|
|
Home | Switchboard | Unix Administration | Red Hat | TCP/IP Networks | Neoliberalism | Toxic Managers |
| (slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and bastardization of classic Unix | |||||||
| The Deep State | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 |
|
|
Switchboard | ||||
| Latest | |||||
| Past week | |||||
| Past month | |||||
|
|
 |
 |
 |
Oct 22, 2017 | www.unz.com
Fran Macadam , October 20, 2017 at 3:08 pm GMT
A credible reading of the diverse facts, Mike.Kirk Elarbee , October 20, 2017 at 8:27 pm GMTSadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers.utu , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:18 am GMTAgain Mike Whitney does not get it. Though in the first part of the article I thought he would. He was almost getting there. The objective was to push new administration into the corner from which it could not improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he wanted to during the campaign.anon , Disclaimer Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:54 am GMTConvincing Americans in Russia's influence or Russia collusion with Trump was only a tool that would create pressure on Trump that together with the fear of paralysis of his administration and impeachment would push Trump into the corner from which the only thing he could do was to worsen relations with Russia. What American people believe or not is really secondary. With firing of Gen. Flynn Trump acted exactly as they wanted him to act. This was the beginning of downward slope.
Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. Trump can concentrate on Iran in which he will be supported by all sides and factions including the media. Even Larry David will approve not only the zionist harpies like Pam Geller, Rita Katz and Ilana Mercer.
Pamela Geller: Thank You, Larry David
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2017/10/19/pamela-geller-thank-larry-david/
OK.ThereisaGod , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 6:37 am GMTThe only part that is absurd is that Russia posed a bona fide threat to the US. I'm fine with the idea that he ruined Brennen's plans in Syria. But thats just ego we shouldn't have been there anyway.
No one really cares about Ukraine. And the European/Russian trade zone? No one cares. The Eurozone has its hands full with Greece and the rest of the old EU. I have a feeling they have already gone way too far and are more likely to shrink than expand in any meaningful way
The one thing I am not positive about. If the elite really believe that Russia is a threat, then Americans have done psych ops on themselves.
The US was only interested in Ukraine because it was there. Next in line on a map. The rather shocking disinterest in investing money -- on both sides -- is inexplicable if it was really important. Most of it would be a waste -- but still. The US stupidly spent $5 billion on something -- getting duped by politicians and got theoretical regime change, but it was hell to pry even $1 billion for real economic aid.
jilles dykstra , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 6:46 am GMT" ..factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people."All the more powerfully put because of its recognisably comical. understatement. Thank you Mr Whitney. Brilliant article that would be all over the mainstream media were the US MSM an instrument of American rather than globalist interests.
I am reading Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the USA, 1492 to the Present. A sad story, how the USA always was a police state, where the two percent rich manipulated the 98% poor, to stay rich. When there were insurrections federal troops restored order. Also FDR put down strikes with troops.Logan , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 11:16 am GMT@jilles dykstraDESERT FOX , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 1:30 pm GMTYou should be aware that Zinn's book is not, IMO, an honest attempt at writing history. It is conscious propaganda intended to make Americans believe exactly what you are taking from it.
The elephant in the room is Israel and the neocons , this is the force that controls America and Americas foreign policy , Brennan and the 17 intel agencies are puppets of the mossad and Israel, that is the brutal fact of the matter.TG , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 2:03 pm GMTUntil that fact changes Americans will continue to fight and die for Israel.
Anonymous , Disclaimer Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 2:05 pm GMT"The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result "But it DID achieve the desired result! Trump folded under the pressure, and went full out neoliberal. Starting with his missile attack on Syria, he is now OK with spending trillions fighting pointless endless foreign wars on the other side of the world.
I think maybe half the US population does believe the Russian hacking thing, but that's not really the issue. I think that the pre-Syrian attack media blitz was more a statement of brute power to Trump: WE are in charge here, and WE can take you down and impeach you, and facts don't matter!
Sometimes propaganda is about persuading people. And sometimes, I think, it is about intimidating them.
Whitney is another author who declares the "Russians did it" narrative a psyop. He then devotes entire columns to the psyop, "naww Russia didn't do it". There could be plenty to write about – recent laws that do undercut liberty, but no, the Washington Post needs fake opposition to its fake news so you have guys like Whitney in the less-mainstream fake news media.Jake , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 2:32 pm GMTSo Brennan wanted revenge? Well that's simple enough to understand, without being too stupid. But Whitney's whopper of a lie is what you're supposed to unquestionably believe. The US has "rival political parties". Did you miss it?
The US is doing nothing more than acting as the British Empire 2.0. WASP culture was born of a Judaizing heresy: Anglo-Saxon Puritanism. That meant that the WASP Elites of every are pro-Jewish, especially in order to wage war, physical and/or cultural, against the vast majority of white Christians they rule.Logan , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:04 pm GMTBy the early 19th century, The Brit Empire's Elites also had a strong, and growing, dose of pro-Arabic/pro-Islamic philoSemitism. Most of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which means being pro-Wahhabi and permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite Mohammedans.
So, by the time of Victoria's high reign, the Brit WASP Elites were a strange brew of hardcoree pro-Jewish and hardcore pro-Arabic/islamic. The US foreign policy of today is an attempt to put those two together and force it on everyone and make it work.
The Brit secret service, in effect, created and trained not merely the CIA but also the Mossad and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency. All four are defined by endless lies, endless acts of utterly amoral savagery. All 4 are at least as bad as the KGB ever was, and that means as bad as Hell itself.
@Grandpa CharlieWally , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:16 pm GMTFair enough. I didn't know that about the foreword. If accurate, that's a reasonable approach for a book.
Here's the problem.
Back when O. Cromwell was the dictator of England, he retained an artist to paint him. The custom of the time was for artists to "clean up" their subjects, in a primitive form of photoshopping.
OC being a religious fanatic, he informed the artist he wished to be portrayed as God had made him, "warts and all." (Ollie had a bunch of unattractive facial warts.) Or the artist wouldn't be paid.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/08/cromwell-portraitist-samuel-cooper-exhibition
Traditional triumphalist American narrative history, as taught in schools up through the 60s or so, portrayed America as "wart-free." Since then, with Zinn's book playing a major role, it has increasingly been portrayed as "warts-only," which is of course at least equally flawed. I would say more so.
All I am asking is that American (and other) history be written "warts and all." The triumphalist version is true, largely, and so is the Zinn version. Gone With the Wind and Roots both portray certain aspects of the pre-war south fairly accurately..
America has been, and is, both evil and good. As is/was true of every human institution and government in history. Personally, I believe America, net/net, has been one of the greatest forces for human good ever. But nobody will realize that if only the negative side of American history is taught.
@Michael KennyLogan , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:20 pm GMTHasbarist 'Kenny', you said:
"There must be something really dirty in Russigate that hasn't yet come out to generate this level of panic."
You continue to claim what you cannot prove.
But then you are a Jews First Zionist.
Russia-Gate Jumps the Shark
Russia-gate has jumped the shark with laughable new claims about a tiny number of "Russia-linked" social media ads, but the US mainstream media is determined to keep a straight facehttps://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/10/robert-parry/jumping-the-shark/
Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet?
+ review of other frauds
@JakeGrandpa Charlie , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:25 pm GMTMost of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which means being pro-Wahhabi and permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite Mohammedans.
Thanks for the laugh. During the 19th century, the Sauds were toothless, dirt-poor hicks from the deep desert of zero importance on the world stage.
The Brits were not Saudi proponents, in fact promoting the Husseins of Hejaz, the guys Lawrence of Arabia worked with. The Husseins, the Sharifs of Mecca and rulers of Hejaz, were the hereditary enemies of the Sauds of Nejd.
After WWI, the Brits installed Husseins as rulers of both Transjordan and Iraq, which with the Hejaz meant the Sauds were pretty much surrounded. The Sauds conquered the Hejaz in 1924, despite lukewarm British support for the Hejaz.
Nobody in the world cared much about the Saudis one way or another until massive oil fields were discovered, by Americans not Brits, starting in 1938. There was no reason they should. Prior to that Saudi prominence in world affairs was about equal to that of Chad today, and for much the same reason. Chad (and Saudi Arabia) had nothing anybody else wanted.
@Michael KennySeamus Padraig , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:39 pm GMT'Putin stopped talking about the "Lisbon to Vladivostok" free trade area long ago" -- Michael Kenney
Putin was simply trying to sell Russia's application for EU membership with the catch-phrase "Lisbon to Vladivostok". He continued that until the issue was triply mooted (1) by implosion of EU growth and boosterism, (2) by NATO's aggressive stance, in effect taken by NATO in Ukraine events and in the Baltics, and, (3) Russia's alliance with China.
It is surely still true that Russians think of themselves, categorically, as Europeans. OTOH, we can easily imagine that Russians in Vladivostok look at things differently than do Russians in St. Petersburg. Then again, Vladivostok only goes back about a century and a half.
@utuSeamus Padraig , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:45 pm GMTAnyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration.
I generally agree with your comment, but that part strikes me as a bit of an exaggeration. While relations with Russia certainly haven't improved, how have they really worsened? The second round of sanctions that Trump reluctantly approved have yet to be implemented by Europe, which was the goal. And apart from that, what of substance has changed?
@Grandpa CharlieLudwig Watzal , Website Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:46 pm GMTThat pre-9/11 "cooperation" nearly destroyed Russia. Nobody in Russia (except, perhaps, for Pussy Riot) wants a return to the Yeltsin era.
It's not surprising that 57 percent of the American people believe in Russian meddling. Didn't two-thirds of the same crowd believe that Saddam was behind 9/11, too? The American public is being brainwashed 24 hours a day all year long.anonymous , Disclaimer Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:50 pm GMTThe CIA is the world largest criminal and terrorist organization. With Brennan the worst has come to the worst. The whole Russian meddling affair was initiated by the Obama/Clinton gang in cooperation with 95 percent of the media. Nothing will come out of it.
This disinformation campaign might be the prelude to an upcoming war.
Right now, the US is run by jerks and idiots. Watch the video.Only dumb people does not know that TRUMP IS NETANYAHU'S PUPPET.Miro23 , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 4:56 pm GMTThe fifth column zionist jews are running the albino stooge and foreign policy in the Middle East to expand Israel's interest against American interest that is TREASON. One of these FIFTH COLUMNISTS is Jared Kushner. He should be arrested.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/donald-trumps-likudist-campaign-against-iran/5614264
[The key figures who had primary influence on both Trump's and Bush's Iran policies held views close to those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. The main conduit for the Likudist line in the Trump White House is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, primary foreign policy advisor, and longtime friend and supporter of Netanyahu. Kushner's parents are also long-time supporters of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank.
Another figure to whom the Trump White House has turned is John Bolton, undersecretary of state and a key policymaker on Iran in the Bush administration. Although Bolton was not appointed Trump's secretary of state, as he'd hoped, he suddenly reemerged as a player on Iran policy thanks to his relationship with Kushner. Politico reports that Bolton met with Kushner a few days before the final policy statement was released and urged a complete withdrawal from the deal in favor of his own plan for containing Iran.
Bolton spoke with Trump by phone on Thursday about the paragraph in the deal that vowed it would be "terminated" if there was any renegotiation, according to Politico. He was calling Trump from Las Vegas, where he'd been meeting with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the third major figure behind Trump's shift towards Israeli issues. Adelson is a Likud supporter who has long been a close friend of Netanyahu's and has used his Israeli tabloid newspaper Israel Hayomto support Netanyahu's campaigns. He was Trump's main campaign contributor in 2016, donating $100 million. Adelson's real interest has been in supporting Israel's interests in Washington -- especially with regard to Iran.]
A great article with some excellent points:CanSpeccy , Website Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:11 pm GMTPutin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical land bridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington.
American dominance is very much tied to the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency, and the rest of the world no longer want to fund this bankrupt, warlike state – particularly the Chinese.
First, it confirms that the US did not want to see the jihadist extremists defeated by Russia. These mainly-Sunni militias served as Washington's proxy-army conducting an ambitious regime change operation which coincided with US strategic ambitions.
The CIA run US/Israeli/ISIS alliance.
Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can't say.
They are given the political line and they broadcast it.
The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda coupled with the extraordinary advances in surveillance technology, create the perfect conditions for the full implementation of an American police state. But what is more concerning, is that the primary levers of state power are no longer controlled by elected officials but by factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people. That can only lead to trouble.
At some point Americans are going to get a "War on Domestic Terror" cheered along by the media. More or less the arrest and incarceration of any opposition following the Soviet Bolshevik model.
@utuThales the Milesian , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:53 pm GMTOn the plus side, everyone now knows that the Anglo-US media from the NY Times to the Economist, from WaPo to the Gruniard, and from the BBC to CNN, the CBC and Weinstein's Hollywood are a worthless bunch of depraved lying bastards.
Brennan did this, CIA did that .AB_Anonymous , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:59 pm GMTSo what are you going to do about all this?
Continue to whine?
Continue to keep your head stuck in your ass?
So then continue with your blah, blah, blah, and eat sh*t.
You, disgusting self-elected democratic people/institutions!!!
Such a truthful portrait of reality ! The ruling elite is indeed massively corrupt, compromised, and controlled by dark forces. And the police state is already here. For most people, so far, in the form of massive collection of personal data and increasing number of mandatory regulations. But just one or two big false-flags away from progressing into something much worse.Art , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 6:18 pm GMTThe thing is, no matter how thick the mental cages are, and how carefully they are maintained by the daily massive injections of "certified" truth (via MSM), along with neutralizing or compromising of "troublemakers", the presence of multiple alternative sources in the age of Internet makes people to slip out of these cages one by one, and as the last events show – with acceleration.
It means that there's a fast approaching tipping point after which it'd be impossible for those in power both to keep a nice "civilized" face and to control the "cage-free" population. So, no matter how the next war will be called, it will be the war against the free Internet and free people. That's probably why N. Korean leader has no fear to start one.
An aside:Mr. Anon , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:07 pm GMTAll government secrecy is a curse on mankind. Trump is releasing the JFK murder files to the public. Kudos! Let us hope he will follow up with a full 9/11 investigation.
Think Peace -- Art
@utuArt , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:11 pm GMTThe objective was to push new administration into the corner from which it could not improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he wanted to during the campaign.
Good point. That was probably one of the objectives (and from the point of view of the deep-state, perhaps the most important objective) of the "Russia hacked our democracy" narrative, in addition to the general deligitimization of the Trump administration.
And, keep in mind, Washington's Sunni proxies were not a division of the Pentagon; they were entirely a CIA confection: CIA recruited, CIA-armed, CIA-funded and CIA-trained.Rurik , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:12 pm GMTClearly the CIA was making war on Syria. Is secret coercive covert action against sovereign nations Ok? Is it legal? When was the CIA designated a war making entity – what part of the constitution OK's that? Isn't the congress obliged by constitutional law to declare war? (These are NOT six month actions – they go on and on.)
Are committees of six congressman and six senators, who meet in secret, just avoiding the grave constitutional questions of war? We the People cannot even interrogate these politicians. (These politicians make big money in the secrecy swamp when they leave office.)
Syria is only one of many nations that the CIA is attacking – how many countries are we attacking with drones? Where is congress?
Spying is one thing – covert action is another – covert is wrong – it goes against world order. Every year after 9/11 they say things are worse – give them more money more power and they will make things safe. That is BS!
9/11 has opened the flood gates to the US government attacking at will, the various peoples of this Earth. That is NOT our prerogative.
We are being exceptionally arrogant.
Close the CIA – give the spying to the 16 other agencies.
Think Peace -- Art
@Ben10Mr. Anon , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:15 pm GMTright at 1:47
when he says 'we can't move on as a country'
his butt hurt is so ruefully obvious, that I couldn't help notice a wry smile on my face
that bitch spent millions on the war sow, and now all that mullah won't even wipe his butt hurt
when I see ((guys)) like this raging their inner crybaby angst, I feel really, really good about President Trump
MAGA bitches!
@jilles dykstraTradecraft46 , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 8:04 pm GMTI am reading Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the USA
A Peoples History of the USA? Which Peoples?
I am SAIS 70 so know the drill and the article is on point.Here is the dealio. Most reporters are dim and have no experience, and it is real easy to lead them by the nose with promises of better in the future.
|
|
|
May 06, 2014 | mondoweiss.net
At the Huffington Post, Jim Sleeper addresses "A Foreign-Policy Problem No One Speaks About," and it turns out to Jewish identity, the need to belong to the powerful nation on the part of Jewish neoconservatives. Sleeper says this is an insecurity born of European exclusion that he understands as a Jew, even if he's not a warmongering neocon himself. The Yale lecturer's jumping-off point are recent statements by Leon Wieseltier and David Brooks lamenting the decline of American power.
In addition to Wieseltier and Brooks, the "blame the feckless liberals" chorus has included Donald Kagan, Robert Kagan, David Frum, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and many other American neoconservatives. Some of them have been chastened, or at least been made more cautious, by their grand-strategic blunders of a few years ago ..
I'm saying that they've been fatuous as warmongers again and again and that there's something pathetic in their attempts to emulate Winston Churchill, who warned darkly of Hitler's intentions in the 1930s. Their blind spot is their willful ignorance of their own complicity in American deterioration and their over-compensatory, almost pre-adolescent faith in the benevolence of a statist and militarist power they still hope to mobilize against the seductions and terrors rising all around them.
At bottom, the chorus members' recurrent nightmares of 1938 doom them to reenact other nightmares, prompted by very similar writers in 1914, on the eve of World War I. Those writers are depicted chillingly, unforgettably, in Chapter 9, "War Fever," of Amos Elon's The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933. Elon's account of Germany's stampede into World War I chronicles painfully the warmongering hysterics of some Jewish would-be patriots of the Kaiserreich who exerted themselves blindly, romantically, to maneuver their state into the Armageddon that would produce Hitler himself.
This is the place to emphasize that few of Wilhelmine German's warmongers were Jews and that few Jews were or are warmongers. (Me, for example, although my extended-family history isn't much different from Brooks' or Wieseltier's.) My point is simply that, driven by what I recognize as understandable if almost preternatural insecurities and cravings for full liberal-nationalist belonging that was denied to Jews for centuries in Europe, some of today's American super-patriotic neo-conservatives hurled themselves into the Iraq War, and they have continued, again and again, to employ modes of public discourse and politics that echo with eerie fidelity that of the people described in Elon's book. The Americans lionized George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and many others as their predecessors lionized Kaiser Wilhelm, von Bethmann-Hollweg, and far-right nationalist associates who hated the neo-cons of that time but let them play their roles .
Instead of acknowledging their deepest feelings openly, or even to themselves, the writers I've mentioned who've brought so much folly and destruction upon their republic, are doubling down, more nervous and desperate than ever, looking for someone else to blame. Hence their whirling columns and rhythmic incantations. After Germany lost World War I, many Germans unfairly blamed their national folly on Jews, many of whom had served in it loyally but only a few of whom had been provocateurs and cheerleaders like the signatories of [Project for New American Century's] letter to Bush. Now neo-cons, from Wieseltier and Brooks to [Charles] Hill, are blaming Obama and all other feckless liberals. Some of them really need to take a look in Amos Elon's mirror.
Interesting. Though I think Sleeper diminishes Jewish agency here (Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban are no one's proxy) and can't touch the Israel angle. The motivation is not simply romantic identification with power, it's an ideology of religious nationalism in the Middle East, attachment to the needs of a militarist Sparta in the Arab world. That's another foreign policy problem no one speaks about.
Krauss, May 6, 2014, 2:11 pm
"Democracy in in the Middle East" was always just a weasel-word saying of "let's try to improve Israel's strategic position by changing their neighbours".
The neocons basically took a hardline position on foreign interventionism based out of dual loyalty. This is the honest truth. For anti-Semites, a handful of neocons will always represent "The Jews" as a collective. For many Jews, the refusal to come to grips with the rise of the neocons and how the Jewish community (and really by "community" I mean the establishment) failed to prevent them in their own midst, is also a blemish.
Of course, Jim Sleeper is doing these things now. He should have done them 15-20 years ago or so. But better late than never, I guess.
Krauss, May 6, 2014, 2:16 pm
P.S. While we talk a lot about neocons as a Jewish issue, it's also important to put them in perspective. The only war that I can truly think of that they influenced was the Iraq war, which was a disaster, but it also couldn't have happened without 9/11, which was a very rare event in the history of America. You have to go back to Pearl Harbor to find something similar, and that wasn't technically a terrorist attack but rather a military attack by Japan.
Leading up to the early 2000s, they were mostly ignored during the 1990s. They did take over the GOP media in the early 90s, using the same tactics used against Hagel, use social norms as a cover but in actuality the real reason is Israel.
Before the 90s, in the 70s and 80s, the cold war took up all the oxygen.
So yeah, the neocons need to be talked about. But comparing what they are trying to do with a World War is a bit of a stretch.Finally, talking about Israel – which Sleeper ignored – and the hardline positions that the political class in America have adopted, if you want to look who have ensured the greatest slavishness to Israel, liberal/centrist groups like ADL, AJC and AIPAC(yes, they are mostly democrats!) have played a far greater role than the neocons.
But I guess, Sleeper wasn't dealing with that, because it would ruin his view of the neocons as the bogeymen.
Just like "liberal" Zionists want to blame Likud for everything, overlooking the fact that Labor/Mapai has had a far greater role in settling/colonizing the Palestinian land than the right has, and not to speak about the ethnic cleansing campaigns of '48 and '67 which was only done by the "left", so too the neocons often pose as a convenient catch-all target for the collective Jewish failure leading up to Iraq.
And I'm using the words "collective Jewish failure" because I actually don't believe, unlike Mearsheimer/Walt, that the war would not have gone ahead unless there was massive support by the Israel/Jewish lobby. If Jews had decided no, it would still have gone ahead. This is also contrary to Tom Friedman's famous saying of "50 people in DC are responsible for this war".
I also think that's an oversimplification.But I focus more on the Jewish side because that's my side. And I want my community to do better, and just blaming the neocons is something I'm tired of hearing in Jewish circles. The inability to look at liberal Jewish journalists and their role in promoting the war to either gentile or Jewish audiences.
Kathleen, May 6, 2014, 6:53 pm
There was talk about this last night (Monday/5th) on Chris Matthew's Hardball segment on Condi "mushroom cloud" Rice pulling out of the graduation ceremonies at Rutger's. David Corn did not say much but Eugene Robinson and Chris Matthews were basically talking about Israel and the neocons desires to rearrange the middle east "the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad" conversation.
Bumblebye, May 6, 2014, 2:33 pm
"some of today's American super-patriotic neo-conservatives hurled themselves into the Iraq War"
Have to take issue with that – the neo-cons hurled young American (and foreign) servicemen and women into that war, many to their deaths, along with throwing as much taxpayer money as possible. They stayed ultra safe and grew richer for their efforts.
Citizen, May 7, 2014, 9:03 am
@ Bumblebye
Good point. During WW1, as I read the history, the Jewish Germans provided their fair share of combat troops. If memory serves, despite Weimar Germany's later "stab in the back" theory, e.g., Hitler himself was given a combat medal thanks to his Jewish senior officer. In comparison to the build-up to Shrub Jr's war on Iraq, the Jewish neocons provided very few Jewish American combat troops.
It's hard to get reliable stats on Jewish American participation in the US combat arms during the Iraq war. For all I've been able to ascertain, more have joined the IDF over the years. At any rate, it's common knowledge that Shrub's war on Iraq was instigated and supported by chicken hawks (Jew or Gentile) at a time bereft of conscription. They built their sale by ignoring key facts, and embellishing misleading and fake facts, as illustrated by the Downing Street memo.
Keith, May 6, 2014, 7:47 pm
ToivoS, May 7, 2014, 8:10 pmPHIL- Perhaps you are making too much of the so called decline of the neocons. At the strategic level, there is little difference between the neocon "Project for a the New American Century" and Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard," both of which are consistent with US policy and actions in the Ukraine.
The most significant difference seems to me to be the neocon emphasis on American unilateral militarism versus Obama's emphasis on multilateralism, covert operations and financial warfare to achieve the desired results.
Perhaps another significant difference is the neocon emphasis on the primacy of the American nation-state versus the neoliberal emphasis on an American dominated global empire.
So yes, the nationalistic emphasis is an anachronism, however, the decline of the US in conjunction with the extension of a system of globalized domination should hardly be of concern to elite power-seekers who will benefit. In fact, the new system of corporate/financial control will be beyond the political control of any nation, even the US. If they can pull it off. An interesting topic no doubt, but one which I doubt is suitable for extended discussion on Mondoweiss. As for power-seeking as a consequence of a uniquely Jewish experience, perhaps the less said the better.
Interesting to juxtapose Brzezinski and the neocons. In a Venn diagram they would over-lap 90%. The Ukraine crisis exposes that 10% difference. Brzezinski I very much doubt has any emotional attachment to Israel though he is happy to work in coalition with them to further his one true goal which is to isolate and defeat Russian influence in the world. In the 1980s both were on the same page in the "let my people go" campaign against the Soviet Union. Brzezinski saw it as a propaganda opportunity to attack Russia and the neocons saw it has a source of more Jews to settle Palestine.RudyM, May 7, 2014, 9:36 pmRight now, their interests have diverged over the Ukraine crisis. Though many of the American neocons do support subverting Ukraine as does Brzezinski it looks like Israel itself is leaning towards supporting Russia. When it comes down to it it is hard for many Jews, right wing or not, to support the political movement inside Ukraine that identifies with Bandera. Now that was one nasty antisemite whose followers killed many thousands of Ukrainian Jews during the holocaust. My wife's family immigrated from Galicia and the Odessa region and those left behind perished during the holocaust. The extended family includes anti-zionists and WB settlers. There is no way that any of them would identify with Ukrainian fascist movements now active there.
In any case, there does seem to be a potential split among the neocons over Ukraine. It would be the ultimate in hypocrisy for all of those eastern European Jews who became successful in the US in the last few generations to enter into coalition with the Bandera brigades.
Interesting, meaty analysis here of the various players in Ukraine. This is unequivocally from a Russian perspective, incidentally:American, May 6, 2014, 9:23 pm(I know I'm always grabbing OT threads of discussion, but when it comes down to it, I know much less about Zionism and Israel/Palestine than many, if not most of the regular commenters here.)
I also am going to drift further off-topic by saying there is strong evidence that the slaughter in Odessa last Friday was highly orchestrated and not solely the result of spontaneous mob violence. Very graphic and disturbing images in all of these links:
I have only glanced at these:
Citizen May 7, 2014, 9:46 am" and it turns out to Jewish identity, the need to belong to the powerful nation on the part of Jewish neoconservatives. Sleeper says this is an insecurity born of European exclusion that he understands as a Jew, ..>>Stop it Sleeper. Do not continue to use the victim card ' to explain' the trauma, the insecurities, the nightmares, the angst, the feelings, the sensitivities, blah blah, blah of Zionist or Israel.
That is not what they are about. These are power mad psychos like most neocons, period.
And even if it were, and even if all the Jews in the world felt the same way, the bottom line would still be they do not have the right to make others pay in treasure and blood for their nightmares and mental sickness.
@ yonah fredman"The freedom of Ukraine is a worthy goal."
As near as I can tell (correct me if I'm wrong), the Ukrainians themselves are about half and half pro Russia and Pro NATO. Your glance at the history of the region as to why this is so, and your text on historical Ukranian suffering and POTV on MW commentary on this –did not help your analysis and its conclusion.
There's a difference between isolationism and defensive intervention, and even more so, re isolationism v. pro-active interventionism "in the name of pursuing the democratic ideal". See Ron Paul v. PNAC-style neocons and liberal Zionists.
Also, if you were Putin, how would you see the push of NATO & US force posts ever creeping towards Russia and its local environment? Look at the US military postings nearing Russia per se & those surrounding Iran. Compare Russia's.
And note the intent to wean EU from Russian oil, and as well, the draconian sanctions on Iran, and Obama's latest partnering sanctions on Russia.
Imagine yourself in Putin's shoes, and Iran's.
Don't abuse your imagination only by imagining yourself in Netanyahu's shoes, which is the preoccupation of AIPAC and its whores in the US Congress.
ToivoS, May 7, 2014, 8:49 pm
Interesting to juxtapose Brzezinski and the neocons. In a Venn diagram they would over-lap 90%. The Ukraine crisis exposes that 10% difference. Brzezinski I very much doubt has any emotional attachment to Israel though he is happy to work in coalition with them to further his one true goal which is to isolate and defeat Russian influence in the world. In the 1980s both were on the same page in the "let my people go" campaign against the Soviet Union. Brzezinski saw it as a propaganda opportunity to attack Russia and the neocons saw it has a source of more Jews to settle Palestine.ToivoSMay 7, 2014, 9:39 pmRight now, their interests have diverged over the Ukraine crisis. Though many of the American neocons do support subverting Ukraine as does Brzezinski it looks like Israel itself is leaning towards supporting Russia. When it comes down to it it is hard for many Jews, right wing or not, to support the political movement inside Ukraine that identifies with Bandera. Now that was one nasty anti-Semite whose followers killed many thousands of Ukrainian Jews during the holocaust. My wife's family immigrated from Galicia and the Odessa region and those left behind perished during the holocaust. The extended family includes anti-Zionists and WB settlers. There is no way that any of them would identify with Ukrainian fascist movements now active there.
In any case, there does seem to be a potential split among the neocons over Ukraine. It would be the ultimate in hypocrisy for all of those eastern European Jews who became successful in the US in the last few generations to enter into coalition with the Bandera brigades.
piotrMay 7, 2014, 10:18 pmYonah writes The freedom of Ukraine is a worthy goal. If the US is not able to back up our attempt to help them gain their freedom it is not something to celebrate, but something to lament.What are you saying? Ukraine has been an independent nation for 22 years. What freedom is this? What we have witnessed is that one half of Ukraine has gotten tired that the other half keeps on electing candidates that represent those Ukrainians that identify with Russian culture. They (the western half) successfully staged a coup and purged the other (eastern half) from the government. You call that "freedom". Doesn't it embarrass you, Yonah, that the armed militias that conducted that coup are descendants of the Bandera organization.
Does that ring a bell? These are the Ukrainians that were involved in the holocaust. Does Babi Yar stir any memories Yohan? It was a massacre of 40,000 Jews just outside of Kiev in 1942. It was the single largest massacre of Jews during WWII. The massacre was led by the Germans ( Einsatzgruppe C officers) but was carried out with the aid of 400 Ukrainian Auxillary Police. These were later incorporated into the 14th SS-Volunteer Division "Galician" made up mostly Ukrainians. The division flags are to this day displayed at Right Sector rallies in western Ukraine.
Right Sector militias are the fighting force that led the coup against the legally elected Yanukovich government and were almost certainly involved in the recent massacre in Odessa. And you support them for their fight for freedom? You should be ashamed. Zionism is sinking to new lows that they feel the need to identify with open neo-Nazis.
Well, the point is that Zionists in Israel do not identify with that particular set of open neo-Nazis. I suspect that this is simply a matter of the headcount of Jewish business tycoons that are politically aligned with (western) Ukraine and Russia. Or you can count their billions. In any case, the neutral posture is sensible for Israel here. Which is highly uncharacteristic for that government.yonah fredman, May 7, 2014, 10:38 pm
Toivo S- The history of Jew hatred by certain anti Russian elements in the Ukraine is not encouraging and nothing that I celebrate. Maybe I have been swayed by headlines and a superficial reading of the situation.If indeed I am wrong regarding the will of the Ukrainian people, I can only be glad that my opinion is just that, my opinion and not US or Israel or anyone's policy but my own. I assume that a majority of Ukrainians want to maintain independence of Russia and that the expressions of rebellion are in that vein.
My people were murdered by the einsatzgruppen in that part of the world and so maybe I have overcompensated by trying not to allow my personal history to interfere with what I think would be the will of the majority of the Ukraine.
But Toivo S. please skip the "doesn't it embarrass you" line of thought. Just put a sock in it and skip it.
ToivoSMay 8, 2014, 12:51 am
Well thanks for that Yonah. My wife's family descended from Jewish communities in Odessa and Galicia. They emigrated to the US between 1900 and 1940. After WWII none of their relatives left behind were ever heard from again. Perhaps you have family that experienced similar stories. What caused me to react to your post above is that you are describing the current situation in Ukraine as a "freedom" movement by the Ukrainians when the political forces there descended from the same people that killed my inlaws family (and apparently yours to). Why do you support them?yonah fredmanMay 8, 2014, 1:30 am
ToivoS- I support them because I trust/don't trust Putin. I trust him to impose his brand of leadership on Ukraine, I don't trust him to care a whit about freedom. It is natural that the nationalist elements of Ukraine would descend from the elements that expressed themselves the last time they had freedom from the Soviet Union, that is those forces that were willing to join with the Nazis to express their hatred for the communist Soviet Union's rule over their freedom. That's how history works. The nationalists today descend from the nationalists of yesterday.But it's been 70 years since WWII and the Ukrainians ought to be able to have freedom even if the parties that advocate for freedom are descended from those that supported the Nazis. (I know once i include the Nazi part of history any analogies are toxic, but if I am willing to grant Hamas its rights as an expression of the Palestinian desire for freedom, why would I deny the Ukrainian foul nationalist parties their rights to express their people's desire for freedom.)
Political parties are not made in a sterile laboratory, they evolve over history and most specifically they emerge from the past. I accept that Ukrainian nationalism has not evolved much, but nonetheless not having read any polls I assume that the nationalists are the representatives of the people's desire for freedom. And because Putin strikes me as something primitive, I accept the Ukrainian desire for freedom.
CitizenMay 8, 2014, 9:18 am
@ yonah fWhat are you supporting? Let me refresh your historic memory: Black's Transfer Agreement. Now apply analogy, responding to ToivoS. Might help us all to understand, explore more skillfully, Israel's current stance on the Putin-Ukranian matter .?
(I think Nuland's intervention caught on tape, combined with who she is married to, already explores with great clarification what the US is doing.
irishmosesMay 8, 2014, 12:32 pm
Yonah said:"The misadventure in Iraq has cost the US and the world a lot. The US a loss in humans and money and willingness to play the role of superpower, and the world has lost its cop. Most people here would probably disagree with Sleeper, because he does not deny that the world needs a cop, nor that the US would play a positive role, if it only had the means and the desire to do so. People here (overwhelmingly) see the US role as a negative one (let the Russians have their sphere of influence, let the Iranians have their bomb, let the Chinese do whatever they want to do in their part of the world,"
The problem with your reasoning, Yonah, is that you are espousing the Neocon line while not apparently recognizing that embarrassing fact. You lament that the US is no longer playing the role of the world's superpower, and acting as the world's cop, confronting militarily Russia, China, Iran and anyone else. It is precisely that mentality that got us into Iraq, could yet have us in a war with Iran, would like to see us defending Ukraine, and thinks we should confront China militarily over bits of rock it and its neighbors are quibbling over. That is a neocon, American supremacy mentality.
Contrast that with the realist or realism approach recommended by George Kennan, and followed by this country successfully through the end of the Cold War. That approach is conservative and contends we should stay out of wars unless the vital national security interests of the US are at stake, like protecting WESTERN Europe, Japan, Australia, and the Western Hemisphere. This meant we could sympathize with the plight of all the eastern Europeans oppressed by the Soviets, but would not defend militarily the Hungarians (1956) or the Czechs (1968). It also meant we wouldn't send US troops into North Vietnam because we didn't want to go to war with the Chinese over a country that was at best tangential to US interests. When we varied from that policy (Vietnam and Iraq wars, Somalia) we paid a very heavy price while doing nothing to advance or protect our vital national security interests.
The sooner this country can return to our traditional realism-based foreign policy the better. Part of that policy would be to disassociate the US from its entangling alliance with Likud Israel and its US Jewish supporters that espouse the Likud Greater Israel line.
Zionism under Likud has played a major role in promoting the neocon approach to foreign policy in the US. It was heavily involved in the birth of that approach, and has helped fund and promote the policy and its supporters and advocates in this country. They (Likud Zionists and Neocons) played a major role in getting us into the Iraq war and are playing a major role in trying to get us involved in a war with Iran, a war in Syria, and even potential wars in Eastern Europe. That is a very dangerous trend and one folks as intelligent as you are, should be focusing on.
Please note, my criticism is directed neither at all Jews in general, Jews in the US, nor or all Israeli Jews. It is directed at a particular subset of Zionists who support Likud policies, and their supporters, many of whom are not Jews. It is also directed at Neoconservative foreign policy advocates, comprised of Jews and non-Jews, and overlap between the two groups. Please also note my use of the term "major role", and that I am not saying the Neocons and their supporters (Jewish or non) were solely responsible for our involvement in the Iraq war. I am offering these caveats in the hope that the usual changes of antisemitism can be avoided in your or anyone else's response to my arguments.
The influence of Neocons on US foreign policy has been very harmful to this country and poses a grave danger to its future. It would be wise for you to reflect on that harm and those dangers and decide whether you belong in the realist camp or want to continue running with the Neocons.
seanmcbride, May 8, 2014, 1:01 pm
irishmoses,Please note, my criticism is directed neither at all Jews in general, Jews in the US, nor or all Israeli Jews. It is directed at a particular subset of Zionists who support Likud policies, and their supporters, many of whom are not Jews.
What about the role of *liberal Zionists*, like Hillary Clinton, in supporting and promoting the Iraq War? Clinton still hasn't offered an apology for helping to drive the United States in a multi-trillion dollar foreign policy disaster - and she has threatened to "totally obliterate" Iran.
What about Harry Reid's lavish praise of Sheldon Adelson?
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has for some time billed the Koch brothers as public enemy No.1 .
But billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson? He's just fine, Reid says.
"I know Sheldon Adelson. He's not in this for money," the Nevada Democrat said of Adelson, the Vegas casino magnate who reportedly spent close to $150 million to support Republicans in the 2012 presidential election."
Are there really any meaningful distinctions between neoconservatives in the Republican Party and liberal Zionists in the Democratic Party?
talknic, May 7, 2014, 3:24 am
@ yonah fredman "nationalist Armageddon that is nowhere found in the article by Sleeper"Strange
"state into the Armageddon .. ""The misadventure in Iraq has cost the US and the world a lot. The US a loss in humans and money and willingness to play the role of superpower, and the world has lost its cop. "
Tough. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives don't rate a mention.
" (let the Russians have their sphere of influence, let the Iranians have their bomb, let the Chinese do whatever they want to do in their part of the world, for after all they hold a trillion dollars in US government debt and so let them act like the boss, for in fact they have been put in that role by feckless and destructive and wasteful US policy). But Sleeper does not say that."
You do tho, without quoting anyone "here".
BTW Pajero, strawmen no matter how lengthy and seemingly erudite, rarely walk anywhere
JeffB, May 7, 2014, 9:06 am
I'm going to put this down as Jewish navel gazing.Jews are disproportionately liberal. Jews make up a huge chunk of the peace movement. Jews are relative to their numbers on the left of most foreign policy positions.
Iraq was unusual in that Jews were not overwhelming opposed to the invasion, but it is worth noting the invasion at the time was overwhelming popular. Frankly given the fact that Jews are now considered white people and the fact that Jews are almost all middle class they should be biased conservative. There certainly is no reason they should be more liberal than Catholics. Yet they are. It is the degree of Jewish liberalism not the degree of Jewish conservatism that is striking.
But even if we do focus on neocons, neocons don't have opinions about foreign policy and USA dominance that are much distinct from what most Republican interventionists have. How much difference is there between David Frum and Mitt Romney or between Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld?
lysias, May 7, 2014, 10:55 am
The neocons lost one last night: Antiwar Rep. Walter Jones Beats Neocon-Backed GOP Rival:Strongly antiwar incumbent Rep. Walter Jones (R – NC) has won a hotly contested primary tonight, defeating a challenge from hawkish challenger and former Treasury Dept. official Taylor Griffin 51% to 45%.
American, May 7, 2014, 11:24 am
Yep.Voter turn out was light .. tea party types did a lot of lobbying for Griffin here .but Jones prevailed. Considering the onslaught of organized activity against him by ECI and the tea partiers for the past month he did well.
Citizen, May 8, 2014, 9:24 am
@ lysias
Let's refresh our look at what Ron Paul had to say about foreign policy and foreign aid. Then, let's compare what his son has said, and take a look of his latest bill in congress to cut off aid to Palestine. Yes, you read that right; it's not a bill to cut off any aid to Israel.Don't look to the US to get any justice in the ME, nor to regain US good reputation in the world. This will situation will not change because US political campaign fiancé system won't change–it just gets worse, enhanced by SCOTUS.
traintosiberia, May 8, 2014, 9:12 am
Stockman's CornerBravo, Rep. Walter Jones -- Primary Win Sends Neocons Packing
by David Stockman • May 7, 2014 link to davidstockmanscontracorner.com
The heavy artillery included the detestable Karl Rove, former Governor and RNC Chair Haley Barber and the War Party's highly paid chief PR flack, Ari Fleischer.
But it was Neocon central that hauled out the big guns. Bill Kristol was so desperate to thwart the slowly rising anti-interventionist tide within the GOP that he even trotted out Sarah Palin to endorse Jones's opponent"
But neoocns have the confidence that if they could impose the neocon's theology on the rest of the world, they can do it here as well on American street . They call it education, motivation, duty, responsibility, moral burden, and above all the essence of the manifest destiny.
|
|
|
Nov 07, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
In the fall of 2016, Harvey Weinstein set out to suppress allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted numerous women. He began to hire private security agencies to collect information on the women and the journalists trying to expose the allegations. According to dozens of pages of documents, and seven people directly involved in the effort, the firms that Weinstein hired included Kroll, which is one of the world's largest corporate-intelligence companies, and Black Cube, an enterprise run largely by former officers of Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies. Black Cube, which has branches in Tel Aviv, London, and Paris, offers its clients the skills of operatives "highly experienced and trained in Israel's elite military and governmental intelligence units," according to its literature.
Two private investigators from Black Cube, using false identities, met with the actress Rose McGowan, who eventually publicly accused Weinstein of rape, to extract information from her. One of the investigators pretended to be a women's-rights advocate and secretly recorded at least four meetings with McGowan. The same operative, using a different false identity and implying that she had an allegation against Weinstein, met twice with a journalist to find out which women were talking to the press. In other cases, journalists directed by Weinstein or the private investigators interviewed women and reported back the details.
The explicit goal of the investigations, laid out in one contract with Black Cube, signed in July, was to stop the publication of the abuse allegations against Weinstein that eventually emerged in the New York Times and The New Yorker . Over the course of a year, Weinstein had the agencies "target," or collect information on, dozens of individuals, and compile psychological profiles that sometimes focussed on their personal or sexual histories. Weinstein monitored the progress of the investigations personally. He also enlisted former employees from his film enterprises to join in the effort, collecting names and placing calls that, according to some sources who received them, felt intimidating.
Weinstein's lawyer, the cream-of-the-croppy David Boies, knew a lot about this. Farrow also reports about how Weinstein allegedly conspired with the owner of the National Enquirer to dig up dirt on those who accused him.
Harvey Weinstein is a monster. After reading this piece, it is easier to understand why people stayed quiet about his behavior.
Centralist ,, November 7, 2017 at 10:22 am
The sins of capitalism without ethics and a man without ethics, in perfect harmony.Siarlys Jenkins , says: November 7, 2017 at 10:43 amThe joke that this brings to mind is "What is the worst thing for capitalism?" "A pure capitalist". To have a good capitalist system you need sense of community and ethics to guide them. The sense of only "I" is the greatest cause of such abuse. Sadly though this is more in line with a return to old power politics of city states that use to dominate the Italy, Greece, and the Mideast. While often apart of larger empires with their own security forces individual wealth magnates and nobles had their own private forces to keep the rift raft in check because of legal grey area and coupled with official leadership to weak or to in the pocket of the rich to do anything about it.
The further forward we go, the more we go back. I think Mr. Dreher and interesting idea for a novel from you would be a Benedict Option Society in a cyberpunk post nation-state world. Just an idea.
The monstrosity is hardly unique to Weinstein. After all, Black Cube must have quite a few other well-heeled clients with similar needs or it wouldn't be in business on several continents. That seems to be more of a threat to peace and freedom and democracy and liberty and public morality than one man's particular sins, or his desires to cover them up.TR , says: November 7, 2017 at 10:53 amPerhaps men and women who enter into service in a national military or intelligence agency should be required to sign a life-time oath NOT to accept employment in any investigative or paramilitary outfit in the private sector, enforceable by a life prison sentence?
To have a good capitalist system you need sense of community and ethics to guide them.
The two are by and large antithetical. Now the weakness of socialism, to date, is that without a sense of community and ethics, it looks an awful lot like monopoly capitalism. Fidel Castro understood that, but his error was thinking he could inculcate community and ethics by decree (and if necessary force).
I suggest opening the TAC link to Joseph Epstein's take-down of Leon Wieseltier in the Weekly Standard. A masterpiece.Potato , says: November 7, 2017 at 11:05 amThere are all kinds of reasons why Harvey W. was not outed earlier, some having to do with the culture at large, some having to do with the extreme insecurity of anyone in show business. But I am a little uneasy with the frenzy of accusations across the country that have followed. Some have got to be opportunistic rather than real.
For those interested in tales of the cssting couch of old, check out the life of Harry Cohn, the longtime head of Columbia Pictures.
I am concerned about the part in all this played by attorney David Boies, and I think the Bar should initiate an investigation into his involvement. This falls seriously short of the ethical behavior we expect of people who are, after all, officers of the Court.Jason , says: November 7, 2017 at 11:23 amI also believe that any claim of attorney-client privilege as to these materials, in a situation where Boies is claiming that he and his firm did not direct the investigative agencies involved and did not know much about their findings, is farcical, and would never have held up in court. Assuming that he is telling the truth about this ignorance of his, Mr. Boies should surely have known that a claim of privilege would not hold up, and should so have advised his client at the beginning of this entire transaction.
Or, alternatively, he is lying his head off about how much he knew, which is worse.
David Boies is now very understandably backing quickly away from this whole situation, but I believe that it may be too late for him to be in the clear.
One wonders, or I do, why Mr. Boies consented to be involved in the first place. Surely he personally and his firm both have plenty of money, so financial desperation cannot play a part. Is a man in his position so blinded by Fame and Fortune that his good judgment was compromised to this degree? He seems to be at least marginally good, at this late date, at naming all the reasons this was a bad idea for him. One wonders why all this did not occur to him sooner.
Another possibility is that Weinstein or someone closely connected to Weinstein "has the goods" on Mr. Boies, and was able to in effect blackmail him. Weinstein and his associates seem uncommonly good at that.
