asset side to the center of the social construct, while negative feedback pushes the debt to the edges. It could be argued this dynamic is the basis of economic hierarchy, not just a consequence.

Yet money and finance function as the economic blood and arteries, circulating value around the entire community, so the effect of this dynamic is like the heart telling the hands and feet they don't need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get.

Basically we have to accept that while money is an effective medium of exchange, it is not a productive store of value. We wouldn't confuse blood with fat, or roads with parking lots, so it should be possible to learn to store value in tangibles, like the strong communities and healthy environments that will give us the safety and security we presumably save money for.

As a medium, we own money like we own the section of road we are using, or the fluids passing through our bodies. Let the neoliberals chew on that.

tegnost , August 4, 2019 at 11:39 am

Yet money and finance function as the economic blood and arteries, circulating value around the entire community, so the effect of this dynamic is like the heart telling the hands and feet they don't need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get.

nice image of a not so nice dynamic

John Merryman. , August 4, 2019 at 12:34 pm

Thanks. Political persuasion is about keeping it simple. How about; Government was once private. It was called monarchy. Do we want to go back there, or do we need to better understand the balance between public and private? Even houses have spaces that are public and spaces that are private.

pjay , August 4, 2019 at 10:44 am

This is, indeed, an excellent historical overview, evoking some of Kuttner's best writing over the decades. I would recommend it with no hesitation.

On the other hand, Kuttner's American Prospect has also provided cover for some damaging faux-progressive enablers of neoliberalism over those decades (IMHO). A puzzlement.

P S BAKER , August 4, 2019 at 10:45 am

An excellent exegesis – this is going to be my go-to summary from now on. Many thanks.

Sal , August 4, 2019 at 11:20 am

I must remind everyone that Bob Kuttner is no longer what he used to be. Bob Kuttner was against progressive Dem candidates like Bernie in 2016, and was in bed with THE neoliberal candidate ..With the passage of time, Kuttner has evolved into a partisan for the sake of partisanship, instead of being principled.

tegnost , August 4, 2019 at 12:15 pm

after reading your comment I went through the post again and found these suspicious points

"The failure of neoliberalism as economic and social policy does not mean that markets never work. A command economy is even more utopian and perverse than a neoliberal one. The practical quest is for an efficient and equitable middle ground. "

so, get in front of the riot and call it a parade? Maybe a little bit. Also

"Nonetheless, in many sectors of the economy, the process of buying and selling is close enough to the textbook conditions of perfect competition that the price system works tolerably well. Supermarkets, for instance, deliver roughly accurate prices because of the consumer's freedom and knowledge to shop around. Likewise much of retailing . However, when we get into major realms of the economy with positive or negative externalities, such as education and health, markets are not sufficient. And in other major realms, such as pharmaceuticals, where corporations use their political power to rig the terms of patents, the market doesn't produce a cure."

Probably not working so well for the employees or the farm workers who get food on the shelf
I guess maybe not practical to change that dynamic? That said, as history the post is as good as anything else I've seen, and reads well, but maybe does need a grain of salt to make it more palatable.

Camelotkidd , August 4, 2019 at 11:35 am

"Neoliberalism's premise is that free markets can regulate themselves; that government is inherently incompetent, captive to special interests, and an intrusion on the efficiency of the market; that in distributive terms, market outcomes are basically deserved; and that redistribution creates perverse incentives by punishing the economy's winners and rewarding its losers. So government should get out of the market's way."

In an otherwise good article the author makes a fundamental error. As Phillip Mirowski patiently explains in Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, neoliberalism is not laissez faire. Neoliberal desire a strong government to implement their market based nirvana, as long as they control government.

Hayek's Heelbiter , August 4, 2019 at 11:43 am

The best summation on the failure of neoliberalism I've ever read. Will share widely Still nipping. Maybe one day I'll be able to take a real bite!

shinola , August 4, 2019 at 1:51 pm

"[ .] was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform."

That missing first word could easily be neoliberalism; however, that sentence was actually pulled from a definition of Social Darwinism.

[Jul 30, 2019] The main task of Democratic Party is preventing social movements from undertaking independent political activity to their left and killing such social movements

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Besides preventing social movements from undertaking independent political activity to their left, the Democrats have been adept at killing social movements altogether. They have done – and continue to do – this in four key ways: ..."
"... i) inducing "progressive" movement activists (e.g. Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and the leaders of Moveon.org and United for Peace and Justice today) to focus scarce resources on electing and defending capitalist politicians who are certain to betray peaceful- and populist-sounding campaign promises upon the attainment of power; ..."
"... (ii) pressuring activists to "rein in their movements, thereby undercutting the potential for struggle from below;" ..."
"... (iii) using material and social (status) incentives to buy off social movement leaders; ..."
"... iv) feeding a pervasive sense of futility regarding activity against the dominant social and political order, with its business party duopoly. ..."
"... It is not broken. It is fixed. Against us. ..."
"... The militarization of US economy and society underscores your scenario. By being part of the war coalition, the Democratic party, as now constituted, doesn't have to win any presidential elections. The purpose of the Democratic party is to diffuse public dissent in an orderly fashion. This allows the war machine to grind on and the politicians are paid handsomely for their efforts. ..."
"... By joining the war coalition, the Democrats only have leverage over Republicans if the majority of citizens get "uppity" and start demanding social concessions. Democrats put down the revolt by subterfuge, which is less costly and allows the fiction of American Democracy and freedom to persist for a while longer. Republicans, while preferring more overt methods of repressing the working class, allow the fiction to continue because their support for authoritarian principles can stay hidden in the background. ..."
"... When this political theatre in the US finally reaches its end date, what lies behind the curtain will surely shock most of the population and I have little faith that the citizenry are prepared to deal with the consequences. A society of feckless consumers is little prepared to deal with hard core imperialists who's time has reached its end. ..."
"... This wrath of frustrated Imperialists will be turned upon the citizenry ..."
Jul 30, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

g3 , July 30, 2019 at 4:08 am

Mainstream Dems are performing their role very well. Most likely I am preaching to the choir. But anyways, here is a review of Lance Selfa's book "Democrats: a critical history" by Paul Street :

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/hope-killers-by-paul-street/

Besides preventing social movements from undertaking independent political activity to their left, the Democrats have been adept at killing social movements altogether. They have done – and continue to do – this in four key ways:

i) inducing "progressive" movement activists (e.g. Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and the leaders of Moveon.org and United for Peace and Justice today) to focus scarce resources on electing and defending capitalist politicians who are certain to betray peaceful- and populist-sounding campaign promises upon the attainment of power;

(ii) pressuring activists to "rein in their movements, thereby undercutting the potential for struggle from below;"

(iii) using material and social (status) incentives to buy off social movement leaders;

iv) feeding a pervasive sense of futility regarding activity against the dominant social and political order, with its business party duopoly.

It is not broken. It is fixed. Against us.

Norb , July 30, 2019 at 7:18 am

The militarization of US economy and society underscores your scenario. By being part of the war coalition, the Democratic party, as now constituted, doesn't have to win any presidential elections. The purpose of the Democratic party is to diffuse public dissent in an orderly fashion. This allows the war machine to grind on and the politicians are paid handsomely for their efforts.

By joining the war coalition, the Democrats only have leverage over Republicans if the majority of citizens get "uppity" and start demanding social concessions. Democrats put down the revolt by subterfuge, which is less costly and allows the fiction of American Democracy and freedom to persist for a while longer. Republicans, while preferring more overt methods of repressing the working class, allow the fiction to continue because their support for authoritarian principles can stay hidden in the background.

I have little faith in my fellow citizens as the majority are too brainwashed to see the danger of this political theatre. Most ignore politics, while those that do show an interest exercise that effort mainly by supporting whatever faction they belong. Larger issues and connections between current events remain a mystery to them as a result.

Military defeat seems the only means to break this cycle. Democrats, being the fake peaceniks that they are, will be more than happy to defer to their more authoritarian Republican counterparts when dealing with issues concerning war and peace. Look no further than Tulsi Gabbard's treatment in the party. The question is really should the country continue down this Imperialist path.

In one sense, economic recession will be the least of our problems in the future. When this political theatre in the US finally reaches its end date, what lies behind the curtain will surely shock most of the population and I have little faith that the citizenry are prepared to deal with the consequences. A society of feckless consumers is little prepared to deal with hard core imperialists who's time has reached its end.

This wrath of frustrated Imperialists will be turned upon the citizenry.

[Jul 26, 2019] Tucker What should happen to those who lied about Russian collusion

Highly recommended!
Jul 26, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Joe DeHaan , 6 hours ago

They should be charged with treason ! Investigation under false pretenses , ILLEGAL ! Contempt, obstruction ! Pick one !

John Roberts , 6 hours ago (edited)

They should be charged with sedition and hung in the capital square. BAN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!

Gary V , 6 hours ago

What a joke... MULLER appeared SENILE and incompetent led by Dems & their lawyers.

Troy Vincent , 2 hours ago

Exactly Tucker. Serious accountability is what we need for these maliciously lying government officials.

hp , 5 hours ago

Tucker is the last hope for main stream media. Keep up the good work.


Paul Haggar , 5 hours ago

Maybe Putin should get a twitter account haha...... I wonder how he likes the sanctions Pres Trump has placed on Russia

cardsblues219 , 7 hours ago

Schiff has to be charged with treason.

F16 Pilot 4 TRUMP , 4 hours ago (edited)

Tucker you forgot to mention the millions of Iraqs that got killed in the Gulf war over wmds..

Stephan Desy , 5 hours ago

I agree wholeheartedly with Tucker Carlson...This whole stupid Russia hysteria propagated by most of the media made me, an old timer liberal, agree with Tucker. Well played Democratic Party... well played.

G7Batten Batten , 2 hours ago

Exact on the spot as so often. Absolutely nothing will change unless the guilty are punished. May God continue to protect and guide you Tucker.

Zlatko Sich , 7 hours ago

Prison time, for Lying when you work for government. Same for journalists and television(lying and fake news ). This is a solution.

Ryan Mangrum , 43 minutes ago

It was a coup attempt. They should be charged with sedition and/or treason.

Guitarzan , 6 hours ago

Tucker's question about what should happen to the people who attempted to reverse the will of the American people? The answer is very straightforward. Those found guilty of sedition and treason should by law hanged by the neck until dead. This might discourage further efforts to undermine the will of the American people.

Frank Perez , 2 hours ago

They should go to jail, let's make an example of them. They wasted millions of the American tax money on a witch hunt...

[Jul 25, 2019] The destiny of the USA is now tied to the destiny of neoliberalism (much like the USSR and Bolshevism)

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The USA hegemony is based on ideological hegemony of neoliberalism. And BTW both Russia and China are neoliberal countries. That's probably why President Putin calls the USA administration "partners," despite clearly anti-Russian policies of all US administrations since 1991. ..."
"... One fascinating fact that escapes my understanding is why the USA elite wasted colossal advantage it got after the collapse of the USSR in just 25 years or so. I always thought that the USA elite is the most shrewd out of all countries. ..."
"... May be because they were brainwashed by neocon "intellectuals." I understand that most neocons are simply lobbyists of MIC, and MIC has huge political influence, but still neocon doctrine is so primitive that no civilized elite can take it seriously. ..."
"... I also understand Eisenhower hypocritical laments that "train with MIC left the station" and that the situation can't be reversed (lament disguised as a "warning"; let's remember that it was Eisenhower who appointed Allen Dulles to head the CIA. ..."
Dec 25, 2018 | www.unz.com

likbez , says: December 25, 2018 at 8:02 am GMT

@guitarzan

>US hegemony is imposed militarily, both covertly and overtly, throughout the world. It is maintained through the petrodollar, corporate power, and the Federal Reserve Bank and its overseas counterparts

All true, but the key element is missing. The USA hegemony is based on ideological hegemony of neoliberalism. And BTW both Russia and China are neoliberal countries. That's probably why President Putin calls the USA administration "partners," despite clearly anti-Russian policies of all US administrations since 1991.

Ability to use military is important but secondary. Without fifth column of national elites which support neoliberalism that would be impossible, or at least more difficult to use. Like it was when the USSR existed (Vietnam, Cuba, etc). The USSR has had pretty powerful military, which was in some narrow areas competitive, or even superior to the USA, but when the ideology of Bolshevism collapsed, the elite changed sides and adopted a neoliberal ideology. This betrayal led to the collapse of the USSR and all its mighty military and the vast KGB apparatus proved to be useless.

In this sense, the article is weak, and some comments are of a higher level than the article itself in the level of understanding of the situation (Simon in London at December 21, 2018, at 9:23 am one example; longevity of neoliberalism partially is connected to the fact that so far there is no clear alternative to it and without the crisis similar to Great Depression adoption of New Deal style measures is impossible )

It is really sad that the understanding that the destiny of the USA is now tied to the destiny of neoliberalism (much like the USSR and Bolshevism) is foreign for many.

So it might well be that the main danger for the US neoliberal empire now is not China or Russia, but the end of cheap oil, which might facilitate the collapse of neoliberalism as a social system based on wasteful use on commodities (and first of all oil)

One fascinating fact that escapes my understanding is why the USA elite wasted colossal advantage it got after the collapse of the USSR in just 25 years or so. I always thought that the USA elite is the most shrewd out of all countries.

May be because they were brainwashed by neocon "intellectuals." I understand that most neocons are simply lobbyists of MIC, and MIC has huge political influence, but still neocon doctrine is so primitive that no civilized elite can take it seriously.

I also understand Eisenhower hypocritical laments that "train with MIC left the station" and that the situation can't be reversed (lament disguised as a "warning"; let's remember that it was Eisenhower who appointed Allen Dulles to head the CIA.

[Jul 24, 2019] Elizabeth Warren Seeks to Cut Private Equity Down to Size

Highly recommended!
That bill alone makes Warren a viable candidate again, despite all her previous blunders. She is a courageous woman, that Warren. And she might wipe the floor with the completely subservant to Israel lobby Trump. Who betrayed his electorate in all major promises.
Notable quotes:
"... Not only would Warren's legislation prohibit some of the most destructive private equity activities, but it would end their ability to act as traditional asset managers, taking fees and incurring close to no risk if their investments go belly up. The bill takes the explicit and radical view that: ..."
"... Private funds should have a stake in the outcome of their investments, enjoying returns if those investments are successful but ab-1sorbing losses if those investments fail. ..."
"... Critics will say that Warren's bill has no chance of passing, which is currently true but misses the point. ..."
"... firms would share responsibility for the liabilities of companies under their control, including debt, legal judgments, and pension obligations to "better align the incentives of private equity firms and the companies they own." The bill, if enacted, would end the tax subsidy for excessive leverage and closes the carried interest loophole. ..."
"... The bill also seeks to ban dividends to investors for two years after a firm is acquired. Worker pay would be prioritized in the bankruptcy process, with guidelines intended to ensure affected employees are more likely to receive severance pay and pensions. It would also clarify gift cards are consumer deposits, ensuring their priority in bankruptcy proceedings. If enacted, private equity managers will be required to disclose fees, returns, and political expenditures. ..."
"... This is a bold set of proposals that targets abuses that hurt workers and investors. Most readers may not appreciate the significance of the two-year restriction on dividends. One return-goosing strategy that often leaves companies crippled or bankrupt in its wake is the "dividend recap" in which the acquired company takes on yet more debt for the purpose of paying a special dividend to its investors. Another strategy that Appelbaum and Batt have discussed at length is the "op co/prop co." Here the new owners take real estate owned by the company, sell it to a new entity with the former owner leasing it. The leases are typically set high so as to allow for the "prop co" to be sold at a richer price. This strategy is often a direct contributor to the death of businesses, since ones that own their real estate usually do so because they are in cyclical industries, and not having lease payments enables the to ride out bad times. The proceeds of sale of the real estate is usually dividended out to the investors, hence the dividend restriction would also pour cold water on this approach. ..."
"... However, there is precedent in private equity for recognizing joint and several liability of an investment fund for the obligations of its portfolio companies. In a case that winded its way through the federal courts until last year ( Sun Capital Partners III, LP v. New England Teamsters & Trucking Indus. Pension Fund ), the federal court held that Sun Capital Partners III was liable under ERISA, the federal pension law, for the unfunded pension obligations of Scott Brass, a portfolio company of that fund. The court's key finding was that Sun Capital played an active management role in Scott Brass and that its claim of passive investor status therefore should not be respected. ..."
"... Needless to say, private equity firms have worked hard to minimize their exposure to the Sun Capital decision, for example by avoiding purchasing companies with defined benefit pension plans. The Warren bill, however, is so broad in the sweep of liability it imposes that PE firms would be unlikely to be able to structure around it. It is hard to imagine the investors in private equity funds accepting liability for what could be enormous sums of unfunded pension liabilities ultimately flowing onto them. Either they would have to set up shell companies to fund their PE investments that could absorb the potential liability, or they would have to give up on the asset class. Either way, it would mean big changes to the industry and potentially a major contraction of it. ..."
"... I am surprised that Warren sought to make private equity funds responsible for the portfolio company debts by "joint and several liability". You can get to economically pretty much the same end by requiring the general partner and potentially also key employees to guarantee the debt and by preventing them from assigning or buying insurance to protect the guarantor from being liable. There is ample precedent for that for entrepreneurs. Small business corporate credit cards and nearly all small business loans require a personal guarantee. ..."
"... Warren's bill also has strong pro-investor provisions. It takes on the biggest feature of the ongoing investor scamming, which is the failure of PE managers to disclose to the investors all of the fees they receive from portfolio companies. The solution proposed by the bill to this problem is exceedingly straightforward, basically proclaiming, "Oh yeah, now you will have to disclose that." The bill also abolishes the ability of private equity managers to claim long term capital gains treatment on the 20 percent of fund profits that they receive, which is unrelated to the return on any capital that the private equity managers may happen to invest in a fund. ..."
"... We need a reparations movement for all those workers harmed by private equity. Seriously. ..."
"... It's so nice to see someone taking steps to protect the rights and compensation of the people actually doing the work at the companies and putting their interests first in case of bankruptcy. That those who worked hardest to make the company succeed were somehow the ones who took it in the shorts the worst has always struck me as a glaring inequity bordering on cruelty. ..."
Jul 23, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Elizabeth Warren's Stop Wall Street Looting Act , which is co-sponsored by Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown, Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal, seeks to fundamentally alter the way private equity firms operate. While the likely impetus for Warren's bill was the spate of private-equity-induced retail bankruptcies, with Toys 'R' Us particularly prominent, the bill addresses all the areas targeted by critics of private equity: how it hurts workers and investors and short-changes the tax man, thus burdening taxpayers generally.

... ... ...

[Jul 15, 2019] Elizabeth Warren Has Made Her Story America's Story

Highly recommended!
Jul 15, 2019 | www.thenation.com

Looks like Warren weakness is her inability to distinguish between key issues and periferal issues.

While her program is good and is the only one that calls for "structural change" (which is really needed as neoliberalism outlived its usefulness) it mixes apple and oranges. One thing is to stop neoliberal transformation of the society and the other is restitution for black slaves. In the latter case why not to Indians ?

I'd argue that Warren's newly tight and coherent story, in which her life's arc tracks the country's, is contributing to her rise, in part because it protects her against other stories -- the nasty ones told by her opponents, first, and then echoed by the media doubters influenced by her opponents. Her big national-stage debut came when she tangled with Barack Obama's administration over bank bailouts, then set up the powerhouse Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). But she was dismissed as too polarizing, even by some Democrats, and was passed over to run it. In 2012, Massachusetts's Scott Brown mocked Warren as "the Professor," a know-it-all Harvard schoolmarm, before she beat him to take his Senate seat. After that, Donald Trump began trashing her as "Pocahontas" in the wake of a controversy on the campaign trail about her mother's rumored Native American roots. And Warren scored an own goal with a video that announced she had "confirmed" her Native heritage with a DNA test, a claim that ignored the brutal history of blood-quantum requirements and genetic pseudoscience in the construction of race.

When she announced her presidential run this year, some national political reporters raised questions about her likability , finding new ways to compare her to Hillary Clinton, another female candidate widely dismissed as unlikable. A month into Warren's campaign, it seemed the media was poised to Clintonize her off the primary stage. But it turned out she had a plan for that, too.

I n the tale that is captivating crowds on the campaign trail, Warren is not a professor or a political star but a hardscrabble Oklahoma "late-in-life baby" or, as her mother called her, "the surprise." Her elder brothers had joined the military; she was the last one at home, just a middle-schooler when her father had the massive heart attack that would cost him his job. "I remember the day we lost the station wagon," she tells crowds, lowering her voice. "I learned the words 'mortgage' and 'foreclosure' " listening to her parents talk when they thought she was asleep, she recalls. One day she walked in on her mother in her bedroom, crying and saying over and over, " 'We are not going to lose this house.' She was 50 years old," Warren adds, "had never worked outside the home, and she was terrified."

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This part of the story has been a Warren staple for years: Her mother put on her best dress and her high heels and walked down to a Sears, where she got a minimum-wage job. Warren got a private lesson from her mother's sacrifice -- "You do what you have to to take care of those you love" -- and a political one, too. "That minimum-wage job saved our house, and it saved our family." In the 1960s, she says, "a minimum-wage job could support a family of three. Now the minimum wage can't keep a momma and a baby out of poverty."

That's Act I of Warren's story and of the disappearing American middle class whose collective story her family's arc symbolizes. In Act II, she walks the crowd through her early career, including some personal choices that turned her path rockier: early marriage, dropping out of college. But her focus now is on what made it possible for her to rise from the working class. Warren tells us how she went back to school and got her teaching certificate at a public university, then went to law school at another public university. Both cost only a few hundred dollars in tuition a year. She always ends with a crowd-pleaser: "My daddy ended up as a janitor, but his baby daughter got the opportunity to become a public-school teacher, a law professor, a US senator, and run for president!"


Warren has honed this story since her 2012 Senate campaign. Remember her "Nobody in this country got rich on his own" speech ? It was an explanation of how the elite amassed wealth thanks to government investments in roads, schools, energy, and police protection, which drew more than 1 million views on YouTube. Over the years, she has become the best explainer of the way the US government, sometime around 1980, flipped from building the middle class to protecting the wealthy. Her 2014 book, A Fighting Chance , explains how Warren (once a Republican, like two of her brothers) saw her own family's struggle in the stories of those families whose bankruptcies she studied as a lawyer -- families she once thought might have been slackers. Starting in 1989, with a book she cowrote on bankruptcy and consumer credit, her writing has charted the way government policies turned against the middle class and toward corporations. That research got her tapped by then–Senate majority leader Harry Reid to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program after the 2008 financial crash and made her a favorite on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart . Starting in the mid-2000s, she publicly clashed with prominent Democrats, including Biden , a senator at the time, over bankruptcy reforms, and later with then–Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner over the bank bailouts.

Sanders, of course, has a story too, about a government that works for the "millionaires and billionaires." But he has a hard time connecting his family's stories of struggle to his policies. After his first few campaign events, he ditched the details about growing up poor in Brooklyn. In early June, he returned to his personal story in a New York Times op-ed .

W arren preaches the need for "big structural change" so often that a crowd chanted the phrase back at her during a speech in San Francisco the first weekend in June. Then she gets specific. In Act III of her stump speech, she lays out her dizzying array of plans. But by then they're not dizzying, because she has anchored them to her life and the lives of her listeners. The rapport she develops with her audience, sharing her tragedies and disappointments -- questionable choices and all -- makes her bold policy pitches feel believable. She starts with her proposed wealth tax: two cents on every dollar of your worth after $50 million, which she says would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years. (She has also proposed a 7 percent surtax on corporate profits above $100 million.)

Warren sells the tax with a vivid, effective comparison. "How many of you own a home?" she asks. At most of her stops in Iowa, it was roughly half the crowd. "Well, you already pay a wealth tax on your major asset. You pay a property tax, right?" People start nodding. "I just want to make sure we're also taxing the diamonds, the Rembrandts, the yachts, and the stock portfolios." Nobody in those Iowa crowds seemed to have a problem with that.

Then she lays out the shocking fact that people in the top 1 percent pay roughly 3.2 percent of their wealth in taxes, while the bottom 99 percent pay 7.4 percent.

That "big structural change" would pay for the items on Warren's agenda -- the programs that would rebuild the opportunity ladder to the middle class -- that have become her signature: free technical school or two- or four-year public college; at least partial loan forgiveness for 95 percent of those with student debt; universal child care and prekindergarten, with costs capped at 7 percent of family income; and a pay hike for child-care workers.

"Big structural change" would also include strengthening unions and giving workers 40 percent of the seats on corporate boards. Warren promises to break up Big Tech and Big Finance. She calls for a constitutional amendment to protect the right to vote and vows to push to overturn Citizens United . To those who say it's too much, she ends every public event the same way: "What do you think they said to the abolitionists? 'Too hard!' To the suffragists fighting to get women the right to vote? 'Too hard!' To the foot soldiers of the civil-rights movement, to the activists who wanted equal marriage? 'Give up now!' " But none of them gave up, she adds, and she won't either. Closing that way, she got a standing ovation at every event I attended.

R ecently, Warren has incorporated into her pitch the stark differences between what mid-20th-century government offered to black and white Americans. This wasn't always the case. After a speech she delivered at the Roosevelt Institute in 2015, I heard black audience members complain about her whitewashed version of the era when government built the (white) middle class. Many black workers were ineligible for Social Security; the GI Bill didn't prohibit racial discrimination ; and federal loan guarantees systematically excluded black home buyers and black neighborhoods. "I love Elizabeth, but those stories about the '50s drive me crazy," one black progressive said.

The critiques must have made their way to Warren. Ta-Nehisi Coates recently told The New Yorker that after his influential Atlantic essay "The Case for Reparations" appeared five years ago, the Massachusetts senator asked to meet with him. "She had read it. She was deeply serious, and she had questions." Now, when Warren talks about the New Deal, she is quick to mention the ways African Americans were shut out. Her fortunes on the campaign trail brightened after April's She the People forum in Houston, where she joined eight other candidates in talking to what the group's founder, Aimee Allison, calls "the real Democratic base": women of color, many from the South. California's Kamala Harris, only the second African-American woman ever elected to the US Senate, might have had the edge coming in, but Warren surprised the crowd. "She walked in to polite applause and walked out to a standing ovation," Allison said, after the candidate impressed the crowd with policies to address black maternal-health disparities, the black-white wealth gap, pay inequity, and more.



G Jutson says:

July 4, 2019 at 1:00 pm

Well here we are in the circular firing squad Obama warned us about. Sander's fan boys vs. Warren women. Sanders has been our voice in DC on the issues for a generation. He has changed the debate. Thank you Bernie. Now a Capitalist that wants to really reform it can be a viable candidate. Warren is that person. We supported Sanders last time to help us get to this stage. Time to pass the baton to someone that can beat Trump. After the Sept. debates I expect The Nation to endorse Warren and to still hear grumbling from those that think moving on from candidate Bernie somehow means unfaithfulness to his/our message .

Kenneth Viste says: June 27, 2019 at 5:52 am

I would like to hear her talk about free college as an investment in people rather than an expense. Educated people earn more and therefore pay more taxes than uneducated so it pays to educate the populous to the highest level possible.

Jim Dickinson says: June 26, 2019 at 7:11 pm

Warren gets it and IMO is probably the best Democratic candidate of the bunch. Biden does not get it and I get depressed seeing him poll above Warren with his tired corporate ideas from the past.

I have a different take on her not being progressive enough. Her progressive politics are grounded in reality and not in the pie in the sky dreams of Sanders, et al. The US is a massively regressive nation and proposing doing everything at once, including a total revamp of our healthcare system is simply unrealistic.

That was my problem with Sanders, who's ideas I agree with. There is no way in hell to make the US into a progressive dream in one election - NONE.

I too dream of a progressive US that most likely goes well beyond what most people envision. But I also have watched those dreams collapse many, many times in the past when we reach too far. I hope that we can make important but obtainable changes which might make the great unwashed masses see who cares about them and who does not.

I hope that she does well because she has a plan for many of the ills of this nation. The US could certainly use some coherent plans after the chaos and insanity of the Trump years. Arguing about who was the best Democratic candidate in 2016 helped put this schmuck in office and I hope that we don't go down that path again.

Caleb Melamed says: June 26, 2019 at 2:13 pm

I had a misunderstanding about one key aspect of Warren's political history. I had always thought that she was neutral in 2016 between Sanders and Hillary Clinton. On CNN this morning, a news clip showed that Warren in fact endorsed Hillary Clinton publicly, shouting "I'm with her," BEFORE Sanders withdrew from the race. This action had the effect of weakening Sanders' bargaining position vis a vis Clinton once he actually withdrew. Clinton proceeded to treat Sanders and his movement like a dish rag. I am now less ready to support Warren in any way.

Robert Andrews says: June 26, 2019 at 12:17 pm

I have three main reasons I do not want Senator Warren nominate which are:

Not going all out for a single payer healthcare system. This is a massive problem with Warren. With her starting out by moving certain groups to Medicare is sketchy at best. Which groups would be graced first? I am sure whoever is left behind will be thrilled. Is Warren going to expand Medicare so that supplemental coverages will not be needed anymore? Crying about going too far too fast is a losing attitude. You go after the most powerful lobby in the country full bore if you want any kind of real and lasting changes.

With Warren's positions and actions with foreign policy this statement is striking, "Once Warren's foreign policy record is scrutinized, her status as a progressive champion starts to wither. While Warren is not on the far right of Democratic politics on war and peace, she also is not a progressive -- nor a leader -- and has failed to use her powerful position on the Senate Armed Services Committee to challenge the status quo" - Sarah Lazare. She is the web editor at In These Times. She comes from a background in independent journalism for publications including The Intercept, The Nation, and Tom Dispatch. She tweets at @sarahlazare.

Lastly, the stench with selling off her integrity with receiving corporate donations again if nominated is overpowering.

For reference, she was a registered Republican until the mid 1990's.

Joan Walsh, why don't you give congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard any presence with your articles? Her level of integrity out shines any other female candidate and Gabbard's positions and actions are progressive. I don't want to hear that she isn't a major player, because you have included Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Gabbard's media blackout has been dramatic, thank you for your contribution with it also.

Robert Andrews says: June 27, 2019 at 8:29 am

I was impressed with Warren on the debate, especially since she finally opened her arms to a single payer healthcare system.

Caleb Melamed says: June 26, 2019 at 2:35 pm

Gabbard is playing a very important role in this race, whatever her numbers (which are probably higher than those being reported and are sure to go up after tonight). In some ways, her position in 2020 resembles that of Sanders in 2016--the progressive outlier, specifically on issues relating to the U.S. policy of endless war. Gabbard makes Sanders look more mainstream by comparison on this issue (though their difference is more one of emphasis than substance), making it much harder for the DNC establishment to demonize and ostracize Sanders. (Third Way really, really wants to stop Sanders--they have called him an "existential threat.") Gabbard's important role in this respect is one reason the DNC and its factotums are expending such effort on sliming her.

By the way, Nation, you have now reprinted my first comment to this article five (5) times!

Clark Shanahan says: June 26, 2019 at 1:19 pm

Tulsi,
Our most eloquent anti-military-interventionism candidate, hands down.

Richard Phelps says: June 26, 2019 at 1:29 pm

Unfortunately EW doesn't beat Trump past the margin of error in all the polls I have seen. Bernie does in most. The other scary factor is how so many neoliberals are now talking nice about her. They want anyone but the true, consistent progressive, Bernie. And her backing away from putting us on a human path on health care, like so many other countries, is foreboding of a sellout to the health insurance companies, a group focused on profits over health care for our citizens. A group with no redeeming social value. 40,000+ people die each year due to lack of medical care, so the company executives can have their 8 figure salaries and golden parachutes when they retire. Also don't forget they are adamantly anti union. Where is Warren's fervor to ride our country of this leach on society? PS I donated $250 to her last Senate campaign. I like her. She is just not what we need to stop the final stages of oligarchic take over, where so much of our resources are wasted on the Pentagon and unnecessary wars and black opps. It is not Bernie or bust, it is Bernie or oligarchy!!!

Walter Pewen says: June 27, 2019 at 10:52 am

Frankly, having family from Oklahoma I'd say Warren IS a progressive. Start reading backwards and you will find out.

Clark Shanahan says: June 26, 2019 at 1:24 pm

You certainly shall never see her call out AIPAC.
She has since tried to shift her posture.. but, her original take was lamentable.

https://theintercept.com/2014/08/28/elizabeth-warren-speaks-israelgaza-sounds-like-netanyahu/

Clark Shanahan says: June 26, 2019 at 10:29 pm

You really need to give Hillary responsibility for her loss, Andy
Also, to Obama, who sold control of the DNC over to Clinton Inc in Sept, 2015.
I'll vote for Warren, of course.
Sadly, with our endless wars and our rogue state Israel, Ms Warren is way too deferential; seemingly hopeless.

Walter Pewen says: June 28, 2019 at 11:22 am

I don't want to vote for Biden. And if he gets the nomination I probably won't. And I've voted the ticket since 1976. I DO NOT like Joe Biden. Contrary to the media mind fuck we are getting in this era. And I'll wager a LOT of people don't like him. He is a dick.

Karin Eckvall says: June 26, 2019 at 10:50 am

Well-done article Ms. Walsh. Walter, I want to vote for her but can't because although she has plans to deal with the waste and corruption at the Pentagon, she has not renounced our endless militarism, our establishment-endorsed mission to police the world and to change regimes whenever we feel like it.

[Jul 06, 2019] Neoliberal democrats for profit love of minorities

Nov 10, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com

JamesWonnacott , 10 Nov 2016 11:18

"And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women."

Muslims, of course, never degrade women do they?

[Jul 05, 2019] Who Won the Debate? Tulsi Gabbard let the anti-war genie out of the bottle by Philip Giraldi

Highly recommended!
The problem here is that the US population is too brainwashing with jingoism and Exceptionalism to value Tulsi message. The US army is mercenary army and unlike situation with the draft people generally do not care much when mercenaries die. That makes any anti-war candidate vulnerable to "Russiagate" smear.
He/she need to have a strong domestic program to appeal to voters, So far Warren is in better position in this area then Tulsi.
Notable quotes:
"... The Drudge Report website had its poll running while the debate was going on and it registered overwhelmingly in favor of Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Likewise, the Washington Examiner , a right-wing paper, opined that Gabbard had won by a knockout based on its own polling. Google's search engine reportedly saw a surge in searches linked to Tulsi Gabbard both during and after the debate. ..."
"... On the following day traditional conservative Pat Buchanan produced an article entitled "Memo for Trump: Trade Bolton for Tulsi," similar to a comment made by Republican consultant Frank Luntz "She's a long-shot to win the presidency, but Tulsi Gabbard is sounding like a prime candidate for Secretary of Defense." ..."
"... In response to a comment by neoliberal Congressman Tim Ryan who said that the U.S. has to remain "engaged" in places like Afghanistan, she referred to two American soldiers who had been killed that very day, saying "Is that what you will tell the parents of those two soldiers who were just killed in Afghanistan? Well, we just have to be engaged? As a soldier, I will tell you that answer is unacceptable." ..."
"... Tulsi also declared war on the Washington Establishment, saying that "For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end." ..."
"... Blunt words, but it was a statement that few Americans whose livelihoods are not linked to "defense" or to the shamelessly corrupt U.S. Congress and media could disagree with, as it is clear that Washington is at the bottom of a deep hole and persists in digging ..."
"... In the collective judgment of America's Establishment, Tulsi Gabbard and anyone like her must be destroyed. She would not be the first victim of the political process shutting out undesirable opinions. One can go all the way back to Eugene McCarthy and his opposition to the Vietnam War back in 1968. ..."
"... And the beat goes on. In 2016, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, head of the Democratic National Committee, fixed the nomination process so that Bernie Sanders, a peace candidate, would be marginalized and super hawk Hillary Clinton would be selected. Fortunately, the odor emanating from anything having to do with the Clintons kept her from being elected or we would already be at war with Russia and possibly also with China. ..."
"... Tulsi Gabbard has let the genie of "end the forever wars" out of the bottle and it will be difficult to force it back in. She just might shake up the Democratic Party's priorities, leading to more questions about just what has been wrong with U.S. foreign policy over the past twenty years. ..."
"... Yes, to some critics, Tulsi Gabbard is not a perfect candidate . On most domestic issues she appears to be a typical liberal Democrat and is also conventional in terms of her accommodation with Jewish power, but she also breaks with the Democratic Party establishment with her pledge to pardon Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. ..."
"... She also has more of a moral compass than Elizabeth Warren, who cleverly evades the whole issue of Middle East policy, or a Joe Biden who would kiss Benjamin Netanyahu's ass without any hesitation at all. Gabbard has openly criticized Netanyahu and she has also condemned Israel's killing of "unarmed civilians" in Gaza. As a Hindu, her view of Muslims is somewhat complicated based on the historical interaction of the two groups, but she has moderated her views recently. ..."
"... To be sure, Americans have heard much of the same before, much of it from out of the mouth of a gentleman named Donald Trump, but Tulsi Gabbard could well be the only genuine antiwar candidate that might truly be electable in the past fifty years. ..."
Jul 02, 2019 | www.unz.com

Last Wednesday’s debate among half of the announced Democratic Party candidates to become their party’s nominee for president in 2020 was notable for its lack of drama. Many of those called on to speak had little to say apart from the usual liberal bromides about health care, jobs, education and how the United States is a country of immigrants. On the following day the mainstream media anointed Elizabeth Warren as the winner based on the coherency of her message even though she said little that differed from what was being presented by most of the others on the stage. She just said it better, more articulately.

The New York Times’ coverage was typical, praising Warren for her grasp of the issues and her ability to present the same clearly and concisely, and citing a comment "They could teach classes in how Warren talks about a problem and weaves in answers into a story. She's not just wonk and stats." It then went on to lump most of the other candidates together, describing their performances as "ha[ving] one or two strong answers, but none of them had the electric, campaign-launching moment they were hoping for."

Inevitably, however, there was some disagreement on who had actually done best based on viewer reactions as well as the perceptions of some of the media that might not exactly be described as mainstream. The Drudge Report website had its poll running while the debate was going on and it registered overwhelmingly in favor of Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Likewise, the Washington Examiner , a right-wing paper, opined that Gabbard had won by a knockout based on its own polling. Google's search engine reportedly saw a surge in searches linked to Tulsi Gabbard both during and after the debate.

On the following day traditional conservative Pat Buchanan produced an article entitled "Memo for Trump: Trade Bolton for Tulsi," similar to a comment made by Republican consultant Frank Luntz "She's a long-shot to win the presidency, but Tulsi Gabbard is sounding like a prime candidate for Secretary of Defense."

Tulsi, campaigning on her anti-war credentials, was indeed not like the other candidates, confronting directly the issue of war and peace which the other potential candidates studiously avoided. In response to a comment by neoliberal Congressman Tim Ryan who said that the U.S. has to remain "engaged" in places like Afghanistan, she referred to two American soldiers who had been killed that very day, saying "Is that what you will tell the parents of those two soldiers who were just killed in Afghanistan? Well, we just have to be engaged? As a soldier, I will tell you that answer is unacceptable."

At another point she expanded on her thinking about America's wars, saying "Let's deal with the situation where we are, where this president and his chickenhawk cabinet have led us to the brink of war with Iran. I served in the war in Iraq at the height of the war in 2005, a war that took over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in uniforms' lives. The American people need to understand that this war with Iran would be far more devastating, far more costly than anything that we ever saw in Iraq. It would take many more lives. It would exacerbate the refugee crisis. And it wouldn't be just contained within Iran. This would turn into a regional war. This is why it's so important that every one of us, every single American, stand up and say no war with Iran."

Tulsi also declared war on the Washington Establishment, saying that "For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end."

Blunt words, but it was a statement that few Americans whose livelihoods are not linked to "defense" or to the shamelessly corrupt U.S. Congress and media could disagree with, as it is clear that Washington is at the bottom of a deep hole and persists in digging. So why was there such a difference between what ordinary Americans and the Establishment punditry were seeing on their television screens? The difference was not so much in perception as in the desire to see a certain outcome. Anti-war takes away a lot of people's rice bowls, be they directly employed on "defense" or part of the vast army of lobbyists and think tank parasites that keep the money flowing out of the taxpayers' pockets and into the pockets of Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Lockheed Martin like a perpetual motion machine.

In the collective judgment of America's Establishment, Tulsi Gabbard and anyone like her must be destroyed. She would not be the first victim of the political process shutting out undesirable opinions. One can go all the way back to Eugene McCarthy and his opposition to the Vietnam War back in 1968. McCarthy was right and Lyndon Johnson and the rest of the Democratic Party were wrong. More recently, Congressman Ron Paul tried twice to bring some sanity to the Republican Party. He too was marginalized deliberately by the GOP party apparatus working hand-in-hand with the media, to include the final insult of his being denied any opportunity to speak or have his delegates recognized at the 2012 nominating convention.

And the beat goes on. In 2016, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, head of the Democratic National Committee, fixed the nomination process so that Bernie Sanders, a peace candidate, would be marginalized and super hawk Hillary Clinton would be selected. Fortunately, the odor emanating from anything having to do with the Clintons kept her from being elected or we would already be at war with Russia and possibly also with China.

Tulsi Gabbard has let the genie of "end the forever wars" out of the bottle and it will be difficult to force it back in. She just might shake up the Democratic Party's priorities, leading to more questions about just what has been wrong with U.S. foreign policy over the past twenty years. To qualify for the second round of debates she has to gain a couple of points in her approval rating or bring in more donations, either of which is definitely possible based on her performance. It is to be hoped that that will occur and that there will be no Debbie Wasserman Schultz hiding somewhere in the process who will finagle the polling results.

Yes, to some critics, Tulsi Gabbard is not a perfect candidate . On most domestic issues she appears to be a typical liberal Democrat and is also conventional in terms of her accommodation with Jewish power, but she also breaks with the Democratic Party establishment with her pledge to pardon Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

She also has more of a moral compass than Elizabeth Warren, who cleverly evades the whole issue of Middle East policy, or a Joe Biden who would kiss Benjamin Netanyahu's ass without any hesitation at all. Gabbard has openly criticized Netanyahu and she has also condemned Israel's killing of "unarmed civilians" in Gaza. As a Hindu, her view of Muslims is somewhat complicated based on the historical interaction of the two groups, but she has moderated her views recently.

To be sure, Americans have heard much of the same before, much of it from out of the mouth of a gentleman named Donald Trump, but Tulsi Gabbard could well be the only genuine antiwar candidate that might truly be electable in the past fifty years. It is essential that we Americans who are concerned about the future of our country should listen to what she has to say very carefully and to respond accordingly.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]

[Jul 05, 2019] The UK public finally realized that the Globalist/Open Frontiers/ Neoliberal crowd are not their friends

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The key point, is that this happened in the 1980's – 90's. Vast profit possibilities were opening up through digitalization, corporate outsourcing, globalization and the internet. The globalists urgently wanted that money, and had to have political compliance. They found it in Neoliberalism and hijacked both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, creating "New Labour" (leader Tony Blair) through classless "modernization" following Margaret Thatcher's lead. ..."
"... Great blast by Jonathan Cook – I feel as if he has read my thoughts about the political system keeping the proles in an Orwellian state of serfdom for plunder and abuse under the guise of “democracy” and “freedom”. ..."
"... But the ideas of the Chicago School in cohorts with the Frankfurters and Tavistockers were already undermining our hopeful vision of the world while the think tanks at the foundations, councils and institutes were flooding the academies with the doctrines of hardhead uncompromising Capitalism to suck the blood off the proles into anaemic immiseration and apathetic insouciance. ..."
"... With the working class defeated and gone, where is the spirit of resistance to spring from? Not from the selfishness of the new generation of smartphone addicts whose world has shrunk to the atomic MEism and who refuse to open their eyes to what is staring in their face: debt slavery, for life. Maybe the French can do it again. Allez Gilets Jaunes! ..."
Jul 05, 2019 | www.unz.com

Miro23 says: July 5, 2019 at 11:09 am GMT 400 Words

This is a very good article on UK politics, but I would have put more emphasis on the background. Where we are today has everything to do with how we got here.

The UK has this basic left/right split (Labour/Conservative) reaching far back into its class based history. Sad to say, but within 5 seconds a British person can determine the class of the person they are dealing with (working/ middle/ upper) and act accordingly – referencing their own social background.

Margaret Thatcher was a lower middle class grocer's daughter who gained a rare place at Oxford University (on her own high intellectual merits), and took on the industrial wreckers of the radical left (Arthur Scargill etc.). She consolidated her power with the failure of the 1984-85 Miner's Strike. She introduced a new kind of Conservatism that was more classless and open to the talents, adopting free market Neoliberalism along with Ronald Reagan. A large section of the aspirational working class went for this (many already had middle class salaries) and wanted that at least their children could join the middle class through the university system.

The key point, is that this happened in the 1980's – 90's. Vast profit possibilities were opening up through digitalization, corporate outsourcing, globalization and the internet. The globalists urgently wanted that money, and had to have political compliance. They found it in Neoliberalism and hijacked both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, creating "New Labour" (leader Tony Blair) through classless "modernization" following Margaret Thatcher's lead.

The story now, is that the UK public realize that the Globalist/Zionist/SJW/Open Frontiers/ Neoliberal crowd are not their friends . So they (the public) are backtracking fast to find solid ground. In practice this means 1) Leave the Neoliberal/Globalist EU (which has also been hijacked) using Brexit 2) Recover the traditional Socialist Labour Party of working people through Jeremy Corbyn 3) Recover the traditional Conservative Party ( Britain First) through Nigel Farage and his Brexit movement.

Hence the current and growing gulf that is separating the British public from its Zio-Globalist elite + their media propagandists (BBC, Guardian etc.).


Digital Samizdat , says: July 5, 2019 at 12:43 pm GMT

@Miro23

She introduced a new kind of Conservatism that was more classless …

Or just plain anti-working class.

It was actually Thatcher who started the neo-liberal revolution in Britain. To the extent that she refused to finish it, the elites had Tony Blair in the wings waiting to go.

Parfois1 , says: July 5, 2019 at 1:18 pm GMT

Great blast by Jonathan Cook – I feel as if he has read my thoughts about the political system keeping the proles in an Orwellian state of serfdom for plunder and abuse under the guise of “democracy” and “freedom”. Under this system if anyone steps out of line is indeed sidelined for the “anti-semitic” treatment, demonized, vilified and, virtually hanged and quartered on the public square of the mendacious media.

In the good old days, when there was a militant working class and revolting (!) unionism, we would get together at meetings, organize protests and strikes and confront bosses and officialdom. There was camaraderie, solidarity, loyalty and confident defiance that we were fighting for a better world for ourselves and our children – and also for people less fortunate than us in other countries.

But the ideas of the Chicago School in cohorts with the Frankfurters and Tavistockers were already undermining our hopeful vision of the world while the think tanks at the foundations, councils and institutes were flooding the academies with the doctrines of hardhead uncompromising Capitalism to suck the blood off the proles into anaemic immiseration and apathetic insouciance.

... ... ... .

With the working class defeated and gone, where is the spirit of resistance to spring from? Not from the selfishness of the new generation of smartphone addicts whose world has shrunk to the atomic MEism and who refuse to open their eyes to what is staring in their face: debt slavery, for life. Maybe the French can do it again. Allez Gilets Jaunes!

Harbinger , says: July 5, 2019 at 1:47 pm GMT
@Miro23 ic get pissed off and vote in the conservatives who then privatise everything. And this game continues on and on. The British public are literally headless chickens running around not knowing what on earth is going on. They’re not interested in getting to the bottom of why society is the way it is. They’re all too comfortable with their mortgages, cars, holidays twice a year, mobile phones, TV shows and football.

When all of this disappears, then certainly, they will start asking questions, but when that time comes they will be utterly powerless to do anything, as a minority in their own land. Greater Israel will be built when that time comes.

Miro23 , says: July 5, 2019 at 3:05 pm GMT
@Digital Samizdat itants and win – which she did.

No one at the time had much idea about Neoliberalism and none at all about Globalization. This was all in the future.

And it was the British working class who were really cutting their own throats, by wrecking British industry (their future employment), with constant political radicalism and strikes.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Goodbye-Great-Britain-1976-Crisis/dp/0300057288

[Jul 05, 2019] The World Bank and IMF 2019 by Michael Hudson and Bonnie Faulkner

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The purpose of a military conquest is to take control of foreign economies, to take control of their land and impose tribute. The genius of the World Bank was to recognize that it's not necessary to occupy a country in order to impose tribute, or to take over its industry, agriculture and land. Instead of bullets, it uses financial maneuvering. As long as other countries play an artificial economic game that U.S. diplomacy can control, finance is able to achieve today what used to require bombing and loss of life by soldiers ..."
"... It was set up basically by the United States in 1944, along with its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Their purpose was to create an international order like a funnel to make other countries economically dependent on the United States ..."
"... American diplomats insisted on the ability to veto any action by the World Bank or IMF. The aim of this veto power was to make sure that any policy was, in Donald Trump's words, to put America first. "We've got to win and they've got to lose." ..."
"... The World Bank was set up from the outset as a branch of the military, of the Defense Department. John J. McCloy (Assistant Secretary of War, 1941-45), was the first full-time president ..."
"... Many countries had two rates: one for goods and services, which was set normally by the market, and then a different exchange rate that was managed for capital movements. That was because countries were trying to prevent capital flight. They didn't want their wealthy classes or foreign investors to make a run on their own currency – an ever-present threat in Latin America. ..."
"... The IMF and the World Bank backed the cosmopolitan classes, the wealthy. Instead of letting countries control their capital outflows and prevent capital flight, the IMF's job is to protect the richest One Percent and foreign investors from balance-of-payments problems ..."
"... The IMF enables its wealthy constituency to move their money out of the country without taking a foreign-exchange loss ..."
"... Wall Street speculators have sold the local currency short to make a killing, George-Soros style. ..."
"... When the debtor-country currency collapses, the debts that these Latin American countries owe are in dollars, and now have to pay much more in their own currency to carry and pay off these debts. ..."
"... Local currency is thrown onto the foreign-exchange market for dollars, lowering the exchange rate. That increases import prices, raising a price umbrella for domestic products. ..."
"... Instead, the IMF says just the opposite: It acts to prevent any move by other countries to bring the debt volume within the ability to be paid. It uses debt leverage as a way to control the monetary lifeline of financially defeated debtor countries. ..."
"... This control by the U.S. financial system and its diplomacy has been built into the world system by the IMF and the World Bank claiming to be international instead of an expression of specifically U.S. New Cold War nationalism. ..."
"... The same thing happened in Greece a few years ago, when almost all of Greece's foreign debt was owed to Greek millionaires holding their money in Switzerland ..."
"... The IMF could have seized this money to pay off the bondholders. Instead, it made the Greek economy pay. It found that it was worth wrecking the Greek economy, forcing emigration and wiping out Greek industry so that French and German bondholding banks would not have to take a loss. That is what makes the IMF so vicious an institution. ..."
"... America was able to grab all of Iran's foreign exchange just by the banks interfering. The CIA has bragged that it can do the same thing with Russia. If Russia does something that U.S. diplomats don't like, the U.S. can use the SWIFT bank payment system to exclude Russia from it, so the Russian banks and the Russian people and industry won't be able to make payments to each other. ..."
"... You can't create the money, especially if you're running a balance of payments deficit and if U.S. foreign policy forces you into deficit by having someone like George Soros make a run on your currency. Look at the Asia crisis in 1997. Wall Street funds bet against foreign currencies, driving them way down, and then used the money to pick up industry cheap in Korea and other Asian countries. ..."
"... This was also done to Russia's ruble. The only country that avoided this was Malaysia, under Mohamed Mahathir, by using capital controls. Malaysia is an object lesson in how to prevent a currency flight. ..."
"... Client kleptocracies take their money and run, moving it abroad to hard currency areas such as the United States, or at least keeping it in dollars in offshore banking centers instead of reinvesting it to help the country catch up by becoming independent agriculturally, in energy, finance and other sectors. ..."
"... But in shaping the World Trade Organization's rules, the United States said that all countries had to promote free trade and could not have government support, except for countries that already had it. We're the only country that had it. That's what's called "grandfathering". ..."
Jul 05, 2019 | www.unz.com

"The purpose of a military conquest is to take control of foreign economies, to take control of their land and impose tribute. The genius of the World Bank was to recognize that it's not necessary to occupy a country in order to impose tribute, or to take over its industry, agriculture and land. Instead of bullets, it uses financial maneuvering. As long as other countries play an artificial economic game that U.S. diplomacy can control, finance is able to achieve today what used to require bombing and loss of life by soldiers."

I'm Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter: Dr. Michael Hudson. Today's show: The IMF and World Bank: Partners In Backwardness . Dr. Hudson is a financial economist and historian. He is President of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trend, a Wall Street Financial Analyst, and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

His most recent books include " and Forgive them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year "; Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy , and J Is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception . He is also author of Trade, Development and Foreign Debt , among many other books.

We return today to a discussion of Dr. Hudson's seminal 1972 book, Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire , a critique of how the United States exploited foreign economies through the IMF and World Bank, with a special emphasis on food imperialism.

... ... ...

Bonnie Faulkner : In your seminal work form 1972, Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire , you write: "The development lending of the World Bank has been dysfunctional from the outset." When was the World Bank set up and by whom?

Michael Hudson : It was set up basically by the United States in 1944, along with its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Their purpose was to create an international order like a funnel to make other countries economically dependent on the United States. To make sure that no other country or group of countries – even all the rest of the world – could not dictate U.S. policy. American diplomats insisted on the ability to veto any action by the World Bank or IMF. The aim of this veto power was to make sure that any policy was, in Donald Trump's words, to put America first. "We've got to win and they've got to lose."

The World Bank was set up from the outset as a branch of the military, of the Defense Department. John J. McCloy (Assistant Secretary of War, 1941-45), was the first full-time president. He later became Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank (1953-60). McNamara was Secretary of Defense (1961-68), Paul Wolfowitz was Deputy and Under Secretary of Defense (1989-2005), and Robert Zoellick was Deputy Secretary of State. So I think you can look at the World Bank as the soft shoe of American diplomacy.

Bonnie Faulkner : What is the difference between the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the IMF? Is there a difference?

Michael Hudson : Yes, there is. The World Bank was supposed to make loans for what they call international development. "Development" was their euphemism for dependency on U.S. exports and finance. This dependency entailed agricultural backwardness – opposing land reform, family farming to produce domestic food crops, and also monetary backwardness in basing their monetary system on the dollar.

The World Bank was supposed to provide infrastructure loans that other countries would go into debt to pay American engineering firms, to build up their export sectors and their plantation sectors by public investment roads and port development for imports and exports. Essentially, the Bank financed long- investments in the foreign trade sector, in a way that was a natural continuation of European colonialism.

In 1941, for example, C. L. R. James wrote an article on "Imperialism in Africa" pointing out the fiasco of European railroad investment in Africa: "Railways must serve flourishing industrial areas, or densely populated agricult5ural regions, or they must open up new land along which a thriving population develops and provides the railways with traffic. Except in the mining regions of South Africa, all these conditions are absent. Yet railways were needed, for the benefit of European investors and heavy industry." That is why, James explained "only governments can afford to operate them," while being burdened with heavy interest obligations. [1] What was "developed" was Africa's mining and plantation export sector, not its domestic economies. The World Bank followed this pattern of "development" lending without apology.

The IMF was in charge of short-term foreign currency loans. Its aim was to prevent countries from imposing capital controls to protect their balance of payments. Many countries had a dual exchange rate: one for trade in goods and services, the other rate for capital movements. The function of the IMF and World Bank was essentially to make other countries borrow in dollars, not in their own currencies, and to make sure that if they could not pay their dollar-denominated debts, they had to impose austerity on the domestic economy – while subsidizing their import and export sectors and protecting foreign investors, creditors and client oligarchies from loss.

The IMF developed a junk-economics model pretending that any country can pay any amount of debt to the creditors if it just impoverishes its labor enough. So when countries were unable to pay their debt service, the IMF tells them to raise their interest rates to bring on a depression – austerity – and break up the labor unions. That is euphemized as "rationalizing labor markets." The rationalizing is essentially to disable labor unions and the public sector. The aim – and effect – is to prevent countries from essentially following the line of development that had made the United States rich – by public subsidy and protection of domestic agriculture, public subsidy and protection of industry and an active government sector promoting a New Deal democracy. The IMF was essentially promoting and forcing other countries to balance their trade deficits by letting American and other investors buy control of their commanding heights, mainly their infrastructure monopolies, and to subsidize their capital flight.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Now, Michael, when you began speaking about the IMF and monetary controls, you mentioned that there were two exchange rates of currency in countries. What were you referring to?

MICHAEL HUDSON : When I went to work on Wall Street in the '60s, I was balance-of-payments economist for Chase Manhattan, and we used the IMF's monthly International Financial Statistics every month. At the top of each country's statistics would be the exchange-rate figures. Many countries had two rates: one for goods and services, which was set normally by the market, and then a different exchange rate that was managed for capital movements. That was because countries were trying to prevent capital flight. They didn't want their wealthy classes or foreign investors to make a run on their own currency – an ever-present threat in Latin America.

The IMF and the World Bank backed the cosmopolitan classes, the wealthy. Instead of letting countries control their capital outflows and prevent capital flight, the IMF's job is to protect the richest One Percent and foreign investors from balance-of-payments problems.

The World Bank and American diplomacy have steered them into a chronic currency crisis. The IMF enables its wealthy constituency to move their money out of the country without taking a foreign-exchange loss. It makes loans to support capital flight out of domestic currencies into the dollar or other hard currencies. The IMF calls this a "stabilization" program. It is never effective in helping the debtor economy pay foreign debts out of growth. Instead, the IMF uses currency depreciation and sell-offs of public infrastructure and other assets to foreign investors after the flight capital has left and currency collapses. Wall Street speculators have sold the local currency short to make a killing, George-Soros style.

When the debtor-country currency collapses, the debts that these Latin American countries owe are in dollars, and now have to pay much more in their own currency to carry and pay off these debts. We're talking about enormous penalty rates in domestic currency for these countries to pay foreign-currency debts – basically taking on to finance a non-development policy and to subsidize capital flight when that policy "fails" to achieve its pretended objective of growth.

All hyperinflations of Latin America – Chile early on, like Germany after World War I – come from trying to pay foreign debts beyond the ability to be paid. Local currency is thrown onto the foreign-exchange market for dollars, lowering the exchange rate. That increases import prices, raising a price umbrella for domestic products.

A really functional and progressive international monetary fund that would try to help countries develop would say: "Okay, banks and we (the IMF) have made bad loans that the country can't pay. And the World Bank has given it bad advice, distorting its domestic development to serve foreign customers rather than its own growth. So we're going to write down the loans to the ability to be paid." That's what happened in 1931, when the world finally stopped German reparations payments and Inter-Ally debts to the United States stemming from World War I.

Instead, the IMF says just the opposite: It acts to prevent any move by other countries to bring the debt volume within the ability to be paid. It uses debt leverage as a way to control the monetary lifeline of financially defeated debtor countries. So if they do something that U.S. diplomats don't approve of, it can pull the plug financially, encouraging a run on their currency if they act independently of the United States instead of falling in line. This control by the U.S. financial system and its diplomacy has been built into the world system by the IMF and the World Bank claiming to be international instead of an expression of specifically U.S. New Cold War nationalism.

BONNIE FAULKNER : How do exchange rates contribute to capital flight?

MICHAEL HUDSON : It's not the exchange rate that contributes. Suppose that you're a millionaire, and you see that your country is unable to balance its trade under existing production patterns. The money that the government has under control is pesos, escudos, cruzeiros or some other currency, not dollars or euros. You see that your currency is going to go down relative to the dollar, so you want to get our money out of the country to preserve your purchasing power.

This has long been institutionalized. By 1990, for instance, Latin American countries had defaulted so much in the wake of the Mexico defaults in 1982 that I was hired by Scudder Stevens, to help start a Third World Bond Fund (called a "sovereign high-yield fund"). At the time, Argentina and Brazil were running such serious balance-of-payments deficits that they were having to pay 45 percent per year interest, in dollars, on their dollar debt. Mexico, was paying 22.5 percent on its tesobonos .

Scudders' salesmen went around to the United States and tried to sell shares in the proposed fund, but no Americans would buy it, despite the enormous yields. They sent their salesmen to Europe and got a similar reaction. They had lost their shirts on Third World bonds and couldn't see how these countries could pay.

Merrill Lynch was the fund's underwriter. Its office in Brazil and in Argentina proved much more successful in selling investments in Scudder's these offshore fund established in the Dutch West Indies. It was an offshore fund, so Americans were not able to buy it. But Brazilian and Argentinian rich families close to the central bank and the president became the major buyers. We realized that they were buying these funds because they knew that their government was indeed going to pay their stipulated interest charges. In effect, the bonds were owed ultimately to themselves. So these Yankee dollar bonds were being bought by Brazilians and other Latin Americans as a vehicle to move their money out of their soft local currency (which was going down), to buy bonds denominated in hard dollars.

BONNIE FAULKNER : If wealthy families from these countries bought these bonds denominated in dollars, knowing that they were going to be paid off, who was going to pay them off? The country that was going broke?

MICHAEL HUDSON : Well, countries don't pay; the taxpayers pay, and in the end, labor pays. The IMF certainly doesn't want to make its wealthy client oligarchies pay. It wants to squeeze ore economic surplus out of the labor force. So countries are told that the way they can afford to pay their enormously growing dollar-denominated debt is to lower wages even more.

Currency depreciation is an effective way to do this, because what is devalued is basically labor's wages. Other elements of exports have a common world price: energy, raw materials, capital goods, and credit under the dollar-centered international monetary system that the IMF seeks to maintain as a financial strait jacket.

According to the IMF's ideological models, there's no limit to how far you can lower wages by enough to make labor competitive in producing exports. The IMF and World Bank thus use junk economics to pretend that the way to pay debts owed to the wealthiest creditors and investors is to lower wages and impose regressive excise taxes, to impose special taxes on necessities that labor needs, from food to energy and basic services supplied by public infrastructure.

BONNIE FAULKNER: So you're saying that labor ultimately has to pay off these junk bonds?

MICHAEL HUDSON: That is the basic aim of IMF. I discuss its fallacies in my Trade Development and Foreign Debt , which is the academic sister volume to Super Imperialism . These two books show that the World Bank and IMF were viciously anti-labor from the very outset, working with domestic elites whose fortunes are tied to and loyal to the United States.

BONNIE FAULKNER : With regard to these junk bonds, who was it or what entity

MICHAEL HUDSON : They weren't junk bonds. They were called that because they were high-interest bonds, but they weren't really junk because they actually were paid. Everybody thought they were junk because no American would have paid 45 percent interest. Any country that really was self-reliant and was promoting its own economic interest would have said, "You banks and the IMF have made bad loans, and you've made them under false pretenses – a trade theory that imposes austerity instead of leading to prosperity. We're not going to pay." They would have seized the capital flight of their comprador elites and said that these dollar bonds were a rip-off by the corrupt ruling class.

The same thing happened in Greece a few years ago, when almost all of Greece's foreign debt was owed to Greek millionaires holding their money in Switzerland. The details were published in the "Legarde List." But the IMF said, in effect that its loyalty was to the Greek millionaires who ha their money in Switzerland. The IMF could have seized this money to pay off the bondholders. Instead, it made the Greek economy pay. It found that it was worth wrecking the Greek economy, forcing emigration and wiping out Greek industry so that French and German bondholding banks would not have to take a loss. That is what makes the IMF so vicious an institution.

BONNIE FAULKNER : So these loans to foreign countries that were regarded as junk bonds really weren't junk, because they were going to be paid. What group was it that jacked up these interest rates to 45 percent?

MICHAEL HUDSON : The market did. American banks, stock brokers and other investors looked at the balance of payments of these countries and could not see any reasonable way that they could pay their debts, so they were not going to buy their bonds. No country subject to democratic politics would have paid debts under these conditions. But the IMF, U.S. and Eurozone diplomacy overrode democratic choice.

Investors didn't believe that the IMF and the World Bank had such a strangle hold over Latin American, Asian, and African countries that they could make the countries act in the interest of the United States and the cosmopolitan finance capital, instead of in their own national interest. They didn't believe that countries would commit financial suicide just to pay their wealthy One Percent.

They were wrong, of course. Countries were quite willing to commit economic suicide if their governments were dictatorships propped up by the United States. That's why the CIA has assassination teams and actively supports these countries to prevent any party coming to power that would act in their national interest instead of in the interest of a world division of labor and production along the lines that the U.S. planners want for the world. Under the banner of what they call a free market, you have the World Bank and the IMF engage in central planning of a distinctly anti-labor policy. Instead of calling them Third World bonds or junk bonds, you should call them anti-labor bonds, because they have become a lever to impose austerity throughout the world.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Well, that makes a lot of sense, Michael, and answers a lot of the questions I've put together to ask you. What about Puerto Rico writing down debt? I thought such debts couldn't be written down.

MICHAEL HUDSON : That's what they all said, but the bonds were trading at about 45 cents on the dollar, the risk of their not being paid. The Wall Street Journal on June 17, reported that unsecured suppliers and creditors of Puerto Rico, would only get nine cents on the dollar. The secured bond holders would get maybe 65 cents on the dollar.

The terms are being written down because it's obvious that Puerto Rico can't pay, and that trying to do so is driving the population to move out of Puerto Rico to the United States. If you don't want Puerto Ricans to act the same way Greeks did and leave Greece when their industry and economy was shut down, then you're going to have to provide stability or else you're going to have half of Puerto Rico living in Florida.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Who wrote down the Puerto Rican debt?

MICHAEL HUDSON : A committee was appointed, and it calculated how much Puerto Rico can afford to pay out of its taxes. Puerto Rico is a U.S. dependency, that is, an economic colony of the United States. It does not have domestic self-reliance. It's the antithesis of democracy, so it's never been in charge of its own economic policy and essentially has to do whatever the United States tells it to do. There was a reaction after the hurricane and insufficient U.S. support to protect the island and the enormous waste and corruption involved in the U.S. aid. The U.S. response was simply: "We won you fair and square in the Spanish-American war and you're an occupied country, and we're going to keep you that way." Obviously this is causing a political resentment.

BONNIE FAULKNER : You've already touched on this, but why has the World Bank traditionally been headed by a U.S. secretary of defense?

MICHAEL HUDSON : Its job is to do in the financial sphere what, in the past, was done by military force. The purpose of a military conquest is to take control of foreign economies, to take control of their land and impose tribute. The genius of the World Bank was to recognize that it's not necessary to occupy a country in order to impose tribute, or to take over its industry, agriculture and land. Instead of bullets, it uses financial maneuvering. As long as other countries play an artificial economic game that U.S. diplomacy can control, finance is able to achieve today what used to require bombing and loss of life by soldiers.

In this case the loss of life occurs in the debtor countries. Population growth shrinks, suicides go up. The World Bank engages in economic warfare that is just as destructive as military warfare. At the end of the Yeltsin period Russia's President Putin said that American neoliberalism destroyed more of Russia's population than did World War II. Such neoliberalism, which basically is the doctrine of American supremacy and foreign dependency, is the policy of the World Bank and IMF.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Why has World Bank policy since its inception been to provide loans for countries to devote their land to export crops instead of giving priority to feeding themselves? And if this is the case, why do countries want these loans?

MICHAEL HUDSON : One constant of American foreign policy is to make other countries dependent on American grain exports and food exports. The aim is to buttress America's agricultural trade surplus. So the first thing that the World Bank has done is not to make any domestic currency loans to help food producers. Its lending has steered client countries to produce tropical export crops, mainly plantation crops that cannot be grown in the United States. Focusing on export crops leads client countries to become dependent on American farmers – and political sanctions.

In the 1950s, right after the Chinese revolution, the United States tried to prevent China from succeeding by imposing grain export controls to starve China into submission by putting sanctions on exports. Canada was the country that broke these export controls and helped feed China.

The idea is that if you can make other countries export plantation crops, the oversupply will drive down prices for cocoa and other tropical products, and they won't feed themselves. So instead of backing family farms like the American agricultural policy does, the World Bank backed plantation agriculture. In Chile, which has the highest natural supply of fertilizer in the world from its guano deposits, exports guano instead of using it domestically. It also has the most unequal land distribution, blocking it from growing its own grain or food crops. It's completely dependent on the United States for this, and it pays by exporting copper, guano and other natural resources.

The idea is to create interdependency – one-sided dependency on the U.S. economy. The United States has always aimed at being self-sufficient in its own essentials, so that no other country can pull the plug on our economy and say, "We're going to starve you by not feeding you." Americans can feed themselves. Other countries can't say, "We're going to let you freeze in the dark by not sending you oil," because America's independent in energy. But America can use the oil control to make other countries freeze in the dark, and it can starve other countries by food-export sanctions.

So the idea is to give the United States control of the key interconnections of other economies, without letting any country control something that is vital to the working of the American economy.

There's a double standard here. The United States tells other countries: "Don't do as we do. Do as we say." The only way it can enforce this is by interfering in the politics of these countries, as it has interfered in Latin America, always pushing the right wing. For instance, when Hillary's State Department overthrew the Honduras reformer who wanted to undertake land reform and feed the Hondurans, she said: "This person has to go." That's why there are so many Hondurans trying to get into the United States now, because they can't live in their own country.

The effect of American coups is the same in Syria and Iraq. They force an exodus of people who no longer can make a living under the brutal dictatorships supported by the United States to enforce this international dependency system.

BONNIE FAULKNER : So when I asked you why countries would want these loans, I guess you're saying that they wouldn't, and that's why the U.S. finds it necessary to control them politically.

MICHAEL HUDSON : That's a concise way of putting it Bonnie.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Why are World Bank loans only in foreign currency, not in the domestic currency of the country to which it is lending?

MICHAEL HUDSON : That's a good point. A basic principle should be to avoid borrowing in a foreign currency. A country can always pay the loans in its own currency, but there's no way that it can print dollars or euros to pay loans denominated in these foreign currencies.

Making the dollar central forces other countries to interface with the U.S. banking system. So if a country decides to go its own way, as Iran did in 1953 when it wanted to take over its oil from British Petroleum (or Anglo Iranian Oil, as it was called back then), the United States can interfere and overthrow it. The idea is to be able to use the banking system's interconnections to stop payments from being made.

After America installed the Shah's dictatorship, they were overthrown by Khomeini, and Iran had run up a U.S. dollar debt under the Shah. It had plenty of dollars. I think Chase Manhattan was its paying agent. So when its quarterly or annual debt payment came due, Iran told Chase to draw on its accounts and pay the bondholders. But Chase took orders from the State Department or the Defense Department, I don't know which, and refused to pay. When the payment was not made, America and its allies claimed that Iran was in default. They demanded the entire debt to be paid, as per the agreement that the Shah's puppet government had signed. America simply grabbed the deposits that Iran had in the United States. This is the money that was finally returned to Iran without interest under the agreement of 2016.

America was able to grab all of Iran's foreign exchange just by the banks interfering. The CIA has bragged that it can do the same thing with Russia. If Russia does something that U.S. diplomats don't like, the U.S. can use the SWIFT bank payment system to exclude Russia from it, so the Russian banks and the Russian people and industry won't be able to make payments to each other.

This prompted Russia to create its own bank-transfer system, and is leading China, Russia, India and Pakistan to draft plans to de-dollarize.

BONNIE FAULKNER : I was going to ask you, why would loans in a country's domestic currency be preferable to the country taking out a loan in a foreign currency? I guess you've explained that if they took out a loan in a domestic currency, they would be able to repay it.

MICHAEL HUDSON : Yes.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Whereas a loan in a foreign currency would cripple them.

MICHAEL HUDSON : Yes. You can't create the money, especially if you're running a balance of payments deficit and if U.S. foreign policy forces you into deficit by having someone like George Soros make a run on your currency. Look at the Asia crisis in 1997. Wall Street funds bet against foreign currencies, driving them way down, and then used the money to pick up industry cheap in Korea and other Asian countries.

This was also done to Russia's ruble. The only country that avoided this was Malaysia, under Mohamed Mahathir, by using capital controls. Malaysia is an object lesson in how to prevent a currency flight.

But for Latin America and other countries, much of their foreign debt is held by their own ruling class. Even though it's denominated in dollars, Americans don't own most of this debt. It's their own ruling class. The IMF and World Bank dictate tax policy to Latin America – to un-tax wealth and shift the burden onto labor. Client kleptocracies take their money and run, moving it abroad to hard currency areas such as the United States, or at least keeping it in dollars in offshore banking centers instead of reinvesting it to help the country catch up by becoming independent agriculturally, in energy, finance and other sectors.

BONNIE FAULKNER : You say that: "While U.S. agricultural protectionism has been built into the postwar global system at its inception, foreign protectionism is to be nipped in the bud." How has U.S. agricultural protectionism been built into the postwar global system?

MICHAEL HUDSON : Under Franklin Roosevelt the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 called for price supports for crops so that farmers could earn enough to invest in equipment and seeds. The Agriculture Department was a wonderful department in spurring new seed varieties, agricultural extension services, marketing and banking services. It provided public support so that productivity in American agriculture from the 1930s to '50s was higher over a prolonged period than that of any other sector in history.

But in shaping the World Trade Organization's rules, the United States said that all countries had to promote free trade and could not have government support, except for countries that already had it. We're the only country that had it. That's what's called "grandfathering". The Americans said: "We already have this program on the books, so we can keep it. But no other country can succeed in agriculture in the way that we have done. You must keep your agriculture backward, except for the plantation crops and growing crops that we can't grow in the United States." That's what's so evil about the World Bank's development plan.

BONNIE FAULKNER : According to your book: "Domestic currency is needed to provide price supports and agricultural extension services such as have made U.S. agriculture so productive." Why can't infrastructure costs be subsidized to keep down the economy's overall cost structure if IMF loans are made in foreign currency?

MICHAEL HUDSON : If you're a farmer in Brazil, Argentina or Chile, you're doing business in domestic currency. It doesn't help if somebody gives you dollars, because your expenses are in domestic currency. So if the World Bank and the IMF can prevent countries from providing domestic currency support, that means they're not able to give price supports or provide government marketing services for their agriculture.

America is a mixed economy. Our government has always subsidized capital formation in agriculture and industry, but it insists that other countries are socialist or communist if they do what the United States is doing and use their government to support the economy. So it's a double standard. Nobody calls America a socialist country for supporting its farmers, but other countries are called socialist and are overthrown if they attempt land reform or attempt to feed themselves.

This is what the Catholic Church's Liberation Theology was all about. They backed land reform and agricultural self-sufficiency in food, realizing that if you're going to support population growth, you have to support the means to feed it. That's why the United States focused its assassination teams on priests and nuns in Guatemala and Central America for trying to promote domestic self-sufficiency.

BONNIE FAULKNER : If a country takes out an IMF loan, they're obviously going to take it out in dollars. Why can't they take the dollars and convert them into domestic currency to support local infrastructure costs?

MICHAEL HUDSON : You don't need a dollar loan to do that. Now were getting in to MMT. Any country can create its own currency. There's no reason to borrow in dollars to create your own currency. You can print it yourself or create it on your computers.

BONNIE FAULKNER: Well, exactly. So why don't these countries simply print up their own domestic currency?

MICHAEL HUDSON : Their leaders don't want to be assassinated. More immediately, if you look at the people in charge of foreign central banks, almost all have been educated in the United States and essentially brainwashed. It's the mentality of foreign central bankers. The people who are promoted are those who feel personally loyal to the United States, because they that that's how to get ahead. Essentially, they're opportunists working against the interests of their own country. You won't have socialist central bankers as long as central banks are dominated by the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements.

BONNIE FAULKNER : So we're back to the main point: The control is by political means, and they control the politics and the power structure in these countries so that they don't rebel.

MICHAEL HUDSON : That's right. When you have a dysfunctional economic theory that is destructive instead of productive, this is never an accident. It is always a result of junk economics and dependency economics being sponsored. I've talked to people at the U.S. Treasury and asked why they all end up following the United States. Treasury officials have told me: "We simply buy them off. They do it for the money." So you don't need to kill them. All you need to do is find people corrupt enough and opportunist enough to see where the money is, and you buy them off.

BONNIE FAULKNER : You write that "by following U.S. advice, countries have left themselves open to food blackmail." What is food blackmail?

MICHAEL HUDSON : If you pursue a foreign policy that we don't like -- for instance, if you trade with Iran, which we're trying to smash up to grab its oil -- we'll impose financial sanctions against you. We won't sell you food, and you can starve. And because you've followed World Bank advice and not grown your own food, you will starve, because you're dependent on us, the United States and our Free World Ó allies. Canada will no longer follow its own policy independently of the United States, as it did with China in the 1950s when it sold it grain. Europe also is falling in line with U.S. policy.

BONNIE FAULKNER : You write that: "World Bank administrators demand that loan recipients pursue a policy of economic dependency above all on the United States as food supplier." Was this done to support U.S. agriculture? Obviously it is, but were there other reasons as well?

MICHAEL HUDSON : Certainly the agricultural lobby was critical in all of this, and I'm not sure at what point this became thoroughly conscious. I knew some of the World Bank planners, and they had no anticipation that this dependency would be the result. They believed the free-trade junk economics that's taught in the schools' economics departments and for which Nobel prizes are awarded.

When we're dealing with economic planners, we're dealing with tunnel-visioned people. They stayed in the discipline despite its unreality because they sort of think that abstractly it makes sense. There's something autistic about most economists, which is why the French had their non-autistic economic site for many years. The mentality at work is that every country should produce what it's best at – not realizing that nations also need to be self-sufficient in essentials, because we're in a real world of economic and military warfare.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Why does the World Bank prefer to perpetrate world poverty instead of adequate overseas capacity to feed the peoples of developing countries?

MICHAEL HUDSON : World poverty is viewed as solution , not a problem. The World Bank thinks of poverty as low-priced labor, creating a competitive advantage for countries that produce labor-intensive goods. So poverty and austerity for the World Bank and IMF is an economic solution that's built into their models. I discuss these in my Trade, Development and Foreign Debt book. Poverty is to them the solution, because it means low-priced labor, and that means higher profits for the companies bought out by U.S., British, and European investors. So poverty is part of the class war: profits versus poverty.

BONNIE FAULKNER : In general, what is U.S. food imperialism? How would you characterize it?

MICHAEL HUDSON : Its aim is to make America the producer of essential foods and other countries producing inessential plantation crops, while remaining dependent on the United States for grain, soy beans and basic food crops.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Does World Bank lending encourage land reform in former colonies?

MICHAEL HUDSON : No. If there is land reform, the CIA sends its assassination teams in and you have mass murder, as you had in Guatemala, Ecuador, Central America and Columbia. The World Bank is absolutely committed against land reform. When the Forgash Plan for a World Bank for Economic Acceleration was proposed in the 1950s to emphasize land reform and local-currency loans, a Chase Manhattan economist to whom the plan was submitted warned that every country that had land reform turned out to be anti-American. That killed any alternative to the World Bank.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Does the World Bank insist on client governments privatizing their public domain? If so, why, and what is the effect?

MICHAEL HUDSON : It does indeed insist on privatization, pretending that this is efficient. But what it privatizes are natural monopolies – the electrical system, the water system and other basic needs. Foreigners take over, essentially finance them with foreign debt, build the foreign debt that they build into the cost structure, and raise the cost of living and doing business in these countries, thereby crippling them economically. The effect is to prevent them from competing with the United States and its European allies.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Would you say then that it is mainly America that has been aided, not foreign economies that borrow from the World Bank?

MICHAEL HUDSON : That's why the United States is the only country with veto power in the IMF and World Bank – to make sure that what you just described is exactly what happens.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Why do World Bank programs accelerate the exploitation of mineral deposits for use by other nations?

MICHAEL HUDSON : Most World Bank loans are for transportation, roads, harbor development and other infrastructure needed to export minerals and plantation crops. The World Bank doesn't make loans for projects that help the country develop in its own currency. By making only foreign currency loans, in dollars or maybe euros now, the World Bank says that its clients have to repay by generating foreign currency. The only way they can repay the dollars spent on American engineering firms that have built their infrastructure is to export – to earn enough dollars to pay back for the money that the World Bank or IMF have lent.

This is what John Perkins' book about being an economic hit man for the World Bank is all about. He realized that his job was to get countries to borrow dollars to build huge projects that could only be paid for by the country exporting more – which required breaking its labor unions and lowering wages so that it could be competitive in the race to the bottom that the World Bank and IMF encourage.

BONNIE FAULKNER : You also point out in Super Imperialism that mineral resources represent diminishing assets, so these countries that are exporting mineral resources are being depleted while the importing countries aren't.

MICHAEL HUDSON : That's right. They'll end up like Canada. The end result is going to be a big hole in the ground. You've dug up all your minerals, and in the end you have a hole in the ground and a lot of the refuse and pollution – the mining slag and what Marx called the excrements of production.

This is not a sustainable development. The World Bank only promotes the U.S. pursuit of sustainable development. So naturally, they call their "Development," but their focus is on the United States, not the World Bank's client countries.

BONNIE FAULKNER : When Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire was originally published in 1972, how was it received?

MICHAEL HUDSON : Very positively. It enabled my career to take off. I received a phone call a month later by someone from the Bank of Montreal saying they had just made $240 million on the last paragraph of my book. They asked what it would cost to have me come up and give a lecture. I began lecturing once a month at $3,500 a day, moving up to $6,500 a day, and became the highest-paid per diem economist on Wall Street for a few years.

I was immediately hired by the Hudson Institute to explain Super Imperialism to the Defense Department. Herman Kahn said I showed how U.S. imperialism ran rings around European imperialism. They gave the Institute an $85,000 grant to have me go to the White House in Washington to explain how American imperialism worked. The Americans used it as a how-to-do-it book.

The socialists, whom I expected to have a response, decided to talk about other than economic topics. So, much to my surprise, it became a how-to-do-it book for imperialists. It was translated by, I think, the nephew of the Emperor of Japan into Japanese. He then wrote me that the United States opposed the book being translated into Japanese. It later was translated. It was received very positively in China, where I think it has sold more copies than in any other country. It was translated into Spanish, and most recently it was translated into German, and German officials have asked me to come and discuss it with them. So the book has been accepted all over the world as an explanation of how the system works.

BONNIE FAULKNER : In closing, do you really think that the U.S. government officials and others didn't understand how their own system worked?

MICHAEL HUDSON : Many might not have understood in 1944 that this would be the consequence. But by the time 50 years went by, you had an organization called "Fifty Years Is Enough." And by that time everybody should have understood. By the time Joe Stiglitz became the World Bank's chief economist, there was no excuse for not understanding how the system worked. He was amazed to find that indeed it didn't work as advertised, and resigned. But he should have known at the very beginning what it was all about. If he didn't understand how it was until he actually went to work there, you can understand how hard it is for most academics to get through the vocabulary of junk economics, the patter-talk of free trade and free markets to understand how exploitative and destructive the system is.

BONNIE FAULKNER : Michael Hudson, thank you very much.

MICHAEL HUDSON : It's always good to be here, Bonnie. I'm glad you ask questions like these.

I've been speaking with Dr. Michael Hudson. Today's show has been: The IMF and World Bank: Partners in Backwardness. Dr. Hudson is a financial economist and historian. He is president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trend, a Wall Street financial analyst and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His 1972 book, Super Imperialism : The Economic Strategy of American Empire , a critique of how the United States exploited foreign economies through the IMF and World Bank, the subject of today's broadcast, is posted in PDF format on his website at michael-hudson.com. He is also author of Trade, Development and Foreign Debt , which is the academic sister volume to Super Imperialism. Dr. Hudson acts as an economic advisor to governments worldwide on finance and tax law. Visit his website at michael-hudson.com.

Guns and Butter is produced by Bonnie Faulkner, Yarrow Mahko and Tony Rango. Visit us at gunsandbutter.org to listen to past programs, comment on shows, or join our email list to receive our newsletter that includes recent shows and updates. Email us at [email protected] . Follow us on Twitter at #gandbradio.

[Jul 01, 2019] Tour d'horizon

Jul 01, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

6. Tucker Carlson as a replacement for the 'stache? Good idea! Make the 'stache ambassador to Turkey or Israel. pl

catherine ,

''Make the 'stache ambassador to Turkey or Israel. ''

Heaven forbid! Put him on a plane and drop him out over Houthis territory in Yemen instead.

[Jun 27, 2019] Glenn Greenwald: People Who Feel Inadequate In Life Get Purpose And Strength By Calling For War

Notable quotes:
"... Glenn Greenwald called out journalists and columnists pushing for a war with Iran and lamented that people who have been continually wrong are often hailed as the voice of authority and reason in an interview with FNC's Tucker Carlson on Friday. ..."
Jun 27, 2019 | www.realclearpolitics.com

Glenn Greenwald called out journalists and columnists pushing for a war with Iran and lamented that people who have been continually wrong are often hailed as the voice of authority and reason in an interview with FNC's Tucker Carlson on Friday.

Greenwald specifically took aim at Jeffrey Goldberg of 'The Atlantic' who he said got a promotion for being wrong about the war in Iraq.

VIDEO

Posted by: John Smith | Jun 27, 2019 1:05:43 AM | 113

[Jun 27, 2019] The Ongoing Restructuring of the Greater Middle East by C.J. Hopkins

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... If I were a particularly cynical analyst, it might look to me like global capitalism, starting right around 1990, freed by the collapse of the U.S.S.R. to do whatever the hell it wanted, more or less immediately started dismantling uncooperative power structures throughout the Greater Middle East. My cynical theory would kind of make sense of the "catastrophic policy blunders" that the United States has supposedly made in Iraq, Libya, and throughout the region, not to mention the whole "Global War on Terror," and what it is currently doing to Syria, and Iran. ..."
"... Take a look at that map again. What you're looking at is global capitalism cleaning up after winning the Cold War. And yes, I do mean global capitalism, not the United States of America (i.e., the "nation" most Americans think they live in, despite all evidence to the contrary). I know it hurts to accept the fact that "America" is nothing but a simulation projected onto an enormous marketplace but seriously, do you honestly believe that the U.S. government and its military serve the interests of the American people? If so, go ahead, review the history of their activities since the Second World War, and explain to me how they have benefited Americans not the corporatist ruling classes, regular working class Americans, many of whom can't afford to see a doctor, or buy a house, or educate their kids, not without assuming a lifetime of debt to some global financial institution. ..."
"... OK, so I digressed a little. The point is, "America" is not at war with Iran. Global capitalism is at war with Iran. The supranational corporatist empire. Yes, it wears an American face, and waves a big American flag, but it is no more "American" than the corporations it comprises, or the governments those corporations own, or the military forces those governments control, or the transnational banks that keep the whole show running. ..."
Jun 27, 2019 | www.unz.com

... ... ...

If I were a particularly cynical analyst, it might look to me like global capitalism, starting right around 1990, freed by the collapse of the U.S.S.R. to do whatever the hell it wanted, more or less immediately started dismantling uncooperative power structures throughout the Greater Middle East. My cynical theory would kind of make sense of the "catastrophic policy blunders" that the United States has supposedly made in Iraq, Libya, and throughout the region, not to mention the whole "Global War on Terror," and what it is currently doing to Syria, and Iran.

Take a good look at this Smithsonian map of where the U.S.A. is "combating terrorism." Note how the U.S. military (i.e., global capitalism's unofficial "enforcer") has catastrophically blundered its way into more or less every nation depicted. Or ask our "allies" in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and so on. OK, you might have to reach them in New York or London, or in the South of France this time of year, but, go ahead, ask them about the horrors they've been suffering on account of our "catastrophic blunders."

See, according to this crackpot conspiracy theory that I would put forth if I were a geopolitical analyst instead of just a political satirist, there have been no "catastrophic policy blunders," not for global capitalism. The Restructuring of the Greater Middle East is proceeding exactly according to plan. The regional ruling classes are playing ball, and those who wouldn't have been regime-changed, or are being regime-changed, or are scheduled for regime change.

Sure, for the actual people of the region, and for regular Americans, the last thirty years of wars, "strategic" bombings, sanctions, fomented coups, and other such shenanigans have been a pointless waste of lives and money but global capitalism doesn't care about people or the "sovereign nations" they believe they live in, except to the extent they are useful. Global capitalism has no nations. All it has are market territories, which are either open for business or not.

Take a look at that map again. What you're looking at is global capitalism cleaning up after winning the Cold War. And yes, I do mean global capitalism, not the United States of America (i.e., the "nation" most Americans think they live in, despite all evidence to the contrary). I know it hurts to accept the fact that "America" is nothing but a simulation projected onto an enormous marketplace but seriously, do you honestly believe that the U.S. government and its military serve the interests of the American people? If so, go ahead, review the history of their activities since the Second World War, and explain to me how they have benefited Americans not the corporatist ruling classes, regular working class Americans, many of whom can't afford to see a doctor, or buy a house, or educate their kids, not without assuming a lifetime of debt to some global financial institution.

OK, so I digressed a little. The point is, "America" is not at war with Iran. Global capitalism is at war with Iran. The supranational corporatist empire. Yes, it wears an American face, and waves a big American flag, but it is no more "American" than the corporations it comprises, or the governments those corporations own, or the military forces those governments control, or the transnational banks that keep the whole show running.

This is what Iran and Syria are up against. This is what Russia is up against. Global capitalism doesn't want to nuke them, or occupy them. It wants to privatize them, like it is privatizing the rest of the world, like it has already privatized America according to my crackpot theory, of course.


peterAUS , says: June 25, 2019 at 10:08 pm GMT

if I were a geopolitical analyst, I might be able to discern a pattern there, and possibly even some sort of strategy.

Sounds good.
Some other people did it before, wrote it down etc. but it's always good to see that stuff.

it might look to me like global capitalism, starting right around 1990, freed by the collapse of the U.S.S.R. to do whatever the hell it wanted, more or less immediately started dismantling uncooperative power structures throughout the Greater Middle East.
.there have been no "catastrophic policy blunders," not for global capitalism. The Restructuring of the Greater Middle East is proceeding exactly according to plan. The regional ruling classes are playing ball, and those who wouldn't have been regime-changed, or are being regime-changed, or are scheduled for regime change.
Sure, for the actual people of the region, and for regular Americans, the last thirty years of wars, "strategic" bombings, sanctions, fomented coups, and other such shenanigans have been a pointless waste of lives and money but global capitalism doesn't care about people or the "sovereign nations" they believe they live in, except to the extent they are useful. Global capitalism has no nations. All it has are market territories, which are either open for business or not.

Spot on.

Now .there IS a bit of oversight in the article re competing groups of people on top of that "Global capitalist" bunch.
It's a bit more complicated than "Global capitalism".

Jewish heavily influenced, perhaps even controlled, Anglo-Saxon "setup" .. or Russian "setup" or Chinese "setup".
Only one of them can be on the top, and they don't like each other much.
And they all have nuclear weapons.

"Global capitalism" idea is optimistic. The global overwhelming force against little players. No chance of MAD there so not that bad.NOPE IMHO.
There is a chance of MAD.

That is the problem . Well, at least for some people.

WorkingClass , says: June 26, 2019 at 12:46 am GMT
Globalists are not Capitalists. There is no competition. Just a hand full of monopolies. These stateless corporate monopolists are better understood as Feudalists. They would have everything. We would have nothing. That's what privatization is. It's the Lords ripping off the proles.

I was a union man in my youth. We liked Capitalism. We just wanted our fair share of the loot. The working class today knows nothing about organizing. They don't even know they are working class. They think they are black or white. Woke or Deplorable.

ALL OF US non billionaires are coming up on serious hard times. Serious enough that we might have to put aside our differences. The government is corrupt. It will not save us. Instead it will continue to work to divide us.

Reparations anyone?

animalogic , says: June 26, 2019 at 10:06 am GMT
Another great article by C J Hopkins.
Hopkins (correctly) posits that behind US actions, wars etc lies the global capitalist class.
"Global capitalism has no nations. All it has are market territories, which are either open for business or not"
This is correct -- but requires an important caveat.
Intrinsic to capitalism is imperialism. They are the head & tail of the same coin.
Global capitalists may unite in their rapacious attacks on average citizens the world over. However, they will disunite when it comes to beating a competitor to a market.
The "West" has no (real) ideological differences with China, Russia & Iran. This is a fight between an existing hegemon & it's allies & a rising hegemon (China) & it's allies.
In many ways it's similar to the WW I situation: an established imperial country, the UK, & it's allies against a country with imperial pretensions -- Germany (& it's allies)
To put it in a nice little homily: the Capitalist wolves prefer to eat sheep (us) -- but, will happily eat each other should they perceive a sufficient interest in doing so.
Digital Samizdat , says: June 26, 2019 at 11:49 am GMT
@WorkingClass

Globalists are not Capitalists. There is no competition. Just a hand full of monopolies.

In most key sectors, competition ends up producing monopolies or their near-equivalent, oligopolies. The many are weeded out (or swallowed up) by the few . The situation is roughly the same with democracy, which historically has always resulted in oligarchy, as occurred in ancient Rome and Athens.

Parfois1 , says: June 27, 2019 at 11:01 am GMT
@WorkingClass

Globalists are not Capitalists. There is no competition. Just a hand full of monopolies. These stateless corporate monopolists are better understood as Feudalists. They would have everything. We would have nothing. That's what privatization is. It's the Lords ripping off the proles.

You are right in expecting that in Capitalism there would be competition – the traditional view that prices would remain low because of competition, the less competitive removed from the field, and so on. But that was primitive laisser-faire Capitalism on a fair playing field that hardly existed but in theory. Occasionally there were some "good" capitalists – say the mill-owner in a Lancashire town who gave employment to the locals, built houses, donated to charity and went to the Sunday church service with his workers. But even that "good" capitalist was in it for the profit, which comes from taking possession for himself of the value added by his workers to a commodity.

But modern Capitalism does not function that way. There are no mill-owners, just absentee investor playing in, usually rigged, stock market casinos. Industrial capitalism has been changed into financial Capitalism without borders and loyalty to worker or country. In fact, it has gone global to play country against country for more profit.

Anyway, the USA has evolved into a Fascist state (an advanced state of capitalism, a.k.a. corporatocracy) as Chomsky stated many years ago. Seen from abroad here's a view from the horse's mouth ( The Guardian is official organ of Globalist Fascism).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment

[Jun 26, 2019] VIPS Memo to the President Is Pompeo's Iran Agenda the Same As Yours Consortiumnews

Notable quotes:
"... UPDATED: VIPS says its direct experience with Mike Pompeo leaves them with strong doubt regarding his trustworthiness on issues of consequence to the President and the nation. ..."
"... As for Pompeo himself, there is no sign he followed up by pursuing Binney's stark observation with anyone, including his own CIA cyber sleuths. Pompeo had been around intelligence long enough to realize the risks entailed in asking intrusive questions of intelligence officers -- in this case, subordinates in the Directorate of Digital Innovation, which was created by CIA Director John Brennan in 2015. ..."
"... CIA malware and hacking tools are built by the Engineering Development Group, part of that relatively new Directorate. (It is a safe guess that offensive cybertool specialists from that Directorate were among those involved in the reported placing of "implants" or software code into the Russian grid, about which The New York Times claims you were not informed.) ..."
"... The question is whose agenda Pompeo was pursuing -- yours or his own. Binney had the impression Pompeo was simply going through the motions -- and disingenuously, at that. If he "really wanted to know about Russian hacking," he would have acquainted himself with the conclusions that VIPS, with Binney in the lead, had reached in mid-2017, and which apparently caught your eye. ..."
"... For the Steering Groups of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity: ..."
Jun 21, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

UPDATED: VIPS says its direct experience with Mike Pompeo leaves them with strong doubt regarding his trustworthiness on issues of consequence to the President and the nation.

DATE: June 21, 2019

MEMORANDUM FOR : The President.

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Is Pompeo's Iran Agenda the Same As Yours?

A fter the close call yesterday when you called off the planned military strike on Iran, we remain concerned that you are about to be mousetrapped into war with Iran. You have said you do not want such a war (no sane person would), and our comments below are based on that premise. There are troubling signs that Secretary Pompeo is not likely to jettison his more warlike approach, More importantly, we know from personal experience with Pompeo's dismissive attitude to instructions from you that his agenda can deviate from yours on issues of major consequence.

Pompeo's behavior betrays a strong desire to resort to military action -- perhaps even without your approval -- to Iranian provocations (real or imagined), with no discernible strategic goal other than to advance the interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He is a neophyte compared to his anti-Iran partner John Bolton, whose dilettante approach to interpreting intelligence, strong advocacy of the misbegotten war on Iraq (and continued pride in his role in promoting it), and fierce pursuit of his own aggressive agenda are a matter of a decades-long record. You may not be fully aware of our experience with Pompeo, who has now taken the lead on Iran.

That experience leaves us with strong doubt regarding his trustworthiness on issues of consequence to you and the country, including the contentious issue of alleged Russian hacking into the DNC. The sketchy "evidence" behind that story has now crumbled, thanks to some unusual candor from the Department of Justice. We refer to the extraordinary revelation in a recent Department of Justice court filing that former FBI Director James Comey never required a final forensic report from the DNC-hired cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike.

Comey, of course, has admitted to the fact that, amid accusations from the late Sen. John McCain and others that the Russians had committed "an act of war," the FBI did not follow best practices and insist on direct access to the DNC computers, preferring to rely on CrowdStrike reporting. What was not known until the DOJ revelation is that CrowdStrike never gave Comey a final report on its forensic findings regarding alleged "Russian hacking." Mainstream media have suppressed this story so far; we reported it several days ago.

The point here is that Pompeo could have exposed the lies about Russian hacking of the DNC, had he done what you asked him to do almost two years ago when he was director of the CIA.

In our Memorandum to you of July 24, 2017 entitled "Was the 'Russian Hack' an Inside Job?," we suggested:

"You may wish to ask CIA Director Mike Pompeo what he knows about this.["This" being the evidence-deprived allegation that "a shadowy entity with the moniker 'Guccifer 2.0' hacked the DNC on behalf of Russian intelligence and gave DNC emails to WikiLeaks ."] Our own lengthy intelligence community experience suggests that it is possible that neither former CIA Director John Brennan, nor the cyber-warriors who worked for him, have been completely candid with their new director regarding how this all went down."

Three months later, Director Pompeo invited William Binney, one of VIPS' two former NSA technical directors (and a co-author of our July 24, 2017 Memorandum), to CIA headquarters to discuss our findings. Pompeo began an hour-long meeting with Binney on October 24, 2017 by explaining the genesis of the unusual invitation: "You are here because the President told me that if I really wanted to know about Russian hacking I needed to talk to you."

But Did Pompeo 'Really Want to Know'?

Apparently not. Binney, a widely respected, plain-spoken scientist with more than three decades of experience at NSA , began by telling Pompeo that his (CIA) people were lying to him about Russian hacking and that he (Binney) could prove it. As we explained in our most recent Memorandum to you, Pompeo reacted with disbelief and -- now get this -- tried to put the burden on Binney to pursue the matter with the FBI and NSA.

As for Pompeo himself, there is no sign he followed up by pursuing Binney's stark observation with anyone, including his own CIA cyber sleuths. Pompeo had been around intelligence long enough to realize the risks entailed in asking intrusive questions of intelligence officers -- in this case, subordinates in the Directorate of Digital Innovation, which was created by CIA Director John Brennan in 2015.

CIA malware and hacking tools are built by the Engineering Development Group, part of that relatively new Directorate. (It is a safe guess that offensive cybertool specialists from that Directorate were among those involved in the reported placing of "implants" or software code into the Russian grid, about which The New York Times claims you were not informed.)

If Pompeo failed to report back to you on the conversation you instructed him to have with Binney, you might ask him about it now (even though the flimsy evidence of Russia hacking the DNC has now evaporated, with Binney vindicated). There were two note-takers present at the October 24, 2017 meeting at CIA headquarters. There is also a good chance the session was also recorded. You might ask Pompeo about that.

Whose Agenda?

The question is whose agenda Pompeo was pursuing -- yours or his own. Binney had the impression Pompeo was simply going through the motions -- and disingenuously, at that. If he "really wanted to know about Russian hacking," he would have acquainted himself with the conclusions that VIPS, with Binney in the lead, had reached in mid-2017, and which apparently caught your eye.

Had he pursued the matter seriously with Binney, we might not have had to wait until the Justice Department itself put nails in the coffin of Russiagate, CrowdStrike, and Comey. In sum, Pompeo could have prevented two additional years of "everyone knows that the Russians hacked into the DNC." Why did he not?

Pompeo is said to be a bright fellow -- Bolton, too–with impeccable academic credentials. The history of the past six decades , though, shows that an Ivy League pedigree can spell disaster in affairs of state. Think, for example, of President Lyndon Johnson's national security adviser, former Harvard Dean McGeorge Bundy, for example, who sold the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to Congress to authorize the Vietnam war based on what he knew was a lie. Millions dead.

Bundy was to LBJ as John Bolton is to you, and it is a bit tiresome watching Bolton brandish his Yale senior ring at every podium. Think, too, of Princeton's own Donald Rumsfeld concocting and pushing the fraud about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to "justify" war on Iraq, assuring us all the while that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Millions dead.

Rumsfeld's dictum is anathema to William Binney, who has shown uncommon patience answering a thousand evidence-free "What if's" over the past three years. Binney's shtick? The principles of physics, applied mathematics, and the scientific method. He is widely recognized for his uncanny ability to use these to excellent advantage in separating the chaff from wheat. No Ivy pedigree wanted or needed.

Binney describes himself as a "country boy" from western Pennsylvania. He studied at Penn State and became a world renowned mathematician/cryptologist as well as a technical director at NSA. Binney's accomplishments are featured in a documentary on YouTube, "A Good American." You may wish to talk to him person-to-person.

Cooked Intelligence

Some of us served as long ago as the Vietnam War. We are painfully aware of how Gen. William Westmoreland and other top military officers lied about the "progress" the Army was making, and succeeded in forcing their superiors in Washington to suppress our conclusions as all-source analysts that the war was a fool's errand and one we would inevitably lose. Millions dead.

Four decades later, on February 5, 2003, six weeks before the attack on Iraq, we warned President Bush that there was no reliable intelligence to justify war on Iraq.

Five years later, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, releasing the bipartisan conclusions of the committee's investigation, said this :

" In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed."

Intelligence on the Middle East has still been spotty -- and sometimes "fixed" for political purposes. Four years ago, a U.S. congressional report said Central Command painted too rosy a picture of the fight against Islamic State in 2014 and 2015 compared with the reality on the ground and grimmer assessments by other analysts.

Intelligence analysts at CENTCOM claimed their commanders imposed a "false narrative" on analysts, intentionally rewrote and suppressed intelligence products, and engaged in "delay tactics" to undermine intelligence provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency. In July 2015, fifty CENTCOM analysts signed a complaint to the Pentagon's Inspector General that their intelligence reports were being manipulated by their superiors. The CENTCOM analysts were joined by intelligence analysts working for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

We offer this as a caution. As difficult as this is for us to say, the intelligence you get from CENTCOM should not be accepted reflexively as gospel truth, especially in periods of high tension. The experience of the Tonkin Gulf alone should give us caution. Unclear and misinterpreted intelligence can be as much a problem as politicization in key conflict areas.

Frequent problems with intelligence and Cheney-style hyperbole help explain why CENTCOM commander Admiral William Fallon in early 2007 blurted out that "an attack on Iran " will not happen on my watch," as Bush kept sending additional carrier groups into the Persian Gulf. Hillary Mann, the administration's former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs, warned at the time that some Bush advisers secretly wanted an excuse to attack Iran. "They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for," she told Newsweek. Deja vu. A National Intelligence Estimate issued in November 2007 concluded unanimously that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003 and had not resumed such work.

We believe your final decision yesterday was the right one -- given the so-called "fog of war" and against the background of a long list of intelligence mistakes, not to mention "cooking" shenanigans. We seldom quote media commentators, but we think Tucker Carlson had it right yesterday evening: "The very people -- in some cases, literally the same people who lured us into the Iraq quagmire 16 years ago -- are demanding a new war -- this one with Iran. Carlson described you as "skeptical." We believe ample skepticism is warranted.

We are at your disposal, should you wish to discuss any of this with us.

For the Steering Groups of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:

[Jun 25, 2019] Tulsi on Iraq war and Trump administration and some interesting information about Bolton

With minor comment editions for clarity...
Looks like Bolton is dyed-in-the-wool imperialist. He believes the United States can do what wants without regard to international law, treaties or the роlitical commitments of previous administrations.
Notable quotes:
"... Israel is an Anglo American aircraft carrier to control the Eastern Mediterranean ..."
Jun 25, 2019 | www.unz.com

J. Gutierrez says: June 24, 2019 at 5:37 pm GMT 300 Words

...Look at this man's video and remember he is a pervert, warmonger and a coward!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hs35O_TBbbU

Ma Laoshi , says: June 24, 2019 at 11:56 pm GMT

@J. Gutierrez

...Zionists know what they want, are willing to work together towards their goals, and put their money where their mouth is. In contrast, for a few pennies the goyim will renounce any principle they pretend to cherish, and go on happily proclaiming the opposite even if a short while down the road it'll get their own children killed.

The real sad part about this notion of the goy as a mere beast in human form is maybe not that it got codified for eternity in the Talmud, but rather that there may be some truth to it? Another way of saying this is raising the question whether the goyim deserve better, given what we see around us.

Saka Arya , says: June 25, 2019 at 7:02 am GMT
@Malla

Israel is an Anglo American aircraft carrier to control the Eastern Mediterranean and prevent a Turko Egyptian and possibly Persian invasion of Greece & the West

[Jun 25, 2019] Tucker US came within minutes of war with Iran

Highly recommended!
Jun 25, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Andris Falks , 1 day ago

I despise so called main stream media, but Tucker can be a light in the infinite darkness of prestitutes.

erik je , 1 day ago

Tucker ,,,, you are kind of restoring what little faith i had left of the mainstream press with this upload its not mutch and it has a long long way to go , but it is a start thank the guy in the sky

Olivier Lecuyer , 1 day ago (edited)

I just upvoted a Tucker Carlson video. I am baffled. BTW, Jimmy Dore said TC's more deserving of a Noble peace prize then Obama, who, of course, never should have had one in the first place. They should be able to take them back, though it means that most of them should be returned.

Alman556 , 1 day ago

"Restrain him from avoiding war"

Joseph Vice , 1 day ago

I'm sick of these old men who talk tough and then send the youth to fight their wars.

The Nair , 1 day ago (edited)

Tucker Carlson your insight and wisdom stands alone on mainstream media. Thankfully our President listens to what you have to say!

Ben Alberduin , 2 days ago

"Ill advised wars are like doing cocaine: The initial rush rises your poll-numbers, but the crash is inevitable." Wise words Mr Carlson

Olivier Lecuyer , 1 day ago (edited)

I just upvoted a Tucker Carlson video. I am baffled. BTW, Jimmy Dore said TC's more deserving of a Noble peace prize then Obama, who, of course, never should have had one in the first place. They should be able to take them back, though it means that most of them should be returned.

Roya Dehghan , 1 day ago

Tucker i disagreed with u in past on many things but i genuinely am impressed with your stance and your moral compass on wars and learning from the past.. kudos to u on this one...it shows we can disagree on many policies yet still respect and support one another on humanity. Glad u worked on Trump on that one.

[Jun 24, 2019] Trump Unleashes On Uber-Hawk Bolton We d Be Fighting The Whole World At One Time

That does not change the fact that Trump foreign policy is a continuation of Obama fogirn policy. It is neocon forign policy directed on "full spectrum dominance". Trump just added to this bulling to the mix.
Notable quotes:
"... When pressed on the dangers of having such an uber-hawk neo-conservative who remains an unapologetic cheerleader of the 2003 Iraq War, and who laid the ground work for it as a member of Bush's National Security Council, Trump followed with, "That doesn't matter because I want both sides." ..."
"... I was against going into Iraq... I was against going into the Middle East . Chuck we've spent 7 trillion dollars in the Middle East right now. ..."
"... Bolton has never kept his career-long goal of seeing regime change in Tehran a secret - repeating his position publicly every chance he got, especially in the years prior to tenure at the Trump White House. ..."
"... Tucker's epic "bureaucratic tapeworm" comment: https://www.youtube.com/embed/-c0jMsspE7Y ..."
"... Bolton! So much winning! And there's also Perry: Rick Perry, Trump's energy secretary, was flagged for describing Trumpism as a "toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition." ..."
"... Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton was one of the architects of the Iraq War under George W. Bush, and now he's itching to start a war with Iran -- an even bigger country with almost three times the population. ..."
Jun 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

In a stunningly frank moment during a Sunday Meet the Press interview focused on President Trump's decision-making on Iran, especially last week's "brink of war" moment which saw Trump draw down readied military forces in what he said was a "common sense" move, the commander in chief threw his own national security advisor under the bus in spectacular fashion .

Though it's not Trump's first tongue-in-cheek denigration of Bolton's notorious hawkishness, it's certainly the most brutal and blunt take down yet, and frankly just plain enjoyable to watch. When host Chuck Todd asked the president if he was "being pushed into military action against Iran" by his advisers in what was clearly a question focused on Bolton first and foremost, Trump responded:

"John Bolton is absolutely a hawk. If it was up to him he'd take on the whole world at one time, okay?"

Trump began by explaining, "I have two groups of people. I have doves and I have hawks," before leading into this sure to be classic line that is one for the history books: "If it was up to him he'd take on the whole world at one time, okay?"

During this section of comments focused on US policy in the Middle East, the president reiterated his preference that he hear from "both sides" on an issue, but that he was ultimately the one making the decisions.

When pressed on the dangers of having such an uber-hawk neo-conservative who remains an unapologetic cheerleader of the 2003 Iraq War, and who laid the ground work for it as a member of Bush's National Security Council, Trump followed with, "That doesn't matter because I want both sides."

And in another clear indicator that Trump wants to stay true to his non-interventionist instincts voiced on the 2016 campaign trail, he explained to Todd that:

I was against going into Iraq... I was against going into the Middle East . Chuck we've spent 7 trillion dollars in the Middle East right now.

It was the second time this weekend that Trump was forced to defend his choice of Bolton as the nation's most influential foreign policy thinker and adviser. When peppered with questions at the White House Saturday following Thursday night's dramatic "almost war" with Iran, Trump said that he "disagrees" with Bolton "very much" but that ultimately he's "doing a very good job".

Bolton has never kept his career-long goal of seeing regime change in Tehran a secret - repeating his position publicly every chance he got, especially in the years prior to tenure at the Trump White House.

Tucker's epic "bureaucratic tapeworm" comment: https://www.youtube.com/embed/-c0jMsspE7Y

But Bolton hasn't had a good past week: not only had Trump on Thursday night shut the door on Bolton's dream of overseeing a major US military strike on Iran, but he's been pummeled in the media.

Even a Fox prime time show (who else but Tucker of course) colorfully described him as a "bureaucratic tapeworm" which periodically reemerges to cause pain and suffering.


Iconoclast422 , 15 seconds ago link

YOU TELL HIM BOSS. Only bomb one country at a time.

bizarroworld , 1 minute ago link

It's great that the biggest war mongers are the ones that not only never served but in the case of Bolton, purposely avoided serving. They should send that ****** to Iran so we can see just how supportive he is when he's actually in danger.

This guy is a worthless piece of **** and Trump's an idiot for hiring him.

Catullus , 1 minute ago link

Being a cheerleader for the Iraq war is as ridiculous as that ******* mustache. He's just letting neocons have a front row seat to power. That's how he's keeping them from jumping ship to become democrats. They have no principles. They're just power worshippers.

Moribundus , 2 minutes ago link

Do ya all remember when Trump took office? Losers use military strategy that is overwhelming bombardment b4 land attack. I thought that Donnie can not survive this pressure. Looks like now he is riding horse with banner in hands. Thumb up, MJT

thepsalmon , 2 minutes ago link

I was against going into the Middle East...$7 Trillion? So why is Jared trying to give away $50 Billion more? People thought they voted for MAGA, but they got Jared...MMEGA.

How about MJANYA?...Make Jared a New Yorker Again. Send Jared and Ivanka back to New York before it's $10 Trillion.

HenryJonesJr , 2 minutes ago link

Never understood why Trump allowed Bolton near the White House. Bolton is insane.

Joiningupthedots , 4 minutes ago link

WTF is wrong with Trump? He appointed Bolton and Pompeo......... OR DID HE?

SMOOCHY SMOOCHY CARLO , 4 minutes ago link

Bolton! So much winning! And there's also Perry: Rick Perry, Trump's energy secretary, was flagged for describing Trumpism as a "toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition."

ne-tiger , 4 minutes ago link

Holycrap trumptards: all get your 22 little pistols ready to die for your orange swamp mushroom?

ConanTheContrarian1 , 5 minutes ago link

Trump "unleashes"? For those who think, he also said Bolton is doing a good job. Crap headline. I think Solomon said, "In a multitude of counselors there is victory".

DingleBarryObummer , 4 minutes ago link

What kind of unprofessional dingus talks openly about employee issues? That's not how you run a organization. That's how you run a reality television show.

DingleBarryObummer , 5 minutes ago link

Bolton is just there to make Trump look like less of a Zionist tool in comparison.

Everybodys All American , 5 minutes ago link

Rid yourself of Bolton. The guy is a friggin megalomaniac and he's no fan of making America great. Move on from this idiot.

RedNemesis , 7 minutes ago link

Who would have thought that we now wish HR McMaster was back.

HillaryOdor , 9 minutes ago link

So why did you put him in your cabinet then you dumb ****? Was this actually news to you?

ConanTheContrarian1 , 8 minutes ago link

Because, you dumber ****, Trump wants to hear both sides, as was pointed out in the article.

DingleBarryObummer , 7 minutes ago link

Sides? I could hire Hobo Joe, the bum that huffs paint and drinks scotch out of plastic bottle while yelling at traffic by the intersection, as my advisor. He'd probably tell me to do some whacky stuff. But why would I do that?

HillaryOdor , 7 minutes ago link

There is no side to hear. Bomb everyone. That is John Bolton's side. It isn't worth hearing. The man shouldn't be drawing a paycheck. He shouldn't be drawing breath. He should be pushing up daisies. He the same as ISIS.

libertysghost , 6 minutes ago link

More easily controlled... Keep your enemies even closer, you may have heard.

HillaryOdor , 30 seconds ago link

Whatever you have to tell yourself to stay in the Trump delusion. What will the excuse be when they are at war with Iran?

Cognitive Dissonance , 1 minute ago link

Reading is fundamental....and certainly not needed to spout opinions. In fact, reading, combined with critical thinking, logic and reason, just gets in the way of forming opinions. Or should I say "repeating" other's opinions.

Commodore 1488 , 11 minutes ago link

John "The Pimp" Bolton wants American military to serve Israel.

FreeShitter , 7 minutes ago link

The military has been serving Israel for decades, you think this is new?

FreeShitter , 11 minutes ago link

"Chuck we've spent 7 trillion dollars in the Middle East right now."....Yes, just like your *** bosses wanted and needed and you dumb ******* sheep still think voting matters.

El_Puerco , 11 minutes ago link

Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton was one of the architects of the Iraq War under George W. Bush, and now he's itching to start a war with Iran -- an even bigger country with almost three times the population.

Democrats in Congress have the power to pull us back from the brink , but they need to act now. Once bombs start falling and troops are on the ground, there will be massive political pressure to rally around the flag.

[Jun 23, 2019] The return of fundamentalist nationalism is arguably a radicalized form of neoliberalism

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... If 'free markets' of enterprising individuals have been tested to destruction, then capitalism is unable to articulate an ideology with which to legitimise itself. ..."
"... Therefore, neoliberal hegemony can only be perpetuated with authoritarian, nationalist ideologies and an order of market feudalism. ..."
"... The market is no longer an enabler of private enterprise, but something more like a medieval religion, conferring ultimate authority on a demagogue. ..."
"... Only in theory is neoliberalism a form of laissez-faire. Neoliberalism is not a case of the state saying, as it were: 'OK everyone, we'll impose some very broad legal parameters, so we'll make sure the police will turn up if someone breaks into your house; but otherwise we'll hang back and let you do what you want'. ..."
"... Hayek is perfectly clear that a strong state is required to force people to act according to market logic. If left to their own devices, they might collectivise, think up dangerous utopian ideologies, and the next thing you know there would be socialism. ..."
"... This the paradox of neoliberalism as an intellectual critique of government: a socialist state can only be prohibited with an equally strong state. That is, neoliberals are not opposed to a state as such, but to a specifically centrally-planned state based on principles of social justice - a state which, to Hayek's mind, could only end in t totalitarianism. ..."
"... It should be understood (and I speak above all as a critic of neoliberalism) that neoliberal ideology is not merely a system of class power, but an entire metaphysic, a way of understanding the world that has an emotional hold over people. For any ideology to universalize itself, it must be based on some very powerful ideas. Hayek and Von Mises were Jewish fugitives of Nazism, living through the worst horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism. There are passages of Hayek's that describe a world operating according to the rules of a benign abstract system that make it sound rather lovely. To understand neoliberalism, we must see that it has an appeal. ..."
"... However, there is no perfect order of price signals. People do not simply act according to economic self-interest. Therefore, neoliberalism is a utopian political project like any other, requiring the brute power of the state to enforce ideological tenets. With tragic irony, the neoliberal order eventually becomes not dissimilar to the totalitarian regimes that Hayek railed against. ..."
Jun 23, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

Pinkie123 , 12 Apr 2019 03:23

The other point to be made is that the return of fundamentalist nationalism is arguably a radicalized form of neoliberalism. If 'free markets' of enterprising individuals have been tested to destruction, then capitalism is unable to articulate an ideology with which to legitimise itself.

Therefore, neoliberal hegemony can only be perpetuated with authoritarian, nationalist ideologies and an order of market feudalism.

In other words, neoliberalism's authoritarian orientations, previously effaced beneath discourses of egalitarian free-enterprise, become overt.

The market is no longer an enabler of private enterprise, but something more like a medieval religion, conferring ultimate authority on a demagogue.

Individual entrepreneurs collectivise into a 'people' serving a market which has become synonymous with nationhood. A corporate state emerges, free of the regulatory fetters of democracy.

The final restriction on the market - democracy itself - is removed. There then is no separate market and state, just a totalitarian market state.

Pinkie123 -> economicalternative , 12 Apr 2019 02:57

Yes, the EU is an ordoliberal institution - the state imposing rules on the market from without. Thus, it is not the chief danger. The takeover of 5G, and therefore our entire economy and industry, by Huawei - now that would be a loss of state sovereignty. But because Huawei is nominally a corporation, people do not think about is a form of governmental bureaucracy, but if powerful enough that is exactly what it is.
economicalternative -> Pinkie123 , 11 Apr 2019 21:33
Pinkie123: So good to read your understandings of neoliberalism. The political project is the imposition of the all seeing all knowing 'market' on all aspects of human life. This version of the market is an 'information processor'. Speaking of the different idea of the laissez-faire version of market/non market areas and the function of the night watchman state are you aware there are different neoliberalisms? The EU for example runs on the version called 'ordoliberalism'. I understand that this still sees some areas of society as separate from 'the market'?
economicalternative -> ADamnSmith2016 , 11 Apr 2019 21:01
ADamnSmith: Philip Mirowski has discussed this 'under the radar' aspect of neoliberalism. How to impose 'the market' on human affairs - best not to be to explicit about what you are doing. Only recently has some knowledge about the actual neoliberal project been appearing. Most people think of neoliberalism as 'making the rich richer' - just a ramped up version of capitalism. That's how the left has thought of it and they have been ineffective in stopping its implementation.
subtropics , 11 Apr 2019 13:51
Neoliberalism allows with impunity pesticide businesses to apply high risk toxic pesticides everywhere seriously affecting the health of children, everyone as well as poisoning the biosphere and all its biodiversity. This freedom has gone far too far and is totally unacceptable and these chemicals should be banished immediately.
Pinkie123 , 11 Apr 2019 13:27
The left have been entirely wrong to believe that neoliberalism is a mobilisation of anarchic, 'free' markets. It never was so. Only a few more acute thinkers on the left (Jacques Ranciere, Foucault, Deleuze and, more recently, Mark Fisher, Wendy Brown, Will Davies and David Graeber) have understood neoliberalism to be a techno-economic order of control, requiring a state apparatus to enforce wholly artificial directives.

Also, the work of recent critics of data markets such as Shoshana Zuboff has shown capitalism to be evolving into a totalitarian system of control through cybernetic data aggregation.

Only in theory is neoliberalism a form of laissez-faire. Neoliberalism is not a case of the state saying, as it were: 'OK everyone, we'll impose some very broad legal parameters, so we'll make sure the police will turn up if someone breaks into your house; but otherwise we'll hang back and let you do what you want'.

Hayek is perfectly clear that a strong state is required to force people to act according to market logic. If left to their own devices, they might collectivise, think up dangerous utopian ideologies, and the next thing you know there would be socialism.

This the paradox of neoliberalism as an intellectual critique of government: a socialist state can only be prohibited with an equally strong state. That is, neoliberals are not opposed to a state as such, but to a specifically centrally-planned state based on principles of social justice - a state which, to Hayek's mind, could only end in t totalitarianism.

Because concepts of social justice are expressed in language, neoliberals are suspicious of linguistic concepts, regarding them as politically dangerous. Their preference has always been for numbers. Hence, market bureaucracy aims for the quantification of all values - translating the entirety of social reality into metrics, data, objectively measurable price signals. Numbers are safe. The laws of numbers never change. Numbers do not lead to revolutions. Hence, all the audit, performance review and tick-boxing that has been enforced into public institutions serves to render them forever subservient to numerical (market) logic. However, because social institutions are not measurable, attempts to make them so become increasingly mystical and absurd. Administrators manage data that has no relation to reality. Quantitatively unmeasurable things - like happiness or success - are measured, with absurd results.

It should be understood (and I speak above all as a critic of neoliberalism) that neoliberal ideology is not merely a system of class power, but an entire metaphysic, a way of understanding the world that has an emotional hold over people. For any ideology to universalize itself, it must be based on some very powerful ideas. Hayek and Von Mises were Jewish fugitives of Nazism, living through the worst horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism. There are passages of Hayek's that describe a world operating according to the rules of a benign abstract system that make it sound rather lovely. To understand neoliberalism, we must see that it has an appeal.

However, there is no perfect order of price signals. People do not simply act according to economic self-interest. Therefore, neoliberalism is a utopian political project like any other, requiring the brute power of the state to enforce ideological tenets. With tragic irony, the neoliberal order eventually becomes not dissimilar to the totalitarian regimes that Hayek railed against.

[Jun 22, 2019] The Myopia of Interventionists by Daniel Lariso

Feb 22, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Andrew Bacevich recalls Madeleine Albright's infamous statement about American indispensability, and notes how poorly it has held up over the last twenty-one years:

Back then, it was Albright's claim to American indispensability that stuck in my craw. Yet as a testimony to ruling class hubris, the assertion of indispensability pales in comparison to Albright's insistence that "we see further into the future."

In fact, from February 1998 down to the present, events have time and again caught Albright's "we" napping.

Albright's statement is even more damning for her and her fellow interventionists when we consider that the context of her remarks was a discussion of the supposed threat from Iraq. The full sentence went like this: "We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us." Albright was making a general claim about our supposed superiority to other nations when it came to looking into the future, but she was also specifically warning against a "danger" from Iraq that she claimed threatened "all of us." She answered one of Matt Lauer's questions with this assertion:

I think that we know what we have to do, and that is help enforce the UN Security Council resolutions, which demand that Saddam Hussein abide by those resolutions, and get rid of his weapons of mass destruction, and allow the inspectors to have unfettered and unconditional access.

Albright's rhetoric from 1998 is a grim reminder that policymakers from both parties accepted the existence of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" as a given and never seriously questioned a policy aimed at eliminating something that did not exist. American hawks couldn't see further in the future. They weren't even perceiving the present correctly, and tens of thousands of Americans and millions of Iraqis would suffer because they insisted that they saw something that wasn't there.

A little more than five years after she uttered these words, the same wild threat inflation that Albright was engaged in led to the invasion of Iraq, the greatest blunder and one of the worst crimes in the history of modern U.S. foreign policy . Not only did Albright and other later war supporters not see what was coming, but their deluded belief in being able to anticipate future threats caused them to buy into and promote a bogus case for a war that was completely unnecessary and should never have been fought.

[Jun 22, 2019] Tucker Carlson: John Bolton is a kind of bureaucratic tapeworm

Notable quotes:
"... "Try as you might, you can't expel him. He seems to live forever in the bowels of the federal agencies, periodically reemerging to cause pain and suffering -- but somehow never suffering himself." ..."
Jun 22, 2019 | nationalinterest.org

Someone whose confidence Bolton does not enjoy is Carlson, a rival for Trump's ear. Carlson, a true believer, took to the airwaves to savage the ambassador Friday night. "John Bolton is a kind of bureaucratic tapeworm," Carlson said.

"Try as you might, you can't expel him. He seems to live forever in the bowels of the federal agencies, periodically reemerging to cause pain and suffering -- but somehow never suffering himself."

[Jun 19, 2019] America s Suicide Epidemic

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every 12 minutes . What's more, after decades of decline, the rate of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually -- the suicide rate -- has been increasing sharply since the late 1990s. Suicides now claim two-and-a-half times as many lives in this country as do homicides , even though the murder rate gets so much more attention. ..."
"... In some states the upsurge was far higher: North Dakota (57.6%), New Hampshire (48.3%), Kansas (45%), Idaho (43%). ..."
"... Since 2008 , suicide has ranked 10th among the causes of death in this country. For Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, however, it comes in second; for those between 35 and 45, fourth. The United States also has the ninth-highest rate in the 38-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Globally , it ranks 27th. ..."
"... The rates in rural counties are almost double those in the most urbanized ones, which is why states like Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, and North Dakota sit atop the suicide list. Furthermore, a far higher percentage of people in rural states own guns than in cities and suburbs, leading to a higher rate of suicide involving firearms, the means used in half of all such acts in this country. ..."
"... Education is also a factor. The suicide rate is lowest among individuals with college degrees. Those who, at best, completed high school are, by comparison, twice as likely to kill themselves. Suicide rates also tend to be lower among people in higher-income brackets. ..."
"... Evidence from the United States , Brazil , Japan , and Sweden does indicate that, as income inequality increases, so does the suicide rate. ..."
"... One aspect of the suicide epidemic is puzzling. Though whites have fared far better economically (and in many other ways) than African Americans, their suicide rate is significantly higher . ..."
"... The higher suicide rate among whites as well as among people with only a high school diploma highlights suicide's disproportionate effect on working-class whites. This segment of the population also accounts for a disproportionate share of what economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have labeled " deaths of despair " -- those caused by suicides plus opioid overdoses and liver diseases linked to alcohol abuse. Though it's hard to offer a complete explanation for this, economic hardship and its ripple effects do appear to matter. ..."
"... Trump has neglected his base on pretty much every issue; this one's no exception. ..."
Jun 19, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Yves here. This post describes how the forces driving the US suicide surge started well before the Trump era, but explains how Trump has not only refused to acknowledge the problem, but has made matters worse.

However, it's not as if the Democrats are embracing this issue either.

BY Rajan Menon, the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. His latest book is The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention Originally published at TomDispatch .

We hear a lot about suicide when celebrities like Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade die by their own hand. Otherwise, it seldom makes the headlines. That's odd given the magnitude of the problem.

In 2017, 47,173 Americans killed themselves. In that single year, in other words, the suicide count was nearly seven times greater than the number of American soldiers killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars between 2001 and 2018.

A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every 12 minutes . What's more, after decades of decline, the rate of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually -- the suicide rate -- has been increasing sharply since the late 1990s. Suicides now claim two-and-a-half times as many lives in this country as do homicides , even though the murder rate gets so much more attention.

In other words, we're talking about a national epidemic of self-inflicted deaths.

Worrisome Numbers

Anyone who has lost a close relative or friend to suicide or has worked on a suicide hotline (as I have) knows that statistics transform the individual, the personal, and indeed the mysterious aspects of that violent act -- Why this person? Why now? Why in this manner? -- into depersonalized abstractions. Still, to grasp how serious the suicide epidemic has become, numbers are a necessity.

According to a 2018 Centers for Disease Control study , between 1999 and 2016, the suicide rate increased in every state in the union except Nevada, which already had a remarkably high rate. In 30 states, it jumped by 25% or more; in 17, by at least a third. Nationally, it increased 33% . In some states the upsurge was far higher: North Dakota (57.6%), New Hampshire (48.3%), Kansas (45%), Idaho (43%).

Alas, the news only gets grimmer.

Since 2008 , suicide has ranked 10th among the causes of death in this country. For Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, however, it comes in second; for those between 35 and 45, fourth. The United States also has the ninth-highest rate in the 38-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Globally , it ranks 27th.

More importantly, the trend in the United States doesn't align with what's happening elsewhere in the developed world. The World Health Organization, for instance, reports that Great Britain, Canada, and China all have notably lower suicide rates than the U.S., as do all but six countries in the European Union. (Japan's is only slightly lower.)

World Bank statistics show that, worldwide, the suicide rate fell from 12.8 per 100,000 in 2000 to 10.6 in 2016. It's been falling in China , Japan (where it has declined steadily for nearly a decade and is at its lowest point in 37 years), most of Europe, and even countries like South Korea and Russia that have a significantly higher suicide rate than the United States. In Russia, for instance, it has dropped by nearly 26% from a high point of 42 per 100,000 in 1994 to 31 in 2019.

We know a fair amount about the patterns of suicide in the United States. In 2017, the rate was highest for men between the ages of 45 and 64 (30 per 100,000) and those 75 and older (39.7 per 100,000).

The rates in rural counties are almost double those in the most urbanized ones, which is why states like Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, and North Dakota sit atop the suicide list. Furthermore, a far higher percentage of people in rural states own guns than in cities and suburbs, leading to a higher rate of suicide involving firearms, the means used in half of all such acts in this country.

There are gender-based differences as well. From 1999 to 2017, the rate for men was substantially higher than for women -- almost four-and-a-half times higher in the first of those years, slightly more than three-and-a-half times in the last.

Education is also a factor. The suicide rate is lowest among individuals with college degrees. Those who, at best, completed high school are, by comparison, twice as likely to kill themselves. Suicide rates also tend to be lower among people in higher-income brackets.

The Economics of Stress

This surge in the suicide rate has taken place in years during which the working class has experienced greater economic hardship and psychological stress. Increased competition from abroad and outsourcing, the results of globalization, have contributed to job loss, particularly in economic sectors like manufacturing, steel, and mining that had long been mainstays of employment for such workers. The jobs still available often paid less and provided fewer benefits.

Technological change, including computerization, robotics, and the coming of artificial intelligence, has similarly begun to displace labor in significant ways, leaving Americans without college degrees, especially those 50 and older, in far more difficult straits when it comes to finding new jobs that pay well. The lack of anything resembling an industrial policy of a sort that exists in Europe has made these dislocations even more painful for American workers, while a sharp decline in private-sector union membership -- down from nearly 17% in 1983 to 6.4% today -- has reduced their ability to press for higher wages through collective bargaining.

Furthermore, the inflation-adjusted median wage has barely budged over the last four decades (even as CEO salaries have soared). And a decline in worker productivity doesn't explain it: between 1973 and 2017 productivity increased by 77%, while a worker's average hourly wage only rose by 12.4%. Wage stagnation has made it harder for working-class Americans to get by, let alone have a lifestyle comparable to that of their parents or grandparents.

The gap in earnings between those at the top and bottom of American society has also increased -- a lot. Since 1979, the wages of Americans in the 10th percentile increased by a pitiful 1.2%. Those in the 50th percentile did a bit better, making a gain of 6%. By contrast, those in the 90th percentile increased by 34.3% and those near the peak of the wage pyramid -- the top 1% and especially the rarefied 0.1% -- made far more substantial gains.

And mind you, we're just talking about wages, not other forms of income like large stock dividends, expensive homes, or eyepopping inheritances. The share of net national wealth held by the richest 0.1% increased from 10% in the 1980s to 20% in 2016. By contrast, the share of the bottom 90% shrank in those same decades from about 35% to 20%. As for the top 1%, by 2016 its share had increased to almost 39% .

The precise relationship between economic inequality and suicide rates remains unclear, and suicide certainly can't simply be reduced to wealth disparities or financial stress. Still, strikingly, in contrast to the United States, suicide rates are noticeably lower and have been declining in Western European countries where income inequalities are far less pronounced, publicly funded healthcare is regarded as a right (not demonized as a pathway to serfdom), social safety nets far more extensive, and apprenticeships and worker retraining programs more widespread.

Evidence from the United States , Brazil , Japan , and Sweden does indicate that, as income inequality increases, so does the suicide rate. If so, the good news is that progressive economic policies -- should Democrats ever retake the White House and the Senate -- could make a positive difference. A study based on state-by-state variations in the U.S. found that simply boosting the minimum wage and Earned Income Tax Credit by 10% appreciably reduces the suicide rate among people without college degrees.

The Race Enigma

One aspect of the suicide epidemic is puzzling. Though whites have fared far better economically (and in many other ways) than African Americans, their suicide rate is significantly higher . It increased from 11.3 per 100,000 in 2000 to 15.85 per 100,000 in 2017; for African Americans in those years the rates were 5.52 per 100,000 and 6.61 per 100,000. Black men are 10 times more likely to be homicide victims than white men, but the latter are two-and-half times more likely to kill themselves.

The higher suicide rate among whites as well as among people with only a high school diploma highlights suicide's disproportionate effect on working-class whites. This segment of the population also accounts for a disproportionate share of what economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have labeled " deaths of despair " -- those caused by suicides plus opioid overdoses and liver diseases linked to alcohol abuse. Though it's hard to offer a complete explanation for this, economic hardship and its ripple effects do appear to matter.

According to a study by the St. Louis Federal Reserve , the white working class accounted for 45% of all income earned in the United States in 1990, but only 27% in 2016. In those same years, its share of national wealth plummeted, from 45% to 22%. And as inflation-adjusted wages have decreased for men without college degrees, many white workers seem to have lost hope of success of any sort. Paradoxically, the sense of failure and the accompanying stress may be greater for white workers precisely because they traditionally were much better off economically than their African American and Hispanic counterparts.

In addition, the fraying of communities knit together by employment in once-robust factories and mines has increased social isolation among them, and the evidence that it -- along with opioid addiction and alcohol abuse -- increases the risk of suicide is strong . On top of that, a significantly higher proportion of whites than blacks and Hispanics own firearms, and suicide rates are markedly higher in states where gun ownership is more widespread.

Trump's Faux Populism

The large increase in suicide within the white working class began a couple of decades before Donald Trump's election. Still, it's reasonable to ask what he's tried to do about it, particularly since votes from these Americans helped propel him to the White House. In 2016, he received 64% of the votes of whites without college degrees; Hillary Clinton, only 28%. Nationwide, he beat Clinton in counties where deaths of despair rose significantly between 2000 and 2015.

White workers will remain crucial to Trump's chances of winning in 2020. Yet while he has spoken about, and initiated steps aimed at reducing, the high suicide rate among veterans , his speeches and tweets have never highlighted the national suicide epidemic or its inordinate impact on white workers. More importantly, to the extent that economic despair contributes to their high suicide rate, his policies will only make matters worse.

The real benefits from the December 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act championed by the president and congressional Republicans flowed to those on the top steps of the economic ladder. By 2027, when the Act's provisions will run out, the wealthiest Americans are expected to have captured 81.8% of the gains. And that's not counting the windfall they received from recent changes in taxes on inheritances. Trump and the GOP doubled the annual amount exempt from estate taxes -- wealth bequeathed to heirs -- through 2025 from $5.6 million per individual to $11.2 million (or $22.4 million per couple). And who benefits most from this act of generosity? Not workers, that's for sure, but every household with an estate worth $22 million or more will.

As for job retraining provided by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the president proposed cutting that program by 40% in his 2019 budget, later settling for keeping it at 2017 levels. Future cuts seem in the cards as long as Trump is in the White House. The Congressional Budget Office projects that his tax cuts alone will produce even bigger budget deficits in the years to come. (The shortfall last year was $779 billion and it is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2020.) Inevitably, the president and congressional Republicans will then demand additional reductions in spending for social programs.

This is all the more likely because Trump and those Republicans also slashed corporate taxes from 35% to 21% -- an estimated $1.4 trillion in savings for corporations over the next decade. And unlike the income tax cut, the corporate tax has no end date . The president assured his base that the big bucks those companies had stashed abroad would start flowing home and produce a wave of job creation -- all without adding to the deficit. As it happens, however, most of that repatriated cash has been used for corporate stock buy-backs, which totaled more than $800 billion last year. That, in turn, boosted share prices, but didn't exactly rain money down on workers. No surprise, of course, since the wealthiest 10% of Americans own at least 84% of all stocks and the bottom 60% have less than 2% of them.

And the president's corporate tax cut hasn't produced the tsunami of job-generating investments he predicted either. Indeed, in its aftermath, more than 80% of American companies stated that their plans for investment and hiring hadn't changed. As a result, the monthly increase in jobs has proven unremarkable compared to President Obama's second term, when the economic recovery that Trump largely inherited began. Yes, the economy did grow 2.3% in 2017 and 2.9% in 2018 (though not 3.1% as the president claimed). There wasn't, however, any "unprecedented economic boom -- a boom that has rarely been seen before" as he insisted in this year's State of the Union Address .

Anyway, what matters for workers struggling to get by is growth in real wages, and there's nothing to celebrate on that front: between 2017 and mid-2018 they actually declined by 1.63% for white workers and 2.5% for African Americans, while they rose for Hispanics by a measly 0.37%. And though Trump insists that his beloved tariff hikes are going to help workers, they will actually raise the prices of goods, hurting the working class and other low-income Americans the most .

Then there are the obstacles those susceptible to suicide face in receiving insurance-provided mental-health care. If you're a white worker without medical coverage or have a policy with a deductible and co-payments that are high and your income, while low, is too high to qualify for Medicaid, Trump and the GOP haven't done anything for you. Never mind the president's tweet proclaiming that "the Republican Party Will Become 'The Party of Healthcare!'"

Let me amend that: actually, they have done something. It's just not what you'd call helpful. The percentage of uninsured adults, which fell from 18% in 2013 to 10.9% at the end of 2016, thanks in no small measure to Obamacare , had risen to 13.7% by the end of last year.

The bottom line? On a problem that literally has life-and-death significance for a pivotal portion of his base, Trump has been AWOL. In fact, to the extent that economic strain contributes to the alarming suicide rate among white workers, his policies are only likely to exacerbate what is already a national crisis of epidemic proportions.


Seamus Padraig , June 19, 2019 at 6:46 am

Trump has neglected his base on pretty much every issue; this one's no exception.

DanB , June 19, 2019 at 8:55 am

Trump is running on the claim that he's turned the economy around; addressing suicide undermines this (false) claim. To state the obvious, NC readers know that Trump is incapable of caring about anyone or anything beyond his in-the-moment interpretation of his self-interest.

JCC , June 19, 2019 at 9:25 am

Not just Trump. Most of the Republican Party and much too many Democrats have also abandoned this base, otherwise known as working class Americans.

The economic facts are near staggering and this article has done a nice job of summarizing these numbers that are spread out across a lot of different sites.

I've experienced this rise within my own family and probably because of that fact I'm well aware that Trump is only a symptom of an entire political system that has all but abandoned it's core constituency, the American Working Class.

sparagmite , June 19, 2019 at 10:13 am

Yep It's not just Trump. The author mentions this, but still focuses on him for some reason. Maybe accurately attributing the problems to a failed system makes people feel more hopeless. Current nihilists in Congress make it their duty to destroy once helpful institutions in the name of "fiscal responsibility," i.e., tax cuts for corporate elites.

dcblogger , June 19, 2019 at 12:20 pm

Maybe because Trump is president and bears the greatest responsibility in this particular time. A great piece and appreciate all the documentation.

Svante , June 19, 2019 at 7:00 am

I'd assumed, the "working class" had dissappeared, back during Reagan's Miracle? We'd still see each other, sitting dazed on porches & stoops of rented old places they'd previously; trying to garden, fix their car while smoking, drinking or dazed on something? Those able to morph into "middle class" lives, might've earned substantially less, especially benefits and retirement package wise. But, a couple decades later, it was their turn, as machines and foreigners improved productivity. You could lease a truck to haul imported stuff your kids could sell to each other, or help robots in some warehouse, but those 80s burger flipping, rent-a-cop & repo-man gigs dried up. Your middle class pals unemployable, everybody in PayDay Loan debt (without any pay day in sight?) SHTF Bug-out bags® & EZ Credit Bushmasters began showing up at yard sales, even up North. Opioids became the religion of the proletariat Whites simply had much farther to fall, more equity for our betters to steal. And it was damned near impossible to get the cops to shoot you?

Man, this just ain't turning out as I'd hoped. Need coffee!

Svante , June 19, 2019 at 7:55 am

We especially love the euphemism "Deaths O' Despair." since it works so well on a Chyron, especially supered over obese crackers waddling in crusty MossyOak™ Snuggies®

https://mobile.twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1140998287933300736
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=apxZvpzq4Mw

DanB , June 19, 2019 at 9:29 am

This is a very good article, but I have a comment about the section titled, "The Race Enigma." I think the key to understanding why African Americans have a lower suicide rate lies in understanding the sociological notion of community, and the related concept Emil Durkheim called social solidarity. This sense of solidarity and community among African Americans stands in contrast to the "There is no such thing as society" neoliberal zeitgeist that in fact produces feelings of extreme isolation, failure, and self-recriminations. An aside: as a white boy growing up in 1950s-60s Detroit I learned that if you yearned for solidarity and community what you had to do was to hang out with black people.

Amfortas the hippie , June 19, 2019 at 2:18 pm

" if you yearned for solidarity and community what you had to do was to hang out with black people."
amen, to that. in my case rural black people.
and I'll add Hispanics to that.
My wife's extended Familia is so very different from mine.
Solidarity/Belonging is cool.
I recommend it.
on the article we keep the scanner on("local news").we had a 3-4 year rash of suicides and attempted suicides(determined by chisme, or deduction) out here.
all of them were despair related more than half correlated with meth addiction itself a despair related thing.
ours were equally male/female, and across both our color spectrum.
that leaves economics/opportunity/just being able to get by as the likely cause.

David B Harrison , June 19, 2019 at 10:05 am

What's left out here is the vast majority of these suicides are men.

Christy , June 19, 2019 at 1:53 pm

Actually, in the article it states:
"There are gender-based differences as well. From 1999 to 2017, the rate for men was substantially higher than for women -- almost four-and-a-half times higher in the first of those years, slightly more than three-and-a-half times in the last."

jrs , June 19, 2019 at 1:58 pm

which in some sense makes despair the wrong word, as females are actually quite a bit more likely to be depressed for instance, but much less likely to "do the deed". Despair if we mean a certain social context maybe, but not just a psychological state.

Ex-Pralite Monk , June 19, 2019 at 10:10 am

obese cracker

You lay off the racial slur "cracker" and I'll lay off the racial slur "nigger". Deal?

rd , June 19, 2019 at 10:53 am

Suicide deaths are a function of the suicide attempt rate and the efficacy of the method used. A unique aspect of the US is the prevalence of guns in the society and therefore the greatly increased usage of them in suicide attempts compared to other countries. Guns are a very efficient way of committing suicide with a very high "success" rate. As of 2010, half of US suicides were using a gun as opposed to other countries with much lower percentages. So if the US comes even close to other countries in suicide rates then the US will surpass them in deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Firearms

Now we can add in opiates, especially fentanyl, that can be quite effective as well.

The economic crisis hitting middle America over the past 30 years has been quite focused on the states and populations that also tend to have high gun ownership rates. So suicide attempts in those populations have a high probability of "success".

Joe Well , June 19, 2019 at 11:32 am

I would just take this opportunity to add that the police end up getting called in to prevent on lot of suicide attempts, and just about every successful one.

In the face of so much blanket demonization of the police, along with justified criticism, it's important to remember that.

B:H , June 19, 2019 at 11:44 am

As someone who works in the mental health treatment system, acute inpatient psychiatry to be specific, I can say that of the 25 inpatients currently here, 11 have been here before, multiple times. And this is because of several issues, in my experience: inadequate inpatient resources, staff burnout, inadequate support once they leave the hospital, and the nature of their illnesses. It's a grim picture here and it's been this way for YEARS. Until MAJOR money is spent on this issue it's not going to get better. This includes opening more facilities for people to live in long term, instead of closing them, which has been the trend I've seen.

B:H , June 19, 2019 at 11:53 am

One last thing the CEO wants "asses in beds", aka census, which is the money maker. There's less profit if people get better and don't return. And I guess I wouldn't have a job either. Hmmmm: sickness generates wealth.

[Jun 09, 2019] The looming 100-year US-China conflict by Martin Wolf

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Across-the-board rivalry with China is becoming an organising principle of US economic, foreign and security policies. ..."
"... An effort to halt China's economic and technological rise is almost certain to fail. Worse, it will foment deep hostility in the Chinese people. In the long run, the demands of an increasingly prosperous and well-educated people for control over their lives might still win out. But that is far less likely if China's natural rise is threatened. ..."
"... The tragedy in what is now happening is that the administration is simultaneously launching a conflict between the two powers, attacking its allies and destroying the institutions of the postwar US-led order. ..."
Jun 04, 2019 | archive.fo
The disappearance of the Soviet Union left a big hole. The "war on terror" was an inadequate replacement. But China ticks all boxes. For the US, it can be the ideological, military and economic enemy many need. Here at last is a worthwhile opponent. That was the main conclusion I drew from this year's Bilderberg meetings.

Across-the-board rivalry with China is becoming an organising principle of US economic, foreign and security policies.

Whether it is Donald Trump's organizing principle is less important. The US president has the gut instincts of a nationalist and protectionist. Others provide both framework and details. The aim is US domination. The means is control over China, or separation from China.

Anybody who believes a rules-based multilateral order, our globalised economy, or even harmonious international relations, are likely to survive this conflict is deluded. The astonishing white paper on the trade conflict , published on Sunday by China, is proof. The -- to me, depressing -- fact is that on many points Chinese positions are right.

The US focus on bilateral imbalances is economically illiterate. The view that theft of intellectual property has caused huge damage to the US is questionable . The proposition that China has grossly violated its commitments under its 2001 accession agreement to the World Trade Organization is hugely exaggerated.

Martin Wolf chart on US/China

Accusing China of cheating is hypocritical when almost all trade policy actions taken by the Trump administration are in breach of WTO rules, a fact implicitly conceded by its determination to destroy the dispute settlement system .

The US negotiating position vis-à-vis China is that "might makes right". This is particularly true of insisting that the Chinese accept the US role as judge, jury and executioner of the agreement .

A dispute over the terms of market opening or protection of intellectual property might be settled with careful negotiation. Such a settlement might even help China, since it would lighten the heavy hand of the state and promote market-oriented reform.

But the issues are now too vexed for such a resolution. This is partly because of the bitter breakdown in negotiation. It is still more because the US debate is increasingly over whether integration with China's state-led economy is desirable. The fear over Huawei focuses on national security and technological autonomy.

[Neo]liberal commerce is increasingly seen as "trading with the enemy".

Martin Wolf chart on US/China

A framing of relations with China as one of zero-sum conflict is emerging. Recent remarks by Kiron Skinner, the US state department's policy planning director (a job once held by cold war strategist George Kennan) are revealing. Rivalry with Beijing, she suggested at a forum organised by New America , is "a fight with a really different civilisation and a different ideology, and the United States hasn't had that before".

She added that this would be "the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian". The war with Japan is forgotten.

But the big point is her framing of this as a civilizational and racial war and so as an insoluble conflict. This cannot be accidental. She is also still in her job. Others present the conflict as one over ideology and power.

Those emphasising the former point to President Xi Jinping's Marxist rhetoric and the reinforced role of the Communist party . Those emphasising the latter point to China's rising economic might. Both perspectives suggest perpetual conflict.

Martin Wolf chart on US/China

This is the most important geopolitical development of our era. Not least, it will increasingly force everybody else to take sides or fight hard for neutrality. But it is not only important. It is dangerous. It risks turning a manageable, albeit vexed, relationship into all-embracing conflict, for no good reason. China's ideology is not a threat to liberal democracy in the way the Soviet Union's was. Rightwing demagogues are far more dangerous.

An effort to halt China's economic and technological rise is almost certain to fail. Worse, it will foment deep hostility in the Chinese people. In the long run, the demands of an increasingly prosperous and well-educated people for control over their lives might still win out. But that is far less likely if China's natural rise is threatened.

Moreover, the rise of China is not an important cause of western malaise. That reflects far more the indifference and incompetence of domestic elites. What is seen as theft of intellectual property reflects, in large part, the inevitable attempt of a rising economy to master the technologies of the day. Above all, an attempt to preserve the domination of 4 per cent of humanity over the rest is illegitimate.

Martin Wolf chart on US/China

This certainly does not mean accepting everything China does or says. On the contrary, the best way for the west to deal with China is to insist on the abiding values of freedom, democracy, rules-based multilateralism and global co-operation. These ideas made many around the globe supporters of the US in the past.

They still captivate many Chinese people today. It is quite possible to uphold these ideas, indeed insist upon them far more strongly, while co-operating with a rising China where that is essential, as over protecting the natural environment, commerce and peace.

Martin Wolf chart on US/China

A blend of competition with co-operation is the right way forward. Such an approach to managing China's rise must include co-operating closely with like-minded allies and treating China with respect.

The tragedy in what is now happening is that the administration is simultaneously launching a conflict between the two powers, attacking its allies and destroying the institutions of the postwar US-led order.

Today's attack on China is the wrong war, fought in the wrong way, on the wrong terrain. Alas, this is where we now are.

[email protected]

[May 25, 2019] The Belligerence Of Empire by Kenn Orphan

Highly recommended!
Note Firefox does not pickup the user name in Zero hedge anymore. So user names in comments were omitted... BTW comments from Zerohedge reflect very well the level of frustration and confusion of common Americans with the neoliberal social system. Neoliberal elites clearly lost most of the legitimacy in 2016.
While this is pretty poignant critique of American empire it does not ask and answer the key question: "What's next?" The crisis of neoliberalism and the end of cheap oil probably will eventually crush the US led global empire and dollar as the reserve currency. Although it probably will be much slower and longer process then many expect.
Are we talking about 20, 40 or 80 years here?
But what is the alternative to the neoliberal and the US dominated global neolinberal empire established after dissolution of the USSR in 1991? That's the question.
Notable quotes:
"... Empire understands nothing except ruthless expansion. It has no other raison d'etre. In the past this meant the violent acquisition of lands and territories by a militarized system where [miliraty] caste was very apparent and visible. But today the dealings of empire are far more duplicitous. The ruling order of this age expands empire via the acquisition of capital while using the military industrial complex to police its exploits. But there is an insidious social conditioning at work which has led the general public to where it is today, a state of "inverted totalitarianism" as political philosopher Sheldon Wolin explained. Indeed, capitalism has morphed into the unassailable religion of the age even among the working class. Its tenets are still viewed as sacrosanct. ..."
"... There is mass compliance to the dictates of the ruling class and this occurs most often without any prompting or debate whatsoever. In this dictatorship of money the poor are looked at with ridicule and contempt, and are often punished legally for their imposed poverty. ..."
"... Most Americans still believe they live in the greatest country on the planet. They believe the American military to be noble and that they always reluctantly go into or are forced into war. Indeed, both the Democrats and Republicans possess an uncanny ability to bridge their ideological distances when it comes to defending US militarism, the Pentagon and the war machine of imperialism. But this is tied to the defense of capitalism, the ruling class, and the ultimate reason for war: the protection of that class's global capital investments. ..."
"... Today Iran and Venezuela are once again in the crosshairs of the American Empire's belligerence. Their defiance to the dominant [neoliberal] socioeconomic order will simply not be tolerated by the global ruling caste, represented as the unquestioned "interests" of the United States. ..."
"... To be sure the American Empire, which has seldom seen a year without pillage of another nation or region, is now facing its greatest nemesis. Unheeded lessons of the past have made it thoroughly inoculated to its own demise. In short, it is drunk on its hubris and unable to grapple with its inevitable descent. ..."
"... The American Empire, one of the shortest lived in human history, has become the biggest threat to humanity ..."
"... But like all empires it will eventually fall. Its endless and costly wars on behalf of capital investments and profiteering are contributing to that demise ..."
"... The US Republic has come and gone - the Empire is failing rapidly despite massive spending to support it. Cecil Rhodes and his heirs dreamed of restoring Anglo American domination of the world yet despite all of the technology employed the US is losing grip. By sheer numbers (and a far more efficient dictatorship) China is moving to a dominant role. ..."
"... In the end, the elite has no problem to rebrand themselves any color it needs to take to rule again, and become totalitarian state. As it becomes in the Soviet Union and China. ..."
"... Another blame America article that fails to mention the International Banksters. They have the finger-pointing thingy down to an art form. ..."
"... How do you begin to change that? Most Americans have been brainwashed and zombified by Hollywood and MSM into revering and lionizing the military without question. The sheer amount of waste in the MIC is not only negligent, but criminal. By the time the sheep awaken, the empire will have run out of their money to pillage. The beast of empire requires new victims to feed off in order to sustain - it devours entire nations, pilfers resources and murders people. Is this really what the founding fathers wanted? ..."
"... Precisely right. It's as if we've painted ourselves into the proverbial corner ..."
May 23, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

" Capitalism's gratuitous wars and sanctioned greed have jeopardized the planet and filled it with refugees. Much of the blame for this rests squarely on the shoulders of the government of the United States. Seventeen years after invading Afghanistan, after bombing it into the 'stone age' with the sole aim of toppling the Taliban, the US government is back in talks with the very same Taliban. In the interim it has destroyed Iraq, Libya and Syria. Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives to war and sanctions, a whole region has descended into chaos, ancient cities -- pounded into dust."

– Arundhati Roy

"As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities. "

― Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

"I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism ."

― Smedley Butler, War is a Racket

"It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr., Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 31 March 1968

Empire understands nothing except ruthless expansion. It has no other raison d'etre. In the past this meant the violent acquisition of lands and territories by a militarized system where [miliraty] caste was very apparent and visible. But today the dealings of empire are far more duplicitous. The ruling order of this age expands empire via the acquisition of capital while using the military industrial complex to police its exploits. But there is an insidious social conditioning at work which has led the general public to where it is today, a state of "inverted totalitarianism" as political philosopher Sheldon Wolin explained. Indeed, capitalism has morphed into the unassailable religion of the age even among the working class. Its tenets are still viewed as sacrosanct.

Violence is the sole language of empire. It is this only currency it uses to enforce its precepts and edicts, both at home and abroad. Eventually this language becomes internalized within the psyche of the subjects. Social and cultural conditioning maintained through constant subtle messaging via mass media begins to mold the public will toward that of authoritarian conformity. The American Empire is emblematic of this process. There is mass compliance to the dictates of the ruling class and this occurs most often without any prompting or debate whatsoever. In this dictatorship of money the poor are looked at with ridicule and contempt, and are often punished legally for their imposed poverty.

But the social conditioning of the American public has led toward a bizarre allegiance to its ruling class oppressors. Propaganda still works here and most are still besotted with the notion of America being a bastion of "freedom and democracy." The growing gap between the ultra-wealthy and the poor and the gutting of civil liberties are ignored. And blind devotion is especially so when it comes to US foreign policy.

Most Americans still believe they live in the greatest country on the planet. They believe the American military to be noble and that they always reluctantly go into or are forced into war. Indeed, both the Democrats and Republicans possess an uncanny ability to bridge their ideological distances when it comes to defending US militarism, the Pentagon and the war machine of imperialism. But this is tied to the defense of capitalism, the ruling class, and the ultimate reason for war: the protection of that class's global capital investments.

The persecution of Chelsea Manning, much like the case of Julian Assange, is demonstrative of this. It is a crusade against truth tellers that has been applauded from both sides of the American establishment, liberal and conservative alike. It does not matter that she helped to expose American war crimes. On the contrary, this is seen as heresy to the Empire itself. Manning's crime was exposing the underbelly of the beast. A war machine which targeted and killed civilians and journalists by soldiers behind a glowing screen thousands of miles away, as if they were playing a video game.

Indeed, those deadened souls pulling the virtual trigger probably thought they were playing a video game since this is how the military seduced them to serve in their ranks in the first place. A kind of hypnotic, addictive, algorithmic tyranny of sorts. It is a form of escapism that so many young Americans are enticed by given their sad prospects in a society that has denuded the commons as well as their future. That it was a war based on lies against an impoverished nation already deeply weakened from decades of American led sanctions is inconsequential....

... ... ...

Today Iran and Venezuela are once again in the crosshairs of the American Empire's belligerence. Their defiance to the dominant [neoliberal] socioeconomic order will simply not be tolerated by the global ruling caste, represented as the unquestioned "interests" of the United States. The imposed suffering on these nations has been twisted as proof that they are now in need of American salvation in the form of even more crippling sanctions, coups, neoliberal austerity and military intervention. As the corporate vultures lie in wait for the next carcass of a society to feed upon, the hawks are busy building the case for the continuation and expansion of capitalist wars of conquest.

Bolton and Pompeo are now the equivalent of the generals who carved up Numidia for the wealthy families of ancient Rome, with Trump, the half-witted, narcissistic and cruel emperor, presiding over the whole in extremis farce. Indeed, the bloated orange Emperor issued the latest of his decrees in his usual banal fashion, via tweet:

"If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!"

One can query when Iran, or any other nation has ever "threatened" the United States, but that question will never be asked by the corporate press who are also in service to Empire. They are, in fact, its mouthpiece and advocate. The US has at least 900 military bases and colonial outposts scattered around the planet, yet this is never looked at as imperialistic in the least by the establishment, including its media. Scores of nations lie in ruins or are besieged with chaos and misery thanks to American bellicosity , from Libya to Iraq and beyond. But the US never looks back in regret at any of its multiple forays, not even a few years back.

To be sure the American Empire, which has seldom seen a year without pillage of another nation or region, is now facing its greatest nemesis. Unheeded lessons of the past have made it thoroughly inoculated to its own demise. In short, it is drunk on its hubris and unable to grapple with its inevitable descent.

... ... ...

American Empire knows no other language sans brutality, deceit and belligerence...

... ... ...

The American Empire, one of the shortest lived in human history, has become the biggest threat to humanity ...

But like all empires it will eventually fall. Its endless and costly wars on behalf of capital investments and profiteering are contributing to that demise . After all, billions of dollars are spent to keep the bloated military industrial complex afloat in service to the ruling class while social and economic safety nets are torn to shreds...

Comments from The Belligerence Of Empire Zero Hedge

9 hours ago

Nowadays the US has a massive military and little else. And "when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail" - Wesley Clark, Former US General.

14 hours ago

Twaddle. Capitalism has lifted out of poverty more people around the globe than all other "successful" systems combined; and in a fraction of the time. Education. Health. Wealth. Not to mention Arts and Sciences.

Go demand a refund for your liberal education. And stop spreading lies.

11 hours ago (Edited)

Poppycock! Capitalism has traded real sovereign wealth for fiat debt backed funny money at the barrel of a gun! You assholes have been forcing otherwise healthy communities into poverty for decades so you could steal their resources and molest their children! Why? Because children are the only people impressed by your tiny d!cks!

The white male gaze that drives child sex tourism Feelings of disempowerment lead to vulnerable families, children

The organization described the average sex tourist as a middle-aged white male from either Europe or North America who often goes online to find the " best deals. " One particular Web site promised "nights of sex with two young Thai girls for the price of a tank of gas."

Sowmia Nair, a Department of Justice agent, said the Thai government often "turns a blind eye" to child sex tourism because of the country's economic reliance on the tourist trade in general . He also said police officers are often corrupt.

" Police have been known to guard brothels and even procure children for prostitution," Nair said. "Some police directly exploit the children themselves."

A report from the International Bureau for Children's Rights said the majority of child prostitutes come from poor families in northern Thailand, referred to as the "hill tribes." With limited economic opportunities and bleak financial circumstances, these families, out of desperation, give their children to "recruiters," who promise them jobs in the city and then force the children into prostitution.

Sometimes families themselves even prostitute their children or sell them into the sex trade for a minuscule sum of money.

This is not by accident! This is by design!

14 hours ago

Capitalism has nothing to do with this. For the average American the empire is a losing proposition.

13 hours ago (Edited)

Empire good. Emperor bad. Kingdom good. King bad. Country good. President bad. Village good. Idiot bad.

13 hours ago (Edited)

Empire is cancer. Especially the present one that leaves a trail of failed states and antangonism in its wake.

16 hours ago

We are part of a scientific dictatorship - the 'Ultimate Revolution' Huxley spoke of in 1962 where the oppressed willingly submit to their enslavement. Social conditioning - promoted by continuous propaganda stressing that the state is their protector, reinforced by endless 'terrorist threats' to keep the masses fearful is but one part of the system.

The state no longer has to use threats and fear of punishment to keep the masses under control - the masses have been convinced that they are better off as slaves and serfs than they were as free men.

The US Republic has come and gone - the Empire is failing rapidly despite massive spending to support it. Cecil Rhodes and his heirs dreamed of restoring Anglo American domination of the world yet despite all of the technology employed the US is losing grip. By sheer numbers (and a far more efficient dictatorship) China is moving to a dominant role.

18 hours ago

Capitalism and corporatism are not the same. When corporate interests effectively wield gov power, you have corporatism, not Capitalism.

14 hours ago

Corporatism=Fascism.

18 hours ago 'Muricanism is the gee-gaw of the chattering classes.

18 hours ago (Edited)

The US is its own worst enemy. They have no idea what they are doing. 2008 – "Oh dear, the global economy just blew up" Its experts investigate and conclude it was a black swan.

https://cdn.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/04/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-13.52.41.png

It is a black swan if you don't consider debt. They use neoclassical economics that doesn't consider debt.

They can't work out why inflation isn't coming back and the real economy isn't recovering faster.

Look at the debt over-hang that's still left after 2008 in the graph above, that's the problem. The repayment on debt to banks destroy money pushing the economy towards debt deflation.

QE can't enter the real economy as so many people are still loaded up with debt and there are too few borrowers.

QE can get into the markets inflating them and the US stock market is now at 1929 levels. They have created another asset price bubble that is ready to collapse leading to another financial crisis.

We need a new scientific economics for globalisation, got any ideas?

What if we just stick some complex maths on top of 1920s neoclassical economics?

No one will notice.

They didn't either, but it's still got all its old problems.

The 1920s roared with debt based consumption and speculation until it all tipped over into the debt deflation of the Great Depression. No one realised the problems that were building up in the economy as they used an economics that doesn't look at private debt, neoclassical economics.

What's the problem?

  1. The belief in the markets gets everyone thinking you are creating real wealth by inflating asset prices.
  2. Bank credit pours into inflating asset prices rather than creating real wealth (as measured by GDP) as no one is looking at the debt building up

1929 and 2008 look so similar because they are; it's the same economics and thinking.

https://cdn.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/04/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-13.52.41.png

What was just a problem in the 1920s in the US is now global.

At 25.30 mins you can see the super imposed private debt-to-GDP ratios.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6

The 1920s problem in the US is now everywhere, UK, US, Euro-zone, Japan and China.

20 hours ago (Edited)

Capitalism is based on darwinian economic competition driven by a desire to accumulate material wealth. When a capitalist becomes sufficiently rich, he can (and does) buy politicians and armies to do his bidding. Ironically, although capitalism is based on the assumption of competition, capitalists actually hate competition and harbor the urge to put competitors out of business. The true goal of a capitalists is monopoly-- as long as it is them.

Imperialism is a logical (and historically predictable) expansion of capitalism.

18 hours ago

Capitalism may not be the path to peace, but just about every other ism, including socialism and communism delivered worse.

Attacking capitalism for common failings is off base.

15 hours ago

Socialism and ultimately communism appear when capitalism goes rampant, and it is normal for the socium to embrace socialism when the inequality becomes too large.

In the end, the elite has no problem to rebrand themselves any color it needs to take to rule again, and become totalitarian state. As it becomes in the Soviet Union and China.

So don't mistake the people's desire for equal world with totalitarian capitalism masked as socialism.

14 hours ago

the real issue is NO GROUP OF HUMANS can be trusted will any form of power. ever. period.

so it goes that no "xyz"ism" will ever work out for the whole. yet humans are social animals and seek to be in groups governed by the very people that strive to lead that exhibit sociopathic tendencies, which are the worst possible leaders. how fuked up is that?

so how can that work? it does for a while. then we end up in the same spot every time, turmoil, the forth turning.

the luck of life is the period of time you live during, where and what stage of human turmoil the society is in...

21 hours ago (Edited)

" Capitalism's gratuitous wars and sanctioned greed have jeopardized the planet and filled it with refugees".

Capitalism did all that huh? It had nothing to do with corrupt politicians in bed with corporations and banks. Now they even have the military singing the same stupidity. Governments make these messes, not capitalism. Someone who risked their life for a corrupt government giving the pieces of **** that put him there a free pass by blaming it on capitalism. What a moron. When politicians hear this stupidity, it's like music to their ears. They know they've successfully shifted the blame to a simple ISM. Governments want to blame the very thing that will fix all of this, for the sake of self-preservation.

18 hours ago

Every system acts to centralise power, even anarchism. So you say it was wealth that enabled what was to follow but it was really power.. something every -ism will centralise and enable.

22 hours ago

Another blame America article that fails to mention the International Banksters. They have the finger-pointing thingy down to an art form.

16 hours ago

Really! Did you miss the Smedley Butler quote?

22 hours ago

Could you please distinguish between capitalism and political, monetary, fiscal, press, and legal aberrations that can occur in capitalist systems because of government sloth and malfeasance? Media monopoly, mass illegal immigration, and offshoring are not the essence of capitalism. And socialist systems can see hideous abuses.

Please read something more than **** and Jane adventures.

23 hours ago

"... is still the owner of the world's biggest nuclear arsenal."

===

Here is the list of all nine countries with nuclear weapons in descending order, starting with the country that has the most nuclear weapons at hand and ending with the country that has the least amount of nuclear weapons

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/countries-with-nuclear-weapons/

23 hours ago

It is now building a $100 million dollar drone base in Africa...

====

China 'negotiates military base' in Djibouti | News | Al Jazeera

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2015/05/150509084913175.html

China is negotiating a military base in a strategic port of Djibouti, the president said, according to the AFP news agency. The move raises the prospect of US and Chinese bases side-by-side in the ...

China May Consider These Countries For Its Next Overseas ...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2017/10/10/china-is-most-likely-to-open-future-military-bases-in-these-3-countries/

Oct 10, 2017 · China and the small African nation of Djibouti reached an agreement in July to let the People's Liberation Army establish up its first overseas military base there. The base on Africa's east ...

China is building its first military base in Africa . America ...

https://www.theweek.com/articles/598367/china-building-first-military-base-africa-america-should-nervous

China is building its first military base in Africa . America should be very nervous. ... In Africa , China has found not just a market for money but for jobs and land -- crucial components of ...

23 hours ago (Edited)

Oh noes! 1 base in Africa.....meanwhile the empire has 800 outposts around the world and despite that, like a snowflake, is bitching about China's one.

Isn't it fascinating how the Chinese do not find it necessary to resort to retarded regime change projects and stoopid kikery to "win" influence? Easy peasy. Methinks the Anglo-Zionists can learn a trick or two from China.

23 hours ago

The empire of 800 outposts is puny compared to the 1960's and 1970's. I can provide the information if you'd like. Almost all the 800 have company sized or smaller contingents. Still, I'd like to see much of it dismantled. No world Policeman.

23 hours ago

The entire world is in favor of a more peaceful planet Earth, except the military-industrial complex. Ron Paul

War puts money in their pockets. Lots of money. It's in the trillions of dollars.

23 hours ago (Edited)

How do you begin to change that? Most Americans have been brainwashed and zombified by Hollywood and MSM into revering and lionizing the military without question. The sheer amount of waste in the MIC is not only negligent, but criminal. By the time the sheep awaken, the empire will have run out of their money to pillage. The beast of empire requires new victims to feed off in order to sustain - it devours entire nations, pilfers resources and murders people. Is this really what the founding fathers wanted?

Now you know why wars happen. If "we the people" can't stop this beast, another nation's military will.

21 hours ago

@BH II

Precisely right. It's as if we've painted ourselves into the proverbial corner. The only way out of the morass is to find men of very high character to correctly lead the way out. America needs a Socrates.

[May 13, 2019] It's time for Trump to stop John Bolton and Mike Pompeo from sabotaging his foreign policy Mulshine

Bolton power over Trump is connected to Adelson power over Trump. To think about Bolton as pure advisor is to seriously underestimate his role and influence.
Notable quotes:
"... But I always figured you needed to keep the blowhards under cover so they wouldn't stick their feet in their mouths and that the public position jobs should go to the smoothies..You, know, diplomats who were capable of some measure of subtlety. ..."
"... A clod like Bolton should be put aside and assigned the job of preparing position papers and a lout Like Pompeo should be a football coach at RoosterPoot U. ..."
"... "Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed," ..."
"... Not only Trump, at the same time the swamp creatures risk losing control over the Democrat primaries, too. With a new major war in the Mideast, Tulsi Gabbard's core message of non-interventionism will resonate a lot more, and that will lower the chances of the corporate DNC picks. A dangerous gamble. ..."
"... The other day I was thinking to myself that if Trump decides to dismiss Bolton or Pompeo, especially given how terrible Venezuela, NKorea, and Iran policies have turned out (clearly at odds with his non-interventionist campaign platform), who would he appoint as State Sec and NS adviser? and since Bolton was personally pushed to Trump by Adelson in exchange for campaign donation, would there be a backlash from the Jewish Republican donors and the loss of support? I think in both cases Trump is facing with big dilemmas. ..."
"... Tulsi for Sec of State 2020... ..."
"... Keeping Bolton and Pompeo on board is consistent with Trump's negotiating style. He is full of bluster and demands to put the other side in a defensive position. I guess it was a successful strategy for him so he continues it. Many years ago I was across the table from Trump negotiating the sale of the land under the Empire State Building which at the time was owned by Prudential even though Trump already had locked up the actual building. I just sat there, impassively, while Trump went on with his fire and fury. When I did not budge, he turned to his Japanese financial partner and said "take care of this" and walked out of the room. Then we were able to talk and negotiate in a logical manner and consumate a deal that was double Trump's negotiating bid. I learned later he was furious with his Japanese partner for failing to "win". ..."
"... You can still these same traits in the way that Trump thinks about other countries - they can be cajoled or pushed into doing what Trump wants. If the other countries just wait Trump out they can usually get a much better deal. Bolton and Pompeo, as Blusterers, are useful in pursuing the same negotiation style, for better or worse, Trump has used for probably for the last 50 years. ..."
"... I have seen this style of negotiations work on occasion. The most important lesson I've learned is the willingness to walk. I'm not sure that Trump's personal style matters that much in complex negotiations among states. There's too many people and far too many details. ..."
"... Having the neocons front & center on his foreign policy team I believe has negative consequences for him politically. IMO, he won support from the anti-interventionists due to his strong campaign stance. While they may be a small segment in America in a tight race they could matter. ..."
"... Additionally as Col. Lang notes the neocons could start a shooting match due to their hubris and that can always escalate and go awry. We can only hope that he's smart enough to recognize that. I remain convinced that our fawning allegiance to Bibi is central to many of our poor strategic decision making. ..."
"... I agree that this is Trump's style but what he does not seem to understand is that in using jugheads like these guys on the international scene he may precipitate a war when he really does not want one. ..."
"... "Perhaps the biggest lie the mainstream media have tried to get over on the American public is the idea that it is conservatives, that start wars. That's total nonsense of course. Almost all of America's wars in the 20th century were stared by liberal Democrats." ..."
"... Exceptions are: Korea? (Eisenhower); Grenada? (Reagan); Iraq? (Bush Sr.) ..."
"... So what exactly is Pussy John, then, just a Yosemite Sam-type bureaucrat with no actual portfolio, so to speak? I defer to your vastly greater knowledge of these matters, but at times it sure seems like they are pursuing a rear-guard action as the US Empire shrinks ..."
"... If were Lavrov, what would I think to myself were I to find myself on the other side of a phone call from PJ or the Malignant Manatee? ..."
May 12, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
It's time for Trump to stop John Bolton and Mike Pompeo from sabotaging his foreign policy | Mulshine

"I put that question to another military vet, former Vietnam Green Beret Pat Lang.

"Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed," said Lang of Trump.

But Lang, who later spent more than a decade in the Mideast, noted that Bolton has no direct control over the military.

"Bolton has a problem," he said. "If he can just get the generals to obey him, he can start all the wars he wants. But they don't obey him."

They obey the commander-in-chief. And Trump has a history of hiring war-crazed advisors who end up losing their jobs when they get a bit too bellicose. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley comes to mind."

" In Lang's view, anyone who sees Trump as some sort of ideologue is missing the point.

"He's an entrepreneurial businessman who hires consultants for their advice and then gets rid of them when he doesn't want that advice," he said.

So far that advice hasn't been very helpful, at least in the case of Bolton. His big mouth seems to have deep-sixed Trump's chance of a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. And that failed coup in Venezuela has brought up comparisons to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion during the Kennedy administration." Mulshine

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

Well, pilgrims, I worked exclusively on the subject of the Islamic culture continent for the USG from 1972 to 1994 and then in business from 1994 to 2006. I suppose I am still working on the subject. pl

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/05/its-time-for-trump-to-stop-john-bolton-and-mike-pompeo-from-sabotaging-his-foreign-policy-mulshine.html


JJackson , 12 May 2019 at 04:11 PM

What is happening with Trump's Syrian troop withdrawal? Someone seems to have spiked that order fairly effectively.
tony , 12 May 2019 at 05:12 PM
I don't get it I suppose. I'd always thought that maybe you wanted highly opinionated Type A personalities in the role of privy council, etc. You know, people who could forcefully advocate positions in closed session meetings and weren't afraid of taking contrary positions. But I always figured you needed to keep the blowhards under cover so they wouldn't stick their feet in their mouths and that the public position jobs should go to the smoothies..You, know, diplomats who were capable of some measure of subtlety.

But these days it's the loudmouths who get these jobs, to our detriment. When will senior govt. leaders understand that just because a person is a success in running for Congress doesn't mean he/she should be sent forth to mingle with the many different personalities and cultures running the rest of the world?

A clod like Bolton should be put aside and assigned the job of preparing position papers and a lout Like Pompeo should be a football coach at RoosterPoot U.

turcopolier -> tony... , 12 May 2019 at 06:55 PM
No. I would like to see highly opinionated Type B personalities like me hold those jobs. Type B does not mean you are passive. It means you are not obsessively competitive.
ex-PFC Chuck said in reply to tony... , 12 May 2019 at 08:06 PM
What do you expect when the boss himself is a loud-mouthed blowhard?
rho , 12 May 2019 at 06:34 PM
"Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed,"

Not only Trump, at the same time the swamp creatures risk losing control over the Democrat primaries, too. With a new major war in the Mideast, Tulsi Gabbard's core message of non-interventionism will resonate a lot more, and that will lower the chances of the corporate DNC picks. A dangerous gamble.

E Publius , 12 May 2019 at 06:55 PM
Interesting post, thank you sir. Prior to this recent post I had never heard of Paul Mulshine. In fact I went through some of his earlier posts on Trump's foreign policy and I found a fair amount of common sense in them. He strikes me as a paleocon, like Pat Buchanan, Paul Craig Roberts, Michael Scheuer, Doug Bandow, Tucker Carlson and others in that mold.

The other day I was thinking to myself that if Trump decides to dismiss Bolton or Pompeo, especially given how terrible Venezuela, NKorea, and Iran policies have turned out (clearly at odds with his non-interventionist campaign platform), who would he appoint as State Sec and NS adviser? and since Bolton was personally pushed to Trump by Adelson in exchange for campaign donation, would there be a backlash from the Jewish Republican donors and the loss of support? I think in both cases Trump is facing with big dilemmas.

My best hope is that Trump teams up with libertarians and maybe even paleocons to run his foreign policy. So far Trump has not succeeded in draining the Swamp. Bolton, Pompeo and their respective staff "are" indeed the Swamp creatures and they run their own policies that run against Trump's America First policy. Any thoughts?

Rick Merlotti said in reply to E Publius... , 13 May 2019 at 10:17 AM
Tulsi for Sec of State 2020...
jdledell , 13 May 2019 at 09:23 AM
Keeping Bolton and Pompeo on board is consistent with Trump's negotiating style. He is full of bluster and demands to put the other side in a defensive position. I guess it was a successful strategy for him so he continues it. Many years ago I was across the table from Trump negotiating the sale of the land under the Empire State Building which at the time was owned by Prudential even though Trump already had locked up the actual building. I just sat there, impassively, while Trump went on with his fire and fury. When I did not budge, he turned to his Japanese financial partner and said "take care of this" and walked out of the room. Then we were able to talk and negotiate in a logical manner and consumate a deal that was double Trump's negotiating bid. I learned later he was furious with his Japanese partner for failing to "win".

You can still these same traits in the way that Trump thinks about other countries - they can be cajoled or pushed into doing what Trump wants. If the other countries just wait Trump out they can usually get a much better deal. Bolton and Pompeo, as Blusterers, are useful in pursuing the same negotiation style, for better or worse, Trump has used for probably for the last 50 years.

Jack said in reply to jdledell... , 13 May 2019 at 02:14 PM
I have seen this style of negotiations work on occasion. The most important lesson I've learned is the willingness to walk. I'm not sure that Trump's personal style matters that much in complex negotiations among states. There's too many people and far too many details. I see he and his trade team not buckling to the Chinese at least not yet despite the intense pressure from Wall St and the big corporations.

Having the neocons front & center on his foreign policy team I believe has negative consequences for him politically. IMO, he won support from the anti-interventionists due to his strong campaign stance. While they may be a small segment in America in a tight race they could matter.

Additionally as Col. Lang notes the neocons could start a shooting match due to their hubris and that can always escalate and go awry. We can only hope that he's smart enough to recognize that. I remain convinced that our fawning allegiance to Bibi is central to many of our poor strategic decision making.

rho said in reply to jdledell... , 13 May 2019 at 04:33 PM
jdledell

Just out of curiosity: Did the deal go through in the end, despite Trump's ire? Or was Trump so furious with the negotiating result of his Japanese partner that he tore up the draft once it was presented to him?

turcopolier , 13 May 2019 at 11:17 AM
jdledell

I agree that this is Trump's style but what he does not seem to understand is that in using jugheads like these guys on the international scene he may precipitate a war when he really does not want one.

Outrage Beyond , 13 May 2019 at 11:51 AM
Mulshine's article has some good points, but he does include some hilariously ignorant bits which undermine his credibility.

"Jose Gomez Rivera is a Jersey guy who served in the State Department in Venezuela at the time of the coup that brought the current socialist regime to power."

Wrong. Maduro was elected and international observers seem to agree the election was fair.

"Perhaps the biggest lie the mainstream media have tried to get over on the American public is the idea that it is conservatives, that start wars. That's total nonsense of course. Almost all of America's wars in the 20th century were stared by liberal Democrats."

Exceptions are: Korea? (Eisenhower); Grenada? (Reagan); Iraq? (Bush Sr.)

O'Shawnessey , 13 May 2019 at 01:21 PM
So what exactly is Pussy John, then, just a Yosemite Sam-type bureaucrat with no actual portfolio, so to speak? I defer to your vastly greater knowledge of these matters, but at times it sure seems like they are pursuing a rear-guard action as the US Empire shrinks and shudders in its death throes underneath them, and at others it seems like they really have no idea what to do, other than engage in juvenile antics, snort some glue from a paper bag and set fires in the dumpsters behind the Taco Bell before going out into a darkened field somewhere to violate farm animals.

If were Lavrov, what would I think to myself were I to find myself on the other side of a phone call from PJ or the Malignant Manatee?

turcopolier , 13 May 2019 at 01:21 PM
O'Shaunessy - He is an adviser who has no power except over his own little staff. The president has the power, not Bolton.

[May 13, 2019] Angry Bear Senate Democratic Jackasses and Elmer Fudd

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Looks like Robert Mueller was a dirty cop hired to confirm fairy tales of Russian collusion peddled by a Clinton wing of Dems (DemoRats) sing Trump. And he enjoyed the full support of several intelligence agencies brass (especially FBI brass; initially Stzkok was one of his investigators) ..."
"... Before that Mueller was in charge of 9/11 and Anthrax scare investigations. So he is a card caring member of the neoliberal elite which converted the USA into what can be called the "National Security State" ..."
"... In order for a person to obstruct justice, there must be some justice to obstruct. Hence, if the alleged obstructer did not commit the underlying crime being investigated, then his so-called obstruction did not impair justice; it just impaired a fruitless investigation ..."
"... the USA squabble over Parteigenosse Mueller Final Report between two factions of neoliberal elite makes the USA a joke in the eyes of the whole world ..."
"... Hopefully, a more sound part of the USA elite, which Barr represents, will put some sand into those wheels. His decision to investigate the origin of Russiagate produced almost a heart attack for Pelosi. And the fact that he decided to skip his auto-da-fé at the House adds insult to injury. Poor Pelosi almost lost her mind. ..."
"... Out of democratic challengers IMHO only Tulsi Gabbard can probably attract a sizable faction of former Trump supporters and she is the most reviled, ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike candidate. ..."
"... The truth is that the color revolution against Donald Trump (a soft coup if you wish) failed. Now he badly needs to win in 2020 to avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. It is just a matter of survival for him. ..."
"... Neoliberal Democrats will help him by putting their weakest pro-war candidate like the aged, apparently slightly demented neocon Joe Biden. With his rabid neoliberal past, neocon foreign policy past, Ukrainian skeletons in the closet and probably participation in the Obama administration dirty and criminal attempt to derail Trump using intelligence agencies as the leverage. ..."
"... Just like is the case with Boeing the situation for neoliberal democrats does not look promising. The world is starting to crash all around them. ..."
May 04, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

likbez, May 4, 2019 8:24 pm

The F.B.I. surveillance didn't come out until after the election. Therefore it couldn't impact the election. McConnell threatened to shriek "partisan politics!" if Obama said anything publicly about the Russian issue. Obama didn't. Claims of partisan behavior? Bullshit.

What about proven attempts of entrapments and inserting spies into Trump campaign?

Mifsud and Halper's stories come to mind (Halper's story has an interesting "seduction" subplot with undercover FBI informant Azra Turk). FBI and Justice Department brass acted as dirty mafia style politicians. McCabe and Brennan are two shining examples here. Probably guided personally by Obama, who being grown in a family of CIA operatives probably know this color revolutions "kitchen" all too well.

BTW Hillary did destroy evidence from her "bathroom server" while under subpoena.

Looks like Robert Mueller was a dirty cop hired to confirm fairy tales of Russian collusion peddled by a Clinton wing of Dems (DemoRats) sing Trump. And he enjoyed the full support of several intelligence agencies brass (especially FBI brass; initially Stzkok was one of his investigators)

Before that Mueller was in charge of 9/11 and Anthrax scare investigations. So he is a card caring member of the neoliberal elite which converted the USA into what can be called the "National Security State"

Which looks like classic Mussolini Italy with two guiding principles of jurisprudence applied to political enemies:

(1) To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law (originated in 1933) .
(2) Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime (that actually comes from Stalinism period of the USSR, but the spirit is the same) .

It was actually Barr who saved Trump from obstruction of justice charge. He based his defense on the interpretation of the statuses the following (actually very elegant) way:

In order for a person to obstruct justice, there must be some justice to obstruct. Hence, if the alleged obstructer did not commit the underlying crime being investigated, then his so-called obstruction did not impair justice; it just impaired a fruitless investigation

Of course, that upset DemoRats who want President Pence to speed up the destruction of the USA and adding a couple of new wars to list the USA is involved.

Mueller was extremely sloppy and one-sided in writing his final report. Which is given taking into account his real task: to sink Trump. As Nunes aptly observed about his treatment of Mifsud as a Russian agent :

"If he is, in fact, a Russian agent, it would be one of the biggest intelligence scandals for not only the United States, but also our allies like the Italians and the Brits and others. Because if Mifsud is a Russian agent, he would know all kinds of our intelligence agents throughout the globe

likbez , May 4, 2019 10:11 pm

run75441,

Yes, of course, in the current neo-McCarthyism atmosphere merely passing the salt to a Russian guest at a dinner party makes you "an unregistered foreign agent" of Russia bent on implementing Putin's evil plans and colliding with Russian government ;-).

It looks like you are unable/unwilling to understand the logic behind my post. With all due respect, the situation is very dangerous -- when the neoliberal elite relies on lies almost exclusively as a matter of policy (look at Kamala Harris questioning Barr -- she is not stupid, she is an evil, almost taken from Orwell 1984, character), IMHO the neoliberal society is doomed. Sooner or later.

Currently, the USA squabble over Parteigenosse Mueller Final Report between two factions of neoliberal elite makes the USA a joke in the eyes of the whole world and Democrats look like Italian Fascists in 30th: a party hell-bent of dominance which does not care about laws or legitimacy one bit and can use entrapment and other dirty methods to achieve its goals.

Hopefully, a more sound part of the USA elite, which Barr represents, will put some sand into those wheels. His decision to investigate the origin of Russiagate produced almost a heart attack for Pelosi. And the fact that he decided to skip his auto-da-fé at the House adds insult to injury. Poor Pelosi almost lost her mind.

Neoliberals and neoconservatives joined ranks behind Russiagate and continue to push it because otherwise they need to be held accountable for all the related neoliberal disasters in the USA since 1980th including sliding standard of living, disappearance of "good" jobs, sky-high cost of university education and medical insurance, and the last but not least, Hillary fiasco.

Trump ran to the left of Clinton in foreign policy and used disillusionment of working close with neoliberal Democratic Party to his advantage promising jobs, end of outsourcing, end of uncontrolled immigration, and increased standard of living. He betrayed all those promises, but, still, that's why he won.

And that why the neoliberal establishment must present his election as de facto illegitimate, because otherwise they would be forced to admit that the bipartisan consensus around both financialization driven economics (casino capitalism) and imperial, war on terror based interventionism that are the foundation of the USA neoliberal elite politics since Clinton has been a disaster for most ordinary Americans -- of all political persuasions.

Out of democratic challengers IMHO only Tulsi Gabbard can probably attract a sizable faction of former Trump supporters and she is the most reviled, ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike candidate.

The truth is that the color revolution against Donald Trump (a soft coup if you wish) failed. Now he badly needs to win in 2020 to avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. It is just a matter of survival for him.

Neoliberal Democrats will help him by putting their weakest pro-war candidate like the aged, apparently slightly demented neocon Joe Biden. With his rabid neoliberal past, neocon foreign policy past, Ukrainian skeletons in the closet and probably participation in the Obama administration dirty and criminal attempt to derail Trump using intelligence agencies as the leverage.

Just like is the case with Boeing the situation for neoliberal democrats does not look promising. The world is starting to crash all around them.

[May 13, 2019] US Foreign Policy as Bellicose as Ever by Serge Halimi

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Historians will study this period when there was a convergence in the objectives of the US intelligence agencies, the leaders of the Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, the majority of Republican politicians and the anti-Trump media. That common objective was stopping any entente between Moscow and Washington. ..."
"... Each group had its own motive. The intelligence community and elements in the Pentagon feared a rapprochement between Trump and Putin would deprive them of a 'presentable' enemy once ISIS's military power was destroyed. The Clinton camp was keen to ascribe an unexpected defeat to a cause other than the candidate and her inept campaign; Moscow's alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails fitted the bill. And the neocons, who 'promoted the Iraq war, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable' ( 8 ), hated Trump's neo-isolationist instincts. ..."
"... This is why the Democratic Party data hack, which the US intelligence services allege is the work of the Russians, obsesses the party, and the press. It strikes two targets: delegitimising Trump's election and stopping his promotion of a thaw with Russia. Has Washington's aggrieved reaction to a foreign power's interference in a state's domestic affairs, and its elections, struck no one as odd? Why do just a handful of people point out that, not long ago, Angela Merkel's phone was tapped not by the Kremlin but by the Obama administration? ..."
"... Now the Times is in the vanguard of those preparing psychologically for conflict with Russia. There is almost no remaining resistance to its line. On the right, as the Wall Street Journal called for the US to arm Ukraine on 3 August, Vice-President Mike Pence spoke on a visit to Estonia about 'the spectre of [Russian] aggression', encouraged Georgia to join NATO, and paid tribute to Montenegro, NATO's newest member. ..."
"... At this stage, it doesn't matter any more what Trump thinks. He is no longer able to get his way on the issue. Moscow has noted this and is drawing its own conclusions. ..."
May 10, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

... ... ...

Trump was after a good deal from Russia. A new partnership would have reversed deteriorating relations between the powers by encouraging their alliance against ISIS and recognising the importance of Ukraine to Russia's security. Current US paranoia about everything Kremlin-related has encouraged amnesia about what President Barack Obama said in 2016, after the annexation of the Crimea and Russia's direct intervention in Syria. He too put the danger posed by President Vladimir Putin into perspective: the interventions in Ukraine and the Middle East were, Obama said, improvised 'in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp' ( 5 ).

Obama went on: 'The Russians can't change us or significantly weaken us. They are a smaller country, they are a weaker country, their economy doesn't produce anything that anybody wants to buy, except oil and gas and arms.' What he feared most about Putin was the sympathy he inspired in Trump and his supporters: '37% of Republican voters approve of Putin, the former head of the KGB. Ronald Reagan would roll over in his grave' ( 6 ).

By January 2017, Reagan's eternal rest was no longer threatened. 'Presidents come and go but the policy never changes,' Putin concluded ( 7 ). Historians will study this period when there was a convergence in the objectives of the US intelligence agencies, the leaders of the Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, the majority of Republican politicians and the anti-Trump media. That common objective was stopping any entente between Moscow and Washington.

Each group had its own motive. The intelligence community and elements in the Pentagon feared a rapprochement between Trump and Putin would deprive them of a 'presentable' enemy once ISIS's military power was destroyed. The Clinton camp was keen to ascribe an unexpected defeat to a cause other than the candidate and her inept campaign; Moscow's alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails fitted the bill. And the neocons, who 'promoted the Iraq war, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable' ( 8 ), hated Trump's neo-isolationist instincts.

The media, especially the New York Times and Washington Post, eagerly sought a new Watergate scandal and knew their middle-class, urban, educated readers loathe Trump for his vulgarity, affection for the far right, violence and lack of culture ( 9 ). So they were searching for any information or rumour that could cause his removal or force a resignation. As in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, everyone had his particular motive for striking the same victim.

The intrigue developed quickly as these four areas have fairly porous boundaries. The understanding between Republican hawks such as John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the military-industrial complex was a given. The architects of recent US imperial adventures, especially Iraq, had not enjoyed the 2016 campaign or Trump's jibes about their expertise. During the campaign, some 50 intellectuals and officials announced that, despite being Republicans, they would not support Trump because he 'would put at risk our country's national security and wellbeing.' Some went so far as to vote for Clinton ( 10 ).

Ambitions of a 'deep state'?

The press feared that Trump's incompetence would threaten the US-dominated international order. It had no problem with military crusades, especially when emblazoned with grand humanitarian, internationalist or progressive principles. According to the press criteria, Putin and his predilection for rightwing nationalists were obvious culprits. But so were Saudi Arabia or Israel, though that did not prevent the Saudis being able to count on the ferociously anti-Russian Wall Street Journal, or Israel enjoying the support of almost all US media, despite having a far-right element in its government.

Just over a week before Trump took office, journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Edward Snowden story that revealed the mass surveillance programmes run by the National Security Agency, warned of the direction of travel. He observed that the US media had become the intelligence services' 'most valuable instrument, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials.' This at a time when 'Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing -- eager -- to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviours might be' ( 11 ).

The anti-Russian coalition hadn't then achieved all its objectives, but Greenwald already discerned the ambitions of a 'deep state'. 'There really is, at this point,' he said 'obvious open warfare between this unelected but very powerful faction that resides in Washington and sees presidents come and go, on the one hand, and the person that the American democracy elected to be the president on the other.' One suspicion, fed by the intelligence services, galvanised all Trump's enemies: Moscow had compromising secrets about Trump -- financial, electoral, sexual -- capable of paralysing him should a crisis between the two countries occur ( 12 ).

Covert opposition to Trump

The suspicion of such a murky understanding, summed up by the pro-Clinton economist Paul Krugman as a 'Trump-Putin ticket', has transformed the anti-Russian activity into a domestic political weapon against a president increasingly hated outside the ultraconservative bloc. It is no longer unusual to hear leftwing activists turn FBI or CIA apologists, since these agencies became a home for a covert opposition to Trump and the source of many leaks.

This is why the Democratic Party data hack, which the US intelligence services allege is the work of the Russians, obsesses the party, and the press. It strikes two targets: delegitimising Trump's election and stopping his promotion of a thaw with Russia. Has Washington's aggrieved reaction to a foreign power's interference in a state's domestic affairs, and its elections, struck no one as odd? Why do just a handful of people point out that, not long ago, Angela Merkel's phone was tapped not by the Kremlin but by the Obama administration?

The silence was once broken when the Republican representative for North Carolina, Tom Tillis, questioned former CIA director James Clapper in January: 'The United States has been involved in one way or another in 81 different elections since World War II. That doesn't include coups or the regime changes, some tangible evidence where we have tried to affect an outcome to our purpose. Russia has done it some 36 times.' This perspective rarely disturbs the New York Times 's fulminations against Moscow's trickery.

The Times also failed to inform younger readers that Russia's president Boris Yeltsin, who picked Putin as his successor in 1999, had been re-elected in 1996, though seriously ill and often drunk, in a fraudulent election conducted with the assistance of US advisers and the overt support of President Bill Clinton. The Times hailed the result as 'a victory for Russian democracy' and declared that 'the forces of democracy and reform won a vital but not definitive victory in Russia yesterday For the first time in history, a free Russia has freely chosen its leader.'

Now the Times is in the vanguard of those preparing psychologically for conflict with Russia. There is almost no remaining resistance to its line. On the right, as the Wall Street Journal called for the US to arm Ukraine on 3 August, Vice-President Mike Pence spoke on a visit to Estonia about 'the spectre of [Russian] aggression', encouraged Georgia to join NATO, and paid tribute to Montenegro, NATO's newest member.

No longer getting his way

But the Times, far from worrying about these provocative gestures coinciding with heightened tensions between great powers (trade sanctions against Russia, Moscow's expulsion of US diplomats), poured oil on the fire. On 2 August it praised the reaffirmation of 'America's commitment to defend democratic nations against those countries that would undermine them' and regretted that Mike Pence's views 'aren't as eagerly embraced and celebrated by the man he works for back in the White House.'

At this stage, it doesn't matter any more what Trump thinks. He is no longer able to get his way on the issue. Moscow has noted this and is drawing its own conclusions.

... ... ...

[May 05, 2019] Viva to another jolly little war by Eric Margolis

May 05, 2019 | www.unz.com

Sure. Let's invade Venezuela. Another jolly little war. It's full of commies and has a sea of oil. The only thing those Cuban-loving Venezuelans lack are weapons of mass destruction.

... ... ...

Venezuela is in a huge economic mess thanks to the crackpot economic policies of the Chavez and Maduro governments – and US economic sabotage. But my first law of international affairs is: 'Every nation has the absolute god-given right to mismanage its own affairs and elect its own crooks or idiots.'

[Apr 03, 2019] What We Can Learn From 1920s Germany by Brian E. Fogarty

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... As usually happens in times of distress, the Germans became a people for whom resolve was valued more highly than prudence, daring more than caution, and righteousness more than discretion. In many ways, they were a people not so different from today's Americans. ..."
"... What was needed, the Germans thought, was a strong leader -- someone who would put an end to politics as usual; most of all, someone who could unite all the divisions in Germany and dispel the clamor. They found that leader in Adolf Hitler, and for a time, most Germans were glad they did. ..."
"... How would we react if things got worse? If we were to lose the war in Iraq, leaving a fundamentalist regime in place; if we endured several more major terrorist attacks; if the economy collapsed; if fuel prices reached $7 per gallon -- would we cling even more fiercely to our democratic ideals? Or would we instead demand greater surveillance, more secret prisons, more arrests for "conspiracies" that amount to little more than daydreams, and more quashing of dissent? ..."
"... Our history suggests the latter. We Americans have had our flights from democracy -- the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, the Red Scare and the McCarthy era, Watergate -- but we have always pulled back from the brink and returned to normal. ..."
Apr 03, 2019 | www.commondreams.org

Imagine this situation: Your country has had a military setback in a war that was supposed to be over after a few months of "shock and awe." Because of that war, it has lost the goodwill and prestige of much of the international community.

The national debt has grown to staggering size. Citizens complain bitterly about the government, especially the legislative branch, for being a bunch of do-nothings working solely for themselves or for special interest groups. In fact, the political scene has pretty much lost its center -- moderates are attacked by all sides as the political discourse becomes a clamor of increasingly extreme positions.

It seems there are election campaigns going on all the time, and they are increasingly vicious. The politicians just want to argue about moral issues -- sexuality, decadent art, the crumbling family and the like -- while pragmatic matters of governance seem neglected.

Sound familiar? That society was Germany of the 1920s -- the ill-fated Weimar Republic. But it also describes more and more the political climate in America today.

Germans were worried about the future of their country. They suffered from all sorts of terror, as assassinations, coup attempts and crime pulled their society apart. The left blamed the right; the right blamed the left, and the political center simply dried up.

To get themselves out of the mess, Germans might have demanded government that carefully mended fences with its allies and enemies; one that judiciously hammered out compromises among the various political parties and sought the middle path.

But we know that didn't happen. In Germany of the 1920s, as now in 21st-century America, appeals to reason and prudence were no way to get votes in times of crisis. Much more effective were appeals to the anger and fear of the German people. A politician could attract more votes by criticizing the government than by praising it, and a vicious negative campaign was usually more effective than a clean one. One of the problems of democracy is that voters aren't always rational, and appeals like these could be very effective.

As usually happens in times of distress, the Germans became a people for whom resolve was valued more highly than prudence, daring more than caution, and righteousness more than discretion. In many ways, they were a people not so different from today's Americans.

What was needed, the Germans thought, was a strong leader -- someone who would put an end to politics as usual; most of all, someone who could unite all the divisions in Germany and dispel the clamor. They found that leader in Adolf Hitler, and for a time, most Germans were glad they did.

Of course, America is not 1920s Germany, and we are certainly not on the verge of a fascist state. But neither have we experienced the deep crises the Germans faced. The setbacks of the Iraq/Afghan war are a far cry from the devastating loss of the First World War; we are not considered the scourge of the international community, and we don't need wheelbarrows full of money to buy a loaf of bread. But even in these relatively secure times, we have shown an alarming willingness to choose headstrong leadership over thoughtful leadership, to value security over liberty; to accept compromises to constitutional principles, and to defy the opinion of the rest of the world.

How would we react if things got worse? If we were to lose the war in Iraq, leaving a fundamentalist regime in place; if we endured several more major terrorist attacks; if the economy collapsed; if fuel prices reached $7 per gallon -- would we cling even more fiercely to our democratic ideals? Or would we instead demand greater surveillance, more secret prisons, more arrests for "conspiracies" that amount to little more than daydreams, and more quashing of dissent?

Our history suggests the latter. We Americans have had our flights from democracy -- the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, the Red Scare and the McCarthy era, Watergate -- but we have always pulled back from the brink and returned to normal.

The time is coming for us to pull back from the brink again. This must happen before the government gets so strong that it can completely demonize opposition, gain complete control of the media, and develop dossiers on all its citizens. By then it will be too late, and we'll have ourselves to blame.

Brian E. Fogarty, a sociology professor at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, is the author of " War, Peace, and the Social Order ."

[Mar 30, 2019] The US desperately needs Venezuelan oil

Highly recommended!
Mar 30, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

dh-mtl , Mar 30, 2019 5:00:04 PM | link

The U.S. desperately needs Venezuelan oil.

They lost control of Saudi Arabia, after trying to take down MBS and then betraying him by unexpectedly allowing waivers on Iranian oil in November.

The U.S. cannot take down Iran without Venezuelan oil. What is worse, right now they don't have access to enough heavy oil to meet their own needs.

Controlling the world oil trade is central to Trump's strategy for the U.S. to continue its empire. Without Venezuelan oil, the U.S. is a bit player in the energy markets, and will remain so.

Having Russia block the U.S. in Venezuela adds insult to injury. After Crimea and Syria, now Venezuela, Russia exposes the U.S. as a loud mouthed-bully without the capacity to back up its threats, a 'toothless tiger', an 'emperor without clothes'.

If the U.S. cannot dislodge Russia from Venezuela, its days as 'global hegemon' are finished. For this reason the U.S. will continue escalating the situation with ever-riskier actions, until it succeeds or breaks.

In the same manor, if Russia backs off, its resistance to the U.S. is finished. And the U.S. will eventually move to destroy Russia, like it has been actively trying to do for the past 30 years. Russia cannot and will not back off.

Venezuela thus becomes the stage where the final act in the clash of empires plays out. Will the world become a multi-polar world, in which the U.S. becomes a relatively isolated and insignificant pole? Or will the world become more fully dominated by a brutal, erratic hegemon?

All options are on the table. For both sides!

[Mar 25, 2019] Russiagate was never about substance, it was about who gets to image-manage the decline of a turbo-charged, self-harming neoliberal capitalism by Jonathan Cook

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... It may look like Russiagate was a failure, but it was actually a success. It deflected the left's attention from endemic corruption within the leadership of the Democratic party, which supposedly represents the left. It rechannelled the left's political energies instead towards the convenient bogeymen targets of Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... What Mueller found – all he was ever going to find – was marginal corruption in the Trump camp. And that was inevitable because Washington is mired in corruption. In fact, what Mueller revealed was the most exceptional forms of corruption among Trump's team while obscuring the run-of-the-mill stuff that would have served as a reminder of the endemic corruption infecting the Democratic leadership too. ..."
"... Further, in focusing on the Trump camp – and relative minnows like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone – the Russiagate inquiry actually served to shield the Democratic leadership from an investigation into the much worse corruption revealed in the content of the DNC emails. ..."
"... What should have been at the front and centre of any inquiry was how the Democratic party sought to rig its primaries to prevent party members selecting anyone but Hillary as their presidential candidate. ..."
"... Trump faces opposition from within the establishment not because he is "anti-establishment" but because he refuses to decorate the pig's snout with lipstick. He is tearing the mask off late-stage capitalism's greed and self-destructiveness ..."
"... The corporate media, and the journalists they employ, are propagandists – for a system that keeps them wealthy. When Trump was a Republican primary candidate, the entire corporate media loved him because he was TV's equivalent of clickbait, just as he had been since reality TV began to usurp the place of current affairs programmes and meaningful political debate. ..."
"... The "[neo]liberal" corporate media shares the values of the Democratic party leadership. In other words, it is heavily invested in making sure the pig doesn't lose its lipstick. By contrast, Fox News and the shock-jocks, like Trump, prioritise making money in the short term over the long-term credibility of a system that gives them licence to make money. They care much less whether the pig's face remains painted. ..."
"... Just as too many on the left sleep-walked through the past two years waiting for Mueller – a former head of the FBI, the US secret police, for chrissakes! – to save them from Trump, they have been manipulated by liberal elites into the political cul-de-sac of identity politics. ..."
"... The "[neo]liberal" elites exploited identity politics to keep us divided by pacifying the most maginalised with the offer of a few additional crumbs. Trump has exploited identity politics to keep us divided by inflaming tensions as he reorders the hierarchy of "privilege" in which those crumbs are offered. In the process, both wings of the elite have averted the danger that class consciousness and real solidarity might develop and start to challenge their privileges. ..."
"... Were the US to get its own Corbyn as president, he or she would undoubtedly face a Mueller-style inquiry, and one far more effective at securing the president's impeachment than this one was ever going to be. ..."
Mar 25, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org
Here are three important lessons for the progressive left to consider now that it is clear the inquiry by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russiagate is never going to uncover collusion between Donald Trump's camp and the Kremlin in the 2016 presidential election.

Painting the pig's face

The left never had a dog in this race. This was always an in-house squabble between different wings of the establishment. Late-stage capitalism is in terminal crisis, and the biggest problem facing our corporate elites is how to emerge from this crisis with their power intact. One wing wants to make sure the pig's face remains painted, the other is happy simply getting its snout deeper into the trough while the food lasts.

Russiagate was never about substance, it was about who gets to image-manage the decline of a turbo-charged, self-harming neoliberal capitalism.

The leaders of the Democratic party are less terrified of Trump and what he represents than they are of us and what we might do if we understood how they have rigged the political and economic system to their permanent advantage.

It may look like Russiagate was a failure, but it was actually a success. It deflected the left's attention from endemic corruption within the leadership of the Democratic party, which supposedly represents the left. It rechannelled the left's political energies instead towards the convenient bogeymen targets of Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Mired in corruption

What Mueller found – all he was ever going to find – was marginal corruption in the Trump camp. And that was inevitable because Washington is mired in corruption. In fact, what Mueller revealed was the most exceptional forms of corruption among Trump's team while obscuring the run-of-the-mill stuff that would have served as a reminder of the endemic corruption infecting the Democratic leadership too.

An anti-corruption investigation would have run much deeper and exposed far more. It would have highlighted the Clinton Foundation, and the role of mega-donors like James Simons, George Soros and Haim Saban who funded Hillary's campaign with one aim in mind: to get their issues into a paid-for national "consensus".

Further, in focusing on the Trump camp – and relative minnows like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone – the Russiagate inquiry actually served to shield the Democratic leadership from an investigation into the much worse corruption revealed in the content of the DNC emails. It was the leaking / hacking of those emails that provided the rationale for Mueller's investigations. What should have been at the front and centre of any inquiry was how the Democratic party sought to rig its primaries to prevent party members selecting anyone but Hillary as their presidential candidate.

So, in short, Russiagate has been two years of wasted energy by the left, energy that could have been spent both targeting Trump for what he is really doing rather than what it is imagined he has done, and targeting the Democratic leadership for its own, equally corrupt practices.

Trump empowered

But it's far worse than that. It is not just that the left wasted two years of political energy on Russiagate. At the same time, they empowered Trump, breathing life into his phony arguments that he is the anti-establishment president, a people's president the elites are determined to destroy.

Trump faces opposition from within the establishment not because he is "anti-establishment" but because he refuses to decorate the pig's snout with lipstick. He is tearing the mask off late-stage capitalism's greed and self-destructiveness. And he is doing so not because he wants to reform or overthrow turbo-charged capitalism but because he wants to remove the last, largely cosmetic constraints on the system so that he and his friends can plunder with greater abandon – and destroy the planet more quickly.

The other wing of the neoliberal establishment, the one represented by the Democratic party leadership, fears that exposing capitalism in this way – making explicit its inherently brutal, wrist-slitting tendencies – will awaken the masses, that over time it will risk turning them into revolutionaries. Democratic party leaders fear Trump chiefly because of the threat he poses to the image of the political and economic system they have so lovingly crafted so that they can continue enriching themselves and their children.

Trump's genius – his only genius – is to have appropriated, and misappropriated, some of the language of the left to advance the interests of the 1 per cent. When he attacks the corporate "liberal" media for having a harmful agenda, for serving as propagandists, he is not wrong. When he rails against the identity politics cultivated by "liberal" elites over the past two decades – suggesting that it has weakened the US – he is not wrong. But he is right for the wrong reasons.

TV's version of clickbait

The corporate media, and the journalists they employ, are propagandists – for a system that keeps them wealthy. When Trump was a Republican primary candidate, the entire corporate media loved him because he was TV's equivalent of clickbait, just as he had been since reality TV began to usurp the place of current affairs programmes and meaningful political debate.

The handful of corporations that own the US media – and much of corporate America besides – are there both to make ever-more money by expanding profits and to maintain the credibility of a political and economic system that lets them make ever more money.

The "[neo]liberal" corporate media shares the values of the Democratic party leadership. In other words, it is heavily invested in making sure the pig doesn't lose its lipstick. By contrast, Fox News and the shock-jocks, like Trump, prioritise making money in the short term over the long-term credibility of a system that gives them licence to make money. They care much less whether the pig's face remains painted.

So Trump is right that the "liberal" media is undemocratic and that it is now propagandising against him. But he is wrong about why. In fact, all corporate media – whether "liberal" or not, whether against Trump or for him – is undemocratic. All of the media propagandises for a rotten system that keeps the vast majority of Americans impoverished. All of the media cares more for Trump and the elites he belongs to than it cares for the 99 per cent.

Gorging on the main course

Similarly, with identity politics. Trump says he wants to make (a white) America great again, and uses the left's obsession with identity as a way to energize a backlash from his own supporters.

Just as too many on the left sleep-walked through the past two years waiting for Mueller – a former head of the FBI, the US secret police, for chrissakes! – to save them from Trump, they have been manipulated by liberal elites into the political cul-de-sac of identity politics.

Just as Mueller put the left on standby, into waiting-for-the-Messiah mode, so simple-minded, pussy-hat-wearing identity politics has been cultivated in the supposedly liberal bastions of the corporate media and Ivy League universities – the same universities that have turned out generations of Muellers and Clintons – to deplete the left's political energies. While we argue over who is most entitled and most victimised, the establishment has carried on raping and pillaging Third World countries, destroying the planet and siphoning off the wealth produced by the rest of us.

These liberal elites long ago worked out that if we could be made to squabble among ourselves about who was most entitled to scraps from the table, they could keep gorging on the main course.

The "[neo]liberal" elites exploited identity politics to keep us divided by pacifying the most maginalised with the offer of a few additional crumbs. Trump has exploited identity politics to keep us divided by inflaming tensions as he reorders the hierarchy of "privilege" in which those crumbs are offered. In the process, both wings of the elite have averted the danger that class consciousness and real solidarity might develop and start to challenge their privileges.

The Corbyn experience

3. But the most important lesson of all for the left is that support among its ranks for the Mueller inquiry against Trump was foolhardy in the extreme.

Not only was the inquiry doomed to failure – in fact, not only was it designed to fail – but it has set a precedent for future politicised investigations that will be used against the progressive left should it make any significant political gains. And an inquiry against the real left will be far more aggressive and far more "productive" than Mueller was.

If there is any doubt about that look to the UK. Britain now has within reach of power the first truly progressive politician in living memory, someone seeking to represent the 99 per cent, not the 1 per cent. But Jeremy Corbyn's experience as the leader of the Labour party – massively swelling the membership's ranks to make it the largest political party in Europe – has been eye-popping.

I have documented Corbyn's travails regularly in this blog over the past four years at the hands of the British political and media establishment. You can find many examples here.

Corbyn, even more so than the small, new wave of insurgency politicians in the US Congress, has faced a relentless barrage of criticism from across the UK's similarly narrow political spectrum. He has been attacked by both the rightwing media and the supposedly "liberal" media. He has been savaged by the ruling Conservative party, as was to be expected, and by his own parliamentary Labour party. The UK's two-party system has been exposed as just as hollow as the US one.

The ferocity of the attacks has been necessary because, unlike the Democratic party's success in keeping a progressive leftwinger away from the presidential campaign, the UK system accidentally allowed a socialist to slip past the gatekeepers. All hell has broken out ever since.

Simple-minded identity politics

What is so noticeable is that Corbyn is rarely attacked over his policies – mainly because they have wide popular appeal. Instead he has been hounded over fanciful claims that, despite being a life-long and very visible anti-racism campaigner, he suddenly morphed into an outright anti-semite the moment party members elected him leader.

I will not rehearse again how implausible these claims are. Simply look through these previous blog posts should you be in any doubt.

But what is amazing is that, just as with the Mueller inquiry, much of the British left – including prominent figures like Owen Jones and the supposedly countercultural Novara Media – have sapped their political energies in trying to placate or support those leading the preposterous claims that Labour under Corbyn has become "institutionally anti-semitic". Again, the promotion of a simple-minded identity politics – which pits the rights of Palestinians against the sensitivities of Zionist Jews about Israel – was exploited to divide the left.

The more the left has conceded to this campaign, the angrier, the more implacable, the more self-righteous Corbyn's opponents have become – to the point that the Labour party is now in serious danger of imploding.

A clarifying moment

Were the US to get its own Corbyn as president, he or she would undoubtedly face a Mueller-style inquiry, and one far more effective at securing the president's impeachment than this one was ever going to be.

That is not because a leftwing US president would be more corrupt or more likely to have colluded with a foreign power. As the UK example shows, it would be because the entire media system – from the New York Times to Fox News – would be against such a president. And as the UK example also shows, it would be because the leaderships of both the Republican and Democratic parties would work as one to finish off such a president.

In the combined success-failure of the Mueller inquiry, the left has an opportunity to understand in a much more sophisticated way how real power works and in whose favour it is exercised. It is moment that should be clarifying – if we are willing to open our eyes to Mueller's real lessons.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are " Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and " Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair " (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jonathan-cook.net/

[Mar 25, 2019] The Mass Psychology of Trumpism by Eli Zaretsky

Highly recommended!
But sophistication of intelligence agencies now reached very high level. Russiage was pretty dirty but pretty slick operation. British thre letter againces were even more devious, if we view Skripals poisoning as MI5/Mi6 "witness protection" operation due to possible Skripal role in creating Steele dossier. So let's keep wanting the evnet. The election 2020 might be event more interesting the Elections of 2016. Who would suggest in 2015 that he/she elects man candidate from Israel lobby instead of a woman candidate from the same lobby?
Notable quotes:
"... The consistent derogation of Trump in the New York Times or on MSNBC may be helpful in keeping the resistance fired up, but it is counterproductive when it comes to breaking down the Trump coalition. His followers take every attack on their leader as an attack on them. ..."
"... Adorno also observed that demagoguery of this sort is a profession, a livelihood with well-tested methods. Trump is a far more familiar figure than may at first appear. The demagogue's appeals, Adorno wrote, 'have been standardised, similarly to the advertising slogans which proved to be most valuable in the promotion of business'. Trump's background in salesmanship and reality TV prepared him perfectly for his present role. ..."
"... the leader can guess the psychological wants and needs of those susceptible to his propaganda because he resembles them psychologically, and is distinguished from them by a capacity to express without inhibitions what is latent in them, rather than by any intrinsic superiority. ..."
"... The leaders are generally oral character types, with a compulsion to speak incessantly and to befool the others. The famous spell they exercise over their followers seems largely to depend on their orality: language itself, devoid of its rational significance, functions in a magical way and furthers those archaic regressions which reduce individuals to members of crowds. ..."
"... Since uninhibited associative speech presupposes at least a temporary lack of ego control, it can indicate weakness as well as strength. The agitators' boasting is frequently accompanied by hints of weakness, often merged with claims of strength. This was particularly striking, Adorno wrote, when the agitator begged for monetary contributions. ..."
"... Since 8 November 2016, many people have concluded that what they understandably view as a catastrophe was the result of the neglect by neoliberal elites of the white working class, simply put. Inspired by Bernie Sanders, they believe that the Democratic Party has to reorient its politics from the idea that 'a few get rich first' to protection for the least advantaged. ..."
"... Of those providing his roughly 40 per cent approval ratings, half say they 'strongly approve' and are probably lost to the Democrats. ..."
Sep 18, 2018 | lrb.co.uk
One might object that Trump, a billionaire TV star, does not resemble his followers. But this misses the powerful intimacy that he establishes with them, at rallies, on TV and on Twitter. Part of his malicious genius lies in his ability to forge a bond with people who are otherwise excluded from the world to which he belongs. Even as he cast Hillary Clinton as the tool of international finance, he said:

I do deals – big deals – all the time. I know and work with all the toughest operators in the world of high-stakes global finance. These are hard-driving, vicious cut-throat financial killers, the kind of people who leave blood all over the boardroom table and fight to the bitter end to gain maximum advantage.

With these words he brought his followers into the boardroom with him and encouraged them to take part in a shared, cynical exposure of the soiled motives and practices that lie behind wealth. His role in the Birther movement, the prelude to his successful presidential campaign, was not only racist, but also showed that he was at home with the most ignorant, benighted, prejudiced people in America. Who else but a complete loser would engage in Birtherism, so far from the Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Harvard aura that elevated Obama, but also distanced him from the masses?

The consistent derogation of Trump in the New York Times or on MSNBC may be helpful in keeping the resistance fired up, but it is counterproductive when it comes to breaking down the Trump coalition. His followers take every attack on their leader as an attack on them. 'The fascist leader's startling symptoms of inferiority', Adorno wrote, 'his resemblance to ham actors and asocial psychopaths', facilitates the identification, which is the basis of the ideal. On the Access Hollywood tape, which was widely assumed would finish him, Trump was giving voice to a common enough daydream, but with 'greater force' and greater 'freedom of libido' than his followers allow themselves. And he was bolstering the narcissism of the women who support him, too, by describing himself as helpless in the grip of his desires for them.

Adorno also observed that demagoguery of this sort is a profession, a livelihood with well-tested methods. Trump is a far more familiar figure than may at first appear. The demagogue's appeals, Adorno wrote, 'have been standardised, similarly to the advertising slogans which proved to be most valuable in the promotion of business'. Trump's background in salesmanship and reality TV prepared him perfectly for his present role. According to Adorno,

the leader can guess the psychological wants and needs of those susceptible to his propaganda because he resembles them psychologically, and is distinguished from them by a capacity to express without inhibitions what is latent in them, rather than by any intrinsic superiority.

To meet the unconscious wishes of his audience, the leader

simply turns his own unconscious outward Experience has taught him consciously to exploit this faculty, to make rational use of his irrationality, similarly to the actor, or a certain type of journalist who knows how to sell their sensitivity.

All he has to do in order to make the sale, to get his TV audience to click, or to arouse a campaign rally, is exploit his own psychology.

Using old-fashioned but still illuminating language, Adorno continued:

The leaders are generally oral character types, with a compulsion to speak incessantly and to befool the others. The famous spell they exercise over their followers seems largely to depend on their orality: language itself, devoid of its rational significance, functions in a magical way and furthers those archaic regressions which reduce individuals to members of crowds.

Since uninhibited associative speech presupposes at least a temporary lack of ego control, it can indicate weakness as well as strength. The agitators' boasting is frequently accompanied by hints of weakness, often merged with claims of strength. This was particularly striking, Adorno wrote, when the agitator begged for monetary contributions. As with the Birther movement or Access Hollywood, Trump's self-debasement – pretending to sell steaks on the campaign trail – forges a bond that secures his idealised status.

Since 8 November 2016, many people have concluded that what they understandably view as a catastrophe was the result of the neglect by neoliberal elites of the white working class, simply put. Inspired by Bernie Sanders, they believe that the Democratic Party has to reorient its politics from the idea that 'a few get rich first' to protection for the least advantaged.

Yet no one who lived through the civil rights and feminist rebellions of recent decades can believe that an economic programme per se is a sufficient basis for a Democratic-led politics.

This holds as well when it comes to trying to reach out to Trump's supporters. Of those providing his roughly 40 per cent approval ratings, half say they 'strongly approve' and are probably lost to the Democrats. But if we understand the personal level at which pro-Trump strivings operate, we may better appeal to the other half, and in that way forestall the coming emergency.

[Mar 15, 2019] Will Democrats Go Full Hawk by Jack Hunter

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Warren could have easily gone either way, succumbing to the emotive demands of the Never Trump mob. She instead opted to stick to the traditional progressive position on undeclared war, even if it meant siding with the president. ..."
"... Bravo Congressman Khanna. And to those progs who share his sympathies with those of us who have consistently opposed US military adventurism. Howard Dean's comments that American troops should take a bullet in support of "women's rights" in Afghanistan (!) only underscores why he serves as comic relief and really should consider wearing tassels and bells. ..."
"... Trump – and Bernie – put their fingers on the electoral zeitgeist in 2016: the oligarchy is out of control, its servants in Washington have turned their backs on the middle class, and we need to stop getting into stupid, needless wars. ..."
"... "Principles", LOL? What principles? When have Democrats ever not campaigned on a "bring them home, no torture, etc" peace platform and then governed on a deep state neocon foreign policy, with entitlements to drone anyone on earth in Obama's case? At least horrible neocon Republicans are honest enough to say what they believe when they run. ..."
"... Hillary was full hawk. It was Trump who said he was less hawkish. Yeah, he hasn't lived up to that either. But Democrats can't go hawkish in response. They already were the hawks. ..."
Mar 14, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

When President Donald Trump announced in December that he wanted an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, there was more silence and opposition from the Left than approval. The 2016 election's highest-profile progressive, Senator Bernie Sanders, said virtually nothing at the time. The 2018 midterm election's Left celeb, former congressman Beto O'Rourke, kept mum too. The 2004 liberal hero, Howard Dean, came out against troop withdrawals, saying they would damage women's rights in Afghanistan.

The liberal news outlet on which Warren made her statement, MSNBC, which had already been sounding more like Fox News circa 2003, warned that withdrawal from Syria could hurt national security. The left-leaning news channel has even made common cause with Bill Kristol and other neoconservatives in its shared opposition to all things Trump.

Maddow herself has not only vocally opposed the president's decision, but has become arguably more popular than ever with liberal viewers by peddling wild-eyed anti-Trump conspiracy theories worthy of Alex Jones. Reacting to one of her cockamamie theories, progressive journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted , "She is Glenn Beck standing at the chalkboard. Liberals celebrate her (relatively) high ratings as proof that she's right, but Beck himself proved that nothing produces higher cable ratings than feeding deranged partisans unhinged conspiracy theories that flatter their beliefs."

The Trump derangement that has so enveloped the Left on everything, including foreign policy, is precisely what makes Democratic presidential candidate Warren's Syria withdrawal position so noteworthy. One can safely assume that Sanders, O'Rourke, Dean, MSNBC, Maddow, and many of their fellow progressive travelers' silence on or resistance to troop withdrawal is simply them gauging what their liberal audiences currently want or will accept.

Warren could have easily gone either way, succumbing to the emotive demands of the Never Trump mob. She instead opted to stick to the traditional progressive position on undeclared war, even if it meant siding with the president.

... ... ...

Jack Hunter is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Senator Rand Paul.


WorkingClass March 13, 2019 at 10:36 pm

Only a crushing defeat and massive casualties on the battlefield will cause ANY change in foreign policy by either party.
PAX , says: March 13, 2019 at 10:45 pm
The antiwar movement is not a "liberal" movement. Hundreds of mainly your people addressed the San Francisco board of supervisors asking them to condemn an Israeli full-fledged attack on Gaza. When they were finished, without objection from one single supervisor, the issued was tabled and let sink permanently in the Bay, never to be heard of again. Had the situation been reversed and Israel under attack there most probably would have been a resolution in nanoseconds. Maybe even half the board volunteering to join the IDF? People believed Trump would act more objectively. That is why he got a lot of peace votes. What AIPAC wants there is a high probability our liberal politicians will oblige quickly and willingly. Who really represents America remains a mystery?
Donald , says: March 13, 2019 at 11:40 pm
"That abiding hatred will continue to play an outsized and often illogical role in determining what most Democrats believe about foreign policy."

True, but the prowar tendency with mainstream liberals ( think Clintonites) is older than that. The antiwar movement among mainstream liberals died the instant Obama entered the White House. And even before that Clinton and Kerry and others supported the Iraq War. I think this goes all the way back to Gulf War I, and possibly further. Democrats were still mostly antiwar to some degree after Vietnam and they also opposed Reagan's proxy wars in Central America and Angola. Some opposed the Gulf War, but it seemed a big success at the time and so it became centrist and smart to kick the Vietnam War syndrome and be prowar. Bill Clinton has his little war in Serbia, which was seen as a success and so being prowar became the centrist Dem position. Obama was careful to say he wasn't antiwar, just against dumb wars. Gore opposed going into Iraq, but on technocratic grounds.

And in popular culture, in the West Wing the liberal fantasy President was bombing an imaginary Mideast terrorist country. Showed he was a tough guy, but measured, unlike some of the even more warlike fictitious Republicans in that show. I remember Toby Ziegler, one of the main characters, ranting to his pro diplomacy wife that we needed to go in and civilize those crazy Muslims.

So it isn't just an illogical overreaction to Trump, though that is part of it.

polistra , says: March 14, 2019 at 2:18 am
Won't happen. Gabbard is solid and sincere but she's not Hillary so she won't be the candidate. Hillary is the candidate forever. If Hillary is too drunk to stand up, or too obviously dead, Kamala will serve as Hillary's regent.
ked_x , says: March 14, 2019 at 2:48 am
The problem isn't THAT Trump is pulling the troops out of Syria. The problem is HOW Trump is pulling the troops out of Syria. The Left isn't fighting about 'keeping troops indefinitely in Syria' vs pulling troops out of Syria'. Its a fight over 'pulling troops out in a way that makes it so that we don't have to go back in like Obama and Iraq' vs 'backing the reckless pull out Trump is going to do'.
Kasoy , says: March 14, 2019 at 3:42 am
Will Democrats go full hawk?

For Democrats, everything depends on what the polls say, which issues seem important to get elected. They will say anything, no matter how irrational & outrageously insane if the polls say Democrat voters like them. If American involvement in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan are less important according to the polls, Democratic 2020 hopefuls will not bother to focus on it.

For True Christian conservatives, everything depends on how issues line up to God's laws. Polls do not change what is morally right, & what is morally evil.

Connecticut Farmer , says: March 14, 2019 at 8:47 am
"I am glad Donald Trump is withdrawing troops from Syria. Congress never authorized the intervention."

Bravo Congressman Khanna. And to those progs who share his sympathies with those of us who have consistently opposed US military adventurism. Howard Dean's comments that American troops should take a bullet in support of "women's rights" in Afghanistan (!) only underscores why he serves as comic relief and really should consider wearing tassels and bells.

M. Orban , says: March 14, 2019 at 9:35 am
Having grown up under communism, I learned that it is dangerous but inevitable that propagandists eventually come to believe their own fabrications.
Argon , says: March 14, 2019 at 11:23 am
Kasoy: "For True Christian conservatives, everything depends on how issues line up to God's laws. Polls do not change what is morally right, & what is morally evil."

I think that needs the trademark symbol, i.e True Christians™

What do True Scotsmen do?

Dave , says: March 14, 2019 at 12:53 pm
Recent suggests that more Christian Identity Politics will not keep us out of unwise wars.
Dave , says: March 14, 2019 at 1:19 pm
The Second Coming of Jack Hunter. Given his well-documented views on race, it's no surprise he's all in on Trump. That surely outweighs Trump's massive spending and corruption that most true libertarians oppose.
EarlyBird , says: March 14, 2019 at 3:04 pm
Trump – and Bernie – put their fingers on the electoral zeitgeist in 2016: the oligarchy is out of control, its servants in Washington have turned their backs on the middle class, and we need to stop getting into stupid, needless wars.

Of course, the left would come out against puppies and sunshine if Trump came out for those things.

But if they are smart, they'd recognize that on war, or his lack of interest in starting new wars, even the broken Trump clock has been right twice a day.

Erin , says: March 14, 2019 at 3:11 pm
The flip side of this phenomenon is that so many Republican voters supported Trump's withdrawal from Syria. Had it been Obama withdrawing the troops, I suspect 80-90% of Republicans would have opposed the withdrawal.

This does show that Republicans are listening to Trump more than Lindsey Graham or Marco Rubio on foreign policy. But once Trump leaves office, I fear the party will swing back towards the neocons.

Andrew , says: March 14, 2019 at 5:14 pm
"Principles", LOL? What principles? When have Democrats ever not campaigned on a "bring them home, no torture, etc" peace platform and then governed on a deep state neocon foreign policy, with entitlements to drone anyone on earth in Obama's case? At least horrible neocon Republicans are honest enough to say what they believe when they run.

Dopey Trump campaigned on something different and has now surrounded himself with GOP hawks, probably because he's lazy and doesn't know any better.

Bernie, much like Ron Paul was, 180 degrees away, is the only one who might do different if he got into office, and the rate the left is going he may very well be the nominee.

Mark Thomason , says: March 15, 2019 at 11:23 am
Hillary was full hawk. It was Trump who said he was less hawkish. Yeah, he hasn't lived up to that either. But Democrats can't go hawkish in response. They already were the hawks.

The least bad comment on Democrats is that everyone in DC is a hawk, not just them.

[Feb 26, 2019] THE CRISIS OF NEOLIBERALISM by Julie A. Wilson

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... While the Tea Party was critical of status-quo neoliberalism -- especially its cosmopolitanism and embrace of globalization and diversity, which was perfectly embodied by Obama's election and presidency -- it was not exactly anti-neoliberal. Rather, it was anti-left neoliberalism-, it represented a more authoritarian, right [wing] version of neoliberalism. ..."
"... Within the context of the 2016 election, Clinton embodied the neoliberal center that could no longer hold. Inequality. Suffering. Collapsing infrastructures. Perpetual war. Anger. Disaffected consent. ..."
"... Both Sanders and Trump were embedded in the emerging left and right responses to neoliberalism's crisis. Specifically, Sanders' energetic campaign -- which was undoubtedly enabled by the rise of the Occupy movement -- proposed a decidedly more "commongood" path. Higher wages for working people. Taxes on the rich, specifically the captains of the creditocracy. ..."
"... In other words, Trump supporters may not have explicitly voted for neoliberalism, but that's what they got. In fact, as Rottenberg argues, they got a version of right neoliberalism "on steroids" -- a mix of blatant plutocracy and authoritarianism that has many concerned about the rise of U.S. fascism. ..."
"... We can't know what would have happened had Sanders run against Trump, but we can think seriously about Trump, right and left neoliberalism, and the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. In other words, we can think about where and how we go from here. As I suggested in the previous chapter, if we want to construct a new world, we are going to have to abandon the entangled politics of both right and left neoliberalism; we have to reject the hegemonic frontiers of both disposability and marketized equality. After all, as political philosopher Nancy Fraser argues, what was rejected in the election of 2016 was progressive, left neoliberalism. ..."
"... While the rise of hyper-right neoliberalism is certainly nothing to celebrate, it does present an opportunity for breaking with neoliberal hegemony. We have to proceed, as Gary Younge reminds us, with the realization that people "have not rejected the chance of a better world. They have not yet been offered one."' ..."
Oct 08, 2017 | www.amazon.com

Quote from the book is courtesy of Amazon preview of the book Neoliberalism (Key Ideas in Media & Cultural Studies)

In Chapter 1, we traced the rise of our neoliberal conjuncture back to the crisis of liberalism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, culminating in the Great Depression. During this period, huge transformations in capitalism proved impossible to manage with classical laissez-faire approaches. Out of this crisis, two movements emerged, both of which would eventually shape the course of the twentieth century and beyond. The first, and the one that became dominant in the aftermath of the crisis, was the conjuncture of embedded liberalism. The crisis indicated that capitalism wrecked too much damage on the lives of ordinary citizens. People (white workers and families, especially) warranted social protection from the volatilities and brutalities of capitalism. The state's public function was expanded to include the provision of a more substantive social safety net, a web of protections for people and a web of constraints on markets. The second response was the invention of neoliberalism. Deeply skeptical of the common-good principles that undergirded the emerging social welfare state, neoliberals began organizing on the ground to develop a "new" liberal govemmentality, one rooted less in laissez-faire principles and more in the generalization of competition and enterprise. They worked to envision a new society premised on a new social ontology, that is, on new truths about the state, the market, and human beings. Crucially, neoliberals also began building infrastructures and institutions for disseminating their new' knowledges and theories (i.e., the Neoliberal Thought Collective), as well as organizing politically to build mass support for new policies (i.e., working to unite anti-communists, Christian conservatives, and free marketers in common cause against the welfare state). When cracks in embedded liberalism began to surface -- which is bound to happen with any moving political equilibrium -- neoliberals were there with new stories and solutions, ready to make the world anew.

We are currently living through the crisis of neoliberalism. As I write this book, Donald Trump has recently secured the U.S. presidency, prevailing in the national election over his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Throughout the election, I couldn't help but think back to the crisis of liberalism and the two responses that emerged. Similarly, after the Great Recession of 2008, we've saw two responses emerge to challenge our unworkable status quo, which dispossesses so many people of vital resources for individual and collective life. On the one hand, we witnessed the rise of Occupy Wall Street. While many continue to critique the movement for its lack of leadership and a coherent political vision, Occupy was connected to burgeoning movements across the globe, and our current political horizons have been undoubtedly shaped by the movement's success at repositioning class and economic inequality within our political horizon. On the other hand, we saw' the rise of the Tea Party, a right-wing response to the crisis. While the Tea Party was critical of status-quo neoliberalism -- especially its cosmopolitanism and embrace of globalization and diversity, which was perfectly embodied by Obama's election and presidency -- it was not exactly anti-neoliberal. Rather, it was anti-left neoliberalism-, it represented a more authoritarian, right [wing] version of neoliberalism.

Within the context of the 2016 election, Clinton embodied the neoliberal center that could no longer hold. Inequality. Suffering. Collapsing infrastructures. Perpetual war. Anger. Disaffected consent. There were just too many fissures and fault lines in the glossy, cosmopolitan world of left neoliberalism and marketized equality. Indeed, while Clinton ran on status-quo stories of good governance and neoliberal feminism, confident that demographics and diversity would be enough to win the election, Trump effectively tapped into the unfolding conjunctural crisis by exacerbating the cracks in the system of marketized equality, channeling political anger into his celebrity brand that had been built on saying "f*** you" to the culture of left neoliberalism (corporate diversity, political correctness, etc.) In fact, much like Clinton's challenger in the Democratic primary, Benie Sanders, Trump was a crisis candidate.

Both Sanders and Trump were embedded in the emerging left and right responses to neoliberalism's crisis. Specifically, Sanders' energetic campaign -- which was undoubtedly enabled by the rise of the Occupy movement -- proposed a decidedly more "commongood" path. Higher wages for working people. Taxes on the rich, specifically the captains of the creditocracy.

Universal health care. Free higher education. Fair trade. The repeal of Citizens United. Trump offered a different response to the crisis. Like Sanders, he railed against global trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). However, Trump's victory was fueled by right neoliberalism's culture of cruelty. While Sanders tapped into and mobilized desires for a more egalitarian and democratic future, Trump's promise was nostalgic, making America "great again" -- putting the nation back on "top of the world," and implying a time when women were "in their place" as male property, and minorities and immigrants were controlled by the state.

Thus, what distinguished Trump's campaign from more traditional Republican campaigns was that it actively and explicitly pitted one group's equality (white men) against everyone else's (immigrants, women, Muslims, minorities, etc.). As Catherine Rottenberg suggests, Trump offered voters a choice between a multiracial society (where folks are increasingly disadvantaged and dispossessed) and white supremacy (where white people would be back on top). However, "[w]hat he neglected to state," Rottenberg writes,

is that neoliberalism flourishes in societies where the playing field is already stacked against various segments of society, and that it needs only a relatively small select group of capital-enhancing subjects, while everyone else is ultimately dispensable. 1

In other words, Trump supporters may not have explicitly voted for neoliberalism, but that's what they got. In fact, as Rottenberg argues, they got a version of right neoliberalism "on steroids" -- a mix of blatant plutocracy and authoritarianism that has many concerned about the rise of U.S. fascism.

We can't know what would have happened had Sanders run against Trump, but we can think seriously about Trump, right and left neoliberalism, and the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. In other words, we can think about where and how we go from here. As I suggested in the previous chapter, if we want to construct a new world, we are going to have to abandon the entangled politics of both right and left neoliberalism; we have to reject the hegemonic frontiers of both disposability and marketized equality. After all, as political philosopher Nancy Fraser argues, what was rejected in the election of 2016 was progressive, left neoliberalism.

While the rise of hyper-right neoliberalism is certainly nothing to celebrate, it does present an opportunity for breaking with neoliberal hegemony. We have to proceed, as Gary Younge reminds us, with the realization that people "have not rejected the chance of a better world. They have not yet been offered one."'

Mark Fisher, the author of Capitalist Realism, put it this way:

The long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.4

I think that, for the first time in the history of U.S. capitalism, the vast majority of people might sense the lie of liberal, capitalist democracy. They feel anxious, unfree, disaffected. Fantasies of the good life have been shattered beyond repair for most people. Trump and this hopefully brief triumph of right neoliberalism will soon lay this bare for everyone to see. Now, with Trump, it is absolutely clear: the rich rule the world; we are all disposable; this is no democracy. The question becomes: How will we show up for history? Will there be new stories, ideas, visions, and fantasies to attach to? How can we productively and meaningful intervene in the crisis of neoliberalism? How can we "tear a hole in the grey curtain" and open up better worlds? How can we put what we've learned to use and begin to imagine and build a world beyond living in competition? I hope our critical journey through the neoliberal conjuncture has enabled you to begin to answer these questions.

More specifically, in recent decades, especially since the end of the Cold War, our common-good sensibilities have been channeled into neoliberal platforms for social change and privatized action, funneling our political energies into brand culture and marketized struggles for equality (e.g., charter schools, NGOs and non-profits, neoliberal antiracism and feminism). As a result, despite our collective anger and disaffected consent, we find ourselves stuck in capitalist realism with no real alternative. Like the neoliberal care of the self, we are trapped in a privatized mode of politics that relies on cruel optimism; we are attached, it seems, to politics that inspire and motivate us to action, while keeping us living in competition.

To disrupt the game, we need to construct common political horizons against neoliberal hegemony. We need to use our common stories and common reason to build common movements against precarity -- for within neoliberalism, precarity is what ultimately has the potential to thread all of our lives together. Put differently, the ultimate fault line in the neoliberal conjiuicture is the way it subjects us all to precarity and the biopolitics of disposability, thereby creating conditions of possibility for new coalitions across race, gender, citizenship, sexuality, and class. Recognizing this potential for coalition in the face of precarization is the most pressing task facing those who are yearning for a new world. The question is: How do we get there? How do we realize these coalitional potentialities and materialize common horizons?

HOW WE GET THERE

Ultimately, mapping the neoliberal conjuncture through everyday life in enterprise culture has not only provided some direction in terms of what we need; it has also cultivated concrete and practical intellectual resources for political interv ention and social interconnection -- a critical toolbox for living in common. More specifically, this book has sought to provide resources for thinking and acting against the four Ds: resources for engaging in counter-conduct, modes of living that refuse, on one hand, to conduct one's life according to the norm of enterprise, and on the other, to relate to others through the norm of competition. Indeed, we need new ways of relating, interacting, and living as friends, lovers, workers, vulnerable bodies, and democratic people if we are to write new stories, invent new govemmentalities, and build coalitions for new worlds.

Against Disimagination: Educated Hope and Affirmative Speculation

We need to stop turning inward, retreating into ourselves, and taking personal responsibility for our lives (a task which is ultimately impossible). Enough with the disimagination machine! Let's start looking outward, not inward -- to the broader structures that undergird our lives. Of course, we need to take care of ourselves; we must survive. But I firmly believe that we can do this in ways both big and small, that transform neoliberal culture and its status-quo stories.

Here's the thing I tell my students all the time. You cannot escape neoliberalism. It is the air we breathe, the water in which we swim. No job, practice of social activism, program of self-care, or relationship will be totally free from neoliberal impingements and logics. There is no pure "outside" to get to or work from -- that's just the nature of the neoliberalism's totalizing cultural power. But let's not forget that neoliberalism's totalizing cultural power is also a source of weakness. Potential for resistance is everywhere, scattered throughout our everyday lives in enterprise culture. Our critical toolbox can help us identify these potentialities and navigate and engage our conjuncture in ways that tear open up those new worlds we desire.

In other words, our critical perspective can help us move through the world with what Henry Giroux calls educated hope. Educated hope means holding in tension the material realities of power and the contingency of history. This orientation of educated hope knows very well what we're up against. However, in the face of seemingly totalizing power, it also knows that neoliberalism can never become total because the future is open. Educated hope is what allows us to see the fault lines, fissures, and potentialities of the present and emboldens us to think and work from that sliver of social space where we do have political agency and freedom to construct a new world. Educated hope is what undoes the power of capitalist realism. It enables affirmative speculation (such as discussed in Chapter 5), which does not try to hold the future to neoliberal horizons (that's cruel optimism!), but instead to affirm our commonalities and the potentialities for the new worlds they signal. Affirmative speculation demands a different sort of risk calculation and management. It senses how little we have to lose and how much we have to gain from knocking the hustle of our lives.

Against De-democratization: Organizing and Collective Coverning

We can think of educated hope and affirmative speculation as practices of what Wendy Brown calls "bare democracy" -- the basic idea that ordinary' people like you and me should govern our lives in common, that we should critique and try to change our world, especially the exploitative and oppressive structures of power that maintain social hierarchies and diminish lives. Neoliberal culture works to stomp out capacities for bare democracy by transforming democratic desires and feelings into meritocratic desires and feelings. In neoliberal culture, utopian sensibilities are directed away from the promise of collective utopian sensibilities are directed away from the promise of collective governing to competing for equality.

We have to get back that democractic feeling! As Jeremy Gilbert taught us, disaffected consent is a post-democratic orientation. We don't like our world, but we don't think we can do anything about it. So, how do we get back that democratic feeling? How do we transform our disaffected consent into something new? As I suggested in the last chapter, we organize. Organizing is simply about people coming together around a common horizon and working collectively to materialize it. In this way, organizing is based on the idea of radical democracy, not liberal democracy. While the latter is based on formal and abstract rights guaranteed by the state, radical democracy insists that people should directly make the decisions that impact their lives, security, and well-being. Radical democracy is a practice of collective governing: it is about us hashing out, together in communities, what matters, and working in common to build a world based on these new sensibilities.

The work of organizing is messy, often unsatisfying, and sometimes even scary. Organizing based on affirmative speculation and coalition-building, furthermore, will have to be experimental and uncertain. As Lauren Berlant suggests, it means "embracing the discomfort of affective experience in a truly open social life that no

one has ever experienced." Organizing through and for the common "requires more adaptable infrastructures. Keep forcing the existing infrastructures to do what they don't know how to do. Make new ways to be local together, where local doesn't require a physical neighborhood." 5 What Berlant is saying is that the work of bare democracy requires unlearning, and detaching from, our current stories and infrastructures in order to see and make things work differently. Organizing for a new world is not easy -- and there are no guarantees -- but it is the only way out of capitalist realism.

Against Disposability: Radical Equality

Getting back democratic feeling will at once require and help us lo move beyond the biopolitics of disposability and entrenched systems of inequality. On one hand, organizing will never be enough if it is not animated by bare democracy, a sensibility that each of us is equally important when it comes to the project of determining our lives in common. Our bodies, our hurts, our dreams, and our desires matter regardless of our race, gender, sexuality, or citizenship, and regardless of how r much capital (economic, social, or cultural) we have. Simply put, in a radical democracy, no one is disposable. This bare-democratic sense of equality must be foundational to organizing and coalition-building. Otherwise, we will always and inevitably fall back into a world of inequality.

On the other hand, organizing and collective governing will deepen and enhance our sensibilities and capacities for radical equality. In this context, the kind of self-enclosed individualism that empowers and underwrites the biopolitics of disposability melts away, as we realize the interconnectedness of our lives and just how amazing it feels to

fail, we affirm our capacities for freedom, political intervention, social interconnection, and collective social doing.

Against Dispossession: Shared Security and Common Wealth

Thinking and acting against the biopolitics of disposability goes hand-in-hand with thinking and acting against dispossession. Ultimately, when we really understand and feel ourselves in relationships of interconnection with others, we want for them as we want for ourselves. Our lives and sensibilities of what is good and just are rooted in radical equality, not possessive or self-appreciating individualism. Because we desire social security and protection, we also know others desire and deserve the same.

However, to really think and act against dispossession means not only advocating for shared security and social protection, but also for a new society that is built on the egalitarian production and distribution of social wealth that we all produce. In this sense, we can take Marx's critique of capitalism -- that wealth is produced collectively but appropriated individually -- to heart. Capitalism was built on the idea that one class -- the owners of the means of production -- could exploit and profit from the collective labors of everyone else (those who do not own and thus have to work), albeit in very different ways depending on race, gender, or citizenship. This meant that, for workers of all stripes, their lives existed not for themselves, but for others (the appropriating class), and that regardless of what we own as consumers, we are not really free or equal in that bare-democratic sense of the word.

If we want to be really free, we need to construct new material and affective social infrastructures for our common wealth. In these new infrastructures, wealth must not be reduced to economic value; it must be rooted in social value. Here, the production of wealth does not exist as a separate sphere from the reproduction of our lives. In other words, new infrastructures, based on the idea of common wealth, will not be set up to exploit our labor, dispossess our communities, or to divide our lives. Rather, they will work to provide collective social resources and care so that we may all be free to pursue happiness, create beautiful and/or useful things, and to realize our potential within a social world of living in common. Crucially, to create the conditions for these new, democratic forms of freedom rooted in radical equality, we need to find ways to refuse and exit the financial networks of Empire and the dispossessions of creditocracy, building new systems that invite everyone to participate in the ongoing production of new worlds and the sharing of the wealth that we produce in common.

It's not up to me to tell you exactly where to look, but I assure you that potentialities for these new worlds are everywhere around you.

[Feb 19, 2019] Tulsi Gabbard kills New World Order bloodbath in thirty seconds

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Tulsi Gabbard has recently launched a new attack on New World Order agents and ethnic cleansers in the Middle East, and one can see why they would be upset with her ..."
"... Gabbard is smart enough to realize that the Neocon path leads to death, chaos, and destruction. She knows that virtually nothing good has come out of the Israeli narrative in the Middle East -- a narrative which has brought America on the brink of collapse in the Middle East. Therefore, she is asking for a U-turn. ..."
"... The first step for change, she says, is to "stand up against powerful politicians from both parties" who take their orders from the Neocons and war machine. These people don't care about you, me, the average American, the people in the Middle East, or the American economy for that matter. They only care about fulfilling a diabolical ideology in the Middle East and much of the world. These people ought to stop once and for all. Regardless of your political views, you should all agree with Gabbard here. ..."
Feb 19, 2019 | www.veteranstoday.com

Tulsi Gabbard has recently launched a new attack on New World Order agents and ethnic cleansers in the Middle East, and one can see why they would be upset with her. She said:

" We must stand up against powerful politicians from both parties who sit in their ivory towers thinking up new wars to wage, new places for people to die, wasting trillions of our taxpayer dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives and undermining our economy, our security, and destroying our middle class."

It is too early to formulate a complete opinion on Gabbard, but she has said the right thing so far. In fact, her record is better than numerous presidents, both past and present.

As we have documented in the past, Gabbard is an Iraq war veteran, and she knew what happened to her fellow soldiers who died for Israel, the Neocon war machine, and the military industrial complex. She also seems to be aware that the war in Iraq alone will cost American taxpayers at least six trillion dollars. [1] She is almost certainly aware of the fact that at least "360,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans may have suffered brain injuries." [2]

Gabbard is smart enough to realize that the Neocon path leads to death, chaos, and destruction. She knows that virtually nothing good has come out of the Israeli narrative in the Middle East -- a narrative which has brought America on the brink of collapse in the Middle East. Therefore, she is asking for a U-turn.

The first step for change, she says, is to "stand up against powerful politicians from both parties" who take their orders from the Neocons and war machine. These people don't care about you, me, the average American, the people in the Middle East, or the American economy for that matter. They only care about fulfilling a diabolical ideology in the Middle East and much of the world. These people ought to stop once and for all. Regardless of your political views, you should all agree with Gabbard here.


[Feb 19, 2019] Warmongers in their ivory towers - YouTube

Highly recommended!
This is a powerful political statement... Someaht similar to Tucker Carlson stance...
Feb 19, 2019 | www.youtube.com

"We must stand up against powerful politicians from both parties who sit in their ivory towers thinking up new wars to wage, new places for people to die, wasting trillions of our taxpayer dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives and undermining our economy, our security, and destroying our middle class."

[Feb 15, 2019] Consumption of liquid fuels grows over the next decade, before broadly plateauing in the 2030s

Highly recommended!
How they can claim that US tight oil will be produced in larger quantities if they predict stagnant oil prices and at those price the US production is unprofitable.
So from now on it's all condensate, and very little heavy and medium oil.
I like BP propaganda: "The abundance of oil resources, and risk that large quantities of recoverable oil will never be extracted, may prompt low-cost producers to use their comparative advantage to expand their market share in order to help ensure their resources are produced." That's not only stupid but also gives up the intent...
Notable quotes:
"... In the ET scenario, global demand for liquid fuels – crude and condensates, natural gas liquids (NGLs), and other liquids – increases by 10 Mb/d, plateauing around 108 Mb/d in the 2030s. ..."
"... All of the demand growth comes from developing economies, driven by the burgeoning middle class in developing Asian economies. Consumption of liquid fuels within the OECD resumes its declining trend. ..."
"... The increase in liquid fuels supplies is set to be dominated by increases in NGLs and biofuels, with only limited growth in crude ..."
www.bp.com

In the ET scenario, global demand for liquid fuels – crude and condensates, natural gas liquids (NGLs), and other liquids – increases by 10 Mb/d, plateauing around 108 Mb/d in the 2030s.

All of the demand growth comes from developing economies, driven by the burgeoning middle class in developing Asian economies. Consumption of liquid fuels within the OECD resumes its declining trend. The growth in demand is initially met from non-OPEC producers, led by US tight oil. But as US tight oil production declines in the final decade of the Outlook, OPEC becomes the main source of incremental supply. OPEC output increases by 4 Mb/d over the Outlook, with all of this growth concentrated in the 2030s. Non-OPEC supply grows by 6 Mb/d, led by the US (5 Mb/d), Brazil (2 Mb/d) and Russia (1 Mb/d) offset by declines in higher-cost, mature basins.

Consumption of liquid fuels grows over the next decade, before broadly plateauing in the 2030s

Demand for liquid fuels looks set to expand for a period before gradually plateauing as efficiency improvements in the transport sector accelerate. In the ET scenario, consumption of liquid fuels increases by 10 Mb/d (from 98 Mb/d to 108 Mb/d), with the majority of that growth happening over the next 10 years or so. The demand for liquid fuels continues to be dominated by the transport sector, with its share of liquids consumption remaining around 55%. Transport demand for liquid fuels increases from 56 Mb/d to 61 Mb/d by 2040, with this expansion split between road (2 Mb/d) (divided broadly equally between cars, trucks, and 2/3 wheelers) and aviation/marine (3 Mb/d). But the impetus from transport demand fades over the Outlook as the pace of vehicle efficiency improvements quicken and alternative sources of energy penetrate the transport system . In contrast, efficiency gains when using oil for non-combusted uses, especially as a feedstock in petrochemicals, are more limited. As a result, the non-combusted use of oil takes over as the largest source of demand growth over the Outlook, increasing by 7 Mb/d to 22 Mb/d by 2040.

The outlook for oil demand is uncertain but looks set to play a major role in global energy out to 2040

Although the precise outlook is uncertain, the world looks set to consume significant amounts of oil (crude plus NGLs) for several decades, requiring substantial investment. This year's Energy Outlook considers a range of scenarios for oil demand, with the timing of the peak in demand varying from the next few years to beyond 2040. Despite these differences, the scenarios share two common features. First, all the scenarios suggest that oil will continue to play a significant role in the global energy system in 2040, with the level of oil demand in 2040 ranging from around 80 Mb/d to 130 Mb/d. In all scenarios, trillions of dollars of investment in oil is needed Second, significant levels of investment are required for there to be sufficient supplies of oil to meet demand in 2040. If future investment was limited to developing existing fields and there was no investment in new production areas, global production would decline at an average rate of around 4.5% p.a. (based on IEA's estimates), implying global oil supply would be only around 35 Mb/d in 2040. Closing the gap between this supply profile and any of the demand scenarios in the Outlook would require many trillions of dollars of investment over the next 20 years.

Growth in liquids supply is initially dominated by US tight oil, with OPEC production increasing only as US tight oil declines

Growth in global liquids production is dominated in the first part of the Outlook by US tight oil, with OPEC production gaining in importance further out. In the ET scenario, total US liquids production accounts for the vast majority of the increase in global supplies out to 2030, driven by US tight oil and NGLs. US tight oil increases by almost 6 Mb/d in the next 10 years, peaking at close to 10.5 Mb/d in the late 2020s, before falling back to around 8.5 Mb/d by 2040. The strong growth in US tight oil reinforces the US's position as the world's largest producer of liquid fuels. As US tight oil declines, this space is filled by OPEC production, which more than accounts for the increase in liquid supplies in the final decade of the Outlook.

The increase in OPEC production is aided by OPEC members responding to the increasing abundance of global oil resources by reforming their economies and reducing their dependency on oil, allowing them gradually to adopt a more competitive strategy of increasing their market share. The speed and extent of this reform is a key uncertainty affecting the outlook for global oil markets (see pp 88-89).

The stalling in OPEC production during the first part of the Outlook causes OPEC's share of global liquids production to fall to its lowest level since the late 1980s before recovering towards the end of the Outlook.

Low-cost producers: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Iraq and Russia

Oil demand
Download chart and data Download this chart pdf / 64.6 KB Download this data xlsx / 10.1 KB
Excluding GTLs and CTLs

The abundance of oil resources, and risk that large quantities of recoverable oil will never be extracted, may prompt low-cost producers to use their comparative advantage to expand their market share in order to help ensure their resources are produced.

The extent to which low-cost producers can sustainably adopt such a 'higher production, lower price' strategy depends on their progress in reforming their economies, reducing their dependence on oil revenues.

In the ET scenario, low-cost producers are assumed to make some progress in the second half of the Outlook, but the structure of their economies still acts as a material constraint on their ability to exploit fully their low-cost barrels.

The alternative 'Greater reform' scenario assumes a faster pace of economic reform, allowing low-cost producers to increase their market share. The extent to which low-cost producers can increase their market share depends on: the time needed to increase production capacity; and on the ability of higher-cost producers to compete, by either reducing production costs or varying fiscal terms.

The lower price environment associated with this more competitive market structure boosts demand, with the consumption of oil growing throughout the Outlook.

Growth in liquid fuels supplies is driven by NGLs and biofuels, with only limited growth in crude oil production

The increase in liquid fuels supplies is set to be dominated by increases in NGLs and biofuels, with only limited growth in crude.

[Feb 13, 2019] Stephen Cohen on War with Russia and Soviet-style Censorship in the US by Russell Mokhiber

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... War with Russia. ..."
"... Cohen said the censorship that he has faced in recent years is similar to the censorship imposed on dissidents in the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... "Katrina and I had a joint signed op-ed piece in the New York Times ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... "The alternatives have been excluded from both. I would welcome an opportunity to debate these issues in the mainstream media, where you can reach more people. And remember, being in these pages, for better or for worse, makes you Kosher. This is the way it works. If you have been on these pages, you are cited approvingly. You are legitimate. You are within the parameters of the debate." ..."
"... "When I lived off and on in the Soviet Union, I saw how Soviet media treated dissident voices. And they didn't have to arrest them. They just wouldn't ever mention them. Sometimes they did that (arrest them). But they just wouldn't ever mention them in the media." ..."
"... "And something like that has descended here. And it's really alarming, along with some other Soviet-style practices in this country that nobody seems to care about – like keeping people in prison until they break, that is plea, without right to bail, even though they haven't been convicted of anything." ..."
"... "That's what they did in the Soviet Union. They kept people in prison until people said – I want to go home. Tell me what to say – and I'll go home. That's what we are doing here. And we shouldn't be doing that." ..."
"... Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter.. ..."
Feb 12, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

On stage at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C. this past week was Princeton University Professor Emeritus Stephen Cohen, author of the new book, War with Russia: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate.

Cohen has largely been banished from mainstream media.

"I had been arguing for years -- very much against the American political media grain -- that a new US/Russian Cold War was unfolding -- driven primarily by politics in Washington, not Moscow," Cohen writes in War with Russia. "For this perspective, I had been largely excluded from influential print, broadcast and cable outlets where I had been previously welcomed."

On the stage at Busboys and Poets with Cohen was Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation magazine, and Robert Borosage, co-founder of the Campaign for America's Future.

During question time, Cohen was asked about the extent of the censorship in the context of other Americans who had been banished from mainstream American media, including Ralph Nader, whom the liberal Democratic establishment, including Borosage and Vanden Heuvel, stiff armed when he crashed the corporate political parties in the electoral arena in 2004 and 2008.

Cohen said the censorship that he has faced in recent years is similar to the censorship imposed on dissidents in the Soviet Union.

"Until some period of time before Trump, on the question of what America's policy toward Putin's Kremlin should be, there was a reasonable facsimile of a debate on those venues that had these discussions," Cohen said. "Are we allowed to mention the former Charlie Rose for example? On the long interview form, Charlie would have on a person who would argue for a very hard policy toward Putin. And then somebody like myself who thought it wasn't a good idea."

"Occasionally that got on CNN too. MSNBC not so much. And you could get an op-ed piece published, with effort, in the New York Times or Washington Post ."

"Katrina and I had a joint signed op-ed piece in the New York Times six or seven years ago. But then it stopped. And to me, that's the fundamental difference between this Cold War and the preceding Cold War."

"I will tell you off the record – no, I'm not going to do it," Cohen said. "Two exceedingly imminent Americans, who most op-ed pages would die to get a piece by, just to say they were on the page, submitted such articles to the New York Times , and they were rejected the same day. They didn't even debate it. They didn't even come back and say – could you tone it down? They just didn't want it."

"Now is that censorship? In Italy, where each political party has its own newspaper, you would say – okay fair enough. I will go to a newspaper that wants me. But here, we are used to these newspapers."

"Remember how it works. I was in TV for 18 years being paid by CBS. So, I know how these things work. TV doesn't generate its own news anymore. Their actual reporting has been de-budgeted. They do video versions of what is in the newspapers."

"Look at the cable talk shows. You see it in the New York Times and Washington Post in the morning, you turn on the TV at night and there is the video version. That's just the way the news business works now."

"The alternatives have been excluded from both. I would welcome an opportunity to debate these issues in the mainstream media, where you can reach more people. And remember, being in these pages, for better or for worse, makes you Kosher. This is the way it works. If you have been on these pages, you are cited approvingly. You are legitimate. You are within the parameters of the debate."

"If you are not, then you struggle to create your own alternative media. It's new in my lifetime. I know these imminent Americans I mentioned were shocked when they were just told no. It's a lockdown. And it is a form of censorship."

"When I lived off and on in the Soviet Union, I saw how Soviet media treated dissident voices. And they didn't have to arrest them. They just wouldn't ever mention them. Sometimes they did that (arrest them). But they just wouldn't ever mention them in the media."

"Dissidents created what is known as samizdat – that's typescript that you circulate by hand. Gorbachev, before he came to power, did read some samizdat. But it's no match for newspapers published with five, six, seven million copies a day. Or the three television networks which were the only television networks Soviet citizens had access to."

"And something like that has descended here. And it's really alarming, along with some other Soviet-style practices in this country that nobody seems to care about – like keeping people in prison until they break, that is plea, without right to bail, even though they haven't been convicted of anything."

"That's what they did in the Soviet Union. They kept people in prison until people said – I want to go home. Tell me what to say – and I'll go home. That's what we are doing here. And we shouldn't be doing that."

Cohen appears periodically on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News. And that rankled one person in the audience at Busboys and Poets, who said he worried that Cohen's perspective on Russia can be "appropriated by the right."

"Trump can take that and run on a nationalistic platform – to hell with NATO, to hell with fighting these endless wars, to do what he did in 2016 and get the votes of people who are very concerned about the deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Russia," the man said.

Cohen says that on a personal level, he likes Tucker Carlson "and I don't find him to be a racist or a nationalist."

"Nationalism is on the rise around the world everywhere," Cohen said. "There are different kinds of nationalism. We always called it patriotism in this country, but we have always been a nationalistic country."

"Fox has about three to four million viewers at that hour," Cohen said. "If I am not permitted to give my take on American/Russian relations on any other mass media, and by the way, possibly talk directly to Trump, who seems to like his show, and say – Trump is making a mistake, he should do this or do that instead -- I don't get many opportunities – and I can't see why I shouldn't do it."

"I get three and a half to four minutes," Cohen said. "I don't see it as consistent with my mission, if that's the right word, to say no. These articles I write for The Nation , which ended up in my book, are posted on some of the most God awful websites in the world. I had to look them up to find out how bad they really are. But what can I do about it?"

Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Russell Mokhiber

Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter..

[Feb 10, 2019] Neoliberalism is dead. Now let's repair our democratic institutions by Richard Denniss

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The opposite of a neoliberal economic agenda isn't a progressive economic agenda, but democratic re-engagement. Neoliberalism taught us that "there is no alternative" to cutting taxes, cutting services and letting the banks treat us as they see fit. But of course not even the Coalition believes that any more. These days they proudly subsidise their friends and regulate their enemies in order to reshape Australia in their preferred form. ..."
"... While the hypocrisy is staggering, at least voters can now see that politics, and elections, matter. Having been told for decades that it was "global markets" that shaped our society, it's now clear that it is actually the likes of Barnaby Joyce and Tony Abbott who decide whether we get new coal mines or power stations. Luckily, millions of voters now realise that if it's OK to subsidise new coal mines, there's no reason we can't subsidise renewables instead. ..."
"... So, what to nationalise? What new machinery of state should we build first? Should we create a national anti-corruption watchdog, replace the productivity commission with a national interest commission, or abolish the failed network of finance sector regulators and build a new one from scratch? ..."
"... The death of neoliberalism means we can finally have a national debate about the size and role of government, and the shape of the economy and society we want to build. ..."
"... class warfare (by the rich against the 99%, though I should not need to say that) is still very much alive. ..."
"... The rise of nationalism is indeed worrying situation.. but its clear that mass discontent is driving a 'shift' away from the status quo and that opportunists of every creed are all trying to get in on the action.. ..."
"... the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is population growth and lack of natural resources and meaningful 'employment' .. which self serving politicians are exploiting via playing the fear card and creating further division in society in order to embrace and increase their own power. Further more, no one, it seems, has any valid answers as regards resolving the division and creating a path forward.. thereby making more conflict an inevitability. ..."
"... Like Octopus, the globalists have every one of their eight legs in a different pot of gold. On their arms, suction cups maintain an iron grip. Trying to pull those suckers out, leaves us raw and bleeding. To release their grip, without hurting ourselves, we must aim for the brain. ..."
"... Murdoch's media empire has arms in every Democracy on earth. As his poisonous ink spread across our lands, we wallowed in the dark. ..."
"... The Oil and Coal Tycoons have arms in every black hole on earth. As their suckers pull black gold from the land beneath our feet, we choke on the air we breathe. ..."
"... The Financial Tyrants have arms in our buildings, factories, farms and homes. Their suckers stripped our pockets bare and we ran out of money. ..."
"... The False Prophets spread their arms into our private lives. Their suckers turned our modest, humble faiths into global empires filled with mega-churches, televangelists, jet-setting preachers and evangelical armies Hell bent on disruption and destruction. ..."
"... Neoliberalism may be dead but the former Trotskyites who invented it are still alive and they still have an agenda. ..."
"... Neo Liberalism was a project cooked up back in the late 1970s by the Capital owning classes & enacted by successive govts of "right" or "left" ever since. They feared the growing power of the working & middle classes which they felt threatened their own power & wealth. So they set out to destroy any ability of the working class to organise & to gut the middle class. ..."
"... Key to this was decoupling wages from productivity & forcing us all into debt peonage. Deregulation of the financial markets & the globalization of capital markets, disastorous multilateral trade deals & off shoring jobs, slashing state social programmes, Union busting laws all part of the plan. All covered with a lie that we live in meritocracies & the "best & brightest" are in charge. The result has been evermore riches funneled to the wealthiest few percent & a wealth gap bigger than that of the gilded age ..."
"... The majority press are so organised around the idea that neoliberalism in the sense captured economically and to some extent socially as construed in the article above; ..."
"... Rumours of neoliberalism's death have been somewhat exaggerated. Its been on life support provided by the LNP since John Howard and there are still a few market fundamentalists lurking in the ranks of the ALP, just waiting for their chance to do New Labor MkII in memory of Paul Keating. ..."
"... Neoliberalism's lasting legacy will not be the ludicrous economic programs, privatizations and deregulation, those can all be rolled back if some party would grow a spine. The real damage was caused by the aping of the US and UK's cult of individual responsibility, the atomizing effects of neoliberal anti-social policy and demonization of collective action including unionism. ..."
Oct 31, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

The opposite of a neoliberal economic agenda isn't a progressive economic agenda, but democratic re-engagement. Neoliberalism taught us that "there is no alternative" to cutting taxes, cutting services and letting the banks treat us as they see fit. But of course not even the Coalition believes that any more. These days they proudly subsidise their friends and regulate their enemies in order to reshape Australia in their preferred form.

While the hypocrisy is staggering, at least voters can now see that politics, and elections, matter. Having been told for decades that it was "global markets" that shaped our society, it's now clear that it is actually the likes of Barnaby Joyce and Tony Abbott who decide whether we get new coal mines or power stations. Luckily, millions of voters now realise that if it's OK to subsidise new coal mines, there's no reason we can't subsidise renewables instead.

Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world Read more

The parliament is filling with people of all political persuasions who, if nothing else, decry the neoliberal agenda to shrink our government and our national vision. While there's obviously quite a distance between MPs who want to build the nation, one new coal mine at a time, and those who want to fill our cities with renewable energy, the whole purpose of democracy is to settle such disputes at the ballot box.

The Liberals want to nationalise coal-fired power stations and pour public money into Snowy 2.0 . The ALP want much bigger renewable energy targets and to collect more revenue by closing billions of dollars in tax-loopholes . The Greens want a publicly owned bank and some unions are pushing to nationalise aged care. It's never been a more exciting time to support a bigger role for government.

So, what to nationalise? What new machinery of state should we build first? Should we create a national anti-corruption watchdog, replace the productivity commission with a national interest commission, or abolish the failed network of finance sector regulators and build a new one from scratch?

... ... ...

The death of neoliberalism means we can finally have a national debate about the size and role of government, and the shape of the economy and society we want to build. But we need to do more than talk about tax and regulation. Australia is one of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the world, and we once helped lead the world in the design of democratic institutions and the creation of an open democratic culture. Let's not allow the legacy of neoliberalism to be a cynical belief that there is no point repairing and rebuilding the democratic institutions that ensure not just our economy thrives, but our society as well. A quick look around the world provides clear evidence that there really are a lot of alternatives.

Richard Denniss is chief economist for the Australia Institute


R_Ambrose_Raven , 1 Nov 2018 16:38

Mmmm, well, class warfare (by the rich against the 99%, though I should not need to say that) is still very much alive.

Globalisation-driven financial deregulation was commenced here by Hawke Labor from 1983 as a Laberal facade for the Australian chapter of the transnational ruling class policy of self-enrichment. It was sold to the aspirationals as the ever-popular This Will Make You Rich - as ever-rising house prices did, for home-owners then (paid for now through housing unaffordability for their descendants). Then, transnational capital was able to loot both aspirationals' productivity gains (easily 10% of GDP) plus usurious interest from the borrowings made by the said aspirationals (easily 6% of GDP) to keep up with the Joneses. Now, it loots 90% of all increases in GDP, leaving just 10% in crumbs from the filthy rich man's table for 15 million workers to share.

We don't notice as much as we should, because the mainstream (mainly but not only Murdoch) media is very good at persuading us - then and now - that there is nothing to see. It is a tool of that transnational class, its role being to manufacture our consent to our own exploitation. Thus they play the man because it is politically easier than open demands that the public be robbed. In the case of penalty rates, thus adopting the obvious hypocrisy of which "The Australian" accuses Shorten. Or they play the woman, in the case of the ferocious, relentless media vilification of Julia Gillard and Gillard Labor – five years after the demonization of Gillard Labor's Great Big New (Carbon) Tax, the need for one is now almost universally accepted. Or they play the players, hence a focus on Dutton's challenge that pretends that he has meaningful policies.

Labor's class traitors clearly intended to aggressively apply the standard neoliberal model – look at how it helps their careers after politics (ask Anna Blight)! Shorten is not working to promote some progressive agenda, he is doing as little as possible, and expects to simply be voted into The Lodge as a committed servant of transnational capitalism.

Colinn -> bushranga , 1 Nov 2018 16:14
Wait till the revolution comes and we get the bastards up against the wall.
Colinn , 1 Nov 2018 15:53
I stopped voting 40 years ago because the voting system is mathematically rigged to favor the duopoly. Until a large number of minor parties can share their preferences and beat the majors, which is now starting to happen. This is not just voting for a good representative, but voting against the corrupt parties. A minority government should lead to proper debate in parliament. More women will lead to lower levels of testosterone fuelled sledging and better communication. A "Coalition of Representative Independents" could form government in the future, leading by consensus and constantly listening to the community.
tjt77 -> BlueThird , 1 Nov 2018 11:35
The rise of nationalism is indeed worrying situation.. but its clear that mass discontent is driving a 'shift' away from the status quo and that opportunists of every creed are all trying to get in on the action..

The big nut to crack is HOW do we collectively find sane and honest leadership ? A huge part of the problem is the ongoing trend of disdain for government in favor of embracing private monopolies as the be all and end all for solving the ongoing societal rift. .. which has created a centralization of wealth and the power that that wealth yields.. allied to the fact that huge swaths of the population in EVERY nation were hiding when the brains were allocated.. and hence are very easy to dupe..

the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is population growth and lack of natural resources and meaningful 'employment' .. which self serving politicians are exploiting via playing the fear card and creating further division in society in order to embrace and increase their own power. Further more, no one, it seems, has any valid answers as regards resolving the division and creating a path forward.. thereby making more conflict an inevitability.

MeRaffey , 1 Nov 2018 08:05
Like Octopus, the globalists have every one of their eight legs in a different pot of gold. On their arms, suction cups maintain an iron grip. Trying to pull those suckers out, leaves us raw and bleeding. To release their grip, without hurting ourselves, we must aim for the brain.

Murdoch's media empire has arms in every Democracy on earth. As his poisonous ink spread across our lands, we wallowed in the dark.

The Oil and Coal Tycoons have arms in every black hole on earth. As their suckers pull black gold from the land beneath our feet, we choke on the air we breathe.

The Financial Tyrants have arms in our buildings, factories, farms and homes. Their suckers stripped our pockets bare and we ran out of money.

The False Prophets spread their arms into our private lives. Their suckers turned our modest, humble faiths into global empires filled with mega-churches, televangelists, jet-setting preachers and evangelical armies Hell bent on disruption and destruction.

Denniss offers us the cure! Start thinking fresh and new and starve the globalists to death. They fed us BS, we ate BS and now we are mal-nourished. We need good, healthy ideas.

Land. Infrastructure. Time.

Time - "WE" increased productivity and the globalists stole the rewards. Time to increase our FREE time. 32 hours is the NEW full time. Pay us full time wages, give us full time benefits, and reduce our work days by 20% and suddenly we have 20% more jobs. As the incomes of billionaires drop, the money in circulation will increase. We are the job creators - not globalists.

21st Century Infrastructure is about healthy human beings - not the effing economy. Think healthcare, education, senior care and child care. If we find out you have sent your money off-shore, your local taxes will increase by ten. So please, do, send your money off-shore - our cities and towns would love to increase taxes on your stores, offices and real estate by ten.

No more caps on taxes. If you are a citizen, you pay social taxes on every dime you get. In America you will be paying 15.3% of every dollar to social security. That's $153,000.00 a year for every million dollars you take out of our economy.

Land is not something you put in a museum, lock away in a vault, or wear on your neck. Think fresh and new. If you own land, you are responsible for meeting community rules.

No more empty, weed filled lots allowed. If you have empty land, you better put in a nice garden, pretty trees and walkways or we will do it for you and employ "eminent-domain" on your bank accounts to pay for it.

No more empty buildings. If you own an empty building you will put it to good use, or we will do it for you - and keep the profits to fund our local governments, schools, hospitals, and senior/child care centers.

No more slumlords allowed. We have basic standards, for everyone. If we catch you renting a slum to anyone, we will make repairs for you, and if you do not pay the bill, we will put a lien on your building and wait until you sell it to pay ourselves back.

We do not trust you big-box types anymore. If you want to build your mega-store in our cities, towns or communities, you must, first, deposit the entire cost of tearing it down, and landscaping a park, or playground when you leave. While you stay, we will invest your deposit in index funds and assure ourselves enough money down the road.

Sorry you BIG guys and gals, but you will find our countries are very expensive places for you to invest. We put our families, our neighborhoods and our lives first.

Proselytiser -> FarmerDave , 1 Nov 2018 07:30
That would be fantastic.

However - and it's a big however - there is a very real danger that at the next election the libs will again win by default due to the fact that many traditional labour voters are defecting to the greens instead. Sadly, LNP supporters are a lot less likely to vote green. Our best hope is to wipe the LNP out at the next election by voting labour, and then at the election after that establishing the greens in opposition. It is unfortunatly unlikely to happen at the next election....and I just hope that voters in certain seats understand that by voting for the greens they might be in fact unwittingly handing the reins back to the least green party of all: the LNP.

childofmine , 1 Nov 2018 04:04
Neoliberalism may be dead but the former Trotskyites who invented it are still alive and they still have an agenda.
Idiotgods , 1 Nov 2018 03:25
Neo Liberalism was a project cooked up back in the late 1970s by the Capital owning classes & enacted by successive govts of "right" or "left" ever since. They feared the growing power of the working & middle classes which they felt threatened their own power & wealth. So they set out to destroy any ability of the working class to organise & to gut the middle class.

Key to this was decoupling wages from productivity & forcing us all into debt peonage. Deregulation of the financial markets & the globalization of capital markets, disastorous multilateral trade deals & off shoring jobs, slashing state social programmes, Union busting laws all part of the plan. All covered with a lie that we live in meritocracies & the "best & brightest" are in charge. The result has been evermore riches funneled to the wealthiest few percent & a wealth gap bigger than that of the gilded age

Phalaris -> fabfreddy , 1 Nov 2018 03:18
The essential infrastructure to ensure a base level quality of life for all. Really it's not difficult. What are you afraid of?
Phalaris , 1 Nov 2018 03:15
The majority press are so organised around the idea that neoliberalism in the sense captured economically and to some extent socially as construed in the article above; as normal and natural that nothing can be done. As the system folds we see in its place Brexit, neoconservatism, Trump.

This is not new found freedom or Liberatarianism but a post liberal world where decency and open mindedness and open nuanced debate take a a back seat to populism and demagoguery.

Citizen0 , 1 Nov 2018 00:52
The whole purpose of Anglophone liberal democracy has been twofold: 1. to establish and protect private property rights and 2. TO guarantee some individual liberties. Guess who benefits from the enshrinement of private property rights as absolute? Big owners, and you know who they are. ... Individual tights are just not that sacred, summon the latest bogeyman, and they can be shrunken or tossed.
Alan Ritchie , 31 Oct 2018 22:24
Neoliberalism, the economic stablemate of big religion's Prosperity Evangelism cult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology . Dual streams of bull shit to confuse the citizens while the Country's immense wealth is stolen.
PaulC_Fitzroy -> Bearmuchly , 31 Oct 2018 22:19
I certainly agree with you.

It seems there's been a turning point recently though in the ideas of neoliberalism, as pointed out by Denniss that suddenly it's okay for all and sundry to talk about nationalising industries and infrastructure. It will probably take a couple of decades to turn things around in practical ways. And there are surely plenty of powerful supporters of the ideas of neoliberalism still around.

HonestQuestion , 31 Oct 2018 19:00
Is neo-liberalism really dead or is it wishful thinking?
If neo-liberalism really is on the decline in Australia, all i can say is bravo to Australia, use this opportunity to build a stronger government and regain the terrain that was lost during the TINA (there is no alternative) years.
Here in Canada neo-liberalism is stronger than ever, maybe because of the proximity to the cancerous tumor at the south, so when i read this article, i did it with a bit of skepticism but also with a bit of envy and a bit of hope for the future.
MrTallangatta , 31 Oct 2018 18:58
Neoliberalism is *not* dead, and it is counter-productive to claim that it is. It is clearly the driver of what passes for policy by the LNP government. Just as trickle-down economics remains as the basis of the government's economic actions.
sangela -> mikedow , 31 Oct 2018 18:50
I love it!!
Nintiblue , 31 Oct 2018 18:48
It will look like it's dead when back bone services and infrastructure utilities are returned to public ownership.

Those things are not fit for market style private ownership for a few big reasons:

They are by their nature natural monopolies (so a market private ownership won't work and will rapidly creep up prices of reduced service precisely because they not in a natural market context.

These core services and utilities are mega scale operations beyond a natural market ROI value.

These core sovereign services and utilities, are nation critical to the national economy and political stability. The last thing we want to do is hand that sovereign power over to private control.

PaulMan , 31 Oct 2018 18:47
Australia is a very fortunate country. It enjoys national sovereignty, unshackled by crippling bonds to anything like the neoliberal EU. It is thus able to concentrate on solving its own issues.
StephenO -> ildfluer , 31 Oct 2018 18:47
When The Guardian's editorial staff goes down to Guatamala City, they can stand on a soap box in front of Subway sandwich or McDonalds or Radio Shack.

Europe doesn't do socialism. It's a capitalist system with a high rate of taxes to support a generous social welfare.

sangela -> Matt4720 , 31 Oct 2018 18:46
Jane is too radical and progressive for Warringah...maybe they don't know that?
sangela , 31 Oct 2018 18:45
Great article. Must say that we do have more than one vote per electorate. They're called preference votes. Kerryn Phelps get 23% of the primary PLUS a heap of preferences! But a proportional system would change a whole lot of results
ildfluer -> Matt4720 , 31 Oct 2018 18:41
Yes. But only if she relinquishes her British citizenship in time.
Fred1 -> Alpo88 , 31 Oct 2018 18:38
Firstly we are not in America. America is a basket case and has been since, well, forever.

Secondly the so called "housing crisis" is a simple consequence of a growing population. In the 1950s there were just 8m people in Australia, there 10m in the 1960s and 12m in the 1970s. And, no, neo-liebralism didn't cause the growing population. People having sex and living longer caused the growing population. It is therefore all the more remarkable that we have actually built enough houses to house a population which has doubled in size.

Thirdly, in the last 30 years 1 billion people have been lifted out of poverty. When you talk about huge, unprecedented, un-fucking-believable levels of poverty, super-massive inequality, dissatisfaction (Really? This is now a measure?), unemployment/sub-employment and casualization, collapse (collapse?) of public services, high(er) costs of living.....do you think you're being a little overly dramatic?

Do you really think it all comes to back to one silly economic theory?

Nothing to do with the reality of automation, globalisation, growing populations and the realities of living in 2018 rather than 1978?

Are voters around the world going hard against Neoliberalism? (I note it's now a capitalised term).

In the US they voted for a billionaire who blamed immigrants for people's problems while promising tax and spending cuts.....sounds like an even more extreme version of neo-liberlaism to me.

In Britain they voted for Brexit to....oh that's right....kick out immigrants and burn "red tape".

In Brazil, yep, more neo-liberalism on steroids.

In fact, looking around the world it's actually the far right which are seizing power.

And this is the issue with the obsessive preoccupation with community decline. It feeds directly into the hands of fascism and the far right.

I'm not saying things are perfect. I would prefer to see much more government investment. The only way we'll get that is to educate ourselves about how government finances work so that we're not frightened off by talk of deficits.

However, by laying this all on the door of one rather silly economic theory is to ignore that economics is nothing without human beings. It is human beings who are responsible for all of the good and bad in the world. No theory is going change that. If the world is the way it is it's because humans made it like this.

The "deterioration of the environment"? We did that not neo-liberalism .....

JustInterest , 31 Oct 2018 18:37
In answer to the headline article question, yes WE citizens should collectively strive to think radically, bigger and better than the existing status quo.

PAY CITIZENS TO VOTE!

We must bypass the vested interests and create a new system which encourages active, regular participation in democracy.... lest we wake up one day and realise too late that, by stealth and citizen apathy, the plutocrats and their corporate fascist servants have usurped our nation state, corrupted our law and weakened our institutions, to such a point that our individual rights are permanently crushed.

Change is coming, like it or not. This century - there is great risk to society that advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics and lifespan enhancing genetic engineering will be used by ultra-rich plutocrats to make the vast majority of humanity redundant (within a couple of generations).

Citizens should advocate for DIRECT DEMOCRACY in which citizens are PAID on a per vote per issue basis (subject to verification checks that support the rewarding of effort- citizens should be asked to first demonstrate that they have made effort to obtain sufficient knowledge on a particular topic, prior to being rewarded for their service of voting. Such a process can be opt-in, those who want to be paid, work to do so by learning about the governance issue which is to be voted upon. In this way, a minimum wage can be obtained by direct citizen participation in the governance of communities and our nation). We have the technologies TODAY to undertake open-ledger, smart-phone enabled, digital/postal voting on a per issue basis... which can be funded by EFFECTIVE taxation on large multinational corporations and ultra-wealthy (foreign) shareholders. Citizen will is needed to influence change - the major political parties did not want a Federal ICAC and they certainly will not support paid direct citizen democracy unless voters overwhelming demand it.

Citizens already accept that politicians are paid to vote (and frequently "rewarded" for their "service" to large corporations and wealthy (foreign) shareholders by unethical, corrupt means). Thus, in principle, why can society not collectively accept direct payment to citizens for their individual vote upon an issue? Why do citizens continue to accept archaic systems of democracy which have clearly FAILED to meet the needs of our population in the 21st century?

Citizens are not sufficiently politically engaged in democracy and their civic responsibilities BECAUSE they are not incentivised to do so and because they are economic slaves without the luxury of time to sort through deliberate overload of disinformation, distortion, distraction and deception. Citizens are struggling to obtain objective understanding and to think critically because these crucial functions of democracy are innately discouraged by our existing 20th century economy (that is, slaves are busy support the systems of plutocrats in order that they may live, ants to a queen).

We must advocate for change in the systems of democracy which are failing our communities, our nation, our planet. For too long, plutocrats and their servants have maintained control over economic slaves and the vast majority of the population because citizens have accepted the status quo of being governed by the powerful.

Technology has permanently changed our species. We must all collectively act before innate human greed, lust for power and fear of loss of control (by the wealthy few) lead the majority on an irrational path toward destruction - using the very technologies which helped set us free from the natural world!

JustInterest -> NoSoupforNanna , 31 Oct 2018 18:35
In answer to the headline article question, yes WE citizens should collectively strive to think radically, bigger and better than the existing status quo.
PAY CITIZENS TO VOTE!

We must bypass the vested interests and create a new system which encourages active, regular participation in democracy.... lest we wake up one day and realise too late that, by stealth and citizen apathy, the plutocrats and their corporate fascist servants have usurped our nation state, corrupted our law and weakened our institutions, to such a point that our individual rights are permanently crushed.

Change is coming, like it or not. This century - there is great risk to society that advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics and lifespan enhancing genetic engineering will be used by ultra-rich plutocrats to make the vast majority of humanity redundant (within a couple of generations).

Citizens should advocate for DIRECT DEMOCRACY in which citizens are PAID on a per vote per issue basis (subject to verification checks that support the rewarding of effort- citizens should be asked to first demonstrate that they have made effort to obtain sufficient knowledge on a particular topic, prior to being rewarded for their service of voting. Such a process can be opt-in, those who want to be paid, work to do so by learning about the governance issue which is to be voted upon. In this way, a minimum wage can be obtained by direct citizen participation in the governance of communities and our nation). We have the technologies TODAY to undertake open-ledger, smart-phone enabled, digital/postal voting on a per issue basis... which can be funded by EFFECTIVE taxation on large multinational corporations and ultra-wealthy (foreign) shareholders. Citizen will is needed to influence change - the major political parties did not want a Federal ICAC and they certainly will not support paid direct citizen democracy unless voters overwhelming demand it.

Citizens already accept that politicians are paid to vote (and frequently "rewarded" for their "service" to large corporations and wealthy (foreign) shareholders by unethical, corrupt means). Thus, in principle, why can society not collectively accept direct payment to citizens for their individual vote upon an issue? Why do citizens continue to accept archaic systems of democracy which have clearly FAILED to meet the needs of our population in the 21st century?

Citizens are not sufficiently politically engaged in democracy and their civic responsibilities BECAUSE they are not incentivised to do so and because they are economic slaves without the luxury of time to sort through deliberate overload of disinformation, distortion, distraction and deception. Citizens are struggling to obtain objective understanding and to think critically because these crucial functions of democracy are innately discouraged by our existing 20th century economy (that is, slaves are busy support the systems of plutocrats in order that they may live, ants to a queen).

We must advocate for change in the systems of democracy which are failing our communities, our nation, our planet. For too long, plutocrats and their servants have maintained control over economic slaves and the vast majority of the population because citizens have accepted the status quo of being governed by the powerful.

Technology has permanently changed our species. We must all collectively act before innate human greed, lust for power and fear of loss of control (by the wealthy few) lead the majority on an irrational path toward destruction - using the very technologies which helped set us free from the natural world!

exTen , 31 Oct 2018 17:13
Richard went off the rails in his opening sentence: "The opposite of a neoliberal economic agenda isn't a progressive economic agenda, but democratic re-engagement."

I say this because economically misinformed democratic engagement is a shackle around democracy, at best, if not fatal to democracy. And the biggest and most fundamental misinformation, spouted every bit as much by ALP and Greens as the Libs, is that we must strive for a "sustainable surplus".

As Richard rightly observes, "Neoliberalism taught us that "there is no alternative" to cutting taxes, cutting services and letting the banks treat us as they see fit. But of course not even the Coalition believes that any more." But that doesn't stop them, or Labor, or the Greens from guaranteeing the continuance of the neoliberal cut & privatise mania by insisting that they believe in "budget repair" and "return to surplus" - an insistence which their economically illiterate or misled supporters accept. If you believe in the obviously ridiculous necessity for a currency issuer to run balanced budgets, you are forced into invalid neoliberal thinking, into accepting a false "necessity" for cuts and privatisations, or economy-sedating taxation increases.

Thorlar1 , 31 Oct 2018 08:13
Rumours of neoliberalism's death have been somewhat exaggerated. Its been on life support provided by the LNP since John Howard and there are still a few market fundamentalists lurking in the ranks of the ALP, just waiting for their chance to do New Labor MkII in memory of Paul Keating.

Neoliberalism's lasting legacy will not be the ludicrous economic programs, privatizations and deregulation, those can all be rolled back if some party would grow a spine. The real damage was caused by the aping of the US and UK's cult of individual responsibility, the atomizing effects of neoliberal anti-social policy and demonization of collective action including unionism.

All of which have hastened the atrophy of our democracy.

First things first lets get rid of the neo-liberal national dinosaurs still wallowing in parliament unaware of the mass extinction awaiting them in March next year. At the same time vote in a minority Labor government with enough independent cross benchers, including a preponderance of Greens to keep the bastards honest.

Then just maybe we can start looking at the wider project of repairing Australian society and democracy while we try and reverse the near-decade of damage the LNP have done with their dangerous pro-fossil fuel stance, their insane climate change denial and hypocritical big business friendly economic policies.

Should be a snap!

exTen -> Loco Jack , 31 Oct 2018 08:05
The irony is that it's simple. It's the Heath Robinson contraptions that the economic priesthood for the plutocracy snow us with that are complicated, that turn us off economic thinking because they are impenetrable and make no sense. The simplicity comes from accepting the blinding obvious truth, once you think about it. The federal government is the monopoly issuer of the AUD. The rest of the world are users, not issuers. Its "budgets" are not our budgets. Nothing like them. Kind of the opposite. Its surpluses are the economy's deficits. Its deficits are the economy's surpluses.

[Feb 05, 2019] A good analogy on US policy is Syria

Feb 05, 2019 | www.youtube.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9QOVk0x1Vw

JJL90 , 1 month ago (edited)

The emergency room visits are lower when you have bombed all the emergency rooms :D

So when you stop bombing the hell out of them, they can actually rebuild an emergency room, and visits go up :DDDD

[Feb 03, 2019] Neoliberalism and Christianity

Highly recommended!
Money quote: " neoliberalism is the fight of finance to subdue society at large, and to make the bankers and creditors today in the position that the landlords were under feudalism."
Notable quotes:
"... ... if you take the Bible literally, it's the fight in almost all of the early books of the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, all about the fight over indebtedness and debt cancellation. ..."
"... neoliberalism is the fight of finance to subdue society at large,and to make the bankers and creditors today in the position that the landlords were under feudalism. ..."
"... They call themselves free marketers, but they realize that you cannot have neoliberalism unless you're willing to murder and assassinate everyone who promotes an alternative ..."
"... Just so long as you remember that most of the strongest and most moving condemnations of greed and money in the ancient and (today) western world are also Jewish--i.e. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, the Gospels, Letter of James, etc. ..."
"... The history of Jewish banking after the fall or Rome is inextricable from cultural anti-judaism of Christian west and east and de facto marginalization/ghettoization of Jews from most aspects of social life. The Jewish lending of money on interest to gentiles was both necessary for early mercantilist trade and yet usury was prohibited by the church. So Jewish money lenders were essential to and yet ostracized within European economies for centuries. ..."
"... Now Christianity has itself long given up on the tradition teaching against usury of course. ..."
"... In John, for instance most of the references to what in English is translated as "the Jews" are in Greek clearly references to "the Judaeans"--and especially to the ruling elite among the southern tribe in bed with the Romans. ..."
May 02, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , May 1, 2018 2:27:06 PM | 13

Just finished reading the fascinating Michael Hudson interview I linked to on previous thread; but since we're discussing Jews and their religion in a tangential manner, I think it appropriate to post here since the history Hudson explains is 100% key to the ongoing pain us humans feel and inflict. My apologies in advance, but it will take this long excerpt to explain what I mean:

"Tribes: When does the concept of a general debt cancellation disappear historically?

"Michael: I guess in about the second or third century AD it was downplayed in the Bible. After Jesus died, you had, first of all, St Paul taking over, and basically Christianity was created by one of the most evil men in history, the anti-Semite Cyril of Alexandria. He gained power by murdering his rivals, the Nestorians, by convening a congress of bishops and killing his enemies. Cyril was really the Stalin figure of Christianity, killing everybody who was an enemy, organizing pogroms against the Jews in Alexandria where he ruled.

"It was Cyril that really introduced into Christianity the idea of the Trinity. That's what the whole fight was about in the third and fourth centuries AD. Was Jesus a human, was he a god? And essentially you had the Isis-Osiris figure from Egypt, put into Christianity. The Christians were still trying to drive the Jews out of Christianity. And Cyril knew the one thing the Jewish population was not going to accept would be the Isis figure and the Mariolatry that the church became. And as soon as the Christian church became the establishment rulership church, the last thing it wanted in the West was debt cancellation.

"You had a continuation of the original Christianity in the Greek Orthodox Church, or the Orthodox Church, all the way through Byzantium. And in my book And Forgive Them Their Debts, the last two chapters are on the Byzantine echo of the original debt cancellations, where one ruler after another would cancel the debts. And they gave very explicit reason for it: if we don't cancel the debts, we're not going to be able to field an army, we're not going to be able to collect taxes, because the oligarchy is going to take over. They were very explicit, with references to the Bible, references to the jubilee year. So you had Christianity survive in the Byzantine Empire. But in the West it ended in Margaret Thatcher. And Father Coughlin.

"Tribes: He was the '30s figure here in the States.

"Michael: Yes: anti-Semite, right-wing, pro-war, anti-labor. So the irony is that you have the people who call themselves fundamentalist Christians being against everything that Jesus was fighting for, and everything that original Christianity was all about."

Hudson says debt forgiveness was one of the central tenets of Judaism: " ... if you take the Bible literally, it's the fight in almost all of the early books of the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, all about the fight over indebtedness and debt cancellation. "

Looks like I'll be purchasing Hudson's book as he's essentially unveiling a whole new, potentially revolutionary, historical interpretation.

psychohistorian , May 1, 2018 3:31:50 PM | 26
@ karlof1 with the Michale Hudson link....thanks!!

Here is the quote that I really like from that interview
"
Michael: No. You asked what is the fight about? The fight is whether the state will be taken over, essentially to be an extension of Wall Street if you do not have government planning. Every economy is planned. Ever since the Neolithic (era), you've had to have (a form of) planning. If you don't have a public authority doing the planning, then the financial authority becomes the planners. So globalism is in the financial interest –Wall Street and the City of London, doing the planning, not governments. They will do the planning in their own interest. So neoliberalism is the fight of finance to subdue society at large,and to make the bankers and creditors today in the position that the landlords were under feudalism.
"

karlof1, please email me as I would like to read the book as well and maybe we can share a copy.

And yes, it is relevant to Netanyahoo and his ongoing passel of lies because humanity has been told and been living these lives for centuries...it is time to stop this shit and grow up/evolve

james , May 1, 2018 10:30:01 PM | 96
@13 / 78 karlof1... thanks very much for the links to michael hudson, alastair crooke and the bruno maraces articles...

they were all good for different reasons, but although hudson is being criticized for glossing over some of his talking points, i think the main thrust of his article is very worthwhile for others to read! the quote to end his article is quite good "The question is, who do you want to run the economy? The 1% and the financial sector, or the 99% through politics? The fight has to be in the political sphere, because there's no other sphere that the financial interests cannot crush you on."

it seems to me that the usa has worked hard to bad mouth or get rid of government and the concept of government being involved in anything.. of course everything has to be run by a 'private corp' - ie corporations must run everything.. they call them oligarchs when talking about russia, lol - but they are corporations when they are in the usa.. slight rant..

another quote i especially liked from hudson.. " They call themselves free marketers, but they realize that you cannot have neoliberalism unless you're willing to murder and assassinate everyone who promotes an alternative ." that sounds about right...

@ 84 juliania.. aside from your comments on hudsons characterization of st paul "the anti-Semite Cyril of Alexandria" further down hudson basically does the same with father coughlin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin.. he gets the anti-semite tag as well.. i don't know much about either characters, so it's mostly greek to me, but i do find some of hudsons views especially appealing - debt forgiveness being central to the whole article as i read it...

it is interesting my own view on how money is so central to the world and how often times I am incapable of avoiding the observation of the disproportionate number of Jewish people in banking.. I guess that makes me anti-semite too, but i don't think of myself that way.. I think the obsession with money is killing the planet.. I don't care who is responsible for keeping it going, it is killing us...

WJ | May 1, 2018 10:48:58 PM | 100

James @96,

Just so long as you remember that most of the strongest and most moving condemnations of greed and money in the ancient and (today) western world are also Jewish--i.e. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, the Gospels, Letter of James, etc.

The history of Jewish banking after the fall or Rome is inextricable from cultural anti-judaism of Christian west and east and de facto marginalization/ghettoization of Jews from most aspects of social life. The Jewish lending of money on interest to gentiles was both necessary for early mercantilist trade and yet usury was prohibited by the church. So Jewish money lenders were essential to and yet ostracized within European economies for centuries.

Now Christianity has itself long given up on the tradition teaching against usury of course.

WJ , May 1, 2018 8:23:40 PM | 88
Juliana @84,

I too greatly admire the work of Hudson but he consistently errs and oversimplifies whenever discussing the beliefs of and the development of beliefs among preNicene followers of the way (as Acts puts is) or Christians (as they came to be known in Antioch within roughly eight or nine decades after Jesus' death.) Palestinian Judaism in the time of Jesus was much more variegated than scholars even twenty years ago had recognized. The gradual reception and interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls in tandem with renewed research into Phili of Alexandria, the Essenes, the so-called Sons of Zadok, contemporary Galilean zealot movements styles after the earlier Maccabean resistance, the apocalyptism of post exilic texts like Daniel and (presumably) parts of Enoch--all paint a picture of a highly diverse group of alternatives to the state-Church once known as Second Temple Judaism that has been mistaken as undisputed Jewish "orthodoxy" since the advent of historical criticism.

The Gospel of John, for example, which dates from betweeen 80-120 and is the record of a much earlier oral tradition, is already explicitly binitarian, and possibly already trinitarian depending on how one understands the relationship between the Spirit or Advocate and the Son. (Most ante-Nicene Christians understood the Spirit to be *Christ's* own spirit in distributed form, and they did so by appeal to a well-developed but still largely under recognized strand in Jewish angelology.)

The "theological" development of Christianity occurred much sooner that it has been thought because it emerged from an already highly theologized strand or strands of Jewish teaching that, like Christianity itself, privileged the Abrahamic covenant over the Mosaic Law, the testament of grace over that of works, and the universal scope of revelation and salvation as opposed to any political or ethnic reading of the "Kingdom."

None of these groups were part of the ruling class of Judaean priests and levites and their hangers on the Pharisees.

In John, for instance most of the references to what in English is translated as "the Jews" are in Greek clearly references to "the Judaeans"--and especially to the ruling elite among the southern tribe in bed with the Romans.

So the anti-Judaism/Semiti of John's Gispel largely rests on a mistranslation. In any event, everything is much more complex than Hudson makes it out to be. Christian economic radicalism is alive and well in the thought of Gregory of Nysa and Basil the Great, who also happened to be Cappadocian fathers highly influential in the development of "orthodox" Trinitarianism in the fourth century.

I still think that Hudson's big picture critique of the direction later Christianity took is helpful and necessary, but this doesn't change the fact that he simplifies the origins, development, and arguably devolution of this movement whenever he tries to get specific. It is a worthwhile danger given the quality of his work in historical economics, but still one has to be aware of.

[Jan 29, 2019] These 2020 hopefuls are courting Wall Street. Don t be fooled by their progressive veneer by Bhaskar Sunkara

Highly recommended!
Taming of financial oligarchy and restoration of the job market at the expense of outsourcing and offshoring is required in the USA and gradually getting support. At least a return to key elements of the New Deal should be in the cards. But Clinton wing of Dems is beong redemption. They are Wall Street puddles. all of the them.
Issues like Medicare for All, Free College, Restoring Glass Steagall, Ending Citizen's United/Campaign finance reform, federal jobs guarantee, criminal justice reform, all poll extremely well among the american populace
If even such a neoliberal pro globalization, corporations controlled media source as Guardian views centrist neoliberal Democrats like Booker unelectable, the situation in the next elections might be interesting.
Notable quotes:
"... Bhaskar Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist and the founding editor of Jacobin ..."
"... 2016 has shown that the Democratic party is beyond redemption. When it comes down to the choice of either win with a platform that may impact the wealth and power of their owners, or losing, they will always choose the latter, and continue as useful (and well paid) idiots in the charade presented as US democracy. ..."
Jan 15, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

In their rhetoric and policy advocacy, this trio has been steadily moving to the left to keep pace with a leftward-moving Democratic party. Booker , Harris and Gillibrand know that voters demand action and are more supportive than ever of Medicare for All and universal childcare.
Gillibrand, long considered a moderate, has even gone as far as to endorse abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and, along with Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders' single-payer healthcare bill. Harris has also backed universal healthcare and free college tuition for most Americans.

But outward appearances aren't everything. Booker, Harris and Gillibrand have been making a very different pitch of late -- on Wall Street. According to CNBC , all three potential candidates have been reaching out to financial executives lately, including Blackstone's Jonathan Gray, Robert Wolf from 32 Advisors and the Centerbridge Partners founder Mark Gallogly.

Wall Street, after all, played an important role getting the senators where they are today. During his 2014 Senate run, in which just 7% of his contributions came from small donors, Booker raised $2.2m from the securities and investment industry. Harris and Gillibrand weren't far behind in 2018, and even the progressive Democrat Sherrod Brown has solicited donations from Gallogly and other powerful executives.

When CNBC's story about Gillibrand personally working the phones to woo Wall Street executives came out, her team responded defensively, noting her support for financial regulation and promising that if she did run she would take "no corporate Pac money". But what's most telling isn't that Gillibrand and others want Wall Street's money, it's that they want the blessings of financial CEOs. Even if she doesn't take their contributions, she's signaling that she's just playing politics with populist rhetoric. That will allow capitalists to focus their attention on candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who have shown a real willingness to abandon the traditional coziness of the Democratic party with the finance, insurance and real estate industries.

Gillibrand and others are behaving perfectly rationally. The last presidential election cost $6.6bn -- advertising, staff and conventions are expensive. But even more important than that, they know that while leftwing stances might help win Democratic primaries, the path of least resistance in the general election is capitulation to the big forces of capital that run this country. Those elites might allow some progressive tinkering on the margins, but nothing that challenges the inequities that keep them wealthy and their victims weak.

Big business is likely to bet heavily on the Democratic party in 2020, maybe even more so than it did in 2016. In normal circumstances, the Democratic party is the second-favorite party of capital; with an erratic Trump around, it is often the first.

The American ruling class has a nice hustle going with elections. We don't have a labor-backed social democratic party that could create barriers to avoid capture by monied interests. It's telling that when asked about the former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper's recent chats with Wall Street political financiers, a staff member told CNBC: "We meet with a wide range of donors with shared values across sectors."

Plenty of Democratic leaders believe in the neoliberal growth model. Many have gotten personally wealthy off of it. Others think there is no alternative to allying with finance and then trying to create progressive social policy on the margins. But with sentiments like that, it doesn't take fake news to convince working-class Americans that Democrats don't really have their interests at heart.

Of course, the Democratic party isn't a monolith. But the insurgency waged by newly elected representatives such as the democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ro Khanna and others is still in its infancy. At this stage, it isn't going to scare capital away from the Democratic party, it's going to make Wall Street invest more heavily to maintain its stake in it.

Men like Mark Gallogly know who their real enemy is: more than anyone else, the establishment is wary of Bernie Sanders . It seems likely that he will run for president, but he's been dismissed as a 2020 frontrunner despite his high favorability rates, name recognition, small-donor fundraising ability, appeal to independent voters, and his team's experience running a competitive national campaign. As 2019 goes on, that dismissal will morph into all-out war.

Wall Street isn't afraid of corporate Democrats gaining power. It's afraid of the Democrats who will take them on -- and those, unfortunately, are few and far between.

Bhaskar Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist and the founding editor of Jacobin

memo10 -> Karen Maddening , 15 Jan 2019 14:05

Just like universal health care, let's give up, it's too hard, we're not winners, we're not number one or problem solvers and besides, someone at some time for some reason might get something that someone else might not get regardless if that someone else needs it. Let's go with the Berners who seem to believe there will never be none so pure enough to become president.

The corporate state does not cast the votes. The public does.

Leaning farther to the left on issues like universal healthcare and foreign wars would be agreeing with the public. Not only the progressive public, but the GENERAL public. The big money donors are the ONLY force against the Democrats resisting these things.

mp66 , 15 Jan 2019 13:38
2016 has shown that the Democratic party is beyond redemption. When it comes down to the choice of either win with a platform that may impact the wealth and power of their owners, or losing, they will always choose the latter, and continue as useful (and well paid) idiots in the charade presented as US democracy.
Pete Healey , 15 Jan 2019 13:31
Bernie's challenge will "morph into all-out war". "Wall Street isn't afraid of corporate Democrats", blah, blah, blah. But we're going to continue to play along? Why? Oh yeah, Bhaskar Sunkara will have us believe "There is no alternative". Remember TINA? Give it up, man, just give it up.
yayUSA , 15 Jan 2019 13:17
Tulsi entering is big news.
Danexmachina , 15 Jan 2019 12:31
One dollar, one vote.
If you want Change, keep it in your pocket.
We can't turn this sinking ship around unless we know what direction it's going. So far, that direction is just delivering money to private islands.
Democrats have a lot of talk, but they still want to drive the nice cars and sell the same crapft that the Republicans are.
Taxing the rich only works when you worship the rich in the first place.
Tim Cahill , 15 Jan 2019 12:00
Election financing is the single root cause for our democracy's failure. Period.

I really don't care too much about the mouthing of progressive platitudes from any 2020 Dem Prez candidate. The only ones that will be worth voting for are the ones that sign onto Sanders' (or similar) legislation that calls for a Constitutional amendment that allows federal and state governments to limit campaign contributions.

And past committee votes to prevent amendment legislation from getting to a floor vote - as well as missed co-sponsorship opportunities - should be interesting history for all the candidates to explain.

Campaign financing is what keeps scum entrenched (because primary challengers can't overcome the streams of bribes from those wonderful people exercising their 'free speech' "rights" to keep their puppet in govt) and prevents any challenges to the corporate establishment who serve the same rich masters.

Lenny Dirges -> Vintage59 , 15 Jan 2019 11:55
Lol, Social Security, Medicare, unemployement protections, so many of the things you mentioned, and so much more, were from the PROGRESSIVE New Deal, which managed to implement this slew of changes in 5 years! 5 years! You can't criticize "progressives" in one sentence and then use their accomplishments to support your argument. Today, the New Deal would be considered too far left by most so called "pragmatic liberals." I assume you are getting fully behind the proposed "Green New Deal" then, right?
memo10 -> L C , 15 Jan 2019 11:54

Vintage59 pointed out lots of things people have changed. Here's an exhaustive list of the legislation passed by people who didn't get elected but were more progressive than the people who did:

There is also a steadily growing list of Democrats who did worse in elections than a hypothetical Democratic candidate had been projected to do.

The party can either continue being GOP-Lite or it can start winning elections. It can't do both.

memo10 -> 2miners , 15 Jan 2019 11:49

Forget it Bernie and Co. -with the women haters in his ranks and his apparent tepid support from African Americans he's way off the pace

Way off the pace compared to who? Trump?

memo10 -> IamDolf , 15 Jan 2019 11:44

Nobody is going to get elected on a far left platform. Not in the USA and not anywhere. That's just a fact. And everybody is going to need $$$ in the campaign. Of course candidates are going to suck up to Wall street and business in general.
And we would have been a thousand percent better off with HRC in the white house than we are now with the Trumpostor.

We don't need a candidate with far-left platform, we need one that is left-leaning at all. HRC and her next generation of clones are mild Republicans.

memo10 -> xxxaaaxxx , 15 Jan 2019 11:40

Those who want to push the Democrats to the left in order to win perhaps need to stop talking to each other and talk to people who live outside of LA and NY. If you stay within your bubble it seems the whole world thinks like you.
How old will Sanders be in 2020?

The people (outside the coasts) lean to the left some big issues. Medicare for all. Foreign wars. etc.

A sane person might ask why in the hell the left-side party is leaning farther to the right than the general public.

memo10 -> Peter Krall , 15 Jan 2019 11:17

Sanders is a dinosaur. If there is a reason for Wall Street to be wary of him then it is that the mentally challenged orange guy may win another term if the Democrats run with Sanders.

Hopefully, Sanders will understand what many of his supporters do not want to see: At some time age becomes a problem. If the Democrats decide to move to the left rather than pursuing a pragmatic centrist approach, Ocasio-Cortez might be an option. If they opt for the centrist alternative, it might be Harris or Gillibrand. Or, in both cases, a surprise candidate. But Sanders' time is over, just as Biden's Bloomberg's.

It's true, but Trump is such a clusterfuck that an 80yo president is still be a better situation. Many countries have had rulers in their 80s at one time or another.

Trump is clearly showing early-stage dementia now. Compare footage of him 10+ years ago to anything within the last 6-12 months and it's obvious. The stress levels of being the POTUS + blackmailed by Putin + investigations bearing down on him . . . it's wearing him down fast.

L C -> HobbesianWorlds , 15 Jan 2019 11:15
Anti-trust would be a very good place to start with.

Universal healthcare is a lot harder than you seem to think. I'd love it, but getting there means putting so many people out of work, it'll be a massive political challenge, even if corporations have no influence. Progressives might be better off focusing on how to ensure the existing system works better and Medicaid can slowly expand to fill the universal roll in the future.

Vintage59 -> BaronVonAmericano , 15 Jan 2019 11:05
Wall Street is a casino. The House never loses.
Vintage59 -> Lenny Dirges , 15 Jan 2019 11:02
Everything changes constantly.

Where has offering candidates who actually have a chance to win gotten us? Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the ADA, Title 9, Social Security, and more. None of these exist without constant changes. All took years to pass against heavy opposition. None went far enough. All were improvements.

The list of wrongheaded things that were also passed is longer but thinking nothing changes because it takes time is faulty logic.

ytram -> ChesBay , 15 Jan 2019 10:30
Our capitalist predators are still alive and well. The finance, insurance, and real estate
organizations are the worst predators in the USA.
They will eat your babies if you let them.

[Jan 29, 2019] A State of Neoliberalism by Kevin "Rashid" Johnson (New African Black Panther Party)

Highly recommended!
References omitted
Notable quotes:
"... "number of refugees and displaced persons increased dramatically over the decade, doubling from 2007 to 2015, to approximately 60 million people. There are nine countries with more than 10 per cent of their population classified as refugees or displaced persons with Somalia and South Sudan having more than 20 per cent of their population displaced and Syria with over 60 per cent displaced." ..."
"... In The Road to Serfdom ..."
"... The Road to Serfdom ..."
"... When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism -- the Mont Pelerin Society -- it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations ..."
"... Masters of the Universe ..."
"... As an ideology, neoliberalism borrows heavily from Trotskyism. "One can view neoliberalism as Trotskyism refashioned for elite ..."
"... proletarians of all countries unite ..."
"... neoliberal elites of all countries unite. ..."
"... Today Trotskyism no more confines itself to "informing" the bourgeoisie. Today Trotskyism is the center and the rallying point for the enemies of the Soviet Union, of the proletarian revolution in capitalist countries, of the Communist International. Trotskyism is trying not only to disintegrate the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union, but also to disintegrate the forces that make for the dictatorship of the proletariat the world over. ..."
"... The Origins and Doctrine of Fascism ..."
"... Donald Trump is a visible product of this culture, but clearly is not the choice of the elite ruling class to serve as their "front man" for President. Rather, his role seems to have been to polarize the electorate in such a way as to assure Hillary Clinton the election, just as Bernie Sanders played a role of mobilizing the left-neoliberal camp and then sheep-dogging it into Hillary's camp. ..."
"... Bernie Sanders is this election's Democratic sheepdog. The sheepdog is a card the Democratic party plays every presidential primary season when there's no White House Democrat running for re-election. ..."
"... "An extraordinary feature of the U.S. electoral process is that the two dominant parties collude to dictate – via their own bipartisan "commission" – who is allowed to participate in the officially recognized presidential debates. Needless to say, the two parties set impossible barriers to the participation of any candidates other than their own . Most potential voters are thereby prevented from acquainting themselves with alternatives to the dominant consensus. ..."
"... Citizens United ..."
"... as deep in the shadows as possible ..."
"... Former president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday on the nationally syndicated radio show the Thom Hartmann Program that the United States is now an "oligarchy" in which "unlimited political bribery" has created "a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | rashidmod.com

The fundamental difference between socialism and capitalism is not simply a question of private vs. state ownership of the means of production but of the nature of the state itself. This is because the state is an instrument of class dictatorship. In this epoch, the state will be either a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or a dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat has only one rationale for its existence which is to transform class society into classless society and the state into a non-state that will wither away as classless society is achieved. However, there is a great danger of the dictatorship of the proletariat transforming back into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and thereby restoring capitalism, so long as classes continue to exist under socialism.

Class struggle intensifies under socialism, and will until the basis of class divisions no longer continues to be present. Communism is necessarily a global system, stateless and classless and without national boundaries. At this stage in the evolution of capitalist-imperialism, independent national states have ceased to exist as the global capitalist system becomes ever more hegemonic. In this period the World Proletarian Socialist Revolution cannot simply liberate one country at a time and meanwhile peacefully co-exist with the global capitalist system. Rather we must wage revolution globally to defeat capitalist-imperialism and achieve a global dictatorship of the proletariat. A system of global revolutionary intercommunalism would be the logical form for this proletarian dictatorship.

The U.S. Military is deployed globally with bases in the majority of countries and "partnership" arrangements to train and advise most of the world's armed forces. The U.S. is the dominant force in NATO and of the United Nations' armed forces. A recent report by the Institute for Economics and Peace found a mere ten nations on the planet are not at war and completely free from conflict. The report cites an historic 10-year deterioration in world peace, with the "number of refugees and displaced persons increased dramatically over the decade, doubling from 2007 to 2015, to approximately 60 million people. There are nine countries with more than 10 per cent of their population classified as refugees or displaced persons with Somalia and South Sudan having more than 20 per cent of their population displaced and Syria with over 60 per cent displaced." [1] According to the report, the United States spends an outrageously high percentage of the globe's military expenditures -- 38 percent -- while the next largest military spender, China, accounted for considerably less, 10 percent of the global share. [2]

The principle contradiction in the world today is between the need of the monopoly capitalist ruling class to consolidate its global hegemony and the chaos and anarchy (including the threat of a Third World War) it is unleashing by attempting to do so. The so-called "War on Terrorism" is but a front for capitalist-imperialism's aggressive attempts to consolidate its global bourgeois dictatorship and subordinate every country to its hegemonic control. The essence of communism is community, and capitalist-imperialism is the antithesis of community, particularly under neo-liberalism, which is the final stage of imperialism. As George Monbiot explained:

"The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938 . Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the gradual development of Britain's welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.

" In The Road to Serfdom , published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control . Like Mises's book Bureaucracy , The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism -- the Mont Pelerin Society -- it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations .

"With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the Universe as "a kind of neoliberal International": a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. The movement's rich backers funded a series of think tanks which would refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.

"As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek's view that governments should regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way, among American apostles such as Milton Friedman, to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for efficiency." [3]

As an ideology, neoliberalism borrows heavily from Trotskyism. "One can view neoliberalism as Trotskyism refashioned for elite . " [4] Instead of " proletarians of all countries unite " we have [the] slogan " neoliberal elites of all countries unite. " [5] Stalin purged Trotsky, but some of his disciples made the transition to become founding intellectuals of neoliberal ideology, and in particular its "neo-conservative" wing. "Neoliberalism is also an example of emergence of ideologies, not from their persuasive power or inner logic, but from the private interests of the ruling elite. Political pressure and money created the situation in which intellectually bankrupt ideas could prevail much like Catholicism prevailed during Dark Ages in Europe. In a way, this is return to Dark Ages on a new level." [6]

Trotsky's elitism and contempt for the masses led naturally to neoliberalism. As M.J. Olgin pointed out: Today Trotskyism no more confines itself to "informing" the bourgeoisie. Today Trotskyism is the center and the rallying point for the enemies of the Soviet Union, of the proletarian revolution in capitalist countries, of the Communist International. Trotskyism is trying not only to disintegrate the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union, but also to disintegrate the forces that make for the dictatorship of the proletariat the world over. [7]

Neoliberalism also borrows from the ideology of fascism. As Giovanni Gentile, "The Philosopher of Fascism" expressed in a quote often attributed to Mussolini: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism , since it is the merger of state and corporate power." Gentile also stated in The Origins and Doctrine of Fascism , that "mankind only progresses through division, and progress is achieved through the clash and victory of one side over another." [8]

Neoliberalism is a new form of corporatism based on the ideology of market fundamentalism, dominance of finance and cult of rich ("greed is good") instead of the ideology on racial or national superiority typical for classic corporatism. Actually, some elements of the idea of "national superiority" were preserved in a form superiority of "corporate management" and top speculators over other people. In a way, neoliberalism considers bankers and corporations top management to be a new Aryan race. As it relies on financial mechanisms and banks instead of brute force of subduing people the practice of neoliberalism outside of the G7 is also called neocolonialism. Neoliberal practice within G7 is called casino capitalism, an apt term that underscore [s] the role of finance and stock exchange in this new social order. Neoliberalism is an example of emergence of ideologies not from their persuasive power or inner logic, but from the private interests of ruling elite. Political pressure and money created the situation in which intellectually bankrupt ideas could prevail .

Neoliberalism is not a collection of theories meant to improve the economy. Instead, it should be understood as a class strategy designed to redistribute wealth upward toward an increasingly narrow fraction of population (top 1%). It is the Marxist idea of "class struggle" turned on its head and converted into a perverted "revolt of the elite," unsatisfied with the peace of the pie it is getting from the society. While previously excessive greed was morally condemned, neoliberalism employed a slick trick of adopting "reverse," Nietzschean Ubermench morality in bastartized form propagated in the USA under the name of Randism. [9]

This neoliberal transformation of the society into a top 1% (or, more correctly, 0.01%) "have and have more" and "the rest" undermined and exploited by financial oligarchy with near complete indifference to what happens with the most unprotected lower quintile of the population. The neoliberal reformers don't care about failures and contradictions of the economic system which drive the majority of country population into abject poverty, as it happened in Russia. Nor do they care about their actions such as blowing financial bubbles, like in the USA in 2008 can move national economics toward disaster. They have a somewhat childish, simplistic "greed is good" mentality: they just want to have their (as large as possible) piece of economic pie fast and everything else be damned. In a way, they are criminals and neoliberalism is a highly criminogenic creed, but it tried to conceal the racket and plunder it inflicts of the societies under the dense smoke screen of "free market" newspeak.

That means that in most countries neoliberalism is an unstable social order as plunder can't continue indefinitely. It was partially reversed in Chile, Russia, and several other countries. It was never fully adopted in northern Europe.

One can see an example of this smoke screen in Thatcher's dictum of neoliberalism: "There is no such thing as society. There are only individuals and families." In foreign policy neoliberalism behaves like brutal imperialism which subdue countries either by debt slavery or direct military intervention. In a neoliberal view the world consist of four concentric cycles which in order of diminishing importance are .

Finance is accepted as the most important institution of the civilization which should govern all other spheres of life. It is clear that such a one-dimensional view is wrong, but neoliberals like communists before them have a keen sense of mission and made its "long march through the institutions" and changed the way Americans think (Using the four "M" strategy -- money, media, marketing, and management)

A well-oiled machine of foundations, lobbies, think-tanks, economic departments of major universities, publications, political cadres, lawyers and activist organizations slowly and strategically took over nation after nation. A broad alliance of neo-liberals, neo-conservatives and the religious right successfully manufactured a new common sense, assaulted Enlightenment values and formed a new elite, the top layer of society, where this "greed is good" culture is created and legitimized. [10]

Donald Trump is a visible product of this culture, but clearly is not the choice of the elite ruling class to serve as their "front man" for President. Rather, his role seems to have been to polarize the electorate in such a way as to assure Hillary Clinton the election, just as Bernie Sanders played a role of mobilizing the left-neoliberal camp and then sheep-dogging it into Hillary's camp. As Bruce A. Dixon explained:

" Bernie Sanders is this election's Democratic sheepdog. The sheepdog is a card the Democratic party plays every presidential primary season when there's no White House Democrat running for re-election. The sheepdog is a presidential candidate running ostensibly to the left of the establishment Democrat to whom the billionaires will award the nomination. Sheepdogs are herders, and the sheepdog candidate is charged with herding activists and voters back into the Democratic fold who might otherwise drift leftward and outside of the Democratic party, either staying home or trying to build something outside the two-party box." [11]

Once you realize what the principle contradiction in the world is, and how the game of bourgeois "democracy" is played, the current election become as predictable and blatantly scripted as professional wrestling. As Victor Wallace explained:

"An extraordinary feature of the U.S. electoral process is that the two dominant parties collude to dictate – via their own bipartisan "commission" – who is allowed to participate in the officially recognized presidential debates. Needless to say, the two parties set impossible barriers to the participation of any candidates other than their own . Most potential voters are thereby prevented from acquainting themselves with alternatives to the dominant consensus.

"This practice has taken on glaring proportions in the 2016 campaign, which has been marked by justified public distrust of both the dominant-party tickets. Preventing election-theft would initially require breaking up the bipartisan stranglehold over who can access the tens of millions of voters.

"Another distinctive U.S. trait is the absence of any constitutional guarantee of the right to vote. Instead, a multiplicity of state laws govern voter-eligibility, as well as ballot-access. A few states set ballot-access requirements so high as to effectively disqualify their residents from supporting otherwise viable national candidacies. As for voter-eligibility, it is deliberately narrowed through the time-honored practice of using "states' rights" to impose racist agendas. Most states deny voting rights to ex-convicts, a practice that currently disenfranchises some 6 million citizens, disproportionately from communities of color. More recently, targeting the same constituencies, many states have passed onerous and unnecessary voter-ID laws.

"The role of money in filtering out viable candidacies is well known. It was reinforced by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision of 2010, which opened the gate to unlimited corporate contributions.

"The priorities of corporate media point in a similar direction. Even apart from their taste for campaign-advertising, their orientation toward celebrity and sensationalism prompts them to give far more air-time to well known figures – the more outrageous, the better – than to even the most viable candidates who present serious alternatives. Trump's candidacy was thus "made" by the media, even as they kept the Sanders challenge to Clinton as deep in the shadows as possible ." [12]

Moreover, the media, which in the U.S. is 90% owned by just six mega-corporations, [13] cooperates closely with the dominant establishment of the two parties in framing the questions that are posed in the debates. And they explicitly maintain the fiction that the "commission" running the debates is "non-partisan" when in fact it is bipartisan. [14]

"Turning finally to the voting process itself, the longest-running scandal is the holding of elections on a workday. In recent years, the resulting inconvenience has been partially offset by the institution of early voting, which however has the disadvantage of facilitating premature choices and of being subject to varied and volatile rules set by state legislatures.

"The actual casting of votes on Election Day is further subject to a number of possible abuses. These include: 1) insufficient polling places in poor neighborhoods, sometimes resulting in waiting periods so long that individuals no longer have the time to vote; 2) the sometimes aggressive challenging of voters' eligibility by interested parties; 3) the use of provisional ballots which may easily end up not being counted; and 4), perhaps most significantly, the increasingly complete reliance on computerized voting, which allows for manipulation of the results (via "proprietary" programs) in a manner that cannot be detected. (The probability of such manipulation – based on discrepancies between exit-polls and official tallies – was documented by Marc Crispin Miller in his book on the 2004 election.

"The corporate media add a final abuse in their rush – in presidential races – to announce results in some states before the voting process has been completed throughout the country." [15]

Despite multiple releases of hacked e-mails by WikiLeaks revealing the whole process in detail, it seems to have little effect on the masses or on the game. The most recent batch come from Obama's personal e-mail account and reveal that the Bush administration contacted the future president multiple times before the election in 2008, secretly organizing the transition of power. In one e-mail President Bush states:

" We are now at the point of deciding how to staff economic policy during the transition, who should be the point of contact with Treasury and how to blend the transition and campaign economic policy talent.

Normally these decisions could be made after the election, and ideally after the selection of a National Economic Advisor, but, of course, these are not normal times. " [16]

.... ... ...

The illusion of "democracy" is wearing thin:

Former president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday on the nationally syndicated radio show the Thom Hartmann Program that the United States is now an "oligarchy" in which "unlimited political bribery" has created "a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors ." Both Democrats and Republicans, Carter said, "look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves."

Carter was responding to a question from Hartmann about recent Supreme Court decisions on campaign financing like Citizens United .

Transcript:

... ... ...

Kevin "Rashid" Johnson is the Minister of Defense, New African Black Panther Party (Prison chapter)

[Jan 29, 2019] The Religious Fanaticism of Silicon Valley Elites by Paul Ingrassia

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... As our society rushes toward technological ataraxia , it may do us some good to ponder the costs of what has become Silicon Valley's new religious covenant. For the enlightened technocrat and the venture capitalist, God is long dead and buried, democracy sundered, the American dream lost. These beliefs they keep hush-hushed, out of earshot of their consumer base. Best not to run afoul of the millions of middle-class Americans who have developed slavish devotions to their smartphones and tablets and Echo Dots, pouring billions into the coffers of the ballooning technocracy. ..."
"... The problem with Silicon Valley elites is a bit simpler than that. They are all very smart, but their knowledge is limited. They know everything about electronics, computers, and coding, but know little of history, philosophy, or the human condition. Hence they see everything as an engineering problem, something with an optimal, measurable solution. ..."
"... As Tucker Carlson is realizing, Artificial Intelligence eliminating around 55% of all jobs (as the Future of Employment study found) so that wealthy people can have more disposable income to demand other services also provided by robots is madness. This is religious devotion either to defacto anarcho-capitalism, transhumanism, or both. ..."
"... @TheSnark -- valid observation: The Silicon Valley elites " know everything about electronics, computers, and coding, but know little of history, philosophy, or the human condition." Religion is not an engineering issue. Knowing a little about history, philosophy, human condition would help them to understand that humans need something for their soul. And the human soul is not described by boolean "1"s or "0"s ..."
"... Zuckerberg's comment about the Roman Empire is bizzare.to say the least. Augustus didn't create "200 years of peace". The Roman Empire was constantly conquering its neighbors. And of the first 5 Roman Emperors, Augustus was the only one who defintly died of natural causes ..."
"... This time period was an extremely violent time period. The fact that Zuckerberg doesn't realize this, indicates to me that while he is smart at creating a business, he is basically a pseudo-intellectual ..."
Jan 10, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

They've rejected God and tradition in favor of an egoistic radicalism that sees their fellow man as expendable.

As our society rushes toward technological ataraxia , it may do us some good to ponder the costs of what has become Silicon Valley's new religious covenant. For the enlightened technocrat and the venture capitalist, God is long dead and buried, democracy sundered, the American dream lost. These beliefs they keep hush-hushed, out of earshot of their consumer base. Best not to run afoul of the millions of middle-class Americans who have developed slavish devotions to their smartphones and tablets and Echo Dots, pouring billions into the coffers of the ballooning technocracy.

While Silicon Valley types delay giving their own children screens, knowing full well their deleterious effects on cognitive and social development (not to mention their addictive qualities), they hardly bat an eye when handing these gadgets to our middle class. Some of our Silicon oligarchs have gone so far as to call these products "demonic," yet on they go ushering them into schools, ruthlessly agnostic as to whatever reckoning this might have for future generations.

As they do this, their political views seem to become more radical by the day. They as a class represent the junction of meritocracy and the soft nihilism that has infiltrated almost every major institution in contemporary society. By day they inveigh against guns and walls and inequality; by night they decamp into multimillion-dollar bunkers, safeguarded against the rest of the world, shamelessly indifferent to their blatant hypocrisy. This cognitive dissonance results in a plundering worldview, one whose consequences are not yet fully understood but are certainly catastrophic. Its early casualties already include some of the most fundamental elements of American civil society: privacy, freedom of thought, even truth itself.

​Hence a recent New York Times profile of Silicon Valley's anointed guru, Yuval Harari. Harari is an Israeli futurist-philosopher whose apocalyptic forecasts, made in books like Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow , have tantalized some of the biggest names on the political and business scenes, including Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. The Times portrays Harari as gloomy about the modern world and especially its embrace of technology:

Part of the reason might be that Silicon Valley, at a certain level, is not optimistic on the future of democracy. The more of a mess Washington becomes, the more interested the tech world is in creating something else, and it might not look like elected representation. Rank-and-file coders have long been wary of regulation and curious about alternative forms of government. A separatist streak runs through the place: Venture capitalists periodically call for California to secede or shatter, or for the creation of corporate nation-states. And this summer, Mark Zuckerberg, who has recommended Mr. Harari to his book club, acknowledged a fixation with the autocrat Caesar Augustus. "Basically," Mr. Zuckerberg told The New Yorker, "through a really harsh approach, he established 200 years of world peace."

Harari understands that liberal democracy is in peril, and he's taken it upon himself to act as a foil to the anxieties of the elite class. In return, they regale him with lavish dinner parties and treat him like their maharishi. Yet from reading the article, one gets the impression that, at least in Harari's view, this is but a facade, or what psychologists call "reaction formation." In other words, by paying lip service to Harari, who is skeptical of their designs, our elites hope to spare themselves from incurring any moral responsibility for the costs of their social engineering. And "social engineering" is not a farfetched term to use. A portion of the Times article interrogates the premise of Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World , which tells the story of a totalitarian regime that has anesthetized a docile underclass into blind submission:

As we boarded the black gull-wing Tesla Mr. Harari had rented for his visit, he brought up Aldous Huxley. Generations have been horrified by his novel "Brave New World," which depicts a regime of emotion control and painless consumption. Readers who encounter the book today, Mr. Harari said, often think it sounds great. "Everything is so nice, and in that way it is an intellectually disturbing book because you're really hard-pressed to explain what's wrong with it," he said. "And you do get today a vision coming out of some people in Silicon Valley which goes in that direction."

Here, Harari divulges with brutal frankness the indisputable link between private atheism and political thought. Lacking an immutable ontology, man is left in the desert, unmoored from anything to keep his insatiable passions in check. His pride entices him into playing the role of God.

Big Government Isn't the Way to Fix Big Tech The Tech Giants Must Be Stopped

At one point in the article, Harari wonders why we should even maintain a low-skilled "useless" class, whose work is doomed to disappear over the next several decades, replaced by artificial intelligence. "You're totally expendable," Harari tells his audience. This is why, the Times says, the Silicon elites recommend social engineering solutions like universal income to try and mitigate the more unpleasant effects of that "useless" class. They seem unaware (or at least they're incapable of admitting) that human nature is imperfect, sinful, and can never be perfected from on high. Since many of the Silicon breed reject the possibility of a timeless, intelligent metaphysics (to say nothing of Christianity), such truisms about our natures go over their heads. Metaphysics aside, the fact that our elites are even thinking this way to begin with -- that technology may render an entire underclass "expendable" -- is in itself cause for concern. (As Keynes once quipped, "In the long run we are all dead.")

Harari seems to have a vendetta against traditions -- which can be extrapolated to the tradition of Western civilization writ large -- for long considering homosexuality aberrant. He is quoted as saying, "If society got this thing wrong, who guarantees it didn't get everything else wrong as well?" Thus do the Silicon elites have the audacity to shirk their entire Western birthright, handed down to them across generations, in the name of creating a utopia oriented around a modern, hyper-individualistic view of man.

When man abandons God, he begins to channel his religious desire, more devouring than even his sexual instinct, into other worldly outlets. Thus has modern liberalism evolved from a political school of thought into an out-and-out ecclesiology, one that perverts elements of Christian dogma into technocratic channels. (Of course, one can debate whether this was liberalism's intent in the first place.) Our elites have crafted for themselves a new religion. Humility to them is nothing more than a vice.

The reason the elites are entertaining alternatives to democracy is because they know that so long as we adhere to constitutional government -- our American system, even in its severely compromised form -- we are bound to the utterly natural constraints hardwired by our framers (who, by the way, revered Aristotle and Jesus). Realizing this, they seek alternative forms in Silicon Valley social engineering projects, hoping to create a regime that will conform to their megalomaniacal fancies.

If there is a silver lining in all this, it's that in the real word, any such attempt to base a political regime on naked ego is bound to fail. Such things have been tried before, in our lifetimes, no less, and they have never worked because they cannot work. Man should never be made the center of the universe because, per impossible, there is already a natural order that cannot be breached. May he come to realize this sooner rather than later. And may Mr. Harari's wildest nightmares never come to fruition.

Paul Ingrassia is a co-host of the Right on Point podcast. To listen to his podcast, click here .


Fran Macadam , January 10, 2019 at 2:58 am

"in the real word, any such attempt to base a political regime on naked ego is bound to fail. Such things have been tried before, in our lifetimes, no less, and they have never worked because they cannot work."

But they can create hells on earth for many decades, in which millions are consumed, until played out.

George Crosley , , January 10, 2019 at 7:47 am
As Kipling so aptly put it, in the final stanzas of a poem:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

madge , , January 10, 2019 at 9:03 am
"The reason the elites are entertaining alternatives to democracy is because they know that so long as we adhere to constitutional government -- our American system, even in its severely compromised form -- we are bound to the utterly natural constraints hardwired by our framers (who, by the way, revered Aristotle and Jesus)."

Um, you do know that one of the gravest dangers the founders feared was democracy? And the bulwarks they put in place are all meant to constraint majority rule? Now, if the argument you are making that the elites have so corrupted the hoi polloi that only rule by a minority of REAL AMERICANS can save us, say so, don't do the idiotic dodge of invoking democratic arguments while obviously advocating minority rule.

TheSnark , , January 10, 2019 at 10:23 am
The problem with Silicon Valley elites is a bit simpler than that. They are all very smart, but their knowledge is limited. They know everything about electronics, computers, and coding, but know little of history, philosophy, or the human condition. Hence they see everything as an engineering problem, something with an optimal, measurable solution.

As a result, they do not even understand the systems they have built; witness Zuckerberg struggling to get Facebook under control.

If they go the way the author fears it will be by accident, not design. Despite their smarts, they really don't know what they are doing in terms of society.

CLW , , January 10, 2019 at 3:07 pm
This is an interesting topic meriting serous thought and analysis; instead, we get corny, hyperbolic alarmism. You can do better than this, TAC.
Sisera , , January 10, 2019 at 8:05 pm

As Tucker Carlson is realizing, Artificial Intelligence eliminating around 55% of all jobs (as the Future of Employment study found) so that wealthy people can have more disposable income to demand other services also provided by robots is madness. This is religious devotion either to defacto anarcho-capitalism, transhumanism, or both.

They're literally selling out human existence for their own myopic short-term gain, yet have a moral superiority complex. I suppose the consensus is that the useless class gets welfare depending on their social credit score. Maybe sterilization will lead to a higher social credits score. Dark days are coming.

Great article.

peterc , , January 11, 2019 at 12:33 pm
@TheSnark -- valid observation: The Silicon Valley elites " know everything about electronics, computers, and coding, but know little of history, philosophy, or the human condition." Religion is not an engineering issue. Knowing a little about history, philosophy, human condition would help them to understand that humans need something for their soul. And the human soul is not described by boolean "1"s or "0"s
R Henry , , January 11, 2019 at 2:14 pm
Western Culture is struggling to adapt to the new communication technologies that inhabit the Internet. That the developers of these technologies see themselves as gods of a sort is entirely consistent with human history and nature.

The best historical example of how new communication technology can change society occurred about 500 years ago, when the printing press was developed in Europe. A theologian and professor named Martin Luther (Perhaps you have heard of him?) composed a list of 95 discussion questions regarding the then-current activities of The Church. That list, known as the "95 Theses" was posted on the chapel door in Wittenburg, Germany. Before long, the list was transcribed and published. The list, and many responses, were distributed throughout Europe. The Protestant Reformation was sparked.

The Press and Protestant Reformation it launched remains a primary foundation of today's Western Culture. It has initiated much violence, much dissension, war with millions of deaths, The Enlightenment, and much else. The printing press ushered in the modern era.

Just as the printing press enabled profound change in the world 500 years ago, The Internet is prompting similar disruption today. I think we are in the early stages, and estimate that our great great grandchildren will be among the first to fully appreciate what has been gained and lost as a result of this technology.

grumpy realist , , January 11, 2019 at 4:12 pm
So the arrogance of religious believers convinced that they know "the TRUTH!", are the only ones to do so, and are justified in forcing non-believers to act as "God says!" is to be completely ignored?

Methinks we're seeing a huge case of projection here .

Frederick , , January 12, 2019 at 12:03 am
The problem is also that once those religious foundations are gone, they don't come back easily. How can you talk to an atheist/muslim/buddhist who doesn't even believe that lying is always sin? People in the west have started to think that all our nice freedoms and comfort have magically come from the heart of humans, that we are all somehow equal and want the same things but the bible tells us the real story: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

Then we have religions who fundamentally do not even view death as a problem. Now this is where we enter the danger zone. In the west we have lived on such a good, superior Christian foundation we seem to have forgotten how truly horrible and inferior the alternatives are. Suddenly you get people who endorse cannibalism and child sacrifice again, I have seen this myself. How do you even explain to somebody that this is wrong when he fundamentally disagrees on the morality of killing?

People don't understand that Christian morality was hard fought for, they refuse to understand that human beings do not have a magical switch that makes them disapprove of murder.

Thousands were burned alive in England just for wanting to read the bible. It is like a technological innovation. We found a trick in the human condition, we discovered the truth about humanity. Now these coddled silicon valley people who have grown up in a Christian society with Christian morality and protections in their arrogance think that Christian behavior is the base of human morality anyway and needs no protection. Thanks to them in no small part the entire world is currently doing its utmost to reject the reality of the bible. We see insane propositions that say we should not judge people. Or that everyone is equal. Of course the bible never says that with the meaning they imply, but it was coopted beautifully for their own evil agenda. Yes evil, did I mention that our technocratic genius overlords don't believe in that either?

How can you talk with somebody that has rejected the most base truths of human life. How can you say a murderer is equal to a non-criminal? You must understand that these new age fake Christians truly think like this, they truly believe that everyone is equal. You can't allow yourself to think that 'oh they just mean we are all equal like.. on a human level, in our humanity'. Nono, I made the mistake to be too charitable with them. They actually think we are all equal no matter what. I found it hard to believe that we have degenerated so much, I have been in a quasi state of shock for a long time over this.

Pete from Baltimore , , January 12, 2019 at 8:57 am
Zuckerberg's comment about the Roman Empire is bizzare.to say the least. Augustus didn't create "200 years of peace". The Roman Empire was constantly conquering its neighbors. And of the first 5 Roman Emperors, Augustus was the only one who defintly died of natural causes

This time period was an extremely violent time period. The fact that Zuckerberg doesn't realize this, indicates to me that while he is smart at creating a business, he is basically a pseudo-intellectual

Connecticut Farmer , , January 12, 2019 at 10:09 am
" one of the gravest dangers the founders feared was democracy?"

Wrong! They didn't fear democracy per se', only democracy run amok, hence the checks and balances

[Jan 26, 2019] Can the current US neoliberal/neoconservative elite be considered suicidal?

Highly recommended!
Can the elite be afflicted by some mass disease. Is Neoconservatism a deadly infection ?
Theoretically Democracy depends on information freely available and responsibility of the citizenry to make decisions based on that information. The political elites have made certain precious little of reliable, unclouded and relevant information ever gets broadcast even while popularizing, promoting and rewarding every form of misrepresentation, ignorance and irresponsibility. In other words they spearheaded a dangerous disease to stay in power. And eventually got infected themselves.
Notable quotes:
"... "But what if the elites get things wrong? What if the policies they promulgate produce grotesque inequality or lead to permanent war? Who then has the authority to disregard the guardians, if not the people themselves? How else will the elites come to recognize their folly and change course?" ..."
"... That is how they maintain control and manipulate government to facilitate their own interests to the detriment of the rest of society. Bretix and President Trump have upset their apple cart, which they felt certain was invulnerable and immune to challenge. ..."
"... The elites aren't interested in polls showing Americans want out of Syria and Afghanistan, are they? Can't have mere citizens having influencing decisions like that. ..."
"... An excellent piece. I would add only that the so-called elites mentioned by Mr Bacevich are largely the products of the uppermost stratum of colleges and universities, at least in the USA, and that for a generation or more now, those institutions have indoctrinated rather than educated. ..."
"... As their more recent alumni move into government, media and cultural production, the primitiveness of their views and their inability to think - to say nothing of their fundamental ignorance about our civilization other than that it is bad and evil - begin to have real effect. ..."
Jan 20, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Kent January 18, 2019 at 11:30 am

"But what if the elites get things wrong? What if the policies they promulgate produce grotesque inequality or lead to permanent war? Who then has the authority to disregard the guardians, if not the people themselves? How else will the elites come to recognize their folly and change course?"

What if, on election day, you only have a choice between 2 candidates. Both favoring all the wrong choices, but one tends to talk up Christianity and family and the other talks up diversity.

And both get their funding from the very wealthy and corporations. And any 3rd choices would be "throwing your vote away". How would you ever get to vote for someone who might change course?

Democracy has little to actually do with choice or power.

mlopez, January 18, 2019 at 6:22 pm

GB may not have been any utopia in 1914, but it was certainly geo-politically dominant. It's common people's social, economic and cultural living standards most assuredly was vastly improved over Russian, or European peasants. There can be no serious comparison with third world countries and regions.

As for the US, there can be absolutely no debate about its own dominance, or material standard of living after 1945 as compared to any where else in the world. More importantly, even uneducated and very contemporary observers were capable of recognizing how our elites had sold out their interests in favor of the furtherance of their own.

If we are on about democratic government, then it's been generations since either country and their peoples have had any real democracy. Democracy depends on information freely available and responsibility of the citizenry to make decisions based on that information. The political elites have made certain precious little of reliable, unclouded and relevant information ever gets broadcast even while popularizing, promoting and rewarding every form of misrepresentation, ignorance and irresponsibility.

That is how they maintain control and manipulate government to facilitate their own interests to the detriment of the rest of society. Bretix and President Trump have upset their apple cart, which they felt certain was invulnerable and immune to challenge.

Hello / Goodbye, January 19, 2019 at 11:40 am

The elites aren't interested in polls showing Americans want out of Syria and Afghanistan, are they? Can't have mere citizens having influencing decisions like that.

Patzinak, January 19, 2019 at 5:07 pm

What ineffable flummadiddle!

Prominent Brexiteers include Boris Johnson (dual UK/US citizenship, educated in Brussels and at Eton and Oxford, of mixed ancestry, including a link - by illegitimate descent - to the royal houses of Prussia and the UK); Jacob Rees-Mogg (son of a baron, educated at Eton and Oxford, amassed a solid fortune via hedge fund management); Arron Banks (millionaire, bankroller of UKIP, made to the Brexit campaign the largest ever political donation in UK politics).

So much for "the elite" being against Brexit!

But the main problem with Brexit is this. Having voted by a slim margin in favour of Brexit, the Great British Public then, in the general election, denied a majority to the government that had undertaken to implement it, and elected a Parliament of whom, by a rough estimate, two thirds oppose Brexit.

It ain't that "the elite" got "things wrong". It's that bloody Joe Public can't make his mind what to do - and go through with it.

Rossbach, January 20, 2019 at 2:14 pm

"Whether the imagined utopia of a dominant Great Britain prior to 1914 or a dominant America after 1945 ever actually existed is beside the point."

It wasn't to restore any defunct utopia that led people to vote for Brexit or Donald Trump; it was to check the descent of the Anglosphere into the totalitarian dystopia of forced multi-cultural globalism that caused voters to reject the EU in Britain and Hillary Clinton in the US. It is because they believed that only with the preservation of their national independence was there any chance or hope for a restoration of individual liberty that our people voted as they did.

Ratings System, January 17, 2019 at 1:27 pm

It's why they won't enjoy their privileges much longer. That stale charade can't and won't last.

We don't have a meritocracy. We have a pseudo-meritocracy with an unduly large contingent of aliens, liars, cheats, frauds, and incompetents. They give each other top marks, speak each other's PC language, and hire each other's kids. And they don't understand why things are falling apart, and why they are increasingly hated by real Americans.

A very nasty decade or two is coming our way, but after we've swept out the filth there will be a good chance that Americans will be Americans again.

Paul Reidinger, January 17, 2019 at 2:03 pm

An excellent piece. I would add only that the so-called elites mentioned by Mr Bacevich are largely the products of the uppermost stratum of colleges and universities, at least in the USA, and that for a generation or more now, those institutions have indoctrinated rather than educated.

As their more recent alumni move into government, media and cultural production, the primitiveness of their views and their inability to think - to say nothing of their fundamental ignorance about our civilization other than that it is bad and evil - begin to have real effect. The new dark age is no longer imminent. It is here, and it is them. I see no way to rectify the damage. When minds are ruined young, they remain ruined.

[Jan 24, 2019] No One Said Rich People Were Very Sharp Davos Tries to Combat Populism by Dean Baker

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... the Davos crew is trying to combat populism, according to The Washington Post . It is kind of amazing that the rich people at Davos would not understand how absurd this is. ..."
"... The real incredible aspect of Davos is that so many political leaders and news organizations would go to a meeting that is quite explicitly about rich people trying to set an agenda for the world. ..."
"... It is important to remember, the World Economic Forum is not some sort of international organization like the United Nations, the OECD, or even the International Monetary Fund. It is a for-profit organization that makes money by entertaining extremely rich people. The real outrage of the story is that top political leaders, academics, and new outlets feel obligated to entertain them. ..."
"... Davos ought to be treated as a conspiracy against labor, representative government, environmental regulation and decent living standards, but of course our admiring national press corps doesn't see it that way -- their bosses attend, after all. ..."
"... It may be best to avoid the term "populist" because it tends to be applied indiscriminately to the likes of Trump and to leftist reformers. Or if it is used for Trump it should be "fake populist". Opposition to corporatist globalization can be populistic, but Trump's version so far has been mostly fake. ..."
"... Two kinds of populism: rightwing populism (which often looks like fascism) and leftwing populism. They are quite different critters and they don't have a lot to do with each other though they agree on a few things. ..."
"... People REALLY need to re-read 1984 & refresh their memories of Orwellian good-is-bad brainwashing ..."
"... Trump is a rightwing populist, but it is very confusing. In the US anyway and often in general, rightwing populists are NOT the enemies of the rich. Note Mussolini and Hitler. Fascism really is a type of rightwing populism. ..."
"... Rightwing populism pretends to be for the people and is to some extent (protectionism, isolationalism, nationalism) but in a lot of other ways, it's just fake and it's always a cover for class rule and rule by the rich. ..."
"... The rich will go to fascism or rightwing populism if they get a threat from the Left (read Trotsky), but they don't really like them very much, think they are classless brutes, barbarians, racists, bigots, etc. ..."
"... They're not worried about Donnie. He's no class traitor. They're worried about the populism of the Left and possibly about rightwing populism in Europe. Bolzonaro and Trump are hardly threats to capital. ..."
"... He pretends to be a populist because it helps him. For example, he doesn't care about illegal immigration. He's been happy to hire undocumented workers his whole life, even now in office. But it gets his base fired up so he rails about immigration. He has no ideology, he will use whatever helps him. ..."
"... Rightwing populism is NOT cool in my boat. Rightwing populism is Bolsonaro. It's Duterte too, but that's a bit different, he's a bit more pro-people. Erdogan is a rightwing populist too, but he's rather socialist. Marie Le Pen is out and out socialist and she gets called rightwing populist. Orban is 5X more socialist than Venezuela and he gets called rightwing populist. It's all very confusing. ..."
"... But in the US and Latin America, rightwing populism is ugly stuff all right, and it tends to be associated with fascism! ..."
Jan 22, 2019 | cepr.net
Let's see, cattle ranchers are against vegetarianism, coal companies are against restricting CO2 emissions, and the Davos crew is trying to combat populism, according to The Washington Post . It is kind of amazing that the rich people at Davos would not understand how absurd this is.

Yeah, we get that rich people don't like the idea of movements that would leave them much less rich, but is it helpful to their cause to tell us that they are devoting their rich people's conference to combating them? The real incredible aspect of Davos is that so many political leaders and news organizations would go to a meeting that is quite explicitly about rich people trying to set an agenda for the world.

It is important to remember, the World Economic Forum is not some sort of international organization like the United Nations, the OECD, or even the International Monetary Fund. It is a for-profit organization that makes money by entertaining extremely rich people. The real outrage of the story is that top political leaders, academics, and new outlets feel obligated to entertain them.


pieceofcake pieceofcake a day ago ,

And the fact that so many Americans -(and especially American workers) still mistake Von Clownstick as a so called ''Populist'' - and being on their side - is... unbearable!

Robert Lindsay pieceofcake 12 hours ago ,

He IS in fact a rigthwing populist of a sort. That's what rightwing populism in the US looks like, and what it's always looked like. Bunch of crap huh? Gimme Marie Le Pen any day.

Woodshedding a day ago ,

"The real incredible aspect of Davos is that so many political leaders and news organizations would go to a meeting that is quite explicitly about rich people trying to set an agenda for the world." \

Agreed - like how people almost worship British Royals.. or American celebrities... and yet, unfortunately, isn't it true that the greedmongers at Davos are not "trying," but rather "largely succeeding" at setting said world agenda?

Robert Lindsay pieceofcake 12 hours ago ,

Trump is a rightwing populist in fact. Nasty critters, aren't they?

pieceofcake Robert Lindsay 7 hours ago ,

''Nasty critters, aren't they''?

Yes!

Dwight Cramer 2 days ago ,

Nothing to see here, folks, move right along . . .

Davos and TED Talks. One entertains the rich, the other the smart. The skiing is better at Davos, the ideas are better at a TED Talk. Just remember, most of the rich aren't smart and most of the smart aren't rich. So it's all rather silly, 'though it's easier to get rich if you're smart than it is to get smart if you're rich. Don't ask me how I know that, but I'll tell you, if you have an ounce of human kindness in you, learning the second half of that lesson is more painful than the first.

None of this would be half as much fun outside the glare of publicity, or if not heavily spiced with the envy of the excluded.

Ishi Crew Dwight Cramer 19 hours ago ,

in my view half of ted talks are extremely stupid; the other half are basic 101 (eg j Hari).

Dwight Cramer Ishi Crew 17 hours ago ,

Ishi--I don't disagree with you. Just not as stupid as the Davos drivel. Perhaps I should have said 'less bad' ideas, but I liked the cadence of 'better' and 'better.' Gotta have cadence if you want to get the People Marching.

jake • 2 days ago ,

Davos ought to be treated as a conspiracy against labor, representative government, environmental regulation and decent living standards, but of course our admiring national press corps doesn't see it that way -- their bosses attend, after all.

pieceofcake jake 2 days ago ,

Firstly we have to treat the so called ''Populists'' as a conspiracy against labor - because they pretended in the utmost conspirational way to be on labors side.

While It always was as clear as mud that Davos was a Party of the Rich!

skeptonomist pieceofcake 2 days ago ,

It may be best to avoid the term "populist" because it tends to be applied indiscriminately to the likes of Trump and to leftist reformers. Or if it is used for Trump it should be "fake populist". Opposition to corporatist globalization can be populistic, but Trump's version so far has been mostly fake.

Robert Lindsay skeptonomist 12 hours ago ,

You guys need to read up. Two kinds of populism: rightwing populism (which often looks like fascism) and leftwing populism. They are quite different critters and they don't have a lot to do with each other though they agree on a few things.

Woodshedding skeptonomist a day ago ,

That's basically my take, too. The term is purposely misused by the propagandists to get normal people thinking "Populism" must be something they don't like. People REALLY need to re-read 1984 & refresh their memories of Orwellian good-is-bad brainwashing. [and even "brainwashing" is an orwellian term! Brain-NUMBING, maybe... but nothing's getting cleaned, that's for sure]

Robert Lindsay Woodshedding 12 hours ago ,

Nope US rightwing populism has often looked a lot like Trump's crap. I mean some of it was better. I have a soft spot for Huey Long. But in the US, rightwing populism just helps the rich mostly and it tends to be fascist.

pieceofcake Woodshedding a day ago ,

''The term is purposely misused by the propagandists to get normal people thinking "Populism" must be something they don't like'' You mean some con-artists have conned people who liked the term ''Populism'' into liking idiocy - racism and nationalism?.

Robert Lindsay pieceofcake 12 hours ago ,

Rightwing populism is indeed often nationalism + racism. That's how it works.

pieceofcake skeptonomist 2 days ago ,

- ''it tends to be applied indiscriminately to the likes of Trump and to leftist reformers''.

Only some very Confused (Americans?) confuse Idiotic (''Rightwing) ''Populists'' with Social (Leftwing) ''Socialists''.

Robert Lindsay pieceofcake 12 hours ago ,

Rightwing populists are indeed a thing. Wikipedia is your friend. Just because they suck ass doesn't mean they don't exist, comrade.

It's very common to get mixed up about the types of populism and jumble them all together though.

Robert Lindsay pieceofcake 3 hours ago ,

Trump is a rightwing populist, but it is very confusing. In the US anyway and often in general, rightwing populists are NOT the enemies of the rich. Note Mussolini and Hitler. Fascism really is a type of rightwing populism.

Rightwing populism pretends to be for the people and is to some extent (protectionism, isolationalism, nationalism) but in a lot of other ways, it's just fake and it's always a cover for class rule and rule by the rich.

The rich will go to fascism or rightwing populism if they get a threat from the Left (read Trotsky), but they don't really like them very much, think they are classless brutes, barbarians, racists, bigots, etc.

But the rich allow them because they think they can control them and not let them get out of hand. This is what happened in Germany. This is what often happens actually.

In a sense, rightwing populism IS fake populism because it pretends to be for the people while often fucking them over with rightwing class rule via fascism. It's still populism, it's just not for the people. It's fraudulent, iike most rightwing bullshit.

pieceofcake 2 days ago ,

- AND! -
to suggest - or imply? - that the type of ''Populism'' Trump -(and other so called ''Populists) represent - IS to ''leave the Davos Crowd much less rich'' -
could be the funniest thing ever written on this blog?

Robert Lindsay pieceofcake 12 hours ago ,

They're not worried about Donnie. He's no class traitor. They're worried about the populism of the Left and possibly about rightwing populism in Europe. Bolzonaro and Trump are hardly threats to capital.

Lord Koos pieceofcake 2 days ago ,

Trump is not a populist, even if he appeals to them. He's a very wealthy man who looks out for his rich friends.

DAS Lord Koos 8 hours ago ,

He pretends to be a populist because it helps him. For example, he doesn't care about illegal immigration. He's been happy to hire undocumented workers his whole life, even now in office. But it gets his base fired up so he rails about immigration. He has no ideology, he will use whatever helps him.

Robert Lindsay Lord Koos 12 hours ago ,

He actually has a lot of traits of a rightwing populist, US style, but then that's always been a suckhole anyway.

pieceofcake Lord Koos 2 days ago ,

''Trump is not a populist, even if he appeals to them. He's a very wealthy man who looks out for his rich friends''.

How true - but as most of the current so called ''Populists'' are just as ''non-populist'' as Trump - it might be time to find a new ''expression''.

Robert Lindsay pieceofcake 3 hours ago ,

Typical rightwing populism, which isn't really pro-people anyway, just another rightwing fraud.

pieceofcake pieceofcake 2 days ago ,

and to makes sure not to be misunderstood - I also think Davos is ''pathetic'' and ''hypocritical'' - and everything else one wants to throw at it -
BUT as one of my favorite American Philosophers said:

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

And I think he meant the current ''Populists'' of this planet! -(and lets include especially the Brazilian one too)

pieceofcake 2 days ago ,

But isn't it GREAT- that also ''the rich'' are starting to battle morons and a...holes like Baron von Clownsticks -(or the nationalistic idiots in the UK - or the Neo Nazis in Germany?) -

For I while I thought I was left ALL alone in order to battle the type of ''Populism''- which is nothing else than the sick racist phantasies of some nationalistic a...holes?

Robert Lindsay pieceofcake 12 hours ago ,

Rightwing populism is NOT cool in my boat. Rightwing populism is Bolsonaro. It's Duterte too, but that's a bit different, he's a bit more pro-people. Erdogan is a rightwing populist too, but he's rather socialist. Marie Le Pen is out and out socialist and she gets called rightwing populist. Orban is 5X more socialist than Venezuela and he gets called rightwing populist. It's all very confusing.

But in the US and Latin America, rightwing populism is ugly stuff all right, and it tends to be associated with fascism!

[Jan 23, 2019] When neoliberalism became the object of jokes, it is clear that its time has passed

Highly recommended!
Jan 23, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

Likbez, Jan 22, 2019

I would also say ideas like people age and gradually become irrelevant no matter how strongly they are propelled by the power of the state and MSM. When neoliberalism became the object of jokes, it is clear that its time has passed.

Neoliberal ideology experienced a severe crisis in 2007 and was by-and-large discredited.

But Neoliberalism as a social system is resilient and can continue to exist for some time even after ideology itself was discredited. Probably 30-50 years, if we think that neoliberalism is a perverted flavor of Trotskyism (Financial elite of all countries unite; Permanent neoliberal revolution until the global victory of neoliberalism) and Bolshevism lasted 50 years after the crisis of its ideology in early 60th.

So I think that neoliberalism entered its "zombie phase." It became more bloodthirsty, aggressive (look at Trump) and even managed to stage revenge in Argentina and Brasil deposing less neoliberal governments with hardcore neoliberal.

But ideas age and die like people and in 2019 the ideas of neoliberalism are essentially dead. So now it is clinging by the pure power of propaganda and coercion. That is the road to nowhere, and I expect this neoliberalism position in the USA will be further undermined by-elections of 2020. Maybe tax regime will start to change to byte top 1%, and maybe there is be local and quickly suppressed insurrections/strikes, like in France; I do not know. But with the level of inequality intact, the cracks might widen.

Degeneration of the neoliberal elite (Trump, Pelosi, Schumer, Pompeo, etc.) is another obvious problem. Filters work in such a way that capable (and this potentially dangerous to the system) people are eliminated at early stages of political selection. That might s danger for the USA is not so distant future as a viable, cohesive society and currently, the Congress really reminds Soviet Politburo. Bunch on Mayberry Machiavelli.

At least in Australia politicians started openly discuss alternatives. Here in the USA, there is dead silence. That means that the Congress is a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.

Another problem is with the level of militarism in the USA society. The size of MIC is a huge problem and like cancer is curable only by surgical means. The fact is that politicians are arguing about 5 billion wall which is something like one percent of F35 program cost ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-10/f-35-program-costs-jump-to-406-billion-in-new-pentagon-estimate )

At this point, people stop to trust both politicians and MSM re-defining them as "fake news" which means the crisis of legitimacy of the neoliberal elite. And I think that the USA either reached this point or is very close.

That's why the US neoliberal elite decided to cement the cracks in the neoliberal ideological façade via Russophobia in best neo-McCarthyism fashion. The idea is to define the common enemy and mobilizing the society against it, leaving internal frictions on the "day after." But it looks like neoliberalism which Sheldon Wolin defined as "inverted totalities" is bad on mass mobilization. It no longer can produce slogans or politician who can ignite passion of common people. Obama was a fake. So is Trump.

And Russiagate gambit produced some unwanted to neoliberals externalities like the society attention to intelligence-driven machinations and their role as a political force under neoliberalism. Including the role of British intelligence services.

[Jan 23, 2019] We need political mobilization to fight neoliberalism

Highly recommended!
Jan 23, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

For the last couple of weeks, I've been wanting to write a response to Aaron Major's (paywalled) article on ideas and economic power for Catalyst.

Major argues that they don't matter nearly as much as you might think. This means that a lot of recent work focusing on economic ideas leads us in the wrong direction.
And yet, though motivated by a genuine concern for the damage that neoliberalism has done, building a critique of neoliberalism through an idea-centered framework is both politically disarming and reinforces pernicious aspects of the neoliberal project. One of the recurring points that emerges from a close reading of idea-centered accounts of political and economic change is that the materialist social context -- the structure of social divisions formed along economic lines and the way power is distributed across those divisions -- exerts a great deal of influence over both the content of ideas as well as their relative influence. The neoliberal political-economic agenda, like others before it, advances through a favorable balance of social forces while simultaneously trying to obscure the role that power and material advantage plays in its success. If the strength and resilience of the elitist, pro-capital, and dehumanizing policies and practices that are often summarized as "neoliberal" is reduced to, or primarily explained as, the impact of ideas, and those ideas are not grounded in the balance of material forces that gives them shape and influence, then one can easily walk away with the impression that the solution to neoliberalism is found in intellectual debate and critique, and not what is really needed: political mobilization.
Here, in particular, he focuses on the work of Mark Blyth:


Mark Blyth's Great Transformations helped spur the recent surge in idea-centered political economy and so serves as a useful starting point for this discussion. Like other political economists, Blyth argues that transitions from one political-economic era to another are caused by deep, punctuated crisis. However, whereas realist political science imagines perfectly rational actors approaching a crisis like any other problem to be solved, Blyth questions this basic premise. Political actors are not rational, he argues, but rather rely on prevailing norms and ideas to serve as a kind of "instruction sheet" that they follow. During moments of crisis, dominant models of economic management fail, leaving political actors grasping for some way of understanding the nature of the problems that they face and means to address them. This opens the door to once-sidelined experts and intellectuals to chart a new path forward by writing a new, workable instruction sheet.

Major respects what Blyth is doing – but thinks it is nonetheless misconceived.

To make a strong ideational argument stick, it is not enough to show that some ideas mattered for some social or policy change. Rather, one has to be able to support two additional claims. First, that the formation, circulation, and debate over different policy ideas can be explained independent of other material forces. Materialist political economy, from which Blyth is trying to break, does not deny that economic policymaking has an important ideational component of the sort that Blyth describes, but it also insists that material social factors play a powerful agenda-setting role, limiting the scope of policy debate. Second, a strong ideational argument needs to be able to explain why one set of ideas beat out other, competing ideas in purely ideational terms. A strong ideational argument suggests that the victory of one idea over another can be explained by the character of the idea itself, not by the power or position of the actors who champion it. Great Transformations falters on both counts. What Blyth's account reveals, though he never addresses it explicitly, is that the ideas that framed early New Deal policy innovations were themselves shaped by the structures of US industry and agriculture and the strength of competing economic classes. It is because US labor was organized and militant that the Roosevelt administration sought an economic program that would forge an alliance with the working class. The political capacity of social classes not only affected which policies worked, and which policies failed -- it also affected how policies were crafted and which ones were advanced. Blyth's more recent Austerity: History of a Dangerous Idea is marred by the same analytical unevenness the book is hamstrung by the insistence that the story of austerity can be told as a history of ideas. Taken as a whole, Blyth's work points to a critical challenge that scholars have faced in trying to make idea-centered arguments for political and economic change stick, and that is explainingidea selection. Rarely does anything of historical significance happen without heated debate, and the turn to neoliberalism is no exception. Margaret Thatcher may have successfully exported her pithy, dismissive "There Is No Alternative," but her numerous opponents begged to differ. Sides are formed, measures are proposed, and rationalizations are given. But who wins? Blyth's own accounts of major policy change highlights critical moments in times of crisis when state elites were grappling with competing ideas, but neither Great Transformations nor Austerity can really explain why some ideas went on to shape policy and others found their way into the dustbin of history.

[Jan 22, 2019] The French Anti-Neoliberal Revolution. On the conditions for its success by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The French bourgeoisie is the politically most experienced ruling class in Europe. It has no illusions about the challenge it faces. Le Point put its file on the revolt of the vests under the self-telling title "What is waiting us". ..."
"... But it's not only the king who is naked. The whole system is naked. In the many pages devoted by the magazine to demonstrate that what the Vests want is unfeasible, not even a single serious word is written about what needs to be done to deal with the deep causes which led the French to revolt. Today's capitalism of Macron, Merkel and Trump does not produce a Roosevelt and New Deal or Popular Fronts – and we have to wait to see if it will produce a Hitler as some are trying to achieve. For the time being, it only produces Yellow Vests! ..."
"... In Oscar Wilde's masterpiece "The Picture of Dorian Gray", the main character looks every night at his horrible real self in the mirror. But he looks at it alone. ..."
"... This is where Macron made his most fatal mistake, being arrogant and markedly cut off from reality – with the confidence given to him by the mighty elite forces, which elected him and by his contempt of the common people which characterizes him. ..."
"... Observing Macron, the people understood what lied ahead for them. They felt their backs against the wall – they felt that they had only themselves to rely on, that they had to take themselves action to save themselves and their country. ..."
"... This was the decisive moment, the moment the historical mission of Macron was achieved . By establishing the most absolute control of Finance over Politics, he himself invited Revolution. His triumph and his tragedy came together. ..."
"... Many established "leftists" or "radical" intellectuals, who used to feverishly haul capitalism over the coals – although the last thing they really wanted was to experience a real revolution during their lifetime – they too, stand now frightened, looking at an angry Bucephalus running ahead of them. They prefer a stable capitalism, of which they can constitute its "consciousness", writing books, appearing on shows and giving lectures, analyzing its crises and explaining its tribulations. They idea that the People could at some point take seriously what they themselves said, never crossed their minds either! ..."
"... Today, four out of five French people disapprove of Macron's policies and one in two demands that he resigns immediately. We assume that this percentage is greater than the percentage of Russians who wanted the ousting of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917. ..."
"... France is currently almost in a state of Power Vacuum . The president and the government cannot in essence govern and the people cannot tolerate them. It is not a situation of dual power, but a situation of dual legitimacy , in Mélenchon 's accurate description. ..."
"... This is a typical definition of a revolutionary situation . As history teaches us, the emergence of such a situation is necessary but not sufficient condition for a victorious Revolution. What is required in or order to turn a rebellion into a potentially victorious Revolution, is a capable and decided leadership and an adequate strategy, program and vision. These elements do not seem to exist, at last not for now, in today's France, as they did not exist in May 1968 or during the Russian Revolution of February 1917. Therefore, the present situation remains open to all possible eventualities; there must be no doubt however, that this is the beginning of a period of intense political and class conflicts in Europe, and that the Europe, as we know it, is already history. ..."
"... Or at least, for the people to be given the opportunity to develop an effective way of controlling state power. ..."
"... By reversing Marx's famous formula in German Ideology , the ideas of the dominant class do not dominate society. This is why the situation can be described as revolutionary. ..."
"... Although it is difficult to form an opinion from afar about how the situation may unfold, the formation of a such a United Front from grassroots could perhaps offer a way out with regards to the need for a political leadership for the movement, or even of the need to work out a transitional economic program for France, which must also serve as a transitional program for Europe . ..."
"... Contrary to how things were a century ago, certain factors such as the educational level of the lower social classes, the existence of a number of critical, radical thinkers with the necessary intellectual skills and the Internet, render such a possibility a much more realistic scenario today, than in the past. ..."
Jan 14, 2019 | www.defenddemocracy.press

The magazine Le Point is one of the main media outlets of the French conservative "centre-right". One of its December issues carries the cover title France Faces its History. 1648, 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871 four centuries of revolutions.

The cover features also a painting by Pierre-Jérôme Lordon, showing people clashing with the army at Rue de Babylone , in Paris, during the Revolution of 1830. Perhaps this is where Luc Ferry, Chirac's former minister, got his idea from, when, two days ago, he asked the Army to intervene and the police to start shooting and killing Yellow Vests.

Do not be surprised if you haven't heard this from your TV or if you don't know that the level of police repression and violence in France, measured in people dead, injured and arrested, has exceeded everything the country has experienced since 1968. Nor should you wonder why you don't know anything about some Yellow Vest's new campaign calling for a massive run on French banks. Or why you have been lead you to believe that the whole thing is to do with fuel taxes or increasing minimum wage.

The vast majority of European media didn't even bother to communicate to their readers or viewers the main political demands of the Yellow Vests ; and certainly, there hasn't been any meaningful attempt to offer an insightful interpretation of what's happening in France and there is just very little serious on-the-ground reporting, in the villages and motorways of France.

Totalitarianism

Following Napoleon's defeat in Waterloo, European Powers formed the Holy Alliance banning Revolutions.

Nowadays, Revolutions have just been declared inconceivable (Soros – though not just him – has been giving a relentless fight to take them out of history textbooks or, as a minimum, to erase their significance and meaning). Since they are unthinkable they cannot happen. Since they cannot happen they do not happen.

In the same vein, European media sent their journalists out to the streets in Paris on Christmas and New Year's days, counted the protesters and found that they weren't too many after all. Of course they didn't count the 150,000 police and soldiers lined up by Macron on New Year's Eve. Then they made sure that they remain "impartial" and by just comparing numbers of protesters, led viewers to think that we are almost done with it – it was just a storm, it will pass.

The other day I read a whole page article about Europe in one of the most "serious" Greek newspapers, on 30.12. The author devoted just one single meaningless phrase about the Vests. Instead, the paper still found the way to include in the article the utterly stupid statement of a European Right-Wing politician who attributed the European crisis to the existence of Russia Today and Sputnik! And when I finally found a somewhat more serious article online about the developments in France, I realized that its only purpose was to convince us that what is happening in France surely has nothing to do with 1789 or 1968!

It is only a pity that the people concerned, the French themselves, cannot read in Greek. If they could, they would have realized that it does not make any sense to have "Revolution" written on their vests or to sing the 1789 song in their demonstrations or to organize symbolic ceremonies of the public "decapitation" of Macron, like Louis XV. And the French bourgeois press would not waste time everyday comparing what happens in the country now with what happened in 1968 and 1789.

Totalitarianism is not just a threat. It's already here. Simply it has omitted to announce its arrival. We have to deduce its precence from its results.

A terrified ruling class

The French bourgeoisie is the politically most experienced ruling class in Europe. It has no illusions about the challenge it faces. Le Point put its file on the revolt of the vests under the self-telling title "What is waiting us".

A few months ago, all we had about Macron in the papers was praise, inside and outside of France – he was the "rising star" of European politics, the man who managed to pass the "reforms" one after the other, no resistance could stop him, he would be the one to save and rebuild Europe. Varoufakis admired and supported him, as early as of the first round of the 2017 elections.

Now, the "chosen one" became a burden for those who put him in office. Some of them probably want to get rid of him as fast as they can, to replace him with someone else, but it's not easy – and even more so, it is not easy given the monarchical powers conferred by the French constitution to the President. The constitution is tailored to the needs of a President who wants to safeguard power from the people. Those who drafted it could not probably imagine it would make difficult for the Oligarchy also to fire him!

Read also: Scandaleux : le fondateur du parti fasciste ukrainien Svoboda reçu à l'Assemblée et au Sénat !

And who would dare to hold a parliamentary or presidential election in such a situation, as in France today? No one knows what could come out of it. Moreover, Macron does not have a party in the sense of political power. He has a federation of friends who benefit as long as he stays in power and they are damaged when he collapses.

The King is naked

"The King is naked", points out Le Point's editorial, before, with almost sadistic callousness, posing the question: "What can a government do when a remarkable section of the people vomits it?"

But it's not only the king who is naked. The whole system is naked. In the many pages devoted by the magazine to demonstrate that what the Vests want is unfeasible, not even a single serious word is written about what needs to be done to deal with the deep causes which led the French to revolt. Today's capitalism of Macron, Merkel and Trump does not produce a Roosevelt and New Deal or Popular Fronts – and we have to wait to see if it will produce a Hitler as some are trying to achieve. For the time being, it only produces Yellow Vests!

They predicted it, they saw it coming, but they didn't believe it!

Yet they could have predicted all that. It would have sufficed, had they only taken seriously and studied a book published in France in late 2016, six months before the presidential election, highlighting the explosive nature of the social situation and warning of the danger of revolution and civil war.

The title of the book was "Revolution". Its author was none other than Emmanuel Macron himself. Six months later, he would become the President of France, to eventually verify, and indeed rather spectacularly, his predictions. But the truth is probably, that not even he himself gave much credit to what he wrote just to win the election.

By constantly lying, politicians, journalists and intellectuals reasonably came to believe that even their own words are of no importance. That they can say and do anything they want, without any consequence.

In Oscar Wilde's masterpiece "The Picture of Dorian Gray", the main character looks every night at his horrible real self in the mirror. But he looks at it alone.

This is where Macron made his most fatal mistake, being arrogant and markedly cut off from reality – with the confidence given to him by the mighty elite forces, which elected him and by his contempt of the common people which characterizes him.

Unwise and Arrogant, he made no effort to hide – this is how sure he felt of himself, this is how convinced his environment was that he could infinitely go on doing anything he wanted without any consequences (same as our Tsipras). Thus, acting foolishly and arrogantly, he left a few million eyes to see his real face. This was the last straw that made the French people realize in a definite way what they had already started figuring out during Sarkozy's and Hollande's, administration, or even earlier. Observing Macron, the people understood what lied ahead for them. They felt their backs against the wall – they felt that they had only themselves to rely on, that they had to take themselves action to save themselves and their country.

There was nobody else to make it in their place.

Macron as a Provocateur. Terror in Pompeii

This was the decisive moment, the moment the historical mission of Macron was achieved . By establishing the most absolute control of Finance over Politics, he himself invited Revolution. His triumph and his tragedy came together.

It was just then, that Bucephalus (*) sprang from the depths of historical Memory, galloping without a rider, ready to sweep away everything in his path.

Now those in power look at him with fear, but fearful too are both the "radical right" and the "radical left". Le Pen has already called on protesters to return to their homes and give her names to include in her list for the European election!

Mélenchon supports the Vests – 70% of their demands coincide with the program of his party, La France Insoumise – but so far he hasn't dared to join the people in demanding Macron's resignation, by adopting the immense, but orphan, cry of the people heard all over France: "Macron resign". Perhaps he feels that he hasn't got the steely strength and willpower required for attempting to lead such a movement.

The unions' leadership is doing everything it can to keep the working class away from the Vests, but this stand started causing increasing unrest at its base.

Read also: Macron Prepares a Social War

Many established "leftists" or "radical" intellectuals, who used to feverishly haul capitalism over the coals – although the last thing they really wanted was to experience a real revolution during their lifetime – they too, stand now frightened, looking at an angry Bucephalus running ahead of them. They prefer a stable capitalism, of which they can constitute its "consciousness", writing books, appearing on shows and giving lectures, analyzing its crises and explaining its tribulations. They idea that the People could at some point take seriously what they themselves said, never crossed their minds either!

In fact, this is also a further confirmation of the depth of the movement. Lenin , who, in any event knew something about revolutions, wrote in 1917: "In a revolutionary situation, the Party is a hundred times farther to the left than the Central Committee and the workers a hundred times farther to the left than the Party."

"Revolutionary Situation" and Power Vacuum

Today, four out of five French people disapprove of Macron's policies and one in two demands that he resigns immediately. We assume that this percentage is greater than the percentage of Russians who wanted the ousting of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917.

France is currently almost in a state of Power Vacuum . The president and the government cannot in essence govern and the people cannot tolerate them. It is not a situation of dual power, but a situation of dual legitimacy , in Mélenchon 's accurate description.

This is a typical definition of a revolutionary situation . As history teaches us, the emergence of such a situation is necessary but not sufficient condition for a victorious Revolution. What is required in or order to turn a rebellion into a potentially victorious Revolution, is a capable and decided leadership and an adequate strategy, program and vision. These elements do not seem to exist, at last not for now, in today's France, as they did not exist in May 1968 or during the Russian Revolution of February 1917. Therefore, the present situation remains open to all possible eventualities; there must be no doubt however, that this is the beginning of a period of intense political and class conflicts in Europe, and that the Europe, as we know it, is already history.

People's Sovereignty at the center of demands

Starting from fuel tax the revolting French have now put at the centre of their demands, in addition to Macron's resignation, the following:

In other words, they demand a profound and radical " transformation " of the Western bourgeois-democratic regime, as we know it, towards a form of direct democracy in order to take back the state, which has gradually and in a totalitarian manner – but while keeping up democratic appearances – passed under direct and full control of the Financial Capital and its employees. Or at least, for the people to be given the opportunity to develop an effective way of controlling state power.

These are not the demands of a fun-club of Protagoras or of some left-wing or right-wing groupuscule propagating Self-Management or of some club of intellectuals. Nor are they the demands of only the lowest social strata of the French nation.

They are supported, according to the polls and put forward by at least three quarters of French citizens, including a sizeable portion of the less poor. In such circumstances, these demands constitute in effect the Will of the People, the Will of the Nation.

The Vests are nothing more than its fighting pioneers. And precisely because it is the absolute majority of people who align with these demands, even if numbers have somewhat gone down since the beginning of December, the Vests are still wanted out on the streets.

By reversing Marx's famous formula in German Ideology , the ideas of the dominant class do not dominate society. This is why the situation can be described as revolutionary.

And also because it is not only the President and the Government, who have been debunked or at least de-legitimized, but it's also the whole range of state and political institutions, the parties, the unions, the "information" media and the "ideologists" of the regime.

The questioning of the establishment is so profound that any arguments about violence and the protesters do not weaken society's support for them. Many, but not all, condemn violence, but there are not many who don't go on immediately to add a reminder of the regime's social violence against the people. When a famous ex-boxer lost his temper and reacted by punching a number of violent police officers, protesters set up a fundraising website for his legal fees. In just two hours they managed to raise around 120.000 euro, before removing the page over officials' complaints and threats about keeping a file on anyone who contributes money to support such causes.

Read also: Greece: Creditors out to crush any trace of Syriza disobedience

Until now, an overwhelming majority of the French people supports the demands while an absolute majority shows supports for the demonstrations; but of course, it is difficult to keep such a deadlock and power-void situation going for long. They will sooner or later demand a solution, and in situations such as these it is often the case that public opinion shifts rapidly from the one end of the political spectrum to the other and vice versa, depending on which force appears to be more decisive and capable of driving society out of the crisis.

The organization of the Movement

Because the protesters have no confidence in the parties, the trade unions, or anyone else for that matter, they are driven out of necessity into self-organization, as they already do with the Citizens' Assemblies that are now emerging in villages, cities and motorway camps. Indeed, by the end of the month, if everything goes well, they will hold the first " Assembly of Assemblies ".

Similar developments have also been observed in many revolutionary movements of this kind in various countries. A classic example is the spontaneous formation of the councils ( Soviets ) during the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917.

Although it is difficult to form an opinion from afar about how the situation may unfold, the formation of a such a United Front from grassroots could perhaps offer a way out with regards to the need for a political leadership for the movement, or even of the need to work out a transitional economic program for France, which must also serve as a transitional program for Europe .

Contrary to how things were a century ago, certain factors such as the educational level of the lower social classes, the existence of a number of critical, radical thinkers with the necessary intellectual skills and the Internet, render such a possibility a much more realistic scenario today, than in the past.

Because the movement's Achilles' Heel is that, while it is already in the process of forming a political proposition, it still, at least for now, does not offer any economic alternative or a politically structured, democratically controlled leadership.

Effective Democracy is an absolute requirement in such a front, because it is the only way to synthesize the inevitably different levels of consciousness within the People and to avoid a split of the movement between "left" and "right", between those who are ready to resort to violence to achieve their ends and those who have a preference for more peaceful, gradual processes.

Such a " front " could perhaps also serve as a platform for solidifying a program and vision, to which the various parties and political organizations could contribute.

In her Critique of the Russian Revolution Rosa Luxemburg , the leader of the German Social Democracy was overly critical of the Bolsheviks , even if, I think, a bit too severe in some points. But she closes her critique with the phrase: " They at least dared "

Driven by absolute Need, guided by the specific way its historical experience has formed its consciousness, possessing a Surplus of Consciousness, that is able to feel the unavoidable conclusions coming out of the synthesis of the information we all possess, about both the "quality" of the forces governing our world and the enormous dangers threatening our countries and mankind, the French People, the French Nation has already crossed the Rubicon.

By moving practically to achieve their goals at a massive scale, and regardless of what is to come next, the French people has already made a giant leap up and forward and, once more in its history, it became the world's forerunner in tackling the terrible economic, ecological, nuclear and technological threats against human civilization and its survival.

Without the conscious entry of large masses into the historical scene, with all the dangers and uncertainties that such a thing surely implies, one can hardly imagine how humanity will survive.

Note

(*) Bucephalus was the horse of Alexander the Great, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucephalus

[Jan 17, 2019] No loyal American would fire a leader as impressive as FBI director James Comey by Tucker Carlson

Jan 17, 2019 | www.foxnews.com

Don Lemon -- has it nailed. As we told you Tuesday night - you could've seen this coming - the FBI has suspected this for some time.

The bureau opened a criminal investigation into the president more than a year ago, on the grounds that no loyal American would fire a leader as impressive as FBI director James Comey. Putin must have ordered it. The Washington Post concurred with this.

As one of the paper's columnists noted, Trump has also "endorsed populism." That's right. Populism.

It has the stink of Russia all over it. Smells like vodka and day-old herring.

[Jan 15, 2019] "Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies" - Ron Paul

Notable quotes:
"... "Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies" - Ron Paul ..."
Jan 15, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

GuyCybershy -> -> BaronVonAmericano , 10 Dec 2016 17:0

"Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies" - Ron Paul
greyford14 -> -> GuyCybershy , 10 Dec 2016 17:1
Be careful there, Ron Paul is an FSB agent of Putin, according to the Washington Post.
elias_ , 10 Dec 2016 17:0
At least Tucker Carlson is able to see through the BS and asks searching question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRkeGkCjdHg

[Jan 14, 2019] Nanci Pelosi and company at the helm of the the ship the Imperial USA: Most terrifying of all, the crew has become incompetent. They have no idea how to sail.

Highly recommended!
The quote below is from Tucker book... Tucker Carlson for President ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... What was written as an allegory is starting to feel like a documentary, as generations of misrule threaten to send our country beneath the waves. ..."
"... Facts threaten their fantasies. And so they continue as if what they're doing is working, making mistakes and reaping consequences that were predictable even to Greek philosophers thousands of years before the Internet. ..."
"... They're fools. The rest of us are their passengers. ..."
Jan 14, 2019 | www.amazon.com

Most terrifying of all, the crew has become incompetent. They have no idea how to sail. They're spinning the ship's wheel like they're playing roulette and cackling like mental patients.

The boat is listing, taking on water, about to sink. They're totally unaware that any of this is happening. As waves wash over the deck, they're awarding themselves majestic new titles and raising their own salaries. You look on in horror, helpless and desperate. You have nowhere to go. You're trapped on a ship of fools.

Plato imagined this scene in The Republic. He never mentions what happened to the ship. It would be nice to know. What was written as an allegory is starting to feel like a documentary, as generations of misrule threaten to send our country beneath the waves.

The people who did it don't seem aware of what they've done. They don't want to know, and they don't want you to tell them. Facts threaten their fantasies. And so they continue as if what they're doing is working, making mistakes and reaping consequences that were predictable even to Greek philosophers thousands of years before the Internet.

They're fools. The rest of us are their passengers.

[Jan 13, 2019] Democracy of vultures: The fact that former head of vulture company Bain Capital was elected the US senator tells you more about the USA democracy that 1000 of Congress speeches

Democracy of vultures, anyone ?
Jan 13, 2019 | finance.townhall.com

Which brings us to recent commentary from Fox News host Tucker Carlson on his eponymous show, Tucker Carlson Tonight . Among other things Carlson asked why investors (think hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, etc.) are taxed at lower rates than are typical workers. Carlson's specific target was Mitt Romney.

The junior Utah senator famously earned hundreds of millions while running private equity (vulture) firm Bain Capital.

[Jan 13, 2019] Catherine Austin Fitts – Federal Government Running Secret Open Bailout

Highly recommended!
Questionable, but still interesting perspective. Ignore marketing crap -- clearly there is marketing push within this presentation -- she wants your subscriptions. "This is Main Street vs Wall Street" dichotomy sounds plausible. Neoliberalism is, in essence, is the restoration of power of financial oligarchy.
But the idea of secret open bailout might explain why shale oil became so prominent despite high cost of producing it: Wall Street was subsidised via backchannels for bringing price downand supporting shale companies by the US goverment
Jan 12, 2019 | www.youtube.com

$21 trillion in "missing money" at the DOD and HUD that was discovered by Dr. Mark Skidmore and Catherine Austin Fitts in 2017 has now become a national security issue. The federal government is not talking or answering questions, even though the DOD recently failed its first ever audit.

Fitts says, "This is basically an open running bailout. Under this structure, you can transfer assets out of the federal government into private ownership, and nobody will know and nobody can stop it. There is no oversight whatsoever. You can't even know who is doing it. I'm telling you they just took the United States government, they just changed the governance model by accounting policy to a fascist government. If you are an investor, you don't know who owns those assets, and there is no evidence that you do. . . . If the law says you have to produce audited financial statements and you refuse to do so for 20 years, and then when somebody calls you on it, you proceed to change the accounting laws that say you can now run secret books for all the agencies and over 100 related entities."

In closing, Fitts says, "We cannot sit around and passively depend on a guy we elected President. The President cannot fix this. We need to fix this. . . . This is Main Street versus Wall Street. This is honest books versus dirty books. If you want the United States in 10 years to resemble anything what it looked like 20 years ago, you are going to have to do it, and there is no one else who can do it. You have to first get the intelligence to know what is happening."

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Catherine Austin Fitts, Publisher of "The Solari Report." Donations: https://usawatchdog.com/donations/

Stay in contact with USAWatchdog.com: https://usawatchdog.com/join/

All links can be found on USAWatchdog.com: https://usawatchdog.com/secret-money-...

Bob T 20 hours ago

Greg, with all due respect I don't you understand what CAF is saying. Forget about a dollar reset. The fascists, using the Treasury, Exchange Stabilization Fund, HUD, DOD and any agency they choose, have turned the US government into a gigantic money laundering operation. And they maintain two sets of books - the public numbers are a complete sham. Any paper assets held by private citizens are not secure, are likely rehypothecated, and when convenient can be frozen or siezed by these fascists in Washington. There is no limit to how many dollars the FED can create secretly and funnel out through the ESF/Treasury to prop up and bail out any bank, black ops, pet project, mercenary army or paper assets they choose. The missing $21 trillion is probably a drop in the bucket as there is no audit and no honest books for us to examine. In sum, all paper asset pricing in dollars is a fraud and a sham. Any paper assets you think you own, whether it be stocks, bonds, or real estate are pure illusion: they can be repriced or stolen at any time; in reality, you own nothing. To the man and woman on the street I say this: get out of paper, get out of these markets and convert to tangibles in your physical possession - and do it secretly and privately, avoid insurances, records, paper trails. This mass defrauding of the American people by this corrupt government in Washington will come crashing down when the US dollar is displaced from reserve status; this is what China and Russia and the BRICS are setting the stage for: world trade without the US dollar. When this happens, your dollars will become virtual toilet paper and all of your paper assets will go poof.

D Loydel 18 hours ago (edited)

"We have to fix this". Ok how does the individual fix this? Private armies are running around doing whatever private armies do and I, the one man, is suppose to fix this. Please, will someone tell us what we are suppose to do, specific instructions not a mix of large words that say " we must fix this", damn, we need a leader. Greg you ask almost every person you interview what the middle class should be doing to protect themselves and you never get a "real" answer, just a dance around. Also you ask numerous people what this coming change is going to look like and again, just silence or dance music, no answers. Damn we need a leader. Your trying very hard to give us information that will help us weather the coming storm, so thank you for all you do, and you do more than anyone else out there.

Forrest Byers 19 hours ago

Question, why in part do I feel I am being lied to? Is it subscription hustle or is it, don't you believe your lying eyes!

Without knowing exactly what is what, anyone who would've watched Herbert Walker Bush's funeral with reactions from those who received cards, whether they be Bush family, the Clintons, the Obamas and entourage. Jeb Bush went from being proud and patriotic to panic like the funeral that he was at was for the whole family.

Joe Biden looked like he had a major personal accident and no way to get to the bathroom for cleanup.

George W. Bush after being asked a question, of which the answer was, "Yep" then proceeded to appear resigned and stoic! What ever was on those cards essentially amounted to, for all those receiving a card, "the gig is up" and it appears they all damn well knew it.

So, Catherine Austin Fitts, explain your, "Trump is colluding with the Bushies," I would say, that Canary in this mine of inquiry is dead. I'm just an old disabled Vietnam vet of plebeian background and certainly not a revolving door Washington DC Beltway patrician, so any explanation needs to be delivered in slow, logical step-by-step progression for I have not mastered the art of selling the sizzle in hopes that the dupes will later pay for the steak. I prefer, Greg, when you actually get more combative with Ms. Fitts. Make America, great again and do so, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

sell siliconvalley 19 hours ago

35 min: Fitts gives a great synopsis of the problem. She never deviates in all of her interviews. greg doesn't seem to understand at all. She repeats herself MULTIPLE TIMES and greg is still asking the same irrelevant PREPPER questions. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT ASSETS YOU HOLD GREG, AND THAT INCLUDES GOLD!!!! WHEN YOU'RE EXISTING IN A TYRANNICAL SYSTEM THAT STEALS AT WILL FROM ITS' CONSTITUENCY YOU CAN'T actually OWN ANYTHING!!!! lord! only so many ways to say

Andy Mak 17 hours ago

She lost credibility when she said Trump has "made a deal with the Bushes." That defies logic. The Bushes made a deal with Trump! Trump has gained full control of the military with a $ 1 1/2 trillion war chest. Trump and Putin are putting the China toothpaste back in the tube.

Karen Lydon 19 hours ago

This woman clearly knows nothing about the plan..she has not even mentioned that the world bank president has resigned who was appointed by obumma. And that is HUGE. She was in government in the corruption, but she doesn't know how things will be fixed..she's not in that loop of current things in the new reset..shes coming from her own perceptions

A T 20 hours ago

This woman always make me sick to my stomach. She comes out and says a bunch of scary stuff and offers no solution. If it's too much for just one person, then we the people need to take control. We don't need a central bank. We need local and state banks like the Bank of North Dakota then we can migrate over to them and then shut down the Fed.

[Jan 13, 2019] Tucker Carlson Routs Conservatism Inc. On Unrestrained Capitalism -- And Immigration by Washington Watcher

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Tucker Carlson's critique of unrestrained capitalism last week sent the Respectable Righ t into apoplectic fury. That's why it's irrelevant -- and why Carlson is increasingly emerging as a name to conjure with. ..."
"... Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But for everyone else, it's infuriating ..."
"... Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You'd have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society. ..."
"... National Review ..."
"... The Right Should Reject Tucker Carlson's Victimhood Populism ..."
"... National Review ..."
"... National Review? ..."
"... [T]he primary responsibility for creating a life of virtue and purpose rests with families and individuals. In fact, it is still true that your choices are far more important to your success than any government program or the actions of any nefarious banker or any malicious feminist. ..."
"... Tucker Carlson Claims Market Capitalism Has Undermined American Society. He's Wrong. ..."
"... National Review ..."
"... America Needs Virtue before Prosperity ..."
"... National Review ..."
"... National Review ..."
"... Most young Americans prefer socialism to capitalism, new report finds ..."
"... Socialism is exactly what we're going to get, and very soon unless a group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that protects normal people ..."
"... Carlson's economic populism pairs with his support for patriotic immigration reform: both policies aim to serve the people's interest and strengthen America as a unified community. This vision conflicts with multinational corporations who would rather see America as one giant strip mall filled with atomized customers. Not surprisingly, these companies oppose patriotic immigration reform. Also not surprisingly, so does Conservatism Inc. ..."
"... The only institution that can stand up to corporations and tell them to change is the state -- which happens to be the only institution patriots can have any influence over. Academia, Hollywood, corporate America, and the Establishment Media are all under the thrall of Cultural Marxists. (The churches are a more complicated matter, but fewer Americans listen to religious leaders in our day and age.) ..."
"... Washington Watcher [ email him ] is an anonymous source Inside The Beltway. ..."
"... Don't cry in 2020 if Donald Trump loses because he took advice from the same market capitalists who tried to sink him and his movement back in 2016 – the same people who destroyed Romney's chances in 2012. He's already well on his way with deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. Unfortunately, some of his supporters seem eager to help him in that losing effort. ..."
"... In my view, I think the message is clear. Government's role of facilitator, monitor and guarantor of fair practices has decided to jump in bed on the side of business and that without guarantee of a fair distribution to the US citizens, who in the case of government subsidies, contracts and bailouts are footing the bill for a good deal of financial misconduct and lousy adherence to best practices as they reap the benefits. ..."
"... Oh–I get it. The problem is not Capitalism. It's that we don't have more of it. God you people are brazenly ingenuous. ..."
"... Deregulating big biz without corresponding relaxations on common people is wrong and we must oppose it. No tax cuts for biz without much bigger ones for the common people! ..."
"... Some below average dude above said "this country has nothing resembling Capitalism going on. Big Business is in bed with Big Feral Gov't. "Crony Capitalism" may not roll off the tongue, but that's the usual fair description of it." Hear that on Fox News? Oh, if only we were all controlled and dominated by Capitalists. If only capitalists owned all the major media. If only Capitalists owned all the politicians. If only capitalists made up all the leading politicians. If only all the bankers were Capitalists If only the Fed was made up of capitalists. Then we would finally have true capitalism. ..."
"... But wait a minute. That's EXACTLY the situation that we do have. What that means is that we have EXACTLY the capitalism that capitalism produces. We have EXACTLY the capitalism that the leading capitalists, who will always control the capitalist government and the capitalist economy, want and need. ..."
"... And before anyone starts with "its the globalists." Globalism is capitalism. Capitalism brought the black slaves here, capitalism is bringing the Mexicans here. Slave labor/cheap labor is the name of the game, always has been. Nothing new. Globalism=capitalism ..."
"... Capitalist wars are also driving the refugees from their homelands. Whether in Iraq, Sudan or Honduras, wars are a twofer for capitalists, massive war profiteering, theft of resources, with the added bonus of driving refugees into Europe/America to lower the standard of living and decrease wages for us. ..."
"... Privatization of public property/resources is theft, privatization today is strictly about prioritizing money away from the commons and general welfare and giving total monopoly to the inbred 1% rent-seeking parasites, monopoly of resources (food, water, air, shelter), monopoly of control, monopoly of propaganda, monopoly of Policy, monopoly of money, monopoly of war. ..."
"... Most people, including below average guy above don't wan't to accept this, usually because of ignorance or "muh capitalism" and "muh free markets " brainwashing by Fox "News". They have been programmed subconsciously into thinking that any other alternative method will not work or it is "evil socialism". They are still interested in making rentier classes out of each other and fucking over their children's future, while propping up their capitalist overlords. ..."
"... Meet the New World Order. Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/ ..."
"... and give it a rest with the "freedumb" BS you goon. The US has the largest prison population in the world. You go to jail for smoking a joint for goodness sake. At the same time capitalist bankers make off with trillions in stolen wealth without a slap on the wrist. ..."
"... Not to mention the spying/surveillance, Patriot Act, assassinations and indefinite detention of Americans with no due process, Anti-BDS laws, a totally rigged judicial system, a healthcare system that is nothing short of a racket, a fake media totally controlled by the capitalist war profiteers and corporate parasites. Everything that you accuse "communists" of is what is actually happening under the Capitalists. ..."
"... I agree with Tucker that the family unit is the most important reason why America is degenerating, resulting in less people getting married, less children, less everything, creating a vacuum that can only be filled by foreign invasion. The lack of strong families is also the reason for the rise in suicides, drug addiction, crime, treason, etc., etc. ..."
"... Militant feminism has made it such that husbands and wives become economic competitors rather than complementary partners. Families have become less important as compared to each partner seeking financial success above all else ..."
"... There is a disincentive to have children because it is an obstacle to climbing the corporate ladder. If you don't have children, there is not a lot of benefit to being married, so divorces increase. ..."
"... As Tucker says, no woman wants to marry a man who makes less than she does. So, as more women are forced into the workforce, less marriages happen. ..."
"... Uncontrolled immigration helps the ruling class to reduce wages, also contributing to declining families. Legal immigration decimates the middle class ..."
"... If that isn't enough, mass distribution of pornography, deviant sex, gender perversion, LGBTQXYZZY , all contribute to the breaking of traditional intimacy between one man and one woman, that is the foundation of marriage and stable families. ..."
"... And there are the fake wars. As sons, and now daughters, go off to fight in foreign lands that have not attacked us, only one parent stays behind to raise the family, inadequately. Moreover, when these traumatized soldiers return from battle, they are seldom able to re-integrate into the family unit, and in a large number of cases, divorces and criminal behavior result. ..."
"... Idiots on here are always going on about how we don't got capitalism, if we only had capitalism, we don't got free markets, if only we had free markets, then everything would be hunky-dory. Without any proof, of course, because there never was and never will be a "free" "market." The US has plenty capitalism. And everything sucks. And they want more. Confused, stupid, disingenuous liars. ..."
"... Free markets are crookedness factories. As a PhD from Chicago Business School told me, "Free markets?! What free markets?! There is no free market! It's all crooked!" ..."
Jan 13, 2019 | www.unz.com

Tucker Carlson's critique of unrestrained capitalism last week sent the Respectable Right into apoplectic fury. That's why it's irrelevant -- and why Carlson is increasingly emerging as a name to conjure with.

In a now-celebrated monologue on his Fox News show, Carlson blamed multinational corporations and urban elites for the decline of Middle America. [ Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But for everyone else, it's infuriating , Fox News , January 3, 2019] He listed several social ills that he attributed to unrestrained capitalism, including predatory loans, higher drug use , declining marriage rates , and shuttered factories.

Carlson lambasted "conservatives" who bemoan the decay of the family but refuse to consider if capitalism played any role in that tragedy. According to Carlson, "conservatives" consider criticism of the free market to be apostasy.

He offered this blunt advice to Republicans who want to make America great again.

Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You'd have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.

Needless to say, this opinion was met with frothing anger by several Conservatism Inc. writers, a crowd that seems to believe the free market a holy thing that must not suffer blasphemy. They were upset that anyone would dare suggest that the state could act to rectify social ills, arguing that this was rank demagogy and antithetical to conservatism. National Review published several op-eds condemning Tucker's monologue -- a sure sign of Respectable Right displeasure.

David French , briefly Bill Kristol's Never Trump catspaw, represented the typical response in The Right Should Reject Tucker Carlson's Victimhood Populism . [ National Review , January 4, 2019]. French claims to agree with Carlson that Middle America suffers from numerous ills, but he argues the state should play no role with fixing them. Thus payday loans are a necessary part of capitalism, drug criminalization is bad because it puts nice minorities in jail, and radical feminism and Affirmative Action aren't serious concerns.

French also defended the virtue of America's elites, citing their charitable giving (including to National Review? ) to absolve the ir disdain of the working class and support for outsourcing :

Carlson is advancing a form of victim-politics populism that takes a series of tectonic cultural changes -- civil rights, women's rights, a technological revolution as significant as the industrial revolution, the mass-scale loss of religious faith, the sexual revolution, etc. -- and turns the negative or challenging aspects of those changes into an angry tale of what they are doing to you.

French's solution is for the working class to go to community college and for America to magically experience an organic renewal of virtue. It's all up to the individual to make America better:

[T]he primary responsibility for creating a life of virtue and purpose rests with families and individuals. In fact, it is still true that your choices are far more important to your success than any government program or the actions of any nefarious banker or any malicious feminist.

It is certainly true that your family and your own choices has a great influence over whether you live a virtuous and even happy life. But that does not show how social ills will somehow be corrected by self-help advice.

Additionally, as one man from a Midwest town destroyed by plant closures pointed out on Twitter, community college and re-training are not sufficient in equaling the old manufacturing jobs . "'New tech always comes along to save the day' does not apply. The late 19th-Century farm workers who flocked to Henry Ford for jobs after the last great labor upheaval have nowhere to go this time," the man, Tom Ferguson, tweeted.

Greenville has only 8,000 residents, but is the largest city in Montcalm County. The plant closure eliminated 3,000 jobs. As long as we're quantifying, I'll note the equivalence to 3,000,000 (sic) jobs being lost in New York City. 4/20 The local community college offered communications and other job-skills courses. My recollection says this noble effort, measured across 3,000 layoffs, was not very meaningful. 8/20 "New tech always comes along to save the day" does not apply. The late 19th-Century farm workers who flocked to Henry Ford for jobs after the last great labor upheaval have nowhere to go this time. 11/20

(See the whole thread here , here , or (as a screenshot) here .)

French also failed to consider how much influence a " malicious feminist " can have over the lives of normal people. Just one "offensive" tweet can cost somebody their career and reputation if Leftists stir up a mob . Good luck finding a job if your Google history is says you're a sexist. Additionally, Human Resources Departments are run to conform to Leftist dictates, and your private speech and views could draw the suspicion of HR at any time.

Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro attacked Carlson in two separate articles. The first, for his own website, zealously defended the greatness of the free market and the purity of movement conservatism: "Traditional conservatives recognized that the role of economics is to provide prosperity – to raise the GDP," is a sentence that best summarizes Shapiro's ridiculous retconning of a once-great movement [ Tucker Carlson Claims Market Capitalism Has Undermined American Society. He's Wrong. , by Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire , January 4, 2019]

Shapiro truly believes the free market is one of the greatest things to ever exist and it must not be restrained. All social problems, according to him, are due to individual choices and we should not seek collective solutions to social ills like declining marriage rates and fewer good jobs for working-class males. Trust the free market and insist a virtue renewal will resolve the problems state aims to solve.

Shapiro followed up his Daily Wire column with a short column in National Review that also insisted we need a virtue renewal instead of a state intervention into the market. Shapiro believes we just need Americans to stop wanting "stuff" and exhibit virtue in order to bring back Middle America [ America Needs Virtue before Prosperity , by Ben Shapiro, National Review , January 8, 2019].

"Carlson's claim that material gain isn't enough to provide happiness doesn't lead him back to virtue, which would bolster additional freedom. It leads him to the same material solutions that undercut virtue in the first place," Shapiro concluded,.

It would be nice if people would make themselves better and get the right job training after they read one National Review column. But that's not going to happen and Shapiro offers no means for enacting a renewal of virtue.

In effect, all of Carlson's Conservatism Inc. critics demand we must do nothing about the woes of working-class whites and the free market will figure out something.

So at a time when a majority of Americans -- including a majority of Republicans -- support single-payer healthcare and other big government initiatives, Conservatism Inc. pundits offer platitudes about limited government and the greatness of capitalism [ Most young Americans prefer socialism to capitalism, new report finds , by Kathleen Elkins, CNBC , August 14, 2018].

This will not end well. Indeed, Carlson anticipated noted this response in his monologue:

Socialism is exactly what we're going to get, and very soon unless a group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that protects normal people

(Carson did not directly mention immigration, somewhat surprising because it has been one of his long-standing concerns. But it ties into this debate. Many of the Conservativism Inc, types outraged at Tucker also support mass immigration and buy into the notion that America is a " nation of immigrants ." They see America as primarily an economy or an idea, not a nation. Tucker's national populism reverses those false notions -- America is a nation first and its primary responsibility is to its citizens , not the GDP.

Carlson's economic populism pairs with his support for patriotic immigration reform: both policies aim to serve the people's interest and strengthen America as a unified community. This vision conflicts with multinational corporations who would rather see America as one giant strip mall filled with atomized customers. Not surprisingly, these companies oppose patriotic immigration reform. Also not surprisingly, so does Conservatism Inc.

The unfortunate fact is that American corporations pose the greatest threat to our fundamental liberties and way of life. They censor free speech, make banking difficult for political dissidents, exclusively promote progressive causes, listen to foreign governments more than our own, promote mass immigration, and demonstrate a loyalty only to their own profits and power. Currently, in fact, they are increasingly boycotting Tucker Carlson's show, to Leftist applause .

The only institution that can stand up to corporations and tell them to change is the state -- which happens to be the only institution patriots can have any influence over. Academia, Hollywood, corporate America, and the Establishment Media are all under the thrall of Cultural Marxists. (The churches are a more complicated matter, but fewer Americans listen to religious leaders in our day and age.)

Americans cannot expect a civic renewal from our social institutions. Conservatives wield zero influence over a culture that encourages drug use, sexual promiscuity, agnosticism, and women's' choosing career over family. We are not going to experience a social renaissance just by wishing for one.

If we want our society to improve, we have to push for state policies with that goal in mind. There is no other option.

It's time to discard the worn-out conservative dogmas and make the state serve the people. National populism is the only path for Republicans to remain viable and (yes!) make our country great again.

Washington Watcher [ email him ] is an anonymous source Inside The Beltway. Tucker Carlson Routs Conservatism Inc. On Unrestrained Capitalism -- And Immigration, by Washington Watcher - The Unz Review


Anon [123] Disclaimer , says: January 11, 2019 at 6:14 pm GMT

The first two comments on this blog perfectly illustrate why conservatives are in so much trouble: they refuse to let go of old – harmful – dogmas, preferring to rationalize them instead; they fail to embrace the policies that could realistically assure a positive outcome for themselves and their beliefs. This leaves them vulnerable to rhetorical conmen like Ben Shapiro and outfits like the National Review – controlled opposition if I ever saw it.

It's not surprising to me that the National Review would oppose Carlson's viewpoint, as the article mentioned. Here are the readership demographics of the National Review: 60+ with an average annual salary somewhere north of $200,000. With that in mind, ask yourself if it is really more likely that the National Review is interested in preserving the principles of free market capitalism than they are merely interested in preserving the pocketbooks of their donors and readers.

And let's be honest, Ben Shapiro was brought in by the National Review to run interference after the disastrous failure of their market capitalism-based NeverTrump critiques back in 2016; their front cover during that campaign was entitled "Against Trump". Despicable.

Ben Shapiro's shtick is to mix "muh feminism" rhetoric popular with the youth with "muh unregulated markets" rhetoric popular with the National Review donors in order to obscure the line between the two. The end result is that you hear exactly what you want to hear (a temporary, but hollow, pleasure) while nothing is ever ultimately done to address the cause of "muh feminism" in the first place which just so happens to be some of the same things pushed by the National Review, as Tucker Carlson noted. This is the kind of thing that explains why you lost the culture war. You embraced rhetoric over reason with no mind to the future.

What the responder here has done is merely repackage old assertions with new rhetoric. He makes the same kind of outlandish and unrealistic claims as Shapiro, even if he is unaware – wishing for miracles, essentially. He points out an issue (say the tax code) and then claims this problem is the ultimate source of all our problems. Lost in this analysis is any sense of probability. What is the probability that the tax code (or anything else he mentioned) will spontaneously fix itself against the wishes of the public, according to all the polls? Answer: very small, probably zero. So, why bother with that approach?

Ask yourself why we shouldn't address the crime rate with the same logic. We could abolish the prison system and just hope that there is a solution to the ensuing rampant dysfunction by wishing for it. Obviously, that's stupid and the public would never go for it, ever. So, why is this logic smart for economics and politics?

Could the National Review and their conman Ben Shapiro really be so obtuse as to really believe that their suggestions are even a remote possibility? I doubt it. Or maybe they have an ulterior motive, as I have already mentioned: run interference with cleverly chosen words while fundamental problems affecting actual republican voters go unaddressed – poverty, suicide, revocation of fundamental liberties, a growing police state, and rampant internet censorship; meanwhile, rich National Review donors continue to line their pocketbooks with cheap labor immigration.

Also unaddressed in multiple – often disingenuous – critiques of Tucker Carlson is exactly how supporters of voodoo economics have any solutions themselves beyond mere rhetoric. Do they even bother at this point? I didn't see much in these rebuttals other than assertions and semantics games. Perhaps, instead, these people have a track record of success that might lead one to believe Elysium is around the corner? Hardly. They have a track record of continual failure. So, why believe them here?

Wage growth has been stagnant for decades while healthcare costs, public debt, and tuition have soared. They've done next to nothing on immigration; their proposal before Trump was to double it. These are also the same people who claimed NAFTA would be great for the American worker – that people could just get retrained. Also wrong. NAFTA has exploded the trade deficit while workers often work longer hours for less pay and fewer benefits. The culture wars? Total failure. Freedom of religion, of speech, and of association are on life support – often at the behest of multinational corporations that threaten boycotts or deny service to conservative viewpoints. What about the rise of China? Totally wrong. That nation is eating our lunch. Sucks that we had to export our industries to them. As we speak, they're considering an armed assault against Taiwan while Rand says their military is probably strong enough to defeat ours if we came to their defense.

Meanwhile, cultural conservatives have lost every battle in the United States mainland. The movement is so weak we can't even protect our own borders because, according to Nancy Pelosi, "that's not who we are." You want to know who else agrees with Nancy? Multinational corporations and National Review donors. Funny how those issues go hand-in-hand. It's almost like these trucons care more about low taxes than mass immigration. Which do you care more about?

And that's why conservatives lose. They refuse to choose between pie-in-the-sky dogma that benefits others at their expense and practical solutions to the issues at hand. They'll justify the current order with statements like "this isn't capitalism, if only we had real capitalism" not realizing that this is the real capitalism the ruling class wants because it benefits them economically, not you the ordinary man.

Ironically, this result is similar to Alexander Fraser Tytler's critique of democracy – that it ends as soon as the public realizes they can vote themselves free goodies. The often missed point of Lord Tytler's argument is that, when given a choice, the average person will forego sacrifice with long-term benefits, instead choosing short-term pleasures with long-term consequences; the end result is dysfunction and ruin. In this case, market capitalists make the same mistake. They embrace disastrous long-term policies – immigration, deregulation, monopolies, a warped tax code, punishing the poor – in order to preserve their short-term bank accounts. We will lose the nation if they and their supporters are allowed to carry the day. That's what happens when you let your enemy control every lever of power in society; they use it to their benefit and at your expense. And that's exactly what free market capitalists advocate, even if they don't directly state it. Thus, the need for regulation and the exercise of power from the sole places where we have it: the government and the military.

Don't cry in 2020 if Donald Trump loses because he took advice from the same market capitalists who tried to sink him and his movement back in 2016 – the same people who destroyed Romney's chances in 2012. He's already well on his way with deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. Unfortunately, some of his supporters seem eager to help him in that losing effort.

EliteCommInc. , says: January 11, 2019 at 6:17 pm GMT
In my view, I think the message is clear. Government's role of facilitator, monitor and guarantor of fair practices has decided to jump in bed on the side of business and that without guarantee of a fair distribution to the US citizens, who in the case of government subsidies, contracts and bailouts are footing the bill for a good deal of financial misconduct and lousy adherence to best practices as they reap the benefits.

Solutions:

a. no member of an elected position should be permitted to own stock, sit on the boards of stock or financial instititions which they are the creators of regulations and laws.

b. elected and appointed government employees are barred from consulting and working as or with private sector companies.

c. senior military leaders are barred from working with or for private industry in any manner related to government provides services and goods, (except as instructors, and similar capacities)

just for starters -- I am a pro capitalist. But what we are experiencing is not capitalism.

obwandiyag , says: January 11, 2019 at 10:13 pm GMT
Oh–I get it. The problem is not Capitalism. It's that we don't have more of it. God you people are brazenly ingenuous.
Fidelios Automata , says: January 13, 2019 at 1:52 am GMT
@Achmed E. Newman As a long-time libertarian, I'd agree with you for the most part. But I've had an epiphany in the last 2 years. All freedoms are not created equal. One of the things beltway-tarians such as the Koch-funded Cato Institute push is the idea that an increase in freedom in any area is good because the benefits "trickle down." Bullcrap!

Deregulating big biz without corresponding relaxations on common people is wrong and we must oppose it. No tax cuts for biz without much bigger ones for the common people!

redmudhooch , says: January 13, 2019 at 2:36 am GMT
Some below average dude above said "this country has nothing resembling Capitalism going on. Big Business is in bed with Big Feral Gov't. "Crony Capitalism" may not roll off the tongue, but that's the usual fair description of it." Hear that on Fox News? Oh, if only we were all controlled and dominated by Capitalists. If only capitalists owned all the major media. If only Capitalists owned all the politicians. If only capitalists made up all the leading politicians. If only all the bankers were Capitalists If only the Fed was made up of capitalists. Then we would finally have true capitalism.

But wait a minute. That's EXACTLY the situation that we do have. What that means is that we have EXACTLY the capitalism that capitalism produces. We have EXACTLY the capitalism that the leading capitalists, who will always control the capitalist government and the capitalist economy, want and need.

Newsflash! There can be no Capitalism that is different from what we've got today. You would have to kill all the capitalists, to start over, because they would just buy their way right back to the top. The money all accrues to the top, very quickly. It's like a bad game of Monopoly. They take the money they've accumulated, and, realizing that money is just a means to an end, put it to work. They buy political power, and use the combination of political and financial/economic power to cement their monopoly. The very first thing they do it to pull up the "ladder of success" after themselves.

When nobody else can climb the ladder, we get frustrated, and want to change the rules to allow an "even playing field." This is exactly what the early winners of Capitalism will not allow, and they go to great lengths to prevent it. They also complain bitterly about any and all attempts to even out the effects of Capitalism.

That "evil government" that you hate is nothing more than the organization of the capitalists. Every member of the government is a Capitalist, often funded into power by even richer capitalists. We do not have a government, we have puppets of capitalists or as you Fox News Hannity enthusiasts call it "the deep state"

Government was intended to be of the people, by the people, for the people, and to serve the people, not the Corporation.

To the (((shill))) Shapiro

If we all had a PhD, there would be EXACTLY the same number of people being paid poverty wages and exactly the same number unemployed. McDonalds and Wal-Mart don't pay a penny more for a fry cook or greeter with a PhD. It's capitalism that determines the jobs and the pay, not the education level of the masses.

When capitalism tells the masses to "go get an education" as being the solution to their poverty, it's nothing more than saying, "you workers need to compete harder among yourselves for the few good-paying jobs that capitalism has to offer." Thanks to the capitalists sending the good paying middle class jobs to slave labor countries so they could make a few dollars more.

And before anyone starts with "its the globalists." Globalism is capitalism. Capitalism brought the black slaves here, capitalism is bringing the Mexicans here. Slave labor/cheap labor is the name of the game, always has been. Nothing new. Globalism=capitalism

Capitalist wars are also driving the refugees from their homelands. Whether in Iraq, Sudan or Honduras, wars are a twofer for capitalists, massive war profiteering, theft of resources, with the added bonus of driving refugees into Europe/America to lower the standard of living and decrease wages for us.

Privatization of public property/resources is theft, privatization today is strictly about prioritizing money away from the commons and general welfare and giving total monopoly to the inbred 1% rent-seeking parasites, monopoly of resources (food, water, air, shelter), monopoly of control, monopoly of propaganda, monopoly of Policy, monopoly of money, monopoly of war.

Most don't have a clue what Socialism actually is. Socialism is government by the working-class. There is not the slightest hint of the working-class ruling over society anywhere in the world. Obviously.

The New World Order is being brought to you through capitalism, private banking and corporate monopoly over EVERYTHING. You think your imaginary boogie-man socialists and communists are scary? Wait till Monsanto/Bayer have total monopoly over our food and water, they're getting very close, better wake up. Jesus warned you.

redmudhooch , says: January 13, 2019 at 4:04 am GMT
Some miserably mediocre guy above said "Jesus didn't warn me that I'd better love "my" government."

He warned you about the love of money AKA capitalism, and what it leads to. You like being replaced with cheap labor, H1B visa slaves, alright that's fine, but I think most American workers are a little tired of it. Problem today mediocre dude, is that governments aren't "governments" but private corporations, with shareholders, operating in the public sector. Again, government is the PEOPLE. The citizens, the workers. Of the people, by the people, for the people, and to serve the people, not the Corporation. Not the parasite. You got it backwards son.

Most people, including below average guy above don't wan't to accept this, usually because of ignorance or "muh capitalism" and "muh free markets " brainwashing by Fox "News". They have been programmed subconsciously into thinking that any other alternative method will not work or it is "evil socialism". They are still interested in making rentier classes out of each other and fucking over their children's future, while propping up their capitalist overlords.

Meet the New World Order. Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/

redmudhooch , says: January 13, 2019 at 5:39 am GMT
@Achmed E. Newman

I get that you are too young, too stupid, or both, to imagine freedom

and give it a rest with the "freedumb" BS you goon. The US has the largest prison population in the world. You go to jail for smoking a joint for goodness sake. At the same time capitalist bankers make off with trillions in stolen wealth without a slap on the wrist.

Not to mention the spying/surveillance, Patriot Act, assassinations and indefinite detention of Americans with no due process, Anti-BDS laws, a totally rigged judicial system, a healthcare system that is nothing short of a racket, a fake media totally controlled by the capitalist war profiteers and corporate parasites. Everything that you accuse "communists" of is what is actually happening under the Capitalists.

Ask Julian Assange or Snowden about this freedumb you speak of.

That's about all I have to say about that.

Cloak And Dagger , says: January 13, 2019 at 6:28 am GMT
I agree with Tucker that the family unit is the most important reason why America is degenerating, resulting in less people getting married, less children, less everything, creating a vacuum that can only be filled by foreign invasion. The lack of strong families is also the reason for the rise in suicides, drug addiction, crime, treason, etc., etc.

But Tucker can't tell us the reason for why this has been happening for decades now. He can't point to the deliberate manipulation of America by strong Jewish forces. The family unit has been the thrust of these attacks, and nobody realizes it.

... ... ...

3. Militant feminism has made it such that husbands and wives become economic competitors rather than complementary partners. Families have become less important as compared to each partner seeking financial success above all else.

There is a disincentive to have children because it is an obstacle to climbing the corporate ladder. If you don't have children, there is not a lot of benefit to being married, so divorces increase. After his divorce, one of the managers in my company has been living together with his girlfriend for 11 years, and they have no intention of getting married or having children. They are together because neither can afford housing on their own and their joint income makes it possible. With only economic necessity holding them together, there is every reason to expect cheating or unexpected dissolution of the partnership when better financial opportunities present themselves. As Tucker says, no woman wants to marry a man who makes less than she does. So, as more women are forced into the workforce, less marriages happen.

... ... ...

5. Uncontrolled immigration helps the ruling class to reduce wages, also contributing to declining families. Legal immigration decimates the middle class.

6. If that isn't enough, mass distribution of pornography, deviant sex, gender perversion, LGBTQXYZZY , all contribute to the breaking of traditional intimacy between one man and one woman, that is the foundation of marriage and stable families.

7. And there are the fake wars. As sons, and now daughters, go off to fight in foreign lands that have not attacked us, only one parent stays behind to raise the family, inadequately. Moreover, when these traumatized soldiers return from battle, they are seldom able to re-integrate into the family unit, and in a large number of cases, divorces and criminal behavior result.

... ... ...

obwandiyag , says: January 13, 2019 at 6:37 am GMT
Idiots on here are always going on about how we don't got capitalism, if we only had capitalism, we don't got free markets, if only we had free markets, then everything would be hunky-dory. Without any proof, of course, because there never was and never will be a "free" "market." The US has plenty capitalism. And everything sucks. And they want more. Confused, stupid, disingenuous liars.
obwandiyag , says: January 13, 2019 at 6:42 am GMT
Look, what you call "capitalism" and "free markets" just means scams to make rich people richer. You read some simple-minded description of some pie-in-the-sky theory of some perfect world where rational actors make the best possible decisions in their own interest without any outside interference, and you actually think you are reading a description of something real.

I'll tell you what's real. Crookedness. Free markets are crookedness factories. As a PhD from Chicago Business School told me, "Free markets?! What free markets?! There is no free market! It's all crooked!"

GandalfTheWhite , says: January 13, 2019 at 6:46 am GMT
@Achmed E. Newman "We need nationalism without capitalism and socialism without internationalism" ~ Gregor Strasser

In the American case, that would also in effect restrict all transfer payments to being within kin-groups and at the local / state / civil society level. America could have had a workable welfare state if the right leadership had governed it (i.e. if there had been no Sexual Revolution amplified by feminism and Cultural Marxist subversion of critical institutions) and if resources of middle class white families were not transferred to non-white underclass dysfunctional degenerates.

follyofwar , says: January 13, 2019 at 6:48 am GMT
Tucker's show is the only political opinion show I watch. The rest of Fox is pretty much Neocon Central. CNN/MSNBC are jokes parading as news outlets. I love it when Trump continually calls them Fake News, which is exactly what they are.

But it's ominous that so many corporations have stopped advertising on Tucker's show. Fox now finds itself in a bind. Not knowing he would become such a threat to the established order when they gave him a prime time gig, they may well prefer to get rid of him. And they could use the convenient excuse that no one wants to advertise on the show anymore. But Carlson has become such a popular pundit that, if they fired him, it could well spell the end of Fox as viewers would leave in droves.

Free speech is dying in newsrooms everywhere and is endangered on the Internet also, with all-powerful leftist corporations like Google deciding what (to them) is acceptable speech. I'd just hate to see Tucker go the way of Phil Donohue, who lost his MSNBC show (at the time the most popular on the network) because he was against the Iraq war.

Huskynut , says: January 13, 2019 at 6:54 am GMT
@achmed e newman, @redmudhooch

It's kinda weird watching you two trade blows.. from the outside your differences seem about 10% of your shared disgust of the MSM.
I'm guessing you'll thump each other to a draw and both fall over exhausted, having left the genuine shared enemy untouched.
In what world is that a sensible outcome?! Stop being such macho douches and start playing a smart political game, or just get used to being shat on by the incumbent powers. Your choice..

anon [180] Disclaimer , says: January 13, 2019 at 7:04 am GMT
@Achmed E. Newman yes, I agree with you Mr. Newman.. but there is something still missing to explain how the good wholesome concept of Capitalism has captured the governed of nearly every nation state and placed them into a prison farm where the monopoly powered corporate private capitalist can extort as much as they please.

Keeping the economic environment fair, open, free, in a fully restrained completely fair play condition is an absolute requirement of capitalism is the only legitimate function of government; in fact, it is the essence of a government that is formed of the substance of the right of self determination. When monopoly powers are generated by government and given to private private enterprise, or or when government services are privatized, capitalism has been turned into captivism and the market has be turned into a human farm yard, allowing those with the monopoly powers to cull and harvest the herds as they wish.

Instead of government doing its job; the USA has actually become the center for biasing capitalism. It continues to bestow monopoly powers (copyright, patents, and it continues to give government grants to universities that use the grants to take the risk that industry should be taking, to investigate new ideas and new products and it continues to allow its obligations to the governed to be privatized ). Basically the University has become the middle man between government and monopoly powered capitalism. The government gives the University a grant, the grant is used to fund training programs called Phd studies, and after a while the (the research encounters a promising discovery, and the corporate department is created within the University but funded by the governed in the form of a government grant. Next when a product of substance is sufficiently understood and most of the questions about it fully explored at government expense (note the privately owned monopoly powered corporation does not have to put any money at risk, until the University develops the product so billions of research dollars are funded from the pockets of the governed, for the practical benefit of one of the monopoly powered corporations), the entire university department become employees of the patent acquiring monopoly powered privately owned corporation. Then as if to add insult to injury, the government has been allowing the private corporations to offer the services the government is suppose to offer (like the water companies, the power companies, the garbage companies, the security companies, the production of weapons, and the likes, all of these government monopolies have been sold off or licensed to private enterprise.in a monopoly transfer concept called privatization or grant by government contract)
so in fact there is no such thing as capitalism in the USA governed America, its privatized monopoly ism.

What makes monopolies so bad is that they prevent competition (and competition is the name of the game in capitalism ). Someone in his back yard invents something that puts Apple or Microsoft, or IBM or the Federal Reserve out of business, just as the University of Australia has invented a way to supply the whole world with nearly free energy, the solar and wind power are used when functioning while the excess is stored so that the capacity of the wind, solar and hydro storage are sufficient to generate, store and provide a flow of energy sufficient to supply the needs of the world, yet few have heard about it, because the media is another privatized thing, and it(the media) will remain silent about such innovation, at least, until it can force the university to sell its patents to one of the mega buck monopoly powered corporations. This solar, wind and hydro combinationhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lk3elu3zf4 is not really a new science discovery , its an application using proven methodology) would eliminate the need for gas and oil in the world, and that would solve the C02 problem which is the essence of global warming .
The problem with capitalism USA style is that government must function as an independent third party, some the USA cannot seem to be, an honest broker.. the government must deny any kind of favouritism to any and all that would in any way bias discovery, bias competition, or bias the financing of investigations that might lead to discovery or financing needed to build the infra structure that allows the new invention to replace the old. History shows the problem with republics, is that the corrupt soon own the government, at least that seems to fit the conditions in the UK, USA, Israel, France, and Saudi Arabia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lk3elu3zf4

utu , says: January 13, 2019 at 7:06 am GMT
@obwandiyag The same thing was in the Soviet Union. Any problem was dismissed on account that they would go away once they had more communism. And it was always emphasized that it must be so because it was scientifically proven by Marx. The libertarian idiots like our Achmed here are no different than those communist idiots.
utu , says: January 13, 2019 at 7:10 am GMT
Achmed E. Newman -- > Commenters to Ignore

I strongly recommend doing this.

Wally , says: January 13, 2019 at 7:32 am GMT
@Achmed E. Newman Indeed, the examples below are not free market capitalism, but these are what too many erroneously think is the result of free market capitalism:

– Trade deals made by Big Gov are not free market capitalism.
– Special exemptions from competition for those connected to Big Gov is not free market capitalism.
– Big Gov granting monopolies to unions is not free market capitalism.
– Big Gov granted monopolies to utility companies are not free market capitalism.
– No bid Big Gov contracts are not free market capitalism.
– Gov laws supporting rent controls are not free market capitalism.
– Big Gov price fixing is not free market capitalism.
– Big Gov income taxes are not free market capitalism.
– Big Gov property taxes are not free market capitalism
– The Big Gov authorized Federal Reserve is not free market capitalism.
– Big Gov massive taxes on every aspect of the economy are not free market capitalism, and which often lead to companies setting up shop elsewhere.
– Big Gov fees for services from agencies we already pay for are not free market capitalism.
– Big Gov subsidies of "alternative energy" which cannot otherwise compete is not free market capitalism.

The list of Big Government intervention in the economy is endless.

Big Gov intervention is the problem, not free market capitalism

Wally , says: January 13, 2019 at 7:42 am GMT
@obwandiyag It's government intervention in the economy that is the problem, not real free market capitalism.

Please pay attention.

BTW, what kind of economic system does your absurdly beloved Africa have?
Oops.

animalogic , says: January 13, 2019 at 7:46 am GMT
@Achmed E. Newman " a land full of people encouraged to be irresponsible by, yes, you guessed it, Big Government." Sure. OK.
But watch an hour of TV & try to tell me it's ONLY big Gov encouraging people to be irresponsible.
Our whole consumer culture makes a virtue out of irresponsibility & the plain stupid & juvenile. (Incidentally, it is utter crock that the Right wants "virtuous" citizens. Where would the Oligarchs be if masses of people started being virtuous ? Honesty, truth, justice, impulse control & rational desires would wreck their whole grubby set-up. Indeed, a virtuous public might actually start thinking & thinking might lead to lamp posts & pitch forks .)
Wally , says: January 13, 2019 at 7:51 am GMT
@redmudhooch You simply don't know the difference between authoritarian Big Government intervention in the economy, which is sadly what we increasingly have and is what you advocate more of, vs. a truly free market economy.

But then Communists have made ignorance and being wrong an art form.

jilles dykstra , says: January 13, 2019 at 8:04 am GMT

make our country great again.

Another undefined slogan in this era of muddle headed thinking, or of no thinking at all.
The 'again' suggests there once upon a times there was this great America.
I cannot be too difficult to specify when this great America existed, and what was so great about it.
But I wonder if it is as in one of Deighton's Cold War novels, German refugees from the east meeting in West Berlin, 'talking about a society that never was'.

Biff , says: January 13, 2019 at 8:10 am GMT
What's the difference between government controlling every aspect of business, or business controlling every aspect of government?
Would there be two different outcomes?
Icy Blast , says: January 13, 2019 at 9:20 am GMT
I keep hearing about "free markets" but I've never actually encountered one. It seems we will die slowly of taxation and regulation while blaming Ron Paul and his friends for our misery. If there were free markets we would be able to sell coal and oil to China and buy weapons from Russia, build nuclear power plants, desalination plants, and LNG ports. But our wise overlords in D.C. won't permit this. Also, the pride of those Marxists who were converted in the 70's and 80's won't let them admit they were cruelly deceived.
eah , says: January 13, 2019 at 9:23 am GMT
Such voices are out there -- it is very important that more people hear them and their arguments.
niceland , says: January 13, 2019 at 10:07 am GMT
@EliteCommInc.

Solutions:

a. no member of an elected position should be permitted to own stock, sit on the boards of stock or financial instititions which they are the creators of regulations and laws.

b. elected and appointed government employees are barred from consulting and working as or with private sector companies.

c. senior military leaders are barred from working with or for private industry in any manner related to government provides services and goods, (except as instructors, and similar capacities)

You hit the jackpot, this is a good start but needs to go much further to drive the powerful interest groups out of Government.

It doesn't matter if you believe in capitalism, socialism both or neither. Left or Right politics, big or small government or none. Everyone should recognize that without this process NOTHING will ever change, absent perhaps a bloody revolution.

It's a full time job for citizens of every country to guard their government from being hijacked by special interest groups. In most cases they fail and almost always it's the same group ending up with all the power. Crony capitalist elites.

In America and most of Europe the Crony Capitalistic elites running the country have joined small part of the left wing – SJW types and allow them good access to their media outlets and small share of the loot. This mercenary army of SJW then in turn barks and gnaws at anyone threatening the status quo. It's a win win. In the meantime both the traditional left (pro working class) and the right have no voices or influence.

Our own (Icelandic) banking crash enabled similar process as you describe, grants to political parties are limited, MP's have to publish their ownership in corporations etc and all kinds of limitations. We are currently enjoying the benefits. It will last few years more – by then the elites will be back in full force.

Realist , says: January 13, 2019 at 10:07 am GMT
@EliteCommInc.

Solutions:

a. no member of an elected position should be permitted to own stock, sit on the boards of stock or financial instititions which they are the creators of regulations and laws.

b. elected and appointed government employees are barred from consulting and working as or with private sector companies.

c. senior military leaders are barred from working with or for private industry in any manner related to government provides services and goods, (except as instructors, and similar capacities)

just for starters --

Big talk now make it happen Hahahahaaa

aspnaz , says: January 13, 2019 at 10:25 am GMT
Where can we find a free market? The US markets are so skewed by regulation that there is not one commodity that has a 'free' market. Add to that the fact that the government has abandoned its policy of preventing market dominance through monopoly. Add to that the US tax payers feeding money into the wealthiest government in the world, a quantity of money that attracts the least beneficial leeches from around the world. The government attracts leeches, otherwise known as individual or corporate government contractors, being overpaid money from the tax payers to support their companies that can't make it in the 'free' market: these companies need the handouts to help them survive.

So where's the free market? It exists only in the small companies that litter the USA and who battle the big corporates, like Amazon, that survive on tax handouts, beating their competitors by bribing politicians rather than fighting the good fight in the free market.

james charles , says: January 13, 2019 at 11:26 am GMT
"the free market"?
[MORE]
'This "equilibrium" graph (Figure 3) and the ideas behind it have been re-iterated so many times in the past half-century that many observes assume they represent one of the few firmly proven facts in economics. Not at all. There is no empirical evidence whatsoever that demand equals supply in any market and that, indeed, markets work in the way this story narrates.
We know this by simply paying attention to the details of the narrative presented. The innocuous assumptions briefly mentioned at the outset are in fact necessary joint conditions in order for the result of equilibrium to be obtained. There are at least eight of these result-critical necessary assumptions: Firstly, all market participants have to have "perfect information", aware of all existing information (thus not needing lecture rooms, books, television or the internet to gather information in a time-consuming manner; there are no lawyers, consultants or estate agents in the economy). Secondly, there are markets trading everything (and their grandmother). Thirdly, all markets are characterized by millions of small firms that compete fiercely so that there are no profits at all in the corporate sector (and certainly there are no oligopolies or monopolies; computer software is produced by so many firms, one hardly knows what operating system to choose ). Fourthly, prices change all the time, even during the course of each day, to reflect changed circumstances (no labels are to be found on the wares offered in supermarkets as a result, except in LCD-form). Fifthly, there are no transaction costs (it costs no petrol to drive to the supermarket, stock brokers charge no commission, estate agents work for free – actually, don't exist, due to perfect information!). Sixthly, everyone has an infinite amount of time and lives infinitely long lives. Seventhly, market participants are solely interested in increasing their own material benefit and do not care for others (so there are no babies, human reproduction has stopped – since babies have all died of neglect; this is where the eternal life of the grown-ups helps). Eighthly, nobody can be influenced by others in any way (so trillion-dollar advertising industry does not exist, just like the legal services and estate agent industries).
It is only in this theoretical dreamworld defined by this conflagration of wholly unrealistic assumptions that markets can be expected to clear, delivering equilibrium and rendering prices the important variable in the economy – including the price of money as the key variable in the macroeconomy. This is the origin of the idea that interest rates are the key variable driving the economy: it is the price of money that determines economic outcomes, since quantities fall into place.
But how likely are these assumptions that are needed for equilibrium to pertain? We know that none of them hold. Yet, if we generously assumed, for sake of argument (in good economists' style), that the probability of each assumption holding true is 55% – i.e. the assumptions are more likely to be true than not – even then we find the mainstream result is elusive: Because all assumptions need to hold at the same time, the probability of obtaining equilibrium in that case is 0.55 to the power of 8 – i.e. less than 1%! In other words, neoclassical economics has demonstrated to us that the circumstances required for equilibrium to occur in any market are so unlikely that we can be sure there is no equilibrium anywhere. Thus we know that markets are rationed, and rationed markets are determined by quantities, not prices.
On our planet earth – as opposed to the very different planet that economists seem to be on – all markets are rationed. In rationed markets a simple rule applies: the short side principle. It says that whichever quantity of demand or supply is smaller (the 'short side') will be transacted (it is the only quantity that can be transacted). Meanwhile, the rest will remain unserved, and thus the short side wields power: the power to pick and choose with whom to do business. Examples abound. For instance, when applying for a job, there tend to be more applicants than jobs, resulting in a selection procedure that may involve a number of activities and demands that can only be described as being of a non-market nature (think about how Hollywood actresses are selected), but does not usually include the question: what is the lowest wage you are prepared to work for?
Thus the theoretical dream world of "market equilibrium" allows economists to avoid talking about the reality of pervasive rationing, and with it, power being exerted by the short side in every market. Thus the entire power hiring starlets for Hollywood films, can exploit his power of being able to pick and choose with whom to do business, by extracting 'non-market benefits' of all kinds. The pretense of 'equilibrium' not only keeps this real power dimension hidden. It also helps to deflect the public discourse onto the politically more convenient alleged role of 'prices', such as the price of money, the interest rate. The emphasis on prices then also helps to justify the charging of usury (interest), which until about 300 years ago was illegal in most countries, including throughout Europe.
However, this narrative has suffered an abductio ad absurdum by the long period of near zero interest rates, so that it became obvious that the true monetary policy action takes place in terms of quantities, not the interest rate.
Thus it can be plainly seen today that the most important macroeconomic variable cannot be the price of money. Instead, it is its quantity. Is the quantity of money rationed by the demand or supply side? Asked differently, what is larger – the demand for money or its supply? Since money – and this includes bank money – is so useful, there is always some demand for it by someone. As a result, the short side is always the supply of money and credit. Banks ration credit even at the best of times in order to ensure that borrowers with sensible investment projects stay among the loan applicants – if rates are raised to equilibrate demand and supply, the resulting interest rate would be so high that only speculative projects would remain and banks' loan portfolios would be too risky.
The banks thus occupy a pivotal role in the economy as they undertake the task of creating and allocating the new purchasing power that is added to the money supply and they decide what projects will get this newly created funding, and what projects will have to be abandoned due to a 'lack of money'.
It is for this reason that we need the right type of banks that take the right decisions concerning the important question of how much money should be created, for what purpose and given into whose hands. These decisions will reshape the economic landscape within a short time period.
Moreover, it is for this reason that central banks have always monitored bank credit creation and allocation closely and most have intervened directly – if often secretly or 'informally' – in order to manage or control bank credit creation. Guidance of bank credit is in fact the only monetary policy tool with a strong track record of preventing asset bubbles and thus avoiding the subsequent banking crises. But credit guidance has always been undertaken in secrecy by central banks, since awareness of its existence and effectiveness gives away the truth that the official central banking narrative is smokescreen.'
https://professorwerner.org/shifting-from-central-planning-to-a-decentralised-economy-do-we-need-central-banks/
james charles , says: January 13, 2019 at 11:36 am GMT
"Socialism is exactly what we're going to get, and very soon unless a group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that protects normal people "

"Even in the US most of nine Labour policies we put to people received majority backing

The British General Election of 2017, an academic account of last year's vote, recalls how Jeremy Corbyn's team questioned just how radical Labour's manifesto was, given that many of the policies were already mainstream in several European countries.
But the question shouldn't unduly worry Labour advisers; a new international YouGov survey shows that Corbynite policies are popular not only on the continent, but also in the UK."
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/01/09/eurotrack-corbyns-policies-popular-europe-and-uk?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=eurotrack_corbyn

The Alarmist , says: January 13, 2019 at 11:45 am GMT
Tucker's point is that the "Free Market" system of America is run by an amoral predator class looking out for only its own interests. What is missing is a sense of noblesse oblige rank has its privileges, but also its own duties to others in the system. Shapiro is but another amoral schmuck looking out only for himself.
Druid , says: January 13, 2019 at 12:09 pm GMT
Eell said. He does sound like a verbose goon. And only ultra-stupids are libertarians
Druid , says: January 13, 2019 at 12:16 pm GMT
@niceland Congressmen are exempt from the laws against insider trading. The US is corrupt. The masters are in Israhell!
Druid , says: January 13, 2019 at 12:19 pm GMT
@The Alarmist He is a "shapiro". What cane expect
Digital Samizdat , says: January 13, 2019 at 12:21 pm GMT
@redmudhooch So true. All these libertarians think capitalism automatically implies competition , but in the real world, that's just a temporary phase. Once the oligopoly stage of capitalism is reached, businesses cease to compete with one another and simply collude–to take over the government, among other things. Then you have business and government working together to shaft the common man (they'll call it "public/private partnership," or some such).

Competition is simply not a permanent part of capitalism, any more than the maggot-phase is a permanent part of being a fly. In the end, the 'free' market is destined to give way either to Jew-Bolshevism or to National Socialism. Personally, I opt for the latter.

niceland , says: January 13, 2019 at 12:25 pm GMT
@Realist

Big talk now make it happen Hahahahaaa

It looks like a pipe dream, and perhaps it is, do you have better alternative?

Of course: socialists, pure capitalists and libertarians can all continue to sit in their little corner and continue to argue against each other like they have done for the past decades, totally powerless and ignored. All waiting for.. what? At least here is an idea to start with, a common ground.

Think about it, while commenters "Achmed E. Newman" and "redmudhooch" almost totally disagree on ideological grounds It seems obvious they could march in a lockstep in a political movement trying to separate the Government from crony capitalism – with all the Unz crowd and majority of the public close behind them. It would be a beautiful sight!

Washington filled with protesters with signs: "We want our Government back" or "The best Government money can by doesn't work – lets try something else"

The MSM would be powerless, their heads would explode trying to dig up slander against such movement.

onebornfree , says: Website January 13, 2019 at 12:39 pm GMT
@aspnaz aspnaz says: "Where can we find a free market? "

It's now called "the black market" don't you know.

Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro etc, like most here, wouldn't know a free market if it bit them in the a$$.

Carlson and Shapiro et all are nothing more than shills for the state [again, like most here].

aspnaz says: "So where's the free market? It exists only in the small companies that litter the USA and who battle the big corporates"

Outside of "illegal" black markets, that's pretty much true.

Corporations are creatures of the state and are protected by the state. Hell, they are the state!

As you obviously know, government/ the state is the problem- never the solution.

The only real political "solution" [as I see it] would be to return the government to its original size and functions, getting rid of the 1000's of regulatory agencies [EPA, FDA, BATF, CIA FBI NSA etc etc etc ad nauseum], plus all welfare , government-run "healthcare", social "security" etc. etc.

And of course, getting rid of the standing army and all associated, to boot.

And to a nation of government indoctrinated, [virtually] commie slaves whose only desire is to live at the expense of everyone else, that "solution" is entirely out of the question.

But even if it were possible to return to the original constitutional government limitations, seeing as how, judging by the results to date, the constitution and bill of rights obviously was not/is not a secure enough chain on federal government growth and its ever increasing interference in all markets [and all areas of our lives], that "solution" would only give us all, at most, about 10 years of relative freedom and prosperity, if even that.

So unless we could figure out some new, better way to permanently chain down the government to a constitution and bill of rights and keep it out of everything else , then a dreamed of return to an allegedly "constitutionally limited" government would only provide a temporary, short term reprieve, as I see it.

Regards, onebornfree

Wizard of Oz , says: January 13, 2019 at 1:17 pm GMT
@niceland Unfortunately the prescriptions are naive.

c. with a bit of grammatical tidying up is already the rule I say with some confidence. The problem is what they might do in the hope of employment when they retire from the armed forces. Perhaps a four year embargo on receiving any direct or indirect benefit from the arms industry might be worth thinking about.

a. is an invitation to legal ingenuity. Ever heard of a "blind trust"? How blind is the politician to the reality of his interests even if his wife isn't the trustee. And if you banned blind trusts you wouldn't stop the spouse, siblings or children standing in for the politician as investor.

b. You could prevent them getting paid directly and immediately but they could often make a case that the consulting was just part of a politician's and some bureaucrats' everyday job and involved both giving and receiving information and advice. And, as to the money side of it, nearly all Congressmen spend a great deal of their time raising money for their reelection campaigns so they wouldn't be asking to be paid personally in most cases. And if the worst came to the worst a PAC fund could receive the money.

anon [393] Disclaimer , says: January 13, 2019 at 1:17 pm GMT
Ironically I came to tuckers same conclusion about a decade ago while being redpilled by neo reactionaries. They of course are technofuturist post humanists which is why its ironic, but they did encourage me to more radically check my premises and i had to admit capitalism had probably done more harm to west civ tham communism in fact without capitalism there is no communism. I had to admit my reflex unequivocal defense of capitalism was more coldwar anti socialism refelex mixed with theoretical capitalism. Oh im still a capitalist but like tucker i think its a tool and we who love it have to remember why we love it or ought to, because it serves us, iy might also be a beautiful machine but if it didnt serve us theres no reason to support it. i also had to admit not only do we not actually have capitalism but corporatism and corporatism is inevitable tendency of capitalism but that we dont really think capitalism functions well without intervention as we pretend we just think it functions best when conservatives invent the interventions .we know left un tended monopolies and cartels form, we know that large corporations will use their size to crush smarter more innovative new firms,price fixing will happen, we dont allow a free market in all sorts of things from child porn to heroine, yet inexplicably other porn and alcohol are ok.I also had to admit it wasnt true that capitalism needs democracy, capitalism finds ways of thriving in any government from stalinist communist to monarchies to managed theocracies or anything in between.Finally I had to admit apes are both capitalist and socialist creatures and white apes particularly so, we are the most capitalistic yet have the lowest tolerance for watching suffering, now that can be for the most part solved with market solutions to social safety if we are willing to admit that despite our hatred of socialists we are never the less social apes. And this is perhaps the crux of the matter, HBD some people are just genetically more capable than others in a free market some will thrive others not so much over time some will really really thrive others not so much at all. so yeah white nationalism is a must actually any nation must be an ethno state because your only real chance of overcoming this natural difference is to start with a group that at least fairly homogenous, but then you must intervene. NO NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE HUMANS WITH RIGHTS FUCKEM NO NOT BECAUSE THEYRE MUH WHITE BROS
because theres more of them than us cog elites and as tucker points out eventually if we make it worth their wiles they will just take our shit. Capitalism does require some form of government even if its just my gang enforcing my rules. all civilization is built on violence and the proles have it they just dont use it because frankly we are their slaves we make the world better for them or they replace us.its in our interest to be their stewards. its also a better way to live with bakers wives and steam fitters smiling and happy nd pumping out children to ward off the other nations. As elites we must do for them what they can not naturally do for themselves a nation is a family or ought to be, everyone has a place. Thats not to say we ought not find ways to stretch our right tale and shorten our left tail which will make us tighter knit and more efficient and less fractured.
besides its simply retarded to give away your best tech to your enemies and and then buy it back from them while leaving your 90% unemployed. This idea that thats capitalism implies that you intend to reduce americans to the status of the least paid third worlder and only when hes willing to work for those wages will you hire him- well good luck with that all I can say is where are you going to hide.Heres the thing all the smart people do not in fact rise to the elite in fact more and more get locked out in a way that prevents them from even breeding statistically the average proles are producing 50% of each year cognitive elite children they are less stable cog elites in as much as their children more likely to revert to mean but never the less they will meet and fuck your children at harvard and contribute 50% of elite generation and some hybrid vigor.you really dont want 50% of the gifted struggling in tiny houses and gigs deciding they really ought to be figuring out how to build a robot army to take you out because they can they have the numbers
helmond , says: January 13, 2019 at 2:00 pm GMT
Inside beltway crap.
Capitalism have been hijacked long time ago by the secret private bank.Central economic control.
The average american citizen daily survival depends on the will to deliver the goods from roughly 11 corporations and their subsidiary networks.And for those who are trying to control morality "happy fishing day".
KenH , says: January 13, 2019 at 2:29 pm GMT
@follyofwar Phil Donohue had his issues but was a semi-honest liberal and was the only popular talking head that I recall who was opposed to the Iraq war and asking the hard questions and second guessing politicians.

Mr. "no spin zone" Bill O' Reilly and many others gave us nothing but spin and just vomited out the neocon talking points.

follyofwar , says: January 13, 2019 at 2:41 pm GMT
@Wally Do you get your talking points from Ayn Rand's didactic, absurd novel "Atlas Shrugged?" Paul Ryan did, and what did he ever do for the country besides give more tax cuts to the rich?
lysias , says: January 13, 2019 at 3:09 pm GMT
Take power away from the elected politicians who can be bribed by the capitalists, and give it to average people. Adopt the Athenian system of choosing officials by lot from all citizens, and capitalism may have to reform.
onebornfree , says: Website January 13, 2019 at 3:18 pm GMT
"Dreams [Matrix Blues]":

"Dreams, you've been hanging on
To dreams when all your dreaming should be done
Dreams, about the way the world could be
You keep dreaming , despite reality

"Dreams, that Donald Trump is not a fraud,
Dreams, that Obama was not a fraud,
Dreams, that Reagan was not a fraud,
Dreams, that all the rest were not frauds,
Dreams, that the Constitution is not a scam,

[MORE]
Dreams, that the Supreme Court is not a scam,
Dreams, that the Federal Reserve is not a scam,
Dreams, that the C.I.A. is not a scam,
Dreams, that the F.B.I. is not a scam,
Dreams, that the cops and the courts are not a scam,

Dreams, that the Pentagon is not a scam,
Dreams, that 9/11 was not a scam,
Dreams, that the war on terror is not a scam,
Dreams, that Social Security is not a scam,
Dreams, that public education is not a scam .."
[and so on and so forth] .

Regards,onebornfree

Agent76 , says: January 13, 2019 at 3:35 pm GMT
November 21, 2018 The homelessness crisis deepens across North America

Homelessness is spiraling out of control across the US and Canada as laws are enacted to criminalize rough sleepers, reports John Clarke.

https://www.counterfire.org/articles/analysis/19988-the-homelessness-crisis-deepens-across-north-america

Oct 2, 2014 13 year old girl Victoria Grant explains Extreme Corruption the cause of Extreme Poverty Governments

Second speech by 13 year old Victoria Grant on the issue of corruption within the banking system. She argues it is a cause of extreme poverty.

DESERT FOX , says: January 13, 2019 at 3:37 pm GMT
What we have here in the US is communism disguised as capitalism , is anyone doubts this, read the 10 planks of the communist manifesto!
onebornfree , says: Website January 13, 2019 at 3:52 pm GMT
@anon anon[393] • Disclaimer says: "..i had to admit capitalism had probably done more harm to west civ tham communism in fact without capitalism there is no communism ."

If you [ or anyone else] wanted to live under an entirely voluntary communist/socialist [ or whatever] system, while others freely chose not to, then I personally would have no problem with that.

But of course, that is not whats being implied in all of this back and forth. The discussion here and elsewhere is ultimately always about who gets to enforce, at the point of a gun, their own imagined "ideal" system on everyone else, via everybodys imagined best friend/big brother, the government, regardless of individual preference.

Private socialism? Go for it.

Not a problem [except for those who try to live under it], but "go ahead, make my day" as someone once said.

After all , the very first Plymouth colony in the "New World" was founded on full on socialism, and therefor quickly failed, but , I remind myself: the one thing that we learn from history is that we don't learn anything from history.

Regards, onebornfree

Wally , says: January 13, 2019 at 4:05 pm GMT
@follyofwar 1. Nope, never read it. Whats "absurd" about it?

However, it's noted that you cannot refute my "talking points".

2. What tax cuts for the rich only? The recent one has helped everyone; me, even you, IF you even work.

Besides, I'm for any tax cuts. The less money Big Gov has the better.

BTW: ca. 50% of US workers pay NO federal income tax.

Cheers.

anarchyst , says: January 13, 2019 at 4:05 pm GMT
@EliteCommInc. I would take it a step further. As it stands now, Congress exempts itself from just about every law and regulation that it imposes on the rest of us. Also, most people are unaware that federal judges do not pay "income taxes".
What is needed it a Constitutional amendment to wit:
"Congress shall make NO LAW that does not apply equally to itself, the legislative branch, the executive branch, the judicial branch, and its agencies, departments, and subdivisions, thereof. All federal agencies, departments, and subdivisions thereof are prohibited from enacting any rulemaking without express approval of Congress. Corporate charters shall not confer the status of personhood on corporations"."
Wally , says: January 13, 2019 at 4:12 pm GMT
@jilles dykstra I guess all those millions of illegals already in and all the millions more wanting in don't think America is so great.

And no doubt you're planning your move to Canada with Barbra Streisand. LOL

Wally , says: January 13, 2019 at 4:16 pm GMT
@Icy Blast Indeed, disparaging free market capitalism that doesn't exist is like describing Communism as government by & for the people.
Taxhonestyguy , says: Website January 13, 2019 at 4:25 pm GMT
@Achmed E. Newman Great comment! I found Tucker's speech to be vague and largely off point. We do not have capitalism, we have "currently existing capitalism"- like the left called the USSR "currently existing socialism", libertarians know, as Rand said, capitalism is an Unknown Ideal.
As a fellow traveller with Ron Paul, Tucker still has libertarian leanings. He seems confused sometimes about his stand on the Drug War, too often settling for his trope that interdiction at the border will actually stop the overdose deaths, rather than recognizing interdiction has been a failure for a hundred years. And how can he recognize that our foreign wars involve us in one futile crisis after another, without asking why after a century of the war on drugs, we are still experiencing a drug crisis? He says he regrets his "long haired libertarian youth", thereby marking himself as just another old fogey who can't remember the fun he had When he was young.
Instead of pearl clutching, he could strike the biggest blow to international corporatism by acknowledging the crucial role that de- dollariztion is playing. He could recognize the role of the Fed in creating international power centers in NYC, London, Zurich now being challenged by Moscow and Beijing.
Like all conservatives, and alas libertarians as well, he doesn'understand the US Individual Income Tax, the original Populist response to big government enabled crony capitalism. He doesn't understand the income tax is a tax on the exploitation of a federal privilege for profit, not an UN-apportioned tax on "everything that comes in". See http://www.losthorizons.com
And please, bring a real libertarian on as his straw man, not that awful, slow thinking slow talking Objectivist !
FvS , says: January 13, 2019 at 4:44 pm GMT
Libertarianism needs white nationalism, but at least libertarians consistently call out the Federal Reserve. Tucker never has to my knowledge, maybe because he doesn't understand or isn't interested in monetary policy. But monetary policy affects all aspects of the economy, from wages to international trade. Tucker is libertarian on foreign policy, among other things, and the last time I checked, he's no Bernie Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez when it comes to domestic policy. Does he favor socialized medicine, public higher education, expansion of the welfare state, and government housing for all? His main gripe is with many corporations' love of cheap foreign labor, big tech censorship, and "free" trade. Oh, and he thinks the rich need to be taxed a little more. Can't say I disagree with him there. However, I don't even see any evidence that he is a race realist. I like him, but he seems like the quintessential civic nationalist to me, though that could just be the mask he has to wear.

The foreign labor aspect does need to be reined in (hence why libertarianism needs racial/ethnic nationalism). Google is hardly a private company as it was seed funded by the CIA and NSA. Facebook regularly colludes with Israeli/U.S. Intelligence. It is not unlibertarian to oppose "private" companies that become arms of the state to shut down opposition. The whole free trade vs. protectionism debate is more complicated than either side will admit. Both policies create winners and losers to varying degrees as Trump's tariffs have shown, and the Federal Reserve mucks up things either way. There is no free market in America.

wayfarer , says: January 13, 2019 at 5:00 pm GMT

Socialism in Marxist theory is a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of Communism.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

SunBakedSuburb , says: January 13, 2019 at 5:01 pm GMT
@Anon Good rebuttal to Achmed E. Newman's comment and the Hallelujah Chorus replying to him. Carlson's point about market capitalism being a religion to conservatives triggers them mightily.
SunBakedSuburb , says: January 13, 2019 at 5:13 pm GMT
@Achmed E. Newman I love the way you sprinkle your magical market fairy dust.

[Jan 12, 2019] Tucker Carlson Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But for everyone else, it's infuriating Fox News

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on January 2, 2019. ..."
Jan 02, 2019 | www.foxnews.com
Tucker: America's goal is happiness, but leaders show no obligation to voters

Voters around the world revolt against leaders who won't improve their lives.

Newly-elected Utah senator Mitt Romney kicked off 2019 with an op-ed in the Washington Post that savaged Donald Trump's character and leadership. Romney's attack and Trump's response Wednesday morning on Twitter are the latest salvos in a longstanding personal feud between the two men. It's even possible that Romney is planning to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination in 2020. We'll see.

But for now, Romney's piece is fascinating on its own terms. It's well-worth reading. It's a window into how the people in charge, in both parties, see our country.

Romney's main complaint in the piece is that Donald Trump is a mercurial and divisive leader. That's true, of course. But beneath the personal slights, Romney has a policy critique of Trump. He seems genuinely angry that Trump might pull American troops out of the Syrian civil war. Romney doesn't explain how staying in Syria would benefit America. He doesn't appear to consider that a relevant question. More policing in the Middle East is always better. We know that. Virtually everyone in Washington agrees.

Corporate tax cuts are also popular in Washington, and Romney is strongly on board with those, too. His piece throws a rare compliment to Trump for cutting the corporate rate a year ago.

That's not surprising. Romney spent the bulk of his business career at a firm called Bain Capital. Bain Capital all but invented what is now a familiar business strategy: Take over an existing company for a short period of time, cut costs by firing employees, run up the debt, extract the wealth, and move on, sometimes leaving retirees without their earned pensions. Romney became fantastically rich doing this.

Meanwhile, a remarkable number of the companies are now bankrupt or extinct. This is the private equity model. Our ruling class sees nothing wrong with it. It's how they run the country.

Mitt Romney refers to unwavering support for a finance-based economy and an internationalist foreign policy as the "mainstream Republican" view. And he's right about that. For generations, Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars. Modern Democrats generally support those goals enthusiastically.

There are signs, however, that most people do not support this, and not just in America. In countries around the world -- France, Brazil, Sweden, the Philippines, Germany, and many others -- voters are suddenly backing candidates and ideas that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago. These are not isolated events. What you're watching is entire populations revolting against leaders who refuse to improve their lives.

Something like this has been in happening in our country for three years. Donald Trump rode a surge of popular discontent all the way to the White House. Does he understand the political revolution that he harnessed? Can he reverse the economic and cultural trends that are destroying America? Those are open questions.

But they're less relevant than we think. At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone, too. The country will remain. What kind of country will be it be then? How do we want our grandchildren to live? These are the only questions that matter.

The answer used to be obvious. The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning cheaper consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones, or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They haven't so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. And yet drug addiction and suicide are depopulating large parts of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be summed up in GDP is an idiot.

The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity. It's happiness. There are a lot of ingredients in being happy: Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence. Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your children. They're what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.

But our leaders don't care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule. They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through. They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can't solve our problems. They don't even bother to understand our problems.

One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us that you can separate economics from everything else that matters. Economics is a topic for public debate. Family and faith and culture, meanwhile, those are personal matters. Both parties believe this.

Members of our educated upper-middle-classes are now the backbone of the Democratic Party who usually describe themselves as fiscally responsible and socially moderate. In other words, functionally libertarian. They don't care how you live, as long as the bills are paid and the markets function. Somehow, they don't see a connection between people's personal lives and the health of our economy, or for that matter, the country's ability to pay its bills. As far as they're concerned, these are two totally separate categories.

Social conservatives, meanwhile, come to the debate from the opposite perspective, and yet reach a strikingly similar conclusion. The real problem, you'll hear them say, is that the American family is collapsing. Nothing can be fixed before we fix that. Yet, like the libertarians they claim to oppose, many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct. The idea that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them. They refuse to consider it. Questioning markets feels like apostasy.

Both sides miss the obvious point: Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined. Certain economic systems allow families to thrive. Thriving families make market economies possible. You can't separate the two. It used to be possible to deny this. Not anymore. The evidence is now overwhelming. How do we know? Consider the inner cities.

Thirty years ago, conservatives looked at Detroit or Newark and many other places and were horrified by what they saw. Conventional families had all but disappeared in poor neighborhoods. The majority of children were born out of wedlock. Single mothers were the rule. Crime and drugs and disorder became universal.

What caused this nightmare? Liberals didn't even want to acknowledge the question. They were benefiting from the disaster, in the form of reliable votes. Conservatives, though, had a ready explanation for inner-city dysfunction and it made sense: big government. Decades of badly-designed social programs had driven fathers from the home and created what conservatives called a "culture of poverty" that trapped people in generational decline.

There was truth in this. But it wasn't the whole story. How do we know? Because virtually the same thing has happened decades later to an entirely different population. In many ways, rural America now looks a lot like Detroit.

This is striking because rural Americans wouldn't seem to have much in common with anyone from the inner city. These groups have different cultures, different traditions and political beliefs. Usually they have different skin colors. Rural people are white conservatives, mostly.

Yet, the pathologies of modern rural America are familiar to anyone who visited downtown Baltimore in the 1980s: Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A terrifying drug epidemic. Two different worlds. Similar outcomes. How did this happen? You'd think our ruling class would be interested in knowing the answer. But mostly they're not. They don't have to be interested. It's easier to import foreign labor to take the place of native-born Americans who are slipping behind.

But Republicans now represent rural voters. They ought to be interested. Here's a big part of the answer: male wages declined. Manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, all but disappeared over the course of a generation. All that remained in many places were the schools and the hospitals, both traditional employers of women. In many places, women suddenly made more than men.

Now, before you applaud this as a victory for feminism, consider the effects. Study after study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don't want to marry them. Maybe they should want to marry them, but they don't. Over big populations, this causes a drop in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births, and all the familiar disasters that inevitably follow -- more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the next generation.

This isn't speculation. This is not propaganda from the evangelicals. It's social science. We know it's true. Rich people know it best of all. That's why they get married before they have kids. That model works. But increasingly, marriage is a luxury only the affluent in America can afford.

And yet, and here's the bewildering and infuriating part, those very same affluent married people, the ones making virtually all the decisions in our society, are doing pretty much nothing to help the people below them get and stay married. Rich people are happy to fight malaria in Congo. But working to raise men's wages in Dayton or Detroit? That's crazy.

This is negligence on a massive scale. Both parties ignore the crisis in marriage. Our mindless cultural leaders act like it's still 1961, and the biggest problem American families face is that sexism is preventing millions of housewives from becoming investment bankers or Facebook executives.

For our ruling class, more investment banking is always the answer. They teach us it's more virtuous to devote your life to some soulless corporation than it is to raise your own kids.

Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook wrote an entire book about this. Sandberg explained that our first duty is to shareholders, above our own children. No surprise there. Sandberg herself is one of America's biggest shareholders. Propaganda like this has made her rich.

We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule. They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through. They have no skin in this game, and it shows.

What's remarkable is how the rest of us responded to it. We didn't question why Sandberg was saying this. We didn't laugh in her face at the pure absurdity of it. Our corporate media celebrated Sandberg as the leader of a liberation movement. Her book became a bestseller: "Lean In." As if putting a corporation first is empowerment. It is not. It is bondage. Republicans should say so.

They should also speak out against the ugliest parts of our financial system. Not all commerce is good. Why is it defensible to loan people money they can't possibly repay? Or charge them interest that impoverishes them? Payday loan outlets in poor neighborhoods collect 400 percent annual interest.

We're OK with that? We shouldn't be. Libertarians tell us that's how markets work -- consenting adults making voluntary decisions about how to live their lives. OK. But it's also disgusting. If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street.

And by the way, if you really loved your fellow Americans, as our leaders should, if it would break your heart to see them high all the time. Which they are. A huge number of our kids, especially our boys, are smoking weed constantly. You may not realize that, because new technology has made it odorless. But it's everywhere.

And that's not an accident. Once our leaders understood they could get rich from marijuana, marijuana became ubiquitous. In many places, tax-hungry politicians have legalized or decriminalized it. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner now lobbies for the marijuana industry. His fellow Republicans seem fine with that. "Oh, but it's better for you than alcohol," they tell us.

Maybe. Who cares? Talk about missing the point. Try having dinner with a 19-year-old who's been smoking weed. The life is gone. Passive, flat, trapped in their own heads. Do you want that for your kids? Of course not. Then why are our leaders pushing it on us? You know the reason. Because they don't care about us.

When you care about people, you do your best to treat them fairly. Our leaders don't even try. They hand out jobs and contracts and scholarships and slots at prestigious universities based purely on how we look. There's nothing less fair than that, though our tax code comes close.

Under our current system, an American who works for a salary pays about twice the tax rate as someone who's living off inherited money and doesn't work at all. We tax capital at half of what we tax labor. It's a sweet deal if you work in finance, as many of our rich people do.

In 2010, for example, Mitt Romney made about $22 million dollars in investment income. He paid an effective federal tax rate of 14 percent. For normal upper-middle-class wage earners, the federal tax rate is nearly 40 percent. No wonder Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But for everyone else, it's infuriating.

Our leaders rarely mention any of this. They tell us our multi-tiered tax code is based on the principles of the free market. Please. It's based on laws that the Congress passed, laws that companies lobbied for in order to increase their economic advantage. It worked well for those people. They did increase their economic advantage. But for everyone else, it came at a big cost. Unfairness is profoundly divisive. When you favor one child over another, your kids don't hate you. They hate each other.

That happens in countries, too. It's happening in ours, probably by design. Divided countries are easier to rule. And nothing divides us like the perception that some people are getting special treatment. In our country, some people definitely are getting special treatment. Republicans should oppose that with everything they have.

What kind of country do you want to live in? A fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement. A country you might recognize when you're old.

A country that listens to young people who don't live in Brooklyn. A country where you can make a solid living outside of the big cities. A country where Lewiston, Maine seems almost as important as the west side of Los Angeles. A country where environmentalism means getting outside and picking up the trash. A clean, orderly, stable country that respects itself. And above all, a country where normal people with an average education who grew up in no place special can get married, and have happy kids, and repeat unto the generations. A country that actually cares about families, the building block of everything.

Video

What will it take a get a country like that? Leaders who want it. For now, those leaders will have to be Republicans. There's no option at this point.

But first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You'd have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.

Internalizing all this will not be easy for Republican leaders. They'll have to unlearn decades of bumper sticker-talking points and corporate propaganda. They'll likely lose donors in the process. They'll be criticized. Libertarians are sure to call any deviation from market fundamentalism a form of socialism.

That's a lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn't work. It's what we should be working desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we're going to get, and very soon unless a group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that protects normal people.

If you want to put America first, you've got to put its families first.

Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on January 2, 2019.

[Jan 12, 2019] Tucker Carlson has sparked the most interesting debate in conservative politics by Jane Coaston

Highly recommended!
Tucker Carlson sounds much more convincing then Trump: See Tucker Leaders show no obligation to American voters and Tucker The American dream is dying
Notable quotes:
"... America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society." ..."
"... He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement." ..."
"... The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher wrote of Carlson's monologue, "A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president. ..."
"... The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke ..."
"... Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites -- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people." ..."
"... "What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?" ..."
"... Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald Trump, whose populist-lite presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it." ..."
"... Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative, thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment. ..."
"... Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax. ..."
"... "I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not." ..."
"... Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed." ..."
"... But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left. ..."
"... Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin. ..."
"... Hillbilly Elegy ..."
"... Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a function or raw nature." ..."
Jan 10, 2019 | www.vox.com

"All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God."

Last Wednesday, the conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson started a fire on the right after airing a prolonged monologue on his show that was, in essence, an indictment of American capitalism.

America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society."

He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement."

The monologue was stunning in itself, an incredible moment in which a Fox News host stated that for generations, "Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars." More broadly, though, Carlson's position and the ensuing controversy reveals an ongoing and nearly unsolvable tension in conservative politics about the meaning of populism, a political ideology that Trump campaigned on but Carlson argues he may not truly understand.

Moreover, in Carlson's words: "At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone too. The country will remain. What kind of country will be it be then?"

The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher wrote of Carlson's monologue, "A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president." Other conservative commentators scoffed. Ben Shapiro wrote in National Review that Carlson's monologue sounded far more like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren than, say, Ronald Reagan.

I spoke with Carlson by phone this week to discuss his monologue and its economic -- and cultural -- meaning. He agreed that his monologue was reminiscent of Warren, referencing her 2003 book The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke . "There were parts of the book that I disagree with, of course," he told me. "But there are parts of it that are really important and true. And nobody wanted to have that conversation."

Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites -- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people."

But whether or not he likes it, Carlson is an important voice in conservative politics. His show is among the most-watched television programs in America. And his raising questions about market capitalism and the free market matters.

"What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?"

Populism on the right is gaining, again

Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald Trump, whose populist-lite presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it."

Populism is a rhetorical approach that separates "the people" from elites. In the words of Cas Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia, it divides the country into "two homogenous and antagonistic groups: the pure people on the one end and the corrupt elite on the other." Populist rhetoric has a long history in American politics, serving as the focal point of numerous presidential campaigns and powering William Jennings Bryan to the Democratic nomination for president in 1896. Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative, thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment.

When right-leaning pundit Ann Coulter spoke with Breitbart Radio about Trump's Tuesday evening Oval Office address to the nation regarding border wall funding, she said she wanted to hear him say something like, "You know, you say a lot of wild things on the campaign trail. I'm speaking to big rallies. But I want to talk to America about a serious problem that is affecting the least among us, the working-class blue-collar workers":

Coulter urged Trump to bring up overdose deaths from heroin in order to speak to the "working class" and to blame the fact that working-class wages have stalled, if not fallen, in the last 20 years on immigration. She encouraged Trump to declare, "This is a national emergency for the people who don't have lobbyists in Washington."

Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax.

-- Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) January 4, 2019

These sentiments have even pitted popular Fox News hosts against each other.

Sean Hannity warned his audience that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's economic policies would mean that "the rich people won't be buying boats that they like recreationally, they're not going to be taking expensive vacations anymore." But Carlson agreed when I said his monologue was somewhat reminiscent of Ocasio-Cortez's past comments on the economy , and how even a strong economy was still leaving working-class Americans behind.

"I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not."

Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed."

"I think populism is potentially really disruptive. What I'm saying is that populism is a symptom of something being wrong," he told me. "Again, populism is a smoke alarm; do not ignore it."

But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left.

Carlson's argument that "market capitalism is not a religion" is of course old hat on the left, but it's also been bubbling on the right for years now. When National Review writer Kevin Williamson wrote a 2016 op-ed about how rural whites "failed themselves," he faced a massive backlash in the Trumpier quarters of the right. And these sentiments are becoming increasingly potent at a time when Americans can see both a booming stock market and perhaps their own family members struggling to get by.

Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin.

-- Jeremy McLallan (@JeremyMcLellan) January 8, 2019

At the Federalist, writer Kirk Jing wrote of Carlson's monologue, and a response to it by National Review columnist David French:

Our society is less French's America, the idea, and more Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" (involving a very different French). The lowest are stripped of even social dignity and deemed unworthy of life . In Real America, wages are stagnant, life expectancy is crashing, people are fleeing the workforce, families are crumbling, and trust in the institutions on top are at all-time lows. To French, holding any leaders of those institutions responsible for their errors is "victimhood populism" ... The Right must do better if it seeks to govern a real America that exists outside of its fantasies.

J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy , wrote that the [neoliberal] economy's victories -- and praise for those wins from conservatives -- were largely meaningless to white working-class Americans living in Ohio and Kentucky: "Yes, they live in a country with a higher GDP than a generation ago, and they're undoubtedly able to buy cheaper consumer goods, but to paraphrase Reagan: Are they better off than they were 20 years ago? Many would say, unequivocally, 'no.'"

Carlson's populism holds, in his view, bipartisan possibilities. In a follow-up email, I asked him why his monologue was aimed at Republicans when many Democrats had long espoused the same criticisms of free market economics. "Fair question," he responded. "I hope it's not just Republicans. But any response to the country's systemic problems will have to give priority to the concerns of American citizens over the concerns of everyone else, just as you'd protect your own kids before the neighbor's kids."

Who is "they"?

And that's the point where Carlson and a host of others on the right who have begun to challenge the conservative movement's orthodoxy on free markets -- people ranging from occasionally mendacious bomb-throwers like Coulter to writers like Michael Brendan Dougherty -- separate themselves from many of those making those exact same arguments on the left.

When Carlson talks about the "normal people" he wants to save from nefarious elites, he is talking, usually, about a specific group of "normal people" -- white working-class Americans who are the "real" victims of capitalism, or marijuana legalization, or immigration policies.

In this telling, white working-class Americans who once relied on a manufacturing economy that doesn't look the way it did in 1955 are the unwilling pawns of elites. It's not their fault that, in Carlson's view, marriage is inaccessible to them, or that marijuana legalization means more teens are smoking weed ( this probably isn't true ). Someone, or something, did this to them. In Carlson's view, it's the responsibility of politicians: Our economic situation, and the plight of the white working class, is "the product of a series of conscious decisions that the Congress made."

The criticism of Carlson's monologue has largely focused on how he deviates from the free market capitalism that conservatives believe is the solution to poverty, not the creator of poverty. To orthodox conservatives, poverty is the result of poor decision making or a lack of virtue that can't be solved by government programs or an anti-elite political platform -- and they say Carlson's argument that elites are in some way responsible for dwindling marriage rates doesn't make sense .

But in French's response to Carlson, he goes deeper, writing that to embrace Carlson's brand of populism is to support "victimhood populism," one that makes white working-class Americans into the victims of an undefined "they:

Carlson is advancing a form of victim-politics populism that takes a series of tectonic cultural changes -- civil rights, women's rights, a technological revolution as significant as the industrial revolution, the mass-scale loss of religious faith, the sexual revolution, etc. -- and turns the negative or challenging aspects of those changes into an angry tale of what they are doing to you .

And that was my biggest question about Carlson's monologue, and the flurry of responses to it, and support for it: When other groups (say, black Americans) have pointed to systemic inequities within the economic system that have resulted in poverty and family dysfunction, the response from many on the right has been, shall we say, less than enthusiastic .

Really, it comes down to when black people have problems, it's personal responsibility, but when white people have the same problems, the system is messed up. Funny how that works!!

-- Judah Maccabeets (@AdamSerwer) January 9, 2019

Yet white working-class poverty receives, from Carlson and others, far more sympathy. And conservatives are far more likely to identify with a criticism of "elites" when they believe those elites are responsible for the expansion of trans rights or creeping secularism than the wealthy and powerful people who are investing in private prisons or an expansion of the militarization of police . Carlson's network, Fox News, and Carlson himself have frequently blasted leftist critics of market capitalism and efforts to fight inequality .

I asked Carlson about this, as his show is frequently centered on the turmoils caused by " demographic change ." He said that for decades, "conservatives just wrote [black economic struggles] off as a culture of poverty," a line he includes in his monologue .

He added that regarding black poverty, "it's pretty easy when you've got 12 percent of the population going through something to feel like, 'Well, there must be ... there's something wrong with that culture.' Which is actually a tricky thing to say because it's in part true, but what you're missing, what I missed, what I think a lot of people missed, was that the economic system you're living under affects your culture."

Carlson said that growing up in Washington, DC, and spending time in rural Maine, he didn't realize until recently that the same poverty and decay he observed in the Washington of the 1980s was also taking place in rural (and majority-white) Maine. "I was thinking, 'Wait a second ... maybe when the jobs go away the culture changes,'" he told me, "And the reason I didn't think of it before was because I was so blinded by this libertarian economic propaganda that I couldn't get past my own assumptions about economics." (For the record, libertarians have critiqued Carlson's monologue as well.)

Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a function or raw nature."

And clearly, our market economy isn't driven by God or nature, as the stock market soars and unemployment dips and yet even those on the right are noticing lengthy periods of wage stagnation and dying little towns across the country. But what to do about those dying little towns, and which dying towns we care about and which we don't, and, most importantly, whose fault it is that those towns are dying in the first place -- those are all questions Carlson leaves to the viewer to answer.

[Jan 11, 2019] Blowback from the neoliberal policy is coming

Highly recommended!
Seeing Tucker Leaders show no obligation to American voters suggest that the collapse of neoliberalism is coming...
Notable quotes:
"... Excessive financialization is the Achilles' heel of neoliberalism. It inevitably distorts everything, blows the asset bubble, which then pops. With each pop, the level of political support of neoliberalism shrinks. Hillary defeat would have been impossible without 2008 events. ..."
Jan 11, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

bruce wilder, January 11, 2019 at 2:17 pm

Barkley insists on a left-right split for his analysis of political parties and their attachment to vague policy tendencies and that insistence makes a mess of the central issue: why the rise of right-wing populism in a "successful" economy?

Naomi Klein's book is about how and why centrist neoliberals got control of policy. The rise of right-wing populism is often supposed (see Mark Blyth) to be about the dissatisfaction bred by the long-term shortcomings of or blowback from neoliberal policy.

Barkley Rosser treats neoliberal policy as implicitly successful and, therefore, the reaction from the populist right appears mysterious, something to investigate. His thesis regarding neoliberal success in Poland is predicated on policy being less severe, less "shocky".

In his left-right division of Polish politics, the centrist neoliberals -- in the 21st century, Civic Platform -- seem to disappear into the background even though I think they are still the second largest Party in Parliament, though some seem to think they will sink in elections this year.

Electoral participation is another factor that receives little attention in this analysis. Politics is shaped in part by the people who do NOT show up. And, in Poland that has sometimes been a lot of people, indeed.

Finally, there's the matter of the neoliberal straitjacket -- the flip-side of the shock in the one-two punch of "there's no alternative". What the policy options for a Party representing the interests of the angry and dissatisfied? If you make policy impossible for a party of the left, of course that breeds parties of the right. duh.

Likbez,

Bruce,

Blowback from the neoliberal policy is coming. I would consider the current situation in the USA as the starting point of this "slow-motion collapse of the neoliberal garbage truck against the wall." Neoliberalism like Bolshevism in 1945 has no future, only the past. That does not mean that it will not limp forward in zombie (and pretty bloodthirsty ) stage for another 50 years. But it is doomed, notwithstanding recently staged revenge in countries like Ukraine, Argentina, and Brazil.

Excessive financialization is the Achilles' heel of neoliberalism. It inevitably distorts everything, blows the asset bubble, which then pops. With each pop, the level of political support of neoliberalism shrinks. Hillary defeat would have been impossible without 2008 events.

At least half of Americans now hate soft neoliberals of Democratic Party (Clinton wing of Bought by Wall Street technocrats), as well as hard neoliberal of Republican Party, which created the " crisis of confidence" toward governing neoliberal elite in countries like the USA, GB, and France. And that probably why the intelligence agencies became the prominent political players and staged the color revolution against Trump (aka Russiagate ) in the USA.

The situation with the support of neoliberalism now is very different than in 1994 when Bill Clinton came to power. Of course, as Otto von Bismarck once quipped "God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America." and another turn of the technological spiral might well save the USA. But the danger of never-ending secular stagnation is substantial and growing. This fact was admitted even by such dyed- in-the-wool neoliberals as Summers.

This illusion that advances in statistics gave neoliberal access to such fine-grained and timely economic data, that now it is possible to regulate economy indirectly, by strictly monetary means is pure religious hubris. Milton Friedman would now be laughed out the room if he tried to repeat his monetarist junk science now. Actually he himself discarded his monetarist illusions before he died.

We probably need to the return of strong direct investments in the economy by the state and nationalization of some assets, if we want to survive and compete with China. Australian politicians are already openly discussing this, we still are lagging because of "walking dead" neoliberals in Congress like Pelosi, Schumer, and company.

But we have another huge problem, which Australia and other countries (other than GB) do not have: neoliberalism in the USA is the state religion which completely displaced Christianity (and is hostile to Christianity), so it might be that the lemming will go off the cliff. I hope not.

The only thing that still keeps neoliberalism from being thrown out to the garbage bin of history is that it is unclear what would the alternative. And that means that like in 1920th far-right nationalism and fascism have a fighting chance against decadent neoliberal oligarchy.

Previously financial oligarchy was in many minds associated with Jewish bankers. Now people are more educated and probably can hang from the lampposts Anglo-Saxon and bankers of other nationalities as well ;-)

I think that in some countries neoliberal oligarchs might soon feel very uncomfortable, much like Soros in Hungary.

As far as I understood the level of animosity and suppressed anger toward financial oligarchy and their stooges including some professors in economics departments of the major universities might soon be approaching the level which existed in the Weimar Republic. And as Lenin noted, " the ideas could become a material force if they got mass support." This is true about anger as well.

[Dec 22, 2018] British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft by Craig Murray

Highly recommended!
Craig Murray is right that "As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier." Collapse of neoliberal ideology and rise of tentions in neoliberal sociarties resulted in unprecedented increase of covert and false flag operations by British intelligence services, especially against Russia, which had been chosen as a convenient scapegoat. With Steele dossier and Skripal affair as two most well known.
New Lady Macbeth (Theresa May) Russophobia is so extreme that her cabinet derailed the election of a Russian to head Interpol.
Looks like neoliberalism cannot be defeated by and faction of the existing elite. Only when shepp oil end mant people will have a chance. The US , GB and EU are part of the wider hegemonic neoliberal system. In fact rejection of neoliberal globalization probably will lead to "national neoliberals" regime which would be a flavor of neo-fascism, no more no less.
Notable quotes:
"... The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. ..."
"... I learnt how highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane just happened to be on holiday in the United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign. ..."
"... It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely unbalanced panel of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia. ..."
"... the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it. ..."
"... By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building . It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London. ..."
"... Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence. ..."
"... I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills. ..."
"... I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information. ..."
"... one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media, it would be the biggest story of the day ..."
"... As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier. ..."
"... You can bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy". ..."
Dec 13, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

in Uncategorized by craig

The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. Look up Eldred Pottinger, who for 180 years appears in scores of British history books – right up to and including William Dalrymple's Return of the King – as a British officer who chanced to be passing Herat on holiday when it came under siege from a partly Russian-officered Persian army, and helped to organise the defences. In researching Sikunder Burnes, I discovered and published from the British Library incontrovertible and detailed documentary evidence that Pottinger's entire journey was under the direct instructions of, and reporting to, British spymaster Alexander Burnes. The first historian to publish the untrue "holiday" cover story, Sir John Kaye, knew both Burnes and Pottinger and undoubtedly knew he was publishing lying propaganda. Every other British historian of the First Afghan War (except me and latterly Farrukh Husain) has just followed Kaye's official propaganda.

Some things don't change. I was irresistibly reminded of Eldred Pottinger just passing Herat on holiday, when I learnt how highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane just happened to be on holiday in the United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Recent university graduate Simon Bracey-Lane took it even further. Originally from Wimbledon in London, he was inspired to rejoin the Labour party in September when Corbyn was elected leader. But by that point, he was already in the US on holiday. So he joined the Sanders campaign, and never left.
"I had two weeks left and some money left, so I thought, Fuck it, I'll make some calls for Bernie Sanders," he explains. "I just sort of knew Des Moines was the place, so I just turned up at their HQ, started making phone calls, and then became a fully fledged field organiser."

It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely unbalanced panel of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia.

Nor would it seem likely that Bracey-Lane would be involved with the Integrity Initiative. Even the mainstream media has been forced to give a few paragraphs to the outrageous Integrity Initiative, under which the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it.

The mainstream media have tracked down the HQ of the "Institute for Statecraft" to a derelict mill near Auchtermuchty. It is owned by one of the company directors, Daniel Lafayeedney, formerly of D Squadron 23rd SAS Regiment and later of Military Intelligence (and incidentally born the rather more prosaic Daniel Edney).

By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building. It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London.

Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence.

Having been told where the Institute for Statecraft skulk, I tipped off journalist Kit Klarenberg of Sputnik Radio to go and physically check it out. Kit did so and was aggressively ejected by that well-known Corbyn and Sanders supporter, Simon Bracey-Lane. It does seem somewhat strange that our left wing hero is deeply embedded in an organisation that launches troll attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.

I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills.

I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information.

But one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media, it would be the biggest story of the day.

As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier.

You can bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy".

As both Scottish Independence and Jeremy Corbyn are viewed as real threats by the British Establishment, you can anticipate every possible kind of dirty trick in the next couple of years, with increasing frequency and audacity

[Dec 16, 2018] Neoliberalism has had its day. So what happens next (The death of neoliberalism and the crisis in western politics) by Martin Jacques

Highly recommended!
It is very interesting and educational to read this pre-election article two years later and see where the author is right and where he is wrong. The death of neoliberalism was greatly exaggerated. It simply mutated in the USA into "national neoliberalism" under Trump. As no clear alternative exists it remain the dominant ideology and universities still brainwash students with neoclassical economics. And in way catchy slogan "Make America great again" under Trump means "Make American working and lower middle class great again"
It is also clear that Trump betrayed or was forced to betray most of his election promises. Standrd of living of common americans did not improve under his watch. most of hi benefits of his tax cuts went to large corporations and financial oligarch. He continued the policy of financial deregulation, which is tantamount of playing with open fire trying to warm up the house
What we see under Trump is tremendous growth of political role of intelligence agencies which now are real kingmakers and can sink any candidate which does not support their agenda. And USA intelligence agencies operated in 2016 in close cooperation with the UK intelligence agencies to the extent that it is not clear who has the lead in creating Steele dossier. They are definitely out of control of executive branch and play their own game. We also see a rise of CIA democrats as a desperate attempt to preserve the power of Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ('soft neoliberals" turned under Hillary into into warmongers and neocons) . Hillary and Bill themselves clearly belong to CIA democrats too, not only to Wall Street democrats, despite the fact that they sold Democratic Party to Wall Street in the past. New Labor in UK did the same.
But if it is more or less clear now what happened in the USa in 2016-2018, it is completely unclear what will happen next. I think in no way neoliberalism will start to be dismantled. there is no social forces powerful enough to start this job, We probably need another financial crisi of the scale of 2008 for this work to be reluctantly started by ruling elite. And we better not to have this repetition of 2008 as it will be really devastating for common people.
Notable quotes:
"... the causes of this political crisis, glaringly evident on both sides of the Atlantic, are much deeper than simply the financial crisis and the virtually stillborn recovery of the last decade. They go to the heart of the neoliberal project that dates from the late 70s and the political rise of Reagan and Thatcher, and embraced at its core the idea of a global free market in goods, services and capital. The depression-era system of bank regulation was dismantled, in the US in the 1990s and in Britain in 1986, thereby creating the conditions for the 2008 crisis. Equality was scorned, the idea of trickle-down economics lauded, government condemned as a fetter on the market and duly downsized, immigration encouraged, regulation cut to a minimum, taxes reduced and a blind eye turned to corporate evasion. ..."
"... It should be noted that, by historical standards, the neoliberal era has not had a particularly good track record. The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism, when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present. ..."
"... In the period 1948-1972, every section of the American population experienced very similar and sizable increases in their standard of living; between 1972-2013, the bottom 10% experienced falling real income while the top 10% did far better than everyone else. In the US, the median real income for full-time male workers is now lower than it was four decades ago: the income of the bottom 90% of the population has stagnated for over 30 years . ..."
"... On average, between 65-70% of households in 25 high-income economies experienced stagnant or falling real incomes between 2005 and 2014. ..."
"... As Thomas Piketty has shown, in the absence of countervailing pressures, capitalism naturally gravitates towards increasing inequality. In the period between 1945 and the late 70s, Cold War competition was arguably the biggest such constraint. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been none. As the popular backlash grows increasingly irresistible, however, such a winner-takes-all regime becomes politically unsustainable. ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... "'Populism' is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don't like." Populism is a movement against the status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is generally much clearer about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or reactionary, but more usually both. ..."
"... According to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population. ..."
"... The re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit vote, can best be described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement. ..."
"... Economists such as Larry Summers believe that the prospect for the future is most likely one of secular stagnation . ..."
"... those who have lost out in the neoliberal era are no longer prepared to acquiesce in their fate – they are increasingly in open revolt. We are witnessing the end of the neoliberal era. It is not dead, but it is in its early death throes, just as the social-democratic era was during the 1970s. ..."
"... Capital in the Twenty-First Century ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
Aug 21, 2016 | www.theguardian.com

In the early 1980s the author was one of the first to herald the emerging dominance of neoliberalism in the west. Here he argues that this doctrine is now faltering. But what happens next?

The western financial crisis of 2007-8 was the worst since 1931, yet its immediate repercussions were surprisingly modest. The crisis challenged the foundation stones of the long-dominant neoliberal ideology but it seemed to emerge largely unscathed. The banks were bailed out; hardly any bankers on either side of the Atlantic were prosecuted for their crimes; and the price of their behaviour was duly paid by the taxpayer. Subsequent economic policy, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, has relied overwhelmingly on monetary policy, especially quantitative easing. It has failed. The western economy has stagnated and is now approaching its lost decade, with no end in sight.

After almost nine years, we are finally beginning to reap the political whirlwind of the financial crisis. But how did neoliberalism manage to survive virtually unscathed for so long? Although it failed the test of the real world, bequeathing the worst economic disaster for seven decades, politically and intellectually it remained the only show in town. Parties of the right, centre and left had all bought into its philosophy, New Labour a classic in point. They knew no other way of thinking or doing: it had become the common sense. It was, as Antonio Gramsci put it, hegemonic. But that hegemony cannot and will not survive the test of the real world.

The first inkling of the wider political consequences was evident in the turn in public opinion against the banks, bankers and business leaders. For decades, they could do no wrong: they were feted as the role models of our age, the default troubleshooters of choice in education, health and seemingly everything else. Now, though, their star was in steep descent, along with that of the political class. The effect of the financial crisis was to undermine faith and trust in the competence of the governing elites. It marked the beginnings of a wider political crisis.

But the causes of this political crisis, glaringly evident on both sides of the Atlantic, are much deeper than simply the financial crisis and the virtually stillborn recovery of the last decade. They go to the heart of the neoliberal project that dates from the late 70s and the political rise of Reagan and Thatcher, and embraced at its core the idea of a global free market in goods, services and capital. The depression-era system of bank regulation was dismantled, in the US in the 1990s and in Britain in 1986, thereby creating the conditions for the 2008 crisis. Equality was scorned, the idea of trickle-down economics lauded, government condemned as a fetter on the market and duly downsized, immigration encouraged, regulation cut to a minimum, taxes reduced and a blind eye turned to corporate evasion.

It should be noted that, by historical standards, the neoliberal era has not had a particularly good track record. The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism, when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present.

But by far the most disastrous feature of the neoliberal period has been the huge growth in inequality. Until very recently, this had been virtually ignored. With extraordinary speed, however, it has emerged as one of, if not the most important political issue on both sides of the Atlantic, most dramatically in the US. It is, bar none, the issue that is driving the political discontent that is now engulfing the west. Given the statistical evidence, it is puzzling, shocking even, that it has been disregarded for so long; the explanation can only lie in the sheer extent of the hegemony of neoliberalism and its values.

But now reality has upset the doctrinal apple cart. In the period 1948-1972, every section of the American population experienced very similar and sizable increases in their standard of living; between 1972-2013, the bottom 10% experienced falling real income while the top 10% did far better than everyone else. In the US, the median real income for full-time male workers is now lower than it was four decades ago: the income of the bottom 90% of the population has stagnated for over 30 years .

A not so dissimilar picture is true of the UK. And the problem has grown more serious since the financial crisis. On average, between 65-70% of households in 25 high-income economies experienced stagnant or falling real incomes between 2005 and 2014.

Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against their lot

The reasons are not difficult to explain. The hyper-globalisation era has been systematically stacked in favour of capital against labour: international trading agreements, drawn up in great secrecy, with business on the inside and the unions and citizens excluded, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being but the latest examples; the politico-legal attack on the unions; the encouragement of large-scale immigration in both the US and Europe that helped to undermine the bargaining power of the domestic workforce; and the failure to retrain displaced workers in any meaningful way.

As Thomas Piketty has shown, in the absence of countervailing pressures, capitalism naturally gravitates towards increasing inequality. In the period between 1945 and the late 70s, Cold War competition was arguably the biggest such constraint. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been none. As the popular backlash grows increasingly irresistible, however, such a winner-takes-all regime becomes politically unsustainable.

Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against their lot, as graphically illustrated by the support for Trump and Sanders in the US and the Brexit vote in the UK. This popular revolt is often described, in a somewhat denigratory and dismissive fashion, as populism. Or, as Francis Fukuyama writes in a recent excellent essay in Foreign Affairs : "'Populism' is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don't like." Populism is a movement against the status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is generally much clearer about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or reactionary, but more usually both.

Brexit is a classic example of such populism. It has overturned a fundamental cornerstone of UK policy since the early 1970s. Though ostensibly about Europe, it was in fact about much more: a cri de coeur from those who feel they have lost out and been left behind, whose living standards have stagnated or worse since the 1980s, who feel dislocated by large-scale immigration over which they have no control and who face an increasingly insecure and casualised labour market. Their revolt has paralysed the governing elite, already claimed one prime minister, and left the latest one fumbling around in the dark looking for divine inspiration.

The wave of populism marks the return of class as a central agency in politics, both in the UK and the US. This is particularly remarkable in the US. For many decades, the idea of the "working class" was marginal to American political discourse. Most Americans described themselves as middle class, a reflection of the aspirational pulse at the heart of American society. According to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population.

Brexit, too, was primarily a working-class revolt. Hitherto, on both sides of the Atlantic, the agency of class has been in retreat in the face of the emergence of a new range of identities and issues from gender and race to sexual orientation and the environment. The return of class, because of its sheer reach, has the potential, like no other issue, to redefine the political landscape.

The working class belongs to no one: its orientation, far from predetermined, is a function of politics

The re-emergence of class should not be confused with the labor movement. They are not synonymous: this is obvious in the US and increasingly the case in the UK. Indeed, over the last half-century, there has been a growing separation between the two in Britain. The re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit vote, can best be described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement.

Indeed, Ukip has been as important – in the form of immigration and Europe – in shaping its current attitudes as the Labour party. In the United States, both Trump and Sanders have given expression to the working-class revolt, the latter almost as much as the former. The working class belongs to no one: its orientation, far from predetermined, as the left liked to think, is a function of politics.

The neoliberal era is being undermined from two directions. First, if its record of economic growth has never been particularly strong, it is now dismal. Europe is barely larger than it was on the eve of the financial crisis in 2007; the United States has done better but even its growth has been anaemic. Economists such as Larry Summers believe that the prospect for the future is most likely one of secular stagnation .

Worse, because the recovery has been so weak and fragile, there is a widespread belief that another financial crisis may well beckon. In other words, the neoliberal era has delivered the west back into the kind of crisis-ridden world that we last experienced in the 1930s. With this background, it is hardly surprising that a majority in the west now believe their children will be worse off than they were. Second, those who have lost out in the neoliberal era are no longer prepared to acquiesce in their fate – they are increasingly in open revolt. We are witnessing the end of the neoliberal era. It is not dead, but it is in its early death throes, just as the social-democratic era was during the 1970s.

A sure sign of the declining influence of neoliberalism is the rising chorus of intellectual voices raised against it. From the mid-70s through the 80s, the economic debate was increasingly dominated by monetarists and free marketeers. But since the western financial crisis, the centre of gravity of the intellectual debate has shifted profoundly. This is most obvious in the United States, with economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Dani Rodrik and Jeffrey Sachs becoming increasingly influential. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been a massive seller. His work and that of Tony Atkinson and Angus Deaton have pushed the question of the inequality to the top of the political agenda. In the UK, Ha-Joon Chang , for long isolated within the economics profession, has gained a following far greater than those who think economics is a branch of mathematics.

Meanwhile, some of those who were previously strong advocates of a neoliberal approach, such as Larry Summers and the Financial Times 's Martin Wolf, have become extremely critical. The wind is in the sails of the critics of neoliberalism; the neoliberals and monetarists are in retreat. In the UK, the media and political worlds are well behind the curve. Few recognize that we are at the end of an era. Old attitudes and assumptions still predominate, whether on the BBC's Today programme, in the rightwing press or the parliamentary Labor party.

Following Ed Miliband's resignation as Labour leader, virtually no one foresaw the triumph of Jeremy Corbyn in the subsequent leadership election. The assumption had been more of the same, a Blairite or a halfway house like Miliband, certainly not anyone like Corbyn. But the zeitgeist had changed. The membership, especially the young who had joined the party on an unprecedented scale, wanted a complete break with New Labour. One of the reasons why the left has failed to emerge as the leader of the new mood of working-class disillusionment is that most social democratic parties became, in varying degrees, disciples of neoliberalism and uber-globalisation. The most extreme forms of this phenomenon were New Labour and the Democrats, who in the late 90s and 00s became its advance guard, personified by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, triangulation and the third way.

But as David Marquand observed in a review for the New Statesman , what is the point of a social democratic party if it doesn't represent the less fortunate, the underprivileged and the losers? New Labour deserted those who needed them, who historically they were supposed to represent. Is it surprising that large sections have now deserted the party who deserted them? Blair, in his reincarnation as a money-obsessed consultant to a shady bunch of presidents and dictators, is a fitting testament to the demise of New Labour.

The rival contenders – Burnham, Cooper and Kendall – represented continuity. They were swept away by Corbyn, who won nearly 60% of the votes. New Labour was over, as dead as Monty Python's parrot. Few grasped the meaning of what had happened. A Guardian leader welcomed the surge in membership and then, lo and behold, urged support for Yvette Cooper, the very antithesis of the reason for the enthusiasm. The PLP refused to accept the result and ever since has tried with might and main to remove Corbyn.

Just as the Labour party took far too long to come to terms with the rise of Thatcherism and the birth of a new era at the end of the 70s, now it could not grasp that the Thatcherite paradigm, which they eventually came to embrace in the form of New Labour, had finally run its course. Labour, like everyone else, is obliged to think anew. The membership in their antipathy to New Labour turned to someone who had never accepted the latter, who was the polar opposite in almost every respect of Blair, and embodying an authenticity and decency which Blair patently did not.

Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great deal better

Corbyn is not a product of the new times, he is a throwback to the late 70s and early 80s. That is both his strength and also his weakness. He is uncontaminated by the New Labour legacy because he has never accepted it. But nor, it would seem, does he understand the nature of the new era. The danger is that he is possessed of feet of clay in what is a highly fluid and unpredictable political environment, devoid of any certainties of almost any kind, in which Labour finds itself dangerously divided and weakened.

Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great deal better. David Cameron was guilty of a huge and irresponsible miscalculation over Brexit. He was forced to resign in the most ignominious of circumstances. The party is hopelessly divided. It has no idea in which direction to move after Brexit. The Brexiters painted an optimistic picture of turning away from the declining European market and embracing the expanding markets of the world, albeit barely mentioning by name which countries it had in mind. It looks as if the new prime minister may have an anachronistic hostility towards China and a willingness to undo the good work of George Osborne. If the government turns its back on China, by far the fastest growing market in the world, where are they going to turn?

Brexit has left the country fragmented and deeply divided, with the very real prospect that Scotland might choose independence. Meanwhile, the Conservatives seem to have little understanding that the neoliberal era is in its death throes.

Dramatic as events have been in the UK, they cannot compare with those in the United States. Almost from nowhere, Donald Trump rose to capture the Republican nomination and confound virtually all the pundits and not least his own party. His message was straightforwardly anti-globalisation. He believes that the interests of the working class have been sacrificed in favour of the big corporations that have been encouraged to invest around the world and thereby deprive American workers of their jobs. Further, he argues that large-scale immigration has weakened the bargaining power of American workers and served to lower their wages.

He proposes that US corporations should be required to invest their cash reserves in the US. He believes that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) has had the effect of exporting American jobs to Mexico. On similar grounds, he is opposed to the TPP and the TTIP. And he also accuses China of stealing American jobs, threatening to impose a 45% tariff on Chinese imports.

To globalisation Trump counterposes economic nationalism: "Put America first". His appeal, above all, is to the white working class who, until Trump's (and Bernie Sander's) arrival on the political scene, had been ignored and largely unrepresented since the 1980s. Given that their wages have been falling for most of the last 40 years, it is extraordinary how their interests have been neglected by the political class. Increasingly, they have voted Republican, but the Republicans have long been captured by the super-rich and Wall Street, whose interests, as hyper-globalisers, have run directly counter to those of the white working class. With the arrival of Trump they finally found a representative: they won Trump the Republican nomination.

Trump believes that America's pursuit of great power status has squandered the nation's resources

The economic nationalist argument has also been vigorously pursued by Bernie Sanders , who ran Hillary Clinton extremely close for the Democratic nomination and would probably have won but for more than 700 so-called super-delegates, who were effectively chosen by the Democratic machine and overwhelmingly supported Clinton. As in the case of the Republicans, the Democrats have long supported a neoliberal, pro-globalisation strategy, notwithstanding the concerns of its trade union base. Both the Republicans and the Democrats now find themselves deeply polarised between the pro- and anti-globalisers, an entirely new development not witnessed since the shift towards neoliberalism under Reagan almost 40 years ago.

Another plank of Trump's nationalist appeal – "Make America great again" – is his position on foreign policy. He believes that America's pursuit of great power status has squandered the nation's resources. He argues that the country's alliance system is unfair, with America bearing most of the cost and its allies contributing far too little. He points to Japan and South Korea, and NATO's European members as prime examples. He seeks to rebalance these relationships and, failing that, to exit from them.

As a country in decline, he argues that America can no longer afford to carry this kind of financial burden. Rather than putting the world to rights, he believes the money should be invested at home, pointing to the dilapidated state of America's infrastructure. Trump's position represents a major critique of America as the world's hegemon. His arguments mark a radical break with the neoliberal, hyper-globalisation ideology that has reigned since the early 1980s and with the foreign policy orthodoxy of most of the postwar period. These arguments must be taken seriously. They should not be lightly dismissed just because of their authorship. But Trump is no man of the left. He is a populist of the right. He has launched a racist and xenophobic attack on Muslims and on Mexicans. Trump's appeal is to a white working class that feels it has been cheated by the big corporations, undermined by Hispanic immigration, and often resentful towards African-Americans who for long too many have viewed as their inferior.

A Trump America would mark a descent into authoritarianism characterised by abuse, scapegoating, discrimination, racism, arbitrariness and violence; America would become a deeply polarised and divided society. His threat to impose 45% tariffs on China , if implemented, would certainly provoke retaliation by the Chinese and herald the beginnings of a new era of protectionism.

Trump may well lose the presidential election just as Sanders failed in his bid for the Democrat nomination. But this does not mean that the forces opposed to hyper-globalisation – unrestricted immigration, TPP and TTIP, the free movement of capital and much else – will have lost the argument and are set to decline. In little more than 12 months, Trump and Sanders have transformed the nature and terms of the argument. Far from being on the wane, the arguments of the critics of hyper-globalisation are steadily gaining ground. Roughly two-thirds of Americans agree that "we should not think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our own national problems". And, above all else, what will continue to drive opposition to the hyper-globalisers is inequality.

[Dec 09, 2018] Neoliberalism is more like modern feudalism - an authoritarian system where the lords (bankers, energy companies and their large and inefficient attendant bureaucracies), keep us peasants in thrall through life long debt-slavery simply to buy a house or exploit us as a captured market in the case of the energy sector.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... I don't like using the term "neo-liberalism" that much because there is nothing "new" or "liberal" about it, the term itself just helps hide the fact that it's a political project more about power than profit and the end result is more like modern feudalism - an authoritarian system where the lords (bankers, energy companies and their large and inefficient attendant bureaucracies), keep us peasants in thrall through life long debt-slavery simply to buy a house or exploit us as a captured market in the case of the energy sector. ..."
"... Since the word "privatisation" is clearly no longer popular, the latest buzzword from this project is "outsourcing". ..."
"... As far as I can see "neo-liberalism", or what I prefer to call managerial and financialised feudalism is not dead, it's still out and about looking around for the next rent-seeking opportunity. ..."
"... In the political arena, is enabling porkies facilitate each other in every lunatic pronouncement about "Budget repair" and "on track for a surplus". And its spotty, textbook-spouting clones ("all debt is debt! Shriek, gasp, hyperventilate!") fall off the conveyor belts of tertiary education Australia-wide, then turn up on The Drum as IPA 'Research Fellows' to spout their evidence-free assertions. ..."
"... And don't forget the handmaiden of neoliberalism is their macroeconomic mythology about government "debt and borrowing" which will condemn our grandchildren to poverty - inter-generational theft! It also allows them to continue dismantling government social programs by giving tax-cuts to reduce "revenue" and then claiming there is no money to fund those programs. ..."
"... "Competition" as the cornerstone of neoliberal economics was always a lie. Corporations do their best to get rid of competitors by unfair pricing tactics or by takeovers. And even where some competitors hang in there by some means (banks, petrol companies) the competition that occurs is not for price but for profit. ..."
"... We find a shift away from democratic processes and the rise of the "all new adulation of the so-called tough leader" factor, aka Nazism/Fascism. From Trump to Turkey, Netanyahu to Putin, Brazil to China, the rise of the "right" in Europe, the South Americas, where the leader is "our great and "good" Teacher", knows best, and thus infantalises the knowledge and awareness of the rest of the population. Who needs scientists, when the "leader" knows everything? ..."
"... There are indeed alternatives to neoliberalism, most of which have been shown to lead back to neoliberalism. Appeals for fiscal and monetary relief/stimulus can only ever paper over the worst aspects of it's relentless 'progress', between wars, it seems. ..."
"... Neoliberalism seems vastly, catastrophically misunderstood. Widely perceived as the latest abomination to spring from the eternal battle 'twixt Labour and Capital, it's actual origins are somewhat more recent. Neoliberalism really, really is not just "Capitalism gone wrong". It goes much deeper, to a fundamental flaw buried( more accurately 'planted') deep in the heart of economics. ..."
"... In 1879 an obscure journalist from then-remote San Francisco, Henry George, took the world by storm with his extraordinary bestseller Progress and Poverty . Still the only published work to outsell the Bible in a single year, it did so for over twenty years, yet few social justice advocates have heard of it. ..."
"... George gravely threatened privileged global power-elites , so they erased him from academic history. A mind compared, in his time with Plato, Copernicus and Adam Smith wiped from living memory, by the modern aristocracy. ..."
"... In the process of doing so, they emasculated the discipline of economics, stripped dignity from labour, and set in motion a world-destroying doctrine. Neo-Classical Economics(aka neoliberalism) was born , to the detriment of the working-citizen and the living world on which s/he depends. ..."
Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

ElectricJolt , 31 Oct 2018 04:38

I don't like using the term "neo-liberalism" that much because there is nothing "new" or "liberal" about it, the term itself just helps hide the fact that it's a political project more about power than profit and the end result is more like modern feudalism - an authoritarian system where the lords (bankers, energy companies and their large and inefficient attendant bureaucracies), keep us peasants in thrall through life long debt-slavery simply to buy a house or exploit us as a captured market in the case of the energy sector.

Since the word "privatisation" is clearly no longer popular, the latest buzzword from this project is "outsourcing". If you've had a look at The Canberra Times over the last couple of weeks there have been quite a few articles about outsourcing parts of Medicare and Centrelink, using labour hire companies and so on – is this part of a current LNP plan to "sell off" parts of the government before Labour takes the reins in May?

As far as I can see "neo-liberalism", or what I prefer to call managerial and financialised feudalism is not dead, it's still out and about looking around for the next rent-seeking opportunity.

Friarbird , 31 Oct 2018 04:02
Neoliberalism "dead"? I think not. It is riveted on the country like a straitjacket.

Which is exactly what it was always intended to be, a system gamed and rigged to ensure the wage-earning scum obtain progressively less and less of the country's productive wealth, however much they contributed to it. The wage theft and exploitation Neoliberalism fosters has become the new norm. Neoliberal idealogues thickly infest Federal and State Treasuries.

In the political arena, is enabling porkies facilitate each other in every lunatic pronouncement about "Budget repair" and "on track for a surplus". And its spotty, textbook-spouting clones ("all debt is debt! Shriek, gasp, hyperventilate!") fall off the conveyor belts of tertiary education Australia-wide, then turn up on The Drum as IPA 'Research Fellows' to spout their evidence-free assertions.

The IPA itself has moles in govt at every level--even in your local Council. Certainly in ours.

Neoliberalism is "dead"? Correction. Neoliberalism is alive, thriving---and quick to ensure its glaring deficiencies and inequities are solely attributable to its opponents. Now THERE'S a surprise.....

totaram -> JohnArmour , 31 Oct 2018 03:01
Agree! And don't forget the handmaiden of neoliberalism is their macroeconomic mythology about government "debt and borrowing" which will condemn our grandchildren to poverty - inter-generational theft! It also allows them to continue dismantling government social programs by giving tax-cuts to reduce "revenue" and then claiming there is no money to fund those programs.
exTen , 31 Oct 2018 02:30
Neoliberalism will not be dead until the underpinning of neoliberalism is abandoned by ALP and Greens. That underpinning is their mindless attachment to "budget repair" and "return to surplus". The federal government's "budget" is nothing like a currency user's budget. Currency users collect in order to spend whereas every dollar spent by the federal government is a new dollar and every dollar taxed by the federal government is an ex-dollar. A currency cannot sensibly have "debt" in the currency that it issues and no amount of surplus or deficit now will enhance or impair its capacity to spend in future. A currency issuer does not need an electronic piggybank, or a Future Fund, or a Drought Relief Fund. It can't max out an imaginary credit card. It's "borrowing" is just an exchange of its termless no-coupon liabilities (currency) for term-limited coupon-bearing liabilities (bonds). The federal budget balance is no rational indicator of any need for austerity or for stimulus. The rational indicators are unemployment (too small a "deficit"/too large a surplus) and inflation (too large a "deficit"/too small a "surplus"). Federal taxation is where dollars go to die. It doesn't "fund" a currency issuer's spending - it is there to stop the dollars it issues from piling up and causing inflation and to make room for spending by democratically elected federal parliament. The name of the game is to balance the economy, not the entirely notional and fundamentally irrelevant "budget".
Copperfield , 31 Oct 2018 01:51
"Competition" as the cornerstone of neoliberal economics was always a lie. Corporations do their best to get rid of competitors by unfair pricing tactics or by takeovers. And even where some competitors hang in there by some means (banks, petrol companies) the competition that occurs is not for price but for profit.

And changing the electoral system? Yes indeed. After years of observation it seems to me that the problem with our politics is not individual politicians (although there are notable exceptions) but political parties. Rigid control of policies and voting on party instruction (even by the Greens) makes the proceedings of parliament a complete waste of time. If every policy had to run the gauntlet of 150 people all voting by their conscience we would have better policy. The executive functions could be carried out by a cabinet also elected from those members. But not going to happen - too many vested interests in the parties and their corporate sponsors.

gidrys , 31 Oct 2018 01:34
With the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil (even though nearly 30% of electors refused to vote) it may be a little presumptuous to dissect the dead corpse of neoliberalism, as Richard Denniss' hopes that we can.

What is absolutely gob-smacking is that Brazilians voted for him; a man that Glenn Greenwald describes as "far more dangerous than Trump" , that Bolsonaro envisages military dictatorships as "being a far more superior form of government" advocating a civil war in order to dispose of the left.

Furthermore, the election of this far-right neoliberal extremist also threatens the Amazon forest and its indigenous people; with a global impact that will render combatting climate change even more difficult.

Locally, recent Liberal Party battles over leadership have included the neolib factor, as the lunatic right in that party - who I suspect would all love to be a Bolsonaro themselves - aggressively activate their grumblings and dissension.

Oh, Richard how I wish you were right; but in the Victorian election campaign - currently underway - I have seen Socialist candidates behaving in a manner that doesn't garner hope in a different way of doing politics.

The fact that 'our' democracy is based on an adversarial, partisan system leaves me with little hope. Alain Badiou wrote that "ours is not a world of democracy but a world of imperial conservatism using democratic phraseology" ; and until that imposition is discarded 'our' democracy will remain whatever we are told it is, and neolibs will continue to shove their bullshit down our throats as much as they can.

beeden , 31 Oct 2018 01:33
There is no abatement to the wealthiest in the global communities seeking greater wealth and thus increasing inequality.

Taking a local example,

We find a shift away from democratic processes and the rise of the "all new adulation of the so-called tough leader" factor, aka Nazism/Fascism. From Trump to Turkey, Netanyahu to Putin, Brazil to China, the rise of the "right" in Europe, the South Americas, where the leader is "our great and "good" Teacher", knows best, and thus infantalises the knowledge and awareness of the rest of the population. Who needs scientists, when the "leader" knows everything?

Have the people of the world abrogated their democratic responsibility?

Or is it the gerrymandering chicanery of US Republican backers/politicians( so long as you control the voting machines ) that have sent the ugly message to the world, Power is yours for the making and taking by any means that ignores the public's rights in the decision making process. Has the "neo-liberal" world delivered a corrupted system of democracy that has deliberately alienated the world's population from actively participating fully in the full awareness that their vote counts and will be counted?

Do we need to take back the controls of democracy to ensure that it is the will of the people and not a manipulation by vested interest groups/individuals? You're darn tootin'!!!

Matt Quinn , 31 Oct 2018 01:32
A thoughtful piece. Thanks. There are indeed alternatives to neoliberalism, most of which have been shown to lead back to neoliberalism. Appeals for fiscal and monetary relief/stimulus can only ever paper over the worst aspects of it's relentless 'progress', between wars, it seems.

Neoliberalism seems vastly, catastrophically misunderstood. Widely perceived as the latest abomination to spring from the eternal battle 'twixt Labour and Capital, it's actual origins are somewhat more recent. Neoliberalism really, really is not just "Capitalism gone wrong". It goes much deeper, to a fundamental flaw buried( more accurately 'planted') deep in the heart of economics.

Instead of trying to understand Neo-Classical Economics it is perhaps more instructive to understand what it was built, layer by layer, to obscure. First the Land system, then the Wealth system, and finally the Money system (hived off into a compartment - 'macroeconomics'). Importantly, three entirely different categories of "thing" .

In 1879 an obscure journalist from then-remote San Francisco, Henry George, took the world by storm with his extraordinary bestseller Progress and Poverty . Still the only published work to outsell the Bible in a single year, it did so for over twenty years, yet few social justice advocates have heard of it.

George set out to discover why the worst poverty always seemed to accompany the most progress. By chasing down the production process to its ends, and tracing where the proceeds were going, he succeeded spectacularly. From Progress and Poverty , Chapter 17 - "The Problem Explained" :

Three things unite in production: land, labor, and capital. Three parties divide the output: landowner, laborer, and capitalist. If the laborer and capitalist get no more as production increases, it is a necessary inference that the landowner takes the gain.

George gravely threatened privileged global power-elites , so they erased him from academic history. A mind compared, in his time with Plato, Copernicus and Adam Smith wiped from living memory, by the modern aristocracy.

In the process of doing so, they emasculated the discipline of economics, stripped dignity from labour, and set in motion a world-destroying doctrine. Neo-Classical Economics(aka neoliberalism) was born , to the detriment of the working-citizen and the living world on which s/he depends.

Einstein was a fan of George, and used his methods of thought-experiment and powerful inductive reasoning to discover Relativity, twenty years later. Henry Georges brilliant insights into Land (aka nature), Wealth (what you want, need), and Money (sharing mechanism) are as relevant as ever, and until they are rediscovered, we are likely to re-run the 1900's over and over, with fewer and fewer resources.

~ How Land Barons, Industrialists and Bankers Corrupted Economics .

[Nov 27, 2018] The political fraud of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal"

Highly recommended!
After Democratic party was co-opted by neoliberals there is no way back. And since Obama the trend of Democratic Party is toward strengthening the wing of CIA-democratic notthe wing of the party friendly to workers. Bought by Wall Street leadership is uncable of intruting any change that undermine thier current neoliberal platform. that's why they criminally derailed Sanders.
Notable quotes:
"... When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism, would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism. ..."
"... To quote Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!" ..."
"... "Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad." ..."
"... "It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent upon the Democratic Party." ..."
"... "And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting the Democrats ..."
"... It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of their class. ..."
"... First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious! ..."
"... from Greenwald: The Democratic Party's deceitful game https://www.salon.com/2010/... ..."
Nov 27, 2018 | www.wsws.org

Raymond Colison4 days ago

they literally ripped this out of the 2016 Green Party platform. Jill Stein spoke repeatedly about the same exact kind of Green New Deal, a full-employment, transition-to-100%-renewables program that would supposedly solve all the world's problems.

When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism, would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism.

In 2016, when the Greens made this their central economic policy proposal, the Democrats responded by calling that platform irresponsible and dangerous ("even if it's a good idea, you can't actually vote for a non-two-party candidate!"). Why would they suddenly find a green new deal appealing now except for its true purpose: left cover for the very system destroying the planet.

To quote Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!"

Greg4 days ago
"Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad."

Their political position not only lacks seriousness, unserious is their political position.

"It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent upon the Democratic Party."

For subjective-idealists, what you want to believe, think and feel is just so much more convincing than objective reality. Especially when it covers over single-minded class interests at play.

"And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting the Democrats

Penny Smith4 days ago
It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of their class.
Jim Bergren4 days ago
First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious!

Only an International Socialist program led by Workers can truly lead a "green revolution" by expropriating the billionaire oil barons of their capital and redirecting that wealth into the socialist reconstruction of the entire economy.

Master Oroko4 days ago
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" is a nice laugh. Really, it sure is funny hearing these lies given any credence at all. This showmanship belongs in a fantasy book, not in real life. The Democratic Party as a force for good social change Now that's a laugh!
Vivek Jain4 days ago
from Greenwald: The Democratic Party's deceitful game https://www.salon.com/2010/...
лидия5 days ago
"Greenwashing" of capitalism (and also of Zionist apartheid colony in Palestine) is but one of dirty tricks by Dems and their "left" backers.
Kalen5 days ago
Lies, empty promises, meaningless tautologies and morality plays, qualified and conditional declarations to be backpedalled pending appropriate political expediencies, devoid any practical content that is what AOC, card carrying member of DSA, and in fact young energetic political apparatchik of calcified political body of Dems establishment, duty engulfs. And working for socialist revolution is no one of them.

What kind of socialist would reject socialist revolution, class struggle and class emancipation and choose, as a suppose socialist path, accommodation with oligarchic ruling elite via political, not revolutionary process that would have necessarily overthrown ruling elite.

What socialist would acquiesce to legalized exploitation of people for profit, legalized greed and inequality and would negotiate away fundamental principle of egalitarianism and working people self rule?

Only National Socialist would; and that is exactly what AOC campaign turned out to be all about.

National Socialism with imperial flavor is her affiliation and what her praises for Pelosi, wife of a billionaire and dead warmonger McCain proved.

Now she is peddling magical thinking about global change and plunge herself into falacy of entrepreneurship, Market solution to the very problem that the market solutions were designed to create and aggravate namely horrific inequality that is robbing people from their own opportunities to mitigate devastating effects of global change.

The insidiousness of phony socialists expresses itself in the fact that they lie that any social problem can be fixed by current of future technical means, namely via so called technological revolution instead by socialist revolution they deem unnecessary or detrimental.

Me at home Kalen4 days ago
The technical means for achieving socialism has existed since the late 19th century, with the telegraph, the coal-powered factory, and modern fertilizer. The improvements since then have only made socialism even more streamlined and efficient, if such technologies could only be liberated from capital! The idea that "we need a new technological revolution just to achieve socialism" reflects the indoctrination in capitalism by many "socialist" theorists because it is only in capitalism where "technological growth" is essential simply to maintain the system. It is only in capitalism (especially America, the most advanced capitalist nation, and thus, the one where capitalism is actually closest towards total crisis) where the dogma of a technological savior is most entrenched because America cannot offer any other kind of palliative to the more literate and productive sections of its population. Religion will not convince most and any attempt at a sociological or economic understanding would inevitably prove the truth of socialism.

[Nov 27, 2018] American capitalism could afford to make concessions assiciated with The New Deal because of its economic dominance. The past forty years have been characterized by the continued decline of American capitalism on a world stage relative to its major rivals. The ruling class has responded to this crisis with a neoliberal counterrevolution to claw back all gains won by workers. This policy has been carried out under both Democratic and Republican administrations and with the assistance of the trade unions.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The original "New Deal," which included massive public works infrastructure projects, was introduced by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s amid the Great Depression. Its purpose was to stave off a socialist revolution in America. It was a response to a militant upsurge of strikes and violent class battles, led by socialists who were inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution ..."
"... Since the 2008 crash, first under Bush and Obama, and now Trump, the ruling elites have pursued a single-minded policy of enriching the wealthy, through free credit, corporate bailouts and tax cuts, while slashing spending on social services. ..."
"... To claim as does Ocasio-Cortez that American capitalism can provide a new "New Deal," of a green or any other variety, is to pfile:///F:/Private_html/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neoliberalism/Historyromote an obvious political fiction." ..."
Nov 27, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Northern Star November 26, 2018 at 4:23 pm

As the New deal unravels:

"The original "New Deal," which included massive public works infrastructure projects, was introduced by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s amid the Great Depression. Its purpose was to stave off a socialist revolution in America. It was a response to a militant upsurge of strikes and violent class battles, led by socialists who were inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution that had occurred less than two decades before.

American capitalism could afford to make such concessions because of its economic dominance. The past forty years have been characterized by the continued decline of American capitalism on a world stage relative to its major rivals. The ruling class has responded to this crisis with a social counterrevolution to claw back all gains won by workers. This has been carried out under both Democratic and Republican administrations and with the assistance of the trade unions.

Since the 2008 crash, first under Bush and Obama, and now Trump, the ruling elites have pursued a single-minded policy of enriching the wealthy, through free credit, corporate bailouts and tax cuts, while slashing spending on social services.

To claim as does Ocasio-Cortez that American capitalism can provide a new "New Deal," of a green or any other variety, is to pfile:///F:/Private_html/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neoliberalism/Historyromote an obvious political fiction."

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/11/23/cort-n23.html

[Nov 13, 2018] "I understand your house is on fire ."

Nov 13, 2018 | twitter.com

[Sep 27, 2018] The power elites goal is to change its appearance to look like something new and innovative to stay ahead of an electorate who are increasingly skeptical of the neoliberalism and globalism that enrich the elite at their expense.

Highly recommended!
Sep 27, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
james , Sep 26, 2018 10:19:13 PM | link

Pft , Sep 26, 2018 9:58:02 PM | link

In my own words then. According to Cook the power elites goal is to change its appearance to look like something new and innovative to stay ahead of an electorate who are increasingly skeptical of the neoliberalism and globalism that enrich the elite at their expense.

Since they do not actually want change they find actors who pretend to represent change , which is in essence fake change. These then are their insurgent candidates

Trump serves the power elite , because while he appears as an insurgent against the power elite he does little to change anything

Trump promotes his fake insurgency on Twitter stage knowing the power elite will counter any of his promises that might threaten them

As an insurgent candidate Trump was indifferent to Israel and wanted the US out of Syria. He wanted good relations with Russia. He wanted to fix the health care system, rebuild infrastructure, scrap NAFTA and TTIPS, bring back good paying jobs, fight the establishment and Wall Street executives and drain the swamp. America First he said.

Trump the insurgent president , has become Israel's biggest cheerleader and has launched US missiles at Syria, relations with Russia are at Cold War lows, infrastructure is still failing, the percentage of people working is now at an all time low in the post housewife era, he has passed tax cuts for the rich that will endanger medicare, medicaid and social security and prohibit infrastructure spending, relaxed regulations on Wall Street, enhanced NAFTA to include TTIPS provisions and make US automobiles more expensive, and the swamp has been refilled with the rich, neocons , Koch associates, and Goldman Sachs that make up the power elites and Deep State Americas rich and Israel First

@34 pft... regarding the 2 cook articles.. i found they overly wordy myself... however, for anyone paying attention - corbyn seems like the person to vote for given how relentless he is being attacked in the media... i am not so sure about trump, but felt cook summed it up well with these 2 lines.. "Trump the candidate was indifferent to Israel and wanted the US out of Syria. Trump the president has become Israel's biggest cheerleader and has launched US missiles at Syria." i get the impression corbyn is legit which is why the anti-semitism keeps on being mentioned... craig murrary is a good source for staying on top of uk dynamics..

Piotr Berman , Sep 26, 2018 10:23:41 PM | link

For Trump to be "insurgent" he should

(a) talk coherently
(b) have some kind of movement consisting of people that agree with what is says -- that necessitates (a)

Then he could staff his Administration with his supporters rather than a gamut of conventional plutocrats, neocons, and hacks from the Deep State (intelligence, FBI and crazies culled from Pentagon). As it is easy to see, I am describing an alternate reality. Who is a Trumpian member of the Administration? His son-in-law?

karlof1 , Sep 26, 2018 11:42:43 PM | link
Pft @34--

Yes. just like Obama before him--another snake in the swamp!

Pft , Sep 27, 2018 12:53:59 AM | link
Karlof1@39

The swamps been filled with all kinds of vile creatures since the Carter administration. This is when the US/UK went full steam ahead with neoliberal globalism with Israel directing the war on terror for the Trilateral Empire (following Bibis Jerusalem conference so as to fulfill the Yinon plan). 40 years of terror and financial mayhem following the coup that took place from 1963-1974. After Nixons ouster they were ready to go once TLC Carter/Zbig kicked off the Trilateral era. Reagan then ran promising to oust the TLC swamp but broke his promise, as every President has done since .

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[Sep 09, 2018] A country where an immigrant Sikh girl can become a neocon ambassador

Notable quotes:
"... We Americans are totally subject to ziocon propaganda when it comes to Middle East affairs. Anyone that disagrees with that viewpoint is immediately labeled anti-semitic and now banned from social media and of course from the TV talk shows. ..."
"... Jack posed an interesting question, how does someone like Putin respond to an irrational US who in their delusions can easily escalate military conflict if their ego gets bruised when it is shown that they don't have the unilateral power of a hegemon? ..."
"... Always thought that Nikki Haley was the price Donald Trump had to pay to get Sheldon Adelson's large campaign contributions in 2016. Adelson was Trump's second biggest contributor. So was recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Sheldon got his money's worth. https://www.investopedia.co... ..."
"... Nikki Haley's Sikh origins may have something to do with her anti-Muslim feelings. ..."
"... it is hypocritical in the extreme for the U.S. to be criticising anyone for killing people anywhere after what they have been doing in the Middle East. According to Professor Gideon Polya the total avoidable deaths in Afghanstan alone since 2001 under ongoing war and occupation-imposed deprivation amount to around three million people, about 900,000 of whom are infants under the age of five (see Professor Gideon Polya at La Trobe University in Melbourne book, 'Body Count: Global Avoidable Mortality Since 1950' and Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility study: http://www.psr.org/assets/p... . ..."
"... Is it in our DNA that we can't learn lessons from our interventionist experience in the Middle East? Looks like Iraq is spinning out of control once again. I'm sure many including the Shia may reminisce favorably to the Sadam years despite his tyranny. https://ejmagnier.com/2018/... ..."
"... We are indoctrinated with the idea that all people are basically the same. In fact this is only true at the level of basics like shelter, food, sex, etc. We refuse to really believe in the reality of widely varying cultures. It makes us incapable, as a group, of understanding people who do not share our outlook. i have been dealing with this all my life as a delegated "ambassador" to the "others." ..."
"... In this context, if you were Vladimir Putin and knowing that President Trump is completely ignorant when it comes to history and policy details and has surrounded himself with neocons as far as foreign policy is concerned and Bibi has him eating out of his hands, how would you deal with him if he starts to get belligerent in Syria and Ukraine? ..."
"... Did the Syrians get upset by General Sherman's destructive march through South Carolina? No. It was a mistake for the US ever getting involved in Syria, with forming, equipping and training foreign armies and shadow governments including replacement prime ministers, all in violation of the UN Charter. ..."
"... Trump is more savagely and ignorantly aggressive. ..."
"... Trump, Nikki and Bolton have been tweeting warnings about the Idlib offensive and already accusing Assad if there are any chemical attacks. Wonder why? Lavrov has also made comments that he expects a chemical use false flag. Not sure about this post on Zerohedge, but if it has any credibility then it would appear that the US military is getting ready for some kind of provocation. ..."
Sep 08, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"In her statement during the UN Security Council briefing, Haley said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its "enablers," Russia and Iran have a playbook for the war in Syria. First, they surround a civilian area. Next, they make the "preposterous claim that everyone in the area is a terrorist," thus making all civilians targets. That is followed by a "starve and surrender" campaign, during which Syrian security forces keep attacking until the people no longer have food, clean water, or shelter. "It's a playbook of death. The Assad regime has spent the last seven years refining it with Russia and Iran's help."

According to her it has happened many times before, in July 2018 it happened in Dara'a and the southwest of Syria, where Syrian forces "trapped and besieged civilians." In February 2018, it was Ghouta. In 2017 it was Aleppo, and prior to that places like Madaya and Hama.

According to her, Assad's government has left the country in ruins. "The atrocities committed by Assad will be a permanent stain on history and a black mark for this Council -- which was blocked over and over by Russia from taking action to help," Nikki Haley said." SF

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

Well, strictly speaking, her parents were immigrants, not she. She was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, a little town in the Piedmont that is majority Black. Her parents were professional people at Amritsar in the Punjab. Haley is the surname of her husband. Nikki is a nickname by which she has long been known. As governor, she was in favor of flying the Confederate flag on the Statehouse grounds before the Charleston massacre of Black Christians at a Bible study session. They were killed by an unstable white teen aged misfit whom they had invited to join their worship. After that Nikki discovered that the Confederate flag was a bad and disruptive symbol. It was a popular position across the country and Nikki became an instant "hit," the flavor of the month so to speak.

I suppose that she was supposed to be an interesting and decorative figure as UN ambassador. She is quite pretty and the South Carolina accent adds to the effect.

The positions she has taken at the UN with regard to the ME are similar to those expressed by her boss, President Trump. They are largely reflections of images projected by the popular and mass media operating as Zionist propaganda machines. I don't believe that the State Department's INR analytic bureau believes the crapola that she spouts with such hysteric fervor. I don't believe that my former friend David Satterfield believes the crapola. So, where does she get ideas like the ones quoted above? IMO she is trying to out-Trump Trump. DJT is a remarkably ignorant man concerning the geo-politics of just about everything in the ME. He appears to have once seen the film, "Exodus" and to have decided on the basis of Paul Newman's performance as Begin that the situation was and is quite simple - Israel good! Everyone else bad! Nikki's depth of knowledge appears to be just about the same.

She also appears to me to be in receipt of a stream of opinion from various Zionist and anti-Muslim groups probably related to the anti-Muslim ravings of Maronite and other Christian ME extremists.

These groups cannot seem to understand that alliances shift as does policy. They don't seem to understand that Israel's policy in Syria is no longer regime change. They never seem to have understood that the Syrian government is the protector of the religious minorities against Sunni jihadi fanatics.

They don't seem to understand that the Syrian government has no choice but to recover Idlib Province, a piece of Syria's heartland. pl

https://southfront.org/us-ambassador-to-un-goes-wild-claims-russia-syria-iran-seek-to-kill-civilians-destroy-schools-and-hospitals-in-idlib/

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

Posted at 10:31 AM in As The Borg Turns , government , Iran , Middle East , Politics , Russia , Syria , Turkey | Permalink | 2 Comments


Don Bacon , 19 hours ago

Haley's "playbook" is used by the US but not by Russia & Iran as she claims, with all civilians being targeted. Instead, Russia & Iran have taken warfare to a higher and better level, allowing the armed factions to surrender their arms and get on a bus or be killed, and many of them took the bus to preserve their lives until the final offensive. A third option, which many of them took, was to join the SAA and fight against their former comrades. All of this statecraft was revolutionary, and was not at all as Haley described, including the crocodile tears over Syrian lives which has never been honest especially considering the level of support Assad has within Syria.
Jaime -> Don Bacon , 16 hours ago
I agree it is revolutionary, at least in modern times in the western world. I wonder if it will set a "trend": a more humane way to wage war. I am sure it will be studied in war colleges.
Jonathan A. Goff , a day ago
Pat,

One observation I had while thinking about the Ambassador Haley quote you provided (which I think supports the point you were making in your post):

When the US was in a somewhat similar situation during the occupation of Iraq, where Sunni militants were in open rebellion and controlling towns like Fallujah, our response wasn't wildly different to the Syrian government's response. The US gov't at the time typically labeled any armed resistance "terrorists", and while they might acknowledge that there were civilians in those territories in addition to terrorists, they were just "human shields" and "regrettable collateral damage". Did the US try a little harder, and have a bit better of technology, training, etc, and do a little bit better of trying to limit damage to civilians when crushing those uprisings? Yes. But we're mostly talking modest quantitative differences in response, not fundamentally morally superior qualitative differences. I bet you if you took pictures of towns like Fallujah, Sadr City, etc, after US counter-insurgency operations, and mixed them in with pictures of trashed Syrian towns that had just been liberated from rebel groups, and showed them to Nikki Haley, or frankly any neocon, they'd have a hard time telling the difference.

~Jon

Biggee Mikeee -> Jonathan A. Goff , 21 hours ago
As I was reading this topic Raqqa and Fallujah came to mind. In the case of Fallujah I don't recall if the civilians were given an opportunity to evacuate. They were not in ISIS controlled Raqqa. In any event Haley's blather at the UN is for the consumption of the rubes.
O rly -> Biggee Mikeee , 18 hours ago
as far as i recall in the battle for fallujah, only women and children were permitted to leave during the siege.and during the siege of Mosul they were dropping leaflets telling people not to try and leave.
Jonathan A. Goff -> Biggee Mikeee , 19 hours ago
And giving civilians a chance to evacuate doesn't help as much as one would think if the insurgents/rebels really do want to use them as human shields.

~Jon

stevenwithavee -> Jonathan A. Goff , 16 hours ago
Speaking to young marines in the aftermath of the second assault on Fallujah I learned that although women and children were allowed to pass the checkpoints but men of fighting age (also known as the father, brother or husband who was driving the families out of the city) were sent back into the city.
jdledell , 16 hours ago
In talking with people here in the U.S. about Syria there is the total lack of understanding of Assad's Alawite government. There are a couple million Christians in Syria and it is Assad's government that protects them from the Saudi sponsored Sunni headchoppers who would like to eliminate Christians, Jews, and Shia from the Middle East. Perhaps, the Alawites being an offshoot of Shia makes them sensitive to minority religions. However, mentioning Assad evokes strong negative reaction among U.S. Christians, similar to Trumps "lets kill them all". On my one visit to Damascus, traveling on my U.S. Passport rather than my Israeli one, The Christians I met were uniformly positive about Assad and the need for Assad to control the ENTIRE country.
blue peacock -> jdledell , 15 hours ago
Thank you for providing your direct experience of the views of Christian Syrians you met there.

Unfortunately none of those views ever make it to either to our print or broadcast media. We Americans are totally subject to ziocon propaganda when it comes to Middle East affairs. Anyone that disagrees with that viewpoint is immediately labeled anti-semitic and now banned from social media and of course from the TV talk shows.

Jack posed an interesting question, how does someone like Putin respond to an irrational US who in their delusions can easily escalate military conflict if their ego gets bruised when it is shown that they don't have the unilateral power of a hegemon?

Bag Man , 17 hours ago
Always thought that Nikki Haley was the price Donald Trump had to pay to get Sheldon Adelson's large campaign contributions in 2016. Adelson was Trump's second biggest contributor. So was recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Sheldon got his money's worth. https://www.investopedia.co...
Pat Lang Mod , 20 hours ago
Somebody said that Nikki's nonsense is for "the rubes." Nah, you town people are just as gullible.
ex-PFC Chuck , 17 hours ago
There's a disturbing piece up today at WaPo by Karen De Young asserting the USA is doubling down in Syria. From the piece, emphasis by ex-PFC Chuck:
"We've started using new language," [James] Jeffrey said, referring to previous warnings against the use of chemical weapons. Now, he said, the United States will not tolerate "an attack. Period." "Any offensive is to us objectionable as a reckless escalation" he said. "You add to that, if you use chemical weapons, or create refu­gee flows or attack innocent civilians," and "the consequences of that are that we will shift our positions and use all of our tools to make it clear that we'll have to find ways to achieve our goals that are less reliant on the goodwill of the Russians."

Jeffrey is said to be Pompeo's point person on Syria. Do any of you with ears closer to the ground than those of us in flyover land know anything about this change of tune?

Biggee Mikeee , 19 hours ago
.Iraq PM urged to quit as key ally deserts him over unrest.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi faced calls to resign yesterday as his alliance with a populist cleric who won May elections crumbled over deadly unrest shaking the country's south. The two leading groups in parliament called on Abadi to step down, after lawmakers held an emergency meeting on the public anger boiling over in the southern city of Basra.,...

The Conquest Alliance of pro-Iranian former paramilitary fighters was "on the same wavelength" as Sadr's Marching Towards Reform list and they would work together to form a new government, Assadi said. Abadi, whose grouping came third in the May polls, defended his record in parliament, describig the unrest as "political sabotage" and saying the crisis over public services was being exploited for political ends. http://news.kuwaittimes.net...

Has McGurk been outmaneuvered by the Iranians?

The Beaver -> Biggee Mikeee , 18 hours ago
According to Elijah Magnier :
Soleimani 1- Brett McGurk 0
Matina Zia , 20 hours ago
Nikki Haley's Sikh origins may have something to do with her anti-Muslim feelings. According to J. D Cunningham, author of 'History of the Sikhs (Appendix XX)' included among the injunctions ordained by Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth guru, 'a Khalsa (true Sikh) proves himself if he mounts a warhorse; is always waging war; kills a Khan (Muslim) and slays the Turks (Muslims).'

Aside from this, it is hypocritical in the extreme for the U.S. to be criticising anyone for killing people anywhere after what they have been doing in the Middle East. According to Professor Gideon Polya the total avoidable deaths in Afghanstan alone since 2001
under ongoing war and occupation-imposed deprivation amount to around three million people, about 900,000 of whom are infants under the age of five (see Professor Gideon Polya at La Trobe University in Melbourne book, 'Body Count: Global Avoidable Mortality Since 1950' and Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility study: http://www.psr.org/assets/p... .

Pat Lang Mod -> Matina Zia , 20 hours ago
I really doubt your numbers. What is your stake in this discussion?
Fred -> Matina Zia , 12 hours ago
Your good professor sounds like a great piece of work. "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950" Perhaps we should have stopped all that foreign aid in the '50s.
stevenwithavee -> Matina Zia , 15 hours ago
The under five mortality figures from Afghanistan (1 in 5) are a problem that preceded our involvement by many years. However, the failure of the international community to make any significant progress over the last 17 years would be a legitimate criticism.
Jack , 20 hours ago
Sir

Is it in our DNA that we can't learn lessons from our interventionist experience in the Middle East? Looks like Iraq is spinning out of control once again. I'm sure many including the Shia may reminisce favorably to the Sadam years despite his tyranny. https://ejmagnier.com/2018/...

Pat Lang Mod -> Jack , 19 hours ago
We are indoctrinated with the idea that all people are basically the same. In fact this is only true at the level of basics like shelter, food, sex, etc. We refuse to really believe in the reality of widely varying cultures. It makes us incapable, as a group, of understanding people who do not share our outlook. i have been dealing with this all my life as a delegated "ambassador" to the "others."
Jack -> Pat Lang , 19 hours ago
Thank you, Sir. It makes perfect sense with the End if History and all those beliefs.

In this context, if you were Vladimir Putin and knowing that President Trump is completely ignorant when it comes to history and policy details and has surrounded himself with neocons as far as foreign policy is concerned and Bibi has him eating out of his hands, how would you deal with him if he starts to get belligerent in Syria and Ukraine?

Barbara Ann -> Jack , 4 hours ago
Jack

You may be interested in a recent article in Unz by SST's own 'smoothieX12' in response to Paul Craig Roberts asking how long Russia should continue to turn the other cheek: http://www.unz.com/article/...

Biggee Mikeee -> Jack , 19 hours ago
Earlier today, the two leading groups in Parliament called on Abadi to step down. http://news.kuwaittimes.net...
Don Bacon , 21 hours ago
Did the Syrians get upset by General Sherman's destructive march through South Carolina? No. It was a mistake for the US ever getting involved in Syria, with forming, equipping and training foreign armies and shadow governments including replacement prime ministers, all in violation of the UN Charter.

A new PM was at the top of H.Clinton's to-do list as Secretary of State. My favorite Assad replacement candidate was Ghassan Hitto from Murphy Texas, but he only lasted a couple months. here

GreenZoneCafe , 21 hours ago
I don't trust converts except for the adjustment from Protestant to Catholic or vice versa. I suppose shifts from one madhab to another, or between Buddhist schools are also ok.

Sad that in a moment of crisis,so many of the rising political stars of both parties are so hollow to the point of dangerousness.

blue peacock , 21 hours ago
Col. Lang

Has anything really changed much with our policies in the ME in the past 50+ years? Haven't we been deeply influenced/controlled by Israeli interests in this period, maybe even beyond if the attacks on USS Liberty are taken into account? Is the Trump administration just following in the traditions of Reagan, Bush Père et fils, Clinton and Obama, or is there a qualitative difference?

Pat Lang Mod -> blue peacock , 21 hours ago
Trump is more savagely and ignorantly aggressive.
GreenZoneCafe -> Pat Lang , 20 hours ago
Trump talks tough but has an aversion to military action. Is that real aggression, or just bullshit for the Bubbas?

North Korea, Syria are examples. He's left the door open to talking to Iran.

Trump won the Republican primaries calling out the Iraq war as a mistake!

Relative to others, dovishness is a Trump virtue. The Tucker Carlson line.

Contrast with Obama, who bombed Libya and pumped weapons into Syria. We'd probably be at war with Russia in Syria and Ukraine if Hillary had won.

blue peacock -> GreenZoneCafe , 19 hours ago
Trump, Nikki and Bolton have been tweeting warnings about the Idlib offensive and already accusing Assad if there are any chemical attacks. Wonder why? Lavrov has also made comments that he expects a chemical use false flag. Not sure about this post on Zerohedge, but if it has any credibility then it would appear that the US military is getting ready for some kind of provocation.

https://www.zerohedge.com/n...

Maybe this is all just "positioning" and "messaging" but maybe not. With Bibi, Nikki, Bolton and Pompeo as THE advisors, does anyone have a clue what Trump decides, when, not if, the jihadi White Helmets stage their chemical event in Idlib?

GreenZoneCafe -> blue peacock , 17 hours ago
We'll see. The most I expect is another cruise missile attack to the same empty coordinate.
Pat Lang Mod -> GreenZoneCafe , 17 hours ago
That will be true if trump sees Nikki and her real bosses for what they are.
Biggee Mikeee , a day ago
I think they understand. I think they view this as a temporary setback.

[Aug 19, 2018] End of "classic neoliberalism": to an extent hardly imaginable in 2008, all the world's leading economies are locked in a perpetually escalating cycle of economic warfare.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... But to an extent hardly imaginable in 2008, all the world's leading economies are locked in a perpetually escalating cycle of economic warfare. This global trade war is spearheaded by the Trump White House, which sees trade sanctions and tariffs, such as the onslaught it launched against Turkey, as an integral component of its drive to secure the United States' geopolitical and economic interests at the expense of friend and foe alike. ..."
"... But while they are deeply divided as to their economic and geo-political objectives, the capitalist ruling classes are united on one essential question. However the next stage of the ongoing breakdown of world capitalism proceeds, they will all strive by whatever means considered necessary to make the working class the world over pay for it. ..."
"... In 2008, capitalist governments around the world, above all in the US, derived enormous benefit from the decades-long suppression of the class struggle by the trade unions and the parties of the political establishment. The rescue operation they carried out on behalf of parasitic and criminal finance capital would not have been possible without it ..."
Aug 19, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Northern Star August 16, 2018 at 3:07 pm

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/16/pers-a16.html

"But to an extent hardly imaginable in 2008, all the world's leading economies are locked in a perpetually escalating cycle of economic warfare. This global trade war is spearheaded by the Trump White House, which sees trade sanctions and tariffs, such as the onslaught it launched against Turkey, as an integral component of its drive to secure the United States' geopolitical and economic interests at the expense of friend and foe alike.

The character of world economy has undergone a major transformation in the past decade in which economic growth, to the extent it that it occurs, is not driven by the development of production and new investments but by the flow of money from one source of speculative and parasitic activity to the next."

"But while they are deeply divided as to their economic and geo-political objectives, the capitalist ruling classes are united on one essential question. However the next stage of the ongoing breakdown of world capitalism proceeds, they will all strive by whatever means considered necessary to make the working class the world over pay for it.

This is the lesson from the past decade which, in every country, has seen a deepening attack on wages, social conditions and living standards as wealth is redistributed up the income scale, raising social inequality to unprecedented heights.

In 2008, capitalist governments around the world, above all in the US, derived enormous benefit from the decades-long suppression of the class struggle by the trade unions and the parties of the political establishment. The rescue operation they carried out on behalf of parasitic and criminal finance capital would not have been possible without it."

[Jul 22, 2018] Tucker Carlson SLAMS Intelligence Community On Russia

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... After the Creation of the "CIA" Unelected, Unconstitutional CIA Intelligence Agency Interfered In Foreign Presidential Elections At Least 81 Times In 54 Years. The US was found to have interfered in foreign elections at least 81 times in 31 countries between 1946 and 2000 – not counting Libya, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, The US-backed military coups or regime change efforts, Proxy-Wars. Just saying ..."
"... Tucker Carlson has been analyzing policies/ideas on a deeper level this year. He is painting US a big picture for us to see. It's quite refreshing to see Fox News actually allow objective truth be aired on on occasion. ..."
"... The Intelligence Agencies are the Praetorian Guard in the United States. ..."
"... Party politics is a means of control. When you come to realize that we all have a tendency to agree that the major issues have no party loyalty, and we're all on the same side, you can look past minor differences and move forward to working for the greater good... ..."
"... I just saw another Tucker Carlson news clip that Tony Podesta is offered immunity to testify against Paul Manafort? WTF? Why aren't Podestas charged?! ..."
"... Neocons, military industrial complex and liberal leftists have penetrated deeply into the government intelligence communities, wall street banking, both houses of Us congress, mainstream media as well as Hollywood people, even in an academia. This country is deep sh*t. I am surprised liberal leftists have not crucified Tucker Carlson yet for speaking out. ..."
"... Russiagate is DemoKKKrat horse cookies. Putin is correct. DemoKKKrats are bad losers. $1.2 billion gone, servers gone! ..."
Jul 22, 2018 | www.youtube.com

Jaime Tapia , 5 hours ago (edited)

Guys Did you know: After the Creation of the "CIA" Unelected, Unconstitutional CIA Intelligence Agency Interfered In Foreign Presidential Elections At Least 81 Times In 54 Years. The US was found to have interfered in foreign elections at least 81 times in 31 countries between 1946 and 2000 – not counting Libya, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, The US-backed military coups or regime change efforts, Proxy-Wars. Just saying. ¯\_(^)_/¯

Boycott israeli products , 5 hours ago

Tucker Carlson is a special character. 95% of time i disagree with Tucker but 5% of time he's just exceptionally good. In April his 8 minute monologue was epic. I love Jimmy Dore's passion... specially when he pronounes "they're lying!!!" Jimmy clearly hates liars ;-) We love you Jimmy for your integrity and intelligence.

Sooner Mac , 5 hours ago

Weapons of mass destruction, 9/11, Bin Laden, Lybia, Gulf of Tonkin, Opium fields in Afghanistan, Operation Mockingbird, Operation Paperclip..... A few reasons not to trust your CIA and FBI. I am sure you guys can name some more.

The Alienated TV , 5 hours ago

I think Tucker Carlson and Jimmy are two of the most responsible journalists on the planet. Keep up the good work.

Connor Phillip , 5 hours ago

"Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex" FZappa

Guillermo Rivas , 5 hours ago

Tucker Carlson has been analyzing policies/ideas on a deeper level this year. He is painting US a big picture for us to see. It's quite refreshing to see Fox News actually allow objective truth be aired on on occasion.

Kunal Sharma , 6 hours ago

The Intelligence Agencies are the Praetorian Guard in the United States.

Joe Boyko , 5 hours ago

Pulling off the partisan blinders is the first step toward enlightenment... Party politics is a means of control. When you come to realize that we all have a tendency to agree that the major issues have no party loyalty, and we're all on the same side, you can look past minor differences and move forward to working for the greater good...

Pisstrooper pan shaker , 5 hours ago

THE CIA HAS BEEN OVERTHROWING GOVERMENTS FOR DECADES,and you wonder why Trump doesn't trust them? It's because he doesn't want war. He ain't no saint but at least we have an anti war President.

Poseidon Cichlidon , 5 hours ago (edited)

Morning Joe's panel said today that the Democrats need to run on this Russia conspiracy theory, and nothing else, in order to win the midterms. If they bring up free college or medicare for all it will "weaken their message and confuse the voters". Once again the corporate neoliberal warmonger Democrats and their rich TV puppets are setting us up for failure, no voter gives a damn about Russia, MSNBC wants our progressive candidates to lose instead of reform their corrupt party!

SONIX , 7 minutes ago

I just saw another Tucker Carlson news clip that Tony Podesta is offered immunity to testify against Paul Manafort? WTF? Why aren't Podestas charged?!

Cynthia Johnson , 5 hours ago (edited)

Yep, Bernie is pushing the Russiagate story and Tucker Carlson on Fox News nails it. The world isn't upside down, it's doing back flips.

Vegan4ThePlanet , 4 hours ago (edited)

"So this is the Hostage Tape" CLASSIC LINE, Great one, LMAO

DlchMcV , 4 hours ago (edited)

I think what has happened to the Liberals, is that for decades and decades they were the most progressive, tolerant party. They really did want to do more for the people and tried to introduce things that the right would instantly point to and call "socialist!!" Corporations started to look at these liberals as representatives they could pay off but without suspect, unlike Republicans, who were widely known to accept money from Corporations, Big Pharma and huge construction companies (Haliburton anyone?).

Over time, Liberals saw the benefits of being chummy with these same big $$ companies and voted on bills, etc in the ways that would make these corps very happy and more profitable. No one wanted to believe that Liberals were doing the same thing as Republicans but now we know they are. It's not a secret anymore. Most politicians aren't in it to make their country, their state or their cities better; they're in it to make their bank accounts unbelievably huge and that's it. They're greedy people with no integrity, pretending to serve the people.

Louis-Ferdinand Féline , 1 hour ago

I'm a righty, and I'm so surprised to see a liberal agree with Tucker in all the things I care about! Imagine what we could accomplish if we put aside our differences for a time and work on what we agree on! No more immoral wars for Israel! TRY BUSH, CHENEY, AND ALL NEOCONS THAT LED US TO WAR WITH IRAQ FOR TREASON!!

Dosh cratonin , 5 hours ago

You are so right. Thank you for bringout the truth. Neocons, military industrial complex and liberal leftists have penetrated deeply into the government intelligence communities, wall street banking, both houses of Us congress, mainstream media as well as Hollywood people, even in an academia. This country is deep sh*t. I am surprised liberal leftists have not crucified Tucker Carlson yet for speaking out.

swiSSy Schweizer , 6 hours ago

Russiagate is DemoKKKrat horse cookies. Putin is correct. DemoKKKrats are bad losers. $1.2 billion gone, servers gone! DmoKKKrats cannot even prove climate change

[Jun 17, 2018] The Necessity of a Trump-Putin Summit by Stephen F. Cohen

Highly recommended!
Decimation of anti-war forces and flourishing of Russophobia are two immanent features of the US neoliberalism. As long as the maintinace fo the US global neoliberal empire depends of weakening and, possibly, dismembering Russia it is naive to expect any change. Russian version of soft "national neoliberalism" is not that different, in principle form Trump version of hard "netional neoliberalism" so those leaders might have something to talk about. In other words as soon as the USA denounce neoliberal globalization that might be some openings.
Notable quotes:
"... The New York Times ..."
Jun 06, 2018 | www.thenation.com

Ten ways the new US-Russian Cold War is increasingly becoming more dangerous than the one we survived.

  1. The political epicenter of the new Cold War is not in far-away Berlin, as it was from the late 1940s on, but directly on Russia's borders, from the Baltic states and Ukraine to the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Each of these new Cold War fronts is, or has recently been, fraught with the possibly of hot war. US-Russian military relations are especially tense today in the Baltic region, where a large-scale NATO buildup is under way, and in Ukraine, where a US-Russian proxy war is intensifying. The "Soviet Bloc" that once served as a buffer between NATO and Russia no longer exists. And many imaginable incidents on the West's new Eastern Front, intentional or unintentional, could easily trigger actual war between the United States and Russia. What brought about this unprecedented situation on Russia's borders -- at least since the Nazi German invasion in 1941 -- was, of course, the exceedingly unwise decision, in the late 1990s, to expand NATO eastward. Done in the name of "security," it has made all the states involved only more insecure.

  2. Proxy wars were a feature of the old Cold War, but usually small ones in what was called the "Third World" -- in Africa, for example -- and they rarely involved many, if any, Soviet or American personnel, mostly only money and weapons. Today's US-Russian proxy wars are different, located in the center of geopolitics and accompanied by too many American and Russian trainers, minders, and possibly fighters. Two have already erupted: in Georgia in 2008, where Russian forces fought a Georgian army financed, trained, and minded by American funds and personnel; and in Syria, where in February scores of Russians were killed by US-backed anti-Assad forces . Moscow did not retaliate, but it has pledged to do so if there is "a next time," as there very well may be. If so, this would in effect be war directly between Russia and America. Meanwhile, the risk of such a direct conflict continues to grow in Ukraine, where the country's US-backed but politically failing President Petro Poroshenko seems increasingly tempted to launch another all-out military assault on rebel-controlled Donbass, backed by Moscow. If he does so, and the assault does not quickly fail as previous ones have, Russia will certainly intervene in eastern Ukraine with a truly tangible "invasion." Washington will then have to make a fateful war-or-peace decision. Having already reneged on its commitments to the Minsk Accords, which are the best hope for ending the four-year Ukrainian crisis peacefully, Kiev seems to have an unrelenting impulse to be a tail wagging the dog of war. Certainly, its capacity for provocations and disinformation are second to none, as evidenced again last week by the faked "assassination and resurrection" of the journalist Arkady Babchenko.

  3. The Western, but especially American, years-long demonization of the Kremlin leader, Putin, is also unprecedented. Too obvious to reiterate here, no Soviet leader, at least since Stalin, was ever subjected to such prolonged, baseless, crudely derogatory personal vilification. Whereas Soviet leaders were generally regarded as acceptable negotiating partners for American presidents, including at major summits, Putin has been made to seem to be an illegitimate national leader -- at best "a KGB thug," at worst a murderous "mafia boss."

  4. Still more, demonizing Putin has generated a widespread Russophobic vilification of Russia itself , or what The New York Times and other mainstream-media outlets have taken to calling " Vladimir Putin's Russia ." Yesterday's enemy was Soviet Communism. Today it is increasingly Russia, thereby also delegitimizing Russia as a great power with legitimate national interests. "The Parity Principle," as Cohen termed it during the preceding Cold War -- the principle that both sides had legitimate interests at home and abroad, which was the basis for diplomacy and negotiations, and symbolized by leadership summits -- no longer exists, at least on the American side. Nor does the acknowledgment that both sides were to blame, at least to some extent, for that Cold War. Among influential American observers who at least recognize the reality of the new Cold War , "Putin's Russia" alone is to blame. When there is no recognized parity and shared responsibility, there is little space for diplomacy -- only for increasingly militarized relations, as we are witnessing today.
  5. Meanwhile, most of the Cold War safeguards -- cooperative mechanisms and mutually observed rules of conduct that evolved over decades in order to prevent superpower hot war -- have been vaporized or badly frayed since the Ukrainian crisis in 2014, as the UN General Secretary António Guterres, almost alone, has recognized : "The Cold War is back -- with a vengeance but with a difference. The mechanisms and the safeguards to manage the risks of escalation that existed in the past no longer seem to be present." Trump's recent missile strike on Syria carefully avoided killing any Russians there, but here too Moscow has vowed to retaliate against US launchers or other forces involved if there is a "next time," as, again, there may be. Even the decades-long process of arms control may, we are told by an expert , be coming to an "end." If so, it will mean an unfettered new nuclear-arms race but also the termination of an ongoing diplomatic process that buffered US-Soviet relations during very bad political times. In short, if there are any new Cold War rules of conduct, they are yet to be formulated and mutually accepted. Nor does this semi-anarchy take into account the new warfare technology of cyber-attacks. What are its implications for the secure functioning of existential Russian and American nuclear command-and-control and early-warning systems that guard against an accidental launching of missiles still on high alert?

  6. Russiagate allegations that the American president has been compromised by -- or is even an agent of -- the Kremlin are also without precedent. These allegations have had profoundly dangerous consequences, among them the nonsensical but mantra-like warfare declaration that "Russia attacked America" during the 2016 presidential election; crippling assaults on President Trump every time he speaks with Putin in person or by phone; and making both Trump and Putin so toxic that even most politicians, journalists, and professors who understand the present-day dangers are reluctant to speak out against US contributions to the new Cold War.

  7. Mainstream-media outlets have, of course, played a woeful role in all of this. Unlike in the past, when pro-détente advocates had roughly equal access to mainstream media, today's new Cold War media enforce their orthodox narrative that Russia is solely to blame. They practice not diversity of opinion and reporting but "confirmation bias." Alternative voices (with, yes, alternative or opposing facts) rarely appear any longer in the most influential mainstream newspapers or on television or radio broadcasts. One alarming result is that "disinformation" generated by or pleasing to Washington and its allies has consequences before it can be corrected. The fake Babchenko assassination (allegedly ordered by Putin, of course) was quickly exposed, but not the alleged Skripal assassination attempt in the UK, which led to the largest US expulsion of Russian diplomats in history before London's official version of the story began to fall apart. This too is unprecedented: Cold War without debate, which in turn precludes the frequent rethinking and revising of US policy that characterized the preceding 40-year Cold War -- in effect, an enforced dogmatization of US policy that is both exceedingly dangerous and undemocratic.

  8. Equally unsurprising, and also very much unlike during the 40-year Cold War, there is virtually no significant opposition in the American mainstream to the US role in the new Cold War -- not in the media, not in Congress, not in the two major political parties, not in the universities, not at grassroots levels. This too is unprecedented, dangerous, and contrary to real democracy. Consider only the thunderous silence of scores of large US corporations that have been doing profitable business in post-Soviet Russia for years, from fast-food chains and automobile manufacturers to pharmaceutical and energy giants. And contrast their behavior to that of CEOs of PepsiCo, Control Data, IBM, and other major American corporations seeking entry to the Soviet market in the 1970s and 1980s, when they publicly supported and even funded pro-détente organizations and politicians. How to explain the silence of their counterparts today, who are usually so profit-motivated? Are they too fearful of being labeled "pro-Putin" or possibly "pro-Trump"? If so, will this Cold War continue to unfold with only very rare profiles of courage in any high places? 9. And then there is the widespread escalatory myth that today's Russia, unlike the Soviet Union, is too weak -- its economy too small and fragile, its leader too "isolated in international affairs" -- to wage a sustained Cold War, and that eventually Putin, who is "punching above his weight," as the cliché has it, will capitulate. This too is a dangerous delusion. As Cohen has shown previously , "Putin's Russia" is hardly isolated in world affairs, and is becoming even less so, even in Europe, where at least five governments are tilting away from Washington and Brussels and perhaps from their economic sanctions on Russia. Indeed, despite the sanctions, Russia's energy industry and agricultural exports are flourishing. Geopolitically, Moscow has many military and related advantages in regions where the new Cold War has unfolded. And no state with Russia's modern nuclear and other weapons is "punching above its weight." Above all, the great majority of Russian people have rallied behind Putin because t hey believe their country is under attack by the US-led West . Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Russia's history understands it is highly unlikely to capitulate under any circumstances.

  9. Finally (at least as of now), there is the growing war-like "hysteria" often commented on in both Washington and Moscow. It is driven by various factors, but television talk/"news" broadcasts, which are as common in Russia as in the United States, play a major role. Perhaps only an extensive quantitative study could discern which plays a more lamentable role in promoting this frenzy -- MSNBC and CNN or their Russian counterparts. For Cohen, the Russian dark witticism seems apt: "Both are worst" ( Oba khuzhe ). Again, some of this American broadcast extremism existed during the preceding Cold War, but almost always balanced, even offset, by truly informed, wiser opinions, which are now largely excluded.

Is this analysis of the dangers inherent in the new Cold War itself extremist or alarmist? Even SOME usually reticent specialists would seem to agree with Cohen's general assessment. Experts gathered by a centrist Washington think tank thought that on a scale of 1 to 10, there is a 5 to 7 chance of actual war with Russia. A former head of British M16 is reported as saying that "for the first time in living memory, there's a realistic chance of a superpower conflict." And a respected retired Russian general tells the same think tank that any military confrontation "will end up with the use of nuclear weapons between the United States and Russia."

In today's dire circumstances, one Trump-Putin summit cannot eliminate the new Cold War dangers. But US-Soviet summits traditionally served three corollary purposes. They created a kind of security partnership -- not a conspiracy -- that involved each leader's limited political capital at home, which the other should recognize and not heedlessly jeopardize. They sent a clear message to the two leaders' respective national-security bureaucracies, which often did not favor détente-like cooperation, that the "boss" was determined and that they must end their foot-dragging, even sabotage. And summits, with their exalted rituals and intense coverage, usually improved the media-political environment needed to enhance cooperation amid Cold War conflicts. If a Trump-Putin summit achieves even some of those purposes, it might result in a turning away from the precipice that now looms

[Apr 21, 2018] Amazingly BBC newsnight just started preparing viewers for the possibility that there was no sarin attack, and the missile strikes might just have been for show

Highly recommended!
Apr 21, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Posted by: Paul Cockshott | Apr 20, 2018 6:56:29 PM | 41


Paul Cockshott , Apr 20, 2018 6:56:29 PM | 41

Amazingly BBC newsnight just started preparing viewers for the possibility that there was no sarin attack, and the missile strikes might just have been for show, i plying Trump did it for political reasons. Narrative changing a bit.
Anonymous , Apr 21, 2018 2:47:25 AM | 57
#Germany's state media senior correspondent (who is in Damascus right now & also visited Douma) on primetime evening news on German television: "#Douma chemical attack is most likely staged. A great many people here seem very convinced."

https://twitter.com/Brasco_Aad/status/987432370595876864

Fran , Apr 21, 2018 2:55:06 AM | 58
Karlofi#35 and frances#18
Michael Quinn on Russia Insider is wondering about the same thing too: Tucker Carlson MIA for 2 Days After Exposing Syria Gas Hoax - Deep State Revenge?

I too hope he will return soon, he seems to be one of the last sane voices of the msm. Hopefully high viewer rates help to bring him back, but he wouldn't be the first one to vanish from the screen, despite high ratings.

[Apr 21, 2018] It s a tough old world and we are certainly capable of a Salisbury set-up and god knows what else in Syria.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... It is perfectly possible that the British government manufactured the whole Salisbury thing. We are capable of just as much despicable behavior and murder as the next. ..."
"... Tucker Carlson of Fox News has it nailed down.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M28aYkLRlm0 ..."
"... This "civil war" has been nothing but a war for Syrian resources waged by western proxies. ..."
"... So now, In desperation borne out of their impending defeat, the imperialists have staged a chemical attack in a last throw of the dice to gain popular support for an escalation in military intervention. Like military interventions of the past, it is being justified in the name of humanitarian intervention. ..."
Apr 21, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

wheelbarrow1 , 13 Apr 2018 14:37

Why is the prime minister of the United Kinkdom on the phone discussing whether or not to bomb a Sovereign country with the highly unstable, Donald Trump?

Can she not make up her own mind? Either she thinks it's the right thing to do or it isn't. Hopefully, the person on the other end of the phone was not Trump but someone with at least half a brain.

Proof, let's have some proof. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so. Russia is saying it's all a put up job, show us your facts. We are saying, don't be silly, we're British and besides, you may have done this sort of thing before.

It is perfectly possible that the British government manufactured the whole Salisbury thing. We are capable of just as much despicable behavior and murder as the next.

Part of the Great British act's of bravery and heroism in the second world war is the part played by women agents who were parachuted into France and helped organize local resistance groups. Odette Hallowes, Noor Inayat Khan and Violette Szabo are just a few of the many names but they are the best known. What is not generally know is that many agents when undergoing their training in the UK, were given information about the 'D' day landings, the approx time and place. They were then dropped into France into the hands of the waiting German army who captured and tortured and often executed them.

The double agent, who Winston Churchill met and fully approved of the plan was Henri Dericourt, an officer in the German army and our man on the ground in France. Dericourt organized the time and place for the drop off of the incoming agents, then told the Germans. The information about the 'D' day invasion time and place was false. The British fed the agents (only a small number) into German hands knowing they would be captured and the false information tortured out of them.

Source :- 'A Quiet Courage' Liane Jones.

It's a tough old world and we are certainly capable of a Salisbury set-up and god knows what else in Syria.

I_Wear_Socks , 13 Apr 2018 14:37
From The Guardian articles today that I have read on Syria, it makes absolutely clear that if you in any way question the narrative forwarded here, that you are a stupid conspiracy theorist in line with Richard Spencer and other far-right, American nutcases.

A more traditional form of argument to incline people to their way of thinking would be facts. But social pressure to conform and not be a conspiratorial idiot in line with the far-right obviously work better for most of their readers. My only surprise it that position hasn't been linked with Brexit.

ChairmanMayTseTung , 13 Apr 2018 14:37
Did anyone see the massive canister that was shown on TV repeatedly that was supposed to have been air-dropped and smashed through the window of a house, landed on a bed and failed to go off.

The bed was in remarkable condition with just a few ruffled bedclothes considering it had been hit with a metal object weighing god knows what and dropped from a great height.

MartinSilenus -> ChairmanMayTseTung , 13 Apr 2018 14:36
"More than 40 years after the US sprayed millions of litres of chemical agents to defoliate"

The Defoliant Agent Orange was used to kill jungles, resulting in light getting through to the dark jungle floors & a massive amount of low bush regrowing, making the finding of Vietcong fighters even harder!

It was sprayed even on American troops, it is a horrible stuff. Still compared to Chlorine poison gas, let alone nerve gases, it is much less terrible. Though the long term effects are pretty horrible.

"Some 45 million liters of the poisoned spray was Agent Orange, which contains the toxic compound dioxin"
http://theconversation.com/agent-orange-exposed-how-u-s-chemical-warfare-in-vietnam-unleashed-a-slow-moving-disaster-84572

120Daze , 13 Apr 2018 14:36
Who needs facts when you've got opinions? Non more hypocritical than the British. Its what you get when you lie and distort though a willing press, you get found out and then nobody believes anything you say.anymore. The white helmets are a western funded and founded organisation, they are NOT independent they are NOT volunteers, The UK the US and the Dutch fund them to the tune of over $40 million. They are a propaganda dispensing outlet. The press shouldn't report anything they release because it is utterly unable to substantiate ANY of it, there hasn't been a western journalist in these areas for over 4 years so why do the press expect us to believe anything they print? Combine this with the worst and most incompetent Govt this country has seen for decades and all you have is a massive distraction from massive domestic troubles which the same govt has no answers too.
LiviaDrusilla -> Bangorstu , 13 Apr 2018 14:36
LOL are you having a larf?

The same organisation that receives millions of quid in funding from USAID?

Whose 'executive director' used to work for USAID?

Who have campaigned for 'no fly zones' (ie US bombing)?

Who are affiliated to the Iranian terrorist group MEK?

Who only happen to run hospitals in 'rebel' held areas?

You have a strange idea of 'politically neutral'. Your 'NGO' are fighting for an Islamist state. Enjoy them.

Dominique2 , 13 Apr 2018 14:32
https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/sep/01/winston-churchill-shocking-use-chemical-weapons

""I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes," [Winston Churchill] declared in one secret memorandum."

The current condemnation by the international community and international law is good and needs enforcement. But no virtue signalling where there is none.

CaptTroyTempest -> StoneRoses , 13 Apr 2018 14:27
But we're still awaiting evidence that a chemical attack has been carried out in Douma, aren't we? And if an attack was carried out, by whom. But before these essential points are verified, you feel that a targeted military response is justified. Are you equally keen for some targeted military response for the use of chemical weapons, namely white phosphorus, in Palestine by the Israaeli military? Unlike Douma, the use of these chemical weapons in the occupied territories by the IDF's personnel is well documented. But we haven't attacked them yet. Funny that.
CMYKilla , 13 Apr 2018 14:26
Instead of "chemicals" why not just firebomb them - you know like we did to entire cities full of women and children in WW2?

Hamburg 27 July 1943 - 46,000 civilians killed in a firestorm
Kassel 22 October 1943 - 9,000 civilians killed 24,000 houses destroyed in a firestorm
Darmstadt 11 September 1944 - 8,000 civilians killed in a firestorm
Dresden 13/14th February - 25,000 civilians killed in a firestorm

Obviously we were fighting Nazism and hadn't actually been invaded - and he is fighting Wahhabism and has had major cities overrun...

Maybe if Assad burnt people to death rather than gassing them we would make a statue of him outside Westminster like the one of Bomber Harris?

Tom1982 , 13 Apr 2018 14:24
Remember the tearful Kuwaiti nurse with her heartrending story of Iraqi troops tipping premature babies out of their incubators after the invasion in 1990? The story was published in pretty much every major Western newspaper, massively increased public support for military intervention............................and turned out to be total bullshit.

Is it too much too ask that we try a bit of collective critical thinking and wait for hard evidence before blundering into a military conflict with Assad; and potentially Putin?

BlutoTheBruto , 13 Apr 2018 14:21
Didn't General Mattis quietly admit at there was no evidence for the alleged Sarin attacks last year by Assad?

http://www.newsweek.com/now-mattis-admits-there-was-no-evidence-assad-using-poison-gas-his-people-801542

Hmmmm.... call me skeptical for not believing it this time around.

AwkwardSquad , 13 Apr 2018 14:19
Well, this is the sort of stuff that the Israelis would be gagging for. They want Assad neutralised and they are assisting ISIS terrorists on the Golan Heights. They tend to their wounded and send them back across the border to fight Assad. What better than to drag the Americans, Brits and French into the ring to finish him off. Job done eh?

Are you sure you are not promoting an Israeli agenda here Jonathan?

Incidentantally what did we in the west do when the Iraqis were gassing the Iranians with nerve agents in the marshes of southern Iraq during the Iran Iraq War? Did we intervene then? No, we didn't we allowed it to happen.

I say stay out it.

dannymega -> fripouille , 13 Apr 2018 14:18
Come on frip, you have to admit there was absolutely no motive for Assad's forces to carry out this attack. Why do you think the Guardian and other main stream media outlets are not even considering the possibility the Jihadi rebels staged it to trigger western intervention? I know, I know.. it's all evil Assad killing his own people for no other reason than he likes butchering people... blah blah. The regime change agenda against Syria has been derailed, no amount of false flag attacks can change the facts on the ground.
Preshous , 13 Apr 2018 14:18
Tucker Carlson of Fox News has it nailed down.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M28aYkLRlm0
ChairmanMayTseTung , 13 Apr 2018 14:16
More than 40 years after the US sprayed millions of litres of chemical agents to defoliate vast swathes of Vietnam and in the full knowledge it would be have a catastrophic effect on the health of the inhabitants of those area, Vietnam has by far the highest incidence of liver cancer on the planet.

Then more recently we have the deadly depleted uranium from US shells that innocent Iraqis are inhaling as shrill voices denounce Assad.

CodeNameTwiglet , 13 Apr 2018 14:15
The Syrian people are heroically resisting and defeating western imperialism. This "civil war" has been nothing but a war for Syrian resources waged by western proxies.

So now, In desperation borne out of their impending defeat, the imperialists have staged a chemical attack in a last throw of the dice to gain popular support for an escalation in military intervention. Like military interventions of the past, it is being justified in the name of humanitarian intervention.

But if we have a brief browse of history we can see that US & UK governments have brought only death, misery and destruction on the populations it was supposedly helping. Hands off Syria.

[Apr 15, 2018] The Trump Regime Is Insane by Paul Craig Roberts

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... People such as Stephen Cohen and myself, who were actively involved throughout the entirety of the Cold War, are astonished at the reckless and irresponsible behavior of the US government and its European vassals toward Russia. ..."
"... In this brief video, Stephen Cohen describes to Tucker Carlson the extreme danger of the present situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvK1Eu01Lz0 Published on Apr 13, 2018 ..."
Apr 13, 2018 | www.unz.com

Craig Roberts • April 13, 2018

  1. Is it insane to push for war with Russia, a major nuclear power?
  2. Is it insane to threaten Russia and bring false charges against her?
  3. Is it insane to brag about killing "hundreds of Russians"? https://news.antiwar.com/2018/04/12/pompeo-russians-met-their-match-us-killed-hundreds-of-them/
  4. A normal person would answer "yes" to the three questions. So what does this tell us about Trump's government as these insane actions are the principle practice of Trump's government?
  5. Does anyone doubt that Nikki Haley is insane?
  6. Does anyone doubt that John Bolton is insane?
  7. Does anyone doubt that Mike Pompeo is insane?
  8. Does this mean that Trump is insane for appointing to the top positions insane people who foment war with a nuclear power?
  9. Does this mean that Congress is insane for approving these appointments?

These are honest questions. Assuming we avoid the Trump-promised Syrian showdown, how long before the insane Trump regime orchestrates another crisis?

The entire world should understand that because of the existence of the insane Trump regime, the continued existence of life on earth is very much in question.

People such as Stephen Cohen and myself, who were actively involved throughout the entirety of the Cold War, are astonished at the reckless and irresponsible behavior of the US government and its European vassals toward Russia. Nothing as irresponsible as what we have witnessed since the Clinton regime and which has worsened dramatically under the Obama and Trump regimes would have been imaginable during the Cold War. In this brief video, Stephen Cohen describes to Tucker Carlson the extreme danger of the present situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvK1Eu01Lz0 Published on Apr 13, 2018

The failure of political leadership throughout the Western world is total. Such total failure is likely to prove deadly to life on earth.

[Mar 23, 2018] John Bolton's Incompetence May Be More Dangerous Than His Ideology by Heather Hurlburt

Notable quotes:
"... President Trump was said to complain that Tillerson disagreed with him and McMaster talked too much. Bolton seems likely to combine both of those traits in one pugnacious, mustachioed package. ..."
"... Bolton may find that in this job, he's the midlevel munchkin. Remember, the national security adviser is supposed to be the coordinator, conciliator, and honest broker among Cabinet officials, managing a process by which all get a fair say and the president makes well-informed decisions. Outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly lost favor with Defense Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly for failing to defer to them, and for being too emotional . ..."
Mar 23, 2018 | nymag.com

John Bolton has been one of liberals' top bogeymen on national security for more than a decade now. He seems to relish the role, going out of his way to argue that the Iraq War wasn't really a failure, calling for U.S.-led regime change in Iran and preventive war against North Korea, and writing the foreword for a book that proclaimed President Obama to be a secret Muslim. He is a profoundly partisan creature, having started a super-PAC whose largest donor was leading Trump benefactor Rebekah Mercer and whose provider of analytics was Cambridge Analytica, the firm alleged to have improperly used Facebook data to make voter profiles, which it sold to the Trump and Brexit campaigns, among others.

Recently Bolton's statements have grown more extreme, alarming centrist and conservative national security professionals along with his longtime liberal foes. He seemed to say that the United States could attack North Korea without the agreement of our South Korean allies, who would face the highest risk of retaliation and casualties; just two months ago he called for a regime change effort in Iran that would allow the U.S. to open a new embassy there by 2019, the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and the taking of Americans hostage in Tehran. His hostility toward Islam points toward a set of extreme policies that could easily have the effect of abridging American Muslims' rights at home and alienating America's Muslim allies abroad.

As worrying as these policies are, it's worth taking a step back and thinking not about Bolton, but about his new boss, Donald Trump. Trump reportedly considered Bolton for a Cabinet post early on, but then soured on him, finding his mustache unprofessional. His choice of Bolton to lead the National Security Council reinforces several trends: right now, this administration is all about making Trump's opponents uncomfortable and angry. Internal coherence and policy effectiveness are not a primary or even secondary consideration. And anyone would be a fool to imagine that, because Bolton pleases Trump today, he will continue to do so tomorrow.

Yes, Bolton has taken strong stances against the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin (though he has also been quoted praising Russian "democracy" as recently as 2013). That's nothing new: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, incoming Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster have called for greater pushback on Russia as well. But there's every reason to think that, rather than a well-oiled war machine, what we'll get from Bolton's National Security Council is scheming and discord – which could be even more dangerous.

President Trump was said to complain that Tillerson disagreed with him and McMaster talked too much. Bolton seems likely to combine both of those traits in one pugnacious, mustachioed package. Their disagreements are real – Bolton has famously pooh-poohed the kind of summit diplomacy with North Korea that Trump is now committed to. While Trump famously backed away from his support for the 2002 invasion of Iraq, courting the GOP isolationist base, Bolton continues to argue that the invasion worked, and seldom hears of a war he would not participate in. Trump attempted to block transgender people from serving in the military, but Bolton has declined to take part in the right's LGBT-bashing, famously hiring gay staff and calling for the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

That's all substance. What really seems likely to take Bolton down is his style, which is legendary – and not in a good way. His colleagues from the George W. Bush administration responded to Trump's announcement with comments like "the obvious question is whether John Bolton has the temperament and the judgment for the job" – not exactly a ringing endorsement. One former co-worker described Bolton as a "kiss up, kick down kind of guy," and he was notorious in past administrations for conniving and sneaking around officials who disagreed with him, both traits that Trump seems likely to enjoy until he doesn't. This is a man who can't refrain from telling Tucker Carlson that his analysis is "simpleminded" – while he's a guest on Carlson's show. Turns out it's not true that he threw a stapler at a contractor – it was a tape dispenser. When Bolton was caught attempting to cook intelligence to suggest that Cuba had a biological weapons program, he bullied the analyst who had dared push back, calling him a " midlevel munchkin ." How long until Trump tires of the drama – or of being eclipsed?

Bolton may find that in this job, he's the midlevel munchkin. Remember, the national security adviser is supposed to be the coordinator, conciliator, and honest broker among Cabinet officials, managing a process by which all get a fair say and the president makes well-informed decisions. Outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly lost favor with Defense Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly for failing to defer to them, and for being too emotional .

Love Bolton or hate him, no one imagines he will be a self-effacing figure, and no one hires him to run a no-drama process. It's also hard to imagine that many of the high-quality professionals McMaster brought into the National Security Council staff will choose to stay. McMaster repeatedly had to fight for his team within the Trump administration, but Bolton seems unlikely to follow that pattern, or to inspire the kind of loyalty that drew well-regarded policy wonks to work for McMaster, regardless their views of Trump.

So even if you like the policies Bolton espouses, it's hard to imagine a smooth process implementing them. That seems likely to leave us with Muslim ban-level incompetence, extreme bellicosity, and several very loud, competing voices – with Twitter feeds – on the most sensitive issues of war and weapons of mass destruction.

[Mar 02, 2018] Fatal Delusions of Western Man by Pat Buchanan

Highly recommended!
At the core of Trumpism is the rejection of neoliberalism
Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands: " Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."
Notable quotes:
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever." ..."
Mar 02, 2018 | www.unz.com

At Yalta, Churchill rose to toast the butcher:

"I walk through this world with greater courage and hope when I find myself in a relation of friendship and intimacy with this great man, whose fame has gone out not only over all Russia, but the world. We regard Marshal Stalin's life as most precious to the hopes and hearts of all of us."

Returning home, Churchill assured a skeptical Parliament, "I know of no Government which stands to its obligations, even in its own despite, more solidly than the Russian Soviet Government."

George W. Bush, with the U.S. establishment united behind him, invaded Iraq with the goal of creating a Vermont in the Middle East that would be a beacon of democracy to the Arab and Islamic world.

Ex-Director of the NSA Gen. William Odom correctly called the U.S. invasion the greatest strategic blunder in American history. But Bush, un-chastened, went on to preach a crusade for democracy with the goal of "ending tyranny in our world."

... ... ...

After our victory in the Cold War, we not only plunged into the Middle East to remake it in our image, we issued war guarantees to every ex-member state of the Warsaw Pact, and threatened Russia with war if she ever intervened again in the Baltic Republics.

No Cold War president would have dreamed of issuing such an in-your-face challenge to a great nuclear power like Russia. If Putin's Russia does not become the pacifist nation it has never been, these guarantees will one day be called. And America will either back down -- or face a nuclear confrontation. Why would we risk something like this?

Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history.

But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants, many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million, composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.

Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation and one people?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

likbez , March 2, 2018 at 6:47 am GMT

Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands:

" Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."

The truth is that now Trump does not represent "Trumpism" -- the movement that he created which includes the following:

– rejection of neoliberal globalization;
– rejection of unrestricted immigration;
– fight against suppression of wages by multinationals via cheap imported labor;
– fight against the elimination of meaningful, well-paying jobs via outsourcing and offshoring of manufacturing;
– rejection of wars for enlargement and sustaining of neoliberal empire, especially NATO role as global policemen and wars for Washington client Israel in the Middle East;
– détente with Russia;
– more pragmatic relations with Israel and suppression of Israeli agents of influence;
– revision of relations with China and addressing the problem of trade deficit.
– rejection of total surveillance on all citizens;
– the cut of military expenses to one third or less of the current level and concentrating on revival on national infrastructure, education, and science.
– abandonment of maintenance of the "sole superpower" status and global neoliberal empire for more practical and less costly "semi-isolationist" foreign policy; closing of unnecessary foreign military bases and cutting aid to the current clients.

Of course, the notion of "Trumpism" is fuzzy and different people might include some additional issues and disagree with some listed here, but the core probably remains.

Of course, Trump is under relentless attack (coup d'état or, more precisely, a color revolution) of neoliberal fifth column, which includes Clinton gang, fifth column elements within his administration (Rosenstein, etc) as well from remnants of Obama administration (Brennan, Comey, Clapper) and associated elements within corresponding intelligence agencies. He probably was forced into some compromises just to survive. He also has members of the neoliberal fifth column within his family (Ivanka and Kushner).

So the movement now is in deep need of a new leader.

Miro23, March 3, 2018 at 7:55 am GMT
@likbez

That's a good summary of what the public voted for and didn't get.

And whether Trump has sold out, or was blackmailed or was a cynical manipulative liar for the beginning is really irrelevant. The fact is that he is not doing it – so he is just blocking the way.

At some point the US public are going to have to forget about their "representatives" (Trump and Congress and the rest of them) and get out onto the street to make themselves heard. The population of the US is 323 million people and if just 1/2 of 1% (1,6 million) of them decided to visit Congress directly the US administration might get the message.

pyrrhus, March 3, 2018 at 2:15 am GMT

@anon

Finally, Pat understands that the American [Neoliberal] Empire and habit of intervention all over the world is a disaster.

[Dec 22, 2017] Beyond Cynicism America Fumbles Towards Kafka s Castle by James Howard Kunstler

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... With the election of 2016, symptoms of the long emergency seeped into the political system. Disinformation rules. There is no coherent consensus about what is happening and no coherent proposals to do anything about it. The two parties are mired in paralysis and dysfunction and the public's trust in them is at epic lows. Donald Trump is viewed as a sort of pirate president, a freebooting freak elected by accident, "a disrupter" of the status quo at best and at worst a dangerous incompetent playing with nuclear fire. A state of war exists between the White House, the permanent D.C. bureaucracy, and the traditional news media. Authentic leadership is otherwise AWOL. Institutions falter. The FBI and the CIA behave like enemies of the people. ..."
"... They chatter about electric driverless car fleets, home delivery drone services, and as-yet-undeveloped modes of energy production to replace problematic fossil fuels, while ignoring the self-evident resource and capital constraints now upon us and even the laws of physics -- especially entropy , the second law of thermodynamics. Their main mental block is their belief in infinite industrial growth on a finite planet, an idea so powerfully foolish that it obviates their standing as technocrats. ..."
"... The universities beget a class of what Nassim Taleb prankishly called "intellectuals-yet-idiots," hierophants trafficking in fads and falsehoods, conveyed in esoteric jargon larded with psychobabble in support of a therapeutic crypto-gnostic crusade bent on transforming human nature to fit the wished-for utopian template of a world where anything goes. In fact, they have only produced a new intellectual despotism worthy of Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot. ..."
"... Until fairly recently, the Democratic Party did not roll that way. It was right-wing Republicans who tried to ban books, censor pop music, and stifle free expression. If anything, Democrats strenuously defended the First Amendment, including the principle that unpopular and discomforting ideas had to be tolerated in order to protect all speech. Back in in 1977 the ACLU defended the right of neo-Nazis to march for their cause (National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43). ..."
"... This is the recipe for what we call identity politics, the main thrust of which these days, the quest for "social justice," is to present a suit against white male privilege and, shall we say, the horse it rode in on: western civ. A peculiar feature of the social justice agenda is the wish to erect strict boundaries around racial identities while erasing behavioral boundaries, sexual boundaries, and ethical boundaries. Since so much of this thought-monster is actually promulgated by white college professors and administrators, and white political activists, against people like themselves, the motives in this concerted campaign might appear puzzling to the casual observer. ..."
"... The evolving matrix of rackets that prompted the 2008 debacle has only grown more elaborate and craven as the old economy of stuff dies and is replaced by a financialized economy of swindles and frauds . Almost nothing in America's financial life is on the level anymore, from the mendacious "guidance" statements of the Federal Reserve, to the official economic statistics of the federal agencies, to the manipulation of all markets, to the shenanigans on the fiscal side, to the pervasive accounting fraud that underlies it all. Ironically, the systematic chiseling of the foundering middle class is most visible in the rackets that medicine and education have become -- two activities that were formerly dedicated to doing no harm and seeking the truth ! ..."
"... Um, forgotten by Kunstler is the fact that 1965 was also the year when the USA reopened its doors to low-skilled immigrants from the Third World – who very quickly became competitors with black Americans. And then the Boom ended, and corporate American, influenced by thinking such as that displayed in Lewis Powell's (in)famous 1971 memorandum, decided to claw back the gains made by the working and middle classes in the previous 3 decades. ..."
"... "Wow – is there ever negative!" ..."
"... You also misrepresent reality to your readers. No, the black underclass is not larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated now than in the 1960's, when cities across the country burned and machine guns were stationed on the Capitol steps. The "racial divide" is not "starker now than ever"; that's just preposterous to anyone who was alive then. And nobody I've ever known felt "shame" over the "outcome of the civil rights campaign". I know nobody who seeks to "punish and humiliate" the 'privileged'. ..."
"... My impression is that what Kunstler is doing here is diagnosing the long crisis of a decadent liberal post-modernity, and his stance is not that of either of the warring sides within our divorced-from-reality political establishment, neither that of the 'right' or 'left.' Which is why, logically, he published it here. National Review would never have accepted this piece ..."
"... "Globalization has acted, meanwhile, as a great leveler. It destroyed what was left of the working class -- the lower-middle class -- which included a great many white Americans who used to be able to support a family with simple labor." ..."
"... Young black people are told by their elders how lucky they are to grow up today because things are much better than when grandpa was our age and we all know this history.\ ..."
"... It's clear that this part of the article was written from absolute ignorance of the actual black experience with no interest in even looking up some facts. Hell, Obama even gave a speech at Howard telling graduates how lucky they were to be young and black Today compared to even when he was their age in the 80's! ..."
"... E.g. Germany. Germany is anything but perfect and its recent government has screwed up with its immigration policies. But Germany has a high standard of living, an educated work force (including unions and skilled crafts-people), a more rational distribution of wealth and high quality universal health care that costs 47% less per capita than in the U.S. and with no intrinsic need to maraud around the planet wasting gobs of taxpayer money playing Global Cop. ..."
"... The larger subtext is that the U.S. house of cards was planned out and constructed as deliberately as the German model was. Only the objective was not to maximize the health and happiness of the citizenry, but to line the pockets of the parasitic Elites. (E.g., note that Mitch McConnell has been a government employee for 50 years but somehow acquired a net worth of over $10 Million.) ..."
Dec 12, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

On America's 'long emergency' of recession, globalization, and identity politics.

Can a people recover from an excursion into unreality? The USA's sojourn into an alternative universe of the mind accelerated sharply after Wall Street nearly detonated the global financial system in 2008. That debacle was only one manifestation of an array of accumulating threats to the postmodern order, which include the burdens of empire, onerous debt, population overshoot, fracturing globalism, worries about energy, disruptive technologies, ecological havoc, and the specter of climate change.

A sense of gathering crisis, which I call the long emergency , persists. It is systemic and existential. It calls into question our ability to carry on "normal" life much farther into this century, and all the anxiety that attends it is hard for the public to process. It manifested itself first in finance because that was the most abstract and fragile of all the major activities we depend on for daily life, and therefore the one most easily tampered with and shoved into criticality by a cadre of irresponsible opportunists on Wall Street. Indeed, a lot of households were permanently wrecked after the so-called Great Financial Crisis of 2008, despite official trumpet blasts heralding "recovery" and the dishonestly engineered pump-up of capital markets since then.

With the election of 2016, symptoms of the long emergency seeped into the political system. Disinformation rules. There is no coherent consensus about what is happening and no coherent proposals to do anything about it. The two parties are mired in paralysis and dysfunction and the public's trust in them is at epic lows. Donald Trump is viewed as a sort of pirate president, a freebooting freak elected by accident, "a disrupter" of the status quo at best and at worst a dangerous incompetent playing with nuclear fire. A state of war exists between the White House, the permanent D.C. bureaucracy, and the traditional news media. Authentic leadership is otherwise AWOL. Institutions falter. The FBI and the CIA behave like enemies of the people.

Bad ideas flourish in this nutrient medium of unresolved crisis. Lately, they actually dominate the scene on every side. A species of wishful thinking that resembles a primitive cargo cult grips the technocratic class, awaiting magical rescue remedies that promise to extend the regime of Happy Motoring, consumerism, and suburbia that makes up the armature of "normal" life in the USA. They chatter about electric driverless car fleets, home delivery drone services, and as-yet-undeveloped modes of energy production to replace problematic fossil fuels, while ignoring the self-evident resource and capital constraints now upon us and even the laws of physics -- especially entropy , the second law of thermodynamics. Their main mental block is their belief in infinite industrial growth on a finite planet, an idea so powerfully foolish that it obviates their standing as technocrats.

The non-technocratic cohort of the thinking class squanders its waking hours on a quixotic campaign to destroy the remnant of an American common culture and, by extension, a reviled Western civilization they blame for the failure in our time to establish a utopia on earth. By the logic of the day, "inclusion" and "diversity" are achieved by forbidding the transmission of ideas, shutting down debate, and creating new racially segregated college dorms. Sexuality is declared to not be biologically determined, yet so-called cis-gendered persons (whose gender identity corresponds with their sex as detected at birth) are vilified by dint of not being "other-gendered" -- thereby thwarting the pursuit of happiness of persons self-identified as other-gendered. Casuistry anyone?

The universities beget a class of what Nassim Taleb prankishly called "intellectuals-yet-idiots," hierophants trafficking in fads and falsehoods, conveyed in esoteric jargon larded with psychobabble in support of a therapeutic crypto-gnostic crusade bent on transforming human nature to fit the wished-for utopian template of a world where anything goes. In fact, they have only produced a new intellectual despotism worthy of Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot.

In case you haven't been paying attention to the hijinks on campus -- the attacks on reason, fairness, and common decency, the kangaroo courts, diversity tribunals, assaults on public speech and speakers themselves -- here is the key take-away: it's not about ideas or ideologies anymore; it's purely about the pleasures of coercion, of pushing other people around. Coercion is fun and exciting! In fact, it's intoxicating, and rewarded with brownie points and career advancement. It's rather perverse that this passion for tyranny is suddenly so popular on the liberal left.

Until fairly recently, the Democratic Party did not roll that way. It was right-wing Republicans who tried to ban books, censor pop music, and stifle free expression. If anything, Democrats strenuously defended the First Amendment, including the principle that unpopular and discomforting ideas had to be tolerated in order to protect all speech. Back in in 1977 the ACLU defended the right of neo-Nazis to march for their cause (National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43).

The new and false idea that something labeled "hate speech" -- labeled by whom? -- is equivalent to violence floated out of the graduate schools on a toxic cloud of intellectual hysteria concocted in the laboratory of so-called "post-structuralist" philosophy, where sundry body parts of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, and Gilles Deleuze were sewn onto a brain comprised of one-third each Thomas Hobbes, Saul Alinsky, and Tupac Shakur to create a perfect Frankenstein monster of thought. It all boiled down to the proposition that the will to power negated all other human drives and values, in particular the search for truth. Under this scheme, all human relations were reduced to a dramatis personae of the oppressed and their oppressors, the former generally "people of color" and women, all subjugated by whites, mostly males. Tactical moves in politics among these self-described "oppressed" and "marginalized" are based on the credo that the ends justify the means (the Alinsky model).

This is the recipe for what we call identity politics, the main thrust of which these days, the quest for "social justice," is to present a suit against white male privilege and, shall we say, the horse it rode in on: western civ. A peculiar feature of the social justice agenda is the wish to erect strict boundaries around racial identities while erasing behavioral boundaries, sexual boundaries, and ethical boundaries. Since so much of this thought-monster is actually promulgated by white college professors and administrators, and white political activists, against people like themselves, the motives in this concerted campaign might appear puzzling to the casual observer.

I would account for it as the psychological displacement among this political cohort of their shame, disappointment, and despair over the outcome of the civil rights campaign that started in the 1960s and formed the core of progressive ideology. It did not bring about the hoped-for utopia. The racial divide in America is starker now than ever, even after two terms of a black president. Today, there is more grievance and resentment, and less hope for a better future, than when Martin Luther King made the case for progress on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. The recent flash points of racial conflict -- Ferguson, the Dallas police ambush, the Charleston church massacre, et cetera -- don't have to be rehearsed in detail here to make the point that there is a great deal of ill feeling throughout the land, and quite a bit of acting out on both sides.

The black underclass is larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated than it was in the 1960s. My theory, for what it's worth, is that the civil rights legislation of 1964 and '65, which removed legal barriers to full participation in national life, induced considerable anxiety among black citizens over the new disposition of things, for one reason or another. And that is exactly why a black separatism movement arose as an alternative at the time, led initially by such charismatic figures as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. Some of that was arguably a product of the same youthful energy that drove the rest of the Sixties counterculture: adolescent rebellion. But the residue of the "Black Power" movement is still present in the widespread ambivalence about making covenant with a common culture, and it has only been exacerbated by a now long-running "multiculturalism and diversity" crusade that effectively nullifies the concept of a national common culture.

What follows from these dynamics is the deflection of all ideas that don't feed a narrative of power relations between oppressors and victims, with the self-identified victims ever more eager to exercise their power to coerce, punish, and humiliate their self-identified oppressors, the "privileged," who condescend to be abused to a shockingly masochistic degree. Nobody stands up to this organized ceremonial nonsense. The punishments are too severe, including the loss of livelihood, status, and reputation, especially in the university. Once branded a "racist," you're done. And venturing to join the oft-called-for "honest conversation about race" is certain to invite that fate.

Globalization has acted, meanwhile, as a great leveler. It destroyed what was left of the working class -- the lower-middle class -- which included a great many white Americans who used to be able to support a family with simple labor. Hung out to dry economically, this class of whites fell into many of the same behaviors as the poor blacks before them: absent fathers, out-of-wedlock births, drug abuse. Then the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 wiped up the floor with the middle-middle class above them, foreclosing on their homes and futures, and in their desperation many of these people became Trump voters -- though I doubt that Trump himself truly understood how this all worked exactly. However, he did see that the white middle class had come to identify as yet another victim group, allowing him to pose as their champion.

The evolving matrix of rackets that prompted the 2008 debacle has only grown more elaborate and craven as the old economy of stuff dies and is replaced by a financialized economy of swindles and frauds . Almost nothing in America's financial life is on the level anymore, from the mendacious "guidance" statements of the Federal Reserve, to the official economic statistics of the federal agencies, to the manipulation of all markets, to the shenanigans on the fiscal side, to the pervasive accounting fraud that underlies it all. Ironically, the systematic chiseling of the foundering middle class is most visible in the rackets that medicine and education have become -- two activities that were formerly dedicated to doing no harm and seeking the truth !

Life in this milieu of immersive dishonesty drives citizens beyond cynicism to an even more desperate state of mind. The suffering public ends up having no idea what is really going on, what is actually happening. The toolkit of the Enlightenment -- reason, empiricism -- doesn't work very well in this socioeconomic hall of mirrors, so all that baggage is discarded for the idea that reality is just a social construct, just whatever story you feel like telling about it. On the right, Karl Rove expressed this point of view some years ago when he bragged, of the Bush II White House, that "we make our own reality." The left says nearly the same thing in the post-structuralist malarkey of academia: "you make your own reality." In the end, both sides are left with a lot of bad feelings and the belief that only raw power has meaning.

Erasing psychological boundaries is a dangerous thing. When the rackets finally come to grief -- as they must because their operations don't add up -- and the reckoning with true price discovery commences at the macro scale, the American people will find themselves in even more distress than they've endured so far. This will be the moment when either nobody has any money, or there is plenty of worthless money for everyone. Either way, the functional bankruptcy of the nation will be complete, and nothing will work anymore, including getting enough to eat. That is exactly the moment when Americans on all sides will beg someone to step up and push them around to get their world working again. And even that may not avail.

James Howard Kunstler's many books include The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation , and the World Made by Hand novel series. He blogs on Mondays and Fridays at Kunstler.com .

Whine Merchant December 20, 2017 at 10:49 pm

Wow – is there ever negative!
Celery , says: December 20, 2017 at 11:33 pm
I think I need to go listen to an old-fashioned Christmas song now.

The ability to be financially, or at least resource, sustaining is the goal of many I know since we share a lack of confidence in any of our institutions. We can only hope that God might look down with compassion on us, but He's not in the practical plan of how to feed and sustain ourselves when things play out to their inevitable end. Having come from a better time, we joke about our dystopian preparations, self-conscious about our "overreaction," but preparing all the same.

Merry Christmas!

Fran Macadam , says: December 20, 2017 at 11:55 pm
Look at it this way: Germany had to be leveled and its citizens reduced to abject penury, before Volkswagen could become the world's biggest car company, and autobahns built throughout the world. It will be darkest before the dawn, and hopefully, that light that comes after, won't be the miniature sunrise of a nuclear conflagration.
KD , says: December 21, 2017 at 6:02 am
Eat, Drink, and be Merry, you can charge it on your credit card!
Rock Stehdy , says: December 21, 2017 at 6:38 am
Hard words, but true. Kunstler is always worth reading for his common-sense wisdom.
Helmut , says: December 21, 2017 at 7:04 am
An excellent summary and bleak reminder of what our so-called civilization has become. How do we extricate ourselves from this strange death spiral?
I have long suspected that we humans are creatures of our own personal/group/tribal/national/global fables and mythologies. We are compelled by our genes, marrow, and blood to tell ourselves stories of our purpose and who we are. It is time for new mythologies and stories of "who we are". This bizarre hyper-techno all-for-profit world needs a new story.
Liam , says: December 21, 2017 at 7:38 am
"The black underclass is larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated than it was in the 1960s. My theory, for what it's worth, is that the civil rights legislation of 1964 and '65, which removed legal barriers to full participation in national life, induced considerable anxiety among black citizens over the new disposition of things, for one reason or another."

Um, forgotten by Kunstler is the fact that 1965 was also the year when the USA reopened its doors to low-skilled immigrants from the Third World – who very quickly became competitors with black Americans. And then the Boom ended, and corporate American, influenced by thinking such as that displayed in Lewis Powell's (in)famous 1971 memorandum, decided to claw back the gains made by the working and middle classes in the previous 3 decades.

Peter , says: December 21, 2017 at 8:34 am
I have some faith that the American people can recover from an excursion into unreality. I base it on my own survival to the end of this silly rant.
SteveM , says: December 21, 2017 at 9:08 am
Re: Whine Merchant, "Wow – is there ever negative!"

Can't argue with the facts

P.S. Merry Christmas.

Dave Wright , says: December 21, 2017 at 9:22 am
Hey Jim, I know you love to blame Wall Street and the Republicans for the GFC. I remember back in '08 you were urging Democrats to blame it all on Republicans to help Obama win. But I have news for you. It wasn't Wall Street that caused the GFC. The crisis actually had its roots in the Clinton Administration's use of the Community Reinvestment Act to pressure banks to relax mortgage underwriting standards. This was done at the behest of left wing activists who claimed (without evidence, of course) that the standards discriminated against minorities. The result was an effective repeal of all underwriting standards and an explosion of real estate speculation with borrowed money. Speculation with borrowed money never ends well.

I have to laugh, too, when you say that it's perverse that the passion for tyranny is popular on the left. Have you ever heard of the French Revolution? How about the USSR? Communist China? North Korea? Et cetera.

Leftism is leftism. Call it Marxism, Communism, socialism, liberalism, progressivism, or what have you. The ideology is the same. Only the tactics and methods change. Destroy the evil institutions of marriage, family, and religion, and Man's innate goodness will shine forth, and the glorious Godless utopia will naturally result.

Of course, the father of lies is ultimately behind it all. "He was a liar and a murderer from the beginning."

When man turns his back on God, nothing good happens. That's the most fundamental problem in Western society today. Not to say that there aren't other issues, but until we return to God, there's not much hope for improvement.

NoahK , says: December 21, 2017 at 10:15 am
It's like somebody just got a bunch of right-wing talking points and mashed them together into one incohesive whole. This is just lazy.
Andrew Imlay , says: December 21, 2017 at 10:36 am
Hmm. I just wandered over here by accident. Being a construction contractor, I don't know enough about globalization, academia, or finance to evaluate your assertions about those realms. But being in a biracial family, and having lived, worked, and worshiped equally in white and black communities, I can evaluate your statements about social justice, race, and civil rights. Long story short, you pick out fringe liberal ideas, misrepresent them as mainstream among liberals, and shoot them down. Casuistry, anyone?

You also misrepresent reality to your readers. No, the black underclass is not larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated now than in the 1960's, when cities across the country burned and machine guns were stationed on the Capitol steps. The "racial divide" is not "starker now than ever"; that's just preposterous to anyone who was alive then. And nobody I've ever known felt "shame" over the "outcome of the civil rights campaign". I know nobody who seeks to "punish and humiliate" the 'privileged'.

I get that this column is a quick toss-off before the holiday, and that your strength is supposed to be in your presentation, not your ideas. For me, it's a helpful way to rehearse debunking common tropes that I'll encounter elsewhere.

But, really, your readers deserve better, and so do the people you misrepresent. We need bad liberal ideas to be critiqued while they're still on the fringe. But by calling fringe ideas mainstream, you discredit yourself, misinform your readers, and contribute to stereotypes both of liberals and of conservatives. I'm looking for serious conservative critiques that help me take a second look at familiar ideas. I won't be back.

peter in boston , says: December 21, 2017 at 10:48 am
Love Kunstler -- and love reading him here -- but he needs a strong editor to get him to turn a formless harangue into clear essay.
Someone in the crowd , says: December 21, 2017 at 11:07 am
I disagree, NoahK, that the whole is incohesive, and I also disagree that these are right-wing talking points.

The theme of this piece is the long crisis in the US, its nature and causes. At no point does this essay, despite it stream of consciousness style, veer away from that theme. Hence it is cohesive.

As for the right wing charge, though it is true, to be sure, that Kunstler's position is in many respects classically conservative -- he believes for example that there should be a national consensus on certain fundamentals, such as whether or not there are two sexes (for the most part), or, instead, an infinite variety of sexes chosen day by day at whim -- you must have noticed that he condemned both the voluntarism of Karl Rove AND the voluntarism of the post-structuralist crowd.

My impression is that what Kunstler is doing here is diagnosing the long crisis of a decadent liberal post-modernity, and his stance is not that of either of the warring sides within our divorced-from-reality political establishment, neither that of the 'right' or 'left.' Which is why, logically, he published it here. National Review would never have accepted this piece. QED.

Jon , says: December 21, 2017 at 11:10 am
This malaise is rooted in human consciousness that when reflecting on itself celebrating its capacity for apperception suffers from the tension that such an inquiry, such an inward glance produces. In a word, the capacity for the human being to be aware of his or herself as an intelligent being capable of reflecting on aspects of reality through the artful manipulation of symbols engenders this tension, this angst.

Some will attempt to extinguish this inner tension through intoxication while others through the thrill of war, and it has been played out since the dawn of man and well documented when the written word emerged.

The malaise which Mr. Kunstler addresses as the problem of our times is rooted in our existence from time immemorial. But the problem is not only existential but ontological. It is rooted in our being as self-aware creatures. Thus no solution avails itself as humanity in and of itself is the problem. Each side (both right and left) seeks its own anodyne whether through profligacy or intolerance, and each side mans the barricades to clash experiencing the adrenaline rush that arises from the perpetual call to arms.

Joe the Plutocrat , says: December 21, 2017 at 11:27 am
"Globalization has acted, meanwhile, as a great leveler. It destroyed what was left of the working class -- the lower-middle class -- which included a great many white Americans who used to be able to support a family with simple labor."

And to whom do we hand the tab for this? Globalization is a word. It is a concept, a talking point. Globalization is oligarchy by another name. Unfortunately, under-educated, deplorable, Americans; regardless of party affiliation/ideology have embraced. And the most ironic part?

Russia and China (the eventual surviving oligarchies) will eventually have to duke it out to decide which superpower gets to make the USA it's b*tch (excuse prison reference, but that's where we're headed folks).

And one more irony. Only in American, could Christianity, which was grew from concepts like compassion, generosity, humility, and benevolence; be re-branded and 'weaponized' to further greed, bigotry, misogyny, intolerance, and violence/war. Americans fiddled (over same sex marriage, abortion, who has to bake wedding cakes, and who gets to use which public restroom), while the oligarchs burned the last resources (natural, financial, and even legal).

The scientist 880 , says: December 21, 2017 at 11:48 am
"Today, there is more grievance and resentment, and less hope for a better future, than when Martin Luther King made the case for progress on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963."

Spoken like a white guy who has zero contact with black people. I mean, even a little bit of research and familiarity would give lie to the idea that blacks are more pessimistic about life today than in the 1960's.

Black millenials are the most optimistic group of Americans about the future. Anyone who has spent any significant time around older black people will notice that you don't hear the rose colored memories of the past. Black people don't miss the 1980's, much less the 1950's. Young black people are told by their elders how lucky they are to grow up today because things are much better than when grandpa was our age and we all know this history.\

It's clear that this part of the article was written from absolute ignorance of the actual black experience with no interest in even looking up some facts. Hell, Obama even gave a speech at Howard telling graduates how lucky they were to be young and black Today compared to even when he was their age in the 80's!

Here is the direct quote;

"In my inaugural address, I remarked that just 60 years earlier, my father might not have been served in a D.C. restaurant -- at least not certain of them. There were no black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Very few black judges. Shoot, as Larry Wilmore pointed out last week, a lot of folks didn't even think blacks had the tools to be a quarterback. Today, former Bull Michael Jordan isn't just the greatest basketball player of all time -- he owns the team. (Laughter.) When I was graduating, the main black hero on TV was Mr. T. (Laughter.) Rap and hip hop were counterculture, underground. Now, Shonda Rhimes owns Thursday night, and Beyoncé runs the world. (Laughter.) We're no longer only entertainers, we're producers, studio executives. No longer small business owners -- we're CEOs, we're mayors, representatives, Presidents of the United States. (Applause.)

I am not saying gaps do not persist. Obviously, they do. Racism persists. Inequality persists. Don't worry -- I'm going to get to that. But I wanted to start, Class of 2016, by opening your eyes to the moment that you are in. If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn't know ahead of time who you were going to be -- what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you'd be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you'd be born into -- you wouldn't choose 100 years ago. You wouldn't choose the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You'd choose right now. If you had to choose a time to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, "young, gifted, and black" in America, you would choose right now. (Applause.)"

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/obamas-howard-commencement-transcript-222931

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58cf1d9ae4b0ec9d29dcf283/amp

Adam , says: December 21, 2017 at 11:57 am
I love reading about how the Community Reinvestment Act was the catalyst of all that is wrong in the world. As someone in the industry the issue was actually twofold. The Commodities Futures Modernization Act turned the mortgage securities market into a casino with the underlying actual debt instruments multiplied through the use of additional debt instruments tied to the performance but with no actual underlying value. These securities were then sold around the world essentially infecting the entire market. In order that feed the beast, these NON GOVERNMENT loans had their underwriting standards lowered to rediculous levels. If you run out of qualified customers, just lower the qualifications. Government loans such as FHA, VA, and USDA were avoided because it was easier to qualify people with the new stuff. And get paid. The short version is all of the incentives that were in place at the time, starting with the Futures Act, directly led to the actions that culminated in the Crash. So yes, it was the government, just a different piece of legislation.
SteveM , says: December 21, 2017 at 12:29 pm
Kunstler itemizing the social and economic pathologies in the United States is not enough. Because there are other models that demonstrate it didn't have to be this way.

E.g. Germany. Germany is anything but perfect and its recent government has screwed up with its immigration policies. But Germany has a high standard of living, an educated work force (including unions and skilled crafts-people), a more rational distribution of wealth and high quality universal health care that costs 47% less per capita than in the U.S. and with no intrinsic need to maraud around the planet wasting gobs of taxpayer money playing Global Cop.

The larger subtext is that the U.S. house of cards was planned out and constructed as deliberately as the German model was. Only the objective was not to maximize the health and happiness of the citizenry, but to line the pockets of the parasitic Elites. (E.g., note that Mitch McConnell has been a government employee for 50 years but somehow acquired a net worth of over $10 Million.)

P.S. About the notionally high U.S. GDP. Factor out the TRILLIONS inexplicably hoovered up by the pathological health care system, the metastasized and sanctified National Security State (with its Global Cop shenanigans) and the cronied-up Ponzi scheme of electron-churn financialization ginned up by Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Banksters, and then see how much GDP that reflects the actual wealth of the middle class is left over.

One Guy , says: December 21, 2017 at 1:10 pm
Right-Wing Dittoheads and Fox Watchers love to blame the Community Reinvestment Act. It allows them to blame both poor black people AND the government. The truth is that many parties were to blame.
LouB , says: December 21, 2017 at 1:14 pm
One of the things I love about this rag is that almost all of the comments are included. You may be sure that similar commenting privilege doesn't exist most anywhere else.

Any disfavor regarding the supposed bleakness with the weak hearted souls aside, Mr K's broadside seems pretty spot on to me.

tzx4 , says: December 21, 2017 at 1:57 pm
I think the author overlooks the fact that government over the past 30 to 40 years has been tilting the playing field ever more towards the uppermost classes and against the middle class. The evisceration of the middle class is plain to see.

If the the common man had more money and security, lots of our current intrasocial conflicts would be far less intense.

Jeeves , says: December 21, 2017 at 2:09 pm
Andrew Imlay: You provide a thoughtful corrective to one of Kunstler's more hyperbolic claims. And you should know that his jeremiad doesn't represent usual fare at TAC. So do come back.

Whether or not every one of Kunstler's assertions can withstand a rigorous fact-check, he is a formidable rhetorician. A generous serving of Weltschmerz is just what the season calls for.

Wezz , says: December 21, 2017 at 2:44 pm
America is stupefied from propaganda on steroids for, largely from the right wing, 25? years of Limbaugh, Fox, etc etc etc Clinton hate x 10, "weapons of mass destruction", "they hate us because we are free", birtherism, death panels, Jade Helm, pedophile pizza, and more Clinton hate porn.

Americans have been taught to worship the wealthy regardless of how they got there. Americans have been taught they are "Exceptional" (better, smarter, more godly than every one else) in spite of outward appearances. Americans are under educated and encouraged to make decisions based on emotion from constant barrage of extra loud advertising from birth selling illusion.

Americans brain chemistry is most likely as messed up as the rest of their bodies from junk or molested food. Are they even capable of normal thought?

Donald Trump has convinced at least a third of Americans that only he, Fox, Breitbart and one or two other sources are telling the Truth, every one else is lying and that he is their friend.

Is it possible we are just plane doomed and there's no way out?

John Blade Wiederspan , says: December 21, 2017 at 4:26 pm
I loathe the cotton candy clown and his Quislings; however, I must admit, his presence as President of the United States has forced everyone (left, right, religious, non-religious) to look behind the curtain. He has done more to dis-spell the idealism of both liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, rich and poor, than any other elected official in history. The sheer amount of mind-numbing absurdity resulting from a publicity stunt that got out of control ..I am 70 and I have seen a lot. This is beyond anything I could ever imagine. America is not going to improve or even remain the same. It is in a 4 year march into worse, three years to go.
EarlyBird , says: December 21, 2017 at 5:23 pm
Sheesh. Should I shoot myself now, or wait until I get home?
dvxprime , says: December 21, 2017 at 5:46 pm
Mr. Kuntzler has an honest and fairly accurate assessment of the situation. And as usual, the liberal audience that TAC is trying so hard to reach, is tossing out their usual talking points whilst being in denial of the situation.

The Holy Bible teaches us that repentance is the first crucial step on the path towards salvation. Until the progressives, from their alleged "elite" down the rank and file at Kos, HuffPo, whatever, take a good, long, hard look at the current national dumpster fire and start claiming some responsibility, America has no chance of solving problems or fixing anything.

Slooch , says: December 21, 2017 at 7:03 pm
Kunstler must have had a good time writing this, and I had a good time reading it. Skewed perspective, wild overstatement, and obsessive cherry-picking of the rare checkable facts are mixed with a little eye of newt and toe of frog and smothered in a oar and roll of rhetoric that was thrilling to be immersed in. Good work!
jp , says: December 21, 2017 at 8:09 pm
aah, same old Kunstler, slightly retailored for the Trump years.

for those of you familiar with him, remember his "peak oil" mania from the late 00s and early 2010s? every blog post was about it. every new year was going to be IT: the long emergency would start, people would be Mad Maxing over oil supplies cos prices at the pump would be $10 a gallon or somesuch.

in this new rant, i did a control-F for "peak oil" and hey, not a mention. I guess even cranks like Kunstler know when to give a tired horse a rest.

c.meyer , says: December 21, 2017 at 8:30 pm
So what else is new. Too 'clever', overwritten, no new ideas. Can't anyone move beyond clichés?
Active investor , says: December 22, 2017 at 12:35 am
Kunstler once again waxes eloquent on the American body politic. Every word rings true, except when it doesn't. At times poetic, at other times paranoid, Kunstler does us a great service by pointing a finger at the deepest pain points in America, any one of which could be the geyser that brings on catastrophic failure.

However, as has been pointed out, he definitely does not hang out with black people. For example, the statement:

But the residue of the "Black Power" movement is still present in the widespread ambivalence about making covenant with a common culture, and it has only been exacerbated by a now long-running "multiculturalism and diversity" crusade that effectively nullifies the concept of a national common culture.

The notion of a 'national common culture' is interesting but pretty much a fantasy that never existed, save colonial times.

Yet Kunstler's voice is one that must be heard, even if he is mostly tuning in to the widespread radicalism on both ends of the spectrum, albeit in relatively small numbers. Let's face it, people are in the streets marching, yelling, and hating and mass murders keep happening, with the regularity of Old Faithful. And he makes a good point about academia loosing touch with reality much of the time. He's spot on about the false expectations of what technology can do for the economy, which is inflated with fiat currency and God knows how many charlatans and hucksters. And yes, the white working class is feeling increasingly like a 'victim group.'

While Kunstler may be more a poet than a lawyer, more songwriter than historian, my gut feeling is that America had better take notice of him, as The American ship of state is being swept by a ferocious tide and the helmsman is high on Fentanyl (made in China).

JonF , says: December 22, 2017 at 9:52 am
Re: The crisis actually had its roots in the Clinton Administration's use of the Community Reinvestment Act

Here we go again with this rotting zombie which rises from its grave no matter how many times it has been debunked by statisticians and reputable economists (and no, not just those on the left– the ranks include Bruce Bartlett for example, a solid Reaganist). To reiterate again : the CRA played no role in the mortgage boom and bust. Among other facts in the way of that hypothesis is the fact that riskiest loans were being made by non-bank lenders (Countrywide) who were not covered by the CRA which only applied to actual banks– and the banks did not really get into the game full tilt, lowering their lending standards, until late in the game, c. 2005, in response to their loss of business to the non-bank lenders. Ditto for the GSEs, which did not lower their standards until 2005 and even then relied on wall Street to vet the subprime loans they were buying.

To be sure, blaming Wall Street for everything is also wrong-headed, though wall Street certainly did some stupid, greedy and shady things (No, I am not letting them off the hook!) But the cast of miscreants is numbered in the millions and it stretches around the planet. Everyone (for example) who got into the get-rich-quick Ponzi scheme of house flipping, especially if they lied about their income to do so. And everyone who took out a HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) and foolishly charged it up on a consumption binge. And shall we talk about the mortgage brokers who coached people into lying, the loan officers who steered customers into the riskiest (and highest earning) loans they could, the sellers who asked palace-prices for crackerbox hovels, the appraisers who rubber-stamped such prices, the regulators who turned a blind eye to all the fraud and malfeasance, the ratings agencies who handed out AAA ratings to securities full of junk, the politicians who rejoiced over the apparent "Bush Boom" well, I could continue, but you get the picture.

We have met the enemy and he was us.

kevin on the left , says: December 22, 2017 at 10:49 am
"The Holy Bible teaches us that repentance is the first crucial step on the path towards salvation. Until the progressives, from their alleged "elite" down the rank and file at Kos, HuffPo, whatever, take a good, long, hard look at the current national dumpster fire and start claiming some responsibility, America has no chance of solving problems or fixing anything."

Pretty sure that calling other people to repent of their sin of disagreeing with you is not quite what the Holy Bible intended.

[Dec 03, 2017] Business Has Killed IT With Overspecialization by Charlie Schluting

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... What happened to the old "sysadmin" of just a few years ago? We've split what used to be the sysadmin into application teams, server teams, storage teams, and network teams. There were often at least a few people, the holders of knowledge, who knew how everything worked, and I mean everything. ..."
"... Now look at what we've done. Knowledge is so decentralized we must invent new roles to act as liaisons between all the IT groups. Architects now hold much of the high-level "how it works" knowledge, but without knowing how any one piece actually does work. In organizations with more than a few hundred IT staff and developers, it becomes nearly impossible for one person to do and know everything. This movement toward specializing in individual areas seems almost natural. That, however, does not provide a free ticket for people to turn a blind eye. ..."
"... Does your IT department function as a unit? Even 20-person IT shops have turf wars, so the answer is very likely, "no." As teams are split into more and more distinct operating units, grouping occurs. One IT budget gets split between all these groups. Often each group will have a manager who pitches his needs to upper management in hopes they will realize how important the team is. ..."
"... The "us vs. them" mentality manifests itself at all levels, and it's reinforced by management having to define each team's worth in the form of a budget. One strategy is to illustrate a doomsday scenario. If you paint a bleak enough picture, you may get more funding. Only if you are careful enough to illustrate the failings are due to lack of capital resources, not management or people. A manager of another group may explain that they are not receiving the correct level of service, so they need to duplicate the efforts of another group and just implement something themselves. On and on, the arguments continue. ..."
Apr 07, 2010 | Enterprise Networking Planet

What happened to the old "sysadmin" of just a few years ago? We've split what used to be the sysadmin into application teams, server teams, storage teams, and network teams. There were often at least a few people, the holders of knowledge, who knew how everything worked, and I mean everything. Every application, every piece of network gear, and how every server was configured -- these people could save a business in times of disaster.

Now look at what we've done. Knowledge is so decentralized we must invent new roles to act as liaisons between all the IT groups. Architects now hold much of the high-level "how it works" knowledge, but without knowing how any one piece actually does work. In organizations with more than a few hundred IT staff and developers, it becomes nearly impossible for one person to do and know everything. This movement toward specializing in individual areas seems almost natural. That, however, does not provide a free ticket for people to turn a blind eye.

Specialization

You know the story: Company installs new application, nobody understands it yet, so an expert is hired. Often, the person with a certification in using the new application only really knows how to run that application. Perhaps they aren't interested in learning anything else, because their skill is in high demand right now. And besides, everything else in the infrastructure is run by people who specialize in those elements. Everything is taken care of.

Except, how do these teams communicate when changes need to take place? Are the storage administrators teaching the Windows administrators about storage multipathing; or worse logging in and setting it up because it's faster for the storage gurus to do it themselves? A fundamental level of knowledge is often lacking, which makes it very difficult for teams to brainstorm about new ways evolve IT services. The business environment has made it OK for IT staffers to specialize and only learn one thing.

If you hire someone certified in the application, operating system, or network vendor you use, that is precisely what you get. Certifications may be a nice filter to quickly identify who has direct knowledge in the area you're hiring for, but often they indicate specialization or compensation for lack of experience.

Resource Competition

Does your IT department function as a unit? Even 20-person IT shops have turf wars, so the answer is very likely, "no." As teams are split into more and more distinct operating units, grouping occurs. One IT budget gets split between all these groups. Often each group will have a manager who pitches his needs to upper management in hopes they will realize how important the team is.

The "us vs. them" mentality manifests itself at all levels, and it's reinforced by management having to define each team's worth in the form of a budget. One strategy is to illustrate a doomsday scenario. If you paint a bleak enough picture, you may get more funding. Only if you are careful enough to illustrate the failings are due to lack of capital resources, not management or people. A manager of another group may explain that they are not receiving the correct level of service, so they need to duplicate the efforts of another group and just implement something themselves. On and on, the arguments continue.

Most often, I've seen competition between server groups result in horribly inefficient uses of hardware. For example, what happens in your organization when one team needs more server hardware? Assume that another team has five unused servers sitting in a blade chassis. Does the answer change? No, it does not. Even in test environments, sharing doesn't often happen between IT groups.

With virtualization, some aspects of resource competition get better and some remain the same. When first implemented, most groups will be running their own type of virtualization for their platform. The next step, I've most often seen, is for test servers to get virtualized. If a new group is formed to manage the virtualization infrastructure, virtual machines can be allocated to various application and server teams from a central pool and everyone is now sharing. Or, they begin sharing and then demand their own physical hardware to be isolated from others' resource hungry utilization. This is nonetheless a step in the right direction. Auto migration and guaranteed resource policies can go a long way toward making shared infrastructure, even between competing groups, a viable option.

Blamestorming

The most damaging side effect of splitting into too many distinct IT groups is the reinforcement of an "us versus them" mentality. Aside from the notion that specialization creates a lack of knowledge, blamestorming is what this article is really about. When a project is delayed, it is all too easy to blame another group. The SAN people didn't allocate storage on time, so another team was delayed. That is the timeline of the project, so all work halted until that hiccup was restored. Having someone else to blame when things get delayed makes it all too easy to simply stop working for a while.

More related to the initial points at the beginning of this article, perhaps, is the blamestorm that happens after a system outage.

Say an ERP system becomes unresponsive a few times throughout the day. The application team says it's just slowing down, and they don't know why. The network team says everything is fine. The server team says the application is "blocking on IO," which means it's a SAN issue. The SAN team say there is nothing wrong, and other applications on the same devices are fine. You've ran through nearly every team, but without an answer still. The SAN people don't have access to the application servers to help diagnose the problem. The server team doesn't even know how the application runs.

See the problem? Specialized teams are distinct and by nature adversarial. Specialized staffers often relegate themselves into a niche knowing that as long as they continue working at large enough companies, "someone else" will take care of all the other pieces.

I unfortunately don't have an answer to this problem. Maybe rotating employees between departments will help. They gain knowledge and also get to know other people, which should lessen the propensity to view them as outsiders

[Nov 29, 2017] Some> Fed officials fear that the persistence of sluggish inflation could damage the economy, by permanently eroding public expectations about the future pace of inflation

Nov 29, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

Christopher H. , November 25, 2017 at 12:54 PM

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/business/economy/fed-interest-rates.html

Fed gonna raise rates:

"A minority of Fed officials, however, have become increasingly forceful in registering their concerns. Those officials are more worried about moving too fast than too slow. They fear that the persistence of sluggish inflation could damage the economy, for example, by permanently eroding public expectations about the future pace of inflation.

The minutes said that some of those officials are reluctant to vote for additional rate increases until they are convinced that inflation is indeed gaining strength.

The officials "indicated that their decision about whether to increase the target range in the near term would depend importantly on whether the upcoming economic data boosted their confidence that inflation was headed toward the Committee's objective.""

Some dissents? I hope so.

Gibbon1 -> Christopher H.... , November 26, 2017 at 04:12 AM
[sluggish inflation could damage the economy, for example, by permanently eroding public expectations about the future pace of inflation.]

Low inflation means no way to get out from under debt via refinancing. If people won't take debt how will late stage capitalists make money?

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Christopher H.... , November 26, 2017 at 11:04 AM
"... permanently eroding public expectations about the future pace of inflation..."

[The public, being voting age people at large and all working people and so on, really would rather not expect any inflation at all. It usually does not work out for them all that well since food prices and other headline inflation goods often rise ahead of wages and core inflation goods. The public is not going to bail us out of this one. Poor and lower middle income people do not even have mortgages to refinance. Economic illiteracy among the public is not our friend. The establishment however cannot afford to make the public more economically literate for fear they will understand how the balance of trade over the last forty year has ripped them off.]

Christopher H. said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , November 26, 2017 at 12:27 PM
"It usually does not work out for them all that well since food prices and other headline inflation goods often rise ahead of wages and core inflation goods."

People also don't like being taxed to pay for infrastructure and public services.

Except for older voters, most people in advanced nations have never experienced moderate inflation.

If macro policy was done entirely by fiscal policy/better trade policy and interest rates were left alone, we'd still see higher inflation after years of running the economy hot.

Christopher H. said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , November 26, 2017 at 12:34 PM
I just think that had the government did more fiscal/monetary policy after the financial crisis and allowed inflation to run over target instead of being paranoid about accelerating inflation, the recovery would have been much quicker and people would have been much happier even with a little inflation. Hillary would have won and inflation expectations would be higher among people who think about such things.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Christopher H.... , November 26, 2017 at 01:44 PM
OH, I totally agree with you. But getting the public aroused about inflation that is too low is entirely a different thing.
ilsm -> Christopher H.... , November 26, 2017 at 02:08 PM
Inflation means you pay the "loan*" with ever "cheaper" dollars from your fixed labor input receiving higher wages, more dollars.

Also inflation means your "collateral" is worth more dollars than the original note.

That went awry post 2000 for whatever reasons, longer run root causes than we know.

*makes sense not to add to the loan, aka the "American dream"+.

+need post mortem and eulogy!*

*'make America great again' is a eulogy of sorts.

Julio -> ilsm... , November 26, 2017 at 09:05 PM
"*'make America great again' is a eulogy of sorts."
[Classic.]
cm -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , November 26, 2017 at 06:32 PM
When sellers of groceries, household goods, utility services, etc. can successfully raise prices, then shouldn't one think there is still untapped consumer surplus? People with "extra money" will probably pay more, what do people with no extra money do? Buy less, substitute down, forgo other more discretionary expenses? Shift other expenses to loaned money? Furniture and appliances have always had financing programs, not obvious that more is bought on loan.
cm -> cm... , November 26, 2017 at 06:34 PM
OTOH where I'm currently shopping, it seems grocery prices were stable over the last year. OTOH "sales" and other frequent short term price variations are of a larger magnitude than inflation, so it's hard to tell. But a number of years ago I have definitely noticed YOY price moves - not so now.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to cm... , November 27, 2017 at 05:02 AM
Grocery stores operate with very thing margins. Retail prices rise when wholesale prices rise. Rising transportation fuel costs can push wholesale grocery prices, but a lot of food prices has to do with supply variances due to weather. Demand is not very price elastic on staples, but luxury demand can fall severely with rising prices. Chuck roast is more of a staple for many people. Filet mignon is a luxury for most people. Or maybe milk is a staple and candy is a luxury most of the time.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , November 27, 2017 at 05:02 AM
"...THIN margins..."

[Nov 29, 2017] Secular Stagnation: The Time for One-Armed Policy is Over

Highly recommended!
Stagnation that is gripping several of the world's largest economies should be viewed as a secular, long term phenomenon, not something transient. It is connected with the neoliberalism entering a new phase of its development, when New Deal was already devoured, 90% or so of population standard of living slides and thus there are no direct mechanisms to increase consumer demand.
Notable quotes:
"... Stagnation is gripping several of the world's largest economies and many view this as secular, not transient. ..."
"... Above all, ideology must conceal, denigrate, diminish, slander and distract from the ONE effective strategy that workers collectively have. This is the spectre that haunts all economics. ..."
"... For many of those who consume the bottom layers of it, what they are ingesting is a barbarous Pink Slime cultural sludge that makes them stupid, frivolous, dependent, impulsive and emotionally erratic – something like perpetual 15 year olds. ..."
"... In the center, we have the neoliberals, who are convinced that our world will spontaneously and beneficially organize itself if only we turn the macroeconomic tumblers and stumble on the right interest rate, or inflation rate, or some other version of the One Parameter to Rule Them All mindset. They are also too devoted to the religion of demand-goosing: the idea that everything will be all right as long as we generate enough "demand" – as though it makes no difference whether people are demanding high fructose cotton candy or the collected works of Shakespeare. ..."
"... Profits and income share at the top soared; wages and income share at the bottom fell, and employment was maintained by speculative bubbles and increasing debt until the last bubble burst, and the system collapsed. ..."
"... How is an increasing deficit and QE supposed to solve our problems in this situation other than by propping up a failed system that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer by increasing government debt? ..."
"... It seems quite clear to me that it is going to take a very long time for the system to adjust to this situation in the absence of a fall in the value of the dollar and the concentration of income. That kind of adjustment means reallocating resources in a very dramatic way so as to accommodate an economy in which resources are allocated to serve the demands of the wealthy few in the absence of the ability of those at the bottom to expand their debt relative to income. ..."
"... It was the fall in the concentration of income that led to mass markets (large numbers of people with purchasing power out of income) that made investment profitable after WW II in the absence of speculative bubbles, and it was the increase in the concentration of income that led to the bubble economy we have today that has led us into the Great Recession. ..."
"... I think neoliberalism naturally leads to secular stagnation. This is the way any economic system that is based on increasing of inequality should behave: after inequality reached certain critical threshold, the economy faces extended period of low growth reflecting persistently weak private demand. ..."
"... The focus on monetary policy and the failure to enact fiscal policy options is structural defect of neoliberalism ideology and can't be changed unless neoliberal ideology is abandoned. Which probably will not happen unless another huge crisis hit the USA. 2008 crisis, while discrediting neoliberalism, was clearly not enough for the abandonment of this ideology. Like in most cults adherents became more fanatical believers after the prophecy did not materialized. ..."
"... In a way behaviour of the USA elite in this respect is as irrational as behavior of the USSR elite. My impression is that they will stick to neoliberal ideology to the bitter end. But at the same time they are much more reckless. Recent attempt to solve economic problems by unleashing a new wars and relying of war time mobilization so far did not work. Including the last move is this game: Russia did not bite the offer for military confrontation that the USA clearly made by instilling coup d'état in Ukraine. ..."
Jun 05, 2015 | economistsview.typepad.com
Willem Buiter, Ebrahim Rahbari, Joe Seydl at Vox EU:

Secular stagnation: The time for one-armed policy is over: Stagnation is gripping several of the world's largest economies and many view this as secular, not transient.

This column argues that many economies need both demand-side stimulus and supply-side reform to close the output gap and restore potential-output growth. A combined monetary-fiscal stimulus – i.e. helicopter money – is needed to close the output gap, and this should be accompanied with extensive debt restructuring, policies to halt rising inequality, and additional public infrastructure investment.

Selected Skeptical Comments

Sandwichman -> anne:

Workers, collectively, have a single, incontrovertible lever for effecting change -- withholding their labor power. Nothing -- not even imprisonment or death -- can prevent workers from withholding their labor power! Kill me and see how much work you can get out of me.

This is the elementary fact that the elites don't want workers to know. "It is futile!" "It is a fallacy!" "You will only hurt yourselves!"

Once one comprehends the strategic importance of making the withholding of labor power taboo, everything else falls into place. Economics actually makes sense as a persuasive discourse to dissuade from the withholding of labor power.

Above all, ideology must conceal, denigrate, diminish, slander and distract from the ONE effective strategy that workers collectively have. This is the spectre that haunts all economics.

Dan Kervick:

Good stuff by Buiter et al, but here are some suggested additions to the litany of supply side woes:

1. Ineffective economic organization, both inside corporate firms and outside of them.

a. Many corporations are now quite dysfunctional as engines of long-term value creation – but not dysfunctional as vehicles of short-term value extraction for their absurdly over-incentivized key stakeholders.

b. The developed world societies are facing an extreme failure of strategic economic leadership, at both the national and global level, and at both the formal level of government and the informal level of visionary public intellectuals and industrial "captains". There is no coherent consensus on which way lies the direction of progress. Since nobody is setting the agenda for what the future looks like, risk trumps confidence everywhere and nobody knows what to invest in.

2. Dyspeptic dystopianism. The intellectual culture of our times is polluted by obsessive, nail-biting negativity and demoralizing storylines preaching hopelessness: the robots are going to destroy all the jobs; the Big One is going to bury everything, the real "neutral" interest rate is preposterously negative, etc. etc. etc. With so much doom and gloom in the air, there is no reason to invest wealth, rather than consume it. Robert Schiller touched on this at a recent talk at LSE.

3. The popular culture of 2015 America is – as in so many other areas - a tale of two cultural cities. For many of those who consume the bottom layers of it, what they are ingesting is a barbarous Pink Slime cultural sludge that makes them stupid, frivolous, dependent, impulsive and emotionally erratic – something like perpetual 15 year olds. People like this can be duped by the most shallow demagoguery and consumerist manipulation, and can't organize themselves to pursue their enlightened self-interest. Enlightened artists and cultural custodians need to step up, organize and find a way to seize the American mind back from the clutches of consumer capitalist garbage-mongers and philistine society-wreckers.

4. Laissez faire backwardness. We are struggling under left-right-center conspiracy of Pollyanna freedom fools, who despite their constant kvetching at one another all share in common the view that progress is self-organizing.

On the left we have the Chomsky and Graeber-style "libertarian socialists" who are convinced we could have a functioning and prosperous society in which seemingly every action is voluntary and spontaneous, nobody is ever compelled to do anything that their delicate little hearts don't throb to do, and who seemingly have no idea of what it takes even to run a carrot farm.

On the right, we have the clueless paranoid libertarians who think the whole world should revolve around their adolescent desire not to be "tread on", and seem to have no idea of what it takes – and what it took historically - to build a livable civilization.

In the center, we have the neoliberals, who are convinced that our world will spontaneously and beneficially organize itself if only we turn the macroeconomic tumblers and stumble on the right interest rate, or inflation rate, or some other version of the One Parameter to Rule Them All mindset. They are also too devoted to the religion of demand-goosing: the idea that everything will be all right as long as we generate enough "demand" – as though it makes no difference whether people are demanding high fructose cotton candy or the collected works of Shakespeare.

5. I'm an optimist! This is all going to change. We have nearly reached Peak Idiocracy. We're on the verge of a new age of social organization and planning and a return to mixed economy common sense and public-spirited mobilization and adulthood. This will happen because ultimately all of those teenagers will stop denying reality, and stop struggling to escape the realization that a more organized and thoughtfully planned way of life is the only thing that will work in our small, resource strapped, crowded 21st century planet.

George H. Blackford:

Since the 80s, US companies have been buying abroad to sell at home as foreign countries used our trade deficits to depress their exchange rates. Profits and income share at the top soared; wages and income share at the bottom fell, and employment was maintained by speculative bubbles and increasing debt until the last bubble burst, and the system collapsed.

There seem to be no more bubbles in the offing. The dollar is overvalued. Debt relative to income is unprecedented, and the concentration of income has created stagnation for lack of investment opportunities.

How is an increasing deficit and QE supposed to solve our problems in this situation other than by propping up a failed system that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer by increasing government debt? Does anyone really believe this sort of thing can go on forever in the absence of a fall in the value of the dollar and in the concentration of income? Who's going to be left holding the bag when this system collapses again?

It seems quite clear to me that it is going to take a very long time for the system to adjust to this situation in the absence of a fall in the value of the dollar and the concentration of income. That kind of adjustment means reallocating resources in a very dramatic way so as to accommodate an economy in which resources are allocated to serve the demands of the wealthy few in the absence of the ability of those at the bottom to expand their debt relative to income.

We didn't smoothly transition from an agricultural economy to one based on manufacturing. That transition was plagued with a great deal of civil unrest, speculative bubbles, booms and busts that eventually led to a collapse of the system and the Great Depression.

And we didn't smoothly transition out of the Great Depression. That was ended by WW II and dramatic changes in our economic system, the most dramatic changes being the role and size of government and the fall in the concentration of income for thirty-five years after 1940.

It was the fall in the concentration of income that led to mass markets (large numbers of people with purchasing power out of income) that made investment profitable after WW II in the absence of speculative bubbles, and it was the increase in the concentration of income that led to the bubble economy we have today that has led us into the Great Recession.

What this means to me is that we are not going to get out of the mess we are in today in the absence of some kind of catastrophe comparable to WW II if we, and the rest of the world, do not come to grips with the fundamental problem we face in this modern age, namely, the trade deficit and the concentration of income.

See:

likbez:

I think neoliberalism naturally leads to secular stagnation. This is the way any economic system that is based on increasing of inequality should behave: after inequality reached certain critical threshold, the economy faces extended period of low growth reflecting persistently weak private demand.

An economic cycle enters recession when total spending falls below expected by producers and they realize that production level is too high relative to demand. What we have under neoliberalism is kind of Marx constant crisis of overproduction.

The focus on monetary policy and the failure to enact fiscal policy options is structural defect of neoliberalism ideology and can't be changed unless neoliberal ideology is abandoned. Which probably will not happen unless another huge crisis hit the USA. 2008 crisis, while discrediting neoliberalism, was clearly not enough for the abandonment of this ideology. Like in most cults adherents became more fanatical believers after the prophecy did not materialized.

The USA elite tried partially alleviate this problem by resorting to military Keynesianism as a supplementary strategy. But while military budget was raised to unprecedented levels, it can't reverse the tendency. Persistent high output gap is now a feature of the US economy, not a transitory state.

"Top everything" does not help iether (top cheap oil is especially nasty factor). Recent pretty clever chess gambit to artificially drop oil price playing Russian card, and sacrificing US shall industry like a pawn (remember that Saudi Arabia is the USA client state) was a very interesting move, but still expectation are now so low that cheap gas stimulus did not work as expected in the USA. It would be interesting to see how quickly oil will return to early 2014 price level because of that. That will be the sign that gambit is abandoned.

In a way behaviour of the USA elite in this respect is as irrational as behavior of the USSR elite. My impression is that they will stick to neoliberal ideology to the bitter end. But at the same time they are much more reckless. Recent attempt to solve economic problems by unleashing a new wars and relying of war time mobilization so far did not work. Including the last move is this game: Russia did not bite the offer for military confrontation that the USA clearly made by instilling coup d'état in Ukraine.

Now it look like there is a second attempt to play "madman" card after Nixon's administration Vietnam attempt to obtain concession from the USSR by threatening to unleash the nuclear war.

[Nov 29, 2017] Economics is a Belief System - and We are Ruled by Fundamentalists

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... During the two decades following the neoliberal economists' take-over of Western governments in the 1980s, many felt that the almost mystical terms of economics - such as derivatives, hedging, leverage, contangos, etc - were beyond the understanding of most ordinary people. ..."
"... They pursued them as a matter of faith in the market and its processes, despite the apparent warning signs of their imminent failure. ..."
"... as within many custom or belief systems, what economics enshrines is a social order. One where a dominant minority are able to take a small quantity of wealth from each member of the majority in order to maintain their higher status. ..."
"... idea of economics as an exploitative mechanism is echoed in the cover picture of the book, Bosch's The Conjurer ..."
"... Within its exposition of economics as a quasi-religious theory, Brian Davey's book helps us to understand why economic theory is driving us toward a global system failure - and why politics and economics are incapable of responding to the pressing ecological crisis which the pursuit of economic growth has spawned. ..."
Nov 09, 2015 | resilience.org

by Paul Mobbs, originally published by The Ecologist |

Brian Davey's new book, Credo: Economic Beliefs in a World in Crisis, is an analysis of economic theory as if it were a system of religious belief.

It's a timely book. The simplistic, perhaps 'supernatural' assumptions which underpin key parts of economic theory demand far more attention. It's a debate we've failed to have as a society.

... ... ...

During the two decades following the neoliberal economists' take-over of Western governments in the 1980s, many felt that the almost mystical terms of economics - such as derivatives, hedging, leverage, contangos, etc - were beyond the understanding of most ordinary people.

And without understanding those terms, irrespective of our gut feeling that there was something wrong, how could we challenge the political lobby those theories had put into power? In the end it took the financial crash of 2007/8 to demonstrate that those in charge of this system didn't understand the complexity and risk of those practices either.

They pursued them as a matter of faith in the market and its processes, despite the apparent warning signs of their imminent failure. Those outside 'orthodox' economics could already see where the economy was heading in the longer-term.

Question is, did economists learn anything from that failure? Or, through austerity, have they once again committed us to their dogmatic belief system, unchanged by that experience?

... ... ...

However, through simple hubris or optimism bias, the political class has been convinced that 'fracking' is a solution to our economic woes - even though there is a paucity of verifiable evidence to demonstrate those claims, and it has already lost billions of investors money.

Economics is a reflection of power

Ultimately though, as within many custom or belief systems, what economics enshrines is a social order. One where a dominant minority are able to take a small quantity of wealth from each member of the majority in order to maintain their higher status.

This idea of economics as an exploitative mechanism is echoed in the cover picture of the book, Bosch's The Conjurer - where a magician distracts the public with a sleight of hand trick so that they can be more easily robbed by his associate.

Again, in a world where we're hitting the limits to human material growth, political models of well-being based upon wealth and consumption are damaging to human society in the long-term. The evidence that we're heading for a longer-term failure is there, as was the case with the warning signs before the 2007 crash. The problem is that those in positions of power do not wish to see it.

... ... ...

Within its exposition of economics as a quasi-religious theory, Brian Davey's book helps us to understand why economic theory is driving us toward a global system failure - and why politics and economics are incapable of responding to the pressing ecological crisis which the pursuit of economic growth has spawned.

Contrary to the economic hubris of many world leaders, set alongside the reality of ecological limits humanity is not 'too big to fail'.

[Nov 29, 2017] Michael Hudson: The Wall Street Economy is Draining the Real Economy

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... An interview by Gordon T. Long of the Financial Repression Authority. Originally published at his website ..."
"... One of the most important distinctions that investors have to understand is the difference between secular and cyclical trends Let us begin with definitions from the Encarta® World English Dictionary: ..."
"... Secular – occurring only once in the course of an age or century; taking place over an extremely or indefinitely long period of time ..."
"... Cycle – a sequence of events that is repeated again and again, especially a causal sequence; a period of time between repetitions of an event or phenomenon that occurs regularly ..."
"... Secular stagnation is when the predators of finance have eaten too many sheeple. ..."
"... Real estate rents in this latest asset bubble, whether commercial or residential, appear to have been going up in many markets even if the increases are slowing. That rent inflation will likely turn into rent deflation, but that doesn't appear to have happened yet consistently. ..."
"... Barter has always existed and always will. Debt money expands and contracts the middle class, acting as a feedback signal, which never works over the long term, because the so encapsulated system can only implode, when natural resource liquidation cannot be accelerated. The whole point is to eliminate the initial requirement for capital, work. Debt fails because both sides of the same coin assume that labor can be replaced. The machines driven by dc technology are not replacing labor; neither the elites nor the middle class can fix the machines, which is why they keep accelerating debt, to replace one failed technology only to be followed by the next, netting extortion by whoever currently controls the debt machine, which the majority is always fighting over, expending more energy to avoid work, like the objective is to avoid sweating, unless you are dumb enough to run on asphalt with Nike gear. ..."
"... . . . The whole argument for privatization, for instance, is the opposite of what was taught in American business schools in the 19th century. The first professor of economics at the Wharton School of Business, which was the first business school, was Simon Patten. He said that public infrastructure is a fourth factor of production. But its role isn't to make a profit . It's to lower the cost of public services and basic inputs to lower the cost of living and lower the cost of doing business to make the economy more competitive. But privatization adds interest payments, dividends, managerial payments, stock buybacks, and merges and acquisitions . Obviously these financialized charges are factored into the price system and raise the cost of living and doing business . ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com
April 29, 2016 by Yves Smith An interview by Gordon T. Long of the Financial Repression Authority. Originally published at his website

GORDON LONG: Thank you for joining us. I'm Gordon Long with the Financial Repression Authority. It's my pleasure to have with me today Dr. Michael Hudson Professor Hudson's very well known in terms of the FIRE economy to-I think, to a lot of our listeners, or at least he's recognized by many as fostering that concept. A well known author, he has published many, many books. Welcome, Professor Hudson.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes.

LONG: Let's just jump into the subject. I mentioned the FIRE economy cause I know that I have always heard it coming from yourself-or, indirectly, not directly, from yourself. Could you explain to our listeners what's meant by that terminology?

HUDSON: Well it's more than just people getting fired. FIRE is an acronym for Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. Basically that sector is about assets, not production and consumption. And most people think of the economy as being producers making goods and services and paying labor to produce them – and then, labour is going to buy these goods and services. But this production and consumption economy is surrounded by the asset economy: the web of Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate of who owns assets, and who owes the debts, and to whom.

LONG: How would you differentiate it (or would you) with what's often referred to as financialization, or the financialization of our economy? Are they one and the same?

HUDSON: Pretty much. The Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate sector is dominated by finance. 70 to 80% of bank loans in North America and Europe are mortgage loans against real estate. So instead of a landowner class owning property clean and clear, as they did in the 19 th century, now you have a democratization of real estate. 2/3 or more of the population owns their own home. But the only way to buy a home, or commercial real estate, is on credit. So the loan-to-value ratio goes up steadily. Banks lend more and more money to the real estate sector. A home or piece of real estate, or a stock or bond, is worth whatever banks are willing to lend against it

As banks loosen their credit terms, as they lower their interest rates, take lower down payments, and lower amortization rates – by making interest-only loans – they are going to lend more and more against property. So real estate is bid up on credit. All this rise in price is debt leverage. So a financialized economy is a debt-leveraged economy, whether it's real estate or insurance, or buying an education, or just living. And debt leveraging means that a larger proportion of assets are represented by debt. So debt equity ratios rise. But financialization also means that more and more of people's income and corporate and government tax revenue is paid to creditors. There's a flow of revenue from the production-and-consumption economy to the financial sector.

LONG: I don't know if you know Richard Duncan. He was with the IMF, etc, and lives in Thailand. He argues right now that capitalism is no longer functioning, and really what he refers to what we have now is "creditism." Because in capitalism we have savings that are reinvested into productive assets that create productivity, which leads to a higher level of living. We're not doing that. We have no savings and investments. Credit is high in the financial sector, but it's not being applied to productive assets. Is he valid in that thinking?

HUDSON: Not as in your statement. It's confused.

LONG: Okay.

HUDSON: There's an enormous amount of savings. Gross savings. The savings we have that are mounting up are just about as large as they've ever been – about, 18-19% of the US economy. They're counterpart is debt. Most savings are lent out to borrowers se debt. Basically, you have savers at the top of the pyramid, the 1% lending out their savings to the 99%. The overall net savings may be zero, and that's what your stupid person from the IMF meant. But gross savings are much higher. Now, the person, Mr. Duncan, obviously-I don't know what to say when I hear this nonsense. Every economy is a credit economy.

Let's start in Ancient Mesopotamia. The group that I organized out of Harvard has done a 20-study of the origins of economic structuring in the Bronze Age, even the Neolithic, and the Bronze Age economy – 3200 BC going back to about 1200 BC. Suppose you're a Babylonian in the time of Hammurabi, about 1750 BC, and you're a cultivator. How do you buy things during the year? Well, if you go to the bar, to an ale woman, what she'd do is write down the debt that you owe. It was to be paid on the threshing floor. The debts were basically paid basically once a year when the income was there, on the threshing floor when the harvest was in. If the palace or the temples would advance animals or inputs or other public services, this would be as a debt. It was all paid in grain, which was monetized for paying debts to the palace, temples and other creditors.

The IMF has this Austrian theory that pretends that money began as barter and that capitalism basically operates on barter. This always is a disinformation campaign. Nobody believed this in times past, and it is a very modern theory that basically is used to say, "Oh, debt is bad." What they really mean is that public debt is bad. The government shouldn't create money, the government shouldn't run budget deficits but should leave the economy to rely on the banks. So the banks should run and indebt the economy.

You're dealing with a public relations mythology that's used as a means of deception for most people. You can usually ignore just about everything the IMF says. If you understand money you're not going to be hired by the IMF. The precondition for being hired by the IMF is not to understand finance. If you do understand finance, you're fired and blacklisted. That's why they impose austerity programs that they call "stabilization programs" that actually are destabilization programs almost wherever they're imposed.

LONG: Is this a lack of understanding and adherence to the wrong philosophy, or how did we get into this trap?

HUDSON: We have an actively erroneous view, not just a lack of understanding. This is not by accident. When you have an error repeated year after year after year, decade after decade after decade, it's not really insanity doing the same thing thinking it'll be different. It's sanity. It's doing the same thing thinking the result will be the same again and again and again. The result will indeed be austerity programs, making budget deficits even worse, driving governments further into debt, further into reliance on the IMF. So then the IMF turns them to the knuckle breakers of the World Bank and says, "Oh, now you have to pay your debts by privatization". It's the success. The successful error of monetarism is to force countries to have such self-defeating policies that they end up having to privatize their natural resources, their public domain, their public enterprises, their communications and transportation, like you're seeing in Greece's selloffs. So when you find an error that is repeated, it's deliberate. It's not insane. It's part of the program, not a bug.

LONG: Where does this lead us? What's the roadmap ahead of us here?

HUDSON: A thousand years ago, if you were a marauding gang and you wanted to take over a country's land and its natural resources and public sector, you'd have to invade it with military troops. Now you use finance to take over countries. So it leads us into a realm where everything that the classical economists saw and argued for – public investment, bringing costs in line with the actual cost of production – that's all rejected in favor of a rentier class evolving into an oligarchy. Basically, financiers – the 1% – are going to pry away the public domain from the government. Pry away and privatize the public enterprises, land, natural resources, so that bondholders and privatizers get all of the revenue for themselves. It's all sucked up to the top of the pyramid, impoverishing the 99%.

LONG: Well I think most people, without understanding economics, would instinctively tell you they think that's what's happening right now, in some way.

HUDSON: Right. As long as you can avoid studying economics you know what's happened. Once you take an economics course you step into brainwashing. It's an Orwellian world.

LONG: I think you said it perfectly well there. Exactly. It gets you locked into the wrong way of thinking as opposed to just basic common sense. Your book is Killing the Host . What was the essence of its message? Was it describing exactly what we're talking about here?

HUDSON: Finance has taken over the industrial economy, so that instead of finance becoming what it was expected to be in the 19 th century, instead of the banks evolving from usurious organizations that leant to governments, mainly to wage war, finance was going to be industrialized. They were going to mobilize savings and recycle it to finance the means of production, starting with heavy industry. This was actually happening in Germany in the late 19 th century. You had the big banks working with government and industry in a triangular process. But that's not what's happening now. After WW1 and especially after WW2, finance reverted to its pre-industrial form. Instead of allying themselves with industry, as banks were expected to do, banks allied themselves with real estate and monopolies, realizing that they can make more money off real estate.

The bank spokesman David Ricardo argued against the landed interest in 1817, against land rent. Now the banks are all in favor of supporting land rent, knowing that today, when people buy and sell property, they need credit and pay interest for it. The banks are going to get all the rent. So you have the banks merge with real estate against industry, against the economy as a whole. The result is that they're part of the overhead process, not part of the production process.

LONG: There's a sense that there's a crisis lying ahead in the next year, two years, or three years. The mainstream economy's so disconnected from Wall Street economy. What's your view on that?

HUDSON: It's not disconnected at all. The Wall Street economy has taken over the economy and is draining it. Under what economics students are taught as Say's Law, the economy's workers are supposed to use their income to buy what they produce. That's why Henry Ford paid them $5 a day, so that they could afford to buy the automobiles they were producing.

LONG: Exactly.

HUDSON: But Wall Street is interjecting itself into the economy, so that instead of the circular flow between producers and consumers, you have more and more of the flow diverted to pay interest, insurance and rent. In other words, to pay the FIRE sector. It all ends up with the financial sector, most of which is owned by the 1%. So, their way of formulating it is to distract attention from today's debt quandary by saying it's just a cycle, or it's "secular stagnation." That removes the element of agency – active politicking by the financial interests and Wall Street lobbyists to obtain all the growth of income and wealth for themselves. That's what happened in America and Canada since the late 1970s.

LONG: What does an investor do today, or somebody who's looking for retirement, trying to save for the future, and they see some of these things occurring. What should they be thinking about? Or how should they be protecting themselves?

HUDSON: What all the billionaires and the heavy investors do is simply try to preserve their wealth. They're not trying to make money, they're not trying to speculate. If you're an investor, you're not going to outsmart Wall Street billionaires, because the markets are basically fixed. It's the George Soros principle. If you have so much money, billions of dollars, you can break the Bank of England. You don't follow the market, you don't anticipate it, you actually make the market and push it up, like the Plunge Protection Team is doing with the stock market these days. You have to be able to control the prices. Insiders make money, but small investors are not going to make money.

Since you're in Canada, I remember the beginning of the 1960s. I used to look at the Treasury Bulletin and Federal Reserve Bulletin figures on foreign investment in the US stock market. We all used to laugh at Canada especially. The Canadians don't buy stocks until they're up to the very top, and then they lose all the money by holding these stocks on the downturn. Finally, when the market's all the way at the bottom, Canadians decide to begin selling because they finally can see a trend. So they miss the upswing until they decide to buy at the top once again. It's hilarious to look at how Canada has performed in the US bond market, and they did the same in the silver market. I remember when silver was going up to $50. The Canadians said, "Yes, we can see the trend now!" and they began to buy it. They lost their shirts. So, basically, if you're a Canadian investor, move.

LONG: So the Canadian investors are a better contrarian indicator than the front page cover, you're saying.

HUDSON: I'd think so. Once they get in, you know the bubble's over.

LONG: Absolutely on that one. What are you currently writing? What is your current focus now?

HUDSON: Well, I just finished a book. You mentioned Killing the Host . My next book will be out in about three months: J is for Junk Economics . It began as a dictionary of terms, so I can provide people with a vocabulary. As we got in the argument at the beginning of your program today, our argument is about the vocabulary we're using and the words you're using. The vocabulary taught to students today in economics – and used by the mass media and by government spokesmen – is basically a set of euphemisms. If you look at the television reports on the market, they say that any loss in the stock market isn't a loss, it's "profit taking". And when they talk about money. the stock market rises – "Oh that's good news." But it's awful news for the short sellers it wipes out. Almost all the words we get are kind of euphemisms to conceal the actual dynamics that are happening. For instance, "secular stagnation" means it's all a cycle. Even the idea of "business cycles": Nobody in the 19 th century used the word "business cycle". They spoke about "crashes". They knew that things go up slowly and then they plunge very quickly. It was a crash. It's not the sine curve that you have in Josef Schumpeter's book on Business Cycles . It's a ratchet effect: slow up, quick down. A cycle is something that is automatic, and if it's a cycle and you have leading and lagging indicators as the National Bureau of Economic Research has. Then you'd think "Oh, okay, everything that goes up will come down, and everything that goes down will come up, just wait your turn." And that means governments should be passive.

Well, that is the opposite of everything that's said in classical economics and the Progressive Era, when they realized that economies don't recover by themselves. You need a-the government to step in, you need something "exogenous," as economist say. You need something from outside the system to revive it. The covert idea of this business cycle analysis is to leave out the role of government. If you look at neoliberal and Austrian theory, there's no role for government spending, and no role of public investment. The whole argument for privatization, for instance, is the opposite of what was taught in American business schools in the 19 th century. The first professor of economics at the Wharton School of Business, which was the first business school, was Simon Patten. He said that public infrastructure is a fourth factor of production. But its role isn't to make a profit. It's to lower the cost of public services and basic inputs to lower the cost of living and lower the cost of doing business to make the economy more competitive. But privatization adds interest payments, dividends, managerial payments, stock buybacks, and merges and acquisitions. Obviously these financialized charges are factored into the price system and raise the cost of living and doing business.

LONG: Well, Michael, we're-I thank you for the time, and we're up against our hard line. I know we didn't have as much time as we always like, so we have to break. Any overall comments you'd like to leave with our listeners who might be interested this school of economics?

HUDSON: Regarding the downturn we're in, we're going into a debt deflation. The key of understanding the economy is to look at debt. The economy has to spend more and more money on debt service. The reason the economy is not recovering isn't simply because this is a normal cycle. And It's not because labour is paid too much. It's because people are diverting more and more of their income to paying their debts, so they can't afford to buy goods. Markets are shrinking – and if markets are shrinking, then real estate rents are shrinking, profits are shrinking. Instead of using their earnings to reinvest and hire more labour to increase production, companies are using their earnings for stock buybacks and dividend payouts to raise the share price so that the managers can take their revenue in the form of bonuses and stocks and live in the short run. They're leaving their companies as bankrupt shells, which is pretty much what hedge funds do when they take over companies.

So the financialization of companies is the reverse of everything Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and everyone you think of as a classical economist was saying. Banks wrap themselves in a cloak of classical economics by dropping history of economic thought from the curriculum, which is pretty much what's happened. And Canada-I know since you're from Canada, my experience there was that the banks have a huge lobbying power over government. In 1979, I wrote for the IRPP Institute there on Canada In the New Monetary Order . At that time the provinces of Canada were borrowing money from Switzerland and Germany because they could borrow it at much lower interest rates. I said that this was going to be a disaster, and one that was completely unnecessary. If Canadian provinces borrow in Francs or any other foreign currency, this money goes into the central bank, which then creates Canadian dollars to spend. Why not have the central bank simply create these dollars without having Swiss francs, without having German marks? It's unnecessary to have an intermediary. But the more thuggish banks, like the Bank of Nova Scotia, said, "Oh, that way's the road to serfdom." It's not. Following the banks and the Austrian School of the banks' philosophy, that's the road to serfdom. That's the road to debt serfdom. It should not be taken now. It lets universities and the government be run by neoliberals. They're a travesty of what real economics is all about.

LONG: Michael, thank you very much. I learned a lot, appreciate it; certainly appreciate how important it is for us to use the right words on the right subject when we're talking about economics. Absolutely agree with you. Talk to you again?

HUDSON: Going to be here.

LONG: Thank you for the time.

Donald , April 29, 2016 at 7:33 am

Interesting, but after insulting Duncan, Hudson says the banks stopped partnering with industry and went into real estate, which sounded like what Duncan said.

I mention this because for a non- expert like myself it is sometimes difficult to tell when an expert is disagreeing with someone for good reasons or just going off half- cocked. I followed what Hudson said about the evils of the IMF, but didn't see where Duncan had defended any of that, unless it was implicit in saying that capitalism used to function better.

Alejandro , April 29, 2016 at 9:06 am

Michael Hudson from the interview;

"As we got in the argument at the beginning of your program today, our argument is about the vocabulary we're using and the words you're using. The vocabulary taught to students today in economics – and used by the mass media and by government spokesmen – is basically a set of euphemisms ."Almost all the words we get are kind of euphemisms to conceal the actual dynamics that are happening."

May consider it's about recognizing and deciphering the "doublespeak", "newspeak", "fedspeak", "greenspeak" etc, whether willing or unwitting using words for understanding and clarifying as opposed to misleading and confusing dialectic as opposed to sophistry.

Michael Hudson , April 29, 2016 at 9:54 am

What I objected to was the characterization of today's situation as "financialization." I explained that financialization is the FIRST stage - when finance WORKS. We are now in the BREAKDOWN of financialization - toward the "barter" stage.
Treating "finance" as an end stage rather than as a beginning stage overlooks the dynamics of breakdown. It is debt deflation. First profits fall, and as that occurs, rents on commercial property decline. This is already widespread here in New York, from Manhattan (8th St. near NYU is half empty) to Queens (Austin St. in Forest Hills.).

Leonard C.Tekaat , April 29, 2016 at 12:19 pm

I wrote an article you might be interested in reading. It outlines a tax policy which would help prevent what you are discussing in your article. The abuse of credit to receive rents and long term capital gains.

The title is "Congress Financialized Our Economy And Created Financial Crisis & More Poverty" Go to http://www.taxpolicyusa.wordpress.com

SomeCallMeTim , April 29, 2016 at 5:23 pm

Thank you for another eye-opening exposition. My political economy education was negative (counting a year of Monetarism and Austrian Economics around 1980), so I appreciate your interviews as correctives.

From your interview answer to the question about what we, the 99+% should do,I gathered only that we should not try to beat the market. Anything more than that?

Skippy , April 29, 2016 at 8:33 pm

From my understanding, post Plaza banking lost most of its traditional market to the shadow sector, as a result, expanded off into C/RE and increasingly to Financialization of everything sundry.

Disheveled Marsupial interesting to note Mr. Hudson's statement about barter, risk factors – ?????

Eduardo Quince , April 29, 2016 at 7:41 am

"secular stagnation" means it's all a cycle

Actually not.

One of the most important distinctions that investors have to understand is the difference between secular and cyclical trends Let us begin with definitions from the Encarta® World English Dictionary:

Secular – occurring only once in the course of an age or century; taking place over an extremely or indefinitely long period of time

Cycle – a sequence of events that is repeated again and again, especially a causal sequence; a period of time between repetitions of an event or phenomenon that occurs regularly

Excerpted from: http://contrarianinvestorsjournal.com/?p=405#

cnchal , April 29, 2016 at 8:30 am

Secular stagnation from http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=secular-stagnation

Secular stagnation is a condition of negligible or no economic growth in a market-based economy . When per capita income stays at relatively high levels, the percentage of savings is likely to start exceeding the percentage of longer-term investments in, for example, infrastructure and education, that are necessary to sustain future economic growth. The absence of such investments (and consequently of the economic growth) leads to declining levels of per capita income (and consequently of per capita savings). With the reduced percentage savings rate converging with the reduced investment rate, economic growth comes to a standstill – ie, it stagnates. In a free economy, consumers anticipating secular stagnation, might transfer their savings to more attractive-looking foreign countries. This would lead to a devaluation of their domestic currency, which would potentially boost their exports, assuming that the country did have goods or services that could be exported.

Persistent low growth, especially in Europe, has been attributed by some to secular stagnation initiated by stronger European economies, such as Germany, in the past few years.

Words. What they mean depends on who's talking.

Secular stagnation is when the predators of finance have eaten too many sheeple.

MikeNY , April 29, 2016 at 9:57 am

Secular stagnation is when the predators of finance have eaten too many sheeple.

This.

digi_owl , April 29, 2016 at 7:44 am

Sad to see Hudson parroting the line about banks lending out savings

Alejandro , April 29, 2016 at 9:18 am

That's not what he said. Re-read or re-listen, please.

Enquiring Mind , April 29, 2016 at 9:02 am

Hudson says

Markets are shrinking – and if markets are shrinking, then real estate rents are shrinking, profits are shrinking.

Real estate rents in this latest asset bubble, whether commercial or residential, appear to have been going up in many markets even if the increases are slowing. That rent inflation will likely turn into rent deflation, but that doesn't appear to have happened yet consistently.

Perhaps he meant to say that markets are going to shrink as the debt deflation becomes more evident?

tegnost , April 29, 2016 at 9:52 am

I think what it means is it's getting harder to squeeze the blood out of the turnip

Synoia , April 29, 2016 at 10:06 am

What Turnip? Its become a stone, fossilized..

rfdawn , April 29, 2016 at 10:52 am

Yes, I think we are into turnip country now. Figure 1 in this prior article looks clear enough – even if you don't like the analysis that went with it. Wealth inequality still climbs but income inequality has plateaued since Clinton I. Whatever the reasons for that, the 1% should be concerned – where is the ROI?

ke , April 29, 2016 at 10:22 am

Barter has always existed and always will. Debt money expands and contracts the middle class, acting as a feedback signal, which never works over the long term, because the so encapsulated system can only implode, when natural resource liquidation cannot be accelerated. The whole point is to eliminate the initial requirement for capital, work. Debt fails because both sides of the same coin assume that labor can be replaced. The machines driven by dc technology are not replacing labor; neither the elites nor the middle class can fix the machines, which is why they keep accelerating debt, to replace one failed technology only to be followed by the next, netting extortion by whoever currently controls the debt machine, which the majority is always fighting over, expending more energy to avoid work, like the objective is to avoid sweating, unless you are dumb enough to run on asphalt with Nike gear.

ke , April 29, 2016 at 12:49 pm

Labor has no problem with multiwhatever presidents, geneticists, psychologists, or economists, trying to hunt down and replace labor, in or out of turn, but none are going to be any more successful than the others. Trump is being employed to bypass the middle class and cut a deal. There is no deal. Labor is always going to pay males to work and their wives to raise children. Obviously, the majority will vote for a competing economy, and it is welcome to do so, but if debt works so well, why is the majority voting to kidnap our kids with public healthcare and education policies.

meeps , April 29, 2016 at 5:36 pm

I'm not sure I heard an answer to the question of what people, who might be trying to save for the future or plan for retirement, can do? Is the point that there isn't anything? Because I'm definitely between rocks and hard places

Robert Coutinho , April 29, 2016 at 9:29 pm

Yeah, he basically said there is no good savings plan. Big-money interests have rigged the rules and are now manipulating the market (this used to be the definition of what was NOT allowed). Thus, they use computer algorithms to squeeze small amounts out of the market millions of times. This means that the "investments" are nothing of the sort. You don't "invest" in something for milliseconds. He said that the 1% are mostly just trying to hold on to what they have. Very few trust the rigged markets.

ke , April 29, 2016 at 7:22 pm

If Big G can print to infinity, print, but then why book it as debt to future generations?

The future is already becoming the present, because the millenials aren't paying.

Russell , April 29, 2016 at 10:00 pm

Low rent & cheap energy are key to the arts & innovations. My model has to work for airports, starts at the fuel farm as the CIA & MI6 Front Page Avjet did. Well before that was Air America. I wonder if now American Airlines itself is a Front.

All of America is a Front far as I can about tell. Hadn't heard that Manhattan rents were coming down. Come in from out of town, how you going to know? Not supposed to I guess.

I got that textbook and I liked that guy John Commons. He says capitalism is great, but it always leads to Socialism because of unbridled greed.

The frenzy to find another stable cash currency showing in Bit Coin and the discussion of Future Tax Credits while the Euro is controlled by the rent takers demands change on both sides of the Atlantic.

We got shot dead protesting the war, and civil rights backlash is the gift that keeps giving to the Southerners looking up every day in every courthouse town, County seat is all about spreading fear and desperation.

How to change it all without violence is going to be really tricky.

cnchal , April 30, 2016 at 4:36 am

Many thanks for the shout out to Canada.

. . . So, basically, if you're a Canadian investor, move.

LONG: So the Canadian investors are a better contrarian indicator than the front page cover, you're saying.

HUDSON: I'd think so. Once they get in, you know the bubble's over.

When one reads the financial press in Canada, every dollar extracted by the lords of finance is a glorious taking by brilliant people at the top of the financial food chain from the stupid little people at the bottom, but when it counts, there was silence, in cooperation with Canada's one percent.

The story starts about five years ago, with smart meters. Everyone knows what they are, a method by which electrical power use can be priced depending on the time of day, and day of the week.

To make this tasty, Ontario's local utilities at first kept the price the same for all the time, and then after all the meters were installed, came the changes, phased in over time. Prices were increased substantially, but there was an out. If you changed your living arrangements to live like a nocturnal rodent and washed your clothes in the middle of the night, had supper later in the evening or waited for weekend power rates you could still get low power rates, from the three tier price structure.

The local utilities bought the power from the government of Ontario power generation utility, renamed to Hydro One, and this is where Michael Hudson's talk becomes relevant.

The successful error of monetarism is to force countries to have such self-defeating policies that they end up having to privatize their natural resources, their public domain, their public enterprises, their communications and transportation, like you're seeing in Greece's selloffs. So when you find an error that is repeated, it's deliberate. It's not insane. It's part of the program, not a bug .

LONG: Where does this lead us? What's the roadmap ahead of us here?

HUDSON: A thousand years ago, if you were a marauding gang and you wanted to take over a country's land and its natural resources and public sector, you'd have to invade it with military troops. Now you use finance to take over countries. So it leads us into a realm where everything that the classical economists saw and argued for – public investment, bringing costs in line with the actual cost of production – that's all rejected in favor of a rentier class evolving into an oligarchy. Basically, financiers – the 1% – are going to pry away the public domain from the government. Pry away and privatize the public enterprises, land, natural resources, so that bondholders and privatizers get all of the revenue for themselves. It's all sucked up to the top of the pyramid, impoverishing the 99% .

Eighteen months ago, there was an election in Ontario, and the press was on radio silence during the whole time leading up to the election about the plans to "privatize" Hydro One. I cannot recall one instance of any mention that the new Premier, Kathleen Wynne was planning on selling Hydro One to "investors".

Where did this come from? Did the little people rise up and say to the politicians "you should privatize Hydro One" for whatever reason? No. This push came from the 1% and Hydro One was sold so fast it made my head spin, and is now trading on the Toronto Stock exchange.

At first I though the premier was an economic ignoramus, because Hydro One was generating income for the province and there was no other power supplier, so one couldn't even fire them if they raised their prices too high.

One of the arguments put forward by the 1% to privatize Hydro One was a classic divide and conquer strategy. They argued that too many people at Hydro One were making too much money, and by privatizing, the employees wages would be beat down, and the resultant savings would be passed on to customers.

Back to Michael Hudson

. . . The whole argument for privatization, for instance, is the opposite of what was taught in American business schools in the 19th century. The first professor of economics at the Wharton School of Business, which was the first business school, was Simon Patten. He said that public infrastructure is a fourth factor of production. But its role isn't to make a profit . It's to lower the cost of public services and basic inputs to lower the cost of living and lower the cost of doing business to make the economy more competitive. But privatization adds interest payments, dividends, managerial payments, stock buybacks, and merges and acquisitions . Obviously these financialized charges are factored into the price system and raise the cost of living and doing business .

Power prices have increased yet again in Ontario since privatization, and Canada's 1% are "making a killing" on it. There has been another change as well. Instead of a three tier price structure, there are now two, really expensive and super expensive. There is no longer a price break to living like a nocturnal rodent. The 1% took that for themselves.

Procopius , April 30, 2016 at 8:10 am

I am so tired of seeing that old lie about Old Henry and the $5 a day. I realize it was just a tossed off reference to something most people believe for the purpose of describing a discarded policy, but the fact is very, very few of Old Henry's employees ever got that pay. See, there were strings attached.

Old Henry hired a lot of spies, too. He sent them around to the neighborhoods where his workers lived (it was convenient having them all in Detroit). If the neighbors saw your kid bringing a bucket of beer home from the corner tavern for the family, you didn't get the $5.

If your lawn wasn't mowed to their satisfaction, you didn't get the $5. If you were thought not to bathe as often as they liked, you didn't get the $5. If you didn't go to a church on Sundays, you didn't get the $5. If you were an immigrant and not taking English classes at night school, you didn't get the $5. There were quite a lot of strings attached. The whole story was a public relations stunt, and Old Henry never intended to live up to it; he hated his workers.

[Nov 29, 2017] Positive Feedback Loops, Financial Instability, The Blind Spot Of Policymakers

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Primates with about exponentially increasing physical technologies continue to deliberately ignore and misunderstand themselves as much as is humanly possible, due to the history of warfare making and maintaining the currently existing political economy, whose maliciousness is manifesting through runaway vicious feedback loops, whereby the excessively successful control of Civilization through applications of the methods of organized crime are resulting in that Civilization manifesting runaway criminal insanities. Indeed, in that context, where there is almost nothing but the central core of triumphant organized crime, namely bankster dominated governments, surrounded by various layers of controlled "opposition" groups, which stay within the same bullshit-based frames of reference regarding those phenomena, the overall situation is that society becoming about exponentially sicker and insane. ..."
"... In general, "Asset Managers" are stuck inside taking for granted that everything they do has become almost totally based on being able to enforce frauds, despite some of them noticing the increasingly blatant ways that there are accumulating apparent anomalies in those systems, as vicious feedback loops drive those systems to become about exponentially more fraudulent, and therefore increasingly unbalanced. To come to better terms with those apparent anomalies requires going through series of intellectual scientific revolutions and profound paradigm shifts, which overall become ways that human beings better understand themselves as manifestations of general energy systems. However, since doing so requires recognizing how and why governments are necessarily the biggest forms of organized crime, dominated by the best organized gangsters, the banksters, it continues to be politically impossible to accomplish that. ..."
"... At each open, algos compute the increase in their AUM from the prior day and their margin reach. They then begin buying. All algos do this. Buying whenever cash/margin exists; selling whenever profit targets exist. On pullbacks, the algos withdraw, volume evaporates, minimizing the drop. The algos collectively increase equity prices without consideration of the value of the money involved. Not valuations. No fundamentals. Just ones and zeroes. Just a program. ..."
Nov 22, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Macro-prudential regulations follow financial crises, rarely do they precede one. Even when evidence is abundant of systemic risks building up, as is today, regulators and policymakers have a marked tendency to turn an institutional blind eye, hoping for imbalances to fizzle out on their own – at least beyond the duration of their mandates. It does not work differently in economics than it does for politics, where short-termism drives the agenda, oftentimes at the expenses of either the next government, the broader population or the next generation.

It does not work differently in the business world either, where corporate actions are selected based on the immediate gratification of shareholders, which means pleasing them at the next round of earnings, often at the expenses of long-term planning and at times exposing the company itself to disruption threats from up-and-comers.

Long-term vision does not pay; it barely shows up in the incentive schemes laid out for most professions . Economics is no exception. Orthodoxy and stillness preserve the status quo, and the advantages hard earned by the few who rose from the ranks of the establishment beforehand.

Yet, when it comes to Central Banking, and more in general policymaking, financial stability should top the priority list. It honorably shows up in the utility function, together with price stability and employment, but is not pursued nearly as actively as them. Central planning and interventionism is no anathema when it comes to target the decimals of unemployment or consumer prices, yet is residual when it comes to master systemic risks, relegated to the camp of ex-post macro-prudential regulation. This is all the more surprising as we know all too well how badly a deep unsettlement of financial markets can reverberate across the real economy, possibly leading into recessions, unemployment, un-anchoring of inflation expectations and durable disruption to consumer patterns. There is no shortage of reminders for that in the history books, looking at the fallout of dee dives in markets in 1929, 2000 and 2007, amongst others.

Intriguingly, the other way round is accepted and even theorized. Manipulating bond and stock prices, directly or indirectly, is mainstream policy theory today. From Ben Bernanke's 'portfolio balance channel theory', to the relentless pursuit of the 'wealth effect' via financial repression under Janet Yellen and Haruhiko Kuroda, to Mario Draghi tackling the fragmentation of credit markets across the EU via direct asset purchases, the practice has become commonplace. To some, like us, the 'wealth effect' may be proving to be more of an 'inequality effect' than much, leading to populism and constantly threatening regime change, but that is beyond the scope of this note today.

What we want to focus on instead is the direct impact that monetary interventionism like Quantitative Easing ('QE') and Negative or Zero Interest Rate Policies ('NIRP' or 'ZIRP') have on the structure of the market itself, how they help create a one-sided investment community, oftentimes long-only, fully invested when not levered up, relying on record-highs for bonds and stocks to perpetuate themselves endlessly - despite a striking disconnect from fundamentals, life-dependent on the lowest levels of volatility ever seen in history . The market structure morphed under the eyes of policymakers over the last few years, to become a pressure cooker at risk of blowing-up, with a small but steadily growing probability as times goes by and the bubble inflates. The positive feedback loops between monetary flooding and the private investment community are culpable for transforming an ever present market risk into a systemic risk, and for masking as peaceful what is instead an unstable equilibrium and market fragility.

Positive Feedback Loops create divergence from general equilibrium, and Systemic Risks

Positive feedback loops , in finance like in biology, chemistry, cybernetics, breed system instability, as they orchestrate a further divergence from equilibrium . An unstable equilibrium is defined as one where a small disturbance is sufficient to trigger a large adjustment.

QE and NIRP have two predominant effects on markets: (i) relentless up-trend in stocks and bonds (the 'Trend Factor') , dominated by the buy-the-dip mentality, which encapsulates the 'moral hazard' of investors knowing Central Banks are prompt to come to their rescue (otherwise known as 'Bernanke/Yellen/Kuroda/Draghi put'), and (ii) the relentless down-trend in volatility the 'Volatility Factor').

Two Factors Explain All: Trend and Volatility

The most fashionable investment strategies these days are directly impacted by either one or both of these drivers. Such strategies make the bulk of the overall market, after leverage or turnover is taken into account : we will refer to them in the following as 'passive' or 'quasi-passive' . The trend impacts the long-only community, crowning it as a sure winner, making the case for low- cost passive investing. The low volatility permeates everything else, making the case for full- investment and leverage.

The vast majority of investors these days are not independent from the QE environment they operate within : ETFs and index funds, Risk Parity funds and Target Volatility vehicles, Low Volatility / Short Volatility vehicles, trend-chasing algos, Machine Learning-inspired funds, behavioral Alternative Risk Premia funds. They are the poster children of the QE world. We estimate combined assets under management of in excess of $8trn across the spectrum. They form a broad category of 'passive' or 'quasi-passive' investors, as are being mechanically driven by two main factors: trend and volatility.

Source: Fasanara Presentations | Market Fragility - How to Position for Twin Bubbles Bust, 16 th October 2017. The slide is described in details in this video recording.

Extraordinary monetary policies have feedback loops with the asset management industry as a whole, reinforcing the effects on markets of such policies in a vicious – or virtuous - cycle . QE and NIRP help a large number of investment strategies to flourish, validating their success and supporting their asset gathering in the process, and are in return helped in boosting bond and stock markets by their flows joining the already monumental public flows.

Private flows so reach singularity with public flows, and the whole market economy morphs into a one big common bet on ever-rising prices, in shallow volatility. Here is the story of how $15trn of money printing by major Central Banks in the last ten years, of which $3.7trn in 2017 alone, is joined by total assets of $8trn managed into buying the same safe and risk assets across, with leverage, indiscriminately.

How Market Risk became Systemic Risk

Let's give a cursory look at the main players involved (a recent presentation we did is recorded here) . As markets trend higher, no matter what happens (ever against the shocked disbeliefs of Brexit, Trump, an Italian failed referendum and nuclear threats in North Korea), investors understand the outperformance that comes from pricing risks out of their portfolios entirely and going long-only and fully-invested. Whoever under-weighs positions in an attempt to be prudent ends up underperforming its benchmarks and is then penalized with redemptions. Passive investors who are long-only and fully invested are the winners, as they are designed to be bold and insensitive to risks. As Central Banks policies reduce the level of interest rates to zero or whereabouts, fees become ever more relevant, making the case for passive investing most compelling. The rise of ETF and passive index funds is then inevitable.

According to JP Morgan, in the last 10 years, $2trn left active managers in equities and $2trn entered passive managers (pag.39 here) . We may be excused for thinking they are the same $ 2trn of underlying investors progressively pricing risk provisions out of books, de facto , while chasing outperformance and lower fees.

To be sure, ETFs are a great financial innovation, helping reducing costs in an expensive industry and giving entry to markets previously un-accessible to most investors. Yet, what matters here is their impact on systemic risks, via positive feedback loops. In circular reference, beyond Central Banks flows, markets are helped rise by such classes of valuations-insensitive passive investors, which are then rewarded with further inflows, with which they can then buy more. The more expensive valuations get, the more they disconnect from fundamentals, the more divergence from equilibrium occurs, the larger fat-tail risks become.

In ever-rising markets, 'buy-and-hold' strategies may only possibly be outsmarted by 'buy-the-dip' strategies. Whatever the outcome of risk events, be ready to buy the dip quickly and blindly. As more investors design themselves up to do so, the dips are shallower over time, leading to an S&P500 that never lost 3% in 2017, an historical milestone. Machine learning is another beautiful market innovation, but what is there to learn from the time series of the last several years, if not that buy- the-dip works, irrespective of what caused the dip. Big Data is yet another great concept, shaping the future of us all. Yet, most data ever generated in humankind dates back three years only, in and by itself a striking limitation. The quality of the deduction cannot exceed the quality of the time series upon which the data science was applied. If the time series is untrustworthy, as is heavily influenced by monumental public flows ($300bn per months), what trust can we put on any model output originating from it? What pattern recognition can we really be hopeful of getting, in the first place? May some of it just be a commercial disguise for going long, selling volatility and leveraging up in various shapes or forms? What is hype and what is real? A short and compromised data series makes it hard, if not possible, to really know. Once public flows abate and price discovery is let free again, then and only then will we be in a position to know the difference.

Low volatility does what trending markets alone cannot. A state of low volatility presents the appearance of stuporous, innocuous, narcotized markets, thus enticing new swathes of unfitting investors in, mostly retail-type 'weak hands'. Weak hands are investors who are brought to like investments by certain characteristics which are uncommon to the specific investment itself, such as featuring a low volatility. It is in this form that we see bond-like investors looking at the stock market for yield pick-up purposes, magnetized by levels of realized volatility similar to what fixed income used to provide with during the Great Moderation. It is in this form that Tech companies out of the US have started filling the coffers of not just Growth ETF, where they should rightfully reside, but also Momentum ETF, and even, incredibly, Low-Volatility ETF.

Low volatility is also a dominant input for Risk Parity funds and Target Volatility vehicles . The lower the volatility, the higher the leverage allowed in such players, mechanically. All of which are long-only players, joining public flows, again helping the market rise to record levels in the process, in circular reference. Rewarded by new inflows, the buying spree gathers momentum, in a virtuous circle. Valuations are no real input in the process, volatility is what matters the most. Volatility is not risk, except for them it is.

It goes further than that. It is not only the level of volatility that count, but its direction too . As volatility implodes, relentlessly, into historical lows never seen before in history, a plethora of investment strategies is launched to capitalize on just that, directly: Short Volatility vehicles . They are the best performing strategy of the last decade, by and large. The problem here is that, due to construction, as volatility got to single-digit territory, relatively small spikes are now enough to trigger wipe-out events on several of these instruments. Our analysis shows that if equity volatility doubles up from current levels (while still being half of what it was as recently as in August 2015), certain Short Vol ETFs may stand to lose up to 75% or more. Moreover, short positions on long-vol ETFs can lose up to 250% of capital. For some, 'termination events' are built into contracts for sudden losses of this magnitude, meaning that the notes would be prematurely withdrawn. It is one thing to expect a spike in volatility to cause losses, it is quite another to know that a minor move is all it takes to trigger a default event.

On such spikes in volatility, Morgan Stanley Quant Derivatives Strategy desk warns further that market makers may be forced to rebalance their exposure non-linearly on a spike in volatility. A drop in the S&P 500 of 5% in one day may trigger approximately $ 400mn of Vega notional of rebalancing (pag.48 here) . We estimate that half a trillion dollars of additional selling on S&P stocks may occur following a correction of between 5% and 10%. That is a lot of selling, pre-set in markets, waiting to strike. Unless you expect the market to not have another 5% sell-off, ever again.

For more details, we describe the role of these different players in a recent video presentation and in our June Investment Outlook and May Investment Outlook.

It's All One Big Position

What do ETFs, Risk Parity and Target Vol vehicles, Low Vol / Short Vol vehicles, trend-chasing algos, Machine Learning, behavioral Alternative Risk Premia, factor investing have in common? Except, of course, being the 'winners take all' of QE-driven markets. They all share one or more of the following risk factors: long-only, fully invested when not leveraged-up, short volatility, short correlation, short gamma Thanks to QE and NIRP, the whole market is becoming one single big position.

The 'Trend Factor' and the 'Volatility Factor' are over-whelming, making it inevitable for a high- beta, long-bias, short-vol proxy to disseminate across. Almost inescapably so, given the time series the asset management industry has to deal with, and derive its signals from.

Several classes of investors may move to sell in lock-steps if and when markets turn. The boost to asset prices and the zero-volatility environment created the conditions for systemic risks in the form of an over-compensation to the downside. Record-low volatility breeds market fragility, it precedes system instability.

Flows Matter, Both Ways!

We will know soon if the fragility of markets is that bad. The undoing of loose monetary policies (NIRP, ZIRP) will create a liquidity withdrawal of over $1 trillion in 2018 alone (pag.61-62 here) . The reaction of the passive and quasi-passive communities will determine the speed of the adjustment in the pricing for both safe and risk assets, and how quickly risk provisions will re- enter portfolios. Such liquidity withdrawal will represent the first real crash-test for markets in 10 years.

As public spending on Wall Street abates, the risk is evident of seeing the whole market turning with it. The shocks of Trump and Brexit did not manage to derail markets for long, as public flows were overwhelming. Flows is what mattered, above all elusive, over-fitting economic narratives justifying price action at the margin. Flows may matter again now as they fade

Systemic Risk is Not Just About Banks: Look at Funds

The role of trending markets is known when it comes to systemic risks: a not sufficient but necessary condition. Most trends do not necessarily lead to systemic risks, but hardly systemic risks ever build up without a prolonged period of uptrend beforehand. Prolonged uptrends in any asset class hold the potential to instill the perception that such asset class will grow forever, irrespective of the fundamentals, and may thus lead to excessive risk taking, excess leverage, the formation of a bubble and, ultimately, systemic risks. The mind goes to the asset class of real estate, its undeterred uptrend into 2006/2007, its perception of perpetuity ("we have never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis'' Ben Bernanke) , the credit bubble built on banks hazardous activities on subprime mortgages as a result, and the systemic risks which emanated, with damages spanning well beyond the borders of real estate.

The role of volatility is also well-researched, especially low volatility. Hayman Minsky, in his " Financial Instability Hypothesis '' in 1977, analyses the behavioral changes induced by a reduction of volatility, postulating that economic agents observing a low risk are induced to increase risk taking, which may in turn lead to a crisis: "stability is destabilizing". In a recent study, Jon Danielsson, Director of the Systemic Risk Centre at the LSE, finds unambiguous support for the 'low volatility channel', insofar as prolonged periods of low volatility have a strong predictive power over the incidence of a banking crisis, owing to excess lending and excess leverage . The economic impact is the highest if the economy stays in the low volatility environment for five years : a 1% decrease in volatility below its trend translates in a 1.01% increase in the probability of a crisis. He also finds that, counter-intuitively, high volatility has little predictive power : very interesting, when the whole finance world at large is based on retrospective VAR metrics, and equivocates high volatility for high risk.

Both a persistent trend and prolonged low-volatility can lead banks to take excessive risks. But what about their impact on the asset management industry?

Thinking at the hard economic impact of the Great Depression (1929-1932) and the Great Recession (2007-2009), and the eminent role played by banks in both, it comes as little surprise that the banking sector captures all the attention. However, what remains to be looked into, and perhaps more worrying in today's environment, is the role of prolonged periods of uptrend and low-vol on the asset management industry

In 2014, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), an international body that makes recommendations to G20 nations on financial risks, published a consultation paper asking whether fund managers might need to be designated as " global systemically important financial institution " or G-SIFI, a step that would involve greater regulation and oversight. It did not result in much, as the industry lobbied in protest, emphasizing the difference between the levered balance sheet of a bank and the business of funds.

The reason for asking the question is evident: (i) sheer size , as the AM industry ballooned in the last few years, to now represent over [15trnXX] for just the top 5 US players!, (ii) funds have partially substituted banks in certain market-making activities, as banks dialed back their participation in response to tighter regulation and (iii) , funds can indeed do damage: think of LTCM in 1998, the fatal bailout of two Real Estate funds by Bear Stearns in 2007, the money market funds 'breaking the buck' in 2008 amongst others.

But it is not just sheer size that matters for asset managers. What may worry more is the positive feedback loops discussed above and the resulting concentration of bets in one single global pot , life-dependent on infinite momentum/trend and ever-falling volatility. Positive feedback loops are the link for the sheer size of the AM industry to become systemically relevant. Today more than ever, they morph market risks in systemic risks.

Volatility will not forever be low, the trend will not forever go: how bad a damage when it stops? As macro prudential policy is not the art of "whether or not it will happen" but of "what happens if", it is hard not to see this as a blind spot for policymakers nowadays.

ebworthen , Nov 22, 2017 10:55 AM

In other words, it's a Ponzi scheme.

Let it Go , Nov 22, 2017 11:49 AM

I have never seen it this bad, the numbers are all moutof wack!

It seems many of us are drawn to a good illusion and this proves true for most people in their daily life as well. In some ways, it could be said that our culture has become obsessed with avoiding what is real.

We must remember that politicians and those in power tend to throw people under the bus rather than rise up and take responsibility for the problems they create. The article below looks at how we have grown to believe things are fine.

http://The Allure Of Ilusions-Five Favorite Financial Myths.html

Batman11 , Nov 22, 2017 12:47 PM

The real estate boom features all the unknowns in today's thinking, which is why they are global.

This simple equation is unknown.

Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)

You can immediately see how high housing costs have to be covered by wages; business pays the high housing costs for expensive housing adding to costs and reducing profits. The real estate boom raises costs to business and makes your nation uncompetitive in a globalised world.

The unproductive lending involved that leads to financial crises.

The UK:

https://cdn.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/04/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-13.53.09.png

The economy gets loaded up with unproductive lending as future spending power has been taken to inflate the value of the nation's housing stock. Housing is more expensive and the future has been impoverished.

US:

https://cdn.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/04/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-13.52.41.png

Unproductive lending is not good for the economy and led directly to 1929 and 2008.

Neoliberalism's underlying economics, neoclassical economics, doesn't look at private debt and so no one really knew what they were doing.

The real estate boom feels good for a reason that is not known to today's thinkers.

Monetary theory has been regressing since 1856, when someone worked out how the system really worked.

Credit creation theory -> fractional reserve theory -> financial intermediation theory

"A lost century in economics: Three theories of banking and the conclusive evidence" Richard A. Werner

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477

" banks make their profits by taking in deposits and lending the funds out at a higher rate of interest" Paul Krugman, 2015. He wouldn't know, that's financial intermediation theory.

Bank lending creates money, which pours into the economy fuelling the boom; it is this money creation that makes the housing boom feel so good in the general economy. It feels like there is lots of money about because there is.

The housing bust feels so bad because the opposite takes place, and money gets sucked out of the economy as the repayments overtake new lending. It feels like there isn't much money about because there isn't.

They were known unknowns, the people that knew weren't the policymakers to whom these things were unknown.

The global economy told policymakers there was something seriously wrong in 2008, but they ignored it, I didn't.

Batman11 -> Batman11 , Nov 22, 2017 12:51 PM

The most fundamental of all fundamentals was unknown.

The relationship between debt and money.

the money supply = all the debt in the system, public and private

http://www.whichwayhome.com/skin/frontend/default/wwgcomcatalogarticles/images/articles/whichwayhomes/US-money-supply.jpg

M3 is going exponential before 2008, a credit bubble is underway (debt = money)

The FED and everyone else doesn't realise.

Batman11 -> Batman11 , Nov 22, 2017 1:25 PM

This is why austerity doesn't work in a balance sheet recession, e.g. Greece.

The IMF predicted Greek GDP would have recovered by 2015 with austerity.

By 2015 it was down 27% and still falling.

Oh dear.

Richard Koo had to explain the problem to the IMF.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk

They had pushed Greece into debt deflation by cutting Government spending with austerity.

It wasn't just the IMF, the Troika all went along with this fatally flawed policy, this means the ECB and EU Commission also didn't know what they were doing.

Richard Koo had watched as Western "experts" told Japan to cut Government spending and seen the fall in GDP as the economy went downhill. The only way to get things going again was to increase Government spending and he has had decades to work out what was going on.

The Troika's bad economics has been wreaking havoc across the Club-Med.

Mark Blythe looks at the data.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6vV8_uQmxs&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs

It comes out of knowledge that is missing from the mainstream.

Batman11 -> Batman11 , Nov 22, 2017 1:31 PM

Balancing the budget ............ be careful you might head into debt deflation.

If the private sector aren't borrowing the Government needs to borrow to keep the money supply stable.

You don't want to end up like Greece do you?

Radical Marijuana , Nov 22, 2017 3:15 PM

Another superficially correct analysis of "Positive Feedback Loops create divergence from general equilibrium, and Systemic Risks." The vicious feedback loops which have the most leverage are all aspects of the funding of the political processes, which have resulted in runaway systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, the most important of which are the ways that the powers of public governments enforce frauds by private banks, the big corporations that have grown up around those big banks.

About exponentially advancing technologies have enabled enforced frauds to become about exponentially more fraudulent. The underlying drivers were the ways that the combined money/murder systems developed, whose social successfulness became more and more based on maximizing maliciousness. From a superficial point of view, those results may appear to be due to incompetence, however, from a deeper point of view those results make sense as due to the excessively successful applications of the methods of organized crime through the political processes, due to the vicious feedback loops of the funding of those political processes.

The only connections between human laws and natural laws are the abilities to back up lies with violence. Natural selection pressures have driven Globalized Neolithic Civilization to develop the most dishonest artificial selection systems possible, while the continuation of the various vicious feedback loops that made and maintained those developments are driving about exponentially increasing dishonesty. Although the laws of nature are not going to stop working, and the laws of nature underpinned the runaway development of excessively successful vicious feedback loops of organized crime, on larger and larger scales, to result in Globalized Neolithic Civilization, the overall results are that Civilization is becoming about exponentially more psychotic. Since Civilization necessarily operates according to the principles and methods of organized crime, while those who became the biggest and best organized forms of organized crime, namely, banker dominated governments, also necessarily became most dishonest about themselves, and yet, their bullshit social stories continue to dominate the public schools, and mainstream mass media, as well as the publicly significant controlled "opposition" groups.

Political economy is INSIDE human ecology, and therefore, the greatest systematic risks are to be found in the tragic trajectory of human ecologies which are almost totally buried under maximized maliciousness. "Public debates" about the human death control systems are based on previously having being as deceitful and treacherous as possible regarding those topics. The most extreme forms of that manifest as the ways that money is measurement backed by murder. Of course, that the debt controls are backed by the death controls are issues which are generally not publicly admitted nor addressed.

Global Neolithic Civilization has become almost totally based on being able to enforce frauds, in ways which have become about exponentially more fraudulent, as the vicious feedback loops which enable that to happen automatically reinforce themselves to get worse, faster. The almost total triumph of enforced frauds has resulted in social "realities" which are becoming exponentially more insane, since the social successfulness of enforced frauds requires the most people do not understand that, because they have been conditioned to not want to understand that. Rather, almost everyone takes for granted deliberately ignoring and misunderstanding the laws of nature in the most absurdly backward ways possible, because of the long history of successful warfare based on deceits and treacheries becoming the more recent history of successful finance based on enforcing frauds, despite that tragic trajectory of vicious feedback loops resulting in about exponentially increasing overall fraudulence.

Various superficially correct analyses, such as the one in the article above, are typical of the content on Zero Hedge , which does not come remotely close to recognizing the degree to which the dominate natural languages and philosophy of science have undergone series of compromises with the biggest bullies' bullshit-based world views, which became the banksters' bullshit about economics. Although it is theoretically possible for human beings to better understand themselves and Civilization, it continues to become more and more politically impossible to do so, due to the ever increasing vicious feedback loops of enforced frauds achieving symbolic robberies ...

Although the laws of nature are never going to stop working, it is barely possible to exaggerate the degree to which Civilization overall is becoming about exponentially more psychotic, due to the social "realities" based on successfully enforcing frauds becoming more and more out of touch with the surrounding, relatively objective, physical and biological facts. The various superficially correct analyses presented on Zero Hedge regarding that kind of runaway collective psychosis, driven by the vicious feedback loops of the funding of all aspects of the funding of the political processes, tend to always grossly understate the seriousness of that situation, especially including the crucial issues of how to operate the human murder systems after the development of weapons of mass destruction, which is unavoidable due to the rapid development of globalized electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic weapons.

Those who believe that possessing precious metals, or cryptocurrencies, etc., are viable solutions to those problems are not remotely close to being in the right order of magnitude. Although there is no doubt that exponentially more "money" is being made out of nothing as debts, in order to "pay" for strip-mining the natural resources of a still relatively fresh planet, and so, there is no doubt that the exponentially decreasing value of that "money" is driving the accumulation of apparent anomalies, such as outlined in the article above, the actually crucial issues continue to be the ways that money is measurement backed by murder, as the most abstract ways that private property are claims backed by coercions. Stop-gap individual responses to the runaway fraudulence, such as faith in possessing precious metals or cryptocurrencies, make some relative sense in terms of the public "money" supplies becoming exponentially more fraudulent, but otherwise dismally fail to be in the ball park of the significant issues driven by prodigious progress in physical sciences, WITHOUT any genuine progress in political sciences, other than to continue to be able to better enforce bigger frauds, through the elaborations of oxymoronic scientific dictatorships, which adamantly refuse to become more genuinely scientific about themselves.

Primates with about exponentially increasing physical technologies continue to deliberately ignore and misunderstand themselves as much as is humanly possible, due to the history of warfare making and maintaining the currently existing political economy, whose maliciousness is manifesting through runaway vicious feedback loops, whereby the excessively successful control of Civilization through applications of the methods of organized crime are resulting in that Civilization manifesting runaway criminal insanities. Indeed, in that context, where there is almost nothing but the central core of triumphant organized crime, namely bankster dominated governments, surrounded by various layers of controlled "opposition" groups, which stay within the same bullshit-based frames of reference regarding those phenomena, the overall situation is that society becoming about exponentially sicker and insane.

That Civilization has been driven by natural selection pressures to manifest runaway psychoses is not going to stop the laws of nature from continuing to work through that Civilization. However, that will nevertheless drive the currently dominate artificial selection systems to become increasingly psychotic, in ways whereby their vicious feedback loops are less and less able to be sanely responded to ... Although some human beings have better and better understood some general energy systems, e.g., electric and atomic energy, etc., since warfare was the oldest and best developed forms of social science and engineering, whose successfulness was based on being able to maximize maliciousness, and since those then enabled successful finance to become based on runaway enforced frauds, human beings living within Globalized Neolithic Civilization are so hidebound by adapting to living inside those vicious feedback loops based on being able to enforce frauds that those human beings are mostly unwilling and unable to better understand themselves as also manifestations of general energy systems.

As the report, embedded in the article, begins by quoting Leonardo da Vinci:

"Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else."

In general, "Asset Managers" are stuck inside taking for granted that everything they do has become almost totally based on being able to enforce frauds, despite some of them noticing the increasingly blatant ways that there are accumulating apparent anomalies in those systems, as vicious feedback loops drive those systems to become about exponentially more fraudulent, and therefore increasingly unbalanced. To come to better terms with those apparent anomalies requires going through series of intellectual scientific revolutions and profound paradigm shifts, which overall become ways that human beings better understand themselves as manifestations of general energy systems. However, since doing so requires recognizing how and why governments are necessarily the biggest forms of organized crime, dominated by the best organized gangsters, the banksters, it continues to be politically impossible to accomplish that.

Muppet , Nov 22, 2017 7:03 PM

At each open, algos compute the increase in their AUM from the prior day and their margin reach. They then begin buying. All algos do this. Buying whenever cash/margin exists; selling whenever profit targets exist. On pullbacks, the algos withdraw, volume evaporates, minimizing the drop. The algos collectively increase equity prices without consideration of the value of the money involved. Not valuations. No fundamentals. Just ones and zeroes. Just a program.

[Nov 29, 2017] Attack on Sanders Economic Plan By Former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisors Irresponsible

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Well, again, what he was doing was running a program of a certain scale, of a large scale, through a set of standard macroeconomic assumptions. And that, again, is a reasonable exercise. If you ask me what my personal view is, I've written a whole book called The End of Normal in which I lay out reasons for my chronic pessimism about the capacity of the world economy to absorb a great deal more rapid economic growth. ..."
"... But that's not in the standard models, and it would not be appropriate to layer that on to a forecast of this kind. What Friedman was criticized for was not for putting his thumb on the scale, but for failing to put his thumb on the scale. In fact, that was the reasonable thing to do ..."
"... So what we had here was a, what was essentially an academic exercise that produced a result that was highly favorable to the Sanders position, and showed that if you did an ambitious program you would get a strong growth response. It's reasonable, certainly, for the first three or four years that that would transpire in practice. And what happened was that people who didn't like that result politically jumped on it in a way which was, frankly speaking, professionally irresponsible, in my view. It was designed to convey the impression, which it succeeded in doing for a brief while through the broad media, that this was not a reputable exercise, and that there were responsible people on one side of the debate, and irresponsible people on the other. ..."
"... The true nature of Capitalism has obviously been forgotten over time. Today we think it brings prosperity to all, but that was certainly never the intention. Today's raw Capitalism is showing its true nature with ever rising inequality. Capitalism is essentially the same as every other social system since the dawn of civilization. The lower and middle classes do all the work and the upper, leisure Class, live in the lap of luxury. The lower class does the manual work; the middle class does the administrative and managerial work and the upper, leisure, class live a life of luxury and leisure. ..."
"... The nature of the Leisure Class, to which the benefits of every system accrue, was studied over 100 years ago. "The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions", by Thorstein Veblen. (The Wikipedia entry gives a good insight. It was written a long time ago but much of it is as true today as it was then. This is the source of the term conspicuous consumption.) We still have our leisure class in the UK, the Aristocracy, and they have been doing very little for centuries. The UK's aristocracy has seen social systems come and go, but they all provide a life of luxury and leisure and with someone else doing all the work. ..."
"... Feudalism – exploit the masses through land ownership. Capitalism – exploit the masses through wealth (Capital) ..."
"... Now the competition has gone, the US middle class is being wiped out. The US is going third world, with just rich and poor and no middle class. Raw Capitalism can only return Capitalism to its true state where there is little demand and those at the bottom live a life of bare subsistence. ..."
"... "The Marxian capitalist has infinite shrewdness and cunning on everything except matters pertaining to his own ultimate survival. On these, he is not subject to education. He continues wilfully and reliably down the path to his own destruction" ..."
"... "We came, we saw, he died" rinse and repeat for 5,000 years. ..."
"... By the 1920s, mass production techniques had improved to such an extent that relatively wealthy consumers were required to purchase all the output the system could produce and extensive advertising was required to manufacture demand for the chronic over-supply the Capitalist system could produce. ..."
"... They knew that if wealth concentrated too much there would not be enough demand. ..."
"... Fiscal conservatism, which champions a balanced budget and expenditure restraints, is often hailed as a politico-economic philosophy as well as a policy of financial responsibility. In practice, it has been used as an argument against free spending by governments which can lead to high levels of debt and inflation. It has not been a positive philosophy which advocates the pro-growth and stability benefits coming from balanced budgets. Rather, it is a negative one – reacting against excessive spending and its consequences. This is probably why modern examples of fiscal conservatism in the United States and the United Kingdom have not led to sustainable growth or a significant reduction in public debt. Instead, in the case of the Ronald Reagan era in the US in the 1980s, public debt soared as fiscal conservatism and other policies were abandoned. ..."
"... Galbraith is probably my favorite economist, and eminently reasonable here. It makes me think that Sanders should have used him, or someone like him as an adviser/in house economist, rather than relying on external analyses like Friedman. ..."
"... Is the American public, trained/indoctrinated to think of the USG budget in terms of a household budget analogy, ready for MMT? ..."
"... To me, too many of the supposed (and actual) intellectuals and high level advisers were experts in rationalizing and explaining the chosen party views, but still employed the Cato Institute suggestion to use "Leninist" propaganda techniques as put forth in the 1996 Newt Gingrich/Frank Luntz GoPac memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control." ..."
"... Galbraith said casually about the thesis of his new book: This really is the new normal for capitalism – meaning low growth – because there is not much growth left. ..."
Mar 06, 2016 | naked capitalism

... ... ...

PERIES: James, the Council of Economic Advisors, they put out economic forecasts each year. And there has been some wildly optimistic ones. For example, if you look at the 2010 predictions for 2012 and 2013 they have not quite been attained. And one would say it was done in the interest of trying to make the administration that they were serving more impressive. But what accounts for this particular attack on Friedman's projection and other fellow economists?

GALBRAITH: This was a classic case of professional bad manners and rank-pulling. What we had here were four former chairs of the president's Council of Economic Advisors, and two from President Obama, two from President Clinton, who decided to use their big names and their titles in order to launch an attack on a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts who had written a paper evaluating the Sanders economic program.

It's likely that the four bigwigs thought that Professor Friedman was a Bernie Sanders supporter. In fact, as of that time he was a Hillary Clinton supporter and a modest donor to her campaign. What he had done was simply to write his evaluation of the economic effects of the ambitious Sanders reform program. The four former council chairs announced that on the basis of their deep commitment to rigor and objectivity, they had discovered that this forecast was unrealistic. And what I pointed out was that that claim was based on no evidence and no analysis whatsoever. And when you pressed down on it you found that it was simply based on the obvious fact that we haven't seen the kinds of growth rates that Professor Friedman's analysis suggested the Sanders program would produce. And for a very simple reason: the Sanders program is bigger. It's more ambitious than anything we've seen in recent years, so it's not surprising that when you put it through a model it generates a higher growth rate.

So that was the basic underlying facts, and these guys, two men and two women, announced that they, that it was a disreputable study, but failed to present any analysis that suggested they'd actually even read the paper before they denounced it. And that's what I pointed out in my counter letter, in a number of articles that have appeared since.

PERIES: James, so in your letter, how do you counter them? What methods did you use to come to your conclusions?

GALBRAITH: Well, I, no need to say anything beyond the fact that I had looked in their letter for the rigor that they were so proud of, for the objectivity and the analysis that they were so proud of, and I'd found that they had not done any. They had not made any such claim, not done any such work.

So that began to provoke a discussion. It's fair to say ultimately, without apologizing for effectively launching an ad hominem attack on an independent academic researcher, one of the former chairs, Christina Romer of President Obama's council, and her husband David Romer, a fellow economist, did produce a paper in which they spelled out their differences with the, with the Friedman paper. But that, again, raised another set of interesting issues which we've continued to discuss at various, various outlets of the press.

PERIES: Now, James Friedman's claim that the growth rate from Sanders' plan to be around 5.3 percent. And some economists, including Dean Baker at the Center for Economic Policy and Research, have claimed that this is unrealistic. What do you make of that?

GALBRAITH: Well, the question is whether it is an effect, let's say, a reasonable projection, of putting the Sanders program into an economic model. And the answer to that question, yes, Professor Friedman did a reasonable job. He spelled out what the underlying assumptions that he was using were. He spelled out the basic rules of thumb that macroeconomists had used for decades to assess the effects of an economic program. In this case, an expansionary economic program. And he ran them through his model and reported the results, a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Now, one can be skeptical. And I am, and Dean Baker is, lots of people are skeptical that the world would work out quite that way, because lots of things, in fact, happen which are not accounted for in a model. And we've talked, we've basically put together a list of things that you think might be problematic. But the exercise here was not to put everything into paper that might happen in the world. The exercise was to take the kind of bare bones that economists use to assess and to compare the consequences of alternative programs, and to ask what kind of results do you get out? And that's what, again, what Jerry Friedman did. It was a reasonable exercise, he came up with a reasonable answer, and he reported it.

PERIES: Now, Friedman seems to think that the rate of full employment in 1999 is attainable. However, many labor economists seem to think that the larger share of the elderly currently in society compared to 1999 explains some of the lack of labor participation, which creates a lower full employment ceiling that's contradicting Friedman's report. Your thoughts on that?

GALBRAITH: Well, I think it is a fact that the population is getting older. But as, I think, any economist would tell you, that when you offer jobs in the labor market, the first thing that happens is the people who are looking for work take those jobs. The second thing that happens is that people who might look for work when jobs were available start coming back into the labor market. And if that is not enough to fill the vacancies that you have, it's perfectly open to employers to raise their wages so as to bring more people in, or to increase the pace at which they innovate and substitute technology for labor so that they don't need the work.

So there's no real crisis involved in the situation if it turns out five years from now we're at 3.5 percent unemployment, and they were beginning to run short of labor. That's not a reason to, at this stage, say no, we're not going to engage in the exercise and run a more expansionary, vigorous reform program, a vigorous infrastructure project, a major reform of healthcare, a tuition-free public education program. All of those things, which were part of what Friedman put into his paper, should be done anyway. The fact that the labor market forecast might prove to have some different, the labor market might have different characteristics in five years' time is from our present point of view just a, it's an academic or a theoretical proposition, purely.

PERIES: And Friedman's paper, he looks at a ten-year forecast. Did you feel that when you looked at the specifics of that, including college, universal healthcare, infrastructure spending and of course, expanding Social Security and so on, that those categories and his predictions or projections, rather, made sense to you?

GALBRAITH: Well, again, what he was doing was running a program of a certain scale, of a large scale, through a set of standard macroeconomic assumptions. And that, again, is a reasonable exercise. If you ask me what my personal view is, I've written a whole book called The End of Normal in which I lay out reasons for my chronic pessimism about the capacity of the world economy to absorb a great deal more rapid economic growth.

But that's not in the standard models, and it would not be appropriate to layer that on to a forecast of this kind. What Friedman was criticized for was not for putting his thumb on the scale, but for failing to put his thumb on the scale. In fact, that was the reasonable thing to do.

On the contrary, and on the other side, when Christina and David Romer did put out their forecast, their own criticism of the Friedman paper, they concluded by asserting that if this program were tried, inflation would soar. So they there were making an allegation for which, again, they had no evidence and no plausible model, that in the world in which we presently live would produce that result.

So what we had here was a, what was essentially an academic exercise that produced a result that was highly favorable to the Sanders position, and showed that if you did an ambitious program you would get a strong growth response. It's reasonable, certainly, for the first three or four years that that would transpire in practice. And what happened was that people who didn't like that result politically jumped on it in a way which was, frankly speaking, professionally irresponsible, in my view. It was designed to convey the impression, which it succeeded in doing for a brief while through the broad media, that this was not a reputable exercise, and that there were responsible people on one side of the debate, and irresponsible people on the other.

And that was, again, something that–an impression that could be conveyed through the mass media, but would not withstand scrutiny, and didn't withstand scrutiny, once a few of us stood up and started saying, okay, where's your evidence, on what are you basing this argument? And revealed the point, which the Romers implicitly conceded, and I give them credit for that, that in order to criticize a fellow economist you need to do some work.

... ... ...

Keith , March 6, 2016 at 4:45 am

The true nature of Capitalism has obviously been forgotten over time. Today we think it brings prosperity to all, but that was certainly never the intention. Today's raw Capitalism is showing its true nature with ever rising inequality. Capitalism is essentially the same as every other social system since the dawn of civilization. The lower and middle classes do all the work and the upper, leisure Class, live in the lap of luxury. The lower class does the manual work; the middle class does the administrative and managerial work and the upper, leisure, class live a life of luxury and leisure.

The nature of the Leisure Class, to which the benefits of every system accrue, was studied over 100 years ago. "The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions", by Thorstein Veblen. (The Wikipedia entry gives a good insight. It was written a long time ago but much of it is as true today as it was then. This is the source of the term conspicuous consumption.) We still have our leisure class in the UK, the Aristocracy, and they have been doing very little for centuries. The UK's aristocracy has seen social systems come and go, but they all provide a life of luxury and leisure and with someone else doing all the work.

Feudalism – exploit the masses through land ownership. Capitalism – exploit the masses through wealth (Capital)

Today this is done through the parasitic, rentier trickle up of Capitalism:

a) Those with excess capital invest it and collect interest, dividends and rent.
b) Those with insufficient capital borrow money and pay interest and rent.

All this was much easier to see in Capitalism's earlier days.

Malthus and Ricardo never saw those at the bottom rising out of a bare subsistence living. This was the way it had always been and always would be, the benefits of the system only accrue to those at the top.

It was very obvious to Adam Smith:

"The Labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers."

Like most classical economists he differentiated between "earned" and "unearned" wealth and noted how the wealthy maintained themselves in idleness and luxury via "unearned", rentier income from their land and capital.

We can no longer see the difference between the productive side of the economy and the unproductive, parasitic, rentier side. This is probably why inequality is rising so fast, the mechanisms by which the system looks after those at the top are now hidden from us.

In the 19th Century things were still very obvious.

1) Those at the top were very wealthy
2) Those lower down lived in grinding poverty, paid just enough to keep them alive to work with as little time off as possible.
3) Slavery
4) Child Labour

Immense wealth at the top with nothing trickling down, just like today.

This is what Capitalism maximized for profit looks like. Labour costs are reduced to the absolute minimum to maximise profit. The beginnings of regulation to deal with the wealthy UK businessman seeking to maximise profit, the abolition of slavery and child labour. The function of the system is still laid bare. The lower class does the manual work; the middle class does the administrative and managerial work and the upper, leisure, class live a life of luxury and leisure. The majority only got a larger slice of the pie through organised Labour movements.

By the 1920s, mass production techniques had improved to such an extent that relatively wealthy consumers were required to purchase all the output the system could produce and extensive advertising was required to manufacture demand for the chronic over-supply the Capitalist system could produce. They knew that if wealth concentrated too much there would not be enough demand. In the 1950s, when Capitalism had healthy competition, it was essential that the Capitalist system could demonstrate that it was better than the competition. The US was able to demonstrate the superior lifestyle it offered to its average citizens.

Now the competition has gone, the US middle class is being wiped out. The US is going third world, with just rich and poor and no middle class. Raw Capitalism can only return Capitalism to its true state where there is little demand and those at the bottom live a life of bare subsistence.

When you realise the true nature of Capitalism, you know why some kind of redistribution is necessary and strong progressive taxation is the only way a consumer society can ever be kept functioning.

A good quote from John Kenneth Galbraith's book "The Affluent Society", which in turn comes from Marx.

"The Marxian capitalist has infinite shrewdness and cunning on everything except matters pertaining to his own ultimate survival. On these, he is not subject to education. He continues wilfully and reliably down the path to his own destruction"

Marx made some mistakes but he got quite a lot right.

Keith , March 6, 2016 at 6:29 am

Thanks to Michael Hudson, whose ideas anyone will recognise who has read his book.

"Killing the Host"

If you haven't read it, do so immediately.

Keith , March 6, 2016 at 1:11 pm

Perhaps, Western civilization had already cultivated and concentrated psychopathic personality traits in its elite before Capitalism ever begun. Early European history is an endless procession of wars at home and abroad as the elite took their wealth by force and the masses were kept in check by force whenever necessary.

No peaceful group could ever survive this relentless onslaught of millennia. This psychopathic elite then took their warlike ways to every corner of the earth. The wealthy elite from this era then became the wealthy elite of the next Capitalist era. Even today their bloodlust cannot be sated as they look to control a global empire.

Keith , March 6, 2016 at 1:17 pm

"We came, we saw, he died" rinse and repeat for 5,000 years.

Vatch , March 6, 2016 at 5:00 pm

Certainly countless hundreds of peaceful, responsible, inclusive, open, empathetic indigenous societies have been co-opted/overthrown by the western model.

Yes, but it's not just the western model that overthrows peaceful societies. The empires of China, the Japanese monarchies, the empires of India (together with a cringeworthy caste system), the human sacrificing Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas, all prove that tyranny is not a western invention.

When a local population becomes too large to be supported by simple egalitarian hunting and gathering, something else is required. That something is agriculture, and almost inevitably, the organization, specialization, and partial urbanization required by large scale agricultural society leads to exploitation and tyranny. This is seen in the earliest societies for which we have a written record, Sumer and Egypt.

Jim Young , March 6, 2016 at 12:27 pm

Thanks for the explanations of Veblen and Galbraith, which I find enduring basics over more than 100 years of speculation, real investment, and the best way to keep consumer society healthy.

My unschooled, simple, way to measure the health of an economy is in the Velocity of Money in the real economy of useful products and services. It appears to be very far below where it was when we did our best, and lower than when we first started measuring it near the beginning of the Great Depression.

Clive , March 6, 2016 at 12:37 pm

Or, pictorially illustrated .

I'm thinking of having my Christmas Cards printed with it on the front this year.

Keith , March 6, 2016 at 1:58 pm

In addition ..

By the 1920s, mass production techniques had improved to such an extent that relatively wealthy consumers were required to purchase all the output the system could produce and extensive advertising was required to manufacture demand for the chronic over-supply the Capitalist system could produce.

They knew that if wealth concentrated too much there would not be enough demand.

Of course the Capitalists could never find it in themselves to raise wages and it took the New Deal and Keynesian thinking to usher in the consumer society.

For The Win , March 6, 2016 at 5:46 am

Colonialism and fiscal conservatism

Fiscal conservatism, which champions a balanced budget and expenditure restraints, is often hailed as a politico-economic philosophy as well as a policy of financial responsibility. In practice, it has been used as an argument against free spending by governments which can lead to high levels of debt and inflation. It has not been a positive philosophy which advocates the pro-growth and stability benefits coming from balanced budgets. Rather, it is a negative one – reacting against excessive spending and its consequences. This is probably why modern examples of fiscal conservatism in the United States and the United Kingdom have not led to sustainable growth or a significant reduction in public debt. Instead, in the case of the Ronald Reagan era in the US in the 1980s, public debt soared as fiscal conservatism and other policies were abandoned.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell , March 6, 2016 at 2:08 pm

A Monetarily Sovereign government does not need to reduce debt. In the U.S. (which is Monetarily Sovereign) federal so-called "debt" is actually the total of deposits in T-security accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank. In short, "debt" is bank deposits.

Why anyone would want to reduce the size of deposits at the world's safest bank is a mystery to me - other than the misleading use of the word "debt."

While all bank accounts are, in fact, debt of banks, most banks boast about the size of their depositors' accounts.

Contrary to popular myth, federal debt (i.e. deposits at the FRB) does not lead to inflation. America's "debt" has grown more than 9,000% in the past 75 years, and the Fed is struggling to create inflation.

mpr , March 6, 2016 at 9:12 am

Galbraith is probably my favorite economist, and eminently reasonable here. It makes me think that Sanders should have used him, or someone like him as an adviser/in house economist, rather than relying on external analyses like Friedman. It would possibly have given his program more gravitas – first amongst elites, and then more generally. At least it would have had a chance of changing the broader discussion. Whether you agree with it or not, right now the general MSM reporting on the Sanders plan is that it doesn't add up.

diptherio , March 6, 2016 at 9:57 am

I want to know why he hasn't been prominently featuring Prof. Kelton and her economic policy prescriptions. What's up with that?

John Zelnicker , March 6, 2016 at 10:25 am

This is speculative, but since Prof. Kelton is actually the economist for the Minority (the Democrats) of the Senate Banking committee, there may be reasons of protocol that Sanders isn't using her policy ideas at the moment.

Another possibility is that trying to introduce a new economic paradigm while running for the nomination may be a bridge too far. If Sanders tried to explain to people that taxes don't fund federal spending, etc., heads would explode.

I'm also not sure how one would use Prof. Kelton's ideas without bringing in a whole bunch of MMT concepts. Maybe if Sanders wins the nomination he can begin to bring some of these ideas into the conversation.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell , March 6, 2016 at 2:19 pm

He won't use her ideas simple because the American voter in not yet amenable to the facts of Monetary Sovereignty .

Try explaining even to your best friend that:

1. Unlike state and local taxes, Federal taxes do not fund federal spending.
2. Even if FICA were eliminated, Social Security and Medicare benefits dramatically could (and should) be increased. There are no federal "trust funds."
3. Federal deficits are necessary for economic growth
4. Federal "debt" is nothing more than deposits in T-security accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank.
5. America never has had, and is absolutely in no danger of, hyper-inflation.

Perhaps, if Bernie wins the election, he will be freer to educate the masses, as well as the economics community, but meanwhile he has to claim the popular myth that federal spending has to be "paid for" by taxes.

Kurt Sperry , March 6, 2016 at 11:48 am

Is the American public, trained/indoctrinated to think of the USG budget in terms of a household budget analogy, ready for MMT? I think it's politically OK to use MMT informed policies–"deficits don't matter"–as the Republicans have, but not OK to openly acknowledge doing so. MMT runs head on into bedrock beliefs like the protestant moral virtues of thrift and fiscal responsibility. People cling to this stuff as tightly as they cling to their religion and guns.

MaroonBulldog , March 6, 2016 at 1:00 pm

MMT is a volatile, explosive doctrine. Tell an ordinary off-the-street taxpayer that Federal taxes don't fund Federal expenditures, that Federal taxes destroy the money they collect and so keep inflation at desired levels, and ready yourself to answer this:

"If I'm just paying taxes so the money can be burned, why should I pay taxes? What good does paying taxes for that do me, or people like me?"

And be prepared not to have your answer heard, comprehended, or accepted, after it is given.

It could lead directly and quickly to the end of a system of tax collection based on voluntary compliance. It could ignite a revolution.

MMT is an unpopular doctrine. Whether it is the true theory, or a truer theory than others, of the state of the world–is not the point.

Yves Smith Post author , March 6, 2016 at 3:01 pm

She can't. She's his staffer (on the Senate Budget Committee) so she is now allowed to work on the campaign. It would be a big ethics violation and would produce a scandal. Staffers cannot work on any of their bosses campaigns, including re-elections. Remember, they are government employees, not on Sanders' personal payroll.

Jim Young , March 6, 2016 at 11:56 am

My old party has worked hard to try discredit James Galbraith. I was faced with some ridicule from a Bush era international negotiator for trying to read "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too" in an airport waiting area.

To me, too many of the supposed (and actual) intellectuals and high level advisers were experts in rationalizing and explaining the chosen party views, but still employed the Cato Institute suggestion to use "Leninist" propaganda techniques as put forth in the 1996 Newt Gingrich/Frank Luntz GoPac memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control."

I don't oppose them (at that level) expressing their well thought out views, even using the "persuasive" techniques described in the document at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4443.htm but I do fault them for trying to prevent people from freely exploring far more comprehensive information and views.

We left the party ancestors had founded and stayed loyal to for 5 generations, though, because of the lower level dirty tricksters ("opposition researchers") that wanted us to corrupt the processes as one fund raiser told me, "We have to fight dirtier than Democrats."

Galbraith is a voice that must be listened to, just as there may be many others that we should be able to listen to (as I assume we could have under the old "Fairness Doctrine" before the corporate take over of almost all fully accessible media).

susan the other , March 6, 2016 at 11:49 am

stg Galbraith said casually about the thesis of his new book: This really is the new normal for capitalism – meaning low growth – because there is not much growth left. So maybe we are headed for a no growth world in which stability and sustainability dictate enterprise which is used to maintain a steady state – so that sounds more socialist than capitalist out of necessity. I believe this is our future too. And I think I understand Varoufakis' and Galbraith's "modest proposal" in a clearer light because growth must be used going forward not willy-nilly, but to achieve our ends. And also too – a while back the link that effectively said we had it backwards when we assume that capitalism supports socialism – because capitalism in reality lives off and is only possible under sufficient socialism. And it seems the 4 presidential advisors are more out to lunch than their letter showed.

jack , March 6, 2016 at 1:09 pm

As somebody asked above, I am still left wondering where Justin Wolfer's NYTimes piece fits into all this?

Detroit Dan , March 6, 2016 at 4:49 pm

Can't respond to all the nonsense. I just read Wolfer's piece and it seems to miss the point (as with the Romers), as noted in the following 2 articles. I especially recommend the 2nd one from John Cassidy in the New Yorker.

Friedman-Response-to-the-Romers
Bernie Sanders and the Case for a New Economic-Stimulus Package

Bernard , March 6, 2016 at 1:22 pm

as usual, i hear a lot "they" failed conservatism, never, Conservatism is just the age old avenue to "scam" the other. Bush "failed" at conservatism, i.e., it was Bush's fault not the ideology of Conservatism. on and on, this self repeated/reinforced "idea" that we have just not "found" the correct "application" of the ideal/reality that is Conservatism.

it does get old, too. all the people killed due to Conservatism and its' perpetrators. Greed, in other words, and the age old scam with "new and improved" tactics. These people have no concept of what "society" is, why we are all interrelated. to scam one is to scam us all. and these people are definitely not Christian in the "Jesus Christ" i've always heard about. Whatsoever you do unto the poor, you do unto me!

i just suppose psychopaths use any avenue for their "crimes." as i've heard, too, any great fortune is usually the result of a great crime.

somethings never change.

[Oct 10, 2017] The US Economy: Explaining Stagnation and Why It Will Persist by Thomas I. Palley

Highly recommended!
The paper is two years old. Looks how his prediction fared. Stagnation is still with us althouth low oil prices lifted all the boats. But this period is coming to the end.
Notable quotes:
"... The financial crisis that erupted in 2008 challenged the foundations of orthodox economic theory and policy. At its outset, orthodox economists were stunned into silence as evidenced by their inability to answer the Queen of England's simple question (November 5th, 2008) to the faculty of the London School of Economics as to why no one foresaw the crisis. ..."
"... Six years later, orthodoxy has fought back and largely succeeded in blocking change of thought and policy. The result has been economic stagnation ..."
"... Perspective # 3 is the progressive position which is rooted in Keynesian economics and can be labeled the "destruction of shared prosperity hypothesis" ..."
"... It is identified with the New Deal wing of the Democratic Party and the labor movement, but it has no standing within major economics departments owing to their suppression of alternatives to economic orthodoxy. ..."
"... However, financial excess is just an element of the crisis and the full explanation is far deeper than just financial market regulatory failure According to the Keynesian destruction of shared prosperity hypothesis, the deep cause is generalized economic policy failure rooted in the flawed neoliberal economic paradigm that was adopted in the late 1970s and early 1980s. ..."
"... globalization reconfigured global production by transferring manufacturing from the U.S. and Europe to emerging market economies. This new global division of labor was then supported by having U.S. consumers serve as the global economy's buyer of first and last resort, which explains the U.S. trade deficit and the global imbalances problem. ..."
"... This new global division of labor inevitably created large trade deficits that also contributed to weakening the aggregate demand (AD)generation process by causing a hemorrhage of spending on imports (Palley, 2015) ..."
"... Finance does this through three channels. First, financial markets have captured control of corporations via enforcement of the shareholder value maximization paradigm of corporate governance. Consequently, corporations now serve financial market interests along with the interests of top management. Second, financial markets in combination with corporations lobby politically for the neoliberal policy mix. ..."
"... Third, financial innovation has facilitated and promoted financial market control of corporations via hostile take-overs, leveraged buyouts and reverse capital distributions. Financial innovation has therefore been key for enforcing Wall Street's construction of the shareholder value maximization paradigm. ..."
"... The second vital role of finance is the support of AD. The neoliberal model gradually undermined the income and demand generation process, creating a growing structural demand gap. The role of finance was to fill that gap. Thus, within the U.S., deregulation, financial innovation, speculation, and mortgage lending fraud enabled finance to fill the demand gap by lending to consumers and by spurring asset price inflation ..."
"... this AD generation role of finance was an unintended consequence and not part of a grand plan. Neoliberal economists and policymakers did not realize they were creating a demand gap, but their laissez-faire economic ideology triggered financial market developments that coincidentally filled the demand gap. ..."
"... the financial process they unleashed was inevitably unstable and was always destined to hit the wall. There are limits to borrowing and limits to asset price inflation and all Ponzi schemes eventually fall apart. ..."
"... the long duration of financial excess made the collapse far deeper when it eventually happened. It has also made escaping the after-effects of the financial crisis far more difficult as the economy is now burdened by debts and destroyed credit worthiness. That has deepened the proclivity to economic stagnation. ..."
"... The neoliberal labor market flexibility agenda explicitly attacks unions and works to shift income to wealthier households. ..."
"... That model inevitably produces stagnation because it produces a structural demand shortage via (i) its impact on income distribution, and (ii) via its design of globalization which generates massive trade deficits, wage competition and off-shoring of jobs and investment. In terms of the three-way contest between the government failure hypothesis, the market failure hypothesis and the destruction of shared prosperity hypothesis, the economic policy debate during the Great Recession was cast as exclusively between government failure and market failure. ..."
"... This attitude to fiscal policy reflects the dominance within the Democratic Party of "Rubinomics", the Wall Street view associated with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, that government spending and budget deficits raise real interest rates and thereby lower growth. According to that view, the US needs long-term fiscal austerity to offset Social Security and Medicare Side-by-side with the attempt to reflate the economy, the Obama administration also pushed for major overhaul and tightening of financial sector regulation via the Dodd- Frank Act (2010). ..."
"... The Obama administration's softcore neoliberalism would have likely generated stagnation by itself, but the prospect has been further strengthened by Republicans. ..."
"... The Obama administration was to provide fiscal stimulus to jump start the economy; the Fed would use QE to blow air back into the asset price bubble; the Dodd-Frank Act (2010) would stabilize financial markets; and globalization would be deepened by further NAFTA-styled international agreements. This is a near-identical model to that which failed so disastrously. Consequently, stagnation is the logical prognosis. ..."
"... Consequently, the economy is destined to repeat the patterns of the 1990s and 2000s. However, the US economy has also experienced almost twenty more years of neoliberalism which has left its economic body in worse health than the 1990s. That means the likelihood of delivering another bubble-based boom is low and stagnation tendencies will likely reassert themselves after a shorter and weaker period of expansion ..."
Apr 10, 2015 | www.thomaspalley.com

Abstract

This paper examines the major competing interpretations of the economic crisis in the US and explains the rebound of neoliberal orthodoxy. It shows how US policymakers acted to stabilize and save the economy, but failed to change the underlying neoliberal economic policy model. That failure explains the emergence of stagnation, which is likely to endure

Current economic conditions in the US smack of the mid-1990s. The 1990s expansion proved unsustainable and so will the current modest expansion. However, this time it is unlikely to be followed by financial crisis because of the balance sheet cleaning that took place during the last crisis

Revised 1: This paper has been prepared for inclusion in Gallas, Herr, Hoffer and Scherrer (eds.), Combatting Inequality: The Global North and South , Rouledge, forthcoming in 2015.

The crisis and the resilience of neoliberal economic orthodoxy

The financial crisis that erupted in 2008 challenged the foundations of orthodox economic theory and policy. At its outset, orthodox economists were stunned into silence as evidenced by their inability to answer the Queen of England's simple question (November 5th, 2008) to the faculty of the London School of Economics as to why no one foresaw the crisis.

Six years later, orthodoxy has fought back and largely succeeded in blocking change of thought and policy. The result has been economic stagnation

This paper examines the major competing interpretations of the economic crisis in the US and explains the rebound of neoliberal orthodoxy. It shows how US policymakers acted to stabilize and save the economy, but failed to change the underlying neoliberal economic policy model.

That failure explains the emergence of stagnation in the US economy and stagnation is likely to endure.

Current economic conditions in the US smack of the mid-1990s. The 1990s expansion proved unsustainable and so will the current modest expansion. However, this time it is unlikely to be followed by financial crisis because of the balance sheet cleaning that took place during the last crisis.

Competing explanations of the crisis

The Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and includes the financial crisis of 2008, is the deepest economic downturn in the US since the World War II. The depth of the downturn is captured in Table 1 which shows the decline in GDP and the peak unemployment rate. The recession has the longest duration and the decline in GDP is the largest. The peak unemployment rate was slightly below the peak rate of the recession of 1981-82. However, this ignores the fact that the labor force participation rate fell in the Great Recession (i.e. people left the labor force and were not counted as unemployed) whereas it increased in the recession of 1981-82 (i.e. people entered the labor force and were counted as unemployed).

Table 1. Alternative measures of the depth of US recessions.

... ... ...

Table 2 provides data on the percent change in private sector employment from business cycle peak to trough. The 7.6 percent loss of private sector jobs in the Great Recession dwarfs other recessions, providing another measure of its depth and confirming it extreme nature. 2 Over the course of the 1981-82 labor force participation rose from 63.8 percent to 64.2 percent, thereby likely increasing the unemployment rate. In contrast, over the course of the Great Recession the labor force participation rate fell from 66.0 percent to 65.7 percent, thereby likely decreasing the unemployment. The decrease in the labor force participation rate was even sharper for prime age (25 – 54 years old) workers, indicating that the decrease in the overall participation rate was not due to demographic factors such as an aging population. Instead, it was due to lack of job opportunities, which supports the claim that labor force exit lowered the unemployment rate. Table 2. U.S. private employment cycles, peak to trough. Source: Bureau of labor statistics and author's calculations.

... ... ...

Broadly speaking there exist three competing perspectives on the crisis (Palley, 2012).

For the period 1945 - 1975 the U.S. economy was characterized by a "virtuous circle" Keynesian growth model built on full employment and wage growth tied to productivity growth. This model is illustrated in Figure 1 and its logic was as follows. Productivity growth drove wage growth, which in turn fuelled demand growth and created full employment. That provided an incentive for investment, which drove further productivity growth and supported higher wages. This model held in the U.S. and, subject to local modifications, it also held throughout the global economy - in Western Europe, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

Figure 1. The 1945 – 75 virtuous circle Keynesian growth model. Wage growth Demand growth Full employment Productivity growth Investment

After 1980 the virtuous circle Keynesian growth model was replaced by a neoliberal growth model. The reasons for the change are a complex mix of economic, political and sociological reasons that are beyond the scope of the current paper. The key changes wrought by the new model were:

  1. Abandonment of the commitment to full employment and the adoption of commitment to very low inflation;
  2. Severing of the link between wages and productivity growth.

Together, these changes created a new economic dynamic. Before 1980, wages were the engine of U.S. demand growth. After 1980, debt and asset price inflation became the engine The new economic model was rooted in neoliberal economic thought. Its principal effects were to weaken the position of workers; strengthen the position of corporations; and unleash financial markets to serve the interests of financial and business elites.

As illustrated in figure 2, the new model can be described as a neoliberal policy box that fences workers in and pressures them from all sides. On the left hand side, the corporate model of globalization put workers in international competition via global production networks that are supported by free trade agreements and capital mobility.

On the right hand side, the "small" government agenda attacked the legitimacy of government and pushed persistently for deregulation regardless of dangers. From below, the labor market flexibility agenda attacked unions and labor market supports such as the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, employment protections, and employee rights. From above, policymakers abandoned the commitment of full employment, a development that was reflected in the rise of inflation targeting and the move toward independent central banks influenced by financial interests.

Figure 2. The neoliberal policy box. Globalization WORKERS Abandonment of full employment Small Government Labor Market Flexibility

Corporate globalization is an especially key feature. Not only did it exert downward inward pressures on economies via import competition and the threat of job off-shoring, it also provided the architecture binding economies together. Thus, globalization reconfigured global production by transferring manufacturing from the U.S. and Europe to emerging market economies. This new global division of labor was then supported by having U.S. consumers serve as the global economy's buyer of first and last resort, which explains the U.S. trade deficit and the global imbalances problem.

This new global division of labor inevitably created large trade deficits that also contributed to weakening the aggregate demand (AD)generation process by causing a hemorrhage of spending on imports (Palley, 2015)

An important feature of the Keynesian hypothesis is that the neoliberal policy box was implemented on a global basis, in both the North and the South. As in the U.S., there was also a structural break in policy regime in both Europe and Latin America. In Latin America , the International Monetary Fund and World Bank played an important role as they used the economic distress created by the 1980s debt crisis to push neoliberal policy

They did so by making financial assistance conditional on adopting such policies. This global diffusion multiplied the impact of the turn to neoliberal economic policy and it explains why the Washington Consensus enforced by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank has been so significant. It also explains why stagnation has taken on a global dimension.

III The role of finance in the neoliberal model

Owing to the extraordinarily deep and damaging nature of the financial crisis of 2008, financial market excess has been a dominant focus of explanations of the Great Recession. Within the neoliberal government failure hypothesis the excess is attributed to ill-advised government intervention and Federal Reserve interest rate policy. Within the neoliberal market failure hypothesis it is attributed to ill-advised deregulation and failure to modernize regulation.

According to the Keynesian destruction of shared prosperity hypothesis neither of those interpretations grasps the true significance of finance. The government failure hypothesis is empirically unsupportable (Palley, 2012a, chapter 6), while the market failure hypothesis has some truth but also misses the true role of finance That role is illustrated in Figure 3 which shows that finance performed two roles in the neoliberal model. The first was to structurally support the neoliberal policy box. The second was to support the AD generation process. These dual roles are central to the process of increasing financial domination of the economy which has been termed financialization (Epstein, 2004, p.3; Krippner, 2004, 2005; Palley, 2013). Figure 3. The role of finance in the neoliberal model. The role of finance: "financialization" Supporting the neoliberal policy box Aggregate demand generation Corporate behavior Economic policy Financial innovation The policy box shown in Figure 2 has four sides.

A true box has six sides and a four sided structure would be prone to structural weakness.

Metaphorically speaking, one role of finance is to provide support on two sides of the neoliberal policy box, as illustrated in Figure 4.

Finance does this through three channels. First, financial markets have captured control of corporations via enforcement of the shareholder value maximization paradigm of corporate governance. Consequently, corporations now serve financial market interests along with the interests of top management. Second, financial markets in combination with corporations lobby politically for the neoliberal policy mix.

The combination of changed corporate behavior and economic policy produces an economic matrix that puts wages under continuous pressure and raises income inequality.

Third, financial innovation has facilitated and promoted financial market control of corporations via hostile take-overs, leveraged buyouts and reverse capital distributions. Financial innovation has therefore been key for enforcing Wall Street's construction of the shareholder value maximization paradigm.

Figure 4. Lifting the lid on the neoliberal policy box. The neoliberal box Corporations Financial markets

The second vital role of finance is the support of AD. The neoliberal model gradually undermined the income and demand generation process, creating a growing structural demand gap. The role of finance was to fill that gap. Thus, within the U.S., deregulation, financial innovation, speculation, and mortgage lending fraud enabled finance to fill the demand gap by lending to consumers and by spurring asset price inflation

Financialization assisted with this process by changing credit market practices and introducing new credit instruments that made credit more easily and widely available to corporations and households. U.S. consumers in turn filled the global demand gap, along with help from U.S. and European corporations who were shifting manufacturing facilities and investment to the emerging market economies.

Three things should be emphasized.

  1. First, this AD generation role of finance was an unintended consequence and not part of a grand plan. Neoliberal economists and policymakers did not realize they were creating a demand gap, but their laissez-faire economic ideology triggered financial market developments that coincidentally filled the demand gap.
  2. Second, the financial process they unleashed was inevitably unstable and was always destined to hit the wall. There are limits to borrowing and limits to asset price inflation and all Ponzi schemes eventually fall apart. The problem is it is impossible to predict when they will fail. All that can be known with confidence is that it will eventually fail.
  3. Third, the process went on far longer than anyone expected, which explains why critics of neoliberalism sounded like Cassandras (Palley, 1998, Chapter 12). However, the long duration of financial excess made the collapse far deeper when it eventually happened. It has also made escaping the after-effects of the financial crisis far more difficult as the economy is now burdened by debts and destroyed credit worthiness. That has deepened the proclivity to economic stagnation.
IV Evidence

Evidence regarding the economic effects of the neoliberal model is plentiful and clear Figure 5 shows productivity and average hourly compensation of non-supervisory workers (that is non-managerial employees who are about 80 percent of the workforce). The link with productivity growth was severed almost 40 years ago and hourly compensation has been essentially stagnant since then.

Figure 5.

... ... ...

Table 3 shows data on the distribution of income growth by business cycle expansion across the wealthiest top 10 percent and bottom 90 percent of households. Over the past sixty years there has been a persistent decline in the share of income gains going to the bottom 90 percent of households ranked by wealth. However, in the period 1948 – 1979 the decline was gradual. After 1980 there is a massive structural break and the share of income gains going to the bottom 90 percent collapses. Before 1980, on average the bottom 90 percent received 66 percent of business cycle expansion income gains. After 1980, on average they receive just 8 percent.

Table 3. Distribution of income growth by business cycle expansion across the wealthiest top 10 percent and bottom 90 percent of households. Source: Tcherneva (2014), published in The New York Times , September 26, 2014. '49- '53 '54- '57 '59- '60 '61- '69 '70- '73 '75- '79 '82- '90 '91- '00 '01- '07 '09- '12 Average Pre-1908 Average Post-1980 Top 10% 20% 28 32 33 43 45 80 73 98 116 34% 92% Bottom 90% 80% 72 68 67 57 55 20 27 2 -16 66% 8%

Figure 6 shows the share of total pre-tax income of the top one percent of households ranked by wealth. From the mid-1930s, with the implementation of the New Deal social contract, that share fell from a high of 23.94 percent in 1928 to a low of 8.95 percent in 1978. Thereafter it has steadily risen, reaching 23.5 percent in 2007 which marked the beginning of the Great Recession. It then fell during the Great Recession owing to a recession-induced fall in profits, but has since recovered most of that decline as income distribution has worsened again during the economic recovery. In effect, during the neoliberal era the US economy has retraced its steps, reversing the improvements achieved by the New Deal and post-World War II prosperity, so that the top one percent's share of pre-tax income has returned to pre-Great Depression levels.

Figure 6. US pre-tax income share of top 1 percent. Source: http://inequality.org/income-inequality/. Original source: Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez (2003), updated at http://emlab.edu/users/saez.

As argued in Palley (2012a, p. 150-151) there is close relationship between union membership density (i.e. percent of employed workers that are unionized) and income distribution. This is clearly shown in Figure 7 which shows union density and the share of pre-tax income going to the top ten percent of wealthiest households. The neoliberal labor market flexibility agenda explicitly attacks unions and works to shift income to wealthier households.

Share of income going to the top 10 percent 2013: 47.0% Union membership density 11.2% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 1917 1923 1929 1935 1941 1947 1953 1959 1965 1971 1977 1983 1989 1995 2001 2007 2013 Source: Data on union density follows the composite series found in Historical Statistics of the United States; updated to 2013 from unionstats.com. Income inequality (share of income to top 10%) from Piketty and Saez,

"Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998, Quarterly Journal of Economics , 118(1), 2003, 1-39. Updated Figure 7. Union membership and the share of income going to the top ten percent of wealthiest households, 1917 – 2013. Source: Mishel, Gould and Bivens (2015). Table 4 provides data on the evolution of the U.S. goods and services trade balance as a share of GDP by business cycle peak. Comparison across peaks controls for the effect of the business cycle. The data show through to the late 1970s U.S. trade was roughly in balance, but after 1980 it swung to massive deficit and the deficits increased each business cycle. These deficits were the inevitable product of the neoliberal model of globalization (Palley, 2015) and they undermined the AD generation process in accordance with the Keynesian hypothesis.

Table 4. The U.S. goods & services trade deficit/surplus by business cycle peaks, 1960 – 2007. Sources: Economic Report of the President, 2009 and author's calculations. Business cycle peak year Trade balance ($ millions) GDP ($ billions) Trade balance/ GDP (%) 1960 3,508 526.4 0.7 1969 91 984.6 0.0 1973 1,900 1,382.7 0.1 1980 -25,500 2,789.5 -0.9 1981 -28,023 3,128.4 -0.9 1990 -111,037 5,803.1 -1.9 2001 -429,519 10,128.0 -4.2 2007 -819,373 13,807.5 -5.9

Finally, Figure 8 shows total domestic debt relative to GDP and growth. This Figure is highly supportive of the Keynesian interpretation of the role of finance. During the neoliberal era real GDP growth has actually slowed but debt growth has exploded. The reason is the neoliberal model did nothing to increase growth, but it needed faster debt growth to fill the demand gap created by the model's worsening of income distribution and creation of large trade deficits. Debt growth supported debt-financed consumer spending and it supported asset price inflation that enabled borrowing which filled the demand gap caused by the neoliberal model. Figure 8. Total domestic debt and growth (1952-2007). Source: Grantham, 2010.

V The debate about the causes of the crisis: why it matters

The importance of the debate about the causes of the crisis is that each perspective recommends its own different policy response. For hardcore neoliberal government failure proponents the recommended policy response is to double-down on the policies described by the neoliberal policy box and further deregulate markets; to deepen central bank independence and the commitment to low inflation via strict rules based monetary policy; and to further shrink government and impose fiscal austerity to deal with increased government debt produced by the crisis For softcore neoliberal market failure proponents the recommended policy response is to tighten financial regulation but continue with all other aspects of the existing neoliberal policy paradigm. That means continued support for corporate globalization, socalled labor market flexibility, low inflation targeting, and fiscal austerity in the long term. Additionally, there is need for temporary large-scale fiscal and monetary stimulus to combat the deep recession caused by the financial crisis.

However, once the economy has recovered, policy should continue with the neoliberal model For proponents of the destruction of shared prosperity hypothesis the policy response is fundamentally different. The fundamental need is to overthrow the neoliberal paradigm and replace it with a "structural Keynesian" paradigm. That involves repacking the policy box as illustrated in Figure 9.

The critical step is to take workers out of the box and put corporations and financial markets in so that they are made to serve a broader public interest. The key elements are to replace corporate globalization with managed globalization that blocks race to the bottom trade dynamics and stabilizes global financial markets; restore a commitment to full employment; replace the neoliberal anti-government agenda with a social democratic government agenda; and replace the neoliberal labor market flexibility with a solidarity based labor market agenda.

The goals are restoration of full employment and restoration of a solid link between wage and productivity growth.

Figure 9. The structural Keynesian box Corporations & Managed Financial Markets Globalization Full Employment Social Democratic Government Solidarity Labor Markets

Lastly, since the neoliberal model was adopted as part of a new global economic order, there is also need to recalibrate the global economy. This is where the issue of "global rebalancing" enters and emerging market economies need to shift away from export-led growth strategies to domestic demand-led strategies. That poses huge challenges for many emerging market economies because they have configured their growth strategies around export-led growth whereby they sell to U.S. consumers.

VI From crisis to stagnation: the failure to change

Massive policy interventions, unequalled in the post-war era, stopped the Great Recession from spiraling into a second Great Depression. The domestic economic interventions included the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that bailed out the financial sector via government purchases of assets and equity from financial institutions; the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) that provided approximately $800 billion of fiscal stimulus, consisting of approximately $550 billion of government spending and $250 billion of tax cuts; the Federal Reserve lowering its interest target to near-zero (0 - 0.25 percent); and the Federal Reserve engaging in quantitative easing (QE) transactions that involve it purchasing government and private sector securities. At the international level, in 2008 the Federal Reserve established a temporary $620 billion foreign exchange (FX) swap facility with foreign central banks.

That facility provided the global economy with dollar balances, thereby preventing a dollar liquidity shortage from triggering a wave of global default on short-term dollar loans that the financial system was unwilling to roll-over because of panic.3

Additionally, there was unprecedented globally coordinated fiscal stimulus arranged via the G-20 mechanism. 3

The FX swaps with foreign central banks have been criticized as being a bail-out for foreign economies. In fact, they saved the US financial system which would have been pulled down by financial collapse outside

Despite their scale, these interventions did not stop the recession from being the deepest since 1945, and nor did they stop the onset of stagnation. Table 5 shows how GDP growth has failed to recover since the end of the Great Recession, averaging just 2.1 percent for the five year period from 2010 – 2014. Furthermore, that period includes the rebound year of 2010 when the economy rebounded from its massive slump owing to the extraordinary fiscal and monetary stimulus measures that were put in place

Table 5. U.S. GDP growth. Source: Statistical Annex of the European Union, Autumn 2014 and author's calculations.

The growth rate for 2014 is that estimated in October 2014.

1961 - 1970 1971 - 1980 1981 - 1990 1991 - 2000 2001 - 2007 2008 - 2009 2010 - 2014

4.2% 3.2% 3.3% 3.5% 2.5% -1.6% 2.1%

Table 6 shows employment creation in the five years after the end of recessions, which provides another window on stagnation. The job creation numbers show that the neoliberal model was already slowing in the 1990s with the first episode of "jobless the US.

Many foreign banks operating in the US had acquired US assets financed with short-term dollar borrowings. When the US money market froze in 2008 they could not roll-over these loans in accordance with normal practice. That threatened massive default by these banks within the US financial system, which would have pulled down the entire global financial system.

The Federal Reserve could not lend directly to these foreign banks and their governing central banks lacked adequate dollar liquidity to fill the financing gap. The solution was to lend dollars to foreign central banks, which then made dollar loans to foreign banks in need of dollar roll-over short-term financing. recovery".

It actually ground to stagnation in the 2001 – 2007 period, but this was masked by the house price bubble and the false prosperity it created. Stagnation has persisted after the Great Recession, but the economic distress caused by the recession has finally triggered awareness of stagnation among elites economists. In a sense, the Great Recession called out the obvious, just as did the little boy in the Hans Anderson story about the emperor's new suit

Table 6. U.S. private sector employment creation in the five year period after the end of recessions for six business cycles with extended expansions. Source: Bureau of labor statistics and author's calculations. * = January 1980 the beginning of the next recession Recession end date Employment at recession end date (millions) Employment five years later (millions) Percent growth in employment Feb 1961 45.0 52.2 16.0% Mar 1975 61.9 74.6* 20.5% Nov 1982 72.8 86.1 18.3% March 1991 90.1 99.5 10.4% Nov 2001 109.8 115.0 4.7% June 2009 108.4 117.1 8.0% The persistence of stagnation after the Great Recession raises the question "why"? The answer is policy has done nothing to change the structure of the underlying neoliberal economic model.

That model inevitably produces stagnation because it produces a structural demand shortage via (i) its impact on income distribution, and (ii) via its design of globalization which generates massive trade deficits, wage competition and off-shoring of jobs and investment. In terms of the three-way contest between the government failure hypothesis, the market failure hypothesis and the destruction of shared prosperity hypothesis, the economic policy debate during the Great Recession was cast as exclusively between government failure and market failure.

With the Democrats controlling the Congress and Presidency after the 2008 election, the market failure hypothesis won out and has framed policy since then. According to the hypothesis, the financial crisis caused an exceptionally deep recession that required exceptionally large monetary and fiscal stimulus to counter it and restore normalcy. Additionally, the market failure hypothesis recommends restoring and renovating financial regulation, but other than that the neoliberal paradigm is appropriate and should be deepened In accordance with this thinking, the in-coming Obama administration affirmed existing efforts to save the system and prevent a downward spiral by supporting the Bush administration's TARP, the Federal Reserve's first round of QE (November/December 2008) that provided market liquidity, and the Federal Reserve's FX swap agreement with foreign central banks

Thereafter, the Obama administration worked to reflate the economy via passage of the ARRA (2009) which provided significant fiscal stimulus. With the failure to deliver a V-shaped recovery, candidate Obama became even more vocal about fiscal stimulus However, reflecting its softcore neoliberal inclinations, the Obama administration then became much less so when it took office. Thus, the winners of the internal debate about fiscal policy in the first days of the Obama administration were those wanting more modest fiscal stimulus.4 Furthermore, its analytical frame was one of temporary stimulus with the 4 Since 2009 there has been some evolution of policy positions characterized by a shift to stronger support for fiscal stimulus. This has been especially marked in Larry Summers, who was the Obama administration's goal of long-term fiscal consolidation, which is softcore neoliberal speak for fiscal austerity Seen in the above light, after the passage of ARRA (2009), the fiscal policy divide between the Obama administration and hardcore neoliberal Republicans was about the speed and conditions under which fiscal austerity should be restored.

This attitude to fiscal policy reflects the dominance within the Democratic Party of "Rubinomics", the Wall Street view associated with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, that government spending and budget deficits raise real interest rates and thereby lower growth. According to that view, the US needs long-term fiscal austerity to offset Social Security and Medicare Side-by-side with the attempt to reflate the economy, the Obama administration also pushed for major overhaul and tightening of financial sector regulation via the Dodd- Frank Act (2010).

That accorded with the market failure hypothesis's claim about the economic crisis and Great Recession being caused by financial excess permitted by the combination of excessive deregulation, lax regulation and failure to modernize regulation Finally, and again in accordance with the logic of the market failure hypothesis, the Obama administration has pushed ahead with doubling-down and further entrenching the neoliberal policy box. This is most visible in its approach to globalization. In 2010, free trade agreements modelled after NAFTA were signed with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), two mega-agreements negotiated in secrecy and apparently bearing chief economic adviser when it took office. This shift has become a way of rewriting history by erasing the memory of initial positions. That is also true of the IMF which in 2010-2011 was a robust supporter of fiscal consolidation in Europe. similar hallmarks to prior trade agreements, are also being pushed by the Obama administration

The Obama administration's softcore neoliberalism would have likely generated stagnation by itself, but the prospect has been further strengthened by Republicans.

Thus, in accordance with their point of view, Republicans have persistently pushed the government failure hypothesis by directing the policy conversation to excessive regulation and easy monetary policy as the causes of the crisis. Consequently, they have consistently opposed strengthened financial regulation and demands for fiscal stimulus.

At the same time, they have joined with softcore neoliberal Democrats regarding doubling-down on neoliberal box policies, particularly as regards trade and globalization Paradoxically, the failure to change the overall economic model becomes most visible by analyzing the policies of the Federal Reserve, which have changed the most dramatically via the introduction of QE. The initial round of QE (QE1) was followed by QE2 in November 2010 and QE3 in September 2012, with the Fed shifting from providing short-term emergency liquidity to buying private sector financial assets.

The goal was to bid up prices of longer term bonds and other securities, thereby lowering interest rates on longer-term financing and encouraging investors to buy equities and other riskier financial assets. The Fed's reasoning was lower long-term rates would stimulate the economy, and higher financial asset prices would trigger a positive wealth effect on consumption spending. This makes clear the architecture of policy.

The Obama administration was to provide fiscal stimulus to jump start the economy; the Fed would use QE to blow air back into the asset price bubble; the Dodd-Frank Act (2010) would stabilize financial markets; and globalization would be deepened by further NAFTA-styled international agreements. This is a near-identical model to that which failed so disastrously. Consequently, stagnation is the logical prognosis.

VII Déjà vu all over again: back to the 1990s but with a weaker economy

The exclusion of the destruction of shared prosperity hypothesis, combined with the joint triumph of the market failure and government failure hypotheses, means the underlying economic model that produced the Great Recession remains essentially unchanged. That failure to change explains stagnation. It also explains why current conditions smack of "déjà vu all over again" with the US economy in 2014-15 appearing to have returned to conditions reminiscent of the mid-1990s.

Just as the 1990s failed to deliver durable prosperity, so too current optimistic conditions will prove unsustainable absent deeper change The déjà vu similarities are evident

All of these features mean both policy context and policy design look a lot like the mid-1990s. The Obama administration saved the system but did not change it

Consequently, the economy is destined to repeat the patterns of the 1990s and 2000s. However, the US economy has also experienced almost twenty more years of neoliberalism which has left its economic body in worse health than the 1990s. That means the likelihood of delivering another bubble-based boom is low and stagnation tendencies will likely reassert themselves after a shorter and weaker period of expansion

This structurally weakened state of the US economy is evident in the further worsening of income inequality that has occurred during the Great Recession and subsequent slow recovery.

... ... ...

Thomas I. Palley, Senior Economic Policy Advisor, AFL-CIO Washington, D.C. [email protected]

[Oct 01, 2017] Bulletproof Neoliberalism by Paul Heideman

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Mirowski identifies three basic aspects of neoliberalism that the Left has failed to understand: the movement's intellectual history, the way it has transformed everyday life, and what constitutes opposition to it. Until we come to terms with them, Mirowski suggests, right-wing movements such as the Tea Party (a prominent player in the book) will continue to reign triumphant. ..."
"... Joining a long line of thinkers, most famously Karl Polanyi, Mirowski insists that a key error of the Left has been its failure to see that markets are always embedded in other social institutions. Neoliberals, by contrast, grasp this point with both hands -- and therefore seek to reshape all of the institutions of society, including and especially the state, to promote markets. Neoliberal ascendancy has meant not the retreat of the state so much as its remaking. ..."
"... he also recognizes that the neoliberals themselves have been canny about keeping the real nature of their project hidden through a variety of means. Neoliberal institutions tend to have what he calls a "Russian doll" structure, with the most central ones well hidden from public eyes. Mirowski coins an ironic expression, "the Neoliberal Thought Collective," for the innermost entities that formulate the movement's doctrine. The venerable Mont Pelerin Society is an NTC institution. Its ideas are frequently disseminated through venues which, formally at least, are unconnected to the center, such as academic economics departments. Thus, neoclassical economists spread the gospel of the free market while the grand project of remaking the state falls to others. ..."
"... At the same time as neoliberal commonsense trickles down from above, Mirowski argues that it also wells up from below, reinforced by our daily patterns of life. Social networking sites like Facebook encourage people to view themselves as perpetual cultural entrepreneurs, striving to offer a newer and better version of themselves to the world. Sites like LinkedIn prod their users to present themselves as a fungible basket of skills, adjustable to the needs of any employer, without any essential characteristics beyond a requisite subservience. Classical liberalism always assumes the coherent individual self as its basic unit. Neoliberalism, by contrast, sees people as little more than variable bundles of human capital, with no permanent interests or even attributes that cannot be remade through the market. For Mirowski, the proliferation of these forms of everyday neoliberalism constitute a "major reason the neoliberals have emerged from the crisis triumphant." ..."
"... Finally, Mirowski argues that the Left has too often been sucked in by neoliberalism's loyal opposition. Figures like Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman, while critical of austerity and supportive of the welfare state, accept the fundamental neoclassical economic precepts at the heart of neoliberal policy. Mirowski argues that we must ditch this tradition in its entirety. Even attempts to render its assumptions more realistic -- as in the case of behavioral economics, for example, which takes account of the ways real people diverge from the hyperrationality of homo economicus -- provide little succor for those seeking to overturn the neoliberals. ..."
"... Mirowski's insistence on the centrality of the state to the neoliberal project helps correct the unfortunate tendency of many leftists over the past decade to assent to neoliberal nostrums about the obsolescence of the state. Indeed, Mirowski goes further than many other critics who have challenged the supposed retreat of the state under neoliberalism. ..."
"... Loïc Wacquant, for instance, has described the "centaur state" of neoliberalism, in which a humanist liberalism reigns for the upper classes, while the lower classes face the punitive state apparatus in all its bestiality. ..."
"... Mirowski shows us that the world of the rich under neoliberalism in no way corresponds to the laissez-faire of classical liberalism. The state does not so much leave the rich alone as actively work to reshape the world in their interests, helping to create markets for the derivatives and securities that made (and then destroyed) so many of the fortunes of the recent past. The neoliberal state is an eminently interventionist one, and those mistaking it for the austere nightwatchman of libertarian utopianism have little hope of combating it. ..."
"... Mirowski's concern to disabuse his readers of the notion that the wing of neoliberal doctrine disseminated by neoclassical economists could ever be reformed produces some of the best sections of the book. His portrait of an economics profession in haggard disarray in the aftermath of the crisis is both comic and tragic, as the amusement value of the buffoonery on display diminishes quickly when one realizes the prestige still accorded to these figures. Reading his comprehensive examination of the discipline's response to the crisis, one is reminded of Freud's famous broken kettle. The professional economists' account of their role in the crisis went something like (a) there was no bubble and (b) bubbles are impossible to predict but (c) we knew it was a bubble all along. ..."
"... Though Krugman and Stiglitz have attacked concepts like the efficient markets hypothesis (which holds that prices in a competitive financial market reflect all relevant economic information), Mirowski argues that their attempt to do so while retaining the basic theoretical architecture of neoclassicism has rendered them doubly ineffective. ..."
"... First, their adoption of the battery of assumptions that accompany most neoclassical theorizing -- about representative agents, treating information like any other commodity, and so on -- make it nearly impossible to conclusively rebut arguments like the efficient markets hypothesis. ..."
Oct 01, 2017 | www.jacobinmag.com

To understand how a body of thought became an era of capitalism requires more than intellectual history.

"What is going to come after neoliberalism?" It was the question on many radicals' lips, present writer included, after the financial crisis hit in 2008. Though few were so sanguine about our prospects as to repeat the suicidal optimism of previous radical movements ("After Hitler, Our Turn!"), the feeling of the day was that the era of unfettered marketization was coming to a close. A new period of what was loosely referred to as Keynesianism would be the inevitable result of a crisis caused by markets run amok.

Five years later, little has changed. What comes after neoliberalism? More neoliberalism, apparently. The prospects for a revived Left capable of confronting it appear grim.

Enter Philip Mirowski's Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown . Mirowski maintains that the true nature of neoliberalism has gone unrecognized by its would-be critics, allowing the doctrine to flourish even in conditions, such as a massive financial crisis, that would seem to be inimical to its survival. Leftists keep busy tilting at the windmill of deregulation as the giants of neoliberalism go on pillaging unmolested.

Mirowski identifies three basic aspects of neoliberalism that the Left has failed to understand: the movement's intellectual history, the way it has transformed everyday life, and what constitutes opposition to it. Until we come to terms with them, Mirowski suggests, right-wing movements such as the Tea Party (a prominent player in the book) will continue to reign triumphant.

The book begins with the war of ideas -- a conflict in which, Mirowski argues, the Left has been far too generous in taking neoliberals at their word, or at least their best-publicized word. We have, in effect, been suckered by kindly old Milton Friedman telling us how much better off we'd all be if the government simply left us "free to choose." But neoliberals have at times been forthright about their appreciation for the uses of state power. Markets, after all, do not simply create themselves. Joining a long line of thinkers, most famously Karl Polanyi, Mirowski insists that a key error of the Left has been its failure to see that markets are always embedded in other social institutions. Neoliberals, by contrast, grasp this point with both hands -- and therefore seek to reshape all of the institutions of society, including and especially the state, to promote markets. Neoliberal ascendancy has meant not the retreat of the state so much as its remaking.

If Mirowski is often acidic about the Left's failure to understand this point, he also recognizes that the neoliberals themselves have been canny about keeping the real nature of their project hidden through a variety of means. Neoliberal institutions tend to have what he calls a "Russian doll" structure, with the most central ones well hidden from public eyes. Mirowski coins an ironic expression, "the Neoliberal Thought Collective," for the innermost entities that formulate the movement's doctrine. The venerable Mont Pelerin Society is an NTC institution. Its ideas are frequently disseminated through venues which, formally at least, are unconnected to the center, such as academic economics departments. Thus, neoclassical economists spread the gospel of the free market while the grand project of remaking the state falls to others.

At the same time as neoliberal commonsense trickles down from above, Mirowski argues that it also wells up from below, reinforced by our daily patterns of life. Social networking sites like Facebook encourage people to view themselves as perpetual cultural entrepreneurs, striving to offer a newer and better version of themselves to the world. Sites like LinkedIn prod their users to present themselves as a fungible basket of skills, adjustable to the needs of any employer, without any essential characteristics beyond a requisite subservience. Classical liberalism always assumes the coherent individual self as its basic unit. Neoliberalism, by contrast, sees people as little more than variable bundles of human capital, with no permanent interests or even attributes that cannot be remade through the market. For Mirowski, the proliferation of these forms of everyday neoliberalism constitute a "major reason the neoliberals have emerged from the crisis triumphant."

Finally, Mirowski argues that the Left has too often been sucked in by neoliberalism's loyal opposition. Figures like Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman, while critical of austerity and supportive of the welfare state, accept the fundamental neoclassical economic precepts at the heart of neoliberal policy. Mirowski argues that we must ditch this tradition in its entirety. Even attempts to render its assumptions more realistic -- as in the case of behavioral economics, for example, which takes account of the ways real people diverge from the hyperrationality of homo economicus -- provide little succor for those seeking to overturn the neoliberals.

For Mirowski, these three failures of the Left go a long way toward explaining how neoliberals have largely escaped blame for a crisis they created. The Left persistently goes after phantoms like deregulation or smaller government, which neoliberals easily parry by pointing out that the regulatory apparatus has never been bigger. At the same time, we ignore the deep roots of neoliberal ideology in everyday life, deceiving ourselves as to the scale of the task in front of us.

Whatever criticisms of Mirowski's analysis are in order, much of it is compelling, particularly in regard to the intellectual history of the NTC. Mirowski's insistence on the centrality of the state to the neoliberal project helps correct the unfortunate tendency of many leftists over the past decade to assent to neoliberal nostrums about the obsolescence of the state. Indeed, Mirowski goes further than many other critics who have challenged the supposed retreat of the state under neoliberalism.

Loïc Wacquant, for instance, has described the "centaur state" of neoliberalism, in which a humanist liberalism reigns for the upper classes, while the lower classes face the punitive state apparatus in all its bestiality. But Mirowski shows us that the world of the rich under neoliberalism in no way corresponds to the laissez-faire of classical liberalism. The state does not so much leave the rich alone as actively work to reshape the world in their interests, helping to create markets for the derivatives and securities that made (and then destroyed) so many of the fortunes of the recent past. The neoliberal state is an eminently interventionist one, and those mistaking it for the austere nightwatchman of libertarian utopianism have little hope of combating it.

It's here that we begin to see the strategic genius of neoliberal infrastructure, with its teams of college economics professors teaching the wondrous efficacy of supply and demand on the one hand, and the think tanks and policy shops engaged in the relentless pursuit of state power on the other. The Left too often sees inconsistency where in fact there is a division of labor.

Mirowski's concern to disabuse his readers of the notion that the wing of neoliberal doctrine disseminated by neoclassical economists could ever be reformed produces some of the best sections of the book. His portrait of an economics profession in haggard disarray in the aftermath of the crisis is both comic and tragic, as the amusement value of the buffoonery on display diminishes quickly when one realizes the prestige still accorded to these figures. Reading his comprehensive examination of the discipline's response to the crisis, one is reminded of Freud's famous broken kettle. The professional economists' account of their role in the crisis went something like (a) there was no bubble and (b) bubbles are impossible to predict but (c) we knew it was a bubble all along.

Incoherence notwithstanding, however, little in the discipline has changed in the wake of the crisis. Mirowski thinks that this is at least in part a result of the impotence of the loyal opposition -- those economists such as Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman who attempt to oppose the more viciously neoliberal articulations of economic theory from within the camp of neoclassical economics. Though Krugman and Stiglitz have attacked concepts like the efficient markets hypothesis (which holds that prices in a competitive financial market reflect all relevant economic information), Mirowski argues that their attempt to do so while retaining the basic theoretical architecture of neoclassicism has rendered them doubly ineffective.

First, their adoption of the battery of assumptions that accompany most neoclassical theorizing -- about representative agents, treating information like any other commodity, and so on -- make it nearly impossible to conclusively rebut arguments like the efficient markets hypothesis. Instead, they end up tinkering with it, introducing a nuance here or a qualification there. This tinkering causes their arguments to be more or less ignored in neoclassical pedagogy, as economists more favorably inclined toward hard neoliberal arguments can easily ignore such revisions and hold that the basic thrust of the theory is still correct. Stiglitz's and Krugman's arguments, while receiving circulation through the popular press, utterly fail to transform the discipline.

Mirowski also heaps scorn on the suggestion, sometimes made in leftist circles, that the problem at the heart of neoclassical economics is its assumption of a hyperrational homo economicus , relentlessly comparing equilibrium states and maximizing utility. Though such a revision may be appealing to a certain radical romanticism, Mirowski shows that a good deal of work going on under the label of behavioral economics has performed just this revision, and has come up with results that don't differ substantively from those of the mainstream. The main problem with neoclassicism isn't its theory of the human agent but rather its the theory of the market -- which is precisely what behavioral economics isn't interested in contesting.

In all, Mirowski's indictment of the state of economic theory and its imbrication with the neoliberal project is devastating. Unfortunately, he proves much less successful in explaining why things have turned out as they have. The book ascribes tremendous power to the Neoliberal Thought Collective, which somehow manages to do everything from controlling the economics profession to reshaping the state to forging a new sense of the human self. The reader is left wondering how the NTC came to acquire such power. This leads to the book's central flaw: a lack of any theory of the structure of modern capitalism. Indeed, the NTC seems to operate in something of a vacuum, without ever confronting other institutions or groups, such as the state or popular movements, with interests and agendas of their own.

To be fair, Mirowski does offer an explanation for the failure of popular movements to challenge neoliberalism, largely through his account of "everyday" neoliberalism. At its strongest, the book identifies important strategic failures, such as Occupy's embrace of "a mimicry of media technologies as opposed to concerted political mobilization." However, Mirowski extends the argument well beyond a specific failure of the Occupy movement to propose a general thesis that developments like Facebook and reality TV have transmitted neoliberal ideology to people who have never read Friedman and Hayek. In claiming that this embodied or embedded ideology plays an important role in the failure of the Left, he places far more explanatory weight on the concept of everyday neoliberalism than it is capable of bearing.

At the simplest level, it's just not clear that everyday neoliberalism constitutes the kind of block to political action that Mirowski thinks it does. No doubt, many people reading this article right now simultaneously have another browser tab open to monster.com or LinkedIn, where they are striving to present themselves as a fungible basket of skills to any employer that will have them. In this economy, everyone has to hustle, and that means using all available means. That many of these same readers have probably also done things like organize against foreclosures should give pause to any blurring of the distinction between using various media technologies and embracing the ideology Mirowski sees embodied in them.

Indeed, the ubiquity of participation in such technologies by people who support, oppose, or are apathetic about neoliberalism points to a larger phenomenon on which Mirowski is silent: the labor market. Put bluntly, it is difficult to imagine anyone engaging in the painfully strained self-advertisement facilitated by LinkedIn in a labor market with, say, 2-percent unemployment. In such a market, in which employers were competing for comparatively scarce workers, there would be very little need for those workers to go through the self-abasing ritual of converting themselves into fungible baskets of skills. In our current situation, by contrast, where secure and remunerative employment is comparatively scarce, it is no surprise that people turn to whatever technologies are available to attempt to sell themselves. As Joan Robinson put it, the only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by it.

In evaluating the role of everyday neoliberalism, it is also helpful to move, for the moment, beyond the perspective of the United States, where the NTC has clearly had great success, and adopt that of countries where resistance is significantly more developed, such as Venezuela or South Africa. Especially in the former, popular movements have been notably successful in combating neoliberal efforts to take over the state and reshape the economy, and have instead pushed the country in the opposite direction. Is it really plausible that a main reason for this difference is that everyday neoliberalism is more intense in the United States? I doubt it. For one thing, the strength of Venezuela's radical movements, in comparison with the US, clearly antedates the developments (social media, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo , and so on) that Mirowski discusses.

Moreover, it is just as plausible that the entrepreneurial culture he describes is even more extensive in the slums of the global South, where neoliberal devastation has forced many poor households to rely on at least one family member engaging in semi-legal arbitrage in goods salvaged from garbage or made at home. Surely such activities provide a firmer foundation for commercial subjectivity than having a 401(k). That resistance has grown in such circumstances suggests that looking to malignant subjectivities to explain popular passivity is an analytic dead-end.

If everyday neoliberalism doesn't explain the comparative weakness of the US left, what does? This is, of course, the key question, and I can do no more than gesture at an answer here. But I would suggest that the specific histories of the institutions of the American left, from the Communist Party to Students for a Democratic Society to labor unions, and the histories of the situations they confronted, provide us with a more solid foundation for understanding our current weakness than the hegemony of neoliberal culture does. Moreover, with a theory of capitalism that emphasizes the way the structure of the system makes it both necessary and very difficult for most people to organize to advance their interests, it becomes very easy to explain the persistence of a low level of popular mobilization against neoliberalism in the context of a weakened left.

If Mirowski's account doesn't give us a good basis for explaining why popular resistance has been so lacking in the US, it nonetheless suggests why he is so concerned with explaining the supposed dominance of neoliberal ideology among the general population. From the beginning, he raises the specter of right-wing resurgence, whether in the form of Scott Walker surviving the recall campaign in Wisconsin, the Tea Party mania of 2010, or the success of right-wing parties in Europe. However, much of this seems overstated, especially from a contemporary perspective. The Tea Party has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared from the front lines of American politics, and the Republican Party, while capable of enacting all kinds of sadistic policies on the state level, has remained in a state of disarray on the national level since the 2006 congressional elections.

More fundamentally, the argument that the voting public embraces neoliberalism doesn't square well with recent research by political scientists like Larry Bartels and Martin Gilens emphasizing the profound disconnect between the policy preferences of the poor and what transpires in Washington. What appears to be happening is less the general populace's incorporation into neoliberalism than their exclusion from any institutions that would allow them to change it. Importantly, this alternative explanation does not rely on the Left conceit that rebellion lurks perpetually just below the placid social surface, ready to explode into radical insurgency at any moment. It simply contends that the political passivity of neoliberalism's victims reflects a real diminution of their political options.

Mirowski's failure to address these larger institutional and structural dynamics vitiates much of the explanatory power of his book. On a purely descriptive level, the sections on the intellectual history of neoliberalism and the non-crisis of neoclassical economics illuminate many of the hidden corners of neoliberal ideology. However, if Mirowski is right to suggest that we need to understand neoliberalism better to be successful in fighting it -- and he surely is -- then much more is needed to explain neoliberal success and Left failure.

To understand how a body of thought became an era of capitalism requires more than intellectual history. It demands an account of how capitalism actually works in the period in question, and how the ideas of a small group of intellectuals came to be the policy preferences of the rich. Mirowski has given us an excellent foundation for understanding the doctrine, but it will remain for others to explain its actual development.

https://staticxx.facebook.com/connect/xd_arbiter/r/Z2duorNoYeF.js?version=42#channel=f1c0e2812ec10f6&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jacobinmag.com

[Jul 17, 2017] Tucker Carlson Goes to War Against the Neocons by Curt Mills

Highly recommended!
max Book is just anothe "Yascha about Russia" type, that Masha Gessen represents so vividly. The problem with him is that time of neocon prominance is solidly in the past and now unpleasant question about the cost from the US people of their reckless foreign policies get into some newspapers and managines. They cost the USA tremedous anount of money (as in trillions) and those money consititute a large portion of the national debt. Critiques so far were very weak and partially suppressed voices, but defeat of neocon warmonger Hillary signify some break with the past.
Notable quotes:
"... National Interest ..."
"... Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump. This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird our policies." ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. . . . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject. ..."
"... New York Observer ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . . . Nobody is paying attention to it, " ..."
"... : Flickr/Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. ..."
Jul 14, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

This week's primetime knife fights with Max Boot and Ralph Peters are emblematic of the battle for the soul of the American Right.

To be sure, Carlson rejects the term "neoconservatism," and implicitly, its corollary on the Democratic side, liberal internationalism. In 2016, "the reigning Republican foreign-policy view, you can call it neoconservatism, or interventionism, or whatever you want to call it" was rejected, he explained in a wide-ranging interview with the National Interest Friday.

"But I don't like the term 'neoconservatism,'" he says, "because I don't even know what it means. I think it describes the people rather than their ideas, which is what I'm interested in. And to be perfectly honest . . . I have a lot of friends who have been described as neocons, people I really love, sincerely. And they are offended by it. So I don't use it," Carlson said.

But Carlson's recent segments on foreign policy conducted with Lt. Col. Ralph Peters and the prominent neoconservative journalist and author Max Boot were acrimonious even by Carlsonian standards. In a discussion on Syria, Russia and Iran, a visibly upset Boot accused Carlson of being "immoral" and taking foreign-policy positions to curry favor with the White House, keep up his ratings , and by proxy, benefit financially. Boot says that Carlson "basically parrots whatever the pro-Trump line is that Fox viewers want to see. If Trump came out strongly against Putin tomorrow, I imagine Tucker would echo this as faithfully as the pro-Russia arguments he echoes today." But is this assessment fair?

Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump. This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird our policies."

Even if Carlson doesn't want to use the label neocon to describe some of those ideas, Boot is not so bashful. In 2005, Boot wrote an essay called "Neocons May Get the Last Laugh." Carlson "has become a Trump acolyte in pursuit of ratings," says Boot, also interviewed by the National Interest . "I bet if it were President Clinton accused of colluding with the Russians, Tucker would be outraged and calling for impeachment if not execution. But since it's Trump, then it's all a big joke to him," Boot says. Carlson vociferously dissents from such assessments: "This is what dumb people do. They can't assess the merits of an argument. . . . I'm not talking about Syria, and Russia, and Iran because of ratings. That's absurd. I can't imagine those were anywhere near the most highly-rated segments that night. That's not why I wanted to do it."

But Carlson insists, "I have been saying the same thing for fifteen years. Now I have a T.V. show that people watch, so my views are better known. But it shouldn't be a surprise. I supported Trump to the extent he articulated beliefs that I agree with. . . . And I don't support Trump to the extent that his actions deviate from those beliefs," Carlson said. Boot on Fox said that Carlson is "too smart" for this kind of argument. But Carlson has bucked the Trump line, notably on Trump's April 7 strikes in Syria. "When the Trump administration threw a bunch of cruise missiles into Syria for no obvious reason, on the basis of a pretext that I question . . . I questioned [the decision] immediately. On T.V. I was on the air when that happened. I think, maybe seven minutes into my show. . . . I thought this was reckless."

But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. . . . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject.

Boot objects to what he sees as a cavalier attitude on the part of Carlson and others toward allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and also toward the deaths of citizens of other countries. "You are laughing about the fact that Russia is interfering in our election process. That to me is immoral," Boot told Carlson on his show. "This is the level of dumbness and McCarthyism in Washington right now," says Carlson. "I think it has the virtue of making Max Boot feel like a good person. Like he's on God's team, or something like that. But how does that serve the interest of the country? It doesn't." Carlson says that Donald Trump, Jr.'s emails aren't nearly as important as who is going to lead Syria, which he says Boot and others have no plan for successfully occupying. Boot, by contrast, sees the U.S. administration as dangerously flirting with working with Russia, Iran and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. "For whatever reason, Trump is pro-Putin, no one knows why, and he's taken a good chunk of the GOP along with him," Boot says.

On Fox last Wednesday, Boot reminded Carlson that he originally supported the 2003 Iraq decision. "You supported the invasion of Iraq," Boot said, before repeating, "You supported the invasion of Iraq." Carlson conceded that, but it seems the invasion was a bona fide turning point. It's most important to parse whether Carlson has a long record of anti-interventionism, or if he's merely sniffing the throne of the president (who, dubiously, may have opposed the 2003 invasion). "I think it's a total nightmare and disaster, and I'm ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it," Carlson told the New York Observer in early 2004. "It's something I'll never do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who's smarter than I am, and I shouldn't have done that. . . . I'm enraged by it, actually." Carlson told the National Interest that he's felt this way since seeing Iraq for himself in December 2003.

The evidence points heavily toward a sincere conversion on Carlson's part, or preexisting conviction that was briefly overcome by the beat of the war drums. Carlson did work for the Weekly Standard , perhaps the most prominent neoconservative magazine, in the 1990s and early 2000s. Carlson today speaks respectfully of William Kristol, its founding editor, but has concluded that he is all wet. On foreign policy, the people Carlson speaks most warmly about are genuine hard left-wingers: Glenn Greenwald, a vociferous critic of both economic neoliberalism and neoconservatism; the anti-establishment journalist Michael Tracey; Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation ; and her husband, Stephen Cohen, the Russia expert and critic of U.S. foreign policy.

"The only people in American public life who are raising these questions are on the traditional left: not lifestyle liberals, not the Williamsburg (Brooklyn) group, not liberals in D.C., not Nancy Pelosi." He calls the expertise of establishment sources on matters like Syria "more shallow than I even imagined." On his MSNBC show, which was canceled for poor ratings, he cavorted with noninterventionist stalwarts such as Ron Paul , the 2008 and 2012 antiwar GOP candidate, and Patrick J. Buchanan. "No one is smarter than Pat Buchanan," he said last year of the man whose ideas many say laid the groundwork for Trump's political success.

Carlson has risen to the pinnacle of cable news, succeeding Bill O'Reilly. It wasn't always clear an antiwar take would vault someone to such prominence. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney could be president (Boot has advised the latter two). But here he is, and it's likely no coincidence that Carlson got a show after Trump's election, starting at the 7 p.m. slot, before swiftly moving to the 9 p.m. slot to replace Trump antagonist Megyn Kelly, and just as quickly replacing O'Reilly at the top slot, 8 p.m. Boot, on the other hand, declared in 2016 that the Republican Party was dead , before it went on to hold Congress and most state houses, and of course take the presidency. He's still at the Council on Foreign Relations and writes for the New York Times (this seems to clearly annoy Carlson: "It tells you everything about the low standards of the American foreign-policy establishment").

Boot wrote in 2003 in the Weekly Standard that the fall of Saddam Hussein's government "may turn out to be one of those hinge moments in history" comparable to "events like the storming of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which everything is different." He continued, "If the occupation goes well (admittedly a big if ), it may mark the moment when the powerful antibiotic known as democracy was introduced into the diseased environment of the Middle East, and began to transform the region for the better."

Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . . . Nobody is paying attention to it, "

Carlson seems intent on pressing the issue. The previous night, in his debate with Peters, the retired lieutenant colonel said that Carlson sounded like Charles Lindbergh, who opposed U.S. intervention against Nazi Germany before 1941. "This particular strain of Republican foreign policy has almost no constituency. Nobody agrees with it. I mean there's not actually a large group of people outside of New York, Washington or L.A. who think any of this is a good idea," Carlson says. "All I am is an asker of obvious questions. And that's enough to reveal these people have no idea what they're talking about. None."

Curt Mills is a foreign-affairs reporter at the National Interest . Follow him on Twitter: @CurtMills .

Image : Flickr/Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.

[Jul 12, 2017] Stephen Cohens Remarks on Tucker Carlson Last Night Were Extraordinary

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Cohen's appearance on Carlson's show last night demonstrated again at what a blistering pace public opinion in the West about Putin and Russia is shifting, for the better. ..."
"... Cohen is always good, but last night he nailed it, calling the media's coverage of Hamburg 'pornography'. ..."
"... It was just a year ago, pre-Trump, that professor Cohen was banned from all the networks, from any major media outlet, and being relentlessly pilloried by the neocon media for being a naive fool for defending Putin and Russia. ..."
"... "The first thing you notice is just how much the press is rooting for this meeting between our president and the Russian President to fail. It's a kind of pornography. Just as there's no love in pornography, there's no American national interest in this bashing of Trump and Putin. ..."
"... Carlson tried to draw Cohen out about who exactly in Washington is so against Assad, and why, and Cohen deflected, demurring - 'I don't know - I'm not an expert'. Of course he knows, as does Carlson - it is an unholy alliance of Israel, Saudi Arabia and their neocon friends in Washington and the media who are pushing this criminal policy, who support ISIS, deliberately. But they can't say so, because, ... well, because. Ask Rupert Murdoch. ..."
Jul 12, 2017 | russia-insider.com
Cohen's appearance on Carlson's show last night demonstrated again at what a blistering pace public opinion in the West about Putin and Russia is shifting, for the better.

Cohen is always good, but last night he nailed it, calling the media's coverage of Hamburg 'pornography'.

Ahh, the power of the apt phrase.

It was just a year ago, pre-Trump, that professor Cohen was banned from all the networks, from any major media outlet, and being relentlessly pilloried by the neocon media for being a naive fool for defending Putin and Russia.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5L2F4ocEIZw

Last night he was the featured guest on the most watched news show in the country, being cheered on by the host, who has him on as a regular. And Cohen isn't remotely a conservative. He is a contributing editor at the arch-liberal Nation magazine, of which his wife is the editor. It doesn't really get pinker than that.

Some choice quotes here, but the whole thing is worth a listen:

"The first thing you notice is just how much the press is rooting for this meeting between our president and the Russian President to fail. It's a kind of pornography. Just as there's no love in pornography, there's no American national interest in this bashing of Trump and Putin.

As a historian let me tell you the headline I would write instead:

"What we witnessed today in Hamburg was a potentially historic new detente. an anti-cold-war partnership begun by Trump and Putin but meanwhile attempts to sabotage it escalate." I've seen a lot of summits between American and Russian presidents, ... and I think what we saw today was potentially the most fateful meeting ... since the Cold War.

The reason is, is that the relationship with Russia is so dangerous and we have a president who might have been crippled or cowed by these Russiagate attacks ... yet he was not. He was politically courageous. It went well. They got important things done. I think maybe today we witnessed president Trump emerging as an American statesman."

Cohen goes on to say that the US should ally with Assad, Iran, and Russia to crush ISIS, with Carlson bobbing his head up and down in emphatic agreement.

Carlson tried to draw Cohen out about who exactly in Washington is so against Assad, and why, and Cohen deflected, demurring - 'I don't know - I'm not an expert'. Of course he knows, as does Carlson - it is an unholy alliance of Israel, Saudi Arabia and their neocon friends in Washington and the media who are pushing this criminal policy, who support ISIS, deliberately. But they can't say so, because, ... well, because. Ask Rupert Murdoch.

Things are getting better in the US media, but we aren't quite able to call a spade a spade in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

[Dec 17, 2015] FED 5 year experiment in string pushing and do-nothingism is coming to an end

Notable quotes:
"... L. Summers claims the fed faces asymmetric risks, because failure of a too-loose policy can more easily be corrected than failure of a too-tight policy ..."
economistsview.typepad.com
Dan Kervick -> Pinkybum, December 16, 2015 at 07:08 PM
Why? What the Fed did today was raise the Fed funds rate. The Fed funds rate is the rate at which banks lend their excess reserves to one another in the interbank lending market. Interbank lending is at an all-time low because banks are already holding such a staggering quantity of excess reserves that they have very little need to borrow any of them from anybody else. Many banks could increase their lending 5 or 10 fold without acquiring a single additional dollar of reserves.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=2W6C

The prevailing effective Fed funds rate was at a historically unprecedented 0.12% rate that was only half of the historically unprecedented target rate of 0.25%. Now that the target rate has gone up to 0.50%, the Fed funds rate will still be *far* lower than it was at any time between 1954 and 2009.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=2Qva

So the Fed has slightly increased the rock bottom price in a market few people are availing themselves of because of gross excess supply in that market for something they don't need to obtain. It increased that rock bottom price to a slightly higher rock bottom price. And yet there are people who are concerned this is going to make money too "tight".

The number and convoluted complexity of the tall stories the neo-monetarist and New Keynesian quacks have had to tell to sell people on this patently absurd confusion and hysteria is breathtaking. Now those people are all quite sad, because their 5 year experiment in string pushing and do-nothingism is coming to an end, and they weren't able to prove their conservative theory that the nation's economic goals can be achieved with central bank rate twiddling and verbal exercises in expectations management.

Ben Groves -> Dan Kervick...
Milton Friedman was a very very very bad man.
am -> am

The early BBC take on the move. I think we will see currency movements against the dollar and matching interest rate moves, especially in the developing world. If they do proceed to normalisation over the next several quarters then this instability will continue world wide over the next several quarters. Its effect on the US and the world economy will be depressive although probably not recessive. That will show it should have been avoided. Apologies for the crystal ball.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35117405

JF said...

What happens with the FED's book of assets? At the end of the press release they indicated that they will continue to roll-over their book of assets as the bonds mature - " it anticipates doing so until normalization of the level of the federal funds rate is well under way."

That is a significant alteration in their policy - it ties the redemption of the maturing book of assets to increasing interest rates - targeting something they call normalization.

So does this mean that interest rates have to come up to 3% or so before they will stop the roll-over?

spencer said...

Maybe the interesting thing is that almost all of them expect 2.0%, or maybe a bit higher, real GDP growth over the next two years. That is about the same as it has been. Does this imply that they expect higher rates to have little of no impact?

pgl -> spencer...

Some suggest potential real GDP is growing at only 2%. Let's say that is correct. The GDP gap is over 3%. So are they saying they want this gap to continue? If so - a bad decision.

don said...

L. Summers claims the fed faces asymmetric risks, because failure of a too-loose policy can more easily be corrected than failure of a too-tight policy. Not sure I see this. For example, I would expect a reverse course by the fed now to quickly bring dollar weakening and exuberance in equity markets...

[Nov 23, 2015] Thoughts on NPRs Discussion of the Weimar 70s: Deflating Inflation Myths

Notable quotes:
"... Higher unemployment reduced workers' bargaining power and lowered demand in the economy. This slowed inflation. In fact, the skipping from Gerald Ford to Paul Volcker, misrepresents the actual course of inflation over this period. Inflation did in fact come down. After peaking at 10.4 percent in 1974, it fell back to 5.5 percent in 1976 before it started to rise again. The main factor bringing inflation down was a steep recession in 1974-1975, so the method for bringing inflation under control was not quite as difficult to figure out as the piece implies. ..."
"... In sum, the inflation in the 1970s was nowhere near as debilitating as this piece implies. It was not in the least mysterious and would likely have come down even without the magic of Paul Volcker. The Volcker recession destroyed the lives of millions of workers and their children. It is very much an open question as to whether a more rapid reduction in the rate of inflation was worth this pain. ..."
economistsview.typepad.com
anne said... , November 23, 2015 at 05:17 AM
http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/thoughts-on-npr-s-discussion-of-the-weimar-70s-deflating-inflation-myths

November 22, 2015

Thoughts on NPR's Discussion of the Weimar 70s: Deflating Inflation Myths

National Public Radio had a piece * on the horrible inflation of the 1970s and how the country was rescued by the herioics of Paul Volcker who was Federal Reserve chair at the time. The piece raises several points that could use a bit more context and leaves out some important information.

First and most importantly, the piece implies a world that did not exist. It begins with a discussion of a speech by President Gerald Ford in 1974. It told listeners:

"Inflation was the silent thief, and every year it got worse. Inflation got worse. It went from 10 percent to 11 percent to 12 percent. It wasn't clear exactly why and no one could agree on a simple way to fix it."

Neither part of this story is especially true. Inflation was hardly silent. It was widely reported, so people did know about it. Nor was it obviously a thief. Many, perhaps most, wage contracts were indexed to inflation, which meant that wages rose more or less in step with prices. While this was not true for everyone, a substantial segment of the population was able to insulate itself from the effects of inflation. This is one of the factors that made it harder to contain inflation.

It is also not true that no one knew how to fix it. Higher unemployment reduced workers' bargaining power and lowered demand in the economy. This slowed inflation. In fact, the skipping from Gerald Ford to Paul Volcker, misrepresents the actual course of inflation over this period. Inflation did in fact come down. After peaking at 10.4 percent in 1974, it fell back to 5.5 percent in 1976 before it started to rise again. The main factor bringing inflation down was a steep recession in 1974-1975, so the method for bringing inflation under control was not quite as difficult to figure out as the piece implies.

Then we get this account of the period from New York University economist Bill Silber:

"SILBER: It sort of took over your life. You had to worry about buying things before they went up in price. Every time you turned around you'd say, well, I mean, I better buy it now rather than later and of course that's the process, which makes the inflation accelerate because everybody starts thinking that way. Just buy something because you know if you buy it now you're better off than if you wait.

"KESTENBAUM: Do you remember that happening with you? Did you buy anything for that reason?

"SILBER: I think I bought a house.

"KESTENBAUM: People buying houses just because they think they'll be more expensive the next year - that is not good...."

Perhaps inflation took over Mr. Silber's life, but this is not likely true for many other people. House price inflation peaked at 16.3 percent in the year from February of 1978 to February of 1979. This is not good, but there are two points worth noting. First, it was already on its way down by the time our hero, Paul Volcker, enters the stage in the fall of 1979. On a year over year basis the rate of house price inflation was down to 14.8 percent and if we annualize the rate for the immediate three months before Volcker took the job it was down to 11.8 percent.

The other point is that we have seen comparable rates of house price increases more recently. For example, in the year from August 2004 to August 2005 house prices rose by 14.5 percent. Did it take over your life?

The other point worth noting here is that most prices were not rising anywhere near this fast. For example car prices were rising at a 7.5 percent annual rate when Volcker took the job. This meant that if you were considering buying a car for $20,000 (in today's dollars) and waited a month, it would cost you $150 more. Clothes were rising at less than a 4.0 percent rate. This meant that it would cost you $1.30 if you put off buying that $400 suit for a month. Waiting a month on a $20 shirt would cost you 7 cents. This was not Weimar Germany where inflation was reaching the point people could not do ordinary business.

In addition to the misrepresentations, there is an extremely important part of the story left out of the discussion in this piece. Oil prices quadrupled in the early 1970s as OPEC first flexed its muscle as a cartel. They quadrupled again in the late 1970s as the Iranian revolution took the country's production, then the world's second largest exporter, off the market. At the time the economy was both more dependent on oil and less flexible than it is today.

These price increases played a huge role in driving up inflation as there was no easy way for the economy to deal with this jolt. The impact of the oil price rises was widely known and discussed at the time so there is nothing mysterious in this story. Oil prices plunged in the 1980s as increased supply and reduced demand, both due to the recession and conservation efforts, put downward pressure on prices. Lower oil prices would have dampened inflation with or without Paul Volcker's magic.

The other important piece of the inflation puzzle left out off this discussion is that official consumer price index seriously overstated the rate of inflation at the time, with the gap approaching 2 full percentage points in 1978 and 1979. This mattered both because many contracts were legally tied to the rate of inflation and also because many workers would likely have seen the official CPI as setting a target for wage increases. This overstatement disappeared in the 1980s, first because the factors driving it went into reverse, and second because the Bureau of Labor Statistics changed its methodology. This also had nothing to do with Paul Volcker's magic.

In sum, the inflation in the 1970s was nowhere near as debilitating as this piece implies. It was not in the least mysterious and would likely have come down even without the magic of Paul Volcker. The Volcker recession destroyed the lives of millions of workers and their children. It is very much an open question as to whether a more rapid reduction in the rate of inflation was worth this pain.

* http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=456855788

-- Dean Baker

djb -> anne...

it wasn't just the collusion of the oil producing nations that played a role in the rising oil prices of the 1970's. The American oil companies were part of that collusion as well. Tankers full of oil stayed parked off the cost and prices went up every 15th and 30th of the month like clockwork. That from an industry insider, my father.

Those factors were not controlled by opec nations or market forces other than collusion

anne -> djb...

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=2EcA

January 4, 2015

Price of Oil, 1968-1990

djb -> anne...

For the oil company he worked for the price increases during the 79 crisis would come in on the 15th and the 30th of each month during the period when the oil prices were increasing

this was not what normally happened

he found it fishy

Dan Kervick ->anne...

"Many, perhaps most, wage contracts were indexed to inflation, which meant that wages rose more or less in step with prices."

This is a good piece by Dean Baker. I was only in high school in the mid-seventies, but I was an undergrad from 77-81, and was taking a bunch of economics courses at the time when inflation was a big issue. And Baker's telling more closely resembles the way I remember it going down.

The main economic theme I remember being in the air at the time was the idea of the "wage-price spiral". the analogy was with the arms race. Basically everyone had come to have high inflation expectations, and the high expectations were self-fulfilling. Producers continually raised their prices both to keep up with actual increases in the prices they paid for their own supplies and labor, and to be ahead of the curve on the increases they expected to occur in the near future. Workers negotiated hefty COLAs into their contracts to keep up with the anticipated price rises, which caused their employers to raise their prices, which caused labor to demand higher wages, etc. - and on and on it went.


I also remember the economics professors emphasizing very strongly the difference between inflation and changes in the "cost of living" - basically consumer prices. This is a distinction that seems frequently lost in many contemporary discussions. It is possible to have high persistent inflation without any change in the cost of living whatsoever. Similarly, if there is a change in the relative prices of labor and consumer goods, then the cost of living could go up or down, even if there is no general inflation.

The reason the high inflation of the period was considered "bad" was that inflation at that high a level tends to be very jerky and somewhat unpredictable, and the size of the prediction uncertainty potentially very significant. Since contracts of all kinds have inflation expectations priced into them, then the inability to accurately anticipate nominal changes added an extra element of risk to ordinary business dealing.

The picture many people now have is that Volcker "broke the back" of inflation. But the way I remember it, the decline in inflation rates was a much more complex process having to do with (i) trends in the decline in union membership and labor bargaining power, (ii) unions being convinced to back off COLA demands, or replace them with other demands - especially in industries that were under heavy international competitive pressure, (iii) subsiding of the impact of the OPEC supply shocks. Volcker's attempt to re-set inflation expectations via shock treatment was only one of several factors.

pgl ->Dan Kervick...

"The reason the high inflation of the period was considered "bad" was that inflation at that high a level tends to be very jerky and somewhat unpredictable"

One of the reasons it was "jerky" had to do with really dumb periods of monetary restraint as in those stupid Ford WIN buttons. And yes Volcker killed off inflation but creating a massive and prolonged output gap. No magic - the kind of economic waste a model by James Tobin predicted. I was taking a class from Tobin back then and he loathed the Volcker regime.

Peter K. ->Peter K....

Steve Randy Waldman is an interesting and articulate blogger. I liked his take:

http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/4561.html

Paine ->Dan Kervick...

Cola cost of living adjustments in major contracts were capped back then

If you look at inflation patterns cost of living was hit very hard

Hint food and fuel

What is missing here. The solution

A Lerner type mark up market

Some day we collectivists will implement one

Paine ->Paine ...

I was in grad school from76 to 80

The hay day of NIARU
That folk loric sweet spot
where the rate of unemployment
just kept output price changes on a steady predictable path

Paine ->Paine ...

Of course the agenda called for ever lower cycle by cycle steady rates of out put inflation

And a bias in forecasting became de rigour

And the employment gap kept higher then post war targets

And
And

And it ended in fall 2008 !!

pgl ->anne...

Gerald Ford and those WIN buttons. I was young and naive back then but 1974 was the year I realized that we are ruled by idiots.

[Nov 17, 2015] Economists View Links for 11-17-15

Notable quotes:
"... And again! We are no longer saw mill mules, aircraft designers, and porno actresses. We have become the Bankers of World ! ..."
"... The idolatry of US capitalism profit from exploiting labor and collecting rents assured by the gumint that is paid only by labor. ..."
economistsview.typepad.com

pgl

How much sake did Noah Smith drink when he wrote this about Japan:

"Sustained higher inflation would represent a net transfer of resources from the old to the young. That would increase optimism, and hopefully raise the fertility rate, helping with demographic stabilization."

Optimism leading to more fertility - OK!

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to pgl...

"...Any of these solutions for raising inflation -- electronic money, "escape velocity," Neo-Fisherism -- would represent a dramatic departure from standard monetary policy. The latter two would also require a deep rethink of everything we know about macroeconomics..."

[Wouldn't a fiscal expansion backed by printing debt-free money create the inflation that they want? Why doesn't the Japanese government just print money to buy free sake for all of its married young people and solve both the inflation problem and the fertility rate problem at the same time? (joke)]

pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

Fiscal stimulus is the right solution to secular stagnation.

But whenever we suggest this - JohnH freaks out over the debt/GDP ratio. And yet he also says he is the only one for fiscal stimulus. Go figure.

likbez said in reply to pgl...

"Fiscal stimulus is the right solution to secular stagnation. "

Much depends on the price of the energy. There is a hypothesis that when EROEI crosses a certain threshold stagnation inevitably follows.

I think if the current drop of energy prices was engineered by Obama administration, we need radically rethink the statue of this "change we can believe in" President.

DrDick said in reply to pgl...

"That would increase optimism, and hopefully raise the fertility rate, helping with demographic stabilization"

This of course completely ignores the historical evidence that greater prosperity and economic security actually *lowers* the fertility rate. Indeed, the low birthrates in Japan, most of Europe, and white Americans (all generally below replacement rate) are a direct result of that.

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to DrDick...

We have actually had both. Off the top of my pointed little head the WWII post-war baby boom lasted through to the late fifties. That was more than just horny GIs returning home from war. It was a period of widespread prosperity that lifted all boats.

Now of course subsequently man invented more user friendly birth control than had in the immediate (WWII) post-war period, but we also urbanized the previously more rural black population and then we created poor family economic support with single-parent eligibility requirements. Children added, but dads subtracted from (total) income (including transfer payments) for poor families. More affluent families took advantage of birth control to increase their per capita wealth by keeping kiddy capita low.

That said then you are most probably quite correct about Japan. Japan's Gini coefficient is lower than the US but still higher than most of Europe. It seems like the more inequality that wealthy people have then the more inequality that wealthy people want. Increased prosperity can grow families when that prosperity is widespread and shared rather than narrowly distributed under stiff competition and hoarded.

Pharaoh's Joseph said in reply to Anonymous...

"now that credit spreads are back down to normal why should the Fed NOT raise rates?
"
~~Anonymous~

Is Our Most Important Export, Deflation?

How much framing lumber do we export? What is PM, profit margin on lumber? PM on aircraft? PM on B Movies? Which of our exports offers us our highest PM? That's it!

Highest PM is on our GTF. Using slight of hand, fed governors put ink onto paper to generate enough GTF, global Triffin fiat to foreign-exchange for Chinese Checkers, Canadian Checker Cabs, Korean Sports Cars, and Germanic VW Factories for Chattanooga.

ooga ooga!

Do you see how works? Brilliant foreigners exchange their counterfeit trash for our authentic cash. And we let them get away with it. Why?

We can afford to act lenient to them because of our 99% profit margin on GTF.

We must be careful, however, to print up less supply of GTF, less than demand. Smaller print job drives the buying-power-denominated-price of $$$$ up thus packing more deflation wallop into each dollar we print. More deflation you print, more popular our product becomes. When our product popularity increases then we get to play the game again.

And again! We are no longer saw mill mules, aircraft designers, and porno actresses. We have become the Bankers of World !

run75441 said in reply to Pharaoh's Joseph...

Profit without Labor

ilsm said in reply to run75441...

The idolatry of US capitalism profit from exploiting labor and collecting rents assured by the gumint that is paid only by labor.

Continued



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