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49 minutes agoFeb 23, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Danny Sjursen via TomDispatch.com,
There once lived an odd little man - five feet nine inches tall and barely 140 pounds sopping wet - who rocked the lecture circuit and the nation itself. For all but a few activist insiders and scholars, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler is now lost to history. Yet more than a century ago, this strange contradiction of a man would become a national war hero, celebrated in pulp adventure novels, and then, 30 years later, as one of this country's most prominent antiwar and anti-imperialist dissidents.
Raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and educated in Quaker (pacifist) schools, the son of an influential congressman, he would end up serving in nearly all of America's " Banana Wars " from 1898 to 1931. Wounded in combat and a rare recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor, he would retire as the youngest, most decorated major general in the Marines.
A teenage officer and a certified hero during an international intervention in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion of 1900, he would later become a constabulary leader of the Haitian gendarme, the police chief of Philadelphia (while on an approved absence from the military), and a proponent of Marine Corps football. In more standard fashion, he would serve in battle as well as in what might today be labeled peacekeeping , counterinsurgency , and advise-and-assist missions in Cuba, China, the Philippines, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, France, and China (again). While he showed early signs of skepticism about some of those imperial campaigns or, as they were sardonically called by critics at the time, " Dollar Diplomacy " operations -- that is, military campaigns waged on behalf of U.S. corporate business interests -- until he retired he remained the prototypical loyal Marine.
But after retirement, Smedley Butler changed his tune. He began to blast the imperialist foreign policy and interventionist bullying in which he'd only recently played such a prominent part. Eventually, in 1935 during the Great Depression, in what became a classic passage in his memoir, which he titled "War Is a Racket," he wrote:
"I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service... 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."
Seemingly overnight, the famous war hero transformed himself into an equally acclaimed antiwar speaker and activist in a politically turbulent era. Those were, admittedly, uncommonly anti-interventionist years, in which veterans and politicians alike promoted what (for America, at least) had been fringe ideas. This was, after all, the height of what later pro-war interventionists would pejoratively label American " isolationism ."
Nonetheless, Butler was unique (for that moment and certainly for our own) in his unapologetic amenability to left-wing domestic politics and materialist critiques of American militarism. In the last years of his life, he would face increasing criticism from his former admirer, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the military establishment, and the interventionist press. This was particularly true after Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany invaded Poland and later France. Given the severity of the Nazi threat to mankind, hindsight undoubtedly proved Butler's virulent opposition to U.S. intervention in World War II wrong.
Nevertheless, the long-term erasure of his decade of antiwar and anti-imperialist activism and the assumption that all his assertions were irrelevant has proven historically deeply misguided. In the wake of America's brief but bloody entry into the First World War, the skepticism of Butler (and a significant part of an entire generation of veterans) about intervention in a new European bloodbath should have been understandable. Above all, however, his critique of American militarism of an earlier imperial era in the Pacific and in Latin America remains prescient and all too timely today, especially coming as it did from one of the most decorated and high-ranking general officers of his time. (In the era of the never-ending war on terror, such a phenomenon is quite literally inconceivable.)
Smedley Butler's Marine Corps and the military of his day was, in certain ways, a different sort of organization than today's highly professionalized armed forces. History rarely repeats itself, not in a literal sense anyway. Still, there are some disturbing similarities between the careers of Butler and today's generation of forever-war fighters. All of them served repeated tours of duty in (mostly) unsanctioned wars around the world. Butler's conflicts may have stretched west from Haiti across the oceans to China, whereas today's generals mostly lead missions from West Africa east to Central Asia, but both sets of conflicts seemed perpetual in their day and were motivated by barely concealed economic and imperial interests.
Nonetheless, whereas this country's imperial campaigns of the first third of the twentieth century generated a Smedley Butler, the hyper-interventionism of the first decades of this century hasn't produced a single even faintly comparable figure. Not one. Zero. Zilch. Why that is matters and illustrates much about the U.S. military establishment and contemporary national culture, none of it particularly encouraging.
Why No Antiwar GeneralsWhen Smedley Butler retired in 1931, he was one of three Marine Corps major generals holding a rank just below that of only the Marine commandant and the Army chief of staff. Today, with about 900 generals and admirals currently serving on active duty, including 24 major generals in the Marine Corps alone, and with scores of flag officers retiring annually, not a single one has offered genuine public opposition to almost 19 years worth of ill-advised, remarkably unsuccessful American wars . As for the most senior officers, the 40 four-star generals and admirals whose vocal antimilitarism might make the biggest splash, there are more of them today than there were even at the height of the Vietnam War, although the active military is now about half the size it was then. Adulated as many of them may be, however, not one qualifies as a public critic of today's failing wars.
Instead, the principal patriotic dissent against those terror wars has come from retired colonels, lieutenant colonels, and occasionally more junior officers (like me), as well as enlisted service members. Not that there are many of us to speak of either. I consider it disturbing (and so should you) that I personally know just about every one of the retired military figures who has spoken out against America's forever wars.
The big three are Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson ; Vietnam veteran and onetime West Point history instructor, retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich ; and Iraq veteran and Afghan War whistleblower , retired Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis . All three have proven to be genuine public servants, poignant voices, and -- on some level -- cherished personal mentors. For better or worse, however, none carry the potential clout of a retired senior theater commander or prominent four-star general offering the same critiques.
Something must account for veteran dissenters topping out at the level of colonel. Obviously, there are personal reasons why individual officers chose early retirement or didn't make general or admiral. Still, the system for selecting flag officers should raise at least a few questions when it comes to the lack of antiwar voices among retired commanders. In fact, a selection committee of top generals and admirals is appointed each year to choose the next colonels to earn their first star. And perhaps you won't be surprised to learn that, according to numerous reports , "the members of this board are inclined, if not explicitly motivated, to seek candidates in their own image -- officers whose careers look like theirs." At a minimal level, such a system is hardly built to foster free thinkers, no less breed potential dissidents.
Consider it an irony of sorts that this system first received criticism in our era of forever wars when General David Petraeus, then commanding the highly publicized " surge " in Iraq, had to leave that theater of war in 2007 to serve as the chair of that selection committee. The reason: he wanted to ensure that a twice passed-over colonel, a protégé of his -- future Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster -- earned his star.
Mainstream national security analysts reported on this affair at the time as if it were a major scandal, since most of them were convinced that Petraeus and his vaunted counterinsurgency or " COINdinista " protégés and their " new " war-fighting doctrine had the magic touch that would turn around the failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, Petraeus tried to apply those very tactics twice -- once in each country -- as did acolytes of his later, and you know the results of that.
But here's the point: it took an eleventh-hour intervention by America's most acclaimed general of that moment to get new stars handed out to prominent colonels who had, until then, been stonewalled by Cold War-bred flag officers because they were promoting different (but also strangely familiar) tactics in this country's wars. Imagine, then, how likely it would be for such a leadership system to produce genuine dissenters with stars of any serious sort, no less a crew of future Smedley Butlers.
At the roots of this system lay the obsession of the American officer corps with " professionalization " after the Vietnam War debacle. This first manifested itself in a decision to ditch the citizen-soldier tradition, end the draft, and create an "all-volunteer force." The elimination of conscription, as predicted by critics at the time, created an ever-growing civil-military divide, even as it increased public apathy regarding America's wars by erasing whatever " skin in the game " most citizens had.
More than just helping to squelch civilian antiwar activism, though, the professionalization of the military, and of the officer corps in particular, ensured that any future Smedley Butlers would be left in the dust (or in retirement at the level of lieutenant colonel or colonel) by a system geared to producing faux warrior-monks. Typical of such figures is current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Mark Milley. He may speak gruffly and look like a man with a head of his own, but typically he's turned out to be just another yes-man for another war-power -hungry president.
One group of generals, however, reportedly now does have it out for President Trump -- but not because they're opposed to endless war. Rather, they reportedly think that The Donald doesn't "listen enough to military advice" on, you know, how to wage war forever and a day.
What Would Smedley Butler Think Today?In his years of retirement, Smedley Butler regularly focused on the economic component of America's imperial war policies. He saw clearly that the conflicts he had fought in, the elections he had helped rig, the coups he had supported, and the constabularies he had formed and empowered in faraway lands had all served the interests of U.S. corporate investors. Though less overtly the case today, this still remains a reality in America's post-9/11 conflicts, even on occasion embarrassingly so (as when the Iraqi ministry of oil was essentially the only public building protected by American troops as looters tore apart the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in the post-invasion chaos of April 2003). Mostly, however, such influence plays out far more subtly than that, both abroad and here at home where those wars help maintain the record profits of the top weapons makers of the military-industrial complex.
That beast, first identified by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is now on steroids as American commanders in retirement regularly move directly from the military onto the boards of the giant defense contractors, a reality which only contributes to the dearth of Butlers in the military retiree community. For all the corruption of his time, the Pentagon didn't yet exist and the path from the military to, say, United Fruit Company, Standard Oil, or other typical corporate giants of that moment had yet to be normalized for retiring generals and admirals. Imagine what Butler would have had to say about the modern phenomenon of the " revolving door " in Washington.
Of course, he served in a very different moment, one in which military funding and troop levels were still contested in Congress. As a longtime critic of capitalist excesses who wrote for leftist publications and supported the Socialist Party candidate in the 1936 presidential elections, Butler would have found today's nearly trillion-dollar annual defense budgets beyond belief. What the grizzled former Marine long ago identified as a treacherous nexus between warfare and capital "in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives" seems to have reached its natural end point in the twenty-first century. Case in point: the record (and still rising ) "defense" spending of the present moment, including -- to please a president -- the creation of a whole new military service aimed at the full-scale militarization of space .
Sadly enough, in the age of Trump, as numerous polls demonstrate, the U.S. military is the only public institution Americans still truly trust. Under the circumstances, how useful it would be to have a high-ranking, highly decorated, charismatic retired general in the Butler mold galvanize an apathetic public around those forever wars of ours. Unfortunately, the likelihood of that is practically nil, given the military system of our moment.
Of course, Butler didn't exactly end his life triumphantly. In late May 1940, having lost 25 pounds due to illness and exhaustion -- and demonized as a leftist, isolationist crank but still maintaining a whirlwind speaking schedule -- he checked himself into the Philadelphia Navy Yard Hospital for a "rest." He died there, probably of some sort of cancer, four weeks later. Working himself to death in his 10-year retirement and second career as a born-again antiwar activist, however, might just have constituted the very best service that the two-time Medal of Honor winner could have given the nation he loved to the very end.
Someone of his credibility, character, and candor is needed more than ever today. Unfortunately, this military generation is unlikely to produce such a figure. In retirement, Butler himself boldly confessed that, "like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical..."
Today, generals don't seem to have a thought of their own even in retirement. And more's the pity...
2 minutes agoAm I the only one to notice that Hollywood and it's film distributors have gone full bore on "war" productions, glorifying these historical events while using poetic license to rewrite history. Prepping the numbheads.14 minutes agoTULSI GABBARD.14 minutes agoForget rank. As Mr Sjursen implies, dissidents are no longer allowed in the higher ranks. "They" made sure to fix this as Mr Butler had too much of a mind of his own (US education system also programmed against creative, charismatic thinkers, btw).
The US Space Force has been created as part of a plan to disclose the deep state's Secret Space Program (SSP), which has been active for decades, and which has utilized, and repressed, advanced technologies that would provide free, unlimited renewable energy, and thus eliminate hunger and poverty on a planetary scale.
14 minutes ago
- What imperialism?
- We are spreading freedumb and dumbocracy.
- We are saving the world from socialism and communism.
- We are energy independent, with innate exceptionalism and #MAGA# will usher in a new era of American prosperity.
- Any and all accusations of USSA imperialism, are made by the "woke" and those jealous of the greatest Capitalist system in the world.
- The swamp is being drained as I speak, and therefore will continue with unwavering support for my 5x draft dodging, Zionist supporting, multiple times bankrupt, keeper of broken promises POTUS.
- Smedley Butler's book is not worthy of reading once you have the seminal work known as "The Art Of The Deal"
#MIGA#
29 minutes ago30 minutes agoSadly enough, in the age of Trump, as numerous polls demonstrate, the U.S. military is the only public institution Americans still truly trust. Under the circumstances, how useful it would be to have a high-ranking, highly decorated, charismatic retired general in the Butler mold galvanize an apathetic public around those forever wars of ours. Unfortunately, the likelihood of that is practically nil, given the military system of our moment.
This is why I feel an oath keeping constitutionally oriented American general is what we need in power, clear out all 545 criminals in office now, review their finances (and most of them will roll over on the others) and punish accordingly, then the lobbyist, how many of them worked against the country? You know what we do with those.
And then, finally, Hollywood, oh yes I long to see that **** hole burn with everyone in it.
Republicrat: the two faces of the moar war whore.32 minutes ago35 minutes agoGiven the severity of the Nazi threat to mankind
Do tell, from what I've read the Nazis were really only a threat to a few groups, the rest of us didn't need to worry.
Today, the "Masters of the Permawars" refer to the international extortion, MIC, racket as "Defending American Interests"! .....With never any explanation to the public/American taxpayer just what "American Interests" the incredible expenditures of American lives, blood, and treasure are being defended!41 minutes agoWhy are we sending our children out into the hellholes of the world to be maimed and killed in the fauxjew banksters' quest for world domination.
How stupid can we be!
(Edited) "Smedley Butler"... The last time the UCMJ was actually used before being permanently turned into a "door stop"!49 minutes agoHe was correct about our staying out of WWII. Which, BTW, would have never happened if we had stayed out of WWI.22 minutes ago(Edited) Both wars were about the international fauxjew imposition of debt-money central bankstering.53 minutes agoBoth wars were promulgated by the Financial oligarchyof New York. The communist Red Army of Russia was funded and supplied by the Financial oligarchyof New York. It was American Financial oligarchythat built the Russian Red Army that vexed the world and created the Cold War. How many hundreds of millions of goyim were sacrificed to create both the Russian and the Chinese Satanic behemoths.......and the communist horror that is now embedded in American academia, publishing, American politics, so-called news, entertainment, The worldwide Catholic religion, the Pentagon, and the American deep state.......and more!
How stupid can we be. Every generation has the be dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the eternal maw of historical ignorance to avoid falling back into the myriad dark hellholes of history. As we all should know, people who forget their own history are doomed to repeat it.
Today's General is a robot with with a DNA.54 minutes agoAll the General Staff is a bunch of #asskissinglittlechickenshits57 minutes agowant to stop senseless Empire wars>>well do thisWar = jobs and profit..we get work "THEY" get the profit.. If we taxed all war related profit at 99% how many wars would our rulers start? 1 hour ago
Here is a simple straightforward trading maxim that might apply here: if it works or is working keep doing it, but if it doesn't work or stops working, then STOP doing it. There are plenty of people, now poorer, for not adhering to that simple principle. Where is the Taxpayer's return on investment from the Combat taking place on their behalf around the globe? 'Nuff said - it isn't working. It is making a microscopic few richer & all others poorer so STOP doing it. 36 seconds ago We don't have to look far to figure out who they are that are getting rich off the fauxjew permawars.How can we be so stupid???
1 hour ago
See also:TULSI GABBARD
1 hour ago
The main reason you don't see the generals criticizing is that the current crop have not been in actual long term direct combat with the enemy and have mostly been bureaucratic paper pushers.Take the Marine Major General who is the current commander of CENTCOM. By the time he got into the Iraq/Afghanistan war he was already a Lieutenant Colonel and far removed from direct action.
He was only there on and off for a few years. Here are some of his other career highlights aft as they appear on his official bio:
- 2006-07: he served as the Military Secretary to the 33rd and 34th Commandants of the Marine Corps
- 2008: he was selected by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be the Director of the Chairman's New Administration Transition Team (CNATT)
- 2009: he reported to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, Afghanistan to serve as the Deputy to the Deputy Chief of Staff (DCOS) for Stability. ..... Deputy to the Deputy for Stability ???? WTF is that?
- 2010: he was assigned as the Director, Strategy, Plans, and Policy (J-5) for the U.S. Central Command
- 2012: he reported to Headquarters Marine Corps to serve as the Marine Corps Representative to the Quadrennial Defense Review
In short, these top guys aren't warriors they're bureaucrats so why would we expect them to be honest brokers of the truth?
51 minutes ago
are U saying Chesty Puller he's NOT? 1 hour ago(Edited) The purpose of war is to ensure that the Federal Reserve Note remains the world reserve paper currency of choice by keeping it relevant and in demand across the globe by forcing pesky energy producing nations to trade with it exclusively.It is a 49 year old policy created by the private owners of quasi public institutions called central banks to ensure they remain the Wizards of Oz doing gods work conjuring magic paper into existence with a secret spell known as issuing credit.
How else is a technologically advanced society of billions of people supposed to function w/out this divinely inspired paper?
1 hour ago
Goebbels in "Churchill's Lie Factory" where he said: "The Americans follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous." - Jospeh Goebbels, "Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik," 12. january 1941, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel1 hour ago
The greatest anti-imperialist of our times is Michael Parenti:Imperialism has been the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries, carving up whole continents while oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilizations. Yet, it is seldom accorded any serious attention by our academics, media commentators, and political leaders. When not ignored outright, the subject of imperialism has been sanitized, so that empires become "commonwealths," and colonies become "territories" or "dominions" (or, as in the case of Puerto Rico, "commonwealths" too). Imperialist military interventions become matters of "national defense," "national security," and maintaining "stability" in one or another region. In this book I want to look at imperialism for what it really is.
"Imperialism has been the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries, carving up whole continents while oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilizations. Yet, it is seldom accorded any serious attention by our academics, media commentators, and political leaders."Why would it when they who control academia, media and most of our politicians are our enemies.
1 hour ago
1 hour ago"The big three are Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson ; ..."
Yep, Wilkerson, who leaked Valerie Plame's name, not that it was a leak, to Novak, and then stood by to watch the grand jury fry Scooter Libby. Wilkerson, that paragon of moral rectitude. Wilkerson the silent, that *******.
sheesh,
(Edited)" A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people."
James Madison Friday June 29, 1787
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_629.asp
"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." (Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment [I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789])
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendIIs6.html
1 hour ago
A particularly pernicious example of intra-European imperialism was the Nazi aggression during World War II, which gave the German business cartels and the Nazi state an opportunity to plunder the resources and exploit the labor of occupied Europe, including the slave labor of concentration camps. - M. PARENTI, Against empireSee Alexander Parvus
1 hour ago
Collapse is the cure. It's too far gone.
1 hour ago
Russia Wants to 'Jam' F-22 and F-35s in the Middle East: Reporthttps://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russia-wants-jam-f-22-and-f-35s-middle-east-report-121041
1 hour ago
ZH retards think that the American mic is bad and all other mics are good or don't exist. That's the power of brainwashing. Humans understand that war in general is bad, but humans are becoming increasingly rare in this world.
1 hour ago
The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.2 hours agoIf 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.
https://truthout.org/articles/the-dangers-of-american-fascism/
The swamp is bigger than the military alone. Substitute Bureaucrat, Statesman, or Beltway Bandit for General and Colonel in your writing above and you've got a whole new article to post that is just as true.2 hours ago
(Edited) War = jobs and profit..we get work "THEY" get the profit..If we taxed all war related profit at 99% how many wars would our rulers start?2 hours ago [edited for clarity]
War is a racket. And nobody loves a racket more than Financial oligarchy. Americans come close though, that's why Financial oligarchy use them to project their own rackets and provide protection reprisals.
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Feb 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Norwegian , Feb 22 2020 19:12 utc | 66
Posted by: Bemildred | Feb 22 2020 13:41 utc | 20The "social" is "social media" is in contrast to "professional" or "business" or "commercial" media, i.e. the MSM and other commercial media.
I understand "social media" literally in the Orwellian sense, it is "social" media just like war is peace. The true meaning is "asocial media" which prevents real interaction, and under complete control by big brother, you can become a non-person at any moment.
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Jan 21, 2020 | www.unz.com
SolontoCroesus , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 5:20 pm GMT
Z-man , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 7:05 pm GMTThat Iraq is to say the least unstable is attributable to the ill-advised U.S. invasion of 2003.
Nothing to do with 9 years of sanctions on Iraq that killed a million Iraqis, "half of them children," and US control of Iraqi air space, after having killed Iraqi military in a turkey-shoot, for no really good reason other than George H W Bush seized the "unipolar moment" to become king of the world?
Maybe it's just stubbornness: I think Papa Bush is responsible for the "imperial pivot," in the Persian Gulf war aka Operation Desert Storm, 29 years and 4 days ago -- January 17, 1991.
According to Jeffrey Engel, Bush's biographer and director of the Bush library at Southern Methodist University, Gorbachev harassed Bush with phone calls, pleading with him not to go to war over Kuwait
https://www.c-span.org/video/?310832-1/into-desert-reflections-gulf-war
(It's worth noting that Dennis Ross was relatively new in his role on Jim Baker's staff when Baker, Brent Skowcroft, Larry Eagleburger & like minded urged Bush to take the Imperial Pivot.)
According to Vernon Loeb, who completed the writing of King's Counsel after Jack O'Connell died, Jordan's King Hussein, in consultation with retired CIA station chief O'Connell, parlayed with Arab leaders to resolve the conflict on their own, i.e. Arab-to-Arab terms, and also pleaded with Bush to stay out, and to let the Arabs solve their own problems. Bush refused.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?301361-6/kings-counselSee above: Bush was determined to "seize the unipolar moment."
Once again insist on entering into the record: George H Bush was present at the creation of the Global War on Terror, July 4, 1979, the Jerusalem Conference hosted by Benzion and Benjamin Netanyahu and heavily populated with Trotskyites – neocons.
International Terrorism: Challenge and Response, Benjamin Netanyahu, ed., 1981.
(Wurmser became Netanyahu's acolyte)@SolontoCroesusI think Papa Bush is responsible for the "imperial pivot," in the Persian Gulf war aka Operation Desert Storm, 29 years and 4 days ago -- January 17, 1991.
Yes I remember it well. I came back from a long trip & memorable vacation, alas I was a young man, to the television drama that was unfolding with Arthur Kent 'The Scud Stud' and others reporting from the safety of their hotel balconies filming aircaft and cruise missiles. It was surreal.
You are correct of course.
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Feb 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Ian2 , Feb 6 2020 20:02 utc | 65
It should be clear on what the fight is really about in the US. It's about stopping the rise of socialism. Regardless of party affiliation, the elites know what the populace wants and are desperately trying to stop it. I refuse to accept that the Democrats have no idea what they're doing.I honestly can't see Sanders getting the nomination with all the corruption openly being displayed. I would be pleasantly surprised if Sanders did manage to get it, but he still have to deal with the ELECTORAL COLLEGE (EC). The Electors have the final say. Yes, one can point out that some States have laws forcing Electors to vote what the populace wants, but that is being challenged in court. The debate on whether such laws are unconstitutional or not, remains to be seen. It's too late now to deal with the EC for this election, but people need to be more active in politics at the State level as that's where Electors are (s)elected.
IF Sanders is genuine then he should prepare to run as an independent just to get the EC attention.
ben , Feb 6 2020 22:01 utc | 79
RR @ 14;
Everything in the U$A today, is driven by the unofficial Party of $, and it's reach transcends both Dems & repubs. It's cadre is the majority of the D.C. "rule makers", so we get what they want, not what "we the people" want or need.They own the banks, MSM media, and even our voting systems.
IMO, to assume one party is to blame for conditions in the U$A is a bit naive.
Question is, can anything the masses do, change the system? Or is rank and file America just along for the ride?
I'm assuming us peons will get what the party of $ wants this November also.
P.S. If any blame is given, it needs to go to the American public, because " you get the kind of Gov. you deserve" through your inactions...
It's a lot like living, death is certain, but until that occurs, I'll move forward trying to mitigate current paradigms.
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Feb 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Richard Steven Hack , Feb 7 2020 0:54 utc | 104
This is very speculative, but...Pepe Escobar pointed out once that certain members of the "Masters of the Universe" (as he terms the US elites who actually run things) supported Trump in 2016, and were opposed to other "Masters" who supported Hillary Clinton. Given that Clinton disappointed her "Masters" by losing and damaging her credibility with the whole "Russiagate" fiasco, perhaps they switched sides to Trump - especially given that Trump can be controlled and manipulated more easily (since he is an idiot and ignoramus) to start the wars the "masters" are yearning for to improve their corporate profits (regardless of his alleged desire to avoid wars - a fanciful story also told about Barrack Obama from the beginning as well, which resulted in Obama destroying four more countries than Bush during his administration.)
So now they've decided the Dems need to be kept out of it for whatever reasons of incompetent politicking or too much socialism for the "Masters" liking, or whatever. So they're arranging for the Dems to self-destruct this year.
Just a speculative thought, and I wouldn't put any stock in it absent any real evidence.
In the end, it doesn't matter. Absent Gabbard being nominated and elected, nothing will change in US foreign policy anyway. And to quote Percival Rose from the Nikita show about Gabbard's chances, "That ain't gonna happen."
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Feb 05, 2020 | off-guardian.org
Entrapment of Flynn and his own stupid behavior (for former chief of DIA this really unass[eble naivity) that facilitated it is an interesting case study here...
David G. Horsman Although I am not familar with all the players, in context to early 2017 the one part of the article I thought exaggerated was this:'Probably the most intelligent analysis of the Deep State was written for The Nation by Greg Grandin. Titled "What is the Deep State?", it makes many very good points I
n 1956, C. Wright Mills wrote that "the conception of the power elite and of its unity rests upon the corresponding developments and the coincidence of interests among economic, political, and military organizations."
If nothing else, the "Trump v. Deep State" framings show that unity is long gone.'The three seem generally aligned with the people on the outside looking in. Infighting is the norm.
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Jan 29, 2020 | www.unz.com
Donald Trump ran on a platform guaranteed to arouse the hatred of this elite. His immigration-related proposals and comments (e.g., " Paris is no longer Paris ," "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best") and his advocacy of a non-interventionist foreign policy were red flags to an Establishment bent on massive immigration and endless wars in the Middle East to protect Israel. His victory was a hostile takeover of the Presidency, opposed by the entire spectrum of elite political opinion, from the far Left to the neoconservative "Right," and including Conservatism, Inc. cheap-labor lobbyists like Paul Ryan.
...So it's no surprise that Trump's actual election was greeted with quite unprecedented anguish and frustration. The Washington Post headlined The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun the day of Trump's inauguration. [By Matea Gold, January 17, 2017] (But in fact -- incredibly -- it dates back to even before his nomination).
Digital Samizdat , says: Show Comment January 27, 2020 at 12:14 pm GMT
Bob Bishop , says: Show Comment January 27, 2020 at 3:54 pm GMTSo it's no surprise that Trump's actual election was greeted with quite unprecedented anguish and frustration. The Washington Post headlined The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun the day of Trump's inauguration. [By Matea Gold, January 17, 2017] (But in fact -- incredibly -- it dates back to even before his nomination).
In fact, right around the time of the Republican convention in 2016, James Kirchik was already openly stating that a coup against Trump was possibility, if he won the election. You can't say we weren't given fair warning.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-kirchick-trump-coup-20160719-snap-story.html
I believe the present political crisis should be seen as a struggle between our new, Jewish-dominated elite, stemming from the 1880–1920 First Great Wave of immigration, and the traditional white Christian majority of America, significantly derived from pre-Revolutionary colonial stock but augmented by subsequent white Christian immigration.
But as Kevin himself later notes, Trump is such a raging Zionist and he's surrounded by Zionist Jews–including his own family! So I'm thinking maybe this is all actually a schism between rival factions of Jews: say, globalist Jews vs. zionist Jews. The WASPs, after all, are finished. They surrendered their country long ago.
The nascent elite defeated Sen. McCarthy, despite subsequent evidence that he was substantially right. Of course, it is simply a fact that the individuals caught up in the McCarthy accusations were disproportionately Jewish. McCarthy's crusade may be regarded as the last gasp of traditional America.
McCarthy himself was controlled opposition. Please note that he never, ever raised the Judenfrage in public. And with good reason: some of leading advisors, like the ultra-creepy Roy Cohn, were Jews. So 'Tailgunner Joe' was just more controlled opposition–and so were the Birchers, too.
I suggest that that the "visceral animosity" that I noted above is motivated by the parallels between Trump's white working-class base and working-class support for National Socialism in 1930s Germany. This phenomenon was traumatic for Jewish intellectuals, who at the time were deeply immersed in classical class-struggle Marxism. It was of critical importance in motivating the shift pioneered by Frankfurt School toward conceptualizing Jewish interests in terms of race -- that the real problem Jews faced was white ethnocentrism, the latter solvable only by propaganda efforts aimed at vilifying white racial identity (which soon became mainstream in the educational efforts of the Jewish activist community) and by importing non-whites in order to diminish white political power.
This! Jewish intellectual support for the working class a hundred years ago was purely and transparently cynical. In the 1930s, once it became clear that the working class was capable of acting in its own interests without the help of Shmuel, the Frankfurt Schoolers (who, as the name implies, originated in Frankfurt, Germany) were stunned. That's why hardly any Jewish leftists anymore give a rat's rumpus about the working class. And Bernie Sanders is just a relic of a bygone era assuming he's even sincere.
Assuming eliminating the white majority is the goal, what are Jews supposed to do once they've accomplished it? This strategy seems self-destructive since all the other racial and ethnic groups being imported are far less tolerant of Jews.Curmudgeon , says: Show Comment January 27, 2020 at 10:29 pm GMT@Been_there_done_that In other words, fcuk the UN Declaration of Human Rights guaranteeing freedom of political thought.Been_there_done_that , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 4:19 am GMT
https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html@Curmudgeon Regrettably, not a single country in the world fully complies with Article 19 nowadays; this standard appears to be just too difficult to live up to:GMC , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 8:44 am GMTArticle 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
The 65 Open, Unlimited , un Vetted Immigration plan that was lobbied ... passed by the team that killed JFK, knew exactly what they were engineering. Their plan to cut off the European white society and was the end game. 80 % of our immigrants prior to 65 came from Europe – after the 65 laws – only 8% were permitted. This is the Smoking Gun !..Lockean Proviso , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 11:04 am GMT@Franz Has John Bolton flipped by leaking early drafts of his book and saying that he will testify if subpoenaed? Not really, he's now trying to help dislodge Trump from office because Trump is wobbly on starting a war with Iran. After the Soleimani hit at the behest of his administration neoconservatives, Trump's in-house nationalist isolationists then got his fickle, ADD ear and talked him down from further escalations. No real tit-for-tat came after the Iranian symbolic strike on a US empty hangar (one that was prefaced with a warning so as to ensure no US deaths). Rhetoric aside, both the Iranian leadership and Trump realized that full-scale war is a very bad idea for both Iran and the US.Sean , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 11:41 am GMTThe neocon element and their Israeli allies are unhappy to be derailed from their path to war, so they, including Bolton, probably now believe that it's time to remove Trump and replace him with Mike Pence, a 100% Useful Idiot for Israel. With Pence, and maybe an October/November Surprise, the vile, treasonous neocons would get the disastrous war with Iran they so desperately want America to fight on behalf of Israel.
By the way, it's important to remember that the Democratic leadership decided not to take their House subpoenas to court and to involve the judicial branch in enforcing them, which it ultimately would have. The Dems made a political decision to favor expediency over historic congressional prerogatives and power because they didn't want the impeachment to be near the election. Won't it be ironic if it ends up that Senate Republicans end up being the enforcers of subpoenas by using their political clout from being in Trump's party, all due to the book by a former staffer (and to backroom animosities toward Trump and to Senate interventionists such as Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney).
This is a significant development.
Anonymous [830] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 12:21 pm GMTDonald Trump ran on a platform guaranteed to arouse the hatred of this elite. His immigration-related proposals and comments (e.g., "Paris is no longer Paris," "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best") and his advocacy of a non-interventionist foreign policy were red flags to an Establishment bent on massive immigration and endless wars in the Middle East to protect Israel.
While immigration was a big part of his appeal the longest running theme with Trump has been unfavourable terms of trade and military largesse undermining American primacy.
Saudi Arabia cannot defend itself. The US army cannot be kept in Saudi Arabia, and if the US wants the Saudi oil money to the kept in US bonds then the US must be prepared to use military force to defend Saudi Arabia. Iran already has the beginnings of an alliance with Russia and China having conducted unprecedented naval exercises with them recently. The Iranians have it in for Saudi Arabia. It really will not do to walk away from Saudi Arabia; does anyone think China would hesitate to build a base in Saudi if the Saudis decided they would be a better protector than the US? If the US withdrew from the Middle East, China would be in there like a shot, nothing would stop them. This is the same China that Trump opposed the so called free trade with that put people out a job who are killing themselves in the White Death with fentanyl that China funnels into the US.
DONALD TRUMP: THE MAKING OF A WORLD VIEW by Brendan Simms shows that for past thirty five years Trump has focused on on trade and economic power and his concern is with countries that either rival the US economy (especially China) or so called allies that undermine American strength by exploiting relations with the US. Since the 80s Trump has been extremely critical of Saudi Arabia , Germany, and Japan's failure to contribute to their own defence.
Indeed, in his call with Zelensky, Trump spotlighted his displeasure that the U.S. was helping Ukraine while Germany and other European nations were not doing enough.
I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it's something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she ·doesn't do anything. A lot of the European countries are the same way so I think it's something you want to look at but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. How about Germany opening up a pipeline into Russia? And we are supposed to be fighting Russia. So Germany is paying Russia like 2 billion dollars a month and they a member of NATO And we are paying 90% of the cost of NATO.
The hatred oozing from every pore of Schiff, Nadler, and the others mentioned cannot be explained even in part by hatred of the person of DJT, because none of them know him enough to hate him the way they do. The American tragedy is that average whites can't see he's a proxy for them and that that hatred is a brazen display of sanguinary intent about what they would do if they could, as happened in Russia a century ago at the hands of their forefathers.anonymous [245] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 12:56 pm GMTUnless you've worked with them where they're running the show, such as, say, on Wall Street, you really have no idea how visceral their hatred for you is when they don't need your cooperation for something or other. In suburban NYC towns on Long Island and up in Fairfield County, Connecticut you've got thousands of nouveau riche goys working as traders on the Street tooling around in their Porsche convertibles in dusty pink baseball caps on Sunday mornings, worshipping at the bagel shop instead of church. They've got the money and they're surely not going to upset the apple cart for anyone. Mega-sellout Sean Hannity tops most of them, however, selling out his people and country with a straight face every night for a cool $40 MM a year, with a net worth of $250 MM, according to Forbes.
For a different take, see Linh Dinh's prescient column of June 12, 2016.zard , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 1:57 pm GMTSince at least the closed door reaming apparently administered after Helsinki in summer 2018, "Trump's lack of success in effecting fundamental change" is due to Trump's lack of EFFORT in effecting fundamental change. And the farcical impeachment is just puppet show turned up to 11, the latest, desperate way to stir up enough sheep to vote RedBlue and keep things just as they are.
The whole Impeachment is in MY opinion staged , another story , a fable designed by the worlds greatest liars . Cover up Epstein , cover up Syria and Saudi Arabia / U.S. military ops and Venezuela . Of course the Chosen Ones will give only the side of the news fit for the goy ..smiddy012 , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 2:08 pm GMTThe US deep state is planning it to backfire. Impeachment was proven to be Bill Clinton's ticket to a second term. They are also running nothing but losers on the Dem side of the contest. The last thing the MIC will allow to happen is for the people to elect a government to control their own lives or to control them. When they have hundreds of billions every year to throw around, all filched from taxpayers, with the money barons calling the shots of whom is to run for the top position, and mutually reticent about any real control from the people, they will use the impeachment process to ensure Trump gets a second term.
People who get stuck on "the Jews" become tiresome after long It is more accurate to point to elite families or institutions like the Rothschilds or Rockefellers, the Vatican, the Skull & Bones/Trilateral/Bilderberg types, the various secret societies and/or Occultist sects If you dig even deeper you may realize that archaic hominids and their hybridization with us plays a role going back millenniaJust passing through , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 2:48 pm GMTThe first problem with blaming Jews and/or Jewish systems is that it absolves non-Jews who partake and are just as effectually guilty as the Jews who do, so it is to some degree slave mentality (similar to how black liberals blame "whites" for everything). The other problem is that there are dark Occult sects whom historically use Jews as a sacrificial front; they'd rather Jews take the fall than "bankers", "Luciferians", etc., it's literally part of their playbook.
@Ship Track If I remember correctly, many heavy industries in Germany during that time were not Jew owned, Hitler received the funding for his NSDAP from companies like Thyssen and Krupp. They donated because they knew Hitler wasn't really 'socialist' and wouldn't seize control of their industries, and that he would be a better alternative to the Communist parties that were on the rise at that time.Derer , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 3:04 pm GMTJews have a complete stranglehold on most aspects of money in 2020, I doubt something like this could happen again, Zionists Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer were donating to Trump after he won the primaries. All politicians can be bought these days and the buyers are always Jews.
I am in a foreign country and must "rely" on CNN for the daily news. The CNN despicable insects reporting is so one-sided pro-Democrats that suggesting "CNN is to Democrats what Goebbels was to Nazis" is a very mild comparison. Instead of discussing Trump's defense team points they are deflecting by discussing Bolton book and pathetic Romney's hate. It looks like Democrats are now holding on to a razor.Really No Shit , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 3:17 pm GMTBolton wants to make money by selling his book unfortunately Democrats would not buy Bolton's book, hence create controversy, Trump slander and they will.
I've never commented without fully delving into an article but today is an exception because the rhetorical headline says it all: it's a clash of the competing elites of America and there is no two ways about it!danand , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 5:37 pm GMT@Z-man "I'm still hoping he's playing 3D chess with the CABAL but that hope is fading fast. Lets see the particulars of this 'Deal of the Century' (rolls eyes)."sarz , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 5:50 pm GMTZ-man, this interview with Ann Coulter (I know, I know) is kind of fun watching for her comments Trumps "3D" chess. Actually quite a few of these PBS frontline interviews published on YouTube, Jan 13th, are interesting/worth a casual view:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mbn9DSr-ynI?feature=oembed
@Ship TrackTruth3 , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 5:52 pm GMTWonderful analysis, but didn't Rothschild bail out Trump?
Thank you.
Yes, he did. More than that, Lord Rothschild's son was dating Ivanka. The big Jews were more or less united in the early years of this century, long past 9/11.
But at some point, in light of the repeated war games that showed Iran defeating the United States in a conventional war, it occurred to the financial powers that had set up Israel in the first place that Israel, much as they loved the idea, was getting to be too high-maintenance. Adolf Hitler had conjectured in his memoirs that the real reason a homeland for the Jews was being pushed was to give the cover of sovereign immunity to the deprecations of a criminal tribe. Let's say the main motive was utilitarian. And so the Yinon ambitions of Israel had to be pruned back somewhat. And so Obama did his nuke treaty. That's when the big-Jew split came about.
It's a family quarrel snd Trump is s dues-paid member of the Kehilla. But he's broken the rules of the biggest big Jews and has to be brought down.
"Cyrus card" doesn't doesn't quite render it right. Cyrus wasn't a Jew. And if you're keeping up on the impeachment, the Parnas recording showed that traditional Jewish religious concepts, specifically the Messiah, had to be explained to Trump. "In a secretly recorded video of a dinner with President Donald Trump, businessmen and Rudy Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman draw a parallel between the president and the Messiah." (Haaretz) But the flattery that was on his wavelength and which he retweeted was" King of the Jews". What he wants is not, what the Adelsons have suggested, a book of his own in the Jewish bible like the Book of Esther, but to be thought of as the biggest Jew macher of all time.
The so called 'Deal of the Century' has been unveiledAbject surrender demanded of the Palestinian people.
See? Trump doubling down on what is 'Good for the Jews'.
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Jan 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
Amidst all the anti-Russia brouhaha that has enveloped our nation , we shouldn't forget that the U.S. national-security establishment -- specifically the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI -- was convinced that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist agent who was spearheading a communist takeover of the United States.
This occurred during the Cold War, when Americans were made to believe that there was a gigantic international communist conspiracy to take over the United States and the rest of the world. The conspiracy, they said, was centered in Moscow, Russia. Yes, that Russia!
That was, in fact, the justification for converting the federal government to a national-security state type of governmental structure after the end of World War II. The argument was that a limited-government republic type of governmental structure, which was the national's founding governmental system, was insufficient to prevent a communist takeover of the United States. To prevail over the communists in what was being called a â€cold War, a€ it would be necessary for the federal government, they said, to become a national-security state so that it could wield the same type of sordid, dark-side, totalitarian-like practices that the communists themselves wielded and exercised.
The conviction that the communists were coming to get us became so predominant, primarily through official propaganda and indoctrination, especially in the national's public (i.e., government) schools, that the matter evolved into mass paranoia. Millions of Americans became convinced that there were communists everywhere. Americans were exhorted to keep a careful watch on everyone else, including their neighbors, and report any suspicious activity, much as Americans today are exhorted to do the same thing with respect to terrorists.
Some Americans would even look under their beds for communists. Others searched for communists in Congress and within the federal bureaucracies, even the Army, and Hollywood as well. One rightwing group became convinced that even President Eisenhower was an agent of the Soviet government.
In the midst of all this national paranoia, the FBI, the Pentagon, and the CIA became convinced that King was a communist agent. When King began criticizing U.S. interventionism in Vietnam, that solidified their belief that he was a communist agent. After all, they maintained, wouldn't any true-blue American patriot rally to his government in time of war, not criticize or condemn it? Only a communist, they believed, would oppose his government when it was committed to killing communists in Vietnam.
Moreover, when King began advocating for civil rights, especially in the South, that constituted additional evidence, as far as the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon were concerned, that he was, in fact, a communist agent, one whose mission was to foment civil strife in America as a prelude to a communist takeover of America . How else to explain why a black man would be fighting for equal rights for blacks in nation that purported to be free?
The website kingcenter.org points out:
After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a unanimous verdict on December 8, 1999 after about an hour of deliberations that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. Mrs. Coretta Scott King welcomed the verdict saying, there is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband Martin Luther King Jr. The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal governments were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband.â€
And why not? Isn't it the duty of the U.S. national-security state to eradicate threats to national security? What bigger threat to national security than a person who is supposedly serving as an agent for the communists and also as a spearhead for an international communist conspiracy to take over the United States?
State-sponsored assassinations to protect national security were among the dark-side practices that began to be utilized after the federal government was converted into a national-security state . As early as 1953, the CIA was developing a formal assassination manual that trained its agents in the art of assassination and, equally important, in the art of concealing the CIA's role in state-sponsored assassinations.
In 1954, the CIA targeted the democratically elected president of Guatemala for assassination because he was reaching out to Russia in a spirt of peace, friendship, and mutual co-existence. In 1960-61, the CIA conspired to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the head of the Congo because he was perceived to be a threat to U.S. national security. In the early 1960s, the CIA , in partnership with the Mafia, the worldâ's premier criminal organization, conspired to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba, a country that never attacked or invaded the United States. In 1973, the U.S. national-security state orchestrated a coup in Chile, where its counterparts in the Chilean national-security establishment conspired to assassinate the democratically elected president of the country, Salvador Allende, by firing missiles at his position in the national palace.
The mountain of circumstantial evidence that has accumulated since November 1963 has established that foreign officials werenâ't the only ones who got targeted as threats to national security. As James W. Douglas documents so well in his remarkable and profound book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters , the U.S. national-security establishment also targeted President John F. Kennedy for a state-sponsored assassination as well.
Why did they target Kennedy? For the same reason they targeted all those other people for assassination -- they concluded that Kennedy had become a grave threat to national security and, they believed, it was their job to eliminate threats to national security.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a breakthrough that enabled him to recognize that the Cold War was just one great big racket for the national-security establishment and its army of defense contractors and sub-contractors.
That's when JFK announced an end to the Cold War and began reaching out to the Soviets and the Cubans in a spirit of peace, friendship, and mutual coexistence. Kennedy's Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963, where he announced his intent to end the Cold War and normalize relations with the communist world, sealed President Kennedy's fate.
Thet's also what had sealed the fate of President Arbenz in Guatemala and what would seal the fate of President Allende in Chile. (See FFFâ's bestselling book JFKâ's War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated  by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s. Also see FFFâ's bestselling book The Kennedy Autopsy  by Jacob Hornberger and his recently published The Kennedy Autopsy 2 .â€)
But what many people often forget is that one day after his Peace Speech at American University, Kennedy delivered a major televised address to the nation defending the civil rights movement, the movement that King was leading.
What better proof of a threat to national security than that â€" reaching out to the communist world in peace and friendship and then, one day later, defending a movement that the U.S. national-security establishment was convinced was a spearhead for the communist takeover of the United States?
The loss of both Kennedy and King constituted conclusive confirmation that the worst mistake in U.S. history was to abandon a limited-government republic type of governmental system in favor of a totalitarian governmental structure known as a national-security state. A free nation does not fight communism with communist tactics and an omnipotent government. A free nation fights communism with freedom and limited government.
There is no doubt what both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. would have thought about a type of totalitarian-like governmental structure that has led our nation in the direction of state-sponsored assassinations, torture, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, coups, alliances with dictatorial regimes, sanctions, embargoes, regime-change operations, and massive death, suffering, and destruction, not to mention the loss of liberty and privacy here at home.
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Jan 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
A German panel of linguists which decides on a new word to 'ban' every year has announced the 'un-wording' of the term "climate hysteria" because it undermines propaganda about man-made global warming.
First of all, just let it sink in that there is an organization comprised of linguists which exists solely to 'ban' words and terms that they don't like. Their action is known as 'Un-word of the year' .
They're literally attempting to re-create 1984's Newspeak dictionary , which shrank in size year after year in order to eliminate language and limit free thought and free speech, making it harder for the plebs to vocalize their opposition to The Party.
As you may have suspected, every word or term already 'banned' by the group in recent years are ones used by conservatives to challenge leftist political tropes. Imagine my shock.
Terms 'un-worded' in recent years include "alternative facts," "do-gooder," "Lügenpresse" (liar press) and "welfare tourism" (referring to "foreigners in Germany allegedly leeching on the welfare system.")
The panel says it exists to discourage the use of words that "discriminate against societal groups or may be euphemistic, disguising or misleading."
Perhaps nervous that more Germans appear to be rejecting the cult of man-made climate change despite vociferous propaganda, this year the panel has chosen to 'un-word' the term "climate hysteria."
According to the panel, which contains no scientists, the term "defames climate protection efforts and the climate protection movement, and discredits important discussions about climate protection."
"Keeping the Newspeak Dictionary as thin as possible in hopes that this will narrow our range of thought is a progressive priority," writes Dave Blount .
"Any word or term that can be used to undermine leftist ideology will eventually be removed from the permissible vocabulary. That's the point of having a Newspeak Dictionary."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/qX86OnqAxBs
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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 | 36Hmmm, 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.Piotr Berman , Jan 23 2020 20:19 utc | 82
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
NorwayThe amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me. <- NorwayOf 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.
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Jan 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Trailer Trash , Jan 23 2020 18:30 utc | 44For example, Trump managed to speed up the process od destruction of the USA-centered neoliberal empire considerably. Especially by lauching the trade war with China. He also managed to discredit the USA foreign policy as no other president before him. Even Bush II.
>This is the most critical U.S. election in our lifetime
> Posted by: Circe | Jan 23 2020 17:46 utc | 36Hmmm, 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...
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Jan 21, 2020 | www.strategic-culture.org
Daniel Lazare
January 20, 2020 © Photo: Wikimedia The New York Times caused a mini-commotion last week with a front-page story suggesting that Russian intelligence had hacked a Ukrainian energy firm known as Burisma Holdings in order to get dirt on Joe Biden and help Donald Trump win re-election.
But the article was flimsy even by Russiagate standards, and so certain questions inevitably arise. What was it really about? Who's behind it? Who's the real target?
Here's a quick answer. It was about boosting Joe Biden, and its real target was his chief rival, Bernie Sanders. And poor, inept Bernie walked straight into the trap.
The article was flimsy because rather than saying straight out that Russian intelligence hacked Burisma, the company notorious for hiring Biden's son, Hunter, for $50,000 a month job, reporters Nicole Perlroth and Matthew Rosenberg had to rely on unnamed "security experts" to say it for them. While suggesting that the hackers were looking for dirt, they didn't quite say that as well. Instead, they admitted that "it is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for."
So we have no idea what they were up to, if anything at all. But the Times then quoted "experts" to the effect that "the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens – the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment." Since Trump and the Russians are seeking the same information, they must be in cahoots, which is what Democrats have been saying from the moment Trump took office. Given the lack of evidence, this was meaningless as well.
But then came the kicker: two full paragraphs in which a Biden campaign spokesman was permitted to expound on the notion that the Russians hacked Burisma because Biden is the candidate that they and Trump fear the most.
"Donald Trump tried to coerce Ukraine into lying about Joe Biden and a major bipartisan, international anti-corruption victory because he recognized that he can't beat the vice president," the spokesman, Andrew Bates, said. "Now we know that Vladimir Putin also sees Joe Biden as a threat. Any American president who had not repeatedly encouraged foreign interventions of this kind would immediately condemn this attack on the sovereignty of our elections."
If Biden is the number-one threat, then Sanders is not, presumably because the Times sees him as soft on Moscow. If so, it means that he could be in for the same neo-McCarthyism that antiwar candidate Tulsi Gabbard encountered last October when Hillary Clinton blasted her as "the favorite of the Russians." Gabbard had the good sense to blast her right back.
"Thank you @Hillary Clinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know – it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine ."
If only Sanders did the same. But instead he put out a statement filled with the usual anti-Russian clichés:
"The 2020 election is likely to be the most consequential election in modern American history, and I am alarmed by new reports that Russia recently hacked into the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the impeachment trial, as well as Russia's plans to once again meddle in our elections and in our democracy. After our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, including with thousands of paid ads on Facebook, the New York Times now reports that Russia likely represents the biggest threat of election meddle in 2020, including through disinformation campaigns, promoting hatred, hacking into voting systems, and by exploiting the political divisions sewn [sic] by Donald Trump ."
And so on for another 250 words. Not only did the statement put him in bed with the intelligence agencies, but it makes him party to the big lie that the Kremlin was responsible for putting Trump over the top in 2016.
Let's get one thing straight. Yes, Russian intelligence may have hacked the Democratic National Committee. But cybersecurity was so lax that others may have been rummaging about as well. (CrowdStrike, the company called in to investigate the hack, says it found not one but two cyber-intruders.) Notwithstanding the Mueller report, all the available evidence indicates that Russia did not then pass along thousands of DNC emails that Wikileaks published in July 2016. (Julian Assange's statement six months later that "our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" remains uncontroverted.) Similarly, there's no evidence that the Kremlin had anything to do with the $45,000 worth of Facebook ads purchased by a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency – Robert Mueller's 2018 indictment of the IRA was completely silent on the subject of a Kremlin connection – and no evidence that the ads, which were politically all over the map, had a remotely significant impact on the 2016 election.
All the rest is a classic CIA disinformation campaign aimed at drumming up anti-Russian hysteria and delegitimizing anyone who fails to go along. And now Bernie Sanders is trying to cover his derrière by hopping on board.
It won't work. Sanders will find himself having to take one loyalty oath after another as the anti-Russia campaign flares anew. But it will never be enough, and he'll only wind up looking tired and weak. Voters will opt for the supposedly more formidable Biden, who will end up as a bug splat on the windshield of Donald Trump's speeding election campaign. With impeachment no longer an issue, he'll be free to behave as dictatorially as he wishes as he settles into his second term.
After inveighing against billionaire's wars, he'll find himself ensnared by the same billionaire war machine. The trouble with Sanders is that he thinks he can win by playing by the rules. But he can't because the rules are stacked against him. He'd know that if his outlook was more radical. His problem is not that he's too much of a socialist. Rather, it's that he's not enough.
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Jan 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Bryce Buchanan via The Burning Platform blog,
Many government officials with long entrenched power are unwilling to give up any of that power. In their minds, they have a right to control our lives as they see fit, with complete indifference to our wishes. To avoid rebellion, they need to hide this fact as much as possible. They want the citizens to believe the lie that we are a nation of laws with equal justice under the law. To advance this lie, they have staged many theatrical productions that they call "investigations". They try to give us the impression that they want to expose the facts and punish wrongdoing.
Most of the big 'investigations' in the news in recent years have not been at all what they pretended to be. The sham investigations of Hillary's email, or the Clinton Foundation, or Weiner's laptop, or Uranium One, or Mueller's witch hunt, or Huber's big nothing, or the IG's whitewash, or the Schiff-Pelosi charades, have all been premeditated deceptions.
There are three types of investigations that call for different deceptions by the Deep State.
- The first type is the rare honest investigation . Examples would be the attempt to find the truth about Fast and Furious (Obama's gunrunning operation), or the IRS scandal (Obama's weaponizing of government). In response to real investigations, the criminals do two things lie and hide evidence. Key evidence, even if it is under subpoena, just disappears. In the IRS case, Lois Lerner's relevant email and the email of 6 others involved in the scheme was just "lost". The IRS "worked tirelessly" to find the email, but hard drives had been destroyed and back-up drives were missing, so the subpoenaed evidence could not be provided.
For the Deep State, hiding and destroying evidence of guilt is standard operating procedure. They simply report a "glitch" that destroyed the key evidence and that's the end of it. Or, they simply redact the portions of the record that would expose the truth. To my memory, no one ever suffers any consequences for this. Even now, Director Wray and others are tenaciously withholding evidence.
- The second type of 'investigation' is when the Deep State pretends to investigate the Deep State . In these 'investigations' the outcome is known in advance, but the script calls for pretending, sometimes for years, that it an honest investigation is underway.
There was nothing about the Hillary investigations that had anything to do with finding facts. The purpose from the beginning was exoneration. Key witnesses were given immunity and many were allowed to attend each other's interviews. There were no early morning swat team raids to gather evidence. Evidence was destroyed with no consequences.
When Anthony Weiner's laptop was found to contain over 340,000 Hillary emails in a file named "insurance", the FBI did not rejoice about finally getting the 'lost' email. No, they hid the discovery for weeks until a New York agent threatened to go public. Then, quite miraculously, Peter Strzok found a way to very quickly examine 340,000 messages and found that there was nothing at all that was incriminating. No rational person would believe that.
The dirty cops are so comfortable about getting away with lies like this that Huber can announce that he found no corruption, when it is readily apparent that he did not interview key witnesses . He even turned away whistleblowers who wanted to submit evidence. A real investigator, Charles Ortel, could have given Huber a long list of Clinton Foundation crimes . Like the Weiner laptop fake investigation, you don't find crimes if you don't really look for them.
The dirty cops are so confident in their ability to deceive the public that they just announced that the FISA court reforms will be managed by David Kris. Kris has been a defender of FBI misconduct and he attacked Devin Nunes for telling the truth about the FISA court. They don't even care about the appearance of fairness. They do what they want.
IG investigations have proven to be flimsy exonerations of Deep State criminality. Any honest observer can see that there was a carefully organized plan by top officials to control the outcome of the Presidential election. This corrupt plan involved lying to the FISA court, illegal surveillance and unmasking of citizens and conspiring with media partners to make sure lies were widely circulated to voters. The government conspirators and the majority of the media were functioning as nothing more than a branch of Hillary's campaign. That's a lot of power aimed at destroying Trump.
To an IG investigator, this monumental scandal was presented to us as nothing to be very concerned about. Yes, a few minor rules were inadvertently broken and there did appear to be some bias, but there was no reason at all to think that bias effected any actions. If the agencies involved make a training video and set aside a day for a training meeting, then that should satisfy us completely.
- The third type of investigation involves investigating an imaginary crime for political reasons . The Mueller investigation and the impeachment investigation are two examples of this. Probably as a justification for illegal surveillance they were already doing, the conspirators pretended that there was powerful evidence that Trump was colluding with Putin to win the election. Lies about this issue propelled the country into 3 years of stories about nothing stories and investigations about something that never happened. Never in the history of nothing has nothing been so thoroughly covered.
Because there was nothing, and because it was known from the start that, " there is no big there, there ", the Mueller Team used several irrelevant legal actions to prolong the belief that they were closing in on Trump. Mueller arranged for their media partner, CNN, to film the early morning swat team raid on 67 year old Roger Stone's home. It was very dramatic and very un-necessary. Also, some small-time Russian troll farms were indicted so that the word "Russia" could fill the news, prolonging the desired myth. One of the indicted firms did not even exist. The others did not appear to favor any one candidate and much of their activity was after the election .
Mueller led a 40 million dollar investigation looking for a crime. That effort failed at finding any collusion, but it did play a role in the Democrats winning a majority in the House of Representatives. That then enabled another investigation of an imaginary crime for political purposes. A scripted hearsay 'whistleblower' submitted lies that allowed Adam Schiff to continue his own campaign of lies. You know the rest of the story. Trump is being falsely charged for doing what Biden bragged about doing.
The Deep State and the media appear to believe that we are fooled by these fraudulent investigations. We are not fooled. We are tired of the lies and the arrogance.
We are increasingly angry that there is a double standard of justice in this country. There is a protected class of people who are not prosecuted for their crimes. This needs to end.
insanelysane , 9 minutes ago link
DonGenaro , 10 minutes ago linkThe sheeple are easily led including the opposition sheeple. Two quick examples:
1. In the email scandal, Hillary was guilty, beyond a shadow of a doubt, of violating the FOIA by conducting all State Department business via a personal email She was guilty. Yet her team, listen up sheeple, her team made it about whether or not classified information was transmitted. This is a gray area which could be defended. She knew she was guilty of the FOIA violation because it was the whole reason the server was set up in the first place. Yet she got away with it because everyone focused on the classifications of emails which was a gray area.
2. In the Weiner / Abedin laptop matter, it is and was illegal for any of these emails to be on a personal computer. Again, guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet again everyone focused on what was in the emails and not the fact that just possessing the emails was illegal. So the FBI was able to say nothing new here and let it drop. If another group such as the US Marshals was in charge of this investigation, Weiner / Abedin would have been fully charged with possessing these emails. They would have been pressured to reveal why it was named Insurance and have been asked to cut a deal.
East Indian , 23 minutes ago linkAssange rots in jail, and Maxwell walks free, while Trump is busy pleasuring every Zionist in sight
hardmedicine , 38 minutes ago linkA comment in 'The Gateway Pundit':
"Andy McCabe admits lying to the FBI and nothing happens. The FBI lies to Gen. Flynn and he faces jail time. Justice in Deep State America."
- reader ricocat1
hoffstetter , 40 minutes ago linkhis name was Seth Rich!
buckboy , 57 minutes ago linkThe purpose of show trials is to fool those that don't pay attention. There are millions of US citizens that get their news from their neighbor or a narrow set of information that is disseminated by media that parrot their providers verbatim without challenge. Such people are quite regularly fooled and some vote.
marlin2009 , 1 hour ago linkWe, the People are free to bitch and moan.
Deep Snorkeler , 1 hour ago linkThe double standard justice system in America is appalling and even worse than communists. Americans really don’t have any credit to criticize communist countries. The ruling class is no better than them.
The media and ruling classes have tried decades to brainwashed the mass to believe that the less or even not corrupted.
Old Hippie Patriot , 1 hour ago linkTrump's Non-Crimes
Trump University Fraud: Trump paid fine
Trump Taj Mahal Casino Money Laundering: Trump paid fine
Trump Foundation Fraud: Trump paid fine
Trump Campaign Law Violations: pending
Trump Obstruction:
Trump Abuse of Power:
Trump...
HANGTHEOWL , 1 hour ago linkThey could have never pulled off the JFK assassination had the internet existed back in 1963. Time for the Epstein *********** to be posted on the internet. Even the asleep would realize the unimaginable evil that has been controlling this world for millenia.
monty42 , 1 hour ago linkI am not sure about that,,we have the net now,,and although there are many of us that pay attention and figure out their crimes and hoax's,,,,they still get away with them,,,,,,NASA still gets 59 million a day to fake the space program,,,
HANGTHEOWL , 57 minutes ago linkWhy not? They pulled off 9/11. And what do we have? The same as with the JFK murder. People still arguing over how it was done, and ignoring the obvious, historically established now, of who benefited and why. Grassy knoll, 2nd shooter, or directed energy weapons or explosives, internet or not, still chasing the tail.
True, they murdered 3,000 of us on 9-11,,right on TV, using plainly obvious controlled demolitions, and to date they have still gotten away with it...
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Jan 19, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer is out with a new book, " Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite," in which he reveals that five members of the Biden family, including Hunter, got rich using former Vice President Joe Biden's "largesse, favorable access and powerful position."
Frank Biden, Vice President Joe Biden, & Mindy WardWhile we know of Hunter's profitable exploits in Ukraine and China - largely in part thanks to Schweizer, Joe's brothers James and Frank, his sister Valerie, and his son-in-law Howard all used the former VP's status to enrich themselves.
Of course, Biden in 2019 said "I never talked with my son or my brother or anyone else -- even distant family -- about their business interests. Period."
As Schweizer puts writes in the New York Post ; "we shall see."
James Biden : Joe's younger brother James has been deeply involved in the lawmaker's rise since the early days - serving as the finance chair of his 1972 Senate campaign. And when Joe became VP, James was a frequent guest at the White House - scoring invites to important state functions which often "dovetailed with his overseas business dealings," writes Schweizer.
Consider the case of HillStone International , a subsidiary of the huge construction management firm, Hill International. The president of HillStone International was Kevin Justice, who grew up in Delaware and was a longtime Biden family friend. On November 4, 2010, according to White House visitors' logs, Justice visited the White House and met with Biden adviser Michele Smith in the Office of the Vice President .
Less than three weeks later, HillStone announced that James Biden would be joining the firm as an executive vice president . James appeared to have little or no background in housing construction, but that did not seem to matter to HillStone. His bio on the company's website noted his "40 years of experience dealing with principals in business, political, legal and financial circles across the nation and internationally "
James Biden was joining HillStone just as the firm was starting negotiations to win a massive contract in war-torn Iraq. Six months later, the firm announced a contract to build 100,000 homes. It was part of a $35 billion, 500,000-unit project deal won by TRAC Development , a South Korean company. HillStone also received a $22 million U.S. federal government contract to manage a construction project for the State Department. - Peter Schweizer, via NY Post
According to Fox Business 's Charlie Gasparino in 2012, HillStone's Iraq project was expected to "generate $1.5 billion in revenues over the next three years," more than tripling their revenue. According to the report, James Biden split roughly $735 million with a group of minority partners .
David Richter - the son of HillStone's parent company's founder - allegedly told investors at a private meeting; it really helps to have "the brother of the vice president as a partner."
Unfortunately for James, HillStone had to back out of the major contract in 2013 over a series of problems, including a lack of experience - but the company maintained "significant contract work in the embattled country" of Iraq, including a six-year contract with the US Army Corps of Engineers.
In the ensuing years, James Biden profited off of Hill's lucrative contracts for dozens of projects in the US, Puerto Rico, Mozambique and elsewhere.
Frank Biden , another one of Joe's brothers (who said the Pennsylvania Bidens voted for Trump over Hillary), profited handsomely on real estate, casinos, and solar power projects after Joe was picked as Obma's point man in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Months after Joe visited Costa Rica, Frank partnered with developer Craig Williamson and the Guanacaste Country Club on a deal which appears to be ongoing.
In real terms, Frank's dream was to build in the jungles of Costa Rica thousands of homes, a world-class golf course, casinos, and an anti-aging center. The Costa Rican government was eager to cooperate with the vice president's brother.
As it happened, Joe Biden had been asked by President Obama to act as the Administration's point man in Latin America and the Caribbean .
Frank's vision for a country club in Costa Rica received support from the highest levels of the Costa Rican government -- despite his lack of experience in building such developments. He met with the Costa Rican ministers of education and energy and environment, as well as the president of the country. - NY Post
And in 2016, the Costa Rican Ministry of Public Education inked a deal with Frank's Company, Sun Fund Americas to install solar power facilities across the country - a project the Obama administration's OPIC authorized $6.5 million in taxpayer funds to support.
This went hand-in-hand with a solar initiative Joe Biden announced two years earlier, in which "American taxpayer dollars were dedicated to facilitating deals that matched U.S. government financing with local energy projects in Caribbean countries, including Jamaica," known as the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative (CESI).
Frank Biden's Sun Fund Americas announced later that it had signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) to build a 20-megawatt solar facility in Jamaica.
Valerie Biden-Owens , Joe's sister, has run all of her brother's Senate campaigns - as well as his 1988 and 2008 presidential runs.
She was also a senior partner in political messaging firm Joe Slade White & Company , where she and Slade White were listed as the only two executives at the time.
According to Schweizer, " The firm received large fees from the Biden campaigns that Valerie was running . Two and a half million dollars in consulting fees flowed to her firm from Citizens for Biden and Biden For President Inc. during the 2008 presidential bid alone."
Dr. Howard Krein - Joe Biden's son-in-law, is the chief medical officer of StartUp Health - a medical investment consultancy that was barely up and running when, in June 2011, two of the company's execs met with Joe Biden and former President Obama in the Oval Office .
The next day, the company was included in a prestigious health care tech conference run by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) - while StartUp Health executives became regular White House visitors between 2011 and 2015 .
StartUp Health offers to provide new companies technical and relationship advice in exchange for a stake in the business. Demonstrating and highlighting the fact that you can score a meeting with the president of the United States certainly helps prove a strategic company asset: high-level contacts. - NY Post
Speaking of his homie hookup, Krein described how his company gained access to the highest levels of power in D.C.:
"I happened to be talking to my father-in-law that day and I mentioned Steve and Unity were down there [in Washington, D.C.]," recalled Howard Krein. "He knew about StartUp Health and was a big fan of it. He asked for Steve's number and said, 'I have to get them up here to talk with Barack.' The Secret Service came and got Steve and Unity and brought them to the Oval Office."
And then, of course, there's Hunter Biden - who was paid millions of dollars to sit on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma while his father was Obama's point man in the country.
But it goes far beyond that for the young crack enthusiast.
With the election of his father as vice president, Hunter Biden launched businesses fused to his father's power that led him to lucrative deals with a rogue's gallery of governments and oligarchs around the world . Sometimes he would hitch a prominent ride with his father aboard Air Force Two to visit a country where he was courting business. Other times, the deals would be done more discreetly. Always they involved foreign entities that appeared to be seeking something from his father.
There was, for example, Hunter's involvement with an entity called Burnham Financial Group , where his business partner Devon Archer -- who'd been at Yale with Hunter -- sat on the board of directors. Burnham became the vehicle for a number of murky deals abroad, involving connected oligarchs in Kazakhstan and state-owned businesses in China.
But one of the most troubling Burnham ventures was here in the United States, in which Burnham became the center of a federal investigation involving a $60 million fraud scheme against one of the poorest Indian tribes in America , the Oglala Sioux.
Devon Archer was arrested in New York in May 2016 and charged with "orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors and a Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars." Other victims of the fraud included several public and union pension plans. Although Hunter Biden was not charged in the case, his fingerprints were all over Burnham . The "legitimacy" that his name and political status as the vice president's son lent to the plan was brought up repeatedly in the trial. - NY Post
Read the rest of the report here .
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Jan 19, 2020 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
"In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory."
J.R.R. Tolkien
"We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination."
C.S. Lewis
"If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it."
G.K. Chesterton
"The barbarian hopes -- and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.
We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles."
Hilaire Belloc
"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists."
Hannah Arendt
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Jan 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Kali , Jan 17 2020 19:26 utc | 7
That Power Elite theory which was written in the 50s by C.W. Mills is incomplete for today because in the 60s there was a split among the power elite between the new "movement conservatives" and the old eastern bank establishment. The conservatives were more focused on the pacific region and containing China, and the liberal establishment were more focused on Europe and containing Russia.
The "movement conservatives" leader was Barry Goldwater who Trump's dad was a big supporter of, and Trump was raised in and among AND represents that faction of elite power. In fact he is the 1st president from that faction of the elites to hold the oval office, many people thought Reagan was, but he was brought under the control of George Bush and the liberal elites after taking office after he was injured by a Bush related person. The different agendas of the the two factions are out in the open today with one being focused on anti-Russia and the other being focused on anti-China. It has been like that since the 1960s.
The anti-China conservative faction which Trump represents (and which unleashed the VietNam War) is screwing up the "rules based order" aka "Liberal International Economic Order" aka Pax Americana which was set up after WWII at Bretton Woods and then altered in the 1970s with the creation of the petrodollar and petrodollar recycling into Treasury Bonds, by destroying the monetary scam they set up to control the world
It needed the cooperation of the elites of Europe and elsewhere, which Trump and his faction doesn't care about -- they only care about short term profits on Wall St.
The LIEO or Rules Based Order is based on being closely allied with European elites against Russia to contain the Middle East and Central Asia (Iran and Afghanistan) based on Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard theory. China trade is important for them, Russia is their main enemy. ( War of the Worlds: The New Class ). Trump and his movement conservative faction is ruining their world order for their own short term gain on Wall St.
VietnamVet , Jan 17 2020 22:34 utc | 44The 1950's triangle of power was superseded by the oligarch's counter revolution that led to supranational trade institutions. Democracies were relegated to a secondary status and run by technocrats for the benefit of oligarchs until Donald Trump. He is a nationalist plutocrat; admittedly a lower level one, a NY casino owner who went bankrupt. Mike Bloomberg represents the other side, a globalist billionaire. Elizabeth Warren is a top level technocrat but no politician.fairleft , Jan 18 2020 1:21 utc | 81The endless wars are fought to make a profit for the plutocracy and destabilize nations to make foreign corporate exploitation possible. That was why Hunter Biden was in Ukraine. The conflicts are not meant to be won.
Donald Trump is way for over his head and getting old. His competent staff are in jail or fired. Apparently no one told him about the thousands of ballistic missiles that can destroy the Gulf States' oil facilities at will and make the buildup for the invasion of Iran impossible. He makes stupid mistakes. Through the barrage of propaganda, reports of shell shocked troops, destroyed buildings and 11 concussion causalities from Iran's missile attack made it into the news. The military must be pissed. The aura of invincibility is gone.
Donald Trump should be removed by the 25th amendment before he mistakenly triggers the Apocalypse. Except the 1% politician VP, Mike Pence, believes that the End of Time is God's Will and necessary for his Ascension.
The power triangle theory is less in line with the facts than a simple duality: Wall Street & the MIC, you have to advance interests of both or you're out.Passer by , Jan 17 2020 22:04 utc | 35Second, the 'meeting in the Tank' sounds like complete b.s. designed to sell books, with an obvious sales strategy, as b said, of pleasuring both the pro/anti Trump sides of the book-buying bourgeoisie.
And the 'rules-based international order' rings very false as something that would be said with a straight face by real MIC insiders, which those generals are.
Finally, whether Trump ridiculed the generals or not, that's a sideshow to entertain the rubes. Trump's always been on side with the big picture Neocon approach essential to the MIC. Their global dominance or chaos approach is essential to keeping military budgets gigantic until 'forever'. True that Trump whined about endless wars as a 2016 campaign strategy, but he was either b.s.-ing or at the time didn't get that they are part of the overall Neocon approach he backs.
A P , Jan 17 2020 19:33 utc | 9Not a very good analysis by b because this does not explain why 90 % of US corporate media is hostile to Trump. This does not happen without significant elite support.
That Trump is backed by the military faction is something i have been saying often. But there are forces within the government faction that dislike him, for example the CIA.
As for the corporate faction, it is not true that free money made them supportive of Trump. Rather the faction is divided - between the globalist corporate faction, relying on globalisation, including most tech companies, and US nationalist faction, such as local US businesses, big oil, shale gas, etc.
Another point - jews have large influence within the US, and 80 % voted against Trump regardless of his Israeli support. They again voted 80 % Dem in 2018. Having 80 % of US jews against you means encountering significant resistance.
Demographically speaking, most women, jews, muslims, latinos, asians, afroamericans, lgbt people, young people, etc. are strongly against him so i think that he will lose. Unless for some reason they do not vote.
Even if he somehow wins again, this will lead to civil war like situation and extreme polarisation in the US.
Walter , Jan 17 2020 23:25 utc | 56The US military, the various factions within the Deep State, political and corporate cabals has the attitude of a spoiled 3-year-old: If I can't have it, I'll break it so it is of little use to others.
Unfortunately, breaking other countries is just fine for the MIC... arms sales all around and chaos to impede non-military commerce with other major power centers like Russia or China.
Trump is the product of a dysfunctional family, a "greed is good" trust-fund social circle and a sociopathic US bully/gun culture.
The fact "bone spurs" Trump weaseled out of the draft will also not play well with the generals, let alone the grunts who suffer most from endless POTUS idiocy (not limited to Trump, see Prince Bush/Bandar the 2nd)
All the more proof that most Western "democracies" would be better served with a lottery to choose their Congressional and POTUS chair-warmers. Joe Sixpack could do a better job. A 200-lb sack of flour would do better than any POTUS since Kennedy.
Likklemore , Jan 17 2020 21:50 utc | 29@ wagelaborer | Jan 17 2020 19:04 utc | 3
your: "Trump can't start a war without ruling class backing any more than he can end the wars if the rulers veto it."
May be, I think is, true in one sense. But Trump is far from the sole agent capable of starting a war. War, as opposed to simple murder, involve 2 or more parties. Whatever the intentions, the recent murders by drone in Baghdad hav,e it seems, brought Iran to consider war exists now...and they have a nifty MAGA policy. On Press TV today they hosted an expert who called for the execution of several exceptional American leaders...sounds like war to me.
(Make America Go Away)
The system is so screwy and peopled by such uneducated and delusional people that it's quite simple that they would do some stupid that that caused a war. Looks like war to me. I await the horrors.
Decaying empires usually start wars that bring about their rapid ruin. Does it matter how they do this?
............
The thesis of the triangle of elite factions is fascinating.
Walter recalls that JFK got the reports from Vietnam that said we were winning, while at the same time Johnson got the true story. And also what happened then with the "correction" of 1963 (their words) and the immediate change of war policy. Can't help an old guy from remembering old folly. And noting that history repeats as farce.
The Iran affair is liable to coordinate with NATO. Lavrov spoke to the NATO preparations today @ TASS...
Some say Trumpie screwed up the schedule, which goes hot in April as a showdown with the Roooskies. I take that with a grain of salt. But I think the sources I've seen might be right. They say that if Barbarossa had not been delayed, the nazis woulda won in Russia. Screwups can be very important.
I can't see any way the US won't use atomic bangers. But maybe...
psychohistorian , Jan 17 2020 19:52 utc | 11@ wagelaborer 3
Good points. I endorse. However the USD have been weaponized, is being sidelined and will be shunned U.S. dollar: Russia, China, EU are motivated to shift from
@ juiliana 22
I posted an article by Shedlock essentially saying all it will take is 3 states to flip and Trump loses: Trump will be easily defeated in 2020 perhaps by a landslide.
Not only sick of wars, his mobster approach to foreign policy and allies is an embarrassment to RINO and Independents.
I agree with wagelaborer in comment #3 and worth a repeat of most of it
"Trump can't start a war without ruling class backing any more than he can end the wars if the rulers veto it.
US foreign policy is not run by White House puppets.
The US trash-talked Saddam Hussein and starved Iraqis for 14 years, but didn't actually invade until he started trading oil in Euros.
The US trash-talked Ghaddafi for decades, and even launched missiles which killed his child in the 80s, but didn't destroy Libya until Ghaddafi decided to sell oil in dinars.
The US has trash-talked and sanctioned Iran for decades, but it was the threat of Iran and Saudi Arabia making peace that pushed them to assassinate General Soleimani, as he arrived at the airport on that diplomatic mission.
If Iran and Saudi Arabia make peace, and the Saudis drop the petro-dollar, the US Empire crumbles. It doesn't matter at all who is in the White House at the time, the Empire will never allow that."
Humanity is in a civilization war about public/private finance being fought by proxies and character actors like Trump. Maybe after this war is over, and if we survive, we can all communicate about the social contract directly instead of through proxy fronts. Do you want to live in a sharing/caring world or a selfish/competitive one?....socialism or barbarism?
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Jan 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
vk , Jan 18 2020 2:37 utc | 90
I think the "triangle of power" theory walks towards the truth, but is not the truth.For starters, the USA is a very large and complex society. There are a lot of classes and a lot of groups which clash and prop up each other all the time. The only consensus is that it is and must remain a capitalist society, i.e. that capitalism must be preserved at any cost.
That said, I see many interests involved, but a hierarchy, in layered form. Here's my opinion on the state of the art of the USA right now:
1) at the highest level, there's the division between the most powerful members of the capitalist class between what should be the American foreign policy strategy for the rest of this century. It is divided between two different ideologies: russophobes (i.e. the "establishment") and the believers of the "clash of civilizations" (i.e. the far-right, sinophobes). The only thing that unites both groups is the conviction Eurasia should remain divided, i.e. that Russia and China should not consolidate their newborn alliance. If that alliance consolidates a century from now, then this contradiction will disappear, but America's new enemy will be stronger than ever - possibly more powerful than the USA.
2) at the lower level, there's the division of the American people about how the spoils that come from the imperial conquests should be better shared. This division manifests itself in the battle between social-democracy and fascism. Neoliberalism is basically a rotten corpse after 2008, but it is important to state it is not an ideology per se, but a political doctrine, from which both American social-democracy and American fascism lend some aspects.
3) at the vestigial level, you have many micro battles which shock with each other. For example, the good part of the American middle class imploded Elizabeth Warren's support for universal healthcare because they wanted to keep their class distinction as the class which has access to healthcare through expensive health insurances (which are often directly linked to distinct jobs they probably have) - but they still will vote Democrat, and probably will support Warren as long as she's viable. In the far-right camp, there are those who want to emphasize the fight against China must happen because China represents modern socialism, while another part wants to fight China for the simple fact they want some jobs back. In the deep state, there's the usual Pentagon vs CIA clash of philosophies about how to better operate overseas. In the lobby industry, each one is fending for themselves.
In conclusion, my take is all of these conflicts have one ultimate cause: the exhaustion of the American imperial system installed in 1945 . Capitalism doesn't know national barriers; in 1945, the USA was both the industrial and financial superpower, but capital must spread and expand or it dies. The Marshall Plan soon begun and, in two decades, Germany and Japan - both spawns of the American post-war doctrine - directly threatened the USA as the industrial superpower. It still managed to fend off these two nations with the Plaza Accord (1985), but at a huge cost: outsourcing its own industrial capacity to China. In 2011, China definitely overcame the USA and now holds the belt of the industrial superpower. It is now trying to be also the financial superpower, with the "opening up" reforms.
This generated a structural contradiction: the loss of the industrial superpower title left the USA only with the financial superpower title. But the financial superpower title can only be maintained, in a nation-State architecture, with increased submission of the rest of the world - naturally, through violent means and financial sanctions.
However, that was not the way the USA was able to build its overwhelming post-war alliance: it did so with nation building , i.e. the proverbial "carrot", the massive investments in infrastructure and better living standards for Western Europe, Japan, Asian Tigers and Australia. But without the industrial superpower title, the USA cannot maintain its "alliance" (i.e. the empire), which reinforces its condition as the financial superpower - which, in turn, increases its necessity to maintain the alliance (empire) which, in turn, weakens more and more said alliance, which, in turn, increases even more its necessity to maintain said alliance, and so on, in a downward spiral movement.
The result of this dialectical contradiction is that the USA will, over time, resort to ever more violent methods to keep the corners of its empire whole, which will drive it ever closer to an epic war against its ultimate enemy: socialism (China/Eurasia).
Duncan Idaho , Jan 18 2020 2:41 utc | 91
Well-----Patroklos , Jan 18 2020 4:52 utc | 100"And many of them may actually be as mind-blowingly stupid as he is as well and they don't see what a problem it is to have such an arrogant moron running the world's only superpower. If there's one thing right-wingers take as an article of faith it's that expertise is nothing but a scam and the guy at the end of the bar can run the world better than the pointy-headed elites. They got what they wanted."
Trump might be appropriate. The survivors, if any, will have more resources, as the ditch he is heading into.
A slow death by Dims would be worse.@ vk 90Your analysis nicely maps onto the Braudelian model of the phases of capitalism, especially as articulated in the chapter by Arrighi and Moore in Phases of Capitalist Development . They argue that the historical signal that the US had begun to lose its hegemony in commodity production (M-C-M') was the Nixon shock/Oil Shock (1970-73). They further argue that the inevitable shift to financial hegemony (M-M'), which has occurred in every other phase (Genovese, Dutch, British), has taken place more quickly than the one before it. As a result, they predicted (in 2001) very broadly that the terminal point of this financial (self-)vampirism -- when the system reaches a point of complete contradiction -- would take place around 2020. One key difference they note between the US global regime with all prior hegemonic orders is the reach and power of the military. The British Empire was able to deploy its navy to support its hegemony only up to a point -- and then became a paper tiger overnight. But the US military has not been deployed to any extent comparable to 1941-45. If it saw a real existential threat to dollar hegemony their military capacity would postpone any collapse indefinitely -- and throw the world into utter chaos.
My question to you and all is this: where are we in the timeline between their loss of industrial hegemony and the real crisis of their financial hegemony? Is this the decade of hegemonic challenge and change -- and therefore war? And to what extent will Iran be the trigger? Or will it be another GFC and de-dollarization?
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Jan 18, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , Jan 17 2020 19:24 utc | 6
Yes! The inability to tell the truth about the genuine aim of policy despite its being published because that policy goal--to attain Full Spectrum Dominance over the planet and its people such that neoliberal bankers can rule the world--is actually 100% against genuine American Values as expressed by the Four Freedoms (1.Freedom of speech; 2.Freedom of worship; 3.Freedom from want; 4.Freedom from fear) and the articulated goals/vision of the UN Charter--World Peace arrived at via collective security and diplomacy, not war--which are still taught in schools along with Wilson's 14 Points. Then of course, there's the war against British Tyranny known as the Spirit of '76 and the Revolutionary War for Independence and the documents that bookend that era. In 1948, Kennan stated, in an internal discussion that was never censored, the USA consumed 60% of global resources with only 5% of the population and needed to somehow come up with a policy to both continue and justify that great disparity to both the domestic and international audience. Yet, those truths were never provided in an overt manner to the American public or the international audience. The upshot being the US federal government since it dropped the bombs on Japan has been lying or misleading its people such that it's now habitual. And Trump's diatribe against the generals reflects the reality that he too was taken in by those lies.
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Apr 18, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
DJG , April 17, 2017 at 11:09 amNeoliberalism is creating loneliness. That's what's wrenching society apart George Monbiot, GuardianKatharine , April 17, 2017 at 11:39 amGeorge Monbiot on human loneliness and its toll. I agree with his observations. I have been cataloguing them in my head for years, especially after a friend of mine, born in Venice and a long-time resident of Rome, pointed out to me that dogs are a sign of loneliness.
A couple of recent trips to Rome have made that point ever more obvious to me: Compared to my North Side neighborhood in Chicago, where every other person seems to have a dog, and on weekends Clark Street is awash in dogs (on their way to the dog boutiques and the dog food truck), Rome has few dogs. Rome is much more densely populated, and the Italians still have each other, for good or for ill. And Americans use the dog as an odd means of making human contact, at least with other dog owners.
But Americanization advances: I was surprised to see people bring dogs into the dining room of a fairly upscale restaurant in Turin. I haven't seen that before. (Most Italian cafes and restaurants are just too small to accommodate a dog, and the owners don't have much patience for disruptions.) The dogs barked at each other for while–violating a cardinal rule in Italy that mealtime is sacred and tranquil. Loneliness rules.
And the cafes and restaurants on weekends in Chicago–chockfull of people, each on his or her own Powerbook, surfing the WWW all by themselves.
That's why the comments about March on Everywhere in Harper's, recommended by Lambert, fascinated me. Maybe, to be less lonely, you just have to attend the occasional march, no matter how disorganized (and the Chicago Women's March organizers made a few big logistical mistakes), no matter how incoherent. Safety in numbers? (And as Monbiot points out, overeating at home alone is a sign of loneliness: Another argument for a walk with a placard.)
DJG , April 17, 2017 at 11:48 amI particularly liked this point:
In Britain, men who have spent their entire lives in quadrangles – at school, at college, at the bar, in parliament – instruct us to stand on our own two feet.
With different imagery, the same is true in this country. The preaching of self-reliance by those who have never had to practice it is galling.
Katherine: Agreed. It is also one of the reasons why I am skeptical of various evangelical / fundi pastors, who are living at the expense of their churches, preaching about individual salvation.
So you have the upper crust (often with inheritances and trust funds) preaching economic self-reliances, and you have divines preaching individual salvation as they go back to the house provided by the members of the church.
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Oct 31, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
Orange Watch 10.29.19 at 8:14 pm (no link) 28Scott P@26 :
...a true believer who's spent too long in echo chambers which recognize the US's foreign policy as selfish and destructive, but then make the entirely unwarranted leap that because it's so bad, any actor that opposes them is morally neutral, or at least not subject to the same degree of scrutiny and criticism.It's a bizarre worldview that seems to want to ignore the possibility that every actor in an interaction is a bad actor, or at the bare minimum confuses the idea of it can be useful for a third party to weaken and distract a common enemy with the idea that this makes the third party succeeding in their broader aims desirable without considering what those aims are.
It's schadenfreude combined with tunnel vision, and its appeal seems to lie in its creation of a personally satisfying narrative which demonizes the near enemy – their centrist political rivals – as hopeless authoritarians.
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Jan 07, 2020 | off-guardian.org
Brian Harry ,
The people at the top in the USA, Neo-Cons, Zionists, Pentagon, CIA, etc, are Hell bent on promoting Israel's needs in the Middle East, rather than the needs of the American people(who have been shafted good and hard by "Globalization" and "Trickle Down" in the last 40 years).
Successive Presidents in recent years have just been "The Organ Grinder's Monkey" and Trump is no exception. Always carrying out Israel's agenda, and ignoring the vast majority of the American people.The Military Industrial Complex are the enemy of the American people, and you have to wonder how much longer they are going to put up with it.
By the way, WHO is the CIA answerable to? They seem to be a "loose Cannon", and always carrying out an agenda which is harmful to "The People".
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Jan 04, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
oldhippie , Jan 4 2020 18:11 utc | 13
Sitting in coffee shop in Chicago listening to Americans. The general sentiment is they had it coming and Iran should be nuked.
Glass parking lot is the desired end.This sentiment is bottom to top in America. Measured response? No way can Iran 'measure' a response.
More generally the sentiment is that a little war in Iran, a few nukes, is not even a big thing. Football scores more important.
Isabella , Jan 4 2020 18:22 utc | 16
"Sitting in coffee shop in Chicago listening to Americans. The general sentiment is they had it coming and Iran should be nuked.Zanon , Jan 4 2020 21:09 utc | 76
Glass parking lot is the desired end."That's pretty much the picture i get from reading responses in UK MSM, not only from English, but many giving American addresses. They are all pretty much thoroughly brainwashed, believing as gospel the lies they've told, and still think that they are the "White hatted, good guys, who do good things for the places they bomb and invade".
it seems they will be supportive of an attack on Iran, and if their maniac "leaders", the basement crazies who got out of the basement, realise this, it increases substantially the chances of a "hot" war. In that case, should it escalate out of control, your Chicago coffee deadheads will get the Glass parking lot they want. It just wont be in the ME. Or Russia. They can have their very own, in their own back yard.
Information_AgentPft , Jan 4 2020 21:48 utc | 79Yes I also noticed this, what I believe is most depressing is how dumb people are. Trump/White house tell alot of lies which then become the truth for alot of his supporters and he also manage to get MSM where he wants, because MSM do not seems to care either, they are on-board when it comes to war.
And yes additional to that, a clear psychological operation going on to get the propaganda out.
I try to counter it on social media, I hope everyone here also do the same.Patroklos @77Dick , Jan 4 2020 22:13 utc | 83Its about conditioning people that its the new normal. Anything goes, "do as thou wilt". So long as it serves the interests of our masters. With no fear that MSM or alt media can or will provide sustained or effective criticism, and the corruption of religious or secular morals among the population thanks to hollywoods cultural marxism/propaganda and corruption of christianity , they can get support among the people for just about anything. People can be made to believe anything. The past 100 years has proven that beyond all doubt. With all doubt now removed they can show their true colors and this will be accepted as the new normal.
The problem with the US is most everyone in the US military, US citizenry, and US government believe their own Exceptionalism propaganda and act accordingly. Attacking the PMU units of the Iraqi army was certainly an unwise decision, but killing Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis is an act of complete moronic insanity!Robert Snefjella , Jan 5 2020 0:22 utc | 121The United States launched a war of aggression, the supreme crime, upon Iraq in 2003, based on blatant lies, and are still there. Prior to that, they helped foment the war between Iraq and Iran, then attacked Iraq in 1991, and on top of the overt warfare there was the economic sanctions warfare. The death and maiming and poisoning of millions of Iraqis has been the American contribution to Iraq, over the last several decades. What for? How has this helped the United States? Or Europe? The main advocates for this supreme criminality has been the Israel lobby, Israel, and the supporters of Israel.The American Apache helicopters are still buzzing around over Baghdad, dealing out terror and intimidation and death. The murder by the United States of yet more Iraqi soldiers and officials recently has been largely absent from the propaganda narratives. But could those be 'the final straw'?
As far as Trump's 52 target threat, this comes after the apparent please don't escalate and we'll make a deal - good cop-bad cop routine.
The 52 number was used to remind mind-controlled Americans that the evil Iranians outrageously took 52 Americans hostage. American's don't just take people hostage; they give them orange suits and torture them, unless they kill them. Apart from murdering and maiming by the millions, they even stage fictional killings, like Osama bin laden, to entertain the zombies, and stick out their chests, hand out medals and the like.
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
BluebellWood -> Supermassive , 29 Nov 2018 12:41
Yep - education is the key.I remember at school we read Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language in an English class and then we were set a writing task as a follow-up, reporting on the same story using the same facts, from completely opposing points of view, using euphemism and mind-numbing cliches. Teach children to do this themselves and they can see how language can be skewed and facts distorted and misrepresented without technically lying.
How many children in schools are taught such critical thinking these days, I wonder? It might be taught in Media Studies, I suppose - but gosh, don't the right really hate that particular subject! Critical thinking is anathema to them.
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Jan 02, 2020 | medium.com
"The attempt to isolate the China-Russia-Iran bloc has no way of succeeding and is clearly based on short term profits for the corporations pushing American policy, rather than the health of the economic system as a whole. This is clearly seen in how America is targeting Europe with sanctions over the Nordstream gas pipeline project from Russia to Germany. If you think this is just about the Trump administration you would be wrong, this has bi-partisan support in America and is clearly being pushed by the big banks and corporations with the politicians in both parties being pushed into doing their bidding. This is a huge mistake and like the economic meltdown of 2008 caused by the short-term profiteering of Wall Street greed, we are seeing a far greater mistake being made by the attempt to enforce submission on so many major economic powers. Their obvious reaction is to isolate themselves from American economic reach which means they WILL join the Russia-China-Iran bloc.
Brzezinski's 2016 advice to bring Russia-China-Iran in from out of the cold was the smart path to follow. It still is. It is THE ONLY way to save the world economy from splitting more and more in ways that adversely affects America more and more and by extension the rest of the world whose economies are tied to America.
The current leaders of both establishment cliques need to accept that their continuance of the Grand Chessboard strategy is outdated and self-defeating -- and dangerous. It threatens the lives of so many on a daily basis around the world, including Americans. The rise of China and Russia has made a unipolar world impossible unless the Chinese all of a sudden decide to submit to the LIEO. And that is what the American establishment seems to think they can force on them. They hope to wait out Putin to change Russia when he is gone. While that may be possible, what they hope with China is extremely unlikely. China is aggressively courting other nations for partnerships while America is losing more and more respect among the people and leaders of the world."
Posted by: Kali | Jan 1 2020 19:48 utc | 108
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Jan 01, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
I am talking about the surveillance state that the American electorate has ignorantly accepted as necessary in order to keep us safe from terrorists.
Despite previous warning from whistleblowers like Russ Tice, Bill Binney, Ed Loomis and Kird Wiebe, no action to rein in the surveillance monster was taken until Edward Snowden absconded with the documents exposing the vast amount spying that the U.S. Government is doing to its own citizens. But even those weak efforts to supposedly rein in the NSA proved to be nothing more than mere window dressing.
The spying got worse. Just ask Donald Trump and the members of his campaign that were targeted first by the CIA and NSA and then by the FBI. Fundamental civil rights were trampled.
The real irony in all of this is that Barack Obama, as President, took credit for helping revise the laws in order to prevent the spying exposed by Edward Snowden. But under the Obama Administration, spying on political opponents--both real and perceived--escalated. We know for a fact that journalists, such as James Rosen and Sheryl Atkinson, were targets and their communications and computers attacked by the U.S. Government.
We know, thanks to a memo released by Judge Rosemary Collyer, that "FBI consultants" were making illegal searches of NSA material using the names of Donald Trump, his family and members of his campaign staff.
Some of this NSA material came courtesy of the Brits and their collection on U.S. targets. Some of this material came from the NSA's own collection and storage of all electronic communications and was obtained using a nifty NSA tool called XKEYSCORE. Listen to Ed Snowden's description. Also, take time to appreciate the irony that CNN and other journalists were actually trying to report real news. Now they are full blown apologists for the abuse of the intelligence collection tools.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/HIsc6DqlMy0
Six years ago, former NSA Technical Director for Military and Geopolitical Issues, Bill Binney, and Russ Tice, a former NSA analyst, appeared on the PBS News Hour. Once again, they make very clear the enormous nature to the threat to our civil liberties.
Too bad Donald Trump did not listen to their warning.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/GJS7F-mShpI
Given the robust, wide ranging ability of the NSA to probe all communications by any person in the United States, it is remarkable that no real dirt on Donald Trump was ever uncovered. Had such information existed, it would be in the NSA's storage vaults in Utah and crooked CIA analysts under Brennan's direction would have found it and used it. But that did not happed. The best the intel folks could fabricate were the salacious claims attributed to reports ostensibly created by former British spy, Christopher Steele. Turns out that the titillating account that Trump hired hookers to perform coprophilia (could of been worse, coprophagia) was nothing more than idle bar talk.
What has happened to Donald Trump can happen to any of us. It is time to take this threat seriously and put the intel agencies back into a properly monitored corral. Otherwise, we will lose this Republic.
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Jan 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Tim E. , Dec 29 2019 4:45 utc | 59
"I don't think there's any actual material reason that there should be any material wants anywhere on this planet, instead "only" political and managerial ones but that's because I believe (and I'm not an expert) one can add additional levels of safeguards -- both physical and administrative -- to existing or new nuclear power-plants and "burn" most of the byproducts into essentially new fuel thus buying humanity at least several thousands of years of time instead of for example chopping up large volumes of air and everything in it be it insects or birds.We should already be in a post-scarcity world, no -isms required, only kindness and applied knowledge. So to me that will be our death sentence if that is the final outcome; too little kindness (towards all life), too little application and sharing of knowledge.
I don't know if that is inspiring or depressing or both :)"
I always find those thoughts scary - since you and I are both NOT Farmers - and depend upon those little people to supply us with the foodstuffs we need to survive.
It's GREAT to be a rocket scientist - but before a rocket scientist can exist - ya need Farmers.
Jay Hanson and Richard Duncan said it best:
Here is a synopsis of the behavioral loop described above:
Step 1. Individuals and groups evolved a bias to maximize fitness by maximizing power, which requires over-reproduction and/or over-consumption of natural resources (overshoot), whenever systemic constraints allow it. Differential power generation and accumulation result in a hierarchical group structure.
Step 2. Energy is always limited, and overshoot eventually leads to decreasing power available to some members of the group, with lower-ranking members suffering first.
Step 3. Diminishing power availability creates divisive subgroups within the original group. Low-rank members will form subgroups and coalitions to demand a greater share of power from higher-ranking individuals, who will resist by forming their own coalitions to maintain power.
Step 4. Violent social strife eventually occurs among subgroups who demand a greater share of the remaining power.
Step 5. The weakest subgroups (high or low rank) are either forced to disperse to a new territory, are killed, enslaved, or imprisoned.
Step 6. Go back to step 1.
The above loop was repeated countless thousands of times during the millions of years that we were evolving[9]. This behavior is inherent in the architecture of our minds -- is entrained in our biological material -- and will be repeated until we go extinct. Carrying capacity will decline[10] with each future iteration of the overshoot loop, and this will cause human numbers to decline until they reach levels not seen since the Pleistocene.
Current models used to predict the end of the biosphere suggest that sometime between 0.5 billion to 1.5 billion years from now, land life as we know it will end on Earth due to the combination of CO2 starvation and increasing heat. It is this decisive end that biologists and planetary geologists have targeted for attention. However, all of their graphs reveal an equally disturbing finding: that global productivity will plummet from our time onward, and indeed, it already has been doing so for the last 300 million years.[11]
It's impossible to know the details of how our rush to extinction will play itself out, but we do know that it is going to be hell for those who are unlucky to be alive at the time.
And:
The Olduvai theory is defined by the ratio of world energy production and population. It states that the life expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than or equal to 100 years: 1930-2030. After more than a century of strong growth -- energy production per capita peaked in 1979. The Olduvai theory explains the 1979 peak and the subsequent decline. Moreover, it says that energy production per capita will fall to its 1930 value by 2030, thus giving Industrial Civilization a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years. This analysis predicts that the collapse will be strongly correlated with an 'epidemic' of permanent blackouts of high-voltage electric power networks -- worldwide.
Will Humans reach the Stars? I believe NOT - and that extinction is but a heart beat away. We are not a Peaceful species - amongst many others - but the Universe lives in Harmony.See: https://etheric.com/om-the-cosmic-vibration/
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Last modified: March, 01, 2020