Or, I wonder, is it just One Of Those Things? You do things, then you do something that is a tiny bit questionable (but hugely profitable), and then the next thing is a tiny bit more questionable until, without really thinking about it, you find yourself in the position David Boies is now in, or worse, in commission of a felony. This kind of thing happens all the time, sadly, when someone like Boies has a moral compass which is a bit out of adjustment.
Anybody who goes to the show right now, knowing what we know or will eventually discover – Weinstein is just the tip of the iceberg – is simply subsidizing evil.charles cosimano , says: November 7, 2017 at 11:43 amSeems he did everything right except the execution. He never would have made it in the mafia.Sam M , says: November 7, 2017 at 11:54 am"After reading this piece, it is easier to understand why people stayed quiet about his behavior."Captain P , says: November 7, 2017 at 1:07 pmBut also easier to believe that, "I didn't know."
This matters. It's one thing for a young aspiring starlet getting off a bus in Hollywood with $20 in her pocket to fall in line. But it's quite another for multi-millionaire power brokers who worked with Weinstein to sit back and watch him abuse one such aspiring starlet after another for 20 years.
There were plenty of producers and actors and directors who knew plenty and never raised a finger, despite having the financial and professional wherewithal to take that risk.
PotatoFran Macadam , says: November 7, 2017 at 1:08 pm> I am concerned about the part in all this played by attorney David Boies, and I think the Bar should initiate an investigation into his involvement. This falls seriously short of the ethical behavior we expect of people who are, after all, officers of the Court.
Sounds like the NYT is going to be suing Boies for his unethical behavior:
"We learned today that the law firm of Boies Schiller and Flexner secretly worked to stop our reporting on Harvey Weinstein at the same time as the firm's lawyers were representing us in other matters," Eileen Murphy, a New York Times spokesperson, told TheWrap.
"We consider this intolerable conduct, a grave betrayal of trust, and a breach of the basic professional standards that all lawyers are required to observe," she continued. "It is inexcusable, and we will be pursuing appropriate remedies."
https://www.thewrap.com/new-york-times-david-boies-harvey-weinstein/
Anybody who's lived in Hollywood, knows that the lure of fame is such that any compromise will be acceded to as the cost of obtaining it. Of course, those who prostituted themselves and violated their consciences, won't mind getting revenge if the opportunity someday arises.theMann , says: November 7, 2017 at 1:30 pmAnd whatever happens on casting couches, is simply the behind the scenes sideplay of the same things acted out onscreen.
In a way, it's consensual if that is the bargain you agreed with yourself to make to get what you wanted.
We've already determined what you are, now we're just negotiating about the price.
Weinstein is stone cold via RICO on extortion, multiple times. Any prosecutor worth his salt (very few of them actually, but another subject) can and should start rolling out the counts. All the people covering up for him, launch discovery and see just how far their accessory goes, also prosecutable under RICO.ludo , says: November 7, 2017 at 1:47 pmhum .Hollywood. Lets all hold our breath until it happens.
At least he didn't have anybody disappeared, unlike routinely happens in Mexico and so many other increasingly neo-medieval places in the world, so credit for that.pitchfork , says: November 7, 2017 at 2:02 pm"The monstrosity is hardly unique to Weinstein. After all, Black Cube must have quite a few other well-heeled clients with similar needs or it wouldn't be in business on several continents. That seems to be more of a threat to peace and freedom and democracy and liberty and public morality than one man's particular sins, or his desires to cover them up."Lllurker , says: November 7, 2017 at 2:19 pmIndeed. And a common tactic seems to be to run everything through a law firm, thereby putting it all under attorney-client privilege. The cyber-security team that Bank of America hired to take down Glenn Greenwald a few years back was apparently organized through Hunton and Williams. At the DOJ's suggestion, no less.
https://wikileaks.org/hbgary-emails/emailid/13730
And this kind of thing isn't confined to media moguls and banks, either. When I was a PhD student I was involved in organizing against certain development plans at my university. On one of the emails between myself, other organizers, and the university vice president, the VP had copied some university employees that had nothing apparent to do with the issue we were protesting. When I researched who _they_ were, one of them had just been hired away from Booz Allen Hamilton. Later on, after the protests were over (we lost, by the way), an insider in the administration told me directly, in great detail, that I, my wife, and other organizers had been carefully watched the whole time. Lucky for me, I'm a good boy with a squeaky clean past, but that's how this university VP rolled.
Shades of Roger Ailes. One more story that shows how ignorant some of us who live out our lives in flyover country can be about this sort of thing. Until the Roger Ailes thing broke I pretty much assumed that hiring "security firms" of this nature was something that just took place in spy novels and westerns.Countme-a-Demon , says: November 7, 2017 at 2:20 pmI wonder if these hired guns who stalk and intimidate people for a living are ever convicted of crimes like stalking and intimidating.
Odd that the title of the article reads "Harvey Weinstein's Stasi", when "Harvey Weinstein's Mossad" was right there for the picking. Is Mossad a different kind of Stasi? Those agents should be arrested and charged as well. Then deported, if ICE isn't too overworked.JCM , says: November 7, 2017 at 3:20 pmI wonder why Mr. Weinstein didn't save himself the trouble and hooked himself up with A-list call girls. I can't imagine that a sense of morality would have kept him from consorting with prostitutes. He would have saved himself a word of trouble and money if he had been inclined to pay for services from the outset. Perhaps, he felt the need to denigrate the women that he so callously approached. Not a nice man, this Mr. Weinstein.Potato , says: November 7, 2017 at 3:49 pma common tactic seems to be to run everything through a law firm, thereby putting it all under attorney-client privilege.Dan Green , says: November 7, 2017 at 4:35 pmAllegedly. Actually you have to do more than just get a lawyer involved somehow, or other in some capacity or other, to invoke the privilege. I haven't researched this transaction specifically, but it sounds to me like the assertion of privilege in this Weinstein business would have had more holes in it than a colander.
Sounds like the NYT is going to be suing Boies for his unethical behavior:
"We learned today that the law firm of Boies Schiller and Flexner secretly worked to stop our reporting on Harvey Weinstein at the same time as the firm's lawyers were representing us in other matters," Eileen Murphy, a New York Times spokesperson, told TheWrap. "We consider this intolerable conduct, a grave betrayal of trust, and a breach of the basic professional standards that all lawyers are required to observe," she continued. "It is inexcusable, and we will be pursuing appropriate remedies."
Good, they have it coming. Among everything else that was wrong with it, this business was a very serious conflict of interest, and worse, Boies was well aware of the conflict at the time. (Actually the Bar will whap you good for conflicts of interest whether you were aware of them or not, taking the position that attorneys are supposed to keep track of such things. But doing it knowingly is worse.)
More cause for head-shaking. Why why why did David Boies consent to become involved?? What did these people have to threaten him with, if that's what happened?
xx
As an irrelevancy, may I say yet again that Harvey Weinstein is one of the most physically unattractive men I have ever seen or seen pictures of. To call him a "pig" is an insult to pigs everywhere.
Hooray for Hollywood, is anybody really surprised what goes on in that fantasy world?cka2nd , says: November 7, 2017 at 4:38 pmTR "But I am a little uneasy with the frenzy of accusations across the country that have followed. Some have got to be opportunistic rather than real."Our Thing , says: November 7, 2017 at 8:42 pmI agree, some are. Corey Haim's mom is calling out Corey Feldman for trying to raise a millions of dollars for some documentary instead of just naming the names of those he claims abused him and her son, who she says was abused by just one person, not the hordes Feldman alleges.
By the way, I'm with Luke and Conewago on being careful about using the dehumanizing term "monster."
"After all, Black Cube must have quite a few other well-heeled clients with similar needs or it wouldn't be in business on several continents. "Philly guy , says: November 7, 2017 at 10:29 pmAnybody who hires a company called "Black Cube" deserves whatever bad things happen to them. And what stupid ex-Mossad hack chose the name? I can't imagine one better calculated to call forth an all-out international investigation. I mean, why not just call it SPECTRE and have done with it?
Am pretty sure Uncle Chuckie said something about Weinstein's henchmen on a previous thread. In 2017 this must be outsourced i.e. Black cube. The words "private" and "security" when used together, make me cringe.Ben H , says: November 7, 2017 at 10:41 pmThis story just gets more and more extraordinary.Elijah , says: November 8, 2017 at 7:33 am
- What David Boies did was just about the worse thing a lawyer can do which is to betray a client. Not even a former client, a current one, and not by accident either. This was intentional betrayal made with a sober mind. This Harvey guy is so important to him that Boies has basically thrown away his integrity, hopefully his law license, and his reputation forever just to stop some rumors. That's why Boies spoke to Farrow, to try to cover his own butt. And the client he screwed is the most powerful media outlet in the world
- The Mossad (or "ex-Mossad") angle brings in the hint of state action on behalf of individuals. Groups like that one do not work for everyone, and how do we know if those agents really are "ex-" or not.
- I agree that it is not surprising that these tactics tended to work as how do you know when the intimidation will stop and direct action will begin if you are the target?
- Farrow has some very good inside information. Obviously someone is giving him stuff like the emails that he quotes from.
- Who's the unnamed 'freelance journalist' given a bunch of money to pretend to write a story?
- There is a scandal in Washington now, involving at least 60 Navy Admirals, bribes and hookers. All our institutions are crumbling. Hurray!
"Why why why did David Boies consent to become involved?? What did these people have to threaten him with, if that's what happened?"You really have to wonder if the lure of Weinstein's fund-raising prowess was that strong or if he was investigating and blackmailing hundreds of people all over the nation.
The more you read about this wretched Weinstein, the less outlandish the conspiracy theories sound.
|
|
|
Nov 01, 2017 | consortiumnews.com
Many working-class Americans voted for Donald Trump believing he would address their needs, not those of rich Republicans. But all pols, it seems, end up conforming to their political group's priorities, as Lawrence Davidson explains.
By Lawrence Davidson
In 1956, William H. Whyte published a book entitled The Organization Man about America's societal changes in the post-World War II economy. Basing his findings on a large number of interviews with CEOs of major American corporations, Whyte concluded that, within the context of modern organizational structure, American "rugged individualism" had given way to a "collectivist ethic." Economic success and individual recognition were now pursued within an institutional structure – that is, by "serving the organization."
Whyte's book was widely read and praised, yet his thesis was not as novel as it seemed. "Rugged individualism," to the extent that it existed, was (and is) the exception for human behavior and not the rule. We have evolved to be group-oriented animals and not lone wolves. This means that the vast majority of us (and certainly not just Americans) live our lives according to established cultural conventions. These operate on many levels – not just national patriotism or the customs of family life.
What Whyte ran across was the sub-culture of the workplace as followed by those who set themselves upon a "career path" within a specific organization. The stereotypical examples are those, to quote Whyte , "who have left home spiritually as well as physically, to take the vows of organization life. [They adopt an ethic that] rationalizes the organization's demand for fealty and gives those who offer it wholeheartedly a sense of dedication."
Today, some private-sector organizations have moved away from the most extreme demands of such conformity, but some other career lines have not, two examples being the military and career party politics.
For insight in this we can turn to the sociologist C. Wright Mills , whose famous book The Power Elite was published the same year as Whyte's The Organization Man. Mills's work narrows the world's ruling bureaucracies to government, military and top economic corporations. T hose who make their careers within these entities, especially the military and the government, are ideologically conditioned to identify their well-being with the specific goals of their chosen organizations. That means they must bind themselves not only to the goals, but also to the ethics of their workplace.
Those who balk are eventually punished and cast out of the organizations. Those who guide these organizations, and essentially decide how rules and ethics will be interpreted and applied, are Mills's "power elite."
How this works out in the military is pretty obvious. There is a long tradition of dedication to duty. At the core of this dedication is a rigid following of orders given by superiors. This tradition is upheld even if it is suspected that one's superior is incompetent.
It may come as a surprise to the reader that party politics as practiced by many of the Western democracies is quite similar. The "power elites" who reside at the top of the so-called greasy pole, holding positions as the head of ruling and contesting parties, are likely to demand the same sort of obedience to orders as any military officer.
The Organization Man or Woman in Politics
Running for and holding office in countries like the United States and Canada often requires one to "take the vows of organization life." Does this support democracy or erode it? Here is one prescient answer: the way we have structured our party politics has given us "an appalling political system which is a step-by-step denial of democracy and a solid foundation for a 'soft' dictatorship."
One of the elegant rooms at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago club. (Photo from maralagoclub.com)
Those are the words of the late Rafe Mair , a Canadian politician, broadcaster, author and a good friend of this writer. Rafe spent years in Canadian politics, particularly in his home province of British Columbia, and his experience led him to the conclusion expressed above. How does this translate into practice?
Rafe explained it this way : "In a parliamentary [or other form of representative] democracy the voter transfers his rights to his member of parliament [congressperson, senator or state legislator] to exercise on his behalf – the trouble is, by running for his political party the [elected person, in turn, is led to] assign your [the voter's] rights to the [party] leader for his exclusive use!"
There is no law that makes the elected official do this. However, the inducements to do so are very powerful.
Leaders of political parties can control their organizations in dictatorial fashion. They have power to reward or punish their party's cohorts in a fashion that can make or break careers. For instance, they control the dispersal of party funds from monies for elections right down to one's office budget; they determine whether a candidate will have to face a primary challenge; they make all committee assignments; they can promote and demote within the party ranks.
As Rafe Mair observed, the possibilities for both reward and punishment are almost endless. In this way elected officials become bound to the diktats of their party's leaders. They cannot normally vote their conscience or reliably represent their constituency unless doing so coincides with the desires of their party's leadership.
... ... ...
Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America's National Interest ; America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood ; and Islamic Fundamentalism . He blogs at www.tothepointanalyses.com .
Stephen J. , October 30, 2017 at 9:19 am
Sam F , October 30, 2017 at 11:42 amI believe we are prisoners of a corrupted "democracy."
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
July 13, 2017
The Prisoners of "Democracy"Screwing the masses was the forte of the political establishment. It did not really matter which political party was in power, or what name it went under, they all had one ruling instinct, tax, tax, and more taxes. These rapacious politicians had an endless appetite for taxes, and also an appetite for giving themselves huge raises, pension plans, expenses, and all kinds of entitlements. In fact one of them famously said, "He was entitled to his entitlements." Public office was a path to more, and more largesse all paid for by the compulsory taxes of the masses that were the prisoners of "democracy."
[more info on this at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/07/the-prisoners-of-democracy.htmlmike k , October 30, 2017 at 3:42 pmYes, our ertswhile democracy has been completely corrupted. Thanks to Lawrence Davidson, William Whyte, C. Wright Mills, and Rafe Mair for this consideration of the systemic corruption of political parties. The diseases of conformity within party organizations are a nearly inherent problem of democracy.
The improper influence which determines the policies conformed to by parties is the central problem, and stems largely from influence of the economic Power Elite, directing the policies to which the Organization Man must be obedient to be chosen. This distortion can be eliminated by Amendments to the Constitution to restrict funding of mass media and elections to limited individual contributions.
Our problem is that we cannot make such reforms because those tools of democracy are already controlled by oligarchy, which never yields power but to superior force. Talk of justice and peace is not in their language of might makes right, and has no effect whatsoever. They yielded to the 1964 Civil Rights Act only because their fear of riots in the streets led them to pretend that MLK et al had been persuasive.
The foreign wars may be stopped by the defeat, isolation, and embargo of the US by foreign powers. But within the US, the full price of democracy must again be paid the People of the US. The oligarchy must be defeated by superior force: only those who deny enforcement to oligarchy and terrify the rich will bring them to yield any power. That is likely to await more severe recessions and inequities caused by the selfish and irresponsible rich.
Sam F , October 30, 2017 at 4:11 pmYou are exactly right Sam F. Unfortunately time is quickly running out for our corrupt "civilization." The time to cultivate and practice wisdom has passed. The sad truth is that our goose is cooked; there will be no cavalry showing up to save us. We are now "eating our karma" and will reap our just deserts. Not because I or anyone say so, but because implacable laws of nature will now play out. Dominant intellectual species occupy a precarious position in planetary evolution, and we are on the verge of a great fall – and all the King's horses and all the King's men will not be able to put our extincting species together again ..
Drew Hunkins , October 30, 2017 at 10:34 amYour reply touches a responsive chord, in that humanity seems to have made so little permanent progress in its million years or so, mostly in its last few hundred years, an insignificant fraction of planetary history. But the history and literature of temporary progress lost is significant as the repository of ideas for future democracies, at those rare moments when they are designed.
Our diseased society is but one tree in the forest of democracies. The US is or will be like the apparently healthy tree that took down my power lines last night, a pretty red oak with brilliant autumn leaves, but sideways now and blocking the road. But like the leaves on that tree, we can see the problem and still hope to be as happy as this year's leaves on healthier trees.
As in what I like to call the universal mind of humanity, individuals may have foresight and thoughts beyond their apparent functions, which survive in that greater mind of their thoughts recorded or just passed along, and in that way their learning is not in vain.
exiled off mainstreet , October 30, 2017 at 11:25 amTrump did nix out the TPP and did desire a rapprochement of sorts with Moscow. He also regularly asserted that he wanted to re-build American manufacturing in the heartland and wanted to rein in Washington's footprint across the globe. Of course Trump ultimately capitulated to the militarist Russophobes. One can only put so much stock in campaign pronouncements, but he did come off as less bellicose than Killary, that was clear to any fair minded observer.
Trump's also been a nightmare as it comes to workers' rights in general, consumer and environmental protections and fair taxation as it relates to regressive vs progressive rates. He was also an Islamophobe when it comes to Iran and fell right in line with Adelson and the other ZIonist psychopaths.
The most welcoming aspect of Trump was his desire to make peace with Russia, this has been completely sabotaged by the deep state militarists. This is the reason the Corkers, Flakes and much of the establishment mass media browbeat and attack him relentlessly. Most of them ignore what he actually should be admonished for opting for nuclear brinkmanship instead.
Bob Van Noy , October 30, 2017 at 10:37 amThis is the best description I have seen about Trump's role.
mike k , October 30, 2017 at 3:47 pmThank you CN and Lawrence Davidson for what I think is a accurate explanation of the failure of our Democracy. I especially like the reference to C. Wright Mills who is a heroic character for me. I think Mr. Mill's book on the Power Elite was prescient, as was his thinking in general. He published a little known book "Listen, Yankee" (1960) that was very insightful about the then current Cuban Revolution. It seems in retrospect that there was plenty of warning at the time for America to wake up to the goals of Big Government and Big Business but it was either successfully repressed or ignored by those who might have made a difference, like Labor. At any rate, C. Wright Mills died too early, because he seemed uniquely suited to make a difference. His writing remains current, I'll add a link.
tina , October 30, 2017 at 10:31 pmI am a big CW Mills fan too. We have had many warnings – now we are going to experience the fate of those who ignore wisdom.
BobH , October 30, 2017 at 12:04 pmHey, college UWM 1984- 1987 Mass Comm, I did not graduate , but we studied Mills, Lewis Mumford, and my favorite, Marshall McLuhan. Also, first time I was introduced to Todd Gitlin and IF Stone. While I did not pursue a life in journalism, I so appreciate all those who did the hard work. I still have all my college required reading books from these people, it is like a set of encyclopedias, only better. And better than the internet. Keep up the work CN , I am not that talented, but what you do is important.
Zachary Smith , October 30, 2017 at 12:17 pmFirst, let me commend Lawrence Davidson for his selection of two of the most insightful writers of the sixties to use as a springboard for his perceptive essay. A third(John Kenneth Galbraith) would complete a trilogy of the brilliant academic social analysis of that time. Galbraith's masterpiece(The Affluent Society) examined the influence of the heavy emphasis corporate advertising had on American culture and concluded that the economic/social structure was disproportionately skewed toward GDP(gross domestic product) at the expense of educational investment. This was in direct contrast with the popular novels and essays of Ayn Rand, the goddess of greed whose spurious philosophy had come to epitomize the mindset that continues to plague the globe with the neoliberal ideals that have been reinvented under many names over time; i.e. laissez faire, trickle down,the Laffer curve, free market economics and monetarism.
mike k , October 30, 2017 at 3:50 pmUsually such claims are themselves no more than campaign hot air. However, in their ignorance, voters may well respond to such hot air, and the result can be a jump from the proverbial frying pan into the fire. U.S. voters seem to have taken just such a leap when they elected Donald Trump president.
Nowhere in this essay are either of the terms "Hillary" or "Clinton" mentioned. U.S. voters had the choice of a known evil on the "D" side of the ballot, or another person well understood to be a shallow, self-centered, rich *****. They were going to end up with an unqualified person either way the voting went. Quite possibly the nod went to Trump because 1) his promises were surely more believable than those of Clinton and 2) Trump wasn't yet the known destroyer of entire nations.
Describing the predicament of the voters as "ignorance" just isn't fair when looking at the overall picture.
Realist , October 31, 2017 at 4:33 amYes. Voters were put in a no win situation. That's why I did not participate in the "show" election.
Stephen J. , October 30, 2017 at 12:23 pmWhat were Obama's reasons for failing to take a stand, once elected, on all the promises he made during his campaigns? He mostly gave away the store to the other side, and insulted his supporters while doing so. Talk about progressives not getting a "win" even after carrying the elections. Two terms earlier, the media called the contest one of two "moderates" between Bush and Gore. If that was "moderation" practiced by Dubya, I need a new dictionary. Most recent elections have been pointless, especially when the Supreme Court doesn't allow a complete recount of the votes. In a field of 13(!) primary candidates last year, the GOP could not provide one quality individual. The Dems cheated to make sure the worst possible of theirs would get the nomination. I see nothing but mental and moral midgets again on the horizon for 2020. I don't expect Trump to seek re-election. He will have had a bellyful should he even survive.
john wilson , October 30, 2017 at 1:00 pmI believe what has happened to all of us is: "The Imposition of a New World Order." This plan has been helped by puppet politicians. Therefore the question must be asked: "Is There An Open Conspiracy to Control the World'?
[More info on this at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2014/12/is-there-open-conspiracy-to-control.htmlStephen J. , October 30, 2017 at 1:44 pmStephen: why do you ask the question to which you already know the answer? Yes, we're all screwed and have been for years. The bankers already control the world and the military make sure its stays that way.
mike k , October 30, 2017 at 3:52 pmVery true john wilson. Questions beget answers and information.
cheers Stephen J.Zachary Smith , October 30, 2017 at 12:48 pmIt's like the Purloined Letter by Poe – the truth of our enslavement is so obvious, that only the deeply brainwashed can fail to see it.
mike k , October 30, 2017 at 3:53 pmThe parts of The Organization Man I found most interesting were the chapters about "Testing The Organization Man". The companies were deliberately selecting for people we currently label Corporate Psychopaths. Whyte suggested memorizing some "attitudes" before taking one of the tests. Among them:
I loved my father and my mother, but my father a little bit more
I like things pretty much the way they are
I never worry much about anything
I don't care for books or music much
I love my wife and children
I don't let them get in the way of company workYou can substitute any number of things that you won't allow to get in the way of company work .
Ecology. Laws. Regulations. Integrity. Religion.
"Screw planet Earth. Exxon comes first!" Or "screw Jesus and the horse he rode in on. We need to cut taxes and balance the budget. People are poor because they're too lazy to get a job."
john wilson , October 30, 2017 at 12:55 pmGood points. Brainwashing in action revealed.
mike k , October 30, 2017 at 3:55 pmDemocracy is another word for consensual slavery. In a communist system or a dictatorship etc you are told you are a slave because you have no voice or choice. In a democracy you do have a choice and its between one salve master and another. If you vote Democrat you are just as much a slave to the system as you are if you vote Republican. The possibility of a third choice which might just free you from your chains, is a fantasy and only there as window dressing to give democracy some credibility. The term for this dilemma is called being TOTALLY SCREWED!!
exiled off mainstreet , October 31, 2017 at 11:01 amAmen John. You got it right brother.
This is an excellent summary of the basis in mentality of what is factually a 21st century version of a fascist regime. Even though two political parties and the shell forms of republican government may exist, the reality is that the parties are factions and the way things operate is via conformity and loyalty to an authoritarian power structure.
|
|
|
Nov 01, 2017 | www.strategic-culture.org
The progressive former Democratic US Senator Ted Kaufman wrote at Forbes , on 22 July 2014
Another year has passed with no one from a Wall Street bank going to jail for the criminal behavior everyone knows helped cause the financial crisis. Fines against Wall Street banks are reaching $100 billion, but all will be paid by stockholders. Bank CEOs and managers pay no fines and face no prison.
There has been no reform -- zilch, nada -- of the credit-rating agencies. They are right back rating securities from issuers who pay them for their ratings.
If you still can't trust the credit-rating on a bond, and if Wall Street's bigs still stand immune from the law even after the 2008 crash they had played a huge role to cause, then in what way can the US Government itself be called a 'democracy'?
Kaufman tries to get the American public interested in overcoming the US Government's profound top-level corruption, but few US politicians join with him on that, because only few American voters understand that a corrupt government (especially one that's corrupt at the very top) cannot even possibly be a democratic government.
However, America's aristocracy are even more corrupt than Wall Street itself is, and they control Wall Street, behind the scenes. And their 'news'media are under strict control to portray America as being still a democratic country that somehow lives up to its anti-aristocratic and anti-imperialistic Founders' intentions and Constitution. Maybe all that remains of those Founders' intentions today is that Britain's aristocracy no longer rules America -- but America's aristocracy now does, instead. And, this isn't much, if any, of an improvement.
Although the US aristocracy -- America's billionaires and centi-millionaires -- are the principals, and Wall Street are only their financial representatives (rather t than the aristocracy itself), Wall Street was blamed by liberals for the 2008 economic crash; and, of course, Wall Street did do lots of dirty work deceiving outside investors and many home buyers and others in order to extract from the public (including those much smaller investors) the hundreds of billions of dollars that the US aristocracy and its big-finance agents drew in pay and bonuses and other ways, from these economic extractions. But the aristocrats themselves emerged unscathed, even in their reputations, and were mainly financially enriched by the scams, which had been set-up by Wall Street in order to enrich the investment-insiders (the aristocrats themselves) at the expense of investment-outsiders, and of the public-at-large. Conservatives blamed the Government for the crash (as if the Government didn't represent only the aristocracy , but instead represented the American public). However, liberals blamed Wall Street (the financial agents of America's aristocracy). And, nobody blamed the aristocracy itself.
America's entire political system, the liberal and the conservative politicians and press, thus hid, from the public, the role that the principals, the aristocrats themselves, had played, demanding these crimes from and by their agents. In other words: the top people who had caused the 2008 crash, didn't only -- and all of them did -- avoid prison entirely, but the worst that some of them suffered, was only that the financial firms that some of them had headed, became hit by wrist-slap fines, and that some of their lower-level employees who had actually executed or carried out the scams are being prosecuted and might someday be fined or even sent to prison . But neither the aristocrats nor their financial agents who run Wall Street were punished, either by the law, nor by their personal reputations. They still are treated in their 'news'media as sages and 'philanthropists', instead of as the nation's most-successful organized gangsters.
US President Barack Obama himself protected the top Wall Street people, but, because he was a liberal -- i.e., a conservative who is hypocritical enough to damn conservatism in public; or, in other words, a conservative who misrepresents what he is -- he publicly condemned, in vague terms, "the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis" , even while he had his Administration prosecute none of them , and even while he assured Wall Street's top people privately "I'm protecting you." Obama had told the Wall Street bigs, near the start of his regime, on 27 March 2009, in private, inside the White House: "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks. I'm not out there to go after you. I'm protecting you. I'm going to shield you." And that's what he did. To him, the public were just "pitchforks," like the KKK bigots who had chased Blacks with pitchforks and lynched them during the early 20th Century were. The heads of Wall Street firms that were being bailed-out by US taxpayers were persecuted victims of the public, in that US President's eyes. To them, the public are merely a mob.
And, on 20 September 2016, Dave Johnson of the Campaign for America's Future, headlined "Banks Used Low Wages, Job Insecurity To Force Employees To Commit Fraud" ; so, there was no way that the employees could keep their jobs except to do the crimes that they were being virtually forced by their bosses to do. The criminality was actually at the very top -- even above where Obama had promised "I'm protecting you," which was directed instead only to the Wall Street bigs, and not to the billionaires they served. And even those people mainly weren't billionaires at all; they were mainly just top financial agents for the billionaires, grasping to join the aristocracy. Obama, like they, represented the billionaires, though as a politician; and, so, he talked publicly against some of these agents, basically against Republican ones, in order to keep the votes of Democrats -- he just kept suckering the liberals, the Democratic Party of the US aristocracy's voters.
The aristocracy's 'news'media present the storyline that the billionaires and centi-millionaires were merely among the many victims of the scams that had produced the 2008 crash; but there is a problem with that storyline: the Government bailed-out those giant investors, because those were overwhelmingly the investors in "Strategically Important Financial Institutions" -- not in medium and small-sized ones, not in merely community banks, but in the giant banks and insurers.
These mega-investors were the controlling interests in America's international corporations. They consequently controlled US Government politics and political fundraising.
Cheated investors, and illegally foreclosed home-owners, were nominally protected in the laws, but even the federal Government's own studies of actual results showed that almost all of these people, the real direct victims, were simply being ignored -- even while Wall Street and its mega-investors got bailed-out by taxpayers .
The entire system, both private and public, was thus controlled by the aristocracy; and, so, even now a decade after the crash, the responsible aristocrats remain at the very top, both financially and in terms of prestige, and the statutes-of-limitations on possible prosecutions of decisions they had made which had actually produced the crash, have expired, so that these individuals can't be prosecuted, not even if an honest person were elected to the White House and were to become supported by an honest Congress. "Equal Justice Under Law" -- this certainly isn't that, nor anything close to it. In fact, America has the world's highest percentage of its population in prison of any country, but aristocrats never end up there unless the aristocrat is a drug-kingpin, and even those are rarely prosecuted, even though their underlings are. And, how can such a nation as this, be called a "democracy"? But it's not only a dictatorship ; it is an imperial one: Obama himself said many times, such as on 28 May 2014 , "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation," which means that every other nation was "dispensable" to him; and, any foreign aristocracy -- and any democracy (if such any longer exists) -- will therefore be either a vassal-nation, or else "the enemy," and thus be destroyed, at the sole discretion of America's (and its allied) aristocracies.
For example, to George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein was "the enemy" and Iraq was "dispensable" (to use Obama's term); and, to Obama, Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad, and Viktor Yanukovych, were "enemies," and those nations also were "dispensable." During earlier eras, Mohammed Mosaddegh, and Jacobo Arbenz, and Salvador Allende, were "enemies," whose governments were, in their own times, "dispensable," and so the US aristocracy replaced them by US-Government-selected tyrants. (Assad, however, was able to stay in power, not only because he had the support of the majority of Syrians, but because Russia decided to protect Syria's national sovereignty -- to make its firm stand, there, not allow that ally, too, to fall by means of an American invasion, as Ukraine had fallen by means of an American coup in 2014.) Trump seems to think that Iran and North Korea are especially "dispensable" (again, using Obama's term).
Trump came to power promising opposition against the US aristocracy; but, instead, he's on the attack against Obama's least-bad policies, while trying to out-do Obama's worst policies (such as by his cancelling the Iran deal, and by his trying to destroy Obamacare and the Paris Climate Agreement). If Obama turned out to be a Democratic George W. Bush, then perhaps Trump will turn out to be a Republican Barack Obama, and this will be the 'bipartisanship' that US voters say they want. But the polls don't show that America's electorate actually want the type of 'bipartisanship' that the US aristocracy are delivering, via the nonstop neoconservatism of Bush, and then of Obama, and then (perhaps too) of Trump. The aristocracy are neoconservative (or "imperialistic," to employ the Continental term for it); and, though the public don't even know what that means, bipartisan neoconservatism always bring on yet more invasions and wars, which lower the welfare of the public, even while the welfare of the aristocrats goes up from it. The public just don't know this.
A good example, recently, of how the US aristocracy deceive the US public, to accept such a barbaric Government (a neoconservative regime) is the uniform neoconservatism of both the Democratic and the Republican Parties, and of their respective 'news'media, this uniform neoconservatism that's being reflected by the almost simultaneous publication in the Establishment's own Foreign Affairs (from the Council on Foreign Relations), and from the British Guardian that's now controlled by George Soros and US and-affiliated international corporations, and also from the US military-industrial complex's bipartisan neoconservative propaganda-organ The Atlantic , and also from the neoconservative Vox online 'news'-site . In all of these 'news'media, almost on the very same day, are being published articles by, and interviews of, Ms. Emma Sky, a thoroughly undistinguished and undistinguishable neoconservative "intellectual" (CFR, Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Officer of the British Empire, etc.), who, with no demonstrated outstanding abilities, but only with the hypocrisy and callousness that aristocrats tend to seek out in those whom they select to execute their dirty-work, graduated from an elite college and then (without needing to obtain any higher academic or other degree, and with no record of personal achievement at anything) went virtually straight into advising governments and serving as the US invading and occupying General David Petraeus 's (the US torture-meister 's) right-hand political advisor in Iraq, with the title of "Governorate Co-ordinator of Kirkuk for the Coalition Provisional Authority, 2003-2004" , and, then, ultimately, as "advisor to the Commanding General of US Forces in Iraq from 2007-2010," before bec oming widely published in the US empire's various 'news'media, with not only these hypocritical articles from her that were linked-to at those four publications, but also books, all of them being standard discreet neoconservative fare, 'compassionately' gung-ho on the US empire, and especially rabid against Iran, because Iranians in 1953 had voted for Mohammed Mosaddegh as Prime Minister, who promptly passed a land-reform act, and nationalized the UK aristocracy's Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, after which the US CIA engineered a coup overthrowing him, grabbing Iran's oil, and establishing in Iran the Pahlevi Shah's brutal dictatorship with torture-chambers, which dictatorship Ms. Sky evidently wants restored in some form to Iran, perhaps as punishment to the Iranian people, for having stood up against the American invaders and occupiers, in 1953. Such people are PR agents, not really journalists or historians -- of anything. But, apparently, readers find their misrepresentations to be tolerable; so, at least her propaganda isn't amateurish. If only readers would just ask themselves the type of question that the victims of these invasions might likely ask, then the true character of such writers would become horrendously and immediately clear: "What right do you have to be invading and occupying our land?"
No one can understand the reality on the basis of the West's honored 'historians' and 'journalists', because they're propagandists for the imperial system, which used to be British but now is American. The neoconservative New York Times Sunday Book Review section published, on 12 July 2015, a review from the neoconservative Christopher Dickey, the Foreign Editor of the neoconservative The Daily Beast 'news'-site, of the neoconservative Emma Sky's book The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq . He presented Iran as being America's enemy-in-chief, and presented especially "Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran's Quds Force, the section of the Revolutionary Guards responsible for covert and overt operations in Lebanon, Syria and, above all, Iraq" as being America's enemy; and he wrote that:
the betrayal of the Sunnis by the Baghdad government the Americans left behind has been crucial to recruiting by the self-proclaimed caliphate. Many of those who had helped crush Al Qaeda in Iraq eight years ago have concluded that no one except ISIS will protect them from Suleimani's fighters and flunkies.
To counter Iran in Iraq and prevent the alienation that created ISIS would have required a better ambassador than Hill and a more attentive State Department than the one run by Hillary Clinton. It would have required, perhaps, a thousand Emma Skys. But there was only one of those. And it would have meant many more years of enormous involvement on the ground, but the American people had no taste for that.
... ... ...
|
|
|
Oct 24, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Hillary's former IT consultant Paul Combetta who admitted to deleting Hillary's emails despite the existence of a Congressional subpoena, it seems as though James Comey has just had his very own "oh shit" moment.After months of inexplicable delays, the chairman of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), announced moments ago a joint investigation into how the Justice Department handled last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server.
Among other things, Goodlatte and Gowdy said that the FBI must answer for why it chose to provide public updates in the Clinton investigation but not in the Trump investigation and why the FBI decided to " appropriate full decision making in respect to charging or not charging Secretary Clinton," a power typically left to the DOJ.
"Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status. The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic and our fellow citizens must have confidence in its objectivity, independence, and evenhandedness. The law is the most equalizing force in this country. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight.
"Decisions made by the Department of Justice in 2016 have led to a host of outstanding questions that must be answered. These include, but are not limited to:
- FBI's decision to publicly announce the investigation into Secretary Clinton's handling of classified information but not to publicly announce the investigation into campaign associates of then-candidate Donald Trump;
- FBI's decision to notify Congress by formal letter of the status of the investigation both in October and November of 2016;
- FBI's decision to appropriate full decision making in respect to charging or not charging Secretary Clinton to the FBI rather than the DOJ;
- FBI's timeline in respect to charging decisions.
'The Committees will review these decisions and others to better understand the reasoning behind how certain conclusions were drawn. Congress has a constitutional duty to preserve the integrity of our justice system by ensuring transparency and accountability of actions taken."
???? #BREAKING : @RepGoodlatte & @TGowdySC to investigate #DOJ decisions made in 2016 to ensure transparency and accountability at the agency. pic.twitter.com/EOm4pnHbTG
-- House Judiciary ? (@HouseJudiciary) October 24, 2017
Of course, this comes just one day after Comey revealed his secret Twitter account which led the internet to wildly speculate that he may be running for a political office...which, these days, being under investigation by multiple Congressional committees might just mean he has a good shot.
Finally, we leave you with one artist's depiction of how the Comey 'investigation' of Hillary's email scandal played out...
AlaricBalth -> Creepy_Azz_Crackaah , Oct 24, 2017 1:03 PM
Ghost of PartysOver -> AlaricBalth , Oct 24, 2017 1:10 PM"Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status. The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic..."
Spewed coffee after reading this quote.
nope-1004 -> Ghost of PartysOver , Oct 24, 2017 1:12 PMOh goody, Trey Gowdy doing another investigation. Isn't he 0 for many on his investigations. 0 as in zero, nada, nill, squat, zippo. He is another political empty suit with a bad haircut.
macholatte -> nope-1004 , Oct 24, 2017 1:17 PMLAMP POST!
Live stream for all to witness.
Thought Processor -> Chupacabra-322 , Oct 24, 2017 2:11 PMIt's nice publicity to hear that the Congress is "investigating". It's NOT nice to know that the DOJ is doing nothing. Probably 50 top level people at the FBI need to be fired as well as another 50 at DOJ to get the ball rolling toward a Grand Jury. Until then, it's all eyewash and BULLSHIT!
Ikiru -> Creepy_Azz_Crackaah , Oct 24, 2017 2:02 PMWell said. The Clinton network leads to the real money in this game. Any real investigation would expose many of the primary players. It would also expose the network for what it is, that being a mechanism to scam both the American people and the people of the world.
Perhaps a real investigation will now only be done from outside the system (as the U.S. political system seems utterly incapable of investigating or policing itself). Though in time all information will surface, as good players leak the info of the bad players into the open. Which of course is why the corrupt players go after the leakers, as it is one key way they can be taken down. Also remember that they need the good players in any organization to be used as cover (as those not in the know can be used to work on legit projects). Once the good players catch on to the ruse and corruption it is, beyond a certain tipping point, all over, as the leaked information goes from drop to flood. There will simply be no way to deny it.
jimmy c korn -> Richard Chesler , Oct 24, 2017 1:28 PMYou're probably right, but there's a chance this whole thing could go sidewise on Hillary in a hurry, Weinstein-style. If the criminal stench surrounding her gets strong enough, the rats will begin to jump ship. People will stop taking orders and doing her dirty work. She's wounded right now, if there was ever a time to finish her, it would be now. Where the fuck is the big-talking Jeff Sessions? I think they got to him--he even LOOKS scared shitless.
chunga -> Max Cynical , Oct 24, 2017 1:00 PMa blind-folded woman with a hand in their pockets.
shovelhead -> DirtySanchez , Oct 24, 2017 12:57 PMIt's just not possible to have any respect for these politician people.
We already know Honest Hill'rey's other IT guy (Bryan Pagliano) ignored subpoenas from congress...twice. Remember Chaffetz "subpoenas are not suggestions"? Yeah, well they are. Chaffetz turned around and sent a letter about this to "attorney general" jeff sessions and he's done exactly shit about about it. (Look it up, that's a true story)
Then we've got president maverick outsider simply ignoring Julian Assange and Wikileaks while he squeals daily about fake news. Wikileaks has exposed more fraud than Congress ever has.
DirtySanchez -> shovelhead , Oct 24, 2017 1:05 PMFirst we need to get a US Attorney. Our last one seems to have gone AWOL.
waterwitch -> DirtySanchez , Oct 24, 2017 1:18 PMSessions is the Attorney General. Give the man some credit. He recused himself from the Russia/Trump collusion, and this decision may very well save the republic.
If Sessions was actively involved, half the nation would never accept the findings, no matter the outcome. With Sessions voluntarily sidelined, the truth will eventually expose the criminal conspirators; all the way to the top.
Wikileaks and Assange have documented proof of criminal behavior from Obama, Lynch, Holder, Hillary, W. Bush, and more. This will be the biggest scandal to hit the world stage. Ever.
IronForge , Oct 24, 2017 12:36 PMBigger than the Awan Spy ring in Congress?
To Hell In A Ha... , Oct 24, 2017 12:40 PMAbout Fracking Time. Toss that Evidence Eraser into Black Sites hot during the Summer and Cold during the Winter Months.
E.F. Mutton , Oct 24, 2017 12:37 PMlol Another classic case of "the Boy that cried wolf" for the Trumpettes to believe justice is coming to the Clintons. The House Judiciary and Oversight committees, will turn up nothing, apart from some procedural mistakes. A complete waste of time and tax payer money. Only the Goldfish will be happy over another charade. Killary is immune from normal laws.
ToSoft4Truth , Oct 24, 2017 12:38 PMPotemkin Justice. Not a damn thing will come of it unless they find that one of Hillary's aides parked in a handicapped spot.
Akzed -> ToSoft4Truth , Oct 24, 2017 12:39 PMThe TV said Comey will be running for president in 2020.
ToSoft4Truth -> Akzed , Oct 24, 2017 12:51 PMWell then it must be true.
E.F. Mutton -> Gerry Fletcher , Oct 24, 2017 12:57 PMThe TV showed me Trump saying, "She's been through enough" and "They're good people" when referring to Hillary and Bill Clinton. Holograms?
mc888 -> BigWillyStyle887 , Oct 24, 2017 1:24 PMThe Blind Justice Lady is real, she just has a .45 at the back of her head held by Hillary. And don't even ask where Bill's finger is
Dead Indiana Sky , Oct 24, 2017 12:43 PMCongress can't do shit without DOJ and FBI, which are both compromised and corrupt to the core.
That should have been Sessions' first order of business.
He can still get it rolling by firing Rosenstein and replacing him with someone that will do the job.They can strike down the Comey immunity deals and arrest people for violating Congressional subpeona.
They can also assemble a Grand Jury to indict Rosenstein and Mueller for the Russian collusion conspiracy to commit Espionage and Sabotage of our National Security resources. Half of Mueller's staff will then be indicted, along with Clinton, Obama, Lynch, Holder, and Comey.
Replacement of Rosenstein is the crucial first step.
Stopped reading at "they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status."
|
|
|
Oct 16, 2017 | discussion.theguardian.com
FREDBUDTZ -> DocAdam , 15 Oct 2017 08:49
Yes, but the fundamental issue has always been, how do you chose the oligarch and how do you get rid of one who is clearly badly failing or abusing power?DirDigIns -> jessthecrip , 15 Oct 2017 08:46Democracy is a compromise, but it is one that virtually no one argues against. At least leaders are obliged to leave periodically. Churchill had it right when called democracy the worst form of government except for all the others.
Oligarchy clearly serves some developing countries well, always assuming the oligarchs are people dedicated to doing their best for the country as a whole. And they do do that sometimes.
Yet, we have supported nonsense like killing a Gadaffi, who gave his people good government and peace, and pitching Libya into chaos.
All in the dishonest name of democracy from our dishonest "democratic" politicians.
Look at Israel, always slapping itself on the back as the Mideast's "only democracy," while it consorts happily with kings and tyrants in its neighborhood and continues to hold millions of people in occupation against their will.
zippy200 , 15 Oct 2017 08:44What's your definition then?
Representative democracy. Not democracy by the crowd. Not eternal referenda. Not local "community" groups holding a lot of power. This is simply the tyranny of small groups of ideological left and ring wing extremists who will sit for 4 hours on a wet Tuesday evening in some hall somewhere to get their way, knowing that most normal people have better things to do with their lives.
It is the way of socialist workers and the like at University with their endless union meetings and motions, hoping to sneak through some crap the "represents" the student body of thousands on the basis of less than 100 votes. When challenged as to legitimacy the response is always "no one is prevented from getting involved".
That I suspect is your type of democracy, as it certainly is Corbyn's.
So, no thanks, I prefer representative democracy where I leave governance to a representative who I can vote for or against. I don't want to ever be involved in politics and hence I don't want decision left to groups of "community activists" of which i suspect you'd be quite happy to be part of.
Marxism 101. Trouble is liberals on the one hand bang on about proletariat solidarity, yet on the other, peddle identity politics and turn a blind eye at increasingly fragmented communities. And when the modern oligarchs come out and play they scratch their heads and blame "the stupid".DirDigIns -> ID059068 , 15 Oct 2017 08:40Your comment is the equivalent of the reply one normally gets from lefties btl if you say you don't want to be paying more tax i.e. "go to Somalia".W.a. Thomaston , 15 Oct 2017 08:37The nuance that there may be something between high tax and low tax is lost on them.
In your case, the idea that having what Beveridge proposed originally as a "safety net" of state provision rather than a lifestyle choice of full coverage of everything is lost on you, hence you suggest the choice is a binary everything or nothing.
Yours is the ignorance of the socialist and yes, a lack of personal freedom in your thinking that I'd reject every time.
The first rule of oligarchic fight club: You do not talk about oligarchic fight club! Or apparently Republics? From the little golden book of how to overthrow oligarchs by overthrown oligarchs (*Minion Free Edition)Amanzim -> JosephCamilleri , 15 Oct 2017 08:37India has democracy, but it is suppressing Kashmiris who want to be independent. In the last decade more than 30000 people have been killed by Indian army. Why? Because they want freedom.Koen Van Vugt -> aeris2001x2 , 15 Oct 2017 08:36Trump is no Caesar but a Cataline. Just a sad sideshow in the slow implosion of Pax Americana.awilson5280 -> amwink , 15 Oct 2017 08:36Sparta used slave labor for its agricultural needs, freeing its people to train and form the backbone of its militaristic society.FREDBUDTZ , 15 Oct 2017 08:36I agree that the best system for managing human affairs remains an open question. Locke and Hobbes are not done debating, and Churchill's attribution that democracy is the worst system of governance aside from everything else we've tried bears consideration as well. (If you want to discard democracy, it only seems fair that you present a viable, well thought-out replacement.)
timiengels , 15 Oct 2017 08:34"How the oligarchy wins..." "... two recent books can teach us about defending democracy from oligarchs'I'm sorry, but this is just not possible, at least not without something close to a revolution. In every Western country we like to call a democracy, the truth is that they have only an elaborate stage set of democracy. I prefer the term "plutocrat" to "oligarch," but whatever word you choose to use, the facts of society are the same.
Power, no matter how it is granted, is power. And money is power, serious power. We can see this in a thousand aspects of our societies from the long-term success of someone like Harvey Weinstein in business to the many powerful lobbies which determine the direction of national policy.
In the United States, the last national election was between a multi-billionaire and the best financed candidate in history, a woman who burnt through somewhere between $1.2 billion and $1.8 billion to lose.
It has been studied, and the fact is that members of the American Senate spend about two-thirds of their time raising money. The American House of Representatives actually has call rooms were Representatives spend time every week raising money. And when I say "raising money" I don't mean the contributions which come from the likes of you or me. I mean big money from big sources of money, the only ones who really count.
Look at a phenomenon like Macron in France. He came from nowhere and seems to have very limited talents, yet the plutocratic interests who backed him managed to grab the French Presidency. Former French President Sarkozy, a man who proved mostly ineffective, took huge sums from General Gaddafi to the richest woman in France, a woman rumored to not have been even fully competent at the time.
Not only are the contributors of big money - both individuals and lobby groups - at the center of Western politics, but our very institutions are constructed to accommodate leadership which does not reflect the views of a majority. This is done in many structural ways from district gerrymandering to the nature of the "first past the post" ballots we use.
Look at Britain's most utterly incompetent modern politician, David Cameron, the man who single-handedly created the entire Brexit mess plus engaged in a terrible lot of dishonest and brutal behavior in the Middle East. He was never popular and ruled with something over 35% of the vote. Britain's institutions accommodated that.
In Canada, Stephen Harper, the man most Canadians likely regard as the shabbiest ever to rule the country, managed to do terrible things with about 39% of the vote.
And everywhere, people don't vote for war, interests do, rich interests.
We desperately need a revolution.....and to hang these oligarchs from the nearest yardarm or lamppost. Where is our Robspierre?Boghaunter -> Sailor25 , 15 Oct 2017 08:34Economist Ha Joon Chang wrote about the meteoric economic rise of South Korea. He talked about how governmental policy chose areas to heavily subsidize (like educating engineers) to stimulate growth. They were successful but Chang also talks about the "losers" left behind.choowy , 15 Oct 2017 08:33If we only look at economics and if we assume economic growth is always a positive with no downside (slums, environmental degradation, authoritarian oppression, rulers passing laws to protect their privilege, etc.), than your premise looks sound.
'...displays of wealth that might spark *envy'. Interesting article otherwiseClaudiaRain01 -> Boghaunter , 15 Oct 2017 08:33I think being dire is an important key. Maybe it is dire in Britain for many people now. It isn't here, in Australia, just yet although people are going backwards.Fibonaccisequins , 15 Oct 2017 08:32The other issue is a lack of political literacy. You have to convince people they need a revolution. Many people are poor because understanding things like politics and society is not their strong point.
You may have a large group of people who are prime to vote for socialism but you'd have to explain to them why and convince them not just take it as a given they will. You may have an overwhelming amount of people who would benefit from socialism and you could win the revolution then they'd do something dumb like vote for Trump or Pauline Hanson. It is not a given that having victorious numbers of struggling people means socialism will be voted for.
Something is out of balance in Washington. Corporations now spend about $2.6 billion a year on reported lobbying expenditures -- more than the $2 billion we spend to fund the House ($1.18 billion) and Senate ($860 million). It's a gap that has been widening since corporate lobbying began to regularly exceed the combined House-Senate budget in the early 2000s.TheResult , 15 Oct 2017 08:29Today, the biggest companies have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them, allowing them to be everywhere, all the time. For every dollar spent on lobbying by labor unions and public-interest groups together, large corporations and their associations now spend $34. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business.
Above analysis needs to be translated into common everyday analogies. Such as Governments are gangs selling crack and guns and form co-ops with other gangs to stop killing each other. Leaders are psychopaths who kill anyone who calls them a bitch.barciad -> TheWindsOfWinter93 , 15 Oct 2017 08:29You say that, but wind the clock back 80 years and they were saying the same things about tanks and airplanes. Modern day, 'urbanised feudalism' with the petrol engine instead of horses. Otherwise known as Fascism. Didn't quite work out did it...Elgrecoandros -> jessthecrip , 15 Oct 2017 08:29I don't think Jeremy Corbyn should be punished for having different political opinions to me, nor do I want Jacob Rees-Mogg punished because his opinions differ from mine, whereas you were calling for the latter to be punished for his political views.Boghaunter -> ClaudiaRain01 , 15 Oct 2017 08:27For most people the options for dealing with those of a different political opinion are not either 1) imprisonment or 2) confiscation of property/forced labour. Those are extremist positions.
I find truth in your words. I used to understand the fear of "mob rule", which democracy seemed vulnerable to. Governing is complicated and, ideally, is broad-minded as laws and policies affect a diverse spectrum of people and situations. The average person, in my experience, is not inclined to spend the time necessary to understand good laws/policy in a complex society. The one safety check on mob rule is that most people don't become politically active until their situation is relatively dire.ClaudiaRain01 -> imperium3 , 15 Oct 2017 08:25Revolutions usually occur because of economic difficulties. As long as life is relatively stable/acceptable, most people will not challenge the status quo. Their voting (if they vote at all) is reflexive/rote.
Most of the time, democracies are fundamentally guided by people who have a deeper interest in governance. As long as the engaged populace takes reasonable account of society as a whole, there will be no upheavals. When the scales tip too far we get an "acting out" that is unrestrained and chaotic and understandable.
This is simplistic and not meant to be absolute. Just an observation.
People will only rise up if you take away the minimum level of life for too many people. Many people are happy with the minimum. The left are deluded in they think they can gather together a lot of political protests for a life above the minimum. Many people are happy if they are simply getting by. You only have a problem when too many people are not getting by.ClaudiaRain01 -> JosephCamilleri , 15 Oct 2017 08:22In Australia plenty of people choose to live off the minimum wage. Many choose not to work full time. The state picks up after them with health care and income top ups. They are highly unlikely to make an effort to overthrow the oligarchy or the plutocracy. Why bother when you can work 30 hours a week at an easy job and get along just fine in life.Fibonaccisequins , 15 Oct 2017 08:20I don't like an oligarchy but I'm just not sure where this pushback will come from. Many people are destined to be the bottom of whatever system is in place.
In the UK we have circa 1200 quangos controlling our lives, and look how the tories have recently abused select committee appointments. In the USA they have organisations such as the council on foreign relations which wields huge power across all areas of policy, combined with the intricacies of all the mechanisms it prevents democracy from taking shape. We're delivered the illusion of democracy but look how quickly trump has been owned and is now going OTT in doing the bidding of the elites.amwink , 15 Oct 2017 08:19By "Greece" I suspect this article means "Athens". Sparta had a different system and was not subjected to these issues. In fact, that system was superior in many ways, but apparently all has to be judged according to the rule that democracy would be the best.MattSpanner , 15 Oct 2017 08:16Classical Greece's economy ran on slave labour. Something Tories hanker after with austerity, zero-hours contracts and non-existent job security.aeris2001x2 , 15 Oct 2017 08:16Or one from the elite arises and takes power and skips democracy and devolves the US straight to tyranny, as also forewarned by the classics. Its a good job Trump never got in last year...oh fuckJosephCamilleri -> TheWindsOfWinter93 , 15 Oct 2017 08:15People that are poor and oppressed CAN'T complain. That is the whole point of living in a dictatorship. Should you be interested in the truth of what is happening in that empire, just navigate different news sites.SimonGKelly -> Churchman72 , 15 Oct 2017 08:12Authorities in Xinjiang Extend Uyghur Persecution to Region's Ethnic Kyrgyz (RFA)
Justice for Some, Notoriety for Others: Public Law Enforcement in China (DH)
Xinjiang Seethes Under Chinese Crackdown (NYT)
Clashes as Ethnic Evenk Herders Protest China's Grazing Ban in Inner Mongolia (RFA)
Chinese Dissident 'Utterly Destroyed' in Detention (FB)
China executed 2,400 people in 2013: report (AJ)
Chinese Dissident Calls on China to Stop Persecuting His Family (VOA)China is indeed a good example.Stateless1 , 15 Oct 2017 08:12What about the GOP and the Democratic parties as competing oligopolies? Last November, a decent sized percentage of the American electorate appears to have voted for a 'politician' who they perceived to be the outsider. Presumably, their view was that there was little to differentiate between traditional republicans and democrats.
Gerrymandering helps get the result you want.shtove -> Slo27 , 15 Oct 2017 08:09
https://img.washingtonpost.com/pbox.php?url=http://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/05/crimes-against-geography.png&w=1484&op=resize&opt=1&filter=antialias&t=20170517Once you use the concept of class you out yourself as the oligarch's willing executioner. There's no proof that democracy can't adapt and survive, yet a catastrophist will insist it's so.imperium3 -> ClaudiaRain01 , 15 Oct 2017 08:08ConBrio , 15 Oct 2017 08:07They aspire to be like the top? No, they don't. No revolution is coming because plenty on the bottom are fine if they are just getting along in life. Aspiring to be like the top would involve too much hard work for many.
If you push the bottom too far you just end up with a correction at the next election, that's it.
And yet the Bourbons do not still rule France, neither the Romanovs nor the Bolsheviks rule Russia, and the once-mighty Habsburgs are a distant memory.
Of course, the reason our democracies are not supposed to go the same way is that the populace can change things themselves through elections rather than having to rise up and overthrow the whole system. But what happens when the electoral system fails? What happens if, no matter how the electorate votes, the political class thumbs its nose at them and carries on as usual?
To take the most obvious example of democratic failure - the US - where will the American electorate go after Trump? Can we seriously expect the same people who voted for him, and undoubtedly did not get what they wanted, to flock to support some business-as-usual Democrat or oily Republican?
Churchman72 -> SimonGKelly , 15 Oct 2017 08:01Winters declares that America is already a civil oligarchy. To use the language of recent political campaigns, our oligarchs try to rig the system to defend their wealth. They focus on lowering taxes and on reducing regulations that protect workers and citizens from corporate wrongdoing.
If there's ever been a country not ruled by oligarchy I'd like to see it.
The United States vacillates between a sly oligarchy of the Left who use the dole as its virtue signaling to garner votes, and the Right whose use of government for self aggrandizement is more obvious.
Indeed, any notion that the genetic impulse to self aggrandizement will change is spurious.
As such, the only and imperfect defense, is to limit government power thus reducing the oligarchs' potential for self dealing and, more importantly, requiring frequent elections which although in the long run don't eliminate the problem, tend to engender compromise and periodic shifts in power from one faction to another.
James Madison's article No. 10 of The Federalist elucidates the principles. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.aspof
I think today's China is a good example of what a modern oligarchy looks like- a Party structure that provides privilege through membership, but no clearly definable ideology other than consolidating power and projecting it. It is ironic that a supposedly socialist country devotes so much energy into preventing labour from organising into unions and has such massive inequality.JosephCamilleri -> TheWindsOfWinter93 , 15 Oct 2017 07:58Russia on the other hand is a sham democracy where the structure of democracy is in place, but thoroughly eviscerated so that it exists only to confer legitimacy on the oligarchy (with Putin and his inner circle at the core). If Putin was to die suddenly (or become incapacitated) there may be a real world example of oligarchical collapse as rival factions try to occupy the vacant centre of power. It could very well create a space in which genuine grassroots democracy could grow, but equally it could tear the country apart.
Neither country has a history of democracy, and the rule of law isn't anywhere near as strong as in liberal western democracies, and is easily subverted. Russia particularly has a culture of political coups, as the country relies on unequal power distribution to function, making separatist movements a very real threat.
They are complaining, but you can't hear them, because they are oppressed and colonized and disenfranchised. In the country, in inner Mongolia, in Turkestan, and in Tibet, and when they want to claim their rights and their family gets persecuted for a few generations. And if anyone talks about it, the Communist party threatens to not trade with you.imperium3 -> TheWindsOfWinter93 , 15 Oct 2017 07:58Precisely. In a world where a handful of people could control a whole army, who's to stop that handful from assuming total control over the rest of us?EquilibriaJones -> Sailor25 , 15 Oct 2017 07:57I'm not even sure there's much that can be done to stop it, since the nations that refuse to embrace new military technology tend to get defeated by other nations that have no such qualms.
Successful until people start missing 3 meals. Then the pitchforks come out.jessthecrip -> Elgrecoandros , 15 Oct 2017 07:57I was responding to a poster who called for imprisonment for those concerned. Do you think imprisonment would be more democratic?DocAdam , 15 Oct 2017 07:55Thank you for a wonderful article. Does the assumption "Oligarchy bad- Democracy good" really stand up to scrutiny in all cases? Democracy has had its failures, and some benign dictators have done very well for their people.ID059068 -> DirDigIns , 15 Oct 2017 07:54I sincerely wish you to have the same freedom to 'live freely and succeed or fail due to their own personal talents' as my grandparents had in the 20s and 30s.JosephCamilleri -> ClaudiaRain01 , 15 Oct 2017 07:54That is, the freedom to be unemployed without help for years (but with the freedom to grow what food they could in the back yard of a slum in an industrial city). The freedom to see some of their children die because there was no treatment if you were diabetic and poor. The freedom to send your 13 year old son to work with a broken foot (stamped on by one of the cart-horses he tended) because he was the only earner. The freedom to work hungry for two days until payday because bills had been paid (rent, coal) and there was no money... I could go on and on. I really hope you get to enjoy all this freedom. And please do emjoy it without a murmur of complaint because being helped by all your neighbours that make up 'the state' isn't freedom, is it?
Who is 'we'? It depends where you were born.JosephCamilleri -> Sailor25 , 15 Oct 2017 07:52Both Greece and Rome went through quire a few multiple systems in multiple situations. It does not make sense to say they are singular political types at all.Elgrecoandros -> jessthecrip , 15 Oct 2017 07:51Considering that in another thread you called on forced labour and confiscation of private property for those you disagreed with politically, your version of 'proper democracy' would have been called 'τυραννία' by the Ancient Greeks.ClaudiaRain01 -> Swoll Man , 15 Oct 2017 07:50No, working with poor people convinced me socialism is no better. I'm not inclined to work hard and have to support people who choose to work part time and collect benefits part time as a lifestyle choice.imperium3 -> Sailor25 , 15 Oct 2017 07:50Successful for whom? All of those were extremely unequal societies. The spoils of the Roman and British Empires mostly went to enrich the oligarchs while the vast majority of the population laboured in poverty.TheWindsOfWinter93 -> GagaInGreenacres , 15 Oct 2017 07:45The majority was only able to prosper once the power of the oligarchs was broken, either from above (the early Roman emperors tore the old senatorial class to pieces) or from below (gradual democratic and labour reforms in Britain conceded for fear of a potential revolution).
That would work fine before the age of automation now where humans are taken out of the job scope entirely. Then it becomes a lot harder to justify on a philosophical, ethical and moral level the logic of giving money to people for doing nothing (because there's nothing left for them to do).unclestinky , 15 Oct 2017 07:44You're talking about a fundamental change in the mentality that we reap what we sow, that our efforts directly correspond to the rewards and resources we gain at the end of it. I don't think that's possible. Neither is it desirable.
TheWindsOfWinter93 -> twilightegal , 15 Oct 2017 07:43There was also a couple of generations trained under arms and seasoned under fire. There was a mixing of classes unlike any other and enough people who would not put up with a return to the status quo.two World Wars and a Great Depression largely wiped out the holdings of the extremely wealthy
A world war is entirely necessary. To assume that peace is inherently good for humanity as a whole in terms of population numbers, technological advancements, or political stability is ridiculous in my honest opinion. Peace represents stagnation. It relies too much on ever-convoluted webs of interdependence (like that Concert of Europe before WWI, once declared as peace for its time).TheResult , 15 Oct 2017 07:41The American revolutionaries had it right when they said that the tree of liberty regularly requires the blood of tyrants and patriots to continue flourishing.
Big Words usages up aboveTheWindsOfWinter93 -> barciad , 15 Oct 2017 07:41Words and Technologies lead to abuse by rouge states like USA NSA and UK GCHQ spying on all citizens, Bannon type nonsense like racism is populism, white supremacy is judeo-christan values and racist Corporations like Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica pushing racist platforms like Trump and Brexit. Same Hypocrites are outraged when Russia and Iran infiltrate them back. Drone tech preceded 911 and preceded Bush war in Iraq and Afghanistan, (but were used on the sly). Now illegal wars are conducted using drones illegally claiming there is no law for drone wars. Spy Agencies and Internet censors have Sundays off.
Interesting idea. So the core of a nation's military power decides what politics makes it up (dependent on who's got the most access to the power to kill). In that case the automation of war for drones and robots cannot be anything but bad news: they are the new cavalry, affordable only by the very rich and powerful and so awesome in destructive power at almost no human cost if they are destroyed that they would make the perfect enforcers for a strict feudal order.apacheman , 15 Oct 2017 07:39Understanding the connection between wealth and power shouldn't be all that difficult. Really. More wealth = more political power, always has. Waiting for the oligarchy to rot from within isn't what i would call a viable plan. Not when there is a far better and far more sure way to get the job done. Start with capping wealth accumulation. No one has a right to unlimited wealth accumulation. Allowing it leads to oligarchies and the death of democracies, as this article points out.TheWindsOfWinter93 -> Slo27 , 15 Oct 2017 07:36Set the cap at a reasonably high figure to reward hard work, innovation, etc. Somewhere around $5B should work. Why $5 billion? Because of the ~2K billionaires in the world, most, like 80-85% or so, have less than that amount, and it becomes a break point within the oligarchy, dividing their unity. Think of the egos involved: many of those with $1-5B would relish seeing the 200+ hyper rich brought within striking distance of equality on their level.
Second, agree with the politicians that taxpayers know best how to spend their money.
Change the budget process so that the politicians pass the budget, but the people decide whether or not to fund it. Establish dedicated tax payment centers so when tax time rolls around, the proposed budget is available for the citizenry to examine.
Then allow the taxpayer to fund those parts they agree are necessary and make sense, by establishing discrete step amounts scaled to the size of the tax bill, e.g., say your tax bill came to 1582 whatevers, dollars, pounds, etc. At that size your increment might be 25 or 50, let's say 50 for argument's sake.
That means our taxpayer could fund up to 31 different parts of the budget. To ensure that the money gets spread around, we can limit the number of allocations to any given part to 3 or 4, and close a choice when its budget request is met. Anything left over that doesn't meet the minimum step level would go into the general fund for the politicians to allocate, either topping off programs that didn't quite get their budget requests filled or funding something that didn't get sufficient funds from the public to be viable.
Now here's were you can get voluntary revenue enhancement: allow the taxpayer to top off the leftover amount for the privilege of allocating it themselves rather than surrendering it to politicians' control. That amount wouldn't be applied against future taxes, it is payment-for-privilege. In our example the taxpayer could add 18 to the leftover 32, a choice many would make.
Third, bring voting into the modern era: use those handy tax payment centers both to vote in local, state, and national elections (while changing the voting period from a day to a week) and to provide feedback to politicians. Whenever anything controversial comes up, like healthcare or bailouts or war, allow the citizenry to override their representative's choice of vote if a majority of voters choose to vote the other way on that particular matter.
Fourth, establish mental standards for running for political office. Test would-be candidates to determine whether or not they are sociopaths. I'd prefer to not allow such people to hold political offices or appointments, but would accept just identifying them so voters know what they will get.
Taken together, those steps would ensure that democracy is strong and safe from co-option by oligarchs, both directly and indirectly by providing a genuine incentive to pay attention to issues.
Indeed you're right. And to be fair, why should he? The world's spent long enough whining on about great powers like the US trying to foist their ideas of a better world by their own rules and standards on everyone else (democracy spreading anyone?), so if we are to truly put words to action then an isolationist US allowing for other powers to fill the vacuum and return the world to multipolarity cannot be seen as anything other than a good thing.TheWindsOfWinter93 -> JosephCamilleri , 15 Oct 2017 07:34That doesn't sound very much like China here which is used as an example of a dictatorship (more de-facto than de-jure since the Chinese president and premier only has the absolute writ of God for ten years).barciad -> N1LiberalElitist , 15 Oct 2017 07:31Apart from those in Hong Kong, there really isn't much of anyone in China's domestic population complaining about being oppressed, unfree, colonised, or unable to become who they can be.
It really some downs to how you define the term 'Liberal'. Socially Liberal? Economically Liberal? The latter being a modern euphemism for being about as reactionary as it gets.philipl -> ValuedCustomer , 15 Oct 2017 07:28But that is breaking down as middle class benefits (pensions etc.) begin to disappear. There is a growing awareness , I think, that inequality is becoming extreme between the very rich and everyone else. Good article, anyway.JosephCamilleri -> TheWindsOfWinter93 , 15 Oct 2017 07:28People in dictatorships are oppressed, unfree, colonised, and unable to become who they could be. Most people want to be more than just alive.DirDigIns -> WhatTheTruth , 15 Oct 2017 07:27I'd rather describe it as socialism giving everybody endless free stuff, hence we get more and more reliant on the state and those who wish to live freely and succeed or fail due to their own personal talents see the idea of personal responsibility denuded everywhere.mrpukpuk , 15 Oct 2017 07:26Socialists seem to think "freedom" is achieved by having the state always there in everything to back you up, to a lot of the rest of us that is most definitely not freedom at all.
We are all well divided. So the oligarchy is safe.Russell Sanders , 15 Oct 2017 07:24When George Bush Junior followed his father into the White House and became the President he demonstrated that political power remains in the hands of a few and the system is rigged. It doesn't require academics to write comparisons to Greek culture to tell us the dice is always loaded.JosephCamilleri -> TheWindsOfWinter93 , 15 Oct 2017 07:23That would depend on the quality and sophistication of the constitution. Social multi-party representative democracies with a house of review don't decay like executive presidencies do.JosephCamilleri , 15 Oct 2017 07:19Dan2017 -> Sailor25 , 15 Oct 2017 07:18"In civil oligarchies, governance is collective and enforced through laws, rather than by arms. Democracy defeated oligarchy in ancient Greece because of 'oligarchic breakdown.' With this typology behind him, Winters declares that America is already a civil oligarchy."
Two things.
1. The USA is clearly a warlord power in how it behaves around the world, and anyone that sees the power of the militarised police, from Kent state to Black Lives, should recognise aspects of the Mafia type power.
2. The point is not that the laws are used by Oligarchs, but that the constitution and system of laws one has brings forth olicharchs. Europe has laws, but the countries there are largely social democracies rather than imperialist presidencies.
Also, I don't think anyone interested in politics does not understand that material economical structure is the basis, and ideology is just the result or sales pitch.
Unfortunately, your view is one that is becoming more prevalent, on the left and right. All about ensuring that the correct thinking people are not held back by the plebs. Ti that effect they accuse them of false consciousness by one half and being anti-business by the other.FranklinDRoosevelt , 15 Oct 2017 07:17One of the finest reviews written in decades about a topic of supreme importance. Police and military officials are the brute arms and legs of the oligarchic elites. The coming attack on North Korea and Iran is the elite capturing new markets for their banking industry and manufacturing. Goldman Sachs and the investment banks are chomping at the bit for entre into southwest and east Asia. Articles and reviews like this one is WHY I HAVE READ THE GUARDIAN FOR DECADES.GagaInGreenacres -> TragicomedyBeholder , 15 Oct 2017 07:16The government need not favour the down trodden, it need only offer a job at a living wage to anyone willing to contribute to their community. This would make us all equal enough.Sailor25 , 15 Oct 2017 07:15The article assumes that oligarchy is inherently bad. Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and Victorian England where all democratically sanctioned oligarchies. They where also the most successful cultures of their day. Perhaps a democratically sanctioned oligarchy is the most successful system of governance in large populations.ClaudiaRain01 -> TheWindsOfWinter93 , 15 Oct 2017 07:15They aspire to be like the top? No, they don't. No revolution is coming because plenty on the bottom are fine if they are just getting along in life. Aspiring to be like the top would involve too much hard work for many.ClaudiaRain01 , 15 Oct 2017 07:13If you push the bottom too far you just end up with a correction at the next election, that's it.
Having been poor, I can't see the poor doing a better job of running the world. These articles never propose any workable solution to what we have now. Maybe the middle class could run things. Let's have a middle class revolution. That's more workable than 'power to the poor' which would end terribly.qvideh -> YurekandTina Kulski , 15 Oct 2017 07:11Plutocracy!GagaInGreenacres , 15 Oct 2017 07:11Their most effective power play is the perpetual game of economical musical chairs. The chairs are your living wage. Each round the masters take out their profit, removing one (or more) of the chairs from the next round. Now you have the choice of a death match with your neighbors for the remaining chairs or currying favour with the masters for the removed chair.Slo27 -> Amanzim , 15 Oct 2017 07:09The masters need only cut out some unpopular group and tell some convenient story about how they brought it on themselves in order to get your support.
The only way for democracy to thrive is for the community to supply a new a chair for every one taken by the masters, as was done in the post war period up till the mid seventies. Since then it has been economic musical chairs with austerity, budget constraints and irreducible unemployment as far as they eye can see.
Isolationist Trump still intends to rule the world, he just does not want to get involved in making it better.Slo27 -> TheWindsOfWinter93 , 15 Oct 2017 07:07YurekandTina Kulski , 15 Oct 2017 07:06In America, they actually chose an oligarch to battle the oligarch, and somehow that is not how it is panning out.don't they become the very oligarchs they despise?
Don't forget the role of the corporations and their associated 'think tanks'. In reality the USA is a corporatocracy as nicely pointed out by Bruce E. Levine in The Blog of the HUFFPOST in 2011. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-e-levine/the-myth-of-us-democracy-corporatocracy_b_836573.htmlRedredemptionist , 15 Oct 2017 07:06"...in today's meritocratic era." This description is a myth put about by the oligarchs to justify their economic and political power.Slo27 , 15 Oct 2017 07:05Gunsarecivilrights -> WhatTheTruth , 15 Oct 2017 07:05And yet, the American voters brought in Trump the oligarch, and tasked him with destroying the institutions that perpetuate oligarchy.Democracy will be destroyed through utter stupidity of the lower classes. They can easily be egged to see an enemy in their fellow citizens and turn to oligarchs for protection. Specifically, in the US, the white majority wants Trump to prevent a transition into whites becoming the largest minority, instead of the majority. These are their expectations and they are prepared to tolerate any outrage as long as they think he is working towards that goal.
Rights and socialism do not belong in the same sentence. Are you drunk?barciad , 15 Oct 2017 07:03The UK had a brief glimpse of Democracy, sometime between the mid 1940's and the late 1970's. I should also add that Aristotle included a third factor. The size and nature of ones armed forces:-SimonGKelly -> WhatTheTruth , 15 Oct 2017 06:59
- If the core was cavalry, then it would be a feudal monarchy (Macedon, Persia)
- If it was elite heavy infantry, then it would be an oligarchy (Sparta, Rome)
- If it was through either mass light infantry or naval based, then it would be a Democracy (Athens)
Now consider the UK after 1945, you have a this huge 'citizen's army' that has been out in field (one way or another) for over half a decade. Add onto that the huge losses of wealth and (more importantly) the alliances that were forced upon us. There could be nothing but an effective mass popular Democracy in this country. And for the first time in its history.
But alas, the Oligarchs bided their time and when the first sign of crisis came along, the struck. The 1970's for fucks sake, which were nothing compared to the cataclysms between 1914-1914, that same said Oligarchs created. Yet you would not think it the way those people bang on about it. Thus now, we have the 2010's, a decade that we will be warning our children about.
With the subheading 'What happens when you forget the lessons of history'.
If you are thinking of the old Warsaw Pact countries, that was certainly an oligarchy based on party membership.Redredemptionist -> TragicomedyBeholder , 15 Oct 2017 06:54However, how far are we from that in a system which guarantees that only one of two parties will end up in power? A glance across the pond shows how that is simply another form of oligarchy generating a hereditary establishment. That was HC's biggest problem.
Perhaps all political systems will tend towards oligarchy over time, as the people with the wherewithal learn how to make the system work for them and theirs. Anarchy cannot be the solution, but what is ...?
So an oligarchy hiding behind a sham democracy is the best we can hope for?TheWindsOfWinter93 -> Amanzim , 15 Oct 2017 06:53Who cares about whether democracy or dictatorship is better. As long as the people get richer and safer and happier with their lot in life, that's all that matters. Humans don't nearly live long enough to care more than just staying alive and bettering our own lot in life.twilightegal , 15 Oct 2017 06:51In a system where we economic power buys political power democracy will remain a myth or at best an illusion and as the author rightly points out a catastrophic event at the level of the depression or world war is needed to begin anew. I for one am not hoping for eitherNotSoLittleMouse , 15 Oct 2017 06:49There is also an economic minimum the population needs to be at. Dividing the classes only goes so far.TheWindsOfWinter93 , 15 Oct 2017 06:49There's an argument on the oligarch needing the masses to finance their wealth, especially through utilities and monopolies (privately run NHS by token choice of companies), but it almost like the oligarchs don't need the masses anymore and can defend their wealth via stock exchange and governmental debts.
I would say that the biggest reason for the success of the oligarchs is making security, defined and framed by them, more important for the mass than freedom.
So when the people take control and their populist leaders take charge and all their lots become better, don't they become the very oligarchs they despise?redleader , 15 Oct 2017 06:48What seems to be missing is recognizing the fact that very often in human society those on the bottom aspire to be like the top, even if they disagree with their personalities they don't disagree with their idea of prosperity and power. So it's going to be endlessly cyclical. The people take power and become oligarchs in their own right. Then someone has to take over on the bottom and then it all starts again.
Amanzim , 15 Oct 2017 06:47With this typology behind him, Winters declares that America is already a civil oligarchy. To use the language of recent political campaigns, our oligarchs try to rig the system to defend their wealth. They focus on lowering taxes and on reducing regulations that protect workers and citizens from corporate wrongdoing.
Aristotle would have argued that countries are oligarchies when they have oligarchical constitutions.
Democracy works much better when all have economic prosperity. It should also look after the minorities by giving them equal rights and opportunities. I see democracy in India and look up to how it has remained a free country. But there are more than 300 million people in India who are so poor that they cannot afford much in life, most of them live on roads. China on the other hand is a dictatorship, but has reduced poverty of more than 400 million people in the last few decades. Which path should others follow?Andy Roberts , 15 Oct 2017 06:43America under Trump is making the country isolationist. As Economist wrote so well: "The world does not want an isolationist United States or a dictatorship in China. Alas, it may get both."
Industrialization will prevent any meaningful revolution so without serious changes in who is winning elections for a sustained time oligarchy in the US is here to stay. Mechanized war means control of assets rather than numerical superiority is the key to conflict and despite the millions of rifles and assault weapons out there they wont do much against drone bombers and drone tanks.kizbot , 15 Oct 2017 06:41in Greece the oligarchs rule through corruption. Everyone is tainted so the system cannot be overthrown without going down with it.mill1806 , 15 Oct 2017 06:40I was heartened by the idea that the oligarchy must necessarily rot from within as a result of its own cronyism. Much like the insider-dealing, back-stabbing, and incompetence of the present clique.Keith Fraser -> TragicomedyBeholder , 15 Oct 2017 06:37Not all measures aimed at improving equality involve giving extra privileges to currently disadvantaged groups - one can remove privileges/other advantages from groups which are doing more than OK, like curtailing legal tax-dodges which are only of use/available to the very wealthy. One can also remove barriers which (deliberately or not) impact people unequally, such as voter-suppression tricks.N1LiberalElitist -> ValuedCustomer , 15 Oct 2017 06:37This set of images is a very simplistic but helpful way of explaining the difference between different ways to deal with inequality:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*owl5RUCkVYPzZi9tuyC54Q.jpeg
If you think that's "contemporary bourgeois liberal strategy" then the oligarchs are winning. They've told you the woes of the world are all the fault of the liberal middle classes, and you've believed them.abugaafar , 15 Oct 2017 06:35Nada89 , 15 Oct 2017 06:33The question is whether democracy will emerge from oligarchic breakdown
or demagoguery.
'The question is whether democracy will emerge from oligarchic breakdown – or whether the oligarchs will just strengthen their grasp on the levers of government.' - judging by evidence from time immemorial my money is definitely on the oligarchs.jazzdrum , 15 Oct 2017 06:32For me , this film says it all and clearly too. https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/everything-rich-man-trick /imipak , 15 Oct 2017 06:30The combination of political and economic power is discussed in Plato's Republic. Either book 4 or 5. Whilst not a replacement for modern treatment, it is vital reading if you want to avoid the limitations of single perspectives.Hibernica , 15 Oct 2017 06:30To understand the significance of psyops and infowar against the public, you should also look at Tacitus' book on Corrupt Eloquence. Again, not a replacement but a way of seeing the broader picture.
Remember, we wouldn't be in this mess if we had a clear picture, but we have a different perspective to these past writers. Philosophers and elephants. You've got to combine the visions and weight them correctly.
The article starts with an assumption that is wrong. It seems to suggest that America can't become an oligarchy without the will of the people. That ignores the fact that America's electoral system attracts oligarchs or at least people who are happy to be puppets of oligarch to the top job.ValuedCustomer -> ValuedCustomer , 15 Oct 2017 06:30If Trump hadn't been elected Hillary Clinton would now be President. More intelligent certainly and less likely to destroy the country but still backed by countless very wealthy people who would have been expecting payback for their support.
So rather than ask how America can avoid becoming an oligarchy I'd be asking if there was ever a time when it wasn't an oligarchy.
In fact the whole article is fantastic, I've been relying on instinct and Michels' (accurate but primitive) Iron Law of Oligarchy for this stuff.WhatTheTruth , 15 Oct 2017 06:29What about the oligarchy of Socialism where giving people too many rights neutralises everything to a standstill?ValuedCustomer , 15 Oct 2017 06:25While the ruling class must remain united for an oligarchy to remain in power, the people must also be divided so they cannot overthrow their oppressors. Oligarchs in ancient Greece thus used a combination of coercion and co-optation to keep democracy at bay. They gave rewards to informants and found pliable citizens to take positions in the government.SameTrip , 15 Oct 2017 06:23These collaborators legitimized the regime and gave oligarchs beachheads into the people. In addition, oligarchs controlled public spaces and livelihoods to prevent the people from organizing.
This is the clearest explanation of contemporary bourgeois liberal strategy I've ever seen.
Bravo!
Tenthred , 15 Oct 2017 06:23Surveillance, drones, a purchased media, a mercenary govt, an internet with too much democracy and thus too many hairsplitting doctrinal differences, and increasingly effective killing devices, means the international corporate oligarchs have been in control for some time and will be for awhile moreThe question is whether democracy will emerge from oligarchic breakdown – or whether the oligarchs will just strengthen their grasp on the levers of government.
Bransby -> Commem , 15 Oct 2017 06:21Yes, but I'm not sure I see why that is to do with institutional decay - except if that means that the arrangements for bribing, threatening and manipulating the populace break down, in which case it just pushes the query back to why that should happen.democracy defeated oligarchy in ancient Greece because of "oligarchic breakdown."
Which brings us to consent and to capacity. If the state has the capacity to ensure that citizens do OK then it will gain their consent. If not, not.
So far so simple for the ancient Greeks. Not so simple for us, now, because one of the institutional structures controlled by the oligarchy is the one that manufactures and maintains consent.
That's why, if we have arrived at oligarchy, we will not escape as simply as the city states of ancient Greece - and perhaps cannot escape it at all.
When I was an ancient Greek I was fantastic. Since the financial crisis and austerity cuts I've found it hard to be as great as beforejessthecrip -> jessthecrip , 15 Oct 2017 06:21Ooops - 'sew disunity in the ruling class'jessthecrip , 15 Oct 2017 06:20So those of us who want proper democracy need to try and sew in the ruling class, just as they have long encouraged disunity amongst us plebs, is that it? Perhaps one advantage (of few that I can see) of brexit is it's exposing significant disunity in the Tory party.Commem , 15 Oct 2017 06:19Nothing new then. Who said " I don't care who makes the decisions as long as I write the Agenda and the Minutes. Information control is key. We live in a Alice in Wonderland world of spin.ethelbrose , 15 Oct 2017 06:17If only we could shut off roads in cities to traffic we could be so much more powerful as a mob...TragicomedyBeholder , 15 Oct 2017 06:16Very interesting and informative. However...If one were to look at this equality problem rationally and logically, then any government policy aimed at making people equal would actually amount to government treating people very unequally.one solution is creating a more economically equal society
Sort of like because people are unequal they should be treated unequally in order to make them equal. So in this sense the very idea of social justice is either irrational or else meaningless.
Differences in vocation, gifts, interests, locations and aspirations contribute to making people unequal. Socialism is a provenly unworkable myth.
|
|
|
Oct 16, 2017 | discussion.theguardian.com
cognitivedissonance1 , 15 Oct 2017 13:25
Nothing new here, C Wright Mills, the US state as a plutocracy , government by the few , said it all fifty years ago , especially the economic oligarchsimipak -> NoBets , 15 Oct 2017 13:21http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/theory/mills_critique.html
http://plutocratsandplutocracy.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-power-elite.html
I would again point to Plato. Those whose affluence exceeds the critical threshold stagnate. They have no need to work, no need to hold anything as valuable, they contribute nothing and take everything.Viddyvideo , 15 Oct 2017 13:19What is the point in being so rich? There's nothing you can gain from it, other than bank account pinball.
The purpose of being rich is to enable you. It is the only purpose. Once you are fully enabled, money has no value.
Those who are poor can't afford the tools to work well, the education/training needed, anything by which they could better themselves and be upwardly mobile.
There are some who are poor by choice. Voluntary hermits are common enough. They're not included in here because they're self-sufficient and have the tools they need so fall out of scope.
The middle band, where prone work the best, function the best, are mentally and physically the best, is very very big. Nothing stops you cramming society into there because they've plenty of room to stretch out.
But people always want to improve. No big. Make tax follow a curve, so that you always improve but the game gets harder not easier. Would you play a computer game where level 100 was easier than level 1? No, you'd find it boring. As long as it's a single curve, nobody gets penalized.
You now get to play forever, level billion is better than level million is better than level thousand, but it's asymptotic so infinite improvement never breaks outside the bounds.
"Asymptotic" is a word that meets your objection AND my rebuttal. You do not have to have either a constant, infinity or hard ceilings. Leave straight lines to geometers and enter the world of inflection points.
Elites exist the world over -- East, West, North and South. Question is how do we create a world where power is shared -- Plato and his Guardians perhaps or are we doomed to be ruled by elites until the end of time?handygranny -> R Zwarich , 15 Oct 2017 13:14Indeed; smart, intelligent, "clever" folks in no way confers any degree of civility on their "vested" interests. Manipulation and control are suitably useful tools for their purposes.memo10 -> ashleyhk , 15 Oct 2017 13:11RecantedYank -> mjmizera , 15 Oct 2017 13:09Yet most of the media is resolutely "liberal" or leftist How do you explain that?
The media is not a major player in running the country, contrary to what much of the right has been brainwashed to believe. It's a tool of the elite. A hammer is also a very useful tool but it doesn't do much to determine what the carpenter builds.
Rapid is still quite right... We convinced ourselves that our form of oligarchy was somehow "better" than other forms, when in fact, the end game was always the same..concentrating the power in as few hands as possible. Denial was the name of the game here in the US.CommanderMaxil -> Elgrecoandros , 15 Oct 2017 13:08jessthecrip's comment was clearly not calling for JRM to be imprisoned or in any way punished for his views , but for his votes . Specifically his votes in the House of commons to support benefit cuts for disability claimants. Admittedly that a pretty extreme position from my point of view, but nonetheless you are misrepresentating what was said, whether deliberately or because you genuinely have not understood only you can knowSpudnik2 -> Gunsarecivilrights , 15 Oct 2017 13:05More people should simply look up from time to time and quit living in fantasy books. The whole and real truth is not written in a book its all around you if you are willing to except what you see.vinny59er , 15 Oct 2017 13:04Form a government in same way we select juries. No entrenchment of the same old guard, no lobbyists,no elite, no vested interests.Just people like you,and you.People like your children.People like your parents.People like your neighborsmjmizera -> RecantedYank , 15 Oct 2017 13:03The industrial-military complex of the 50-70s didn't just disappear, but morphed into today's structures.mjmizera -> voogdy , 15 Oct 2017 13:00Not anymore, as conspiracy nuts are now serving their new masters, the altRight. They joined the enemy.theseligsussex -> Sailor25 , 15 Oct 2017 12:59Not really driven by the oligarch, more looted. And there's normally 1 greedy bugger, Sulla or Pompey, who has to have it all and upsets the apple cart, and then you get Augustus.mjmizera -> ashleyhk , 15 Oct 2017 12:58There is never the right far enough that one can't be to the left of.mjmizera -> RecantedYank , 15 Oct 2017 12:55All the good/bad labels lose their meaning without a qualifier - for whom.winemaster2 , 15 Oct 2017 12:54The US and it being a democracy, the word that is no where mentioned in the Constitution is one big hoax and the perpetuation of the same, where the missed people in this country are further conned by the elite and the rich. Then on top of it all we f or sure not practice what we preach. To that end our political system with two senators from each of 50 states m irrespective to the population is lot to be desired in terms of any real democratic process, let alone equality in representation. To add insult to injury, the US House of Representatives where Congressional Districts are gerrymandered just about every two years, is even worst. Just as the US Congress in which over 90% of the people have no confidence.sejong -> ashleyhk , 15 Oct 2017 12:50Yet most of the media is resolutely "liberal" or leftist How do you explain that?makingalist , 15 Oct 2017 12:47Liberal MSM has been emasculated. It doesn't know it's dead. It doesn't move any needles. It just brays on in ineffective anti-Trump outrage and one identity politics issue after another.
Rightwing media is king in USA.
One way they get away with it is by having their own separate education system. It's high time private schools were closed down.handygranny -> ID3924525 , 15 Oct 2017 12:47Who was it again who said he loves the undereducated and uninformed during the campaign season of 2016?laerteg -> ValuedCustomer , 15 Oct 2017 12:44Yes- the demonization of liberalism on the right and the turning away from liberalism on the left *has* paved the way for oligarchy.Shrimpandgrits -> imperium3 , 15 Oct 2017 12:44Divide and conquer, as usual, is working.
Slavery -- chattel slavery -- was an element.Leon Sphinx , 15 Oct 2017 12:41Socialist, mass slavery was not.
The House of Lords in the U.K. and the Senate in the US were originally there to prevent poor people - always the majority - from voting to take away wealth and lands from the rich. Basically, if such a vote was cast, the HoL and Senate - filled with the elites of society - had the power to block it.ashleyhk , 15 Oct 2017 12:41This is a fascinating dissection of how the "leftist/liberal" media was completely disrupted by Trump. It is a long read and quite difficult (so not likely to appeal to most of the knee-jerk commentators) but, whatever your politics it is well worth a lookLaurence Bury , 15 Oct 2017 12:41
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502 /The human (and probably animal) world is made up of oligarchies that deal with each other. History has shown that only lone soldiers can upset established orders: Alexander, Napoleon, Lenin, Castro and Bin Laden come to mind.laerteg -> Hibernica , 15 Oct 2017 12:40I agree with the article's premise. We have allowed the oligarchs to consolidate power.Matt Quinn , 15 Oct 2017 12:40Why? Because Americans revere wealth and power. We have bought into the capitalist model hook, line, and sinker. We willingly elect candidates and sign on to policies that allow oligarchs to consolidate their power, increase their wealth and income inequality, pomote greed and selfishness, and undermine democracy - the power of the people.
We have been busy electing agents of oligarchy to Congress since 1980. Buying ino the "small government" con, the "taxes are theft" con, "the business is overregulated" con, the "corporations are the job creators" con and its twin the "government never created jobs" con, the anti-union con, etc, etc, etc.
Our political system would be a lot more representative of the people if the people would get off their butts and start participating in it. Our electoral ststem is open to anyone who wants to participate.
But who and how many participate any more?
When the people create a vacuum with their apathy and cynicism, the oligarchs fill it with their greed.
Oligarchs will always be attracted to power, no matter what system is in place. What's needed to minimize their ability to entrench themselves is vigilance in defending our institutions against corruption.
And vigilance is something that the American people seem to have less and less of every day.
Maximise aggregate happiness as John Nash suggested. Cooperation beats competition in almost every sphere. Uniting the 99% will happen after the 1% have brought civilisation to a standstill and a billion people starve.vinny59er , 15 Oct 2017 12:38The biggest impediment to true and real democracy is the existence of political parties.RapidSloth -> RecantedYank , 15 Oct 2017 12:27Denial is a powerful mental mechanism, that and also people tend to associate oligarchy with brutal, straight forwards autocratic rule.RecantedYank , 15 Oct 2017 12:20
US has a very sophisticated socio-political system that has isolated the elite and the common man through many filters rather than one solid brick wall - so people dont see it. This paired with large enough populations who are cretinous enough to actually vote for somebody like Trump or give a second term to the likes of G.W Bush makes fooling extremely easy.There is also the tendency of treating laws like dogma and the constitution like the bible. A stark example of it is how they boast about freedom of speech. Everybody is keen to point out that one can publicly criticize politicians without fear of prosecution but nobody seems to notice how useless that speech is and how effectively the political elite shelters itself from negative opinion and is able to proceed against the public will. I find it quite fascinating.
ALL oligarchies are bad...they just function from a different starting point.virgenskamikazes , 15 Oct 2017 12:20
In the US, we have an oligarchy based on wealth,who then uses their money to buy the political animals.
In Communist countries, you had a political oligarchy, who used their political powers to corner the wealth.
And in religious oligarchies you have a few selected "high priests" using religious fervor/special communication lines with whatever deity, to capture both wealth and politics.None of these are preferable over the other as they all concentrate power into the hands of the few (1-2%), against the interests of the many.
The fact is Western Democracy (democratic capitalism) is not and was never a true democracy.sejong , 15 Oct 2017 12:15Historians from at least 300 years from now, when studying our historical time, will state our system was capitalism, whose political system was plutocracy -- the rule of the capitalist class from behind the curtains, through puppet governors.
Sure, the same historians will, through archaeological evidence, state, correctly, that we called and considered ourselves to live in a democracy. But they will also find evidence that this claim was always contested by contemporaries. Emperor Augustus restored the façade of the Republic and called himself princeps instead of king, and, officially, Rome was still a Republic until the time of Marcus Aurelius to Diocletian (maybe the first emperor to openly consider himself a monarch) -- it doesn't fool today's historians, and it seems it didn't fool the Roman people also.
Oligarchy in USA is secure. For a generation, it has leveraged rightwing media to get unquestioning support from white America based on aggrieved truculence toward the liberal, the brown, and the black. And that was pre-Trump.voogdy , 15 Oct 2017 12:10Now Trump rampages against the very symbol of the grievance: Obama.
It's midnight in the world's leading third world country
Anyone who's been accusing united states of being an oligarchy so far was branded as a conspiracy nut. So does this article rehabilitates them and confirms their assertions?j. von Hettlingen , 15 Oct 2017 12:07In ancient Greece: "While the ruling class must remain united for an oligarchy to remain in power, the people must also be divided so they cannot overthrow their oppressors." Today the oligarchs aren't always united, because they see each other as rivals. But they have nothing against dividing and weakening the people in order to prevent them from rising up to "their oppressors."PeterlooSunset -> maddiemot , 15 Oct 2017 12:06
Mass indoctrination is the answer. Oligarchs around the world seek to build up a media empire to brainwash a gullible public and sow discord in the society. The most notorious members of a civil oligarchy in the West are Silvio Berlusconi and Rupert Murdoch. Like oligarchs in ancient Greece, their modern counterparts need democratic support to legitimise their goals. And they support candidates in elections who will do their bidding once in office.
Oligarchy and plutocracy will continue to rule America, because the worship of money is a popular faith. As long as an individual is well off, he/she sees little incentive to help improve social equality. A revolution will only be possible if a critical mass is behind it.The current US education system was put in place by the oligarch foundations of the Rockefellers, Carnegies and Guggenheims . It exists to keep the majority of the citizenry misinformed, thus docile workers and passive consumers.ID3924525 -> 37Dionysos , 15 Oct 2017 12:05Sounds about right - a least some, a very small minority, realise they're being suckered - the overwhelming majority die pig ignorant, whether they believe they've made it or live in a trailer park.lasos2222 , 15 Oct 2017 12:03it's very rare that an article in the Guardian doesn't have an obvious agenda. Simple click bait stuff. This article is different, and worthwhile reading. Excellent.RecantedYank , 15 Oct 2017 12:02I am only surprised that anyone would still be in the dark about whether or not the US is an oligarchy. It's been obvious now for at least the past three-four decades.RapidSloth , 15 Oct 2017 12:01If the general public opposes rule-by-economic-elites, yep sure... too elections held in the last two decades contradict that statement.37Dionysos -> OldTrombone , 15 Oct 2017 12:01Yep---for where very few have very much and most have nothing, you have a pressure-cooker. The property-police must indeed grow in number and brutality.37Dionysos -> ID3924525 , 15 Oct 2017 11:58And the other half of it is what Ben Franklin warned about, "the corruption of the people." The gangsters really sense and know how to play people against themselves---arousing appetites, appealing to short-term pleasure, to short-term feel-good thinking and acts, and to greed and lust for seemingly easy power. When you realize you're had, it's too late: "In every transaction, there's a sucker. If you're wondering who that is, it's you."Feindbild -> PSmd , 15 Oct 2017 11:55Yep sure. The 'big white kid' pritecting the brown kid does tend to be working class or middle class Jewish, and indeed, more likely to be socialist than liberal (in my experience).MTorrespico -> OldTrombone , 15 Oct 2017 11:52I wouldn't limit credit for this kind of thing to any particular ethnicity. But I will say that most major successful reform 'crusades' of modern Western history were inspired by Christian ideals, and often led by Christian clergy, including the anti-slavery Abolition movement in 19th-century America, the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and '60s, and the anti-Communist revolutions in 1980's Eastern Central Europe. Even in the anti-Apartheid movement, the churches played a leading role, personified, of course, by Bishop Tutu.
Correct, because that would be too easy . . . for 'Muricans, because Other people might benefit, and because it is too, too logical a solution for the Turd World USA.37Dionysos , 15 Oct 2017 11:51In the Oxford English Dictionary you find that "profit" and "advantage" are close cousins etymologically. Makes sense, since "profit" (the word for value you did not put into an exchange) creates "advantage"---and then you use advantages to give even less and take even more profit. Round and round she goes, and there's no bottom. "Advantage" of course is also inherently relative to somebody else's "DIS-advantage": hence our planet full of "disadvantaged" working people.OldTrombone -> rg12345 , 15 Oct 2017 11:50No, I think the Democrats are the ones most successful at diverting the people from their own power in favor of the banks. The Republicans are far less successful by their own control, instead benefitting only from luck such as Wasserman-Schultz denying Elizabeth Warren from her rightful place in the Oval Office. Sanders was the consolation candidate for Warren voters. Warren would have beaten Trump 50-nil.MTorrespico -> Nash25 , 15 Oct 2017 11:50Correct. Two equal evils from the same nest-egg, a political party with two right-wings. At the least, the public know why the First Nazi of Great America has an aura of flies.name1 -> Skip Breitmeyer , 15 Oct 2017 11:46Divisions or hijacking? I suspect the latter.PeterlooSunset , 15 Oct 2017 11:39teamofrivals , 15 Oct 2017 11:38a colleague of mine asked if America was really at risk of becoming an oligarchy. Our political system, he said, is a democracy. If the people don't want to be run by wealthy elites, we can just vote them out.
Thanks for the cracking joke. That was hilariously funny.
There's a term on everything and a rhythm to all things and its an impertinence to think that any political system lasts forever for our security.brianBT , 15 Oct 2017 11:34full and transparent disclosure of all finical and gift transactions between elected official and anyone not in govt.. this include "payments" to family, friends their charities.. etc.. if you cant see the lie no one fight to have the laws and rules changed... additionally lobbyist must no longer be allowed to have the type of closed door access to our leaders.. all these conversations must be moderated or flat out banned and a new form of communication is developed.... put it this way I have never been able to get a meeting with my leading politician yet big business can at almost any time.. I'm glad this issues is being more openly discussed.. we need more of the sameID3924525 -> ID3924525 , 15 Oct 2017 11:32Karl Marx, in The Communist Manifesto , indentified this in his concept, "False Consciousness", and Orwell, taking Stalinism to exemplify it, points to the same in Animal Farm , though I bet they weren't the first, and hope they won't be the last.OldTrombone , 15 Oct 2017 11:31Machiavelli was right, when you need political favors to get to the top, then you will always owe the favor-givers when you get there. Machiavelli also said this:laerteg , 15 Oct 2017 11:29Sortition works!
When the most powerful person has literally zero interest in the outcome, they will defer to moral utilitarianism every time. Ask Canada's John Ralton Saul "The Unconcious Civilization" and Australia's Ricky Muir from the Motoring Enthusiasts Party [seriously] who scuppered Aussie right-wingers from bringing US-style education-loans to rent-seek our economy to death.
The problem is that today's so-called "populists" have been so propagandized into despising the liberalism that could fight the oligarchs, and buying into the very policies and philosophies that allow the oligarchs to consolidate their power (endless tax cuts, undermined government, deregulation, big money in politics, destruction of unions, etc, etc.) that they play right into their hands.Elgrecoandros -> jessthecrip , 15 Oct 2017 11:28They've mistaken a demagogue for a man of the people and continue to cheer on the dismantling of the checks on oligarchy that our system provides.
This country is in a world of hurt and those who should be exercizing their democratic power to diminish the power of the oligarchs are busy dismantling it, thanks to decades of right wing media propaganda.
All I see is more oligarchy, more autoctacy, and less power to the people. We just keep sticking it to ourselves.
I literally copy pasted the comments in order, how have I twisted anything?OldTrombone , 15 Oct 2017 11:25The person complained about some reaction to Rees-Mogg for having different political views being over the top and you promptly justified their claim.
Capitalist oligarchies = bad, right?ID3924525 , 15 Oct 2017 11:22So... communism, then, right?
It's time for SORTITION
When anyone could instantly become president, then everyone has to be educated as much as possible. Right? Hey classical policy scholars, sortition worked in Ancient Greece too! As well as everywhere else ever since. Ever heard of court juries?
Divide and rule - the oldest trick in the book, and incredibly easy, as long as people are kept ignorant by propaganda (currently known as The Media) and education.rg12345 -> Rainborough , 15 Oct 2017 11:21Many (most?) Of us do understand it, that's why we're opposed to Citizens United, whereas the Republicans are for it.Nash25 , 15 Oct 2017 11:20Hillary Clinton lost because the working class (correctly) perceived her to be a supporter of oligarchy in the USA. Her ties to Wall Street, corporate power, and the upper class were too obvious.jessthecrip -> Elgrecoandros , 15 Oct 2017 11:19Yes, Trump fooled many voters into believing that he was populist, but their perception of Clinton was still accurate.
If the Democratic party leaders had chosen Sanders as their candidate, they would have won the election. But the "Democratic" party leaders (ironically) feared what he offered: real democracy.
You are an expert twister and no mistake. I can only salute youSoxMcCarthy -> TragicomedyBeholder , 15 Oct 2017 11:18"The Bad Hayek emerged when he aimed to convert a wider public. Then, as often happens, he tended to overreach, and to suggest more than he had legitimately argued. The Road to Serfdom was a popular success but was not a good book. Leaving aside the irrelevant extremes, or even including them, it would be perverse to read the history, as of 1944 or as of now, as suggesting that the standard regulatory interventions in the economy have any inherent tendency to snowball into "serfdom." The correlations often run the other way. Sixty-five years later, Hayek's implicit prediction is a failure, rather like Marx's forecast of the coming "immiserization of the working class.""fivefeetfour , 15 Oct 2017 11:18Lenin has written that politics is a concentrated economy more than a century ago.rg12345 -> OldTrombone , 15 Oct 2017 11:16Do you think Democrats are the only ones trying to consolidate wealth and power? You must have missed the part about keeping people divided.Lafcadio1944 , 15 Oct 2017 11:15This of course is a simplified version and can't really touch on everything, however he glaringly leaves out the deliberate human suffering results from the oligarchy protecting its wealth and aggressively taking over ever more markets. Yes, of course, what today is called "alignment of interests" among the oligarchy is necessary but that alone is not enough they mus also be ruthless beyond that of others. Nothing stands in the way of profits nothing stands in the way of ever greater control. The oligarchy has decided that nature itself is just another obstacle profit making - there is no room for empathy in the world of the oligarchy poverty suffering from curable disease mutilation from bombs are acceptable external consequences to their obsessive accumulation of wealth.Elgrecoandros -> jessthecrip , 15 Oct 2017 11:14The real reason the oligarchy wins is because they are willing to be ruthless in the extreme and society rewards ruthlessness and ridicules the empathetic.
"Perhaps the OP was proposing prison for JRM for expressing a viewpoint..."R Zwarich -> Kay Nixon , 15 Oct 2017 11:14Nobody was proposing that, it was hyperbole from rjm2017.
Well it was hyperbole until your comment calling on punishment for those with different political views.
This may be true, they often seem so blinded by their raw greed that their powers of reason become dysfunctional. I don't think, however, that the stupid things they do to slake their greed means that they are stupid. When the chips are down, they are capable of bringing their considerable powers of reason to bear.fragglerokk , 15 Oct 2017 11:13However stupid or smart they might be, we surely must realize that they have been at least smart enough to gain total ownership and control of all our mass media. They use this tool, the most powerful tool of social control that has ever existed, with consummate skill in pursuit of their agenda(s).
If you look at the overall content of our mass media, you can see an impressive level of 'mind' at work, 'behind the curtain'. This 'mind' is constantly manipulating our consciousness, using very highly sophisticated, highly skilled techniques.Their understanding of human psychology, and their ability to manipulate us using our most basic appetites and desires, is characterized by true genius, even ig that genius is diabolical in its designs.
'They' choose what movies get made. Which TV shows are produced. Which songs get airplay. Which social and political issues are sensationalized and which are buried.
Most of the citizens of our ostensible 'democracy' have been 'trained', just as any animals are trained to any behavior, to be 'consumers' rather than 'citizens'. We are well trained by an omnipresent mass media that assaults us constantly. In any direction that we turn our gaze, or our attention, 'they' are there, to direct our thoughts as they think serves their purposes.
I sure wouldn't sell these people's intelligence short. They may often do stupid things to serve their greed, but they did not acquire the power that they have through any lack of intelligence.
what everyone seems to forget is that whilst ancient Greece was the cradle of democracy it was not only a slave state (whose slaves had no rights to vote) but that only an elite minority were eligible to vote themselves - power very much rested with the vested interests of the few.OldTrombone , 15 Oct 2017 11:13I agree that societies are a reflection of the 'will' of the people these days, even if that will is ill informed, reactionary or, as seems to be the case, largely uninterested in voting. You get the governments you deserve and people in the West have become lazy, permanently distracted, often ignorant and usually in the grip of one addiction or another, thus allowing 'democracy' to be subverted. The media have had their role in this by allowing themselves to be manipulated and owned by vested interests, rarely reporting the truth and doing as they are told by various govt offices and departments. Uninformed people make poor decisions.
What the Black Lives Matter movement is telling us is that the Oligarch's enforce their rules of 'law' precisely at the barrels of guns, and by the words of one man after one man, each with a uniform on and a camera off.TheResult -> J.K. Stevens , 15 Oct 2017 11:13National Anthems only make sense in context of International GamesElgrecoandros -> Elgrecoandros , 15 Oct 2017 11:11
Where 2 anthems are played out of respect for each otherFurther, you stated above that you were "...responding to a poster who called for imprisonment for those concerned", when in fact the quote shows they were complaining about people calling for imprisonment, not calling for it.Skip Breitmeyer -> sparkle5nov , 15 Oct 2017 11:09That shows you are twisting what was said, it is incredibly disingenuous of you.
It's the divisions of the left that allow Tory and Republican minority rule to prevail. In the US the divide is quite bitter between Hillary and Bernie wings of the Dems- at the moment I don't really see where reconciliation can emerge. And of course in Great Britain you actually have two major parties competing rather self-destructively for the available votes on the left. (As well as the mighty Greens...). Divided and conquered, indeed. And such a bloody cliche!OldTrombone , 15 Oct 2017 11:06jessthecrip -> Elgrecoandros , 15 Oct 2017 11:06Democracy is vulnerable to oligarchy because democrats focus so much on guaranteeing political equality that they overlook the indirect threat that emerges from economic inequality
And yet Marx doesn't rate a single mention in the entire article...
No, even though you've quoted me you have misunderstood what was perfectly plain. I stated 'like everyone else who voted to cut even more from disabled people's benefits'. Perhaps the OP was proposing prison for JRM for expressing a viewpoint, but that was not and is not where I'm coming from.OldTrombone , 15 Oct 2017 11:05PSmd -> Dark Angel , 15 Oct 2017 11:02At its core, oligarchy involves concentrating economic power and using it for political purposes.
Here is the exact reason why the Democratic Party is lost now. The Clintons, Wasserman-Schultz, and their new Goldman Sachs alumni hero in New Jersey, and now Kamala Harris seeking the same money from the same bankers.
And who did Hillary blame? Bernie, of course.
It's sort of worked against the right though. Take a look at the last election. Yes, the Tories got most votes, but they've pretty much lost all ethnic minorities, including asian professionals, hindus and sikhs. Why is this, especially when Labour moved to left and are now more socialist than left liberal?Elgrecoandros -> jessthecrip , 15 Oct 2017 11:01Purely because the right has been subsumed by angry grievance mentality, or aggreived entitlement. The internet is awash by people who hate assertive blacks and asians, Dianne Abbott received half of all abuse of female MPs. And so.. the Labour pick up votes that Tories had gained under Cameron. If you are a prosperous hindu dentist or stockbroker, sure you might have shrugged off your parents labour voting tendencies and might be Tory. But also, you might be seeing this sort of stuff, the bile on the internet, the resentment expressed behind internet anonymity. And you might be thinking that deep down underneath that expensive suit of yours, you are your father and mother, a tentative, slightly frightened, cheaply dressed immigrant who has arrived as an outsider and are visibly aware that half the population likes you, but the other half doesn't.
And so you vote Labour.Divisiveness actually divides the core group you are aiming to win. If you do white chauvinism, well, you end up unite everyone who is not white. Black, brown, yellow, all huddle together scared, back under the labour fold. And you end up dividing the whites into the patriotic and the 'self hating libtard'.
The sequence of comments was...barciad -> FrankLittle , 15 Oct 2017 10:57Rjm2017
"Just read the language of many in here...apparent JRM should be banished and locked away. You don't need to look to far to find odeous beliefs."
Your reply to that:
"Not locked away. Prison is expensive for the taxpayer. Assets sequestered for the good of the commons and put to work cleaning - streets, hospitals, care homes - on workfare. Like everyone else who voted to cut even more from disabled people's benefits, causing what the UN has described as a 'catastrophe' for disabled people in this country"
My reply to you:
"You are advocating confiscation of private property and forced physical labour for people who hold different political views to you. Is Stalin a hero of yours?"
Yours is a call to punish people for holding different political views to you.Yours is an extremist position and, like all extremists, you think it is justified.
Skip Breitmeyer -> BayardDC , 15 Oct 2017 10:56e.g. Park Chung-hee sent thousands of homeless people to camps where they were used as slave labour, many were were tortured and executed.
Like I said, benignish. He took a third world basket case (which is what South Korea was up until his seizure of power) and set it on the way to becoming a first world economy.One of the most interesting mini-discourses I've read anywhere. I would only add that the 'mob' currently in charge of the polity of the House is actually a minority that has gamed the system.AladdinStardust -> Gunsarecivilrights , 15 Oct 2017 10:56which is exactly what the author did when her ill health meant that she no longer had medical insurance. Ain't life a bitch?OldTrombone , 15 Oct 2017 10:55Rainborough , 15 Oct 2017 10:55They also tried to keep ordinary people dependent on individual oligarchs for their economic survival, similar to how mob bosses in the movies have paternalistic relationships in their neighborhoods
Like Wine-stine? (Wine-stain?)
"Democracy is vulnerable to oligarchy because democrats focus so much on guaranteeing political equality that they overlook the indirect threat that emerges from economic inequality."ChesBay -> maddiemot , 15 Oct 2017 10:52No democrat with two working brain cells to rub together could honestly suppose that great concentrations of wealth, which necessarily confer political power on the wealthy class, can fail to undermine democracy. A capitalist democracy is an oxymoron and a delusion.
They admire the rich, and the lifestyles of the rich, although it is out of their reach.AveAtqueCave , 15 Oct 2017 10:51
They do not admire the wise, and the experienced.
They don't know who are their state and federal representatives.
They don't know the reason for the Civil War.
They don't know much about our history, our constitution, or anything about civics.
They don't know much about world history.
They don't read much, and are suspicious of education, and the properly educated.
They are easy marks for lies, and negative influence, because they never question.
They refuse to address, or even admit, their own irrational prejudices.
They don't vote, but they do plenty of complaining, and like to blame others for the problems of our nation.Good luck with that.FrankLittle -> barciad , 15 Oct 2017 10:45I do not think that benign or even benign(ish) suits the majority of the above e.g. Park Chung-hee sent thousands of homeless people to camps where they were used as slave labour, many were were tortured and executed.DammedOutraged , 15 Oct 2017 10:44Not sure how Carl Mannerheim gets to be on your list? He was appointed Military chief during the Finnish civil war and he was elected President of Finland
Oh you mean a bit like all those plebs going out and voting to wreck the EU oligarchy's vision as to whats best?vastariner , 15 Oct 2017 10:44StephenR45 -> TheWindsOfWinter93 , 15 Oct 2017 10:43At the same time, they sought to destroy monuments that were symbols of democratic success. Instead of public works projects, dedicated in the name of the people, they relied on what we can think of as philanthropy to sustain their power.
That was more because there was no income tax regime - something difficult to impose when there was no centralized collection from a single consistent professional government. So if the Athenian navy wanted a ship, it got a rich chap to pay for it. Rather than out of general taxation.Athens got rich on levies it imposed on its allies by way of protection money, which eventually collapsed in acrimony, but that's a different story.
You'll be first "over the top" then?Alfandomega -> timiengels , 15 Oct 2017 10:41Owen Jones ? ......a man of high minded principle and unblemishedsomebody_stopme , 15 Oct 2017 10:41
virtue . Don't think he would object to a spot of terror........in defence
of his liberal principles , of course..I guess we are seeing some of oligarchy break down. Many oligarchs support many socialist policies to avoid tension between classes. For eg: many rich support universal basic income and some even support single payer healthcare.imperium3 -> Sailor25 , 15 Oct 2017 10:41Kay Nixon , 15 Oct 2017 10:40You make a good point but in my wide but less than comprehensive knowledge of rapid development often occurrs in periods of oligarchy.
All those mills that drove the industrial revolution, created by oligarchy.
All those armies and aqueducts that drove the Roman Empire, created by oligarchy.
All those libraries and universities that drove Greek learning, funded by the oligarchy.
The great library of Alexandria, oligarchy.
OK, I'll concede that. Which makes for an interesting perspective on things overall, actually. One can see the advantage of an oligarchy - wealth and power is concentrated in few enough hands to achieve great things, but not so few that, like in a monarchy or dictatorship, the leader must spend most time and effort on keeping their power. Whereas a more equal democracy lacks the capacity to make bold steps or drive through unpopular new ideas. But this also means the oligarchs have the power to grind down those underneath them, and therefore in order to enjoy the fruits of that development, the oligarchy needs to be destroyed.
In other words, oligarchies deliver growth, democracies deliver prosperity. I would certainly not like to live under an oligarchy (assuming I'm not an oligarch) but it would be beneficial for a country to have had one in the past.
I have come to the conclusion that the oligarchy which rules the world are complete imbeciles who haven't a clue that the whole Neoliberal system they built in the 1970's is collapsing and they are clueless on how to handle it. Just because they are wealthy and greedy doesn't mean they are intelligent.J.K. Stevens -> TheResult , 15 Oct 2017 10:40In order to prevent the protests from going out over the airwaves Fox (sports) in all their 'logic' started excluding broadcast of the Anthem. Early on I said I would not watch any of these sporting events with, as you say, these jingoistic displays going out and Fox has obliged me but I wont say thanks.desertrat49 -> BayardDC , 15 Oct 2017 10:39Yes....Nothing in current affairs would surprise the ancient political philosophers who were students of real human nature ...and real history!yule620 , 15 Oct 2017 10:37Understanding Greece is not something you associate comfort with.desertrat49 -> DrPepperIsNotARealDr , 15 Oct 2017 10:36It serves as a relieve valve...just as it did in Ancient Greece and Rome.Obfusgator , 15 Oct 2017 10:36It's very simple really. The law system makes a complete mockery of democracy and the judiciary is comprised of a bunch of laissez-faire twits.desertrat49 -> TheResult , 15 Oct 2017 10:35The last recourse of scoundrels is patriotism!...always been thus because it always works...see H.L. Mencken et. al. !Postconventional -> SenseiTim , 15 Oct 2017 10:34Britain isn't different. Oligarchy is built into our system of governance, e.g. royals and house of lords. We even have special oligarch schools where children are sent to be educated for leadershipdesertrat49 -> zootsuitbeatnick , 15 Oct 2017 10:33You do not think the pomp and circumstance of Oligarchs, Monarchs and Military Dictators is without purpose or effect, do you?StephenR45 -> DolyGarcia , 15 Oct 2017 10:32Ban Keeping up with the Kardashians.Gunsarecivilrights -> ID059068 , 15 Oct 2017 10:31Or in other words, "I can't take care of myself, so I demand the government take money from others and give it to me!"maddiemot , 15 Oct 2017 10:31"An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy." - Thomas JeffersonEquilibriaJones -> Sailor25 , 15 Oct 2017 10:31We have Americans who don't know when the Civil War was fought, or even who won, but insist we must stand for the national anthem before a ballgame.
So much for 'the Land of the Free'.Saying life can only get better if we are all collectively greedy together is not a logical argument. Ask the polar bears.StephenR45 -> davshev , 15 Oct 2017 10:30It didn't start with Trump.Gunsarecivilrights -> DirDigIns , 15 Oct 2017 10:30More people need to read Atlas Shrugged.desertrat49 -> MarmaladeMog , 15 Oct 2017 10:30All of the wishful thinking is hugely naive.....they have not been studying the lessons of history.J.K. Stevens -> OldTrombone , 15 Oct 2017 10:29And in the older grades, they prescribe (hand out) adderall, CSN stimulants, like chiclets to help student study (cram) and with comprehensive test taking.desertrat49 -> DolyGarcia , 15 Oct 2017 10:28https://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/why-are-so-many-college-a_b_8331958.html
This is the rub.....and the mob does not value education while the rulers value propaganda. Notice the close association between Autocratic and Oligarchic systems and religion, historical mythology and hyper-patriotism!EquilibriaJones -> Sailor25 , 15 Oct 2017 10:28Or that's the evil of it. Economic inequality rises until people die. Like homeless on the streets, starving food banks, grenfell tower, waiting on hospital beds instead of famine and pitchfork wars.desertrat49 -> Crusty Crab , 15 Oct 2017 10:25
The idea is to progress and solve problems before they escalate to pitchfork wars. Praising grotesque inequality is not part of the solution, it's the cause of the problems.H. L. Mencken is a must read on this!Alfandomega -> Peter Martin , 15 Oct 2017 10:24Very remote possibility . I think you'll find their over inflated salariesSenseiTim , 15 Oct 2017 10:24
weigh more heavily in the balance than their " principles ".This article should be required reading for all Americans. I am posting a link to Twitter and Facebook to get as many Yank eyeballs on it as possible.desertrat49 -> Langsdorff , 15 Oct 2017 10:24What emerges from Plutocracy is Oligarchy...what emerges from Oligarchy is Autocracy. Autocracy is one form or another is the natural state of human society....all the others are ephemeral systems...or systems that disguise the actual Oligarchy or Autocracy!davshev , 15 Oct 2017 10:23The biggest contributor to America's plutocracy is our abysmally uninformed electorate.desertrat49 , 15 Oct 2017 10:20
HL Mencken knew this nearly a century ago when he said:
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."Just exactly when was it that "democracy defeated oligarchy in ancient Greece"?jessthecrip -> Elgrecoandros , 15 Oct 2017 10:18
What proportion of the population in Ancient Athens, for example, were actually citizens...and what proportion of those actually held the franchise?...I believe that you would find the numbers surprising!
Also ...when these (and other) writers speaks of Ancient Greece.....it is usually Athens that they are mythologizing....most the Ancient Greek world had little by way of representative government...let alone "Democracy"!No I wasn't. I already responded to you regarding this. To remind you, I saidOldTrombone , 15 Oct 2017 10:17I was not suggesting punishment for 'thought crime' or for expressing views, but for actions seriously damaging to our citizens.when people in positions of power take £28 billion (at least) off one of the most powerless and already impoverished groups in our country (disabled people), resulting in hundreds of suicides, enormous suffering, worsened isolation, serious lack of care support, and thousands dying soon after being found 'fit to work' (a situation the UN has described as a 'catastrophe') then I think it perfectly reasonable to favour some punishment for those politicians who inflicted such suffering on their fellow citizens
I have worked in several of the American rich's schools where they charge $30k per kid, families have 3-5 kids there, plus they donate another $30k per kid per year. These schools shame their $50k/year teachers into donating hundreds and thousands per year to their own schools in order to prompt further donations from parents, who expect the poor teachers to prove their fidelity to these rich kids by giving their own money to them. I have seen these schools' principals fire teachers who teach "how to change things". I have seen them promote teachers who teach absolutely nothing, because then the rich kids enjoy insulting and demeaning those teachers' weaknesses. I have heard rich $chool principals tell Harvard psychology lecturers that grade inflation is a marketplace necessity. I have seen rich principals tell school inspectors that the curriculum presented for verification is supplied by a currently-employed teacher (who was awfully bad at teaching) when in fact it was written and prepared by a teacher who had just been fired "for methodology problems"...davshev -> ID50611L , 15 Oct 2017 10:15American rich schools are the sickest schools on earth, even sicker than British boarders, even sicker than other countries' orphanages.
Yes, but we now have the consummate...emphasis on "con"...bullshit artist in the White House whose first order of business has been to discredit the media whenever it exposes him for what he truly is. Trump has thousands of people believing that any media story about him which is negative is "fake."Sailor25 -> JosephCamilleri , 15 Oct 2017 10:14Yes they did and in all those political systems there where rich bastards at the top making the decisions.RutherfordFHEA , 15 Oct 2017 10:13They may have been bastards but on balance they actually made some pretty good decisions.
In his book Culture Inc. , Herbert Schiller quoted a recent study on neoliberal deregulation in the US which began with the question:Sailor25 -> Dan2017 , 15 Oct 2017 10:13"Is deregulation... a strategy on the part of corporations to re-appropriate the power lost to democratic reforms of the mid-20th century?"
So you are in favour of populism?ID50611L -> debt2zero , 15 Oct 2017 10:12I consider populism an important part of the process as it creates a balance for oligarchy.
I would consider that the greedy big picture thinking of oligarchy drives growth while the greedy small picture thinking of the plebs (of which I am one) tries to get that growth more equally distributed.
Spot onMoonMoth -> Tenthred , 15 Oct 2017 10:10It is perhaps unlikely that a radical Athenian democrat from ancient Greece would recognise any current form of government as genuinely democratic.Dark Angel , 15 Oct 2017 10:10The cleverest way to maintain a long term oligarchy in these enlightened times might be to have an elective one, only dressed up as something like say a 'parliamentary democracy'. Luckily no-one has come up with this idea yet.
Exactly that is going on now - we have 'workers' and 'benefit scroungers', British against 'immigrants' who exactly are not immigrants as having legal rights to live in the UK (EU citizens), 'deserving' poor and 'undeserving' poor.Sailor25 -> Swoll Man , 15 Oct 2017 10:09
Divide and rule.
Without knowing the past, it is impossible to understand the true meaning of the present and the goals of the future.
It's so annoying that is has been so easy to manipulate with our society - Tories and UKIP say 'hate!' and people do as if they are trained animals - hate people on benefits, EU citizens, immigrants, asylum seekers, a conflict between Brexiters/Remainers...Laughing at the fact that you chose to write an insult rather than engage in debate.barciad -> FrankLittle , 15 Oct 2017 10:08Benign(ish) dictators of the 20th Century:-Sailor25 -> Boghaunter , 15 Oct 2017 10:07
Tito (Yugoslavia)
Carl Mannerheim (Finland)
Kemal Ataturk (Turkey)
Fidel Castro (Cuba)
Nasser (Egypt)
Park Chung-hee (South Korea)
Like I said, benign(ish). Each one the subject for a debate within themselves.There is always winners and losers but the worst loser in modern British society had a better standard of living than a winner of a century ago.Langsdorff , 15 Oct 2017 10:06The key to human development is driving sustainable progress not worrying about who losses out today.
Of course there must be balance because morally we must consider who loses our today. The question is how much do we hamstring the children of tomorrow to help the losers of today.
To war on the Oligarchs is to war on our own nature.whitman100 , 15 Oct 2017 10:03The super rich conservative oligarchy, currently running the UK, get away with it because enough of the British people vote against their own economic interest.GKB507 -> Giftshop , 15 Oct 2017 10:02Parents, for example, effectively vote for the food to be taken from their children's mouths, converted to cash and given in tax cuts to the super rich conservative elite so they can send their children to £30k a year private schools.
Political economy and political science should be compulsory in primary and secondary school so that the ripping-off of the British people is made obvious through education and ended through democratic revolution.
.. it's scary though.. automation will eliminate the economic support line for many, while companies like Google have eyes and ears in every household.JamesKeye -> webapalooza , 15 Oct 2017 10:02Definition of democracy: "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives." You are presenting an anti-Democratic party talking point, not an enlightened understanding of subtle political differences. Of course, the intention was a democracy in the USA, as compromised as it was and is. What we are not, and never have been, is an absolute direct democracy -- a form of governance appropriate only to small communities.dcroteau -> Hibernica , 15 Oct 2017 10:01Considering that "the people" are not that much more enlightened than they were in ancient Greece, yes it is the will of the people that allowed the US to become an oligarchy.KK47 , 15 Oct 2017 10:00Considering the voting turnout around 56%, that means that 44% decided that they didn't care whether or not their leader would be a good or a bad one.
That's more than 1 in 3 people who couldn't care less about the outcome of the elections.
So political apathy is the will of the people.
Oligarchs would fund the creation of a new building or the beautification of a public space.J.K. Stevens -> Peter Martin , 15 Oct 2017 10:00When I read this I think: why am I reminded of the words 'gentrification' and 'privately-owned public spaces'?
Excerpt from the above link:
the spread of pseudo-public space in London – large squares, parks and thoroughfares that appear to be public but are actually owned and controlled by developers and their private backersAnd I'm also reminded of Attlee's great words about the attitudes of oligarchs in general:
http://www.azquotes.com/quote/688837
Excerpt from the above link:
Charity is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim. - AttleeI know that it's just geography but it appears that the 'left coast (west coast) teams (players))' are taking a leadership role in this struggle. Unlike other professional sports systems, the NFL players are at a disadvantage in terms of career length and working conditions (eg, head injuries). I believe they're going to need some outside help (in whatever form) to be successful which doesn't give me hope. There are a bunch of chicken s____ outfits and power players out there at present that, as an example, allowed (contributed) the Executive Branch takeover by a Russian backed interloper.ID50611L -> Giftshop , 15 Oct 2017 09:58agree 100%Sailor25 -> imperium3 , 15 Oct 2017 09:58You make a good point but in my wide but less than comprehensive knowledge of rapid development often occurrs in periods of oligarchy.sparkle5nov -> FE Lang , 15 Oct 2017 09:58All those mills that drove the industrial revolution, created by oligarchy.
All those armies and aqueducts that drove the Roman Empire, created by oligarchy.
All those libraries and universities that drove Greek learning, funded by the oligarchy.
The great library of Alexandria, oligarchy.
I recognise that it takes a plebeian revolt now and again to get the wealth shared out fairly but the engine that drives the wealth so it can be shared often seem to be oligarchy.
Agree! I've been saying for years; cheap fast food, cheap ale and cheap television have replaced religion as the opiate of the people.ID50611L -> zootsuitbeatnick , 15 Oct 2017 09:57Trump is using the toolbox created by the Bush & Obama administrations.Crusty Crab , 15 Oct 2017 09:57A free educated and honest press may be the answer to a true democracy ?DolyGarcia -> Hector Hajnal , 15 Oct 2017 09:55And how do you keep the people informed and educated when the oligarchs control the media?ID50611L , 15 Oct 2017 09:54how is it, then, that the wealthy control so much of government? ...consequence of a lap dog media who lick the ass rather than expose and speak the truth to power elites.TheResult -> J.K. Stevens , 15 Oct 2017 09:53Now is the right time to ban the National AnthemW.a. Thomaston , 15 Oct 2017 09:50Brainwashing jingoist nonsense is a bandwagon platform for wet farts
The captured author/minions have obviously not had full access to the reading roomHector Hajnal , 15 Oct 2017 09:49
*And the secret writings of
Part of a small cache of loose leaf scrolls smuggled out of Alexandria before the fire
Last entrusted to a small elite 13th century band of chainsaw wielding warrior...
Comedy writing nunsIs about education, oligarchy wins to ignorant people. In order to have a healthy democracy the people must be informed and educated other wise oligarchies groups will inundate everything with cheap adds, will manipulate and will win control, methinksId1649 -> Sailor25 , 15 Oct 2017 09:45And all brought down when the elites forgot that they were only the top of a pyramid and that they ultimately relied on those below. We at the foot of the monolith can see that the oligarchs serve only themselves so no longer buy into their project. We see that it is one big club and we - unlike our political masters - ain't in it. So empires fall.MarmaladeMog , 15 Oct 2017 09:45Sitaraman's colleague sounds worryingly naive.Sailor25 -> EquilibriaJones , 15 Oct 2017 09:44True, perhaps that's the beauty of it.webapalooza , 15 Oct 2017 09:44The senators have to supply the bread and circuses the plebs want or out come the pitchforks.
The author demonstrates his ignorance of the American system of government. He uses the word "democracy" no less than 8 times, yet American is not a democracy and never has been a democracy. You will find no form of the word "democracy" in any of the founding documents. The Founding Fathers knew very well the dangers of democracies, and so they created the American government as a constitutional republic. Not once does the author mention that; I doubt he even knows what it means, let alone the difference.NoBets -> imipak , 15 Oct 2017 09:43If you're complaining because prices are (inevitably) regressive on the "poor" (however defined), what do you say to the obvious retort that this is indeed the main difference between being "poor", being comfortable, being affluent and being rich?FrankieOwen -> TheResult , 15 Oct 2017 09:38What is the point of working and earning if it isn't aimed at making oneself less "poor" or more affluent?
Dunno, doesnt appear that they do in the rough parts of Chicago.furryandrew -> Commem , 15 Oct 2017 09:38Or as Mayer Amschel Rothschild correctly summed up the situation in 1790 - "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws"Peter Martin -> J.K. Stevens , 15 Oct 2017 09:36What this article fails to draw our attention to , and they never do, is that private banks CREATE 97% of our entire money supply (look up "fractional reserve banking"). Whilst that remains the case the "oligarchy" will always have firm control over the rest of us.
Wonder what would happen if all players took a knee, if they all stood together then the owners would start to fret.nhickman -> TheWindsOfWinter93 , 15 Oct 2017 09:32There was a time when the deadliest military weapon was the longbow. It could only be handled by men who had been trained up since infancy.zootsuitbeatnick , 15 Oct 2017 09:32
It enabled the English to rout a numerically superior French force at Agincourt, 1415.
The notion that the early 15th century was a period of democratic government is an interesting reading of history.imoNewmacfan , 15 Oct 2017 09:30
In the US today, the oligarchy cannot win without an assist from a significant segment -- not necessarily a majority -- of the overall population.
9/11 taught us that many people are willing to give up freedoms for the myth of security.
The Trump presidency is teaching us that many people are willing to give up their voice -- democracy -- for the myth of returning to a perceived better way of life (group superiority over racial, gender, religious, etc equality) from some bygone era.
imoWe are currently experiencing a destabalisation of our nation and fellow Western Nations by the dominant Western Nation to try to halt the failure of this vastly endebted bigger brother......how do we stop this?J.K. Stevens , 15 Oct 2017 09:28On this NFL Sunday it is not hard to imagine the secret meetings that owners and/or their representatives had to coalesce against Kaepernick's 'taking a knee' to stop this form of protest in its tracks as a oligarchical institution. On Tuesday, when Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones declared that any player taking a knee would not play today, the circle of the objective to chill dissent was complete.TheLibrarianApe -> imperium3 , 15 Oct 2017 09:27And the plutocratic beat goes on.
Top post.DrPepperIsNotARealDr , 15 Oct 2017 09:26Democracy was always like this. What is that famous quote, by Earl Grey or Sandwich or someone, in Parliament, about allowing peasants to have the vote? "I do this, not to weaken our power, but to preserve it"FE Lang -> zippy200 , 15 Oct 2017 09:25Democracy in the UK and the US has always been a forum for the oligarchy to resolve their own disputes rather than rule for the people by the people. Brexit is an example, a referendum held essentially because of the split in conservative party.
And conservatives are going to save us all from done minded feel good policies of the left, is that it?BayardDC , 15 Oct 2017 09:21
Since the 80's American politics had swing do far to the right liberals are capitalists monied elites, but the right had an army of simple minded uneducated lemmings on thier side, people that will be against thier own personal interests because of 12th century religious horse spit or group think. Thier are more Right winners in State houses, leadership positions then ever before, they control the Congress, the courts, the Presidency and yet dolts like you still say the country is going in the wrong directions and listen to son misters tell you its the fault of the left. Somewhere in your reptilian brain you know this makes no sense, but you lack of depth, you inability to comprehend what you read or to shake free from the group think or right wing ideology will never let you understand that the bet people you vote in time after time are the very ones whom have sold your job to the Chinese, profited from your child's illnesses, war, chaos in some far off land.
Keeping voting Republicans, it's working out so well for you tailer, Nascar types...The article obfuscates a distinction laid out by Aristotle, in The Politics: aristocracy - rule by the few, focused on the common good; and oligarchy - rule by the few (wealthy), focused on their selfish good. He argues that aristocracy, rule by the best, inevitably turns into oligarchy, rule by the wealthy. In Aristotle's three forms of government - rule by one, by few, by many - the three legitimate forms (monarchy, aristocracy, polity) degenerate into their evils twins (tyranny, oligarchy, democracy). For Aristotle, Democracy was not a legitimate form of government, but a corrupted form: mob rule, we might call it. The US Constitution deliberately set out to create a mixed form of government: monarchy (president); aristocracy (Senate and Supreme Court); polity (House of Reps.). From the beginning, Americans have focused on the potential for our "monarch" (president) to turn into a tyrant: Trump is the poster child for a single executive ruling on his own, selfish behalf. We have been less aware of the fact that the Senate has become a simple oligarchy, while the House has degenerated into a bastion of deputies chosen by what Aristotle would have called democracy, that is, a corrupted form of rule by the many. Aristotle's citizens - those who rule and are ruled in turn - can constitute about 10% of the population; in today's US that would mean 20+ million people actively and continuously involved in politics (i.e., not simply showing up every four years to mark a ballot). Millions of Americans have long done such things, and political life remains active at the local level in many areas. On the national level, the Tea Party has shown how this level of enhanced involvement can transform politics, and has further shown that a coherent, organized minority can demolish what we think of as democratic norms. They are about to elect a Senator in Alabama who has twice been removed as a judge on the state's Supreme Court (an elective body), for violations of judicial norms. Here in the US, all three forms of our original government - monarchy, aristocracy, polity - have degenerated into their evil twins. Yes, the wealthy 1% will always game the system in their favor, but until we restore each of the parts of our forma mixta, we can never reduce their advantages to a level consonant with a decent form of society. Under W Bush, the oligarchs got the tax rates (above all on capital gains) reduced to their 1929 levels. That legislation had a time limit, and Obama chose not to continue it: indeed, he raised capital gains rates a further 3.8% [making the rate 23.8% as against the 15% of Bush]. Now, the two greatest goals of the oligarchs are a return to the 15% rate and the abolition of the estate tax, so all of the fantastically rich Baby Boomers (say, Sec'y of Commerce Ross, net worth $2.5 billion) can leave their wealth unencumbered to their heirs, solidifying the oligarchy's control. The Tea Party, through all the yahoos now in the House, can focus on creationism, climate change denial, immigration, etc., while the oligarchs quietly change the tax system to perpetuate their dominance. Over here, we are already in fiscal year 2018 (started on Oct 1), so tax changes would really go into effect in 2019, that is, after the mid-term election. If Mnuchen and Co. get their changes to capital gains rates and other technical loopholes aimed at the 0.1% [sic], and eliminate the estate tax, we'll know that the oligarchs have eliminated any barriers to their collective dictatorship.TheLibrarianApe -> Commem , 15 Oct 2017 09:20This is a blindingly excellent article.BlueberryMuffin -> zippy200 , 15 Oct 2017 09:17What's new is, like this article, we have the vocabulary to frame both the problem and the solution. Oligarchy is no longer inevitable and whilst the means of control are greater, the means for derogation are too and there are fewer oligarchs than plebs.
Its now easier to spot bad behaviour and harder to keep secrets. Oligarchs have to use force more often to hold into power and that tips their hand.
This article has left me (an avowed pessimist) feeling rather more optimistic.
Liberalism is about freedom. Personal and economic. Not about "proletariat solidarity" and totalitarian Marxist regimes.FE Lang -> GusDynamite , 15 Oct 2017 09:15They learned their lessons well after the 60's, the last time the people really raised up against the machine, so they have given us all the; junk food at a low cost, all the TV and mindless sexually charged entertainment, all the "debt wealth", a simple minded, unread, semi-literate, beer swilling fool could ever ask for. And we all gladly gobble it up and follow the crowd, for who wants to be on the outside looking in...Giftshop , 15 Oct 2017 09:12There is always a ruling elite because power is the wellspring of all human actions. There is also a certain moral consciousness that many people argue is innate in human nature, and that consciousness is fairness. The fairness instinct survives where ordinary human sympathy may fail. Based upon this basic morality of fairness those of us who are willing to take risks in the interest of fairness need to prune and tend the ruling elites as soon as possible. We proles need to act together.W.a. Thomaston -> awilson5280 , 15 Oct 2017 09:09Democracy is not enough and besides democracy we also need reason, facts,and fighting spirit.
As the inventor of the "hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica" once said: " you have a Republic if you can keep it"amwink -> awilson5280 , 15 Oct 2017 09:06Sparta was more than just militarism, and slavery was also practised in Athens, as well as in Rome and quite much everywhere else in the ancient world.logos00 -> apacheman , 15 Oct 2017 09:05Sparta did something that today's democracies have forgotten: it cared about protection of its citizens. That's the most elementary reason why a State exists, not to provide health or education.
Now, regarding a replacement, epistocracy has yet to be tried. And the same democracy, but with census suffrage, or via election of electors, who in turn elect the ones who will hold office, have worked quite well in many places, producing better politicians, less inclined to populism (take the Venetian Republic, for example).
richard160458 -> MattSpanner , 15 Oct 2017 09:05Waiting for the oligarchy to rot from within isn't what i would call a viable plan. Not when there is a far better and far more sure way to get the job done. Start with capping wealth accumulation.
One must have already broken, or at least sufficiently loosened, the oligarchic grip on politics to institute such a policy.
Here in the UK, things are the darkest they have been in my lifetime, including the Thatcher years, but we are in a moment of possibilities that can lead in opposite directions.
The author is surely right when he says
With all the upheaval in today's politics, it's hard not to think that this moment is one in which the future of the political system might be more up for grabs than it has been in generations.
Dominance of oligarchic political power, through neoliberalism, over the last four decades has effectively put such policies out of bounds.
We had a Labour government that won convincingly under Blair while declaring itself relaxed about the accumulation of great wealth.
And democracy failed after generations of poor decisions and warrichard160458 , 15 Oct 2017 09:02Greece had a long period of decline at the hands of democracy. Plato wrote his Republic as a protest, and to put forward an alternative. Eventually the romans took control.debt2zero , 15 Oct 2017 09:01There are indeed parallels with today but given the external challenges I for one believe that western society will be overtaken by q new set of rules.
Very good, interesting article. You know, every now & then this paper, for all it's faults, serves up an article that is quite enlightened/ing.GusDynamite , 15 Oct 2017 09:00The last one I recall was an article by Kenan Malik on identity politics . For what exists in this country, the UK, I have previously used the term "oligarchy by profession" ... meaning a pool of the usually upper half of the middle class, or a group in whom that group is disproportionally represented, who not only likely have a select education but who go on to become part of certain professions - accountants, lawyers, journalists, bankers, doctors etc. ... and of course, politicians tend to be drawn from these.
And revolving door arrangements is one of the ways this pool retains a certain cohesion, or as in the article "homogeneity in culture and values".
As for division, how many times have I read, "oh, we are so divided .. blah, blah", as though some journalists have an almost unconscious need to promote it.
Interesting article.
Bit too late, really. Not to mention it's super easy to take what they want while we're all so distracted by arguing about who is the most racist misogynist, defending ourselves from the accusations or applauding comic book movies. Apparently we're so distracted that we're also all genuinely shocked that Hollywood is rife with pedophilia and extreme sexual harassment as though it's some revelation that we didn't know already, but that's another conversation.PhilJoMar -> ConBrio , 15 Oct 2017 08:53If we're all so distracted then it's not difficult for our political 'representatives' -- I use that word very tentatively because they barely ever do -- to subject themselves to the oligarchs for a few scraps more than we have ourselves.
Maybe if we didn't bicker like kids we'd beat them.
Either you've not read the article attentively enough or your bias is irremediable. Limiting govt still leaves economic power and the tendency towards monopoly untouched. The genetic impulse you mention is a spurious concept in itself. If there were such a genetic impulse we would not have seen such a change as the major advances of women in the last half century. Culture is the key, much more than any genetic impulse, which is practically meaningless and so explains nothing.As wealth defense is so important to oligarchs, there is a constant pressure to cheat and break the law. One solution therefore is to apply the law but also to construct legislation with specific principles in mind. If the point of tax legislation is to contribute your share towards the general good then those who avoid and evade tax would be guilty of a technical breach but also a breach of the principle.
However our laws are skewed to allowing the wealthy to defend their wealth and so a party of the people is always needed. Always.
Lastly private schooling needs to be looked at. I mean FFS Eton has charitable status!
|
|
|
Oct 11, 2017 | www.unz.com
Originally from: The elites "have no credibility left" by Chris Hedges
But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It's really premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn't make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party.
This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country.
Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive.
The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions.
Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn't actually function as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater.
These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes.
... ... ...
DN: Let's come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation of this?
CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on "Celebrity Apprentice," has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque.
I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can't go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie.
The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced.
DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who pitch it to them.
CH: It's not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA The CIA wasn't buying the "weapons of mass destruction" hysteria.
DN: It goes the other way too?
CH: Sure. Because if you're trying to have access to a senior official, you'll constantly be putting in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see you, it's usually because they have something to sell you.
DN: The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the "left."
CH: Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left -- not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease.
If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this cartoonish vision of politics.
The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the "Red Scares" in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so that Cold War "liberals" equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch.
I've battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they're kind of poster children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down.
So Trump's not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with people who consider themselves part of the left.
The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't win prizes. You won't get grants. The New York Times , if they review your book, will turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it -- as he did with my last book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison!
Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors.
|
|
|
Oct 11, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
Since January, though, we've also seen a new level of rapaciousness by corporate interests in Washington DC that seem intent on extracting as much wealth as they can from wherever they can: consumers, investors, public lands, student borrowers, the tax code and even the war in Afghanistan.
Longtime watchers of the .01% won't be surprised by this bifurcated picture. For over two decades, an ever more educated wealthy elite has trumpeted its belief in tolerance, diversity, and meritocracy – even as it's also helped usher in record levels of inequality that have left many Americans feeling economically excluded and increasingly angry.
Trump's retrograde presidency has revealed the profound contradictions at the top of the US income ladder.
... ... ...
Corporate leaders have already been supportive of Trump's sweeping push to gut regulations in ways that would tilt the rules governing the economy more in favor of business and the wealthy. Social inclusion may be a growing public mantra of the far upper class. But economic extraction remains among its core operating principles.
... ... ...
Social inclusion is a public mantra of the upper class. But economic extraction remains a core operating principle
The answer is that many corporate and financial leaders were, and still are, a big part of the problem. These leaders have fostered the economic conditions that have thrown the values of tolerance and diversity on the defensive in America.
Business practices aimed at boosting shareholder value – like outsourcing, offshoring, automation, union-busting, predatory lending, and a range of anti-competitive abuses – have undermined the security of large swaths of the country. In turn, a flood of business dollars for campaign donations and lobbying over decades has helped thwart effective government responses to rising pain on Main Street.
... ... ...
History tells us that societies with extractive and self-serving upper classes tend to fall into decline – whereas societies with inclusive elites are more likely to thrive. With the rise of Trump, we're seeing what an unraveling of the social fabric looks like after decades in which nearly all the nation's income gains have flowed upwards to a tiny sliver of households.
Rarely has the American experiment – the notion of a country united by ideas rather than shared heritage – felt more fragile than it does right now. It's an ugly picture of division and resentment, but a predictable one given the economic trauma inflicted on millions of people over recent decades.
... ... ...
David Callahan is the author of The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age. He is the founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy
|
|
|
Oct 11, 2017 | www.unz.com
JackOH > , October 9, 2017 at 11:08 am GMT
alexander > , October 9, 2017 at 4:30 pm GMTI'm a moderate admirer of Chris Hedges, but he is really cooking in this interview. Too much to praise here, but his thinking that corporations, the mainstream media, and the academy can and do successfully "game" dissent by suppression, divide and conquer, co-optation, and so on, is spot on.
Anonymous > , Disclaimer October 10, 2017 at 4:10 am GMTI think this was an excellent discussion, and I would like to thank you both for having it, and sharing it.
Among the crises effecting the United States, the one effecting us most profoundly is the absence of any accountability for the crimes committed by our oligarchic class.
Addressing this issue is ground zero for any meaningful change.
If there is no accountability for their crimes , there will be no change.
Certainly the greatest among these crimes was(is) defrauding the nation into " a war of aggression". which, being the supreme international crime, should be met with harsh prison sentences for all who promoted it.
It is important for everyone to recognize just how much damage these policies have done to the country, not just in terms of our collective morale or our constitutional mandates,not just in terms of our international standing on universal principles of legality and justice, but our long term economic solvency as a nation.
The "exceptionalism" of our "war of aggression" elites has completely devastated our nation's balance sheet.
Since 9-11, our national debt has grown by a mind numbing "fourteen and a half trillion dollars".. nearly quadrupling since 1999.
This unconscionable level of "overspending" is unprecedented in human history.
Not one lawmaker, not one primetime pundit, nor one editorialist (of any major newspaper), has a CLUE how to deal with it.
Aside from the root atrocity in visiting mass murder on millions of innocents who never attacked us (and never intended to) which is a horrible crime in and of itself,
There is the profound crisis , in situ , of potentially demanding that 320 million Americans PAY FOR THE WARS OUR ELITES LIED US INTO .
This is where the rubber meets the road for our "war of aggression-ists ", gentlemen.
This is the "unanimous space" of our entire country's population on the issue of "no taxation without representation".
WHOSE assets should be made forfeit to pay for these wars .The DECEIVERS or the DECEIVED ?
Ask "The People" ..and you will find your answer .very fast.
No wonder our "elites" are terrified to discuss this .
Absolutely terrified.
jacques sheete > , October 11, 2017 at 11:20 am GMTNo wonder our "elites" are terrified to discuss this .
They're not terrified–they know full well that they don't have to discuss it. Control of the flow of information eliminates any such necessity.
We're right now in the consolidation phase, during which the last few remaining pockets of dissent are thoroughly vilified, rooted out, made illegal and worse: unthinkable.
The idiotic grievance warriors whom–to his credit–Mr Hedges identifies as such, are the verbal equivalent of the violent criminal shock troops with which the elites afflict us. The 'identity politics' they champion are an extremely useful cudgel in the endless divide-and-conquer strategy.
jacques sheete > , October 11, 2017 at 11:35 am GMTIt is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy.
That's cringe-worthy.
Transformation into an oligarchy? Transformation ??? I like Hedges' work, but such fundamental errors really taint what he sez.
The country was never transformed into an oligarchy; it began as one.
In fact, it was organized and functioned as a pluto-oligarchy right out of the box. In case anyone has the dimness to argue with me about it, all that shows is that you don't know JS about how the cornstitution was foisted on the rest of us by the plutoligarchs.
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for "
-Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIII, 1782 . ME 2:163
The Elites "Have No Credibility Left"
Guess what, boys and girls Why did they have any to begin with?
Where do people get their faith? WakeTF up, already!! (Yes, I'm losing it. Because even a duumbshit goy like myself can see it. Where are all you bright bulb know-it-alls with all the flippin answers???)
jacques sheete > , October 11, 2017 at 12:08 pm GMTNewspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call "objectivity" and "balance," formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the truth.
It's amazing that here we are, self-anointed geniuses and dumbos alike, puttering around in the 21st century, and someone feels the necessity to point that out. And he's right; it needs to be pointed out. Drummed into our skulls in fact.
Arrrgggghhhh!!! Jefferson again.:
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.
Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 14 June 1807
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html
More deja vu all over again and again. Note the date.:
"This is a story of a powerful and wealthy newspaper having enormous influence And never a day out of more than ten thousand days that this newspaper has not subtly and cunningly distort the news of the world in the interest of special privilege. "
Upton Sinclair, "The crimes of the "Times" : a test of newspaper decency," pamphlet, 1921
https://archive.org/stream/crimesofthetimes00sincrich/crimesofthetimes00sincrich
jacques sheete > , October 11, 2017 at 2:35 pm GMTI find it most fascinating that none of what Hedges says is news, but even UR readers probably think it is. Here's an antidote to that idea.
The following quote is from Eugene Kelly who's excoriating government press releases but the criticism applies as well to the resulting press reports. I found the whole article striking.:
Any boob can deduce, a priori, what type of "news" is contained in this rubbish.
-Eugene A. Kelly, Distorting the News, The American Mercury, March 1935 , pp. 307-318
http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury/
I'd like good evidence that the situation has improved since then. Good luck.
The Elites "Have No Credibility Left"
Who thinks they had any to begin with? The quote, below, is almost 2000 years old
Apollo, too, who pretends to be so clever, with his bow and his lyre and his medicine and his prophecies; those oracle-shops that he has opened at Delphi, and Clarus, and Dindyma, are a cheat; he takes good care to be on the safe side by giving ambiguous answers that no one can understand, and makes money out of it, for there are plenty of fools who like being imposed upon,–but sensible people know well enough that most of it is clap-trap
Leto. Oh, of course; my children are butchers and impostors. I know how you hate the sight of them.
-Lucian of Samosata, DIALOGUES OF THE GODS, XVI, ~150AD
|
|
|
Oct 05, 2017 | www.unz.com
Billionaires in the commercial conglomerates, like Walmart, exploit workers by paying poverty wages and providing few, if any, benefits. Walmart earns $16 billion dollar a year in profits by paying its workers between $10 and $13 an hour and relying on state and federal assistance to provide services to the families of its impoverished workers through Medicaid and food stamps. Amazon plutocrat Jeff Bezos exploits workers by paying $12.50 an hour while he has accumulated over $80 billion dollars in profits. UPS CEO David Albany takes $11 million a year by exploiting workers at $11 an hour. Federal Express CEO, Fred Smith gets $16 million and pays workers $11 an hour.
Inequality is not a result of 'technology' and 'education'- contemporary euphemisms for the ruling class cult of superiority – as liberals and conservative economists and journalists like to claim. Inequalities are a result of low wages, based on big profits, financial swindles, multi-trillion dollar public handouts and multi-billion-dollar tax evasion. The ruling class has mastered the 'technology' of exploiting the state, through its pillage of the treasury, and the working class. Capitalist exploitation of low paid production workers provides additional billions for the 'philanthropic' billionaire family foundations to polish their public image – using another tax avoidance gimmick – self-glorifying 'donations'.
Workers pay disproportional taxes for education, health, social and public services and subsidies for billionaires.
Billionaires in the arms industry and security/mercenary conglomerates receive over $700 billion dollars from the federal budget, while over 100 million US workers lack adequate health care and their children are warehoused in deteriorating schools.
Workers and Bosses: Mortality Rates
Billionaires and multi-millionaires and their families enjoy longer and healthier lives than their workers. They have no need for health insurance policies or public hospitals. CEO's live on average ten years longer than a worker and enjoy twenty years more of healthy and pain-free lives.
Private, exclusive clinics and top medical care include the most advanced treatment and safe and proven medication which allow billionaires and their family members to live longer and healthier lives. The quality of their medical care and the qualifications of their medical providers present a stark contrast to the health care apartheid that characterizes the rest of the United States.
Workers are treated and mistreated by the health system: They have inadequate and often incompetent medical treatment, cursory examinations by inexperienced medical assistants and end up victims of the widespread over-prescription of highly addictive narcotics and other medications. Over-prescription of narcotics by incompetent 'providers' has significantly contributed to the rise in premature deaths among workers, spiraling cases of opiate overdose, disability due to addiction and descent into poverty and homelessness. These irresponsible practices have made additional billions of dollars in profits for the insurance corporate elite, who can cut their pensions and health care liabilities as injured, disabled and addicted workers drop out of the system or die.
The shortened life expectancy for workers and their family members is celebrated on Wall Street and in the financial press. Over 560,000 workers were killed by opioids between 1999-2015 contributing to the decline in life expectancy for working age wage and salary earners and reduced pension liabilities for Wall Street and the Social Security Administration.
Inequalities are cumulative, inter-generational and multi-sectorial.
Billionaire families, their children and grandchildren, inherit and invest billions. They have privileged access to the most prestigious schools and medical facilities, and conveniently fall in love to equally privileged, well-connected mates to join their fortunes and form even greater financial empires. Their wealth buys favorable, even fawning, mass media coverage and the services of the most influential lawyers and accountants to cover their swindles and tax evasion.
Billionaires hire innovators and sweat shop MBA managers to devise more ways to slash wages, increase productivity and ensure that inequalities widen even further. Billionaires do not have to be the brightest or most innovative people: Such individuals can simply be bought or imported on the 'free market' and discarded at will.
Billionaires have bought out or formed joint ventures with each other, creating interlocking directorates. Banks, IT, factories, warehouses, food and appliance, pharmaceuticals and hospitals are linked directly to political elites who slither through doors of rotating appointments within the IMF, the World Bank, Treasury, Wall Street banks and prestigious law firms.
Consequences of Inequalities
First and foremost, billionaires and their political, legal and corporate associates dominate the political parties. They designate the leaders and key appointees, thus ensuring that budgets and policies will increase their profits, erode social benefits for the masses and weaken the political power of popular organizations .
Secondly, the burden of the economic crisis is shifted on to the workers who are fired and later re-hired as part-time, contingent labor. Public bailouts, provided by the taxpayer, are channeled to the billionaires under the doctrine that Wall Street banks are too big to fail and workers are too weak to defend their wages, jobs and living standards.
Billionaires buy political elites, who appoint the World Bank and IMF officials tasked with instituting policies to freeze or reduce wages, slash corporate and public health care obligations and increase profits by privatizing public enterprises and facilitating corporate relocation to low wage, low tax countries.
As a result, wage and salary workers are less organized and less influential; they work longer and for less pay, suffer greater workplace insecurity and injuries – physical and mental – fall into decline and disability, drop out of the system, die earlier and poorer, and, in the process, provide unimaginable profits for the billionaire class . Even their addiction and deaths provide opportunities for huge profit – as the Sackler Family, manufacturers of Oxycontin, can attest.
The billionaires and their political acolytes argue that deeper regressive taxation would increase investments and jobs. The data speaks otherwise. The bulk of repatriated profits are directed to buy back stock to increase dividends for investors; they are not invested in the productive economy. Lower taxes and greater profits for conglomerates means more buy-outs and greater outflows to low wage countries. In real terms taxes are already less than half the headline rate and are a major factor heightening the concentration of income and power – both cause and effect.
Corporate elites, the billionaires in the Silicon Valley-Wall Street global complex are relatively satisfied that their cherished inequalities are guaranteed and expanding under the Demo-Republican Presidents- as the 'good times' roll on.
Away from the 'billionaire elite', the 'outsiders' – domestic capitalists – clamor for greater public investment in infrastructure to expand the domestic economy, lower taxes to increase profits, and state subsidies to increase the training of the labor force while reducing funds for health care and public education. They are oblivious to the contradiction.
In other words, the capitalist class as a whole, globalist and domestic alike, pursues the same regressive policies, promoting inequalities while struggling over shares of the profits. One hundred and fifty million wage and salaried taxpayers are excluded from the political and social decisions that directly affect their income, employment, rates of taxation, and political representation. They understand, or at least experience, how the class system works. Most workers know about the injustice of the fake 'free trade' agreements and regressive tax regime, which weighs heavy on the majority of wage and salary earners.
However, worker hostility and despair is directed against 'immigrants' and against the 'liberals' who have backed the import of cheap skilled and semi-skilled labor under the guise of 'freedom'. This 'politically correct' image of imported labor covers up a policy, which has served to lower wages, benefits and living standards for American workers, whether they are in technology, construction or production. Rich conservatives, on the other hand, oppose immigration under the guise of 'law and order' and to lower social expenditures – despite that fact that they all use imported nannies, tutors, nurses, doctors and gardeners to service their families. Their servants can always be deported when convenient.
The pro and anti-immigrant issue avoids the root cause for the economic exploitation and social degradation of the working class – the billionaire owners operating in alliance with the political elite.
In order to reverse the regressive tax practices and tax evasion, the low wage cycle and the spiraling death rates resulting from narcotics and other preventable causes, which profit insurance companies and pharmaceutical billionaires, class alliances need to be forged linking workers, consumers, pensioners, students, the disabled, the foreclosed homeowners, evicted tenants, debtors, the under-employed and immigrants as a unified political force.
Sooner said than done, but never tried! Everything and everyone is at stake: life, health and happiness.
conatus > , October 5, 2017 at 9:02 am GMT
jacques sheete > , October 5, 2017 at 2:29 pm GMTRonald Reagan can be blamed for the excess of billionaires we now have. His lauding of the entrepreneurial spirit and how we are all brave individual risk takers makes it seem you are an envious chickensh$t if you advocate against unlimited assets.
But even Warren Buffet has come out for the estate tax saying something like now the Forbes 400 now possesses total assets of 2.5 trillion in a 20 trillion economy when 40 years ago they totaled in the millions. The legal rule against perpetuities generally used to limit trusts to a lifetime of 100 years, now some states offer 1000 year trusts which will only concretize an outlandishly high Gini coefficient(a measure of income inequality).
The rationale for lowering taxes and the untouchable rich is usually the trickle down theory but, as one of these billionaires said, "How many pairs of pants can I buy?" It takes 274 years spending 10,000 a day to spend a billion dollars.
Better Henry Ford's virtuous circle than Ronald Reagan's entrepreneur.
Ban all billionaires. Bring back the union label. Otherwise .. what do we have to lose?advancedatheist > , October 5, 2017 at 2:53 pm GMT@Wally "According to the US Internal Revenue Service, billionaire tax evasion amounts to $458 billion dollars in lost public revenues every year – almost a trillion dollars every two years by this conservative estimate."
No, it's $458 billion that the government has not managed to steal.
https://www.ronpaul.com/taxes/
https://youtu.be/qI5lC4Z_T80
An income tax is the most degrading and totalitarian of all possible taxes. Its implementation wrongly suggests that the government owns the lives and labor of the citizens it is supposed to represent.Tellingly, "a heavy progressive or graduated income tax" is Plank #2 of the Communist Manifesto, which was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and first published in 1848.
To provide funding for the federal government, Ron Paul supports excise taxes, non-protectionist tariffs, massive cuts in spending"We could eliminate the income tax, replace it with nothing, and still fund the same level of big government we had in the late 1990s. We don't need to "replace" the income tax at all. I see a consumption tax as being a little better than the personal income tax, and I would vote for the Fair-Tax if it came up in the House of Representatives, but it is not my goal. We can do better."
No, it's $458 billion that the government has not managed to steal.
There was a time that I would have agreed with that, and technically still get the point, but what it really means is that the government merely allows the corporations which they favor, subsidize, and bail out to keep the chump change they've stolen from the workers, besides that which the government steals from the workers and hands to the corporations.
Corporations and government work hand in hand to fleece the herd and most of the herd apparently think it's just fine.
Never forget that thanks to government, corporations socialize risk while privatizing profit. They are partners in gangsterism.
anonymous > , Disclaimer October 5, 2017 at 3:05 pm GMTPrivate, exclusive clinics and top medical care include the most advanced treatment and safe and proven medication which allow billionaires and their family members to live longer and healthier lives.
Sorry, I don't buy the notion that billionaires have access to some super-healthcare that the rest of us don't know about. In the real world rich people notoriously waste a lot of money on quackery, like the current fad of receiving plasma transfusions from young people as a phony "anti-aging" treatment.
More likely the kinds of men who become billionaires just enjoy better health and longevity for genetic reasons. They tend to have higher IQ's, for example, and some scientists think that IQ correlates with "system integrity" in their bodies which just make higher IQ people more resilient. Look up the growing body of research on cognitive epidemiology.
MarkinLA > , October 5, 2017 at 3:29 pm GMTI'm disappointed there was no mention of the "Billionaires" use of social media. They've always controlled the press of course: startin' wars, hatin' on those guys, gettin' the blood up, jailin' the 'bad guys', preaching an empty delusion of social justice propaganda, payin' Ken Burns to propagandize and put a new coat of paint on the industrial scale killing of Vietnam. Probably just in time for more violence.
Let's face it, many of the workin' stiff will blow a hedge fund manager and kneel before the so-called free market corpse of Sam Walton but most importantly they'll grab their guns outa' patriotic fervor and social media will be right there with 'em. "I love Elon Musk!"
It's a great thing we're watched and datamined for our own good – information is how billionaires became billionaires along with a lot of help from the Government they usually encourage you to dislike. Keep posting!
Rich conservatives, on the other hand, oppose immigration under the guise of 'law and order' and to lower social expenditures – despite that fact that they all use imported nannies, tutors, nurses, doctors and gardeners to service their families. Their servants can always be deported when convenient.
BZZZZ – wrong. Rich conservative support massive immigration so they can get cheap labor while simutaneously virtue signaling. I thought you just got done sayiong they don't pay for the costs of the working poor? The middle class is who is against immigratioin. They bear the burden and pay the taxes that support it.
|
|
|
Sep 15, 2017 | www.unz.com
Anonymous, Disclaimer September 15, 2017 at 8:22 am GMT
This is their starting position: It is a hoax until proven otherwise.If it's turned out to be a hoax the last 20x it happened, why would you insist on starting at the opposite end? Seems inefficient, no?What is perhaps even more inefficient on the part of Dinh and Revusky is to go interminably 'round and 'round this spot. Ok, we know that the narratives elites feed their subjects are invariably false. They have to be, or they wouldn't work. Twas ever thus.
The narratives are, after all not intended to reveal any truths, but to get their subjects to do something the elites want them to do, and in the course their doing it, to cement the elites' power. Subjects, being what they are, have fallen for lies since the Pharoahs told whoppers to get their peasants to invest in pyramids, or the Archdruids got their's to die hauling and arranging 20T rocks on a dreary plain.
As long as a subject can internalize the narrative and live his life as if it was true, that's good enough for him. He simply doesn't need, or even want more truth than that. He never has, and he never will. Elites have known this since the dawn of the Neolithic, maybe earlier. That's what made them elites. Nothing else.
Much more interesting is what happens when narratives break down, which is why Dinh's vignettes from the fraying seams of the American Narrative are more fascinating than these half-baked, pseudo-forensic analyses of "terror events". Maybe he thinks too many people still believe these bugaboos and should be brought around to enlightenment. That's as may be, but one wonders whether he understands that if enough people "come around", the forces unleashed are far more disruptive than when they accept, if not believe, the lies.
As long as a subject can internalize the narrative and live his life as if it was true, that's good enough for him. He simply doesn't need, or even want more truth than that. He never has, and he never will. Elites have known this since the dawn of the Neolithic, maybe earlier. That's what made them elites. Nothing else.
In other words, society has always been divided into two classes: those who write the script, and those who live it; the programmers and the users.
What's gone wrong? Are too many people finding the root shell?
|
|
|
Sep 16, 2017 | www.unz.com
Introduction
Clearly the US has escalated the pivotal role of the military in the making of foreign and, by extension, domestic policy. The rise of ' the Generals' to strategic positions in the Trump regime is evident, deepening its role as a highly autonomous force determining US strategic policy agendas.
In this paper we will discuss the advantages that the military elite accumulate from the war agenda and the reasons why ' the Generals' have been able to impose their definition of international realities.
We will discuss the military's ascendancy over Trump's civilian regime as a result of the relentless degradation of his presidency by his political opposition.
The Prelude to Militarization: Obama's Multi-War Strategy and Its Aftermath
The central role of the military in deciding US foreign policy has its roots in the strategic decisions taken during the Obama-Clinton Presidency. Several policies were decisive in the rise of unprecedented military-political power.
The massive increase of US troops in Afghanistan and their subsequent failures and retreat weakened the Obama-Clinton regime and increased animosity between the military and the Obama's Administration. As a result of his failures, Obama downgraded the military and weakened Presidential authority. The massive US-led bombing and destruction of Libya, the overthrow of the Gadhafi government and the failure of the Obama-Clinton administration to impose a puppet regime, underlined the limitations of US air power and the ineffectiveness of US political-military intervention. The Presidency blundered in its foreign policy in North Africa and demonstrated its military ineptness. The invasion of Syria by US-funded mercenaries and terrorists committed the US to an unreliable ally in a losing war. This led to a reduction in the military budget and encouraged the Generals to view their direct control of overseas wars and foreign policy as the only guarantee of their positions. The US military intervention in Iraq was only a secondary contributing factor in the defeat of ISIS; the major actors and beneficiaries were Iran and the allied Iraqi Shia militias. The Obama-Clinton engineered coup and power grab in the Ukraine brought a corrupt incompetent military junta to power in Kiev and provoked the secession of the Crimea (to Russia) and Eastern Ukraine (allied with Russia). The Generals were sidelined and found that they had tied themselves to Ukrainian kleptocrats while dangerously increasing political tensions with Russia. The Obama regime dictated economic sanctions against Moscow, designed to compensate for their ignominious military-political failures.The Obama-Clinton legacy facing Trump was built around a three-legged stool: an international order based on military aggression and confrontation with Russia; a ' pivot to Asia' defined as the military encirclement and economic isolation of China – via bellicose threats and economic sanctions against North Korea; and the use of the military as the praetorian guards of free trade agreements in Asia excluding China.
The Obama 'legacy' consists of an international order of globalized capital and multiple wars. The continuity of Obama's 'glorious legacy' initially depended on the election of Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump's presidential campaign, for its part, promised to dismantle or drastically revise the Obama Doctrine of an international order based on multiple wars , neo-colonial 'nation' building and free trade. A furious Obama 'informed' (threatened) the newly-elected President Trump that he would face the combined hostility of the entire State apparatus, Wall Street and the mass media if he proceeded to fulfill his election promises of economic nationalism and thus undermine the US-centered global order.
Trump's bid to shift from Obama's sanctions and military confrontation to economic reconciliation with Russia was countered by a hornet's nest of accusations about a Trump-Russian electoral conspiracy, darkly hinting at treason and show trials against his close allies and even family members.
The concoction of a Trump-Russia plot was only the first step toward a total war on the new president, but it succeeded in undermining Trump's economic nationalist agenda and his efforts to change Obama's global order.
Trump Under Obama's International Order
After only 8 months in office President Trump helplessly gave into the firings, resignations and humiliation of each and every one of his civilian appointees, especially those who were committed to reverse Obama's 'international order'.
Trump was elected to replace wars, sanctions and interventions with economic deals beneficial to the American working and middle class. This would include withdrawing the military from its long-term commitments to budget-busting 'nation-building' (occupation) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and other Obama-designated endless war zones.
Trump's military priorities were supposed to focus on strengthening domestic frontiers and overseas markets. He started by demanding that NATO partners pay for their own military defense responsibilities. Obama's globalists in both political parties were aghast that the US might lose it overwhelming control of NATO; they united and moved immediately to strip Trump of his economic nationalist allies and their programs.
Trump quickly capitulated and fell into line with Obama's international order, except for one proviso – he would select the Cabinet to implement the old/new international order.
A hamstrung Trump chose a military cohort of Generals, led by General James Mattis (famously nicknamed ' Mad Dog' ) as Defense Secretary.
The Generals effectively took over the Presidency. Trump abdicated his responsibilities as President.
General Mattis: The Militarization of America
General Mattis took up the Obama legacy of global militarization and added his own nuances, including the 'psychological-warfare' embedded in Trump's emotional ejaculations on 'Twitter'.
The ' Mattis Doctrine' combined high-risk threats with aggressive provocations, bringing the US (and the world) to the brink of nuclear war.
General Mattis has adopted the targets and fields of operations, defined by the previous Obama administration as it has sought to re-enforce the existing imperialist international order.
The junta's policies relied on provocations and threats against Russia, with expanded economic sanctions. Mattis threw more fuel on the US mass media's already hysterical anti-Russian bonfire. The General promoted a strategy of low intensity diplomatic thuggery, including the unprecedented seizure and invasion of Russian diplomatic offices and the short-notice expulsion of diplomats and consular staff.
These military threats and acts of diplomatic intimidation signified that the Generals' Administration under the Puppet President Trump was ready to sunder diplomatic relations with a major world nuclear power and indeed push the world to direct nuclear confrontation.
What Mattis seeks in these mad fits of aggression is nothing less than capitulation on the part of the Russian government regarding long held US military objectives – namely the partition of Syria (which started under Obama), harsh starvation sanctions on North Korea (which began under Clinton) and the disarmament of Iran (Tel Aviv's main goal) in preparation for its dismemberment.
The Mattis junta occupying the Trump White House heightened its threats against a North Korea, which (in Vladimir Putin's words) ' would rather eat grass than disarm' . The US mass media-military megaphones portrayed the North Korean victims of US sanctions and provocations as an 'existential' threat to the US mainland.
Sanctions have intensified. The stationing of nuclear weapons on South Korea is being pushed. Massive joint military exercises are planned and ongoing in the air, sea and land around North Korea. Mattis twisted Chinese arms (mainly business comprador-linked bureaucrats) and secured their UN Security Council vote on increased sanctions. Russia joined the Mattis-led anti-Pyongyang chorus, even as Putin warned of sanctions ineffectiveness! (As if General ' Mad Dog' Mattis would ever take Putin's advice seriously, especially after Russia voted for the sanctions!)
Mattis further militarized the Persian Gulf, following Obama's policy of partial sanctions and bellicose provocation against Iran.
When he worked for Obama, Mattis increased US arms shipments to the US's Syrian terrorists and Ukrainian puppets, ensuring the US would be able to scuttle any ' negotiated settlements' .
Militarization: An Evaluation
Trump's resort to ' his Generals' is supposed to counter any attacks from members of his own party and Congressional Democrats about his foreign policy. Trump's appointment of ' Mad Dog' Mattis, a notorious Russophobe and warmonger, has somewhat pacified the opposition in Congress and undercut any 'finding' of an election conspiracy between Trump and Moscow dug up by the Special Investigator Robert Mueller. Trump's maintains a role as nominal President by adapting to what Obama warned him was ' their international order' – now directed by an unelected military junta composed of Obama holdovers!
The Generals provide a veneer of legitimacy to the Trump regime (especially for the warmongering Obama Democrats and the mass media). However, handing presidential powers over to ' Mad Dog' Mattis and his cohort will come with a heavy price.
While the military junta may protect Trump's foreign policy flank, it does not lessen the attacks on his domestic agenda. Moreover, Trump's proposed budget compromise with the Democrats has enraged his own Party's leaders.
In sum, under a weakened President Trump, the militarization of the White House benefits the military junta and enlarges their power. The ' Mad Dog' Mattis program has had mixed results, at least in its initial phase: The junta's threats to launch a pre-emptive (possibly nuclear) war against North Korea have strengthened Pyongyang's commitment to develop and refine its long and medium range ballistic missile capability and nuclear weapons. Brinksmanship failed to intimidate North Korea. Mattis cannot impose the Clinton-Bush-Obama doctrine of disarming countries (like Libya and Iraq) of their advanced defensive weapons systems as a prelude to a US 'regime change' invasion.
Any US attack against North Korea will lead to massive retaliatory strikes costing tens of thousands of US military lives and will kill and maim millions of civilians in South Korea and Japan.
At most, ' Mad Dog' managed to intimidate Chinese and Russian officials (and their export business billionaire buddies) to agree to more economic sanctions against North Korea. Mattis and his allies in the UN and White House, the loony Nikki Hailey and a miniaturized President Trump, may bellow war – yet they cannot apply the so-called 'military option' without threatening the US military forces stationed throughout the Asia Pacific region.
The Mad Dog Mattis assault on the Russian embassy did not materially weaken Russia, but it has revealed the uselessness of Moscow's conciliatory diplomacy toward their so-called 'partners' in the Trump regime.
The end-result might lead to a formal break in diplomatic ties, which would increase the danger of a military confrontation and a global nuclear holocaust.
The military junta is pressuring China against North Korea with the goal of isolating the ruling regime in Pyongyang and increasing the US military encirclement of Beijing. Mad Dog has partially succeeded in turning China against North Korea while securing its advanced THADD anti-missile installations in South Korea, which will be directed against Beijing. These are Mattis' short-term gains over the excessively pliant Chinese bureaucrats. However, if Mad Dog intensifies direct military threats against China, Beijing can retaliate by dumping tens of billions of US Treasury notes, cutting trade ties, sowing chaos in the US economy and setting Wall Street against the Pentagon.
Mad Dog's military build-up, especially in Afghanistan and in the Middle East, will not intimidate Iran nor add to any military successes. They entail high costs and low returns, as Obama realized after the better part of a decade of his defeats, fiascos and multi-billion dollar losses.
Conclusion
The militarization of US foreign policy, the establishment of a military junta within the Trump Administration, and the resort to nuclear brinksmanship has not changed the global balance of power.
Domestically Trump's nominal Presidency relies on militarists, like General Mattis. Mattis has tightened the US control over NATO allies, and even rounded up stray European outliers, like Sweden, to join in a military crusade against Russia. Mattis has played on the media's passion for bellicose headlines and its adulation of Four Star Generals.
But for all that – North Korea remains undaunted because it can retaliate. Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons and remains a counterweight to a US-dominated globe. China owns the US Treasury and its unimpressed, despite the presence of an increasingly collision-prone US Navy swarming throughout the South China Sea.
Mad Dog laps up the media attention, with well dressed, scrupulously manicured journalists hanging on his every bloodthirsty pronouncement. War contractors flock to him, like flies to carrion. The Four Star General 'Mad Dog' Mattis has attained Presidential status without winning any election victory (fake or otherwise). No doubt when he steps down, Mattis will be the most eagerly courted board member or senior consultant for giant military contractors in US history, receiving lucrative fees for half hour 'pep-talks' and ensuring the fat perks of nepotism for his family's next three generations. Mad Dog may even run for office, as Senator or even President for whatever Party.
The militarization of US foreign policy provides some important lessons:
First of all, the escalation from threats to war does not succeed in disarming adversaries who possess the capacity to retaliate. Intimidation via sanctions can succeed in imposing significant economic pain on oil export-dependent regimes, but not on hardened, self-sufficient or highly diversified economies.
Low intensity multi-lateral war maneuvers reinforce US-led alliances, but they also convince opponents to increase their military preparedness. Mid-level intense wars against non-nuclear adversaries can seize capital cities, as in Iraq, but the occupier faces long-term costly wars of attrition that can undermine military morale, provoke domestic unrest and heighten budget deficits. And they create millions of refugees.
High intensity military brinksmanship carries major risk of massive losses in lives, allies, territory and piles of radiated ashes – a pyrrhic victory!
In sum:
Threats and intimidation succeed only against conciliatory adversaries. Undiplomatic verbal thuggery can arouse the spirit of the bully and some of its allies, but it has little chance of convincing its adversaries to capitulate. The US policy of worldwide militarization over-extends the US armed forces and has not led to any permanent military gains.
Are there any voices among clear-thinking US military leaders, those not bedazzled by their stars and idiotic admirers in the US media, who could push for more global accommodation and mutual respect among nations? The US Congress and the corrupt media are demonstrably incapable of evaluating past disasters, let alone forging an effective response to new global realities.
Raffler > , September 15, 2017 at 2:25 pm GMT
Parbes > , September 15, 2017 at 6:34 pm GMTAmerican actions in Europe, Asia and the middle east appear increasingly irrational to many international observers. Their policy thrusts are excused as containment of evildoers or punishment of peoples who think and act differently. Those policy thrusts will accomplish the opposite of the stated intention. They will drive into a new detente such incompatible parties as Russia and Iran, or China and many countries. America risks losing its way in the world and free peoples see a flickering beacon that once shone brighter.
peterAUS > , September 15, 2017 at 10:06 pm GMTAn excellent truthful exposition of what has really been going on and a great essay by James Petras. Kudos.
nsa > , September 16, 2017 at 4:03 am GMTStopped reading at
embedded in Trump's emotional ejaculations on 'Twitter'.
Priss Factor > , Website September 16, 2017 at 4:38 am GMTAnyone with military experience recognizes the likes of Mad Poodle Mattis arrogant, belligerent, exceptionally dull, and mainly an inveterate suck-up (mil motto: kiss up and kick down). Every VFW lounge is filled with these boozy ridiculous blowhards and they are insufferable. The media and public, raised on ZioVision and JooieWood pablum, worship these cartoonish bloodletters even though they haven't won a war in 72 years .not one. How about this comic book tough guy quote: "I'm pleading with you with tears in my eyes: if you fuck with me, I'll kill you all" notice the first person used repetitively as he talks down to hapless unarmed tribesman in some distant land. A real egomaniacal narcissistic coward. Any of you with military experience would immediately recognize the type ..
NoseytheDuke > , September 16, 2017 at 7:26 am GMTRelevant to now
anonymous > , Disclaimer September 16, 2017 at 12:27 pm GMT@peterAUS Back to watching Game of Thrones then? Good for you.
Apart from some very minor mistakes that should have been fixed with proofreading, this is an excellent account of the situation.
KA > , September 16, 2017 at 3:24 pm GMT@NoseytheDuke I'm the commenter who complained about the poor quality of the last Petras article. This one isn't as deficient in that respect, but still would benefit from another review for misplaced/missing punctuation, etc. The redundancy is also annoying -- a well written "Conclusion" wouldn't end with a two paragraph coda. If the author wants to convince his reader, then he should spend more time on his craft or seek editorial assistance.
To commenter "Wally":
You may still feel compelled to play wingman, but my criticisms do not concern the substance of the articles. My point is that they are poorly written essays that needlessly damage the reputation of this excellent website.
It seems that the inevitable has happened. Feckless civilians have used military adventures to advance their careers , ensure re- elections, capturr lucrative position as speaker, have a place as member of think tank or lobbying firm or consultant .
Now being as stupidly greedy and impatient as these guys are,they have failed to see that neither the policies nor the militaries can succeed against enemies that are generated from the action and the policy itself .Now military has decided to reverse the roles . At least the military leaders don't have to campaign for re employment .
But very soon the forces that corrupt and abuse the civilian power structure will do same to military .
|
|
|
Sep 16, 2017 | www.unz.com
Looks like "Free marketers category by Petras corresponds to neoliberal elite...
Introduction
In the last few months, several competing political, economic and military sectors – linked to distinct ideological and ethnic groups – have clearly emerged at the centers of power.
We can identify some of the key competing and interlocking directorates of the power elite:
1. Free marketers, with the ubiquitous presence of the 'Israel First' crowd.
2. National capitalists, linked to rightwing ideologues.
3. Generals, linked to the national security and the Pentagon apparatus, as well as defense industry.
4. Business elites, linked to global capital.
This essay attempts to define the power wielders and evaluate their range of power and its impact.
The Economic Power Elite: Israel-Firsters and Wall Street CEO's
'Israel Firsters' dominate the top economic and political positions within the Trump regime and, interestingly, are among the Administration's most vociferous opponents. These include: the Federal Reserve Chairwoman, Janet Yellen, as well as her Vice-Chair, Stanley Fischer, an Israeli citizen and former (sic) Governor of the Bank of Israel.
Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and an Orthodox Jew, acts as his top adviser on Middle East Affairs. Kushner, a New Jersey real estate mogul, set himself up as the archenemy of the economic nationalists in the Trump inner circle. He supports every Israeli power and land grab in the Middle East and works closely with David Friedman, US Ambassador to Israel (and fanatical supporter of the illegal Jewish settlements) and Jason Greenblatt, Special Representative for International negotiations. With three Israel-Firsters determining Middle East policy, there is not even a fig leaf of balance.
The Treasury Secretary is Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive, who leads the neo-liberal free market wing of the Wall Street sector within the Trump regime. Gary Cohn, a longtime Wall Street influential, heads the National Economic Council. They form the core business advisers and lead the neo-liberal anti-nationalist Trump coalition committed to undermining economic nationalist policies.
An influential voice in the Attorney General's office is Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Robert Mueller the chief investigator, which led to the removal of nationalists from the Trump Administration.
The fairy godfather of the anti-nationalist Mnuchin-Cohn team is Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sach's Chairman. The 'Three Israel First bankerteers' are spearheading the fight to deregulate the banking sector, which had ravaged the economy, leading to the 2008 collapse and foreclosure of millions of American homeowners and businesses.
The 'Israel-First' free market elite is spread across the entire ruling political spectrum, including ranking Democrats in Congress, led by Senate Minority leader Charles Schumer and the Democratic Head of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff. The Democratic Party Israel Firsters have allied with their free market brethren in pushing for investigations and mass media campaigns against Trump's economic nationalist supporters and their eventual purge from the administration.
The Military Power Elite: The Generals
The military power elite has successfully taken over from the elected president in major decision-making. Where once the war powers rested with the President and the Congress, today a collection of fanatical militarists make and execute military policy, decide war zones and push for greater militarization of domestic policing. Trump has turned crucial decisions over to those he fondly calls 'my Generals' as he continues to dodge accusations of corruption and racism.
Trump appointed Four-Star General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis (retired USMC) – a general who led the war in Afghanistan and Iraq – as Secretary of Defense. Mattis (whose military 'glories' included bombing a large wedding party in Iraq) is leading the campaign to escalate US military intervention in Afghanistan – a war and occupation that Trump had openly condemned during his campaign. As Defense Secretary, General 'Mad Dog' pushed the under-enthusiastic Trump to announce an increase in US ground troops and air attacks throughout Afghanistan. True to his much-publicized nom-de-guerre , the general is a rabid advocate for a nuclear attack against North Korea.
Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster (an active duty Three Star General and long time proponent of expanding the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan) became National Security Adviser after the purge of Trump's ally Lt. General Michael Flynn, who opposed the campaign of confrontation and sanctions against Russia and China. McMaster has been instrumental in removing 'nationalists' from Trumps administration and joins General 'Mad Dog' Mattis in pushing for a greater build-up of US troops in Afghanistan.
Lt. General John Kelly (Retired USMC), another Iraq war veteran and Middle East regime change enthusiast, was appointed White House Chief of Staff after the ouster of Reince Priebus.
The Administration's Troika of three generals share with the neoliberal Israel First Senior Advisors to Trump, Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner, a deep hostility toward Iran and fully endorse Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's demand that the 2015 Nuclear Accord with Tehran be scrapped.
Trump's military directorate guarantees that spending for overseas wars will not be affected by budget cuts, recessions or even national disasters.
The 'Generals' , the Israel First free marketers and the Democratic Party elite lead the fight against the economic nationalists and have succeeded in ensuring that Obama Era military and economic empire building would remain in place and even expand.
The Economic Nationalist Elite
The leading strategist and ideologue of Trump's economic nationalist allies in the White House was Steve Bannon. He had been chief political architect and Trump adviser during the electoral campaign. Bannon devised an election campaign favoring domestic manufacturers and American workers against the Wall Street and multinational corporate free marketers. He developed Trump's attack on the global trade agreements, which had led to the export of capital and the devastation of US manufacturing labor.
Equally significant, Bannon crafted Trumps early public opposition to the generals' 15-year trillion-dollar intervention in Afghanistan and the even more costly series of wars in the Middle East favored by the Israel-Firsters, including the ongoing proxy-mercenary war to overthrow the secular nationalist government of Syria.
Within 8 month of Trump's administration, the combined forces of the free market economic and military elite, the Democratic Party leaders, overt militarists in the Republican Party and their allies in the mass media succeeded in purging Bannon – and marginalized the mass support base for his 'America First' economic nationalist and anti-'regime change' agenda.
The anti-Trump 'alliance' will now target the remaining few economic nationalists in the administration. These include: the CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who favors protectionism by weakening the Asian and NAFTA trade agreements and Peter Navarro, Chairman of the White House Trade Council. Pompeo and Navarro face strong opposition from the ascendant neoliberal Zionist troika now dominating the Trump regime.
In addition, there is Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, a billionaire and former director of Rothschild Inc., who allied with Bannon in threatening import quotas to address the massive US trade deficit with China and the European Union.
Another Bannon ally is US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer a former military and intelligence analyst with ties to the newsletter Breitbart. He is a strong opponent of the neoliberal, globalizers in and out of the Trump regime.
'Senior Adviser' and Trump speechwriter, Stephen Miller actively promotes the travel ban on Muslims and stricter restrictions on immigration. Miller represents the Bannon wing of Trump's zealously pro-Israel cohort.
Sebastian Gorka, Trump's Deputy Assistant in military and intelligence affairs, was more an ideologue than analyst, who wrote for Breitbart and rode to office on Bannon's coat tails. Right after removing Bannon, the 'Generals' purged Gorka in early August on accusations of 'anti-Semitism'.
Whoever remains among Trump's economic nationalists are significantly handicapped by the loss of Steve Bannon who had provided leadership and direction. However, most have social and economic backgrounds, which also link them to the military power elite on some issues and with the pro-Israel free marketers on others. However, their core beliefs had been shaped and defined by Bannon.
The Business Power Elite
Exxon Mobile CEO Rex Tillerson, Trump's Secretary of State and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, Energy Secretary lead the business elite. Meanwhile, the business elite associated with US manufacturing and industry have little direct influence on domestic or foreign policy. While they follow the Wall Street free marketers on domestic policy, they are subordinated to the military elite on foreign policy and are not allied with Steve Bannon's ideological core.
Trump's business elite, which has no link to the economic nationalists in the Trump regime, provides a friendlier face to overseas economic allies and adversaries.
Analysis and Conclusion
The power elite cuts across party affiliations, branches of government and economic strategies. It is not restricted to either political party, Republican or Democratic. It includes free marketers, some economic nationalists, Wall Street power brokers and militarists. All compete and fight for power, wealth and dominance within this administration. The correlation of forces is volatile, changing rapidly in short periods of time – reflecting the lack of cohesion and coherence in the Trump regime.
Never has the US power elite been subject to such monumental changes in composition and direction during the first year of a new regime.
During the Obama Presidency, Wall Street and the Pentagon comfortably shared power with Silicon Valley billionaires and the mass media elite. They were united in pursuing an imperial 'globalist' strategy, emphasizing multiple theaters of war and multilateral free trade treaties, which was in the process of reducing millions of American workers to permanent helotry.
With the inauguration of President Trump, this power elite faced challenges and the emergence of a new strategic configuration, which sought drastic changes in US political economic and military policy.
The architect of the Trump's campaign and strategy, Steve Bannon, sought to displace the global economic and military elite with his alliance of economic nationalists, manufacturing workers and protectionist business elites. Bannon pushed for a major break from Obama's policy of multiple permanent wars to expanding the domestic market. He proposed troop withdrawal and the end of US military operations in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, while increasing a combination of economic, political and military pressure on China. He sought to end sanctions and confrontation against Moscow and fashion economic ties between the giant energy producers in the US and Russia.
While Bannon was initially the chief strategist in the White House, he quickly found himself faced with powerful rivals inside the regime, and ardent opponents among Democratic and Republican globalists and especially from the Zionist – neoliberals who systematically maneuvered to win strategic economic and policy positions within the regime. Instead of being a coherent platform from which to formulate a new radical economic strategy, the Trump Administration was turned into a chaotic and vicious 'terrain for struggle'. The Bannon's economic strategy barely got off the ground.
The mass media and operatives within the state apparatus, linked to Obama's permanent war strategy, first attacked Trump's proposed economic reconciliation with Russia. To undermine any 'de-escalation', they fabricated the Russian spy and election manipulation conspiracy. Their first successful shots were fired at Lt. General Michael Flynn, Bannon's ally and key proponent for reversing the Obama/Clinton policy of military confrontation with Russia. Flynn was quickly destroyed and openly threatened with prosecution as a 'Russian agent' in whipped-up hysteria that resembled the heydays of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Key economic posts in the Trump regime were split between the Israel-Firster neoliberals and the economic nationalists. The 'Deal Maker' President Trump attempted to harness Wall Street-affiliated neoliberal Zionists to the economic nationalists, linked to Trump's working class electoral base, in formulating new trade relations with the EU and China, which would favor US manufacturers. Given the irreconcilable differences between these forces, Trump's naïve 'deal' weakened Bannon, undermined his leadership and wrecked his nationalist economic strategy.
While Bannon had secured several important economic appointees, the Zionist neoliberals undercut their authority. The Fischer-Mnuchin-Cohn cohort successfully set a competing agenda.
The entire Congressional elite from both parties united to paralyze the TrumpBannon agenda. The giant corporate mass media served as a hysterical and rumor-laden megaphone for zealous Congressional and FBI investigators magnifying every nuance of Trump's US Russia relations in search of conspiracy. The combined state-Congressional and Media apparatus overwhelmed the unorganized and unprepared mass base of Bannon electoral coalition which had elected Trump.
Thoroughly defeated, the toothless President Trump retreated in desperate search for a new power configuration, turning his day-to-day operations over to 'his generals'. The elected civilian President of the United States embraced his generals' pursuit of a new military-globalist alliance and escalation of military threats foremost against North Korea, but including Russia and China. Afghanistan was immediately targeted for an expanded intervention.
Trump effectively replaced Bannon's economic nationalist strategy with a revival Obama's multi-war military approach.
The Trump regime re-launched the US attacks on Afghanistan and Syria – exceeding Obama's use of drone attacks on suspected Muslim militants. He intensified sanctions against Russia and Iran, embraced Saudi Arabia's war against the people of Yemen and turned the entire Middle East policy over to his ultra-Zionist Political Advisor (Real Estate mogul and son-in-law) Jared Kushner and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.
Trump's retreat turned into a grotesque rout. The Generals embraced the neoliberal Zionists in Treasury and the Congressional global militarists. Communication Directory Anthony Scaramucci was fired. Trump's Chief of Staff General Joe Kelly purged Steve Bannon. Sebastian Gorka was kicked out.
The eight months of internal struggle between the economic nationalists and the neoliberals has ended: The Zionist-globalist alliance with Trump's Generals now dominate the Power Elite.
Trump is desperate to adapt to the new configuration, allied to his own Congressional adversaries and the rabidly anti-Trump mass media.
Having all but decimated Trump's economic nationalists and their program, the Power Elite then mounted a series of media-magnified events centering around a local punch-out in Charlottesville, Virginia between 'white supremacists' and 'anti-fascists'. After the confrontation led to death and injury, the media used Trump's inept attempt to blame both 'baseball bat'-wielding sides, as proof of the President's links to neo-Nazis and the KKK. Neoliberal and Zionists, within the Trump administration and his business councils, all joined in the attack on the President, denouncing his failure to immediately and unilaterally blame rightwing extremists for the mayhem.
Trump is turning to sectors of the business and Congressional elite in a desperate attempt to hold onto waning support via promises to enact massive tax cuts and deregulate the entire private sector.
The decisive issue was no longer over one policy or another or even strategy.
Trump had already lost on all accounts. The 'final solution' to the problem of the election of Donald Trump is moving foreword step-by-step – his impeachment and possible arrest by any and all means.
What the rise and destruction of economic nationalism in the 'person' of Donald Trump tells us is that the American political system cannot tolerate any capitalist reforms that might threaten the imperial globalist power elite.
Writers and activists used to think that only democratically elected socialist regimes would be the target of systematic coup d'état. Today the political boundaries are far more restrictive. To call for 'economic nationalism', completely within the capitalist system, and seek reciprocal trade agreements is to invite savage political attacks, trumped up conspiracies and internal military take-overs ending in 'regime change'.
The global-militarist elite purge of economic nationalists and anti-militarists was supported by the entire US left with a few notable exceptions. For the first time in history the left became an organizational weapon of the pro-war, pro-Wall Street, pro-Zionist Right in the campaign to oust President Trump. Local movements and leaders, notwithstanding, trade union functionaries, civil rights and immigration politicians, liberals and social democrats have joined in the fight for restoring the worst of all worlds: the Clinton-Bush-Obama/Clinton policy of permanent multiple wars, escalating confrontations with Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela and Trump's deregulation of the US economy and massive tax-cuts for big business.
We have gone a long-way backwards: from elections to purges and from peace agreements to police state investigations. Today's economic nationalists are labeled 'fascists' ; and displaced workers are 'the deplorables' !
Americans have a lot to learn and unlearn . Our strategic advantage may reside in the fact that political life in the United States cannot get worse – we really have touched bottom and (barring a nuclear war) we can only look up. (Republished from The James Petras Website by permission of author or representative) Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
peterAUS > , September 14, 2017 at 4:41 am GMT
jilles dykstra > , September 14, 2017 at 6:47 am GMTWhat if there is no other way but to proceed along the current course?
What if the system is so entrenched that changing it, properly, would collapse it?
And, the collapse of the system ignites WW3 etc?And, the most important, nobody knows what the new course would be.
One has a feeling .just .a sense .that we are on Titanic but, any change of speed/course will really sink it fast.
So ..we just keep steaming ..hoping for a miracle?And the Captain realized that.
Yes, he himself thought otherwise in the port, but, when he took the bridge he realized the truth.
And now he's just sitting there and watching the sea .hoping we won't hit that iceberg on his watch. Perhaps when the First Mate takes over in a while
Captain, when it happens, will probably be dancing below, entertaining high class passengers.The Alarmist > , September 14, 2017 at 11:08 am GMTIn my opinion, the USA now is in a state of Civil War, cold, so the country is not ruled.
I disagree with that it cannot get worse, the cold war can get hot.Wizard of Oz > , September 14, 2017 at 12:22 pm GMTFree Marketers Puuhhhhleeeeze? Call them what they are, which is a crony-oligarchy that dresses itself in free-market clothing to pillage and plunder on a global scale.
Tradecraft46 > , September 14, 2017 at 2:34 pm GMTWhat an agreeable contrast this makes with the typical conspiracy theorist who seems to need everything neatly tied up and a bunch of conspirators who plot and act with error free precision. The swiftness of a result agreeable to globalist business and militatists of various hues does not prevent the account being plausible.
No mention of Keyser Söze but I read on hoping that the Deep State hadn't been left out. Is's hard to find a live Deep State description in the author's contending categories. So it would be interesting to know whether there is a US Deep State, who constĺitute it, how it operates and whether it is operating today. Is it a useful borrowing for understanding the USA?
Low Voltage > , September 14, 2017 at 9:26 pm GMTTrump is a weakling. He developed a message, but he is p-whipped and he caved to his daughter, and her scum husband. I think he had no intention of committing to anything, but rather made 'hamster noises' to get elected.
He lied and will be finished soon.
James,
Nice effort. Can I make a request? Please write an article about the IDEAS that rule America. The attitudes of the billionaire, the Deep State, the working stiff, and the low-level bureaucracy. All the passengers on the ship are doing their part as the Titanic heads for the iceberg.
What are the ideas that keep the ship of state plugging along?
|
|
|
Aug 24, 2017 | www.unz.com
The argument is that admitting academically unqualified blacks to elite schools is, at core, a policy to protect the racial peace and, as such, has nothing to do with racial justice, the putative benefits of diversity or any other standard justification. It is this peace- keeping function that explains why the entire establishment, from mega corporations to the military, endorses constitutionally iffy racial discrimination and why questioning diversity's benefits is the most grievous of all PC sins. Stated in cost-benefit terms, denying a few hundred (even a few thousand) high-SAT scoring Asians an Ivy League diploma and instead forcing them attend Penn State is a cheap price to pay for social peace.
This argument rests on an indisputable reality that nearly all societies contain distinct ethnic or religious groups who must be managed for the sake of collective peace. They typically lack the ability to economically compete, may embrace values that contravene the dominant ethos, or otherwise just refuse to assimilate. What makes management imperative is the possibility of violence either at an individual level, for example, randomly stabbing total strangers, or on a larger scale, riots and insurrections. Thus, in the grand scheme of modern America's potentially explosive race relations, academically accomplished Asians, most of whom are politically quiescent, are expendable, collateral damage in the battle to sustain a shaky status quo.
Examples of such to-be-managed groups abound. Recall our own tribulations with violent Indian tribes well into the 19 th century or what several European nations currently face with Muslims or today's civil war in Burma with the Karen People. Then there's Turkey's enduring conflict with the Kurds and long before the threat of Islamic terrorism, there were Basque separatists (the ETA ), and the Irish Republican Army . In the past 45 years, there have been more than 16,000 terror attacks in Western Europe according to the Global Terrorism Database . At a lower levels add the persistently criminal Gypsies who for 500 years have resisted all efforts to assimilate them. This listing is, of course, only a tiny sampling of distinct indigestible violence-prone groups.
The repertoire of remedies, successful and failed, is also extensive. Our native-American problem has, sad to say, been largely solved by the use of apartheid-like reservations and incapacitating a once war-like people with drugs and alcohol. Elsewhere generous self-rule has done the trick, for example, the Basques in Spain. A particularly effective traditional solution is to promote passivity by encouraging religious acceptance of one's lowly state.
Now to the question at hand: what is to be done regarding American blacks, a group notable for its penchant for violence whose economic advancement over the last half-century has largely stalled despite tens of billions and countless government uplift programs.
To appreciate the value of affirmative action recall the urban riots of the 1960s. They have almost been forgotten but their sheer number during that decade would shock those grown accustomed to today's relative tranquility. A sampling of cities with major riots includes Rochester, NY, New York City, Philadelphia, PA, Los Angeles, CA, Cleveland, OH, Newark, NJ, Detroit, MI, Chicago, IL, Washington, DC and several smaller cities.
The damage from these riots! "uprisings" or "rebellions" according to some!was immense. For example, the Detroit riot of 1967 lasted five days and quelling it required the intervention of the Michigan Army National Guard and both the 82 nd and 101 st Airborne divisions. When it finally ended, the death toll was 43, some 7200 were arrested and more than 2000 buildings destroyed. Alas, much of this devastation remains visible today and should be a reminder of what could happen absent a policy of cooling out black anger.
To correctly understand how racial preferences at elite colleges serves as a cost-effective solution to potential domestic violence, recall the quip by comedian Henny Youngman when asked "How's your wife?" He responded with, "Compared to what?" This logic reflects a hard truth: when confronting a sizable, potentially disruptive population unable or unwilling to assimilate, a perfect solution is beyond reach. Choices are only among the lesser of evils and, to repeat, under current conditions, race-driven affirmative action is conceivably the best of the worst. A hard-headed realist would draw a parallel with how big city merchants survive by paying off the police, building and food inspectors, and the Mafia. Racial preferences are just one more item on the cost-of-doing business list–the Danegeld .
In effect, racial preferences in elite higher education (and beneficiaries includes students, professors and the diversity-managing administrators) separates the top 10% measured in cognitive ability from their more violent down market racial compatriots. While this manufactured caste-like arrangement hardly guarantees racial peace (as the black-on-white crime rate, demonstrates) but it pretty much dampens the possibility of more collective, well-organized related upheavals, the types of disturbances that truly terrify the white establishment. Better to have the handsomely paid Cornel West pontificating about white racism at Princeton where he is a full professor than fulminating at some Ghetto street corner. This status driven divide just reflects human nature. Why would a black Yalie on Wall Street socialize with the bro's left behind in the Hood? This is the strategy of preventing a large-scale, organized rebellion by decapitating its potential leadership. Violence is now just Chicago or Baltimore-style gang-banger intra-racial mayhem or various lone-wolf criminal attacks on whites.
Co-optation is a staple in the political management repertoire. The Soviet Union adsorbed what they called the "leading edge" into the Party (anyone exceptionally accomplished, from chess grandmasters or world-class athletes) to widen the divide the dominant elite, i.e., the Party, and hoi polloi. Election systems can be organized to guarantee a modicum of power to a handful of potential disruptors and with this position comes ample material benefits (think Maxine Waters). Monarchies have similarly managed potential strife by bestowing honors and titles on commoners. It is no accident that many radicals are routinely accused of "selling out" by their former colleagues in arms. In most instances the accusation is true, and this is by design.
To appreciate the advantages of the racial preferences in higher education consider Henny's "compared to what"? part of his quip. Certainly what successfully worked for quelling potential Native American violence, e.g., forced assimilation in "Indian Schools" or confinement in pathology-breeding reservations, is now totally beyond the pale though, to be sure, some inner-cities dominated by public housing are increasingly coming to resemble pathology-inducing Indian reservations. Even less feasible is some legally mandated homeland of the types advocated by Black Muslims.
I haven't done the math but I would guess that the entire educational racial spoils system is far more cost effective than creating a garrison state or a DDR-like police state where thousands of black trouble-makers were quickly incarcerated. Perhaps affirmative action in general should be viewed as akin to a nuisance tax, probably less than 5% of our GDP.
To be sure, affirmative action at elite universities is only one of today's nostrums to quell potential large scale race-related violence. Other tactics include guaranteeing blacks elected offices, even if this requires turning a blind eye toward election fraud, and quickly surrendering to blacks who demand awards and honors on the basis of skin color. Perhaps a generous welfare system could be added to this keep-the-peace list. Nevertheless, when all added up, the costs would be far lowers than dealing with widespread 1960s style urban violence.
This peace-keeping aspect of affirmative action understood, perhaps we ought to view those smart Asians unfairly rejected from Ivy League schools as sacrificial lambs. Now, given all the billions that have been saved, maybe a totally free ride at lesser schools would be a small price to pay for their dissatisfaction (and they would also be academic stars at such schools). Of course this "Asian only" compensatory scholarship might be illegal under the color blind requirements of 1964 Civil Right Act, but fear not, devious admission officers will figure out a way around the law.
Carlton Meyer > , Website August 16, 2017 at 4:21 am GMT
Thomm > , August 16, 2017 at 4:56 am GMTThis 18 second video clip is a great real world summary:
Thomm > , August 16, 2017 at 5:03 am GMTInteresting take. But risky because :
1) Asians will grow in power, and either force more fairness towards themselves, or return to Asia.
2) WN idiots happy about Asians returning to Asia fail to see that Asians will return only when they control enough of America to manage large parts of it from afar (like the tech industry).
3) 2-3 million top caliber white male Western Expats might just move to Asia, since they may like Asian women more, and want to be free of SJW idiocy. This is all it takes to fill the alleged gap Asia has in creativity, marketing, and sales expertise. Asia effectively decapitates the white West by taking in their best young men and giving them a great life in Asia.
4) America becomes like Brazil with all economic value colonized by Asians and the white expats in Asia with mixed-race children. White trashionalists left behind are swiftly exterminated by blacks, and white women mix with the blacks. America becomes a Brazil minus the fun culture, good weather, and attractive women.Diversity Heretic > , August 16, 2017 at 5:12 am GMT@Carlton Meyer At first, I was surprised that they listened to him.
After a while, I realized that many negros are stupid enough to think that Hispanics and Asians would like to be in some anti-white alliance with blacks as a senior partner. In reality, they have an even lower opinion of blacks than whites do. US blacks have zero knowledge of the world outside America, so this reality just doesn't register with them.
War for Blair Mountain > , August 16, 2017 at 5:26 am GMTJohn Derbyshire has made similar arguments–racial preferences are the price for social peace. But, as Steve Sailer has pointed out, we're running out of white and Asian children to buffer black dysfunction and Asians are going to get less and less willing to be "sacrificial lambs" for a black underclass that they did nothing to create and that they despise.
There are other ways to control the black underclass. You can force the talented ones to remain in their community and provide what leadership they can. Black violence can be met with instant retributive counter-violence. (Prior to the 1960s most race riots were white on black.) Whites can enforce white norms on the black community, who will sort-of conform to them as best they are able.
Finally, Rudyard Kipling had a commentary on Danegeld. It applies to paying off dysfunctional domestic minorities just as much to invading enemies.
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!"jim jones > , August 16, 2017 at 5:30 am GMTRobert Weissberg
Could care less about your smart Asians The smart Asians are enthusiastivally voting Whitey into a racial minority on Nov 3 2020 They don't belong on Native Born White American Living and Breeding Space
Wally > , August 16, 2017 at 5:32 am GMT@Carlton Meyer This 18 second video clip is a great real world summary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHhy2Gk_xik You can just hears someone shouting at the end "Go back to Beijing"
Bro Methylene > , August 16, 2017 at 5:34 am GMTOnce you give in, they will keep demanding more & more.
There's always a manufactured excuse.
It's time to say no.
Priss Factor > , Website August 16, 2017 at 5:55 am GMTPlease stop trying to confuse Orientals with Indians and other subcontinentals. They are quite distinct.
This reminds me of the sinister (but largely successful) campaign to conflate San Francisco with "Silicon Valley." The two are separate in every way.
Thomm > , August 16, 2017 at 6:21 am GMTHell with those 'smart Asians'. They are among the biggest Proglob a-holes.
Asians have servile genes that seek approval from the power. They are status-freaks.
They make perfect collaborators with the Glob.
Under communism, they made the most conformist commies.
Under Japanese militarism, they made the most mindless military goons who did Nanking.
Under Khmer Rouge, they were biggest looney killers.
Under PC, they make such goody good PC dogs.
If the prevailing culture of US was patriotic and conservatives, Asians would try to conform to that, and that wouldn't be so bad.
But since the prevailing culture is PC, these yellow dogs are among the biggest homomaniacal PC tards.
Hell with them. Yellow dogs voted for Obama and Hillary in high numbers. They despise, hate, and feel contempt for white masses and working class. They are servitors of the empire as Darrell Hamamoto said. He's one of the few good guys.
Just look at that Francis Fukuyama, that slavish dog of Soros. He's so disgusting. And then, you got that brown Asian tard Fareed Zakaria. What a vile lowlife. And that fat Jeer Heet who ran from dirty browns shi ** ing all over the place outdoors to live with white people but bitches about 'white supremacy'. Well, the fact that he ran from his own kind to live with whites must mean his own choice prefers white folks. His immigration choice was 'white supremacism'. After all, he could have moved to black Africa. Why didn't he?
PS. The best way of Affirmative Action is to limit it only to American Indians and Blacks of slave ancestry. That's it.
Also, institutions should OPENLY ADMIT that they do indeed discriminate to better represent the broader population. Fair or not, honesty is a virtue. What is most galling about AA is the lies that says 'we are colorblind and meritocratic but ' No more buts. Yes, there is discrimination but to represent larger population. Okay, just be honest.
Thomm > , August 16, 2017 at 6:28 am GMTPlease stop trying to confuse Orientals with Indians and other subcontinentals. They are quite distinct.
In their original countries they are, but in America they are almost identical in all ways except appearance and diet.
Plus, since SE Asia has always had influence from both, there is a smooth continuum in the US across all of these groups by the time the 2nd generation rolls around.
helena > , August 16, 2017 at 6:33 am GMTThey don't belong on Native Born White American Living and Breeding Space
Three things wrong with this sentence.
1) I don't think you know that Native Americans (i.e. Siberians) were here first.
2) I will bet anything that all 128 of your GGGGG-GPs are not English settlers who were here in 1776. You are probably some 2nd gen Polack or something who still worries that WASPs look down on you.
3) There is very high variance among whites, and white trashionalists are SOOOO far below the quality threshold of any moderately successful white that they can't claim to speak for all whites. White Trashionalists represent the waste matter that nature wants to purge (which is the process that enables exceptional whites to emerge on the other end of the scale). That is why white women are absolutely doing what nature wants, which is to cut off the White Trashionalists from reproduction. If you care about the white race, you should be glad that white women want nothing to do with you and allow you to complete you wastebasket role.There.
Priss Factor > , Website August 16, 2017 at 6:36 am GMT@Carlton Meyer That's hilarious. Anti-ma should replace their flags with placards saying, "Hey, Hey, this is Library!" at all counter-anti-fa demos.
jilles dykstra > , August 16, 2017 at 7:00 am GMTWill this really keep the peace?
Obama was one of the beneficiaries of AA along with his wife and their kids. Did that prevent Baltimore and Chicago and etc from blowing up?
In a way, AA and Civil Rights made black communities more volatile. When blacks were more stringently segregated, even smart and sensible blacks lived among blacks and played some kind of 'role model'. They ran businesses and kept in close contact with black folks.
It's like white communities in small towns used to be much better when the George Baileys stayed in them or returned to them and ran things.
But as more and more George Bailies left for the big cities, small towns had fewer top notch role models and leaders and enterprisers. Also, the filth of pop culture and youth degeneracy via TV corrupted the dummies. And then, when globalism took away the industries, there were just people on opioids. At least old timers grew up with family and church. The new generation grew up on Idiocracy.
Anyway, AA will just taken more black talent from black community and mix them with whites, Asians, and etc. Will some of these blacks use their power and privilege to incite black mobs to violence? Some do go radical. But most will just get their goodies and forget the underclass except in some symbolic way. It's like Obama didn't do crap as 'community organizer'. He just stuck close to rich Jews in Hyde Park, and as president, he was serving globo-wars, Wall Street, and homos.
When he finally threw a bone at the blacks in his second term, it lit cities on fire.Did the black underclass change for the better because they saw Obama as president? No. If anything, it just made them bolder as flashmobs. The way blacks saw it, a bunch of fa ** ogty wussy white people voted for a black guy created by a black man sexually conquering a white woman. They felt contempt for cucky whites, especially as rap culture and sports feature blacks as master race lording over whites. To most underclass blacks, the only culture they know is sports and rap and junk they see on TV. And they are told blacks are magical, sacred, badass, and cool. And whites are either 'evil' if they have any pride or cucky-wucky wussy if they are PC.
The Murrayian Coming-Apart of whites took place already with blacks before. And more AA that takes in smarter blacks will NOT make things better for black underclass. And MORE blacks in elite colleges will just lead to MORE anger issues, esp as they cannot keep up with other students.
Even so, I can understand the logic of trying to win over black cream of crop. Maybe if they are treated nice and feel 'included', they won't become rabble-rousers like Al Sharpton and act more like Obama. Obama's race-baiting with Ferguson was bad but could have been worse with someone like Sharpton.
The Power can try to control a people in two ways. Crush everyone OR give carrots to comprador elites so that sticks can be used on masses. Clinton did this. He brought over black elites, and they worked with him to lock up record number of Negroes to make cities safer. As Clinton was surrounded by Negroes and was called 'first black president' by Toni Morrison, many blacks didn't realize that he was really working to lock up lots of black thugs and restore order.
Smart overlords play divide-and-conquer by offering carrots to collaborator elites and using sticks on masses.
British Imperialists did that. Gandhi would likely have collaborated with Brits if not for the fact that he was called a 'wog' in South Africa and kicked off a train. Suddenly, he found himself as ONE with the poor and powerless 'wogs' in the station. He was made equal with his own kind.Consider Jews in the 30s and even during WWII. Many Western European Jews became rich and privileged and felt special and put on airs. Many felt closer to gentile elites and felt contempt and disdain for many 'dirty' and 'low' Eastern European Jews. If Hitler had been cleverer and offered carrots to rich Jews, there's a good chance that many of them would have collaborated and worked with the Power to suppress or control lower Jews, esp. of Eastern European background.
But Hitler didn't class-discriminate among Jews. He went after ALL of them. Richest Jew, poorest Jew, it didn't matter. So, even many rich Jews were left destitute if not dead after WWII. And this wakened them up. They once had so much, but they found themselves with NOTHING. And as they made their way to Palestine with poor Eastern European Jewish survivors, they felt a strong sense of ethnic identity. Oppression and Tragedy were the great equalizer. Having lost everything, they found what it really means to be Jewish. WWII and Holocaust had a great traumatic equalizing effect on Jews, something they never forgot since the war, which is why very rich Jews try to do much for even poor Jews in Israel and which is why secular Jews feel a bond with funny-dressed Jewish of religious sects.
For this reason, it would be great for white identity if the New Power were to attack ALL whites and dispossess all of them. Suppose globalism went after not only Deplorables but Clintons, Bushes, Kaineses, Kerrys, Kennedys, and etc. Suppose all of them were dispossessed and humiliated and called 'honkers'. Then, like Gandhi at the train station, they would regain their white identity and identify with white hoi polloi who've lost so much to globalism. They would become leaders of white folks.
But as long as carrots are offered to the white elites, they go with Glob and dump on whites. They join with the GLOB to use sticks on white folks like in Charlottesville where sticks were literally used against patriots who were also demeaned as 'neo-nazis' when most of them weren't.So, I'm wishing Ivy Leagues will have total NO WHITEY POLICY. It is when the whites elites feel rejected and humiliated by the Glob that they will return to the masses.
Consider current Vietnam. Because Glob offers them bribes and goodies, these Viet-cuck elites are selling their nation to the Glob and even allowing homo 'pride' parades.
White Genocide that attacks ALL whites will have a unifying effect on white elites and white masses. It is when gentiles targeted ALL Jews that all Jews, rich and poor, felt as one.
But the Glob is sneaky. Instead of going for White Genocide that targets top, middle, and bottom, it goes for White Democide while forgoing white aristocide. So, white elites or neo-aristocrats are rewarded with lots of goodies IF they go along like the Romneys, Clintons, Kaines, Bidens, and all those quisling weasels.
Simon in London > , August 16, 2017 at 7:18 am GMT" Now to the question at hand: what is to be done regarding American blacks, a group notable for its penchant for violence whose economic advancement over the last half-century has largely stalled despite tens of billions and countless government uplift programs. "
I read an article, making a learned impression, that on average USA blacks have a lower IQ.
I do suppose that IQ has a cultural component, nevertheless, those in western cultures with a lower IQ can be expected to have less economic success.
A black woman who did seem to understand all this was quoted in the article as that 'blacks should be compensated for this lower IQ'.
One can discuss this morally endless, but even if the principle was accepted, how is it executed, and where is the end ?
For example, people with less than average length are also less successful, are we going to compensate them too ?Kyle McKenna > , August 16, 2017 at 7:45 am GMT"economic advancement over the last half-century has largely stalled despite tens of billions and countless government uplift programs"
It only stalled when the Great Society and the uplift programs started. According to The Bell Curve there was basically an instant collapse when LBJ started to wreaking his havoc. Go back to pre-1964 norms and no late-60s riots.
Realist > , August 16, 2017 at 8:04 am GMTWe have sacrificed smart white students for three generations to keep the hebraic component around 30% at our highest-ranked colleges and universities, and no one (except the jewish Ron Unz himself) made so much as a peep. And as he copiously documented, whites have suffered far more discrimination than asians have. The difference is, whites are more brainwashed into accepting it.
I hope this doesn't need linking here, but wth
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/
Tom Welsh > , August 16, 2017 at 9:11 am GMT"Sacrificing Smart Asians to Keep the Racial Peace"
It is the sacrificing of smart white students that is the problem. Of all the races whites, on average are more innovative and ambitious.
Tom Welsh > , August 16, 2017 at 9:16 am GMT"The argument is that admitting academically unqualified blacks to elite schools is, at core, a policy to protect the racial peace "
In simpler language, appeasement.
Tom Welsh > , August 16, 2017 at 9:24 am GMT@War for Blair Mountain "They don't belong on Native Born White American Living and Breeding Space "
Your statement would be perfectly correct if it read, "White people of European origin don't belong on Native American Living and Breeding Space "
Yet there they are, in immense, pullulating numbers. And now they have the gall to complain that other people – some of whom resemble the few surviving Native Americans far more closely than Whites do – are coming to "their" continent.
Honestly, what is the world coming to when you spend centuries and millions of bullets, bottles of whisky and plague-ridden blankets getting rid of tens of millions of people so you can steal their land – and then more people like you come along and want to settle peaceably alongside you? That's downright un-American.
Maybe you'd be more comfortable if the Asian immigrants behaved more like the European settlers – with fire, sword, malnutrition and pestilence.
Wizard of Oz > , August 16, 2017 at 9:27 am GMT@Diversity Heretic The Kipling quote is stirring and thought-provoking (like most Kipling quotes). But it is not entirely correct.
Consider the kings of France in the 10th century, who were confronted by the apparently insoluble problem of periodic attacks by bands of vicious, warlike, and apparently irresistible Vikings. One king had the bright idea of buying the Northmen off by granting them a very large piece of land in the West of France – right where the invading ships used to start up the Seine towards Paris.
The Northmen settled there, became known as Normans, and held Normandy for the rest of the Middle Ages – in the process absolutely preventing any further attacks eastward towards Paris. The dukes of Normandy held it as a fief from the king, and thus did homage to him as his feudal subordinates.
They did conquer England, Sicily, and a few other places subsequently – but the key fact is that they left the tiny, feeble kingdom of France alone.
Logan > , August 16, 2017 at 9:45 am GMTRatioal cost benefit arguments could be applied much more widely to the benefit of America and other First World countries. If otherwise illegal drugs were legalised, whether to be prescribed by doctors or not, it would save enormous amounts of money on law enforcement and, subject to what I proffer next, incarceration.
What is the downside? The advocates of Prohibition weren't wrong about the connection of alcohol and lower productivity. That was then. If, say, 10 per cent of the population were now disqualified from the workforce what would it matter. The potential STEM wizards amongst them (not many) would mostly be nurtured so that it was only the underclass which life in a daze. And a law which made it an offence, effectively one for which the penalty was to be locked up or otherwise deprived of freedom to be a nuisance, to render oneself unfit to perform the expected duties of citizenship would have collateral benefits in locking up the right underclass males.
Colleen Pater > , August 16, 2017 at 10:19 am GMT@Bro Methylene "Orientals," east Asians, or just Asians in American parlance are indeed quite different from south Asians, called "Asians" in the UK,. These are quite different groups.
But the groups of east and south Asians include widely differing peoples. A Korean doesn't have much in common with a Malay, nor a Pathan with a Tamil. Probably not much more than either has in common with the other group or with white Americans.
That they "all look alike" to use does not really mean the do, it just means we aren't used to them.
Was recently watching an interesting Chinese movie and had enormous difficulty keeping the characters straight, because they did indeed all look alike to me. I wonder if Chinese people in China have similar trouble watching old American movies.
Colleen Pater > , August 16, 2017 at 10:28 am GMT@Carlton Meyer yeah and hispanics are natural conservatives. dont be a cuck once that slant is here long enough he will tumble to the game and get on the anti white bandwagon. and sure asians will eventually out jew the jews just what we need another overlord, only this one a huge percentage or world pop. .
joeshittheragman > , Website August 16, 2017 at 11:12 am GMTYou know weisberg youre not fooling anyone here peddle that cuck crap elsewhere affirmative action leads to nothing but more affirmative action at this point everyone but white males gets it, and you my jew friend know this so selling it to sucker cucks as the cost of doing business is just more jew shenanigans. There is a much better solution to the problem peoples deport them back where they belong israel africa asia central america.
Jake > , August 16, 2017 at 11:47 am GMTThis is all about nothing now. The only thing White people have to learn anymore is controlled breathing, good position, taking up trigger slack, letting the round go at exactly the right moment – one round, one hit.
Astuteobservor II > , August 16, 2017 at 11:58 am GMTWhen your child tosses a tantrum and tears up his bedroom, and you tell him his mean-spirited, selfish cousins caused it and then you reward him with a trip to Disneyland and extra allowance: then you guarantee more and worse tantrums.
That is what America and America's Liberals, the Elites, have done with blacks and violence.
TG > , August 16, 2017 at 12:18 pm GMTha, there is another group that is preying on the asian group and it is omitted.
Anonymouse > , August 16, 2017 at 12:58 pm GMTA very interesting post. Really a unique perspective – who cares if it's not fair, if it is necessary to keep the peace?
I do however disagree with one of your points. " whose economic advancement over the last half-century has largely stalled despite tens of billions and countless government uplift programs."
I think you have missed the main event. Over the last half-century the elites of this nation have waged ruthless economic warfare AGAINST poor blacks in this country, to an extent that far dwarfs the benefits of affirmative action (for a typically small number of already privileged blacks).
Up through the 1960′s, blacks were starting to do not so bad. Yes they were in a lot of menial jobs, but many of these were unionized and the pay was pretty good. I mean, if nobody else wants to sweep your floors, and the only guy willing to do it i s black, well, he can ask for a decent deal.
Then our elites fired black workers en masse, replacing them with Mexican immigrants and outsourcing to low-wage countries. Blacks have had their legs cut off with a chainsaw, and the benefits of affirmative action (which nowadays mostly go to Mexicans etc.!) little more than a bandaid.
And before we are too hard on blacks, let me note that whites are also being swept up in the poverty of neoliberal globalization, and they too are starting to show social pathology.
Because in terms of keeping the social peace, there is one fundamental truth more important than all others: there must be some measure of broadly shared prosperity. Without it, even ethnically homogeneous and smart and hard working people like the Japanese or Chinese will tear themselves apart.
Jake > , August 16, 2017 at 1:00 pm GMTNot New York. Wife & I were living there then and Mayor Lindsay went to Harlem and NYC negroes did not riot after MLK Jr was assassinated.
George Weinbaum > , August 16, 2017 at 1:04 pm GMTNote that there is not a word in this article about what this does to the white working class and how it can be given something in return for allowing Elites to bribe blacks with trillions and trillions of dollars in goodies. Nor is there is there any indication that this process eventually will explode, with too many blacks demanding so much it cannot be paid.
dearieme > , August 16, 2017 at 1:05 pm GMTWas this written tongue in cheek?
Affirmative action will never end. The bribes will never end. The US made a mistake in the 1960s. We should have contained the riots then let the people in those areas sleep in the burned out rubble. Instead through poverty programs we rewarded bad black behavior.
By filling the Ivy League with blacks we create a new class of Cornell West's for white people to listen to. We enhance the "ethos" of these people.
Eventually, certainly in no more than 40 years, we will run out of sacrifices. What then when whites constitute only 40% of the American population? Look at South Africa today.
We have black college graduates with IQs in the 80s! They want to be listened to. After all, they're college graduates.
I do not believe you have found "a cost-effective solution to potential domestic violence".
You mix in this "top 10%" and they get greater acceptance by whites who are turned left in college.anonymous > , Disclaimer August 16, 2017 at 1:19 pm GMT"The argument is that admitting academically unqualified blacks to elite schools is, at core, a policy to protect the racial peace "
IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: –
"We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: –
"Though we know we should defeat you,
we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: –"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"Truth > , August 16, 2017 at 1:54 pm GMTwhose economic advancement over the last half-century has largely stalled despite tens of billions and countless government uplift programs.
The reality of this is become a huge stumbling block. In fact this group has actually been mostly regressing into violence and stupidity, going their own separate way as exemplified by their anti-social music which celebrates values repugnant to the majority. Look at the absurd level of shootings in cities like Chicago. That's not changing anytime soon. They're by far overrepresented in Special Ed, juvenile delinquency, prisons and all other indicators of dysfunction. Their talented tenth isn't very impressive as compared to whites or Asians. Their entire middle class is mostly an artificial creation of affirmative action. The point is that they can only be promoted so far based on their capability. The cost of the subsidy gets greater every year and at some point it'll become too heavy a burden and then it'll be crunch time. After the insanity of the Cultural Revolution the Chinese had to come to their senses. It's time to curtail our own version of it.
You All Look Like Ants > , August 16, 2017 at 1:57 pm GMTIt really is terrible and unfair that an Asian needs to score so much higher than you white oppressors to get into the Ivy league
A Princeton study found that students who identify as Asian need to score 140 points higher on the SAT than whites to have the same chance of admission to private colleges, a difference some have called "the Asian tax."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/us/affirmative-action-battle-has-a-new-focus-asian-americans.html
helena > , August 16, 2017 at 2:05 pm GMTI think this is brilliant satire.
It is actually an argument that is logically sound. Doesn't mean that it's good or sensible or even workable over the long run.
It's just logically sound. It holds together if one accepts the not-crazy parts its made out of.
I don't believe it's meant to be taken literally, because both the beneficiaries and those who get screwed will grow in their resentment and the system would melt down.
New fields with the word "studies' in them would get added and everyone would know – deep down – why that is so, and Asians would continue to dominate the hard sciences, math and engineering.
Still, as satire, it's so close to the bone that it works beautifully.Rich > , August 16, 2017 at 2:08 pm GMT@Tom Welsh "Yet there they are, in immense, pullulating numbers. And now they have the gall to complain that other people – some of whom resemble the few surviving Native Americans far more closely than Whites do – are coming to "their" continent."
Agree. The country should be returned to pre-1700 conditions and given over to anyone who wants it.
Thorfinnsson > , August 16, 2017 at 2:12 pm GMT@Anonymouse I guess one man's riot is another man's peaceful night. There was a bit of rioting in Brooklyn that night, businesses burned and looted, and a handful of businesses were looted in Harlem. There was a very heavy police presence with Mayor Lindsey that night and blacks were still very segregated in 1968, so I'd guess it was more that show of force that prevented the kind of riots we'd seen earlier and in other cities at that time. Still, there was looting and burning, so New York's blacks don't get off the hook. As a personal note. my older brother and his friends were attacked by a roving band of blacks that night in Queens, but managed to chase them out of our neighborhood.
War for Blair Mountain > , August 16, 2017 at 2:18 pm GMTThe costs of BRA may be lower than the costs of 1960s urban riots, though an accurate accounting would be difficult as many costs are not easily tabulated.
Consider, for instance, the costs of excluding higher performing whites and Asians from elite universities. Does this result in permanently lower salaries from them as a result of greater difficulty in joining an elite career track?
What costs do affirmative action impose upon corporations, especially those with offices in metropolitan areas with a lot of blacks? FedEx is famously centralized in Memphis. What's the cost to me as a shipper in having to deal with sluggish black customer service personnel?
The blacks are 15% of the population, so I doubt "garrison state" costs would be terribly high. I am certain that segregation was cheaper than BRA is. The costs of segregation were overlooking some black talent (negligible) and duplication of certain facilities (I suspect this cost is lower than the cost of white flight).
Jason Liu > , August 16, 2017 at 2:28 pm GMTHow did America ever manage to survive when there hardly any Chinese Hindus..Sihks .Koreans in OUR America?
Answer:Very well thank you!!!! ..America 1969=90 percent Native Born White American .places two Alpha Native Born White American Males on the Moon 10 more after this Who the F would be opposed to this?
Answer:Chinese "Americans" Korean "Americans" Hindu "Americans" .Sihk "Americans" .Pakistani "Americans"
anarchyst > , August 16, 2017 at 3:01 pm GMTThere would still be racial peace if affirmative action was abolished. They'll bitch for a while, but they'll get used it and the dust will settle.
Side note: Affirmation action also disproportionately helps white women into college, and they're the largest group fueling radical leftist identity politics/feminism on campus. In other words, affirmative action is a large contributor to SJWism, the media-academia complex, and the resulting current political climate.
bjondo > , August 16, 2017 at 3:15 pm GMT@jilles dykstra The statement "blacks should be compensated for this lower IQ" is no different than the descendents of the so-called jewish "holocaust ™" being compensated in perpetuity by the German government. Now, there are calls by the jewish "holocaust ™" lobby to extend the financial compensation to children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these so-called "holocaust ™ survivors, stating the fake concept of "holocaust ™" transference" just another "holocaust ™" scam
Same thing.Poupon Marx > , August 16, 2017 at 3:20 pm GMTSmart means what?
More Monsanto, DuPont cancers and degraded foods.
New diseases from medical, biological, genetic research
More spying and censorship and stealing by Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, high IQ thieves.
All jobs overseas, domestic unemployment, endless wars, by the best and brightest.
Toxic pollution, mental pollution that dwarfs the back yard pollution of tires and old refrigs by "low IQ deplorables (white and black and brown".
Degraded, degrading entertainment and fake news to match fake histories by Phds.
Tech devices that are "wonderful" but life is actually better more meaningful without.jim jones > , August 16, 2017 at 3:28 pm GMT[Blacks] "whose economic advancement over the last half-century has largely stalled despite tens of billions and countless government uplift programs." No, Professor, it is Trillions spend over the last 50 years and millions before that. Countless Whites and other non-Negroid people have had to step aside in education, military, government, private industry, to let the lesser person advance and leap frog the accepted virtue-merit path to advancement. AND IT STILL IS NOT ENOUGN FOR BLECKS.
The obvious solution is to separate into uni-racial/ethnic states. For Whites, this would include a separate autocephalous, independent state of Caucasians, Asians, and Hindu. This is the Proto-IndoEuropean Family, related by genes and languages.
Rdm > , August 16, 2017 at 3:44 pm GMT@Logan I have the same trouble with Korean movies, all the women look the same:
Greg Bacon > , Website August 16, 2017 at 3:52 pm GMT@Thomm Interesting take. But risky because :
1) Asians will grow in power, and either force more fairness towards themselves, or return to Asia.
2) WN idiots happy about Asians returning to Asia fail to see that Asians will return only when they control enough of America to manage large parts of it from afar (like the tech industry).
3) 2-3 million top caliber white male Western Expats might just move to Asia, since they may like Asian women more, and want to be free of SJW idiocy. This is all it takes to fill the alleged gap Asia has in creativity, marketing, and sales expertise. Asia effectively decapitates the white West by taking in their best young men and giving them a great life in Asia.
4) America becomes like Brazil...with all economic value colonized by Asians and the white expats in Asia with mixed-race children. White trashionalists left behind are swiftly exterminated by blacks, and white women mix with the blacks. America becomes a Brazil minus the fun culture, good weather, and attractive women. Could agree 1 and 2.2-3 millions Top caliber White males moving to Asia?
haha, Top caliber White males (American) will stay in America, screw the rest WN, devour all the resources available, not only in America, but from the rest of the world.
This is a real White so-called Top caliber White males enjoying in Philippines.
You can see the typical features of White in Asia
1. Bald
2. Obese
3. Lanky
4. Gold watch
5. Cargo pants
6. Flip flopYou can't get away those Top caliber White males features in Asia.
Abelard Lindsey > , August 16, 2017 at 3:58 pm GMTI'm guessing the author would be screaming at the top of his lungs if it was Jewish students being told to go to some state university–instead of Harvard–since we have to make room for blacks.
BTW, your comment "..Recall our own tribulations with violent Indian tribes" needs clarification. Maybe the tribes got violent because of the 400 treaties Uncle Sam made with the various tribes, he honored NONE
üeljang > , August 16, 2017 at 4:12 pm GMTI would call it the Diversity Tax.
Alden > , August 16, 2017 at 4:14 pm GMT@jim jones A great part of that is because, well, let's say that the place where those actresses have got their work done is the same.
Whites have much greater natural variations in hair and eye color, but skin color among East Asian individuals is more naturally variable (especially when the effect of tanning is considered), and their facial features and somatotypes are also more diverse in my opinion. For example, East Asian populations contain some individuals who have what the Japanese call futae mabuta "double eyelids" and some individuals who have what they call hitoe mabuta "single eyelids," whereas White populations contain only individuals who have "double eyelids." Whether such increased physical variability is positive or negative probably depends on one's viewpoint; in the case of that eyelid polymorphism, the variant that is found in Asians but not in Whites is generally considered neutral or even positive when it occurs in male individuals, but negative when it occurs in female individuals, so plastic surgeons must be overflowing with gratitude for the single eyelid gene.
Alden > , August 16, 2017 at 4:31 pm GMT@Thorfinnsson The separate school facilities meant a major saving in the costs of school police and security guards, resource teachers, counselors buses and bus drivers, and layers and layers of administrators trying to administer the mess.
Separate schools were a lot cheaper in that the black teachers kept the lid on the violence with physical punishment and the White teachers and students had a civilized environment.
The old sunshine laws kept blacks out of White neighborhoods after dark which greatly reduced black on White crime. In the north, informal neighborhood watches kept black on White crime to a minimum until block by block the blacks conquered the cities.
George Wallace said segregation now, segregation forever. I say sterilization now, problem solved in 80 years.
Asians??? I went to college with the White WASP American young men who were recruited and went to work in Mountain View and Cupertino and the rest of Santa Clara county and invented Silicon Valley.
Not one was Asian or even Jewish. And they invented it and their sons couldn't even get into Stanford because their sons are White American men.
I think the worst thing about affirmative action is that government jobs are about the only well paid secure jobs that still stick to the 40 hour work week. Government is the largest employer in the country. And those jobs are "no Whites need apply".
BTW I read the Protocols years before the Internet. I had to make an appointment to go into a locked section of a research library. I had to show ID. It was brought to me and I had to sit where I could be seen to read it. I had to sign an agreement that I would not copy anything from the protocols.
And there it was, the fourth protocol.
"We shall see to it brothers, that we shall see to it that they appoint only the incompetent and unfit to their government positions. And thus we shall conquer them from within"Beckow > , August 16, 2017 at 4:44 pm GMT@Thomm Actually, Europeans arrived 20, to 30,000 years ago from Europe and were wiped out by the later arriving Asians.
nickels > , August 16, 2017 at 4:52 pm GMT@Thomm Only 4) is remotely possible. And Brazilian women are not that attractive, they are nice looking on postcards, but quite dumpy and weird-looking in person. But that is a matter of personal taste.
The reason 1,2,3 are nonsensical is that geography and resources matter. Asia simply doesn't have them, it is not anywhere as attractive to live in as North America or Europe and never will be. It goes beyond geographic resources, everything from architecture, infrastructure, culture is simply worse in Asia and it would take hundreds of years to change that.
So why the constant 'go to Asia' or 'Asia is the future'? It might be a temporary escape for many desperate, self-hating, white Westerners, a place to safely worship as they give up on it all. Or it could be the endless family links with the Asian women. But that misreads that most of the Asian families are way to clear-headed to exchange what the are trying to escape for the nihilistic dreams of their white partners. They are the least likely to go to Asia, they know it instinctively, they know what they have been trying to escape.
It is possible that the West is on its last legs, and many places are probably gone for good. But Asia is not going to step up and replace it. It is actually much worse that that – we are heading for a dramatic downturn and a loss of comfort and civilization. Thank you Baby Boomers – you are the true end-of-liners of history.
Alec Leamas (hard at work) > , August 16, 2017 at 5:04 pm GMTExcept that, of course, as with all forms of appeasement, it isn't working .
Realist > , August 16, 2017 at 5:07 pm GMTBright and talented white kids from non-elite families stuck between the Scylla and Charybdis of Cram-Schooled Study-Asians with no seeming limit to their tolerance for tedium and 90 IQ entitled blacks is 2017 in a nutshell.
Liberty Mike > , August 16, 2017 at 5:08 pm GMTWeissberg is a nutless quisling. The proper way to handle blackmail is to stop it in it's tracks.
Peaceful demonstrations are fine, property destroying riots should be stopped by any means necessary. Blacks would soon stop their dumb shit actions
Liberty Mike > , August 16, 2017 at 5:11 pm GMT@George Weinbaum That there Cornell West is a learned fellow. I bet his vocabulary is bigger than that of GWB and DJT – combined.
Jeff77450 > , August 16, 2017 at 5:17 pm GMT@Truth That study was slanted.
MEFOBILLS > , Website August 16, 2017 at 5:34 pm GMTSaid in all seriousness: I genuinely feel sorry for blacks but not because of slavery & Jim Crow. Those were great evils but every group has gone through that. No, I feel sorry for them because their average IQ of 85–yes, it is–combined with their crass thug culture, which emphasizes & rewards all the wrong things, is going to keep them mired in dysfunction for decades to come. Men like Thomas Sowell & Walter Williams have all the information that blacks need to turn themselves around but they won't listen, I guess because the message is take responsibility for yourselves and your families and refuse to accept charity in all its different forms to include AA.
"Thomas Sowell vs Affirmative Action's failures" (~13 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agkye3vlG0Q
Astuteobservor II > , August 16, 2017 at 5:41 pm GMTFrom the author:
some legally mandated homeland of the types advocated by Black Muslims.
Why not pay people to leave? A law change would convert the money supply from bank money to sovereign money.
AMI's HR2990 would convert the money supply overnight, and nobody would be the wiser.
At that point, new public money could be channeled into funding people to leave. Blacks that don't like it in the U.S. would be given X amount of dollars to settle in an African country of their choice. This public money can be formed as debt free, and could also be directed such that it can only buy American goods. In other words, it can be forced to channel, to then stimulate the American economy.
In this way, the future works, to then get rid of disruptive future elements.
It always boils down to the money system. There is plenty of economic surplus to then fund the removal of indigestible elements.
People automatically assume that the money supply must be private bank credit, as that is the way it always has been. NO IT HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY.
Rdm > , August 16, 2017 at 5:48 pm GMT@Alden source please, that I would like to read. something new.
segundo > , August 16, 2017 at 6:34 pm GMT@helena If Whites leave America and go back to their origin, no one, I repeat, NO ONE would complain about that. They'd be singing "God Riddance" song all along.
No one wants to migrate to Ukraine, a white country.
No one wants to migrate to Hungary, a white country.
No one wants to migrate to Austria, a white country.Everyone wants to migrate to the place where there's an over-bloated sense of job availability. In this case, America offers an ample amount of opportunity.
Let's wait and see how universities in CA populated with merit-based Asian Americans overrule all universities in the US anytime soon.
Name any state in the US that produces more than two universities (in the Top 50 list) in the world.
No state can compete against CA. You wonder why?
Diversity Heretic > , August 16, 2017 at 7:01 pm GMTAre you utterly oblivious to the fact that well over 95% of the blacks getting AAed into universities are then being trained/indoctrinated into being future disruptive activists? Activists with credentials, more money and connections. Entirely counterproductive and much of it on the taxpayers' dime. If there is a solution, AA isn't it.
David > , August 16, 2017 at 7:05 pm GMT@Rdm Can I count you in on the Calexit movement–followed by the purge of whites? Freed from the burden of those miserable European-origin Americans, the Asian-Negro-Mestizo marvel will be a shining light to the rest of the world!
Alec Leamas (hard at work) > , August 16, 2017 at 7:20 pm GMTI waited to make this comment until the serious thinkers had been here. Did anyone notice the dame in the picture is giving us the finger? I did a little experiment to see if my hand could assume that position inadvertently and it couldn't. It aptly illustrates the article, either way.
The Realist > , Website August 16, 2017 at 8:18 pm GMTName any state in the US that produces more than two universities (in the Top 50 list) in the world.
No state can compete against CA. You wonder why?
If you took the land mass of CA and imposed it on the U.S. East Coast between Boston and South Carolina, I don't think it'd be a problem to surpass California in any Top 50 University competition.
I'm not sure what your point is here.
Mis(ter)Anthrope > , August 16, 2017 at 8:23 pm GMTHere's a simpler and more effective solution-KILL ALL NIGGERS NOW. See, not so difficult, was it? Consider it a Phoenix Program for the American Problem. Actually, here's another idea-KILL ALL LIBERALS NOW. That way, good conservative people of different races, sexes, etc., can be saved from the otherwise necessary carnage. Remember, gun control is being able to hit your target.
Thomm > , August 16, 2017 at 8:23 pm GMTThe affirmative action game may well serve the interests of the cognitive elite whites, but it has been a disaster for the rest of white America. I have a better solution.
Give the feral negroes what they have been asking for. Pull all law enforcement out of negro hellholes like Detroit and South Chicago and let nature take its course.
Send all Asians and other foreigners who not already citizens back to their homelands. End all immigration except very special cases like the whites being slaughtered in South Africa or the spouse of a white American male citizen.
Wally > , Website August 16, 2017 at 8:31 pm GMT@Rdm I am not referring to guys like in the picture.
I am referring to the very topmost career stars, moving to Asia for the expat life. Some of that is happening, and it could accelerate. Only 2-3 million are needed.
Liberty Mike > , August 16, 2017 at 8:31 pm GMT@Kyle McKenna " And as he copiously documented, whites have suffered far more discrimination than asians have. The difference is, whites are more brainwashed into accepting it. "
And that's the function of the fraudulent, impossible '6M Jews, 5M others, gas chambers'.
[MORE]
"The historical mission of our world revolution is to rearrange a new culture of humanity to replace the previous social system. This conversion and re-organization of global society requires two essential steps: firstly, the destruction of the old established order, secondly, design and imposition of the new order. The first stage requires elimination of all frontier borders, nationhood and culture, public policy ethical barriers and social definitions, only then can the destroyed old system elements be replaced by the imposed system elements of our new order.
The first task of our world revolution is Destruction. All social strata and social formations created by traditional society must be annihilated, individual men and women must be uprooted from their ancestral environment, torn out of their native milieus, no tradition of any type shall be permitted to remain as sacrosanct, traditional social norms must only be viewed as a disease to be eradicated, the ruling dictum of the new order is; nothing is good so everything must be criticized and abolished, everything that was, must be gone."
from: 'The Spirit Of Militarism', by Nahum Goldmann
Goldmann was the founder & president of the World Jewish Congresssee the 'holocaust' scam debunked here:
No name calling, level playing field debate here:
Mis(ter)Anthrope > , August 16, 2017 at 8:32 pm GMT@Rdm Almost all white people would rather migrate to Austria, Hungary, and the Ukraine than the following citadels of civilization:
Angola
Botswana
Burundi
Cameroon
Central African Republic
Djibouti
Ethiopia
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Gabon
Ghana
Kenya
Niger
Nigeria
South Africa
Sudan
Swaziland
Tanzania
Uganda
ZambiaYou know what? I bet most blacks would as well.
Wally > , August 16, 2017 at 8:40 pm GMT@Liberty Mike I don't know if anyone else got it, but that is pretty damn funny.
Thomm > , August 16, 2017 at 8:57 pm GMT@Rdm - 45% of California is Federal land.
- Without US taxpayers money CA would be a 3rd world country completely filled with unemployable & dumb illegal immigrants.
- Think about this brief list made possible by the US taxpayers / federal government, money CA would not get and then tens of thousands of CA people would lose their jobs (= lost CA tax revenues):
aerospace contracts, defense contracts, fed gov, software contracts, fed gov airplane orders, bases, ports, money for illegal aliens costs, federal monies for universities, 'affirmative action monies, section 8 housing money, monies for highways, monies for 'mass transportation', monies to fight crime, monies from the EPA for streams & lakes, monies from the Nat. Park Service, monies for healthcare, monies for freeloading welfare recipients, and all this is just the tip of the iceberg
- Not to mention the counties in CA which will not want to be part of the laughable 'Peoples Republic of California'.
- And imagine the 'Peoples Republic of California Army', hilarious.
CA wouldn't last a week without other peoples money.
Calexit? Please, pretty please.
Macumazahn > , August 16, 2017 at 8:58 pm GMT@War for Blair Mountain You just want intra-white socialism so you can mooch off of productive whites.
Rdm > , August 16, 2017 at 9:18 pm GMTIt's particularly unfortunate that Asians, who can hardly be blamed for the plight of America's Blacks, are the ones from whom the "affirmative action" #groidgeld is extracted.
Rdm > , August 16, 2017 at 9:19 pm GMT@Diversity Heretic My impression and overall experience from interacting with White Americans is good in general. I have a very distinct view on both White Americans and Europeans. I'd come back later.
I don't recommend purging of Whites in America. Neither do I prohibit immigration of all people. But I do wish "legal" immigration from all parts of the world to this land. But I also understand why people are fed up with White America.
There is a clear distinction between Europeans and White Americans. White Americans born and bred here are usually an admixture of many European origins. They usually hide their Eastern European origin and fervently claim German, French, English whenever possible -- basically those countries that used to be colonial masters in the past.
White Americans are generally daring, optimistic and very open-minded. Usually when you bump into any White Americans born and bred here, you can sense their genuine hospitality.
Europeans, usually fresh White immigrants in this land, tend to carry over their old mentality with a bit of self-righteous attitude to patronize and condescend Americans on the ground that this is a young country.My former boss was Swiss origin, born in England, and migrated to America. If there's an opportunity cost, he'd regale his English origin. If there's a Swiss opportunity, he'd talk about his ancestry. He'd bash loud, crazy Americans while extoling his European majesty. He became a naturalized American last year for tax purposes so that his American wife can inherit if he kicks the bucket.
Bottom line is, every immigrant to the US, in my honest opinion, is very innocent and genuinely hard working. They have a clear idea of how they like to achieve their dreams here and would like to work hard. It seems after staying here for a while, they all change their true selves to fit into the existing societal structure, i.e., Chris Hemsworth, an Australian purposely trained to speak American English in Red Dawn, can yell "This is our home" while 4th generation Asian Americans will be forced to speak broken English. This is how dreams are shaped in America.
Coming back to purge of Whites, I only wish those self-righteous obese, bald, bottom of the barrel, living on the alms Whites, proclaiming their White skin, will go back to their origin and do something about a coming flood of Muslim in their ancestral country if they're so worried about their heritage.
Saxon > , August 16, 2017 at 9:26 pm GMT@Alec Leamas (hard at work) My point is, universities in CA are doing well commensurate with hard working students without AA action.
Rdm > , August 16, 2017 at 9:30 pm GMT@Thomm No, he just wants the street-defecating hangers-on like you to go back and show how awesome you claim you are in your own country by making a success of it rather than milking all of the entitlements and affirmative action and other programs of literal racial advantage given to you by virtue of setting foot in someone else's country.
Stan d Mute > , August 16, 2017 at 9:36 pm GMT@Wally - 45% of California is Federal land.
- Without US taxpayers money CA would be a 3rd world country completely filled with unemployable & dumb illegal immigrants.
- Think about this brief list made possible by the US taxpayers / federal government, money CA would not get and then tens of thousands of CA people would lose their jobs (= lost CA tax revenues):
aerospace contracts, defense contracts, fed gov, software contracts, fed gov airplane orders, bases, ports, money for illegal aliens costs, federal monies for universities, 'affirmative action monies, section 8 housing money, monies for highways, monies for 'mass transportation', monies to fight crime, monies from the EPA for streams & lakes, monies from the Nat. Park Service, monies for healthcare, monies for freeloading welfare recipients, and all this is just the tip of the iceberg
- Not to mention the counties in CA which will not want to be part of the laughable 'Peoples Republic of California'.
- And imagine the 'Peoples Republic of California Army', hilarious.
CA wouldn't last a week without other peoples money.
Calexit? Please, pretty please. So you're talking about Calexit in AA action?
Let us play along.
If CA is existing solely due to Fed Alms, I can agree it's the tip of the iceberg. But we're talking about Universities, their performance and how AA is affecting well qualified students.
Following on your arguments,
UC Berkeley receives $373 Millions (Federal Sponsorship) in 2016.
Harvard University, on the other hand, receives $656 millions (Federal sponsorship) in 2012.I'm talking about how Universities climb up in World ranking, based upon their innovations, productivity, research output, etc etc etc. Which to me, is reflective of what kind of students are admitted into the programs. That's my point.
If you want to talk about Calexit, you'd better go and refresh your reading comprehension ability.
War for Blair Mountain > , August 16, 2017 at 9:36 pm GMTThe thing that is forgotten is that white Americans DO NOT need the Africans in any way whatsoever. There is NOTHING in Detroit that we want – we abandoned it deliberately and have no interest in ever returning.
On the other hand, what do the Africans need from us?
Food. We own and operate all food production.
Medicine. Ditto.
Clean water. Look at Flint.
Sanitation services. Look at anywhere in Africa.
Order.To put a stop to African behavior from Africans is an idiot's dream. They will never stop being what they are. They simply cannot. So if we cannot expel them, we must control them. When they act up, we cut off their food, medicine, water, and sewer services. Build fences around Detroit and Flint. Siege. After a month or two of the Ethiopian Diet, the Africans in Detroit will be much more compliant.
The peril of appeasement > , August 16, 2017 at 9:40 pm GMT@Thomm You just want intra-white socialism so you can mooch off of productive whites. Thomm=the girly boy blatherings of a White Libertarian Cuck
The benefit to the Historic Native Born White American Working Class of being voted into a White Racial Minority in California by Chinese "Americans" Korean "Americans" .Hindu "Americans" Sihk "Americans" and Iranian "Americans"?
Answer:0 . Bring back the Chinese Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act!!!
Two Great pro-White Socialist Labor Leaders:Denis Kearney and Samuel Gompers go read Denis Kearney's Rebel Rousing speeches google Samuel Gompers' Congressional Testimony in favor of the passage of The Chinese Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act
Truth > , August 16, 2017 at 9:42 pm GMTAs some have pointed out, the trouble with appeasement is, it never ends. Those who are used to the handouts will always want more. There's the saying parents tend to strengthen the strong and weaken the weak, that's what paternalistic policies like affirmative action and welfare do to a society. It creates a cycle of dependency.
Those who think multiculturalism coupled with identity politics is a good idea need to take a good look at Malaysia, arguably the most multicultural country outside the US. The country is in Southeast Asia, with roughly 30m people, roughly 60% ethnic Malay(100% muslim), 23% Chinese(mostly buddhist or christian), brought in by the British in the 1800s to work the rubber plantations and tin mines, and 7% Indian(mostly Hindu), brought in by the British to work the plantations and civil service.
In 1957 the Brits left and left the power in the hands of the ethnic Malays. The Chinese soon became the most successful and prosperous group and dominated commerce and the professional ranks. In 1969 a major race riot broke out, the largely rural and poor Malays decided to "take back what's theirs", burnt, looted and slaughtered many ethnic Chinese. After the riot the government decided the only way to prevent more riots is to raise the standard of living for the Malays. And they began a massive wealth transfer program through affirmative action that heavily favors ethnic Malays. First, all civil service jobs were given to only ethnic Malays, including the police and military. Then AA was instituted in all local universities where Malays with Cs and Ds in math and science were given preference over Chinese with all A's to all the engineering, medicine and law majors. Today no one in their right mind, not even the rich Malays, want to be treated by a Malay doctor. I know people who were maimed by one of these affirmative actioned Malay "neurosurgeons" who botched a simple routine procedure, and there was no recourse, no one is allowed to sue.
Thanks to their pandering to the Malay majority and outright voting fraud, the ruling party UMNO has never lost an election and is today the longest serving ruling party in modern history. Any dissent was stifled through the sedition act where dissidents are thrown in jail, roughed up, tossed down 14th story buildings before they even go to trial. All media is strictly controlled and censored by the government, who also controls the military, and 100% of the country's oil production, with a large portion of the profit of Petronas going to the coffers of the corrupt Malay government elites, whatever's left is given to hoi polloi Malays in the form of fluff job positions created in civil service, poorly run quasi-government Malay owned companies like Petronas, full scholarships to study abroad for only ethnic Malays, tax free importation of luxury cars for ethnic Malays, and when the government decided to "privatize" any government function like the postal service or telcom, they gave it in the form of a monopoly to a Malay owned company. All government contracts e.g. for infrastructure are only given to Malay owned companies, even as they have zero expertise for the job. The clever Chinese quickly figured out they could just use a Malay partner in name only to get all government contracts.
As opposed to the US where affirmative action favors the minority, in Malaysia AA favors the majority. You know it can't last. The minority can only prop up the majority for so long. Growth today is largely propped up by oil income, and the oil reserve is dwindling. Even Mahathir the former prime minister who started the most blatant racial discrimination policy against the Chinese started chastising the Malays of late, saying they've become too lazy and dependent on government largess.
Yet despite the heavy discrimination, the Chinese continued to thrive thanks to their industriousness and ingenuity, while many rural Malays not connected with the governing elite remain poor -- classic case of strengthening the strong and weakening the weak. According to Forbes, of the top 10 richest men in Malaysia today, 9 are ethnic Chinese, only 1 is an ethnic Malay who was given everything he had. Green with envy, the ethnic Malays demanded more to keep the government in power. So a new law was made – all Chinese owned businesses have to give 30% ownership to an ethnic Malay, just like that.
Needless to say all this racial discrimination resulted in a massive brain drain for the country. many middle class Indians joined the Chinese and emigrated en masse to Australia, NZ, US, Canada, Europe, Singapore, HK, Taiwan, Japan. The ones left are often destitute and poor, heavily discriminated against due to their darker skin, and became criminals. Al Jazeera recently reported that the 7% ethnic Indians in Malaysia commit 70% of the crime.
To see how much this has cost Malaysia -- Singapore split off from Malaysia 2 years after their joint independence from Britain and was left in destitute as they have no natural resources. But Lee Kuan Yew with the help of many Malaysian Chinese who emigrated to Singapore turned it into one of the richest countries in the world in one generation with a nominal per capita GDP of $53k, while Malaysia is firmly stuck at $9.4k, despite being endowed with natural resources from oil to tin and beautiful beaches. The combination of heavy emigration among the Chinese and high birthrate among the muslim Malays encouraged by racialist Mahathir, the Chinese went from 40% of the population in 1957 to 23% today. The Indians went from 11% to 7%.
I fear that I'm seeing the same kind of problem in the US. It's supremely stupid for the whites to want to give up their majority status through open borders. Most Asians like me who immigrated here decades ago did it to get away from the corrupt, dishonest, dog-eat-dog, misogynistic culture of Asia. But when so many are now here, it defeats the purpose. The larger the immigrant group, the longer it takes to assimilate them. Multiculturalism is a failed concept, especially when coupled with identity politics. Affirmative Action does not work, it only creates a toxic cycle of dependency. The US is playing with fire. We need a 20 year moratorium on immigration and assimilate all those already here. Otherwise, I fear the US will turn into another basketcase like Malaysia.
Alden > , August 16, 2017 at 9:43 pm GMTTruth > , August 16, 2017 at 9:43 pm GMT@Tom Welsh There were only about one million Indians living in what is the United States in 1500. There are now 3 million living in much better conditions than in 1500.
I would be willing to accept non White immigration if the non White immigrants and our government would end affirmative action for non Whites.
Asians are discriminated against in college admissions. But in the job market they have affirmative action aristocratic status over Whites.
Joe Wong > , August 16, 2017 at 9:45 pm GMT@Liberty Mike The sno percentage is much higher an Ukraine, Hungary and Austria than here.
Thomm > , August 16, 2017 at 9:50 pm GMT@Diversity Heretic John Derbyshire has made similar arguments--racial preferences are the price for social peace. But, as Steve Sailer has pointed out, we're running out of white and Asian children to buffer black dysfunction and Asians are going to get less and less willing to be "sacrificial lambs" for a black underclass that they did nothing to create and that they despise.
There are other ways to control the black underclass. You can force the talented ones to remain in their community and provide what leadership they can. Black violence can be met with instant retributive counter-violence. (Prior to the 1960s most race riots were white on black.) Whites can enforce white norms on the black community, who will sort-of conform to them as best they are able.
Finally, Rudyard Kipling had a commentary on Danegeld. It applies to paying off dysfunctional domestic minorities just as much to invading enemies.
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!"admitting academically unqualified blacks to elite schools is, at core, a policy to protect the racial peace and, as such, has nothing to do with racial justice,
The Black are protesting relentlessly and loudly verbally and thru assertive actions about the racial discrimination they have been facing. I have never seen those academically unqualified blacks admitted to the elite schools have stood up using themselves as shiny examples to refute the discrimination allegations the Black made against the White.
While the policy to protect the racial peace by admitting academically unqualified blacks to elite schools failed miserably, the restricting the smart and qualified Asians to elite schools is blatantly racial injustice practice exercised in broad day light with a straight face lie. The strategy is to cause resentment between the minorities so that the White can admitting their academically unqualified ones to elite schools without arousing scrutiny.
Alden > , August 16, 2017 at 10:04 pm GMT@Saxon I'm white, you stupid faggot.
I am extremely committed that you White Trashionalists fulfill your duty as wastebaskets of genetic matter.
Excellent whites exist only because the waste produced gets removed in the form of WN wiggers.
Like I said, there is a huge variance within whites. Therefore, you have no business speaking for respectable whites.
Worst of all, you Nationalist-Leftists are un-American.
Priss Factor > , Website August 16, 2017 at 10:05 pm GMT@Astuteobservor II Just google solutrean theory Europeans arrived in America 20,000 years ago. Many articles come up including from smithsonian.
The east coast Canadian Indians always had the founding myth they came over the ocean.
There's a book, Across The Atlantic Ice by Dennis Stanford on kindle, Amazon and many book stores.
Alden > , August 16, 2017 at 10:20 pm GMTHere is one 'smart Asian' who is not a Self-Righteous Addict of Proglobalism, but what a clown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNrytSEyUoY
Dineshisms are always funny as hell.
Because KKK were Southern Democrats, Democratic Party is forever the KKK party. Never mind Democrats represented a broad swatch of people.
And Dinesh finds some parallels between Old Democrats and Nazi ideology, therefore Democrats are responsible for Nazism. I meanDoesn't he know that parties change? Democratic Party once used to be working class party. Aint no more.
GOP used to be Party of Lincoln. It is southern party now, and most loyal GOP-ers are Southerns with respect for Confederacy. GOP now wants Southern Neo-Confed votes but don't want Confed memorials. LOL.
Things change.Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond came over to the GOP for a reason.
Dinesh seems to be stuck in 'caste' mentality. Because Dems once had KKK on its side, Democratic Party is forever cast or 'casted' as KKK. And now, 'Democrats are real Nazis'.
Actually, the real supremacism in America at the moment seems to be AIPAC-related.
Anyway, there were leftist elements in National Socialism, but its was more right than left.
Why? Because in the hierarchy of ideological priorities, the most important core value was the 'Aryan' Tribe. Socialized medicine was NOT the highest value among Nazis. Core conviction was the ideology of racial identity and unity. Thus, it was more right than left.
Just because National Socialism had some leftist elements doesn't make it a 'leftist' ideology.
Same is true of Soviet Communism. Stalin brought back high culture and classical music. He favored traditionalist aesthetics to experimental or avant-garde ones. And Soviets promoted some degree of Russian nationalism. And even though communists eradicated certain aspects of the past, they also restored respect for classic literature and culture. So, does that mean USSR was 'conservative' or 'rightist'? No, it had some rightist elements but its core ideology was about class egalitarianism, therefore, it was essentially leftist.
Liberty Mike > , August 16, 2017 at 10:22 pm GMT@Joe Wong All the Whites and Asians who are admitted to the top 25 schools are superbly qualified. There are so many applicants every White and Asian is superbly qualified.
The entire point of affirmative action is that Asians and Whites are discriminated against in favor of blacks and Hispanics. Harvard proudly proclaims that is now majority non White.
Don't worry, the Jews decided long ago that you Asian drones would have medicine and tech, Hispanics construction, food, trucking,and cleaning and Hispanics and blacks would share government work and public education.
Whites will gradually disappear and the 110 year old Jewish black coalition will control the Asians and Hispanics through black crime and periodic riots.
Alden > , August 16, 2017 at 10:31 pm GMT@Truth Do you think Beavis and Butthead are choosing Angola over Austria?
Alden > , August 16, 2017 at 10:35 pm GMT@Macumazahn Affirmative action punishes Whites as well and Asians are always free to go back to wherever their parents or grandparents came from.
After 400 years, Whites can't go anywhere.
Joe Wong > , August 16, 2017 at 10:40 pm GMT@Thomm Do you favor affirmative action?
Liberty Mike > , August 16, 2017 at 10:44 pm GMT@Wally So you are a tough guy, and never give in anything to anyone in your life? It seems the Jews have similar view as yours, the Jews insist that if they give in an inch to those Holocaust deniers, they will keep demanding more & more, at the beginning the Holocaust deniers will demand for the evidence, then they will demand the Jews are at fault, then they will demand the Nazi to be resurrected, then they will demand they can carry out Holocaust against anyone they don't like, Pretty soon they will demand they to be treated like the pigs in the Orwellian's Animal Farm.
F the media > , August 16, 2017 at 10:46 pm GMT@Thomm "Un-American" is descriptively flaccid. It means nada, nothing, zero. It is vapid and so empty and such a lame lexeme.
Any word that is hackneyed, lifeless, and so low energy would never be scripted by a White committed to excellence.
Anon > , Disclaimer August 16, 2017 at 10:46 pm GMT@Priss Factor Hell with those 'smart Asians'. They are among the biggest Proglob a-holes.
Asians have servile genes that seek approval from the power. They are status-freaks.
They make perfect collaborators with the Glob.
Under communism, they made the most conformist commies.
Under Japanese militarism, they made the most mindless military goons who did Nanking.
Under Khmer Rouge, they were biggest looney killers.
Under PC, they make such goody good PC dogs.
If the prevailing culture of US was patriotic and conservatives, Asians would try to conform to that, and that wouldn't be so bad.
But since the prevailing culture is PC, these yellow dogs are among the biggest homomaniacal PC tards.
Hell with them. Yellow dogs voted for Obama and Hillary in high numbers. They despise, hate, and feel contempt for white masses and working class. They are servitors of the empire as Darrell Hamamoto said. He's one of the few good guys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bs_BbIBCoY
Just look at that Francis Fukuyama, that slavish dog of Soros. He's so disgusting. And then, you got that brown Asian tard Fareed Zakaria. What a vile lowlife. And that fat Jeer Heet who ran from dirty browns shi**ing all over the place outdoors to live with white people but bitches about 'white supremacy'. Well, the fact that he ran from his own kind to live with whites must mean his own choice prefers white folks. His immigration choice was 'white supremacism'. After all, he could have moved to black Africa. Why didn't he?
PS. The best way of Affirmative Action is to limit it only to American Indians and Blacks of slave ancestry. That's it.
Also, institutions should OPENLY ADMIT that they do indeed discriminate to better represent the broader population. Fair or not, honesty is a virtue. What is most galling about AA is the lies that says 'we are colorblind and meritocratic but...' No more buts. Yes, there is discrimination but to represent larger population. Okay, just be honest. Asia is a big continent and Asians of different ethnicity have very different voting patterns due to their culture and history. Japanese-Americans tend to be the most liberal ethnic group of all Asian groups because of their experience with internment during WWII. Somehow they conveniently forgot that it was a Democrat president who put them in internment, and are now putting the blames squarely on the right for what happened. These Japanese-Americans are drinking the kool-aid big time, but in the 90s I remember a Japanese prime minister got in big trouble for saying America's biggest problem is we have too many blacks and hispanics dragging us down.
Filipinos, Hmongs and other Southeast Asians tend to be poor and rely on government largess to a certain extent, and also benefit from affirmative action at least in the state of CA, they also tend to be liberal.
In this election cycle Indian-Americans have become the most vocal anti-Trumpers. From Indian politicians from WA state like Kshama Sawant, Pramila Jayapal to Indian entertainers like Aziz Ansari, Hasan Minaj, Kumail Nanjani, to Silicon Valley techies like Calexit mastermind VC Shervin Pishevar, Google CEO Sundra Pichai, all are socialist libtards. In my local election, several Indians are running for city council. All are first generation, all Democrats and champions of liberal policies. It's as if they have amnesia(or just lower IQ), not remembering that socialism was why they had to leave the shithole India to begin with. A Korean American is running as a Republican.
There are Chinese idiots like Ted Lieu and other asians who've gone to elite schools therefore drinking the kool-aid and insisted AA is good for Asian Americans, but most Koreans, Vietnamese and Chinese tend to be more conservative and lean Republican. During the Trump campaign Breitbart printed a story about a group of Chinese Americans voicing their support for Trump despite his anti-China rhetoric because they had no intention of seeing the US turned into another socialist shithole like China.
Per the NYT a major reason Asians vote Republican is because of AA. Asians revere education, esp. the Chinese and Koreans, and they see holistic admission is largely bullshit set up by Jews to protect their legacy status while throwing a few bones to under qualified blacks and hispanics. Unfortunately it didn't seem to dampen their desire to immigrate here. Given that there are 4 billion Asians and thanks to open borders, if it weren't for AA all our top 100 schools will be 100% Asian in no time. I suggest we first curtail Asian immigration, limit their number to no more than 10,000 a year, then we can discuss dismantling AA.
Anon > , Disclaimer August 16, 2017 at 10:46 pm GMT@Wally This is false. See:
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/#main-findings
California sends far more to Washington than it sends back. Also, there is no correlation between percentage of federal land and dependence on federal funding. If there were, Delaware would be the least dependent state in the US.
Clue: It isn't.
Astuteobservor II > , August 16, 2017 at 10:47 pm GMT@Wally This is false. See:
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/#main-findings
California sends far more to Washington than it sends back. Also, there is no correlation between percentage of federal land and dependence on federal funding. If there were, Maine would be among the least dependent states in the US.
Clue: It isn't.
Astuteobservor II > , August 16, 2017 at 10:48 pm GMT@Alden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_hypothesis
if the wiki is reliable. you shouldn't be telling others like it is a cold hard fact. But still a very interesting read. thanks for bringing it up.
F the media > , August 16, 2017 at 11:06 pm GMTBut in the job market they have affirmative action aristocratic status over Whites.
that is another bold claim. I know of black quotas, but asian quota???
THe Realist > , Website August 16, 2017 at 11:13 pm GMT@Astuteobservor II The Indian tribe in tech is known to favor Indians in hiring. I've read from other Indian posters elsewhere that Indian managers like to hire Indian underlings because they are easier to bully.
Indian outsourcing firms like Infosys, TCS, Wipro are like 90% Indian, mostly imported directly from India, with token whites as admin or account manager.
F the media > , August 16, 2017 at 11:14 pm GMT@Truth See #65 above. You die, too, boy.
Joe Wong > , August 16, 2017 at 11:27 pm GMT@Carlton Meyer That's pretty funny. The guy's got balls. Probably son of some corrupt Chinese government official used to being treated like an emperor back home, ain't taking no shit from black folks.
I suppose this is what happens when universities clamor to accept foreign students because they are full pay. His tuition dollar is directly subsidizing these affirmative action hacks, who are now preventing him from studying. He has fully paid for his right to tell them to STFU.
Joe Franklin > , August 16, 2017 at 11:33 pm GMT@Beckow Romans did not think Europe was a nice place to live, full of bloodthirsty barbarians, uneducated, smelly, dirty, foul mouth and rogue manner, even nowadays a lot of them cannot use full set of tableware to finish their meal, a single fork will do, it is a litte more civilized than those use fingers only.
After a millennium of dark age of superstition, religious cult suppression, utter poverty medieval serf Europe, it followed by centuries of racial cleanses, complete destruction of war, stealing and hypocrisy on industrial scale, this time not only restricted to Europe the plague flooded the whole planet.
Even nowadays the same plague from Europe and its offshoots in the North America is threatening to exterminate the human beings with a big bang for their blinding racial obligatory. The rest of the world only can hope this plague would stay put in North America and Europe, so the rest world can live in peace and prosperity.
Reg Cæsar > , August 16, 2017 at 11:38 pm GMTAsians receive federal entitlements the same as the other protected class groups of diversity.
Diversity ideology lectures us that Asians are oppressed by Occidentals.
1. Preferential US immigration, citizenship, and asylum policies for Asian people
2. Federal 8a set-aside government contracts for Asian owned businesses
3. Affirmative Action for Asians especially toward obtaining government jobs
4. Government anti-discrimination laws for Asians
4. Government hate speech crime prosecutions in defense of Asians
5. Sanctuary cities for illegal Asians, and other protected class groups of diversity
6. Asian espionage directed at the US is common, and many times goes unprosecuted
7. American trade policy allows mass importation of cheap Asian products built with slave labor
8. Whaling allowance for some Asian ethnic groups
9. Most H1-B visas awarded to AsiansThomm > , August 17, 2017 at 12:10 am GMTPlease stop trying to confuse Orientals with Indians and other subcontinentals. They are quite distinct.
In their original countries they are, but in America they are almost identical in all ways except appearance and diet.
And odor.
Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 12:12 am GMT@War for Blair Mountain Thomm=the girly boy blatherings of a White Libertarian Cuck...
The benefit to the Historic Native Born White American Working Class of being voted into a White Racial Minority in California by Chinese "Americans"...Korean "Americans"....Hindu "Americans"...Sihk "Americans"...and Iranian "Americans"?
Answer:0.... Bring back the Chinese Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act!!!
Two Great pro-White Socialist Labor Leaders:Denis Kearney and Samuel Gompers...go read Denis Kearney's Rebel Rousing speeches...google Samuel Gompers' Congressional Testimony in favor of the passage of The Chinese Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act... It is MUCH better to be a libertarian than to be a Nationalist-Leftist. You have effectively admitted that you want intra-white socialism since you can't hack it yourself.Socialists = untalented losers.
Plus, I guarantee that your ancestors were not in America since 1776. You are just some 2nd-gen Polack or something.
Issac > , August 17, 2017 at 12:12 am GMTDo you favor affirmative action?
Absolutely not. It is one of the worst things ever devised.
Vinteuil > , August 17, 2017 at 12:14 am GMT@Thomm Sounds like a Jewish fantasy.
Issac > , August 17, 2017 at 12:15 am GMT@Priss Factor Here is one 'smart Asian' who is not a Self-Righteous Addict of Proglobalism, but what a clown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNrytSEyUoY
Dineshisms are always funny as hell.
Because KKK were Southern Democrats, Democratic Party is forever the KKK party. Never mind Democrats represented a broad swatch of people.
And Dinesh finds some parallels between Old Democrats and Nazi ideology, therefore Democrats are responsible for Nazism. I mean...Doesn't he know that parties change? Democratic Party once used to be working class party. Aint no more.
GOP used to be Party of Lincoln. It is southern party now, and most loyal GOP-ers are Southerns with respect for Confederacy. GOP now wants Southern Neo-Confed votes but don't want Confed memorials. LOL.
Things change.Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond came over to the GOP for a reason.
Dinesh seems to be stuck in 'caste' mentality. Because Dems once had KKK on its side, Democratic Party is forever cast or 'casted' as KKK. And now, 'Democrats are real Nazis'.
Actually, the real supremacism in America at the moment seems to be AIPAC-related.
Anyway, there were leftist elements in National Socialism, but its was more right than left.
Why? Because in the hierarchy of ideological priorities, the most important core value was the 'Aryan' Tribe. Socialized medicine was NOT the highest value among Nazis. Core conviction was the ideology of racial identity and unity. Thus, it was more right than left.
Just because National Socialism had some leftist elements doesn't make it a 'leftist' ideology.
Same is true of Soviet Communism. Stalin brought back high culture and classical music. He favored traditionalist aesthetics to experimental or avant-garde ones. And Soviets promoted some degree of Russian nationalism. And even though communists eradicated certain aspects of the past, they also restored respect for classic literature and culture. So, does that mean USSR was 'conservative' or 'rightist'? No, it had some rightist elements but its core ideology was about class egalitarianism, therefore, it was essentially leftist. "Stalin brought back high culture and classical music. He favored traditionalist aesthetics to experimental or avant-garde ones."
Priss, you haven't the first clue what you're talking about, here. Stalin didn't favor "traditionalist aesthetics" – he favored vulgar pop-crap.
Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 12:15 am GMT@Joe Wong Ah yes, the whites are well known for their bigotry. That's why they're so mono-racial and China is so diverse. Good point Chang.
Joe Wong > , August 17, 2017 at 12:15 am GMT@Joe Franklin Asians receive federal entitlements the same as the other protected class groups of diversity.
Diversity ideology lectures us that Asians are oppressed by Occidentals.
1. Preferential US immigration, citizenship, and asylum policies for Asian people
2. Federal 8a set-aside government contracts for Asian owned businesses
3. Affirmative Action for Asians especially toward obtaining government jobs
4. Government anti-discrimination laws for Asians
4. Government hate speech crime prosecutions in defense of Asians
5. Sanctuary cities for illegal Asians, and other protected class groups of diversity
6. Asian espionage directed at the US is common, and many times goes unprosecuted
7. American trade policy allows mass importation of cheap Asian products built with slave labor
8. Whaling allowance for some Asian ethnic groups
9. Most H1-B visas awarded to Asians That is completely false. You just memorized that from some bogus site.Section 8a is used more by white women than by Asians, and Asians get excluded from it due to high income. It should be done away with altogether, of course.
Asians face discrimination in University admissions, as the main article describes.
H1-Bs are awarded to Asians because white countries don't produce enough people who qualify.
Plus, Asian SAT scores are consistently higher than whites. That proves that Asian success was not due to AA.
Saxon > , August 17, 2017 at 12:46 am GMTthe 110 year old Jewish black coalition will control
I am not sure the Muslim and Indian will agree to that, they have a very strong birth rate that can match if not surpass the blacks too.
Ron Unz > , August 17, 2017 at 12:47 am GMT@Thomm Green isn't a color that suits you. You're a subcontinental hanger-on who's only able to garner any success in any western country due to an anarcho-tyranny in enforcement against ethnonepotism as well as lavish handouts in the form of all sorts of party favors.
There are very few non-white groups that could do any well on a level playing field with equal enforcement against nepotism, and yours isn't one of them. Your country? Sad!
Astuteobservor II > , August 17, 2017 at 1:03 am GMTWhites will gradually disappear and the 110 year old Jewish black coalition will control the Asians and Hispanics through black crime and periodic riots.
I don't think this is correct
Since California already has (very roughly) the future demographics you're considering, I think it serves as a good test-case.
The Hispanic and Asian populations have been growing rapidly, and they tend to hold an increasing share of the political power, together with the large white population, though until very recently most of the top offices were still held by (elderly) whites. Whites would have much more political power, except that roughly half of them are still Republicans, and the Republican Party has almost none.
In most of the urban areas, there's relatively little black crime these days since so many of the blacks have been driven away or sent off to prison. I'd also say that major black riots in CA are almost unthinkable since many of the local police forces are heavily Hispanic: they don't particularly like blacks, and might easily shoot the black rioters dead while being backed up by the politicians, and many of the blacks probably recognize this. Admittedly, CA always had a relatively small black population, but that didn't prevent enormous black crime and black riots in the past due to the different demographics.
Meanwhile, Jewish-activists still possess enormous influence over CA politics, but they exert that influence through money and media, just like they do everywhere else in the country.
Priss Factor > , August 17, 2017 at 1:26 am GMT@F the media that is actually true about indians. I have first hand account of a 100+ tech dept getting taken over by indians in just 3 years :/ but that is not a "quota" that is just indians abusing their power once in position of power.
Truth > , August 17, 2017 at 1:35 am GMT@Vinteuil Priss, you haven't the first clue what you're talking about, here. Stalin didn't favor "traditionalist aesthetics" – he favored vulgar pop-crap.
Right.. Ballet, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and classic literature. That's some pop crap.
Soviet Culture was about commie Lena Dunhams.Now, most of Soviet culture was what might be called kitsch or middlebrow stuff, but it was not 'pop crap' as known in the West.
Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 1:58 am GMT@THe Realist LOL, if you're the one holding the knife, hatchet, billy club or brick, I like my chances.
Joe Franklin > , August 17, 2017 at 2:03 am GMT@Saxon Green isn't a color that suits you. You're a subcontinental hanger-on who's only able to garner any success in any western country due to an anarcho-tyranny in enforcement against ethnonepotism as well as lavish handouts in the form of all sorts of party favors.
There are very few non-white groups that could do any well on a level playing field with equal enforcement against nepotism, and yours isn't one of them. Your country? Sad! Whatever helps you sleep at night..
Yesterday I was called a Jew. Today, it is Indian. In reality, I am a white American guy.
You white trashionalists can't get your stories straight, can you? Well, WNs are known for having negro IQs.
Asians don't get affirmative action. They outscore whites in the SAT.
But even blacks outscore WNs like you.
Heh heh heh heh
Truth > , August 17, 2017 at 2:20 am GMT@Thomm That is completely false. You just memorized that from some bogus site.
Section 8a is used more by white women than by Asians, and Asians get excluded from it due to high income. It should be done away with altogether, of course.
Asians face discrimination in University admissions, as the main article describes.
H1-Bs are awarded to Asians because white countries don't produce enough people who qualify.
Plus, Asian SAT scores are consistently higher than whites. That proves that Asian success was not due to AA. You have reading comprehension problems to have confused Federal 8A government contacts with Section 8 housing.
8A contracts are federal contracts granted to "socially and economically disadvantaged individual(s)."
The business must be majority-owned (51 percent or more) and controlled/managed by socially and economically disadvantaged individual(s).
The individual(s) controlling and managing the firm on a full-time basis must meet the SBA requirement for disadvantage, by proving both social disadvantage and economic disadvantage.
Definition of Socially and Economically Disadvantaged Individuals
Socially disadvantaged individuals are those who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias because of their identities as members of groups without regard to their individual qualities. The social disadvantage must stem from circumstances beyond their control.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the following individuals are presumed to be socially disadvantaged:
• Black Americans;
• Hispanic Americans (persons with origins from Latin America, South America, Portugal and Spain);
• Native Americans (American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians);
• Asian Pacific Americans (persons with origins from Japan, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Korea, Samoa, Guam, U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands [Republic of Palau], Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Laos, Cambodia [Kampuchea], Taiwan, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Macao, Hong Kong, Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu, or Nauru);• Subcontinent Asian Americans (persons with origins from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives Islands or Nepal);
• And members of other groups designated from time to time by the SBA.
Beckow > , August 17, 2017 at 2:25 am GMTThat's pretty funny. The guy's got balls.
Nah, just some goofy nerd working on his PhD in Library Science.
THIS Kat on the other hand is my N-!
Truth > , August 17, 2017 at 2:33 am GMT@Joe Wong Romans lived in Europe, get an atlas, Rome is in Europe. I will skip over your silly summaries of European history, we all can do it to any civilization all day. Pointless. Try China. Oh, I forgot, nobody knows much Chinese up and downs because it was mostly inconsequential.
If you call others 'racist' all the time, they might just not take your seriously. Or simply say, fine, if liking one's culture is now 'racism', if it is a white culture, then count me in. The rest of the world is tripping over itself to move – literally to physically move – to Europe and North America. Why do you think that is?
Truth > , August 17, 2017 at 2:35 am GMTI'd also say that major black riots in CA are almost unthinkable since many of the local police forces are heavily Hispanic: they don't particularly like blacks, and might easily shoot the black rioters dead
Oh, would you stop being a make-believe pundit, Ron? That is some commentary you copped from an OJ-era LA Times expose. You've had one conversation with a police officer in your life, and that was over an illegal left term outside the Loma Linda Starbucksand culminated in disturbing the peace when exited your Bentley yelling "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!?!" at the top of your lungs for 4 minutes.
Whenever you've had a nudity-mandatory, eyes-wide-shut, type globalist-soiree at your palatial mansion, the only people you invited were politicians, lawyers, Ivy-league economists, Silicon Valley tech nerds and hookers.
Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 2:37 am GMT@Priss Factor They had to be into all that tired, boring, 11-century old shit; they didn't have any black people.
War for Blair Mountain > , August 17, 2017 at 2:44 am GMT@Joe Franklin We've been over this. 8a is not given to anyone with over $250,000 in assets, as your own link indicates. This means most Asians can't use it anyway (not that they need to).
The whole program should be done away with, of course.
What is funny is that you can't accept that Asians have higher SAT scores than whites, which pretty much proves that they can (and do) outperform without AA. You WN idiots can't come to terms with that.
But Section 8a should be removed just so that WN wiggers don't have anything to hide behind, since Asians don't need it to excel.
uman > , August 17, 2017 at 3:09 am GMT@Thomm These untalented Socialists you refer to would include the vast majority of America 1969 90 percent Native Born White America .a White Nation that placed two Alpha Native Born White American Males on the Moon .ten more after that. Seems that Socialism worked just fine.
If you prefer an Asian Majority you can always pack your bags and pick the Asian Nation of your choice.
Ronnie > , August 17, 2017 at 3:11 am GMT@Ron Unz hmm i don't know that will be the case nationally. Southern cities like Atlanta will not have hispanic or white govt. Same with nyc, no need for blacks in harlem or bronx to leave if government aid continues to pay for rent controlled affordable housing. Same case can be made for most large northern cities like chicago, detroit, boston, philadelphia, DC, etc.
So with future aa population of 14%, that's 60 million blacks in america in 2060 timeframe, although that will have an increasing amount of immigration from africa, which tends to be more educated (at least 1st and 2nd generation).
Asians will be about 8%, so that's a poweful community of 40 million. I see tech and wall street with increasing amount of asian representations.
What i would be interested in seeing if there will any maverick asian billionaires that could disrupt the narrative.
Joe Franklin > , August 17, 2017 at 3:38 am GMTThis article may tend to take your mind off the real racial injustice at Harvard. In an article "Affirmative Action Battle Has a New Focus: Asian-Americans" in the NY Times, August 3, 2017 ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS and STEPHANIE SAUL wrote ""The Harvard lawsuit likens attitudes toward Asian-Americans to attitudes toward Jews at Harvard, beginning around 1920, when Jews were a high-achieving minority. In 1918, Jews reached 20 percent of the Harvard freshman class, and the university soon proposed a quota to lower the number of Jewish students."" In my humble opinion this is a misleading statement which implies that the admission of Jews remained below 20% in the years after 1918. In fact Hillel reports that in recent years the admission of jews to Harvard has been around 25% of the class. This means that almost half of the class are white and half of this white group are Jews. That seems like an amazing over-representation of Jews who are only 2% of our population. So, at least as many Jews as Asians are admitted to Harvard. No wonder the Asians are upset. I note that this article does not point out this Jewish bias in admissions at Harvard and neither did the Asians. Is this another manifestation of political correctness? Or is it an egregious example of racism? This problem is the real elephant in the room. This is the Jewish racism that dare not speak its name. Until lately.
Priss Factor > , Website August 17, 2017 at 3:41 am GMT@Thomm Thanks for changing the subject back to 8A contracts, a subject I first brought up.
You ignorantly labeled me a liar and then prattled on about unrelated Section 8 housing.
I've never mentioned anything about SAT scores because they are irrelevant to anything whatsoever that I've posted.
SAT scores are your irrelevant preoccupation, not mine.
I'm just a person that detests government diversity schemes, group entitlements, and federal protected class groups.
Like it or not, Asians are one of many federal protected class groups entitled by law.
I'm not a WN nor did I ever claim to be a WN; just another example of your fevered and imagined conversations with me.
You are fairly stupid to claim that "most Asians" are rich.
You appear to be a grossly ignorant and arrogant dickhead.
Ron Unz > , August 17, 2017 at 3:54 am GMT@Truth Truth, you is so wise and true. You's right. Them Russian dummies didn't have no vibrant black folks to make fun music that could make them wiggle their butts all their night long. So, they grew stale and bored and drank too much vodka, caught fish with penis, and wrestled with bears and didn't have the all the cool stuff like the US has.
All the world needs to be colonized by superior Negroes cuz folks will just die of boredom.
At least if you get killed by Negroes, it's exciting-like.Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 4:23 am GMThmm i don't know that will be the case nationally. Southern cities like Atlanta will not have hispanic or white govt. Same with nyc, no need for blacks in harlem or bronx to leave if government aid continues to pay for rent controlled affordable housing. Same case can be made for most large northern cities like chicago, detroit, boston, philadelphia, DC, etc.
Well, my California analogy was self-admittedly very rough and approximate given the considerable differences in demographics. But I strongly suspect that such considerations provide a hidden key to some contentious national policies of the last couple of decades, and I've actually written extensively on the subject:
http://www.unz.com/runz/race-and-crime-in-america/#the-hidden-motive-for-heavy-immigration
MarkinLA > , August 17, 2017 at 4:27 am GMTYou are fairly stupid to claim that "most Asians" are rich.
They have higher household income than whites. Many do not qualify for 8a (not that they needed).
But yes, 8a should be abolished, just like ALL other affirmative action.
SAT scores are your irrelevant preoccupation, not mine.
It is relevant, because it demolishes your retarded belief that Asian success would not have happened without affirmative action.
You really are quite lacking in basic intelligence. A typical white trashionalist.
dearieme > , August 17, 2017 at 11:02 am GMT@Anon I imagine it was far different before the defense wind-downs of the mid 90s. Along with the many cut-backs a lot of defense was moved out of California by the contractors as punishment for California's liberal Congressmen. Companies that merged with California based operation usually consolidated outside California such as when Raytheon swallowed up Hughes Aircraft Companies defense operations and moved R&D to Massachusetts.
dearieme > , August 17, 2017 at 11:06 am GMT@Liberty Mike I know several white people who would rather live in Botswana than the Ukraine. They have the advantage of having visited . The rest of your list seems pretty sound with the possible exception of Swaziland.
P.S. If you deleted Austria and Hungary and replaced them by Albania and Kosovo you might make your point even stronger.
Saxon > , August 17, 2017 at 1:30 pm GMT@Joe Franklin Good God, how absolutely awful to hale from Portugal, Spain, or Singapore.
Truth > , August 17, 2017 at 2:49 pm GMT@Thomm You're non-white and really dumb to boot; you don't understand the ecology of a society. Even the white proles are better than your people's proles because they don't make functional civilizations impossible. If it were possible for a tiny minority to drag the lowers upwards you would be able to haul your lower castes upwards and make your own country work, then the Brahmins would have done it. They can't because the average abilities, intelligence and disposition of the masses is too low of quality in those countries to the point where tourists need to be given explicit warnings about rape and other problems which you will never need when visiting, say, some English village of completely average English people. The "white trash" you decry is probably only slightly below your midwit level of intelligence.
Asians do get affirmative action in employment and promotions in the workplace by the way, just not in education.
MarkinLA > , August 17, 2017 at 2:59 pm GMT@Priss Factor Alright, you're finally starting to get it.
Abracadabra > , August 17, 2017 at 3:10 pm GMT@Thomm I seem to remember you telling everybody that Asians DON'T get affirmative action JUST GOOGLE IT without ever offering proof. Of course it never occurred to you that there could never be any documented proof of something like that. There isn't even official documented proof that white males don't get affirmative action. When people claimed and linked to articles indicating Asians are considered disadvantaged by the government, you claimed those people didn't know what they were talking about JUST GOOGLE IT.
I think you made it quite obvious who the idiot is.
Azn_bro > , August 17, 2017 at 3:22 pm GMTIt's time to force our "Golden Dozen" (Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Amherst and Williams) to admit 100% black until the average black income($43k) equals that of average white income($71k).
I'm Asian and I approve of this message.
Abracadabra > , August 17, 2017 at 4:28 pm GMT@Thomm The worst hate crimes I have personally witnessed were perpetrated by black men. I have also seen more casual racism against Asians from blacks than from whites. This might be different in other parts of the country or world.
Outside of the U.S., East Asians are the least likely to want to engage in some kind of anti-white alliance since all of the West's most embarrassing military defeats have come from East Asians. We have always relied on guns and not white guilt for racial equality.
Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 4:32 pm GMT@Ronnie In case you haven't noticed, Jews run this country. They dominate the media, academia, Wall Street, Hollywood, Capitol Hill via the DNC and lobbying firms, Silicon Valley. Per the NYT 80% of Jews are self-proclaimed liberals. They are obsessed with dismantling the WASP World Order that in their mind has oppressed them for the last 2000 years. The Ivy League is the pipeline to these 6 sectors that collectively control the country, whoever controls Harvard controls the country. Jews not only make up majority of the elite college faculty (esp. in the social sciences) but are disproportionately benefiting from legacy admission and development cases(admission of the dim witted sons and daughters of the rich and famous like Malia Obama, Jared Kushner, all of Al Gore's kids).
Asians are the next up. Practically all Asians who've gone to the Ivy League or Stanford have voiced their support for affirmative action, many are left wing nuts like the Jews. CA house representative Ted Liu is one such kool-aid drinking Asian libtard, along with the HI judge Derrick Watson and Baltimore judge Theodore Chuang, both of whom blocked Trump's temp. suspension of Muslim refugees, both went to Harvard Law. As an Asian I would be more than happy if the Ivy League simply make themselves off limits to all Asians and turn their schools 100% black. We don't need more Asians to get indoctrinated in their dumb liberal ideology and go down in history as the group next to the Jews and the blacks who destroyed America.
Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 4:33 pm GMT@Saxon You're non-white and really dumb to boot; you don't understand the ecology of a society. Even the white proles are better than your people's proles because they don't make functional civilizations impossible. If it were possible for a tiny minority to drag the lowers upwards you would be able to haul your lower castes upwards and make your own country work, then the Brahmins would have done it. They can't because the average abilities, intelligence and disposition of the masses is too low of quality in those countries to the point where tourists need to be given explicit warnings about rape and other problems which you will never need when visiting, say, some English village of completely average English people. The "white trash" you decry is probably only slightly below your midwit level of intelligence.
Asians do get affirmative action in employment and promotions in the workplace by the way, just not in education.
Asians do get affirmative action in employment and promotions in the workplace by the way, just not in education.
No they don't, as this very article explains. Could you BE more of a retard?
Plus, the fact that Asians get higher SAT scores than whites proves that they don't need it. There is a left-wing conspiracy to hide Asian success.
Now, regarding an underachieving WN faggot like you :
Remember that white variance is very high. Excellent whites (like me) exist only because genetic waste master has to be removed from the other end of the process. You and other WNs represent that genetic waste matter, and that is why white women are doing a heroic duty of cutting you off (at least the minority of WNs that are straight. Most are gay, as Jack Donovan has explained). Nature wants the waste matter you comprise of to be expelled.
If you cared about the white race, you would be extremely glad that white women are cutting you off, as that is necessary to get rid of the pollution that you represent.
Heh heh heh heh . it is so much fun to put a WN faggot in its place.
Heh heh heh heh
Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 4:36 pm GMT@Azn_bro Yes, what you say is true.
Any real American would be proud of Asian success, as that represents the American Dream that our country was founded on.
Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 4:43 pm GMT@MarkinLA No, I talked about 8a even two weeks ago. Good god, you WN really do have negro IQs.
8a benefits Asians the least, and THE WHOLE THING SHOULD BE ABOLISHED ANYWAY. There should be no AA, ever.
8a harms Asians as it taints their otherwise pristine claim to having succeeded without AA. They don't need 8a, most don't qualify for it as they exceed the $250,000 cutoff, and it lets WN faggots claim that 'all of Asian success is due to AA', which is demonstrably false.
Read this slowly, 10 times, so that even a wigger like you can get it.
Saxon > , August 17, 2017 at 6:00 pm GMT@Abracadabra Heh.. good one.
Don't let these WN faggots get away with claiming all of Asian success is merely due to affirmative action. In reality, Asians don't get affirmative action (other than wrongly being included in the Section 8a code form the 1980s, which ultimately was used by barely 2% of the Asian community).
Remember that among us whites, variance is extremely high. The prettiest woman alongside pretty of ugly fat feminists (who the WN losers still worship). The smartest men, and then these loserish WNs with low IQs and no social skills. White variance is very high.
That is why WNs are so frustrated. They can't get other whites to give them the time of day, and white women are super-committed to shutting out WN loser males from respectable society.
Don't let them claim that Asian success is solely due to affirmative action. Remember, respectable whites hate these WN faggots.
George Orwell > , August 17, 2017 at 6:41 pm GMT@Thomm You're not white, though. You're a rentseeker hanging onto someone else's country and the fact that you write barely literate garbage posts with no substance to them tells all about your intellect and your "high achievement." You're not high quality. You're mediocre at best and probably not even that since your writing is so bad.
Do you even do statistics, though? Whites make up about 70% of the national merit scholars in the US yet aren't in the Ivies at that rate. Harvard for example is maybe only 25% white. Asians are over-represented compared to their merit and jews way over-represented over any merit. Now how does that happen without nepotism? The whole system of any racial favoritism should be scrapped but of course that wouldn't benefit people like you, Thomm.
üeljang > , August 17, 2017 at 6:42 pm GMTWhites aren't more innovative and ambitious than Chinese people. You only have to look at the chinless Unite the Right idiots in Charlottesville to dispel any idea that whites are the superior race. The
Diversity Heretic > , August 17, 2017 at 7:06 pm GMTThis Thomm character is obviously of East Asian origin. His tedious, repetitive blather about Asians, white women, and "white nationalist faggots" is a telltale sign. One of his type characteristically sounds like he would be so much less distressed if those white males were not white nationalist faggots.
Abracadabra > , August 17, 2017 at 7:54 pm GMT@Tom Welsh An interesting historical argument My reply Land isn't money Arguably the Normans came back in the form of the Plantagenets to contest the French throne in the 100 Years War. But by that time France wasn't nearly so feeble
Giving Negroes land in the form of a North American homeland appeals to me (provided whites get one too) although I know the geography is agonizing Blacks tend not to like this suggestion–they realize how depedent they are on whites That wasn't true of the Normans–quite self-reliant fellows!
Abracadabra > , August 17, 2017 at 8:12 pm GMT@Thomm I'm not sure what it was that I said that made you think I think all Asian success is due to AA. In fact I think the opposite is true, that Asians succeed in spite of AA, which is set up solely to hinder Asians from joining the club, and as far as I'm concern, it's a club of sell-out globalist libtards that I wouldn't want more Asians to join.
I've worked in tech long enough to know that in tech, no one gives a fudge where you went to school. I am surrounded by deca-millionaires who went to state schools, many aren't even flagship, some didn't even study STEM. Some didn't even go to college or graduate. The only people I know who still care about the Ivy League are 1st generation often FOB China/India trash, and a small number of Jewish kids looking to benefit from legacy admission, most are gay and/or serious libtards.
Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 8:52 pm GMTYou can tell that Jewish achievement has fallen off a cliff as Ron Unz asserted by looking at a certain popular college website. The longest running thread that's been up there for nearly a decade with over a thousand pages and over 18,000 posts is called "Colleges for the Jewish "B" student". The site is crawling with uber liberal Jewish mothers and monitored by a gang of Ivy graduated SJWs who strictly enforce their "safe space", posters who post anything at all that might offend anyone (affirmative action is always a sensitive topic) are either thrown in "jail" i.e. ban from posting for a month, or kicked off altogether. The SJW forum monitors even directly edit user comments as they see fit, first amendment rights be damned. This is the future of all online forums if the left have their way, the kind of censorship that Piers Morgan advocates.
Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 8:55 pm GMT@Abracadabra Not *you* , them.
There are plenty of KKK losers on here claiming that Asian success is due to AA. I am saying you should join me in fighting them.
Note the comments above from Saxon, MarkinLA, etc. They are alll White Trashionalists.
Vinteuil > , August 17, 2017 at 9:46 pm GMTAsians are over-represented compared to their merit
False. The main article here alone proves otherwise, plus dozens of other research articles.
You just can't stand that Asian success is due to merit. But you have bigger problems, since as a WN, you can't even compete with blacks.
What bugs you the most is that successful white people like me never give WN faggots the time of day. Most tune you idiots out, but I like to remind you that you are waste matter that is being expunged through the natural evolutionary process.
Vinteuil > , August 17, 2017 at 9:57 pm GMT@Priss Factor Priss, please, please, please try to get this right:
Stalin DID NOT favor Prokofiev, or Shostakovich. He treated them exactly the same way he treated everybody else – like dirt under his feet.
Shostakovich's (admittedly disputed) memoirs are essential reading, here. Please check them out before you say anything more.
Thomm > , August 17, 2017 at 11:04 pm GMT@Thomm " successful white people like me never give WN faggots the time of day "
So you've got a problem with "faggots?"
Astuteobservor II > , August 17, 2017 at 11:12 pm GMTSo you've got a problem with "faggots?"
Yes, more so if they are leftists (including Nationalist-Leftists like WNs are). But the fact that WNs are disproportionately gay (as Jack Donovan points out) also explains why they tend to look grotesque, and it supports the scientific rationale that they are wastebaskets designed to expedite the removal of genetic waste matter.
White variance in talent/looks/intelligence is high. WN loser males and fat, ugly feminists represent the bottom. In the old days, these two would be married to each other since even the lowest tiers were paired up. Today, thankfully, both are being weeded out.
Pachyderm Pachyderma > , August 17, 2017 at 11:35 pm GMTI just realized something. a commenter like thomm is the perfect counter to some of the others. hahaha.
Pachyderm Pachyderma > , August 18, 2017 at 1:00 am GMT@Saxon God! you are stupid, Saxon he isn't a Paki, he is a Chinaman. No wonder the Normans put you guys in thrall!
Thomm > , August 18, 2017 at 1:27 am GMT@Alden Sure you can why not go back to Europe to replace the growing number of Muslims? It can kill two birds with a single shor!
MarkinLA > , August 18, 2017 at 3:02 am GMT@Pachyderm Pachyderma Not just that, but some of these 'white nationalists' are just recent immigrants from Poland and Ukraine. They are desperate to take credit for Western Civilization that they did nothing to create. Deep down, they know that during the Cold War, they were not considered 'white' in America.
400 years? i.e. when most of what is now the lower-48 was controlled by a Spanish-speaking government? Yeah Many of these WNs have been here only 30-70 years. That is one category (the domestic WN wiggers are the other)
Both are equally underachieving and loserish.
Thomm > , August 18, 2017 at 3:50 am GMT@Thomm It's too late, everybody knows what I wrote is true and that you are some pathetic millennial libertarian pajama boy. The sad fact is that you can't even man up and admit that you wrote that BS about "Asians don't get affirmative action just google it". See that would have at least have been a sign of maturity, admitting you were wrong.
There is no point reading anything, even once, from a pathetic pajama boy like you.
Thomm > , August 18, 2017 at 4:03 am GMT@MarkinLA I openly said that I am proud to be libertarian. Remember, talented people can hack in on their own, so they are libertarians.
Untalented losers (like you) want socialism so that you can mooch off of others.
Plus, Asians don't get affirmative action outside of one obscure place (Section 8a) which they often don't qualify for ($250K asset cutoff), don't need, and was never used by more than 2% of the Asian-American community. The fact that Asian SAT scores are higher than whites explains why Asians outperform without AA.
Plus, this very article says that Asians are being held back. A WN faggot like you cannot grasp that even though you are commenting in the comments of this article. Could you be any dumber?
I realize you are not smart enough to grasp these basic concepts, but that is why we all know that white trashionalists have negro IQs.
Now begone; you are getting in the way of your betters.
Heh heh heh heh
TWS > , August 18, 2017 at 4:38 pm GMTRemember that White variance in brains/looks/talent/character is extremely high. Hence, whites occupy both extremities of human quality.
Hence, the hierarchy of economic productivity is :
Talented whites (including Jews)
Asians (East and South)
Hispanics
Blacks
Untalented whites (aka these WN wastebaskets, and fat femtwats).That is why :
1) WNs are never given a platform by respectable whites.
2) Bernie Sanders supporters are lily-white, despite his far-left views.
3) WN is a left-wing ideology, as their economic views are left-wing.
4) WNs are unable to even get any white women, as white women have no reason to pollute themselves with this waste matter. Mid-tier white women thus prefer nonwhite men over these WNs, which makes sense based on the hierarchy above.
5) WNs have the IQ of Negros, the poor social skills of an Asian spazoid, etc. They truly combine the worst of all worlds.
6) This is why white unity is impossible; there is no reason for respectable whites to have anything to do with white trashionalists.
7) Genetically, the very fact that superb whites even exists necessitates the production of individuals to act as wastebaskets for removal of genetic waste. WNs are these wastebaskets.
8) The 80s movie 'Twins' was in effect a way to make these wastebaskets feel good, as eventually, the Arnold Schwarzenegger character bonded with the Danny DeVito character. But these two twins effectively represent the sharp bimodal distribution of white quality. Successful whites are personified by the Schwarzenegger character, while WNs by the DeVito character. In reality, these two would never be on friendly terms, as nature produces waste for a reason.This pretty much all there is to what White Trashionalists really are.
Incontrovertible > , August 18, 2017 at 5:10 pm GMT@Thomm Tiny Duck? You decided to larp under a different handle?
Tradecraft46 > , August 18, 2017 at 10:00 pm GMTElite colleges are a prime example of left wing hypocrisy. The same people who are constantly calling for an equal society are at the same time perpetuating the most unequal society by clamoring to send their kids to a few elite schools that will ensure their entry to or retain their ranks among the elites. Equality for everyone else, elitism for me and my kids. David Brook's nausea inducing self-hating pablum "How we are ruining America" is a prime example of this hypocrisy.
Another good example of left wing hypocrisy is on "school integration". The same people who condemn "bad schools" for the urban poor and call for more integration are always the first to move into the whitest possible neighborhoods as soon as they have kids. They aren't willing to sacrifice their own kids, they just want other people to sacrifice their children by sending them to bad schools.
If the left didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all.
Gene Su > , August 19, 2017 at 1:46 am GMTLook, the world is short handed: we need good help or we pay dues.
Affirmative action and the EEOC are not the answer.
When you need help you get help and don't care if they are green [in the color sense or have supernumerary digits.
I don't need agreement with my whimsy, I just need people who will turn to.
Nicholas Stix > , Website August 19, 2017 at 2:42 am GMTWhen I first saw the title of this article, I, being an Asian, was a tad insulted. It smelled like Dr. Weissberg was attempting to create (or at least escalate) racial strife between Asians and blacks. I then read through the article and evaluated the bad and the good.
First the bad: Dr. Weissberg's assertion that Asians are being hurt by the Affirmative Action promotion of blacks is a bit exaggerated. This is because most Asians go into rigorous difficult programs such as engineering, science, and medicine. Most black affirmative action babies go into soft programs such as Black Studies (and whatever else the humanities have degenerated into).
Now the good: I think this is the most true portion of the essay.
Better to have the handsomely paid Cornel West pontificating about white racism at Princeton where he is a full professor than fulminating at some Ghetto street corner. This status driven divide just reflects human nature. Why would a black Yalie on Wall Street socialize with the bro's left behind in the Hood? This is the strategy of preventing a large-scale, organized rebellion by decapitating its potential leadership.
I have once wrote that whites stopped sneering at MLK when Malcolm X and the Black Panthers began taking center stage. They sure became more accommodating of "moderate" blacks. With all of the terrorist attacks going on and with blacks converting to Islam, I don't think we're going to get rid of affirmative action any time soon.
Priss Factor > , Website August 19, 2017 at 3:28 pm GMTThis is a politically plausible but morally craven plan, if we're in 1960.
Oops.
Vinteuil > , August 19, 2017 at 6:31 pm GMT@Vinteuil Stalin alternated between favoritism and intimidation. The truth is he did have an eye and ear for culture unlike Mao who was a total philistine.
If Stalin really hated artists, he would have killed all of them.
He appreciated them but kept a close eye.
He loved the first IVAN THE TERRIBLE by Eisenstein, but he sensed that the second one was a criticism of him, and Eisenstein came under great stress.
DB Cooper > , August 19, 2017 at 7:41 pm GMTOK, well, Stalin loved the movies, and may have had an eye for effective cinema. But when it came to music he was, precisely, a total philistine. On this point, I again recommend Shostakovich's disputed *Testimony,* a work unique in its combination of hilarity and horror, both of which come to a head in his account of the competition to write a new national anthem to replace the internationale – pp. 256-64. A must read.
Stebbing Heuer > , Website August 19, 2017 at 8:33 pm GMT@Thomm Can you explain why if South Asians has such high economic productivity India is such a sh*thole?
MarkinLA > , August 19, 2017 at 11:29 pm GMT@Rdm That's the second comment here picking on bald guys.
What do you have against the bald?
You do realise that it's not possible to control baldness? It's an outcome of genetics, yes?
You do also realise that there is zero correlation between baldness and the quality of one's character?
Are you really as stupid as you appear to be?
Thomm > , August 20, 2017 at 3:04 am GMTIs this the Onion?
I wonder how a Bruin is going to be a symbol of racism?
Thomm > , August 20, 2017 at 3:11 am GMT@DB Cooper For the same reason North Korea is poorer than South Korea, despite being the same people.
For the same reason the GDR was so much poorer than the FRG, despite the same people.You probably never even thought about that.
A bad political system takes decades to recover from. Remember that the British also strip-mined India for 200 years..
Come on, these are novice questions
If you think the success of Asian-Americans in general (and Indian-Americans in particular) does not jive with your beliefs, then the burden of explaining what that is, is on you.
Indians happen to be the highest-income group in the US. Also very high are Filipinos and Taiwanese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income
Most WNs are far, far below the intellectual level where they can grasp the complexities of issues like this.
Russ Nieli > , August 20, 2017 at 8:11 am GMTBTW, the economic center of gravity of the world has always been near Asia, except for a 200-year period from 1820-2020.
That the West would cede to Asia is really just a reversion to the historical norm.
WNs are not smart enough to understand maps/charts like this one, but others will find this interesting.
Avalanche > , August 20, 2017 at 12:35 pm GMTBob,
Racial preferences were ended at California public institutions -- including the elite public universities Berkley and UCLA -- by ballot initiative. No black violence ensued. There is little reason to think the black response would be different if the 8 Ivy League universities ended their policies of racial preferences. Blacks would adjust their expectations. Fear of black rioting and the desire to jumpstart the creation of a large and peaceful black middle class may have been important motives for the initial development of racial preference policies in the late 1960s; they are not major reasons for their retention and continued support from white administrators today. Other reasons and motives are operative (including what I call R-word dread).
PS: Cornel West has moved from Princeton to Harvard Divinity School.Avalanche > , August 20, 2017 at 1:08 pm GMT"Nevertheless, when all added up, the costs would be far lowers than dealing with widespread 1960s style urban violence."
Except back in the '60′s; the White, Euro-derived people were unwilling to fight back. They felt guilty and half-blamed themselves. Not. Any. More! The costs -- social, mental, emotional, physical; pick your metric! -- have now exceeded the patience of WAY more Americans than the media is letting on.
Did you not see 20- and 30-THOUSAND, mostly White Euro-derived, Americans rallying to candidate -- and now President -- Trump's side? (No, the media carefully clipped the videos to hide those numbers, but there they (we!) were! We're done! We're fed up! "FEEDING" these destructive vermin to keep them from destroying our houses and families (and nation and country!) is no longer acceptable! You "don't let Gremlins eat after midnight"? Well, we did -- and now we're in a war against them.
You think this capitulating in education is preventing 'widespread 1960s-style urban violence? Have you not watched the news? We pretty much already are: ask NYC how many "sliced with a knife" attacks they have there! In JUST Jan. and Feb., there were well more than 500! (Seriously vicious attacks with knives and razor blades -- media mentioned it once for a few days, and then shut up.) Look at the fair in Indianapolis; count up rape statistics; investigate the "knock-out game" ("polar bear hunting" -- guess who's the polar bear?!). (Oh yeah, and: Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago; look at ANY black-filled ruin of a city ) If (when!) we finally have to (CHOOSE to) deal with this low-grade war -- WHO is better armed, better prepared, SMARTER, and fed up?
"This peace-keeping aspect of affirmative action understood, perhaps we ought to view those smart Asians unfairly rejected from Ivy League schools as sacrificial lambs."
Wait, wait -- these are White schools, built by White Americans FOR White Americans! "Oh, the poor Asians are not getting their 'fair share' cause the blacks are getting way more than their 'fair share'?! The Asians' 'fair share' is GO HOME!! The Asians don't have a 'fair share' in White AMERICAN universities; we LET them come here and study -- and that is a KINDNESS: they don't have a 'fair share' of OUR country! How about: stop giving preferences to every damned race and nationality other than the one that BUILT this country and these universities!
Check your premises!
Avalanche > , August 20, 2017 at 1:17 pm GMT@War for Blair Mountain Call them what they are: "paperwork Americans"! Having the paperwork does NOT make them Americans, and nothing ever will!
Imagine a virgin land with no inhabitants: if you took all the Chinese "Americans" or all the Pakistani "Americans" or Black "Americans" or Mexican "Americans" (funny, why did you leave those last two out?! Way more of them than the others ) and moved them there, would they -- COULD they ever -- create another America? No, they would create another China, or another Pakistan -- or their own version of the hellholes their forebears (or they themselves) came from. ONLY White, ONLY Euro-derived Americans could recreate an America.
And this goes, also, to answer the grumbling "Native" Americans who were also NOT native, yes? Siberia, Bering land bridge, ever heard of those? Do you not even know your own pre-history?! What "America" was here when it was a sparse population of warring tribes of variously related Indian groups? What did your forebears make of this continent?
Nothing. There would be no "America" where everyone wants to come and benefit by taking; because ONLY the White settlers (not immigrants: SETTLERS!) were able to create America! And as all you non-Americans (AND paperwork "Americans") continue to swamp and change America for your own benefit -- you will be losing the very thing you came here to take (unfair!) advantage of!
Avalanche > , August 20, 2017 at 1:22 pm GMTAt that point, new public money could be channeled into funding people to leave. Blacks that don't like it in the U.S. would be given X amount of dollars to settle in an African country of their choice.
Chip 'em and ship 'em! Microchip where they CAN'T 'dig it out' to prevent them from ever ever ever returning! And ship 'em out! I'd pay a LOT to have this done!
Avalanche > , August 20, 2017 at 1:43 pm GMTGive the feral negroes what they have been asking for. Pull all law enforcement out of negro hellholes like Detroit and South Chicago and let nature take its course.
They (we!) tried that years ago. The BLACK COPS SUED because they were working in the shittiest places with the shittiest, most violent people -- and "the White cops had it easy."
NOT EVEN the blacks want to be with the blacks -- hence them chasing down every last White person, to inflict their Dis-Verse-City on us!
Avalanche > , August 20, 2017 at 1:52 pm GMTThe larger the immigrant group, the longer it takes to assimilate them.
Alas, typical "paperwork American" lack of understanding! I wrote this to a (White) American who wants to keep importing everyone ("save the children!") -- and, she insisted, they "could" assimilate. However, here's what 'assimilate" means:
Suppose you and your family decided to move to, say, Cambodia. You go there intending to "get your part of the Cambodian dream," you go there to become Cambodian citizens, to assimilate and join them, not to invade and change them. You want to adopt their ways, to *assimilate.* Yes? This is how you describe legal immigrants to OUR country (The United States.)
How long would it take for you and your children to be (or even just feel) "assimilated"? How long would it take for you to see your descendants as "assimilated" -- AS Cambodians? Years? Decades? Generations? Would you be trying to fit in -- and "become" Cambodians; or would you be trying to not forget your heritage? ("Heritage"?! Like, Cinco de Mayo, which they don't even celebrate IN Mexico? Or Kwanza -- a CIA-invented completely fake holiday!)
More important: since it's their country -- how long until THEY see you as "Cambodians" and not foreigners. I know a man and family who have lived in Italy for over 20 years. To the Italians in the village where they live, they are still "stranieri": strangers. After this long, to the local Italians, they're not just "the Americans who moved here" -- they're " our Americans" -- but they are still seen as 100% not Italian, not local: not "assimilated"!
Would you and your children and grandchildren learn to speak, read, and write Cambodian -- and stop trying to use English for anything much in your new homeland? Would you join their clubs -- would you join their NATIONAL RELIGION!? Does "becoming Cambodian" -- does "assimilating" -- not actually include (trying to) become Cambodian (and, thus, ceasing to be American)? (If that were even possible; and it's not.) "Assimilation" is a stupid hope, not a possible reality.
That is where my friend balked. She said: she and her family are very Christian, and no way at all ever would they drop Christianity and pick up Cambodian Buddhism. So -- how can they EVER "assimilate" when they (quite rightly) REFUSE to assimilate?!
Please stop buying into the lies the destroyers of OUR nation keep selling. There is no such thing as "assimilation"; only economic parasitism, jihadi invasion, and benefiting from the systems set up by OUR forebears for THEIR posterity!
rec1man > , August 20, 2017 at 9:08 pm GMTJust because National Socialism had some leftist elements doesn't make it a 'leftist' ideology.
Yes. Yes it does. Go watch/listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roMLmYnjslc
The official topic being debated is: "Are National Socialists a legitimate element of the Alt-Right?"
Greg Johnson argues, Yes.
Vox Day argues, No.Thomm > , August 20, 2017 at 10:01 pm GMT@DB Cooper Socialism and Affirmative Action
In my origin state of Tamil Nadu, the effective anti-brahmin quota is 100% ( de-jure is just 69% )
Sundar Pichai or Indira Nooyi or Vish Anand ( former Chess champ ) or Ramanujam ( late math whiz ), cant get a Tamil Nadu State Gov , Math school teacher job
Also, the US gets a biased selection of Indians in terms of caste, class and education
Of Tamil Speakers in USA, about 50% are Tamil Brahmins, vs just 2% in India
The bottom 40% in terms of IQ, such as Muslims, Untouchables and Forest Tribals, are no more than 10% in the US Indian diaspora
For comparison, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis ( muslim ), perform much much lower
UtherWhys > , August 20, 2017 at 10:50 pm GMTFor comparison, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis ( muslim ), perform much much lower
This is interesting, as it puts paid to the obsession that WN idiots have with 'whiteness'.
Pakistan is obviously much more Caucasoid than India and certainly Sri Lanka.
Afghanistan is whiter still. Many in Afghanistan would pass for bona-fide white in the US.
Yet Sri Lanka is richer than India, which is richer than Pakistan, which is richer than Afghanistan.
Either Islam is a negative factor that nullifies everything else including genetics, or something else is going on.
What there is no doubt of is that Asia has been the largest economic region of the world by far except for the brief 200-year deviation (1820-2020), as per that map I posted.
Saintonge235 > , August 21, 2017 at 12:34 am GMT@Thomm Weissberg asks, "Why would a black Yalie on Wall Street socialize with the bro's left behind in the Hood?"
Why focus on the LEFT buttock? His point would be as relevant were he to ask, "Why would a black Yalie on Wall Street socialize with the bro's RIGHT behind in the Hood?" Either way, I smell kinkyness deep within Weissberg's question.
rec1man > , August 21, 2017 at 12:35 am GMTNot protection money. Imperialism.
"Divide and Rule" said the Romans. Incorporate the potential leaders of those you intend to rule into your hereditary upper class, and the vast majority will stay inert at the least. And many will actively support you. See this post by a black woman: Black Americans: The Organized Left's Expendable Shock Troops .
People like Cornel West are not only NOT rabble-rousing in the 'hood, they're telling blacks to support the people who actively keep them poor. "Affirmative Action" is designed to sabotage its alleged goals. Almost all who 'benefit' from it end up among people whose performance is clearly superior to their own, thus fostering feelings of inferiority, subtly communicating that it doesn't matter what the 'beneficiary' of AA does, they'll always fail. This is no accident.
Without AA, there might still be separation, (consider "ultra-orthodox" Jews), but the separate groups would have to be treated with some respect. Really, viewed amorally, it's a marvelous system for oppressing whites and minorities.
MarkinLA > , August 21, 2017 at 1:06 am GMT@Thomm Islam is a negative factor, and the higher IQ castes did not convert to Islam
I have data from California National Merit list, IQ-140 bar
Among Indian Punjabis ;
Jat Sikh peasants = 3 winners ( 75% of Punjabis in USA )
Khatri merchants = 18 winners ( 25% of Punjabis in USA )Both are extremely caucasoid, both appear heavily among Indian bollywood stars ; genetically very similar, just the evolutionary effect of caste selection for merchant niche vs peasant niche
Thomm > , August 21, 2017 at 3:19 am GMT@Russ Nieli Racial preferences were ended at California public institutions -- including the elite public universities Berkley and UCLA -- by ballot initiative.
But the admissions people immediately started using other dodges like "holistic" admissions policies where they try and figure out if your are a minority from other inferences such as your essay where you indicate "how you have overcome". They also wanted to get rid of the SAT or institute a top X% at each school policy.
rec1man > , August 21, 2017 at 8:39 am GMT@rec1man I don't know . a lot of the richest Indians in the US are Gujratis who own motels and gas stations. Patels and such..
They were not of some 'high caste' in India; far from it.
Plus, a Tamil who is of 'high caste' is not Caucasoid in the least. Caste does not seem to correlate to economic talent, since business people are the #3 caste out of 4. The richest people in India today are not 'Brahmins'..
Islam is a negative factor, and the higher IQ castes did not convert to Islam
I disagree. Pakistan is 99% Islam, so all castes converted to Islam and/or many of the lighter-skined Pakistanis are Persians and Turks who migrated there..
Afghanistan's religion prior to Islam was Buddhism, not Hinduism
Fotosynthesis > , August 21, 2017 at 10:43 am GMT@Thomm I don't know.... a lot of the richest Indians in the US are Gujratis who own motels and gas stations. Patels and such..
They were not of some 'high caste' in India; far from it.
Plus, a Tamil who is of 'high caste' is not Caucasoid in the least. Caste does not seem to correlate to economic talent, since business people are the #3 caste out of 4. The richest people in India today are not 'Brahmins'..
I disagree. Pakistan is 99% Islam, so all castes converted to Islam and/or many of the lighter-skined Pakistanis are Persians and Turks who migrated there..
Islam is a negative factor, and the higher IQ castes did not convert to Islam
Afghanistan's religion prior to Islam was Buddhism, not Hinduism... Afghanistan was 33% Hindu, 66% buddhist before islam, but in actual practise lots of overlap between Hinduism and Buddhism, and many families had mixed Indic religions
Pakistan was 22% non-muslim in 1947, these 22% were higher caste Hindus and Sikhs – all got driven out in 1947 ; Pakistan is low IQ islamic sludge residue of Punjabi society
I am Tamil speaking, 80% of Tamil brahmins ( 2% ) can be visually distinguished from the 98% Tamil Dravidians ;
vs
Tamil dravidian
Truth > , August 21, 2017 at 2:39 pm GMTThomm you take up too much oxygen in the room insisting on the importance your opinions, the whole conversation is much more interesting when i skip past your stupid WN focused city boy sheltered viewpoint. Big words and that retarded hehehe thing you do would get you wrastled to the ground and your face rubbed in the dirt
Truth > , August 21, 2017 at 2:54 pm GMT@Fotosynthesis hehehehe
Thomm > , August 21, 2017 at 3:44 pm GMT@rec1man Does anyone want to fill in my comment here in "Miss" Lakshimi?
Bill the Kid > , August 21, 2017 at 10:17 pm GMT@Fotosynthesis By you and what army?
Remember, WNs represent the absolute bottom of every desirable trait.
Heh heh heh heh
Not Another Unz Commenter > , August 21, 2017 at 10:30 pm GMT@jim jones They look the same because they are all clones of the same body.
Thomm > , August 21, 2017 at 11:13 pm GMT@Thomm Why would 'idiot WNs' be happy about the fact that blacks successfully chased asians out of the country, though? That would be a sign that they are gaining a scary degree of power, would it not? Moreover how are white males who want to escape SJW idiocy going to like a country that still actively enforces all sorts of thought control policies of its own? You wannabe libertardian analysts always say silly things like this and it just sounds dumber every time.
JohnMc > , August 22, 2017 at 3:32 pm GMTWhy would 'idiot WNs' be happy about the fact that blacks successfully chased asians out of the country, though? That would be a sign that they are gaining a scary degree of power, would it not?
It would be, but WN retards don't think that far.
You wannabe libertardian analysts always say silly things like this and it just sounds dumber every time.
This is what WNs want, not want I want. It is easy to predict WN opinions.
Plus, being a libertarian is much more desirable than being a WN socialist. Talented people thrive in a libertarian society. WN losers just want to mooch off of successful whites.
S. B. Woo > , August 22, 2017 at 8:36 pm GMT"Better to have the handsomely paid Cornel West pontificating about white racism at Princeton where he is a full professor than fulminating at some Ghetto street corner."
Really? All that does is give the man a bigger sanctioned soap box. In the ghetto he might affect a couple of hundred people. Siting in academia he gets a lever than can affect tens of thousands. Not a good trade.
Incontrovertible > , August 23, 2017 at 4:30 am GMTDear Mr. Weissberg.
Truth is often stranger than fictions. The real reason for discriminating against Asian Ams is not to help make the other minority happy. It is to benefit the whites. The Ivy League schools are using the diversity to give the white applicants an advantage of 140 pst in SAT points. Please see below:
In Table 3.5 on p 92 of Princeton Prof. Espenshade's famous book, "No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal", the following shocking fact was revealed:
Table 3.5 (emphasis added)
Race Admission Preferences at Public & Private Institutions
Measured in ACT & SAT Points, Fall 1997
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!-
Public Institutions Private Institutions
ACT-Point Equivalents SAT-Point Equivalents
Item (out of 36) (out of 1600)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!-
Race
(White) -- –
Black 3.8 310
Hispanics 0.3 130
Asian -3.4 -140Why are 140 SAT pts. taken away from AsAm applicants? To give the white applicants an advantage of 140 SAT pts. over the historically disadvantaged AsAms by using the nobility of diversity as a cover? This is the reverse of affirmative action. This is a gross abuse of affirmation action. This is outrageous discrimination. If
the purpose is to give the blacks an advantages, why not add more SAT points to blacks and hispanics?S.B. Woo
Incontrovertible > , August 23, 2017 at 4:36 am GMT@Avalanche That's an interesting point you brought up, whether anyone can ever really be "assimilated". Even after hundreds of years, blacks and Jews in this country remain very distinct groups. I think for blacks the reason is skin color and culture, while for Jews it is the religion. Both groups have had low out marriage rate until maybe the last couple of decades.
Assimilation is most successful when there's a high intermarriage rate, but intermarriage rate and immigration rate tend to go in opposite directions. The higher the immigration rate, the lower the intermarriage rate.
Hispanics and Asians have been in this country since the 1800s yet you rarely ever meet a hispanic or Asian person who's been here for more than 3 or 4 generations. Why is that? I think it's because many of these earlier groups, due to their small number at the time relative to the population, had intermarried, blended in and disappeared. I would say these earlier immigrants have fully assimilated. The ones who are unassimilated are the new arrivals, those who arrived in large numbers since 2000.
But for some peculiar reason blacks who are mixed with whites often continue to identify as blacks. We see this in Obama, Halle Barry, Vanessa Williams and many other black/white mixes. Black identity is so strong even Indian-black mixed race people call themselves black, like Kamala Harris.
My theory is that most white-hispanic and white-asian marriages are white males with hispanic/asian females. In most cases the white males who married hispanic/asian women are conservatives who prefer women in cultures that are perceived to be more traditional compared to white females who are often selfish and want a divorce at the first sign of personal unhappiness. Many of them then raise their children in full white traditions including as Christians and encourage them to identify themselves as whites.
OTOH, many white-black mix marriages are white female with black male, in many instances these women marry black men because they are liberal nuts who want to raise black children. Jewish women for instance marry black men at a high rate. Many of these women then raise their children as black or biracial children and encourage their children to identify themselves as black.
Education used to be the biggest tool for assimilation, but these days thanks to libtards running amok, our schools are where racial identity is amplified rather than de-emphasized. Now all minority groups are encouraged to take pride in their own cultural identity and eschew mainstream (white) culture. Lured by affirmative action, more and more mixed race hispanic kids are beginning to identify themselves as latino. Thankfully mixed race Asian kids are running in the opposite direction and now mostly identify themselves as white so they are not disadvantaged by AA.
I think assimilation can occur when you have low immigration rate coupled with high intermarriage rate and a smart education system that discourages racial and individual identity and focuses on a single national identity. The biggest reason assimilation is failing now is a combination of high immigration rate, and a failed education system that promotes identity politics and victimhood narrative. The internet and easy air travels back to the homeland also make it much harder to assimilate newcomers. For these reasons I'm in favor of a moratorium on immigration for the next 20 years. All those not yet citizens should be encouraged to return to their home countries. No more green cards, work visas or even student visas should be issued.
Truth > , August 24, 2017 at 12:02 am GMT@S. B. Woo That's the argument of mindless Asian SJWs who've been fed the libtard kool-aid. Just look at the numbers you yourself provided. Whites who were turned down still vastly outperformed blacks and hispanics who were given admission, to the tune of 340 points and 130 points respectively. Libtards who came up with AA want everyone to turn against whites, and mindless Asian SJWs like you are parroting them without thinking things through.
So much for "smart Asians".
Truth > , August 24, 2017 at 12:03 am GMTOTOH, many white-black mix marriages are white female with black male, in many instances these women marry black men because they are liberal nuts who want to raise black children. Jewish women for instance marry black men at a high rate. Many of these women then raise their children as black or biracial children and encourage their children to identify themselves as black.
Yeah, and the rest of them wanted the SCHLONG!
@Incontrovertible That's the argument of mindless Asian SJWs who've been fed the libtard kool-aid. Just look at the numbers you yourself provided. Whites who were turned down still vastly outperformed blacks and hispanics who were given admission, to the tune of 340 points and 130 points respectively. Libtards who came up with AA want everyone to turn against whites, and mindless Asian SJWs like you are parroting them without thinking things through.
So much for "smart Asians". But they still needed a lower score for admittance than Asians
|
|
|
Aug 21, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Charles R | Aug 20, 2017 5:44:06 PM | 7
I have used Simone Weil's " On the Abolition of All Political Parties " in a philosophy class. Her argument, as I'll try to summarize: the impetus to grow and gain size and influence is essential to any political party, and sustaining this inertia overrides the thinking and living of the individual in favor of the coherence of the party itself as a mass; thus, we must eliminate the political party.
My students found this "contradictory" or "stupid." People, they tell me, will naturally form groups, and because of this the group will operate just like she's claiming parties do, so she's not really saying how to get rid of this. I point out that she's very deliberate to talk about fluids versus crystals, between how things form associations that are fluid , and thus on some issues folks connect on on others they disconnect without the pressure to sustain these changes as a stable identity !she points to literary circles as groups that ebb and flow with members and associations that do not conform to the logic of the political party. These are distinct from associations that are crystal , where aggregation and homogeneity and stable arrangement are more important for the whole to remain itself. So, I take it my students, despite getting up in one class, walking around campus, and sitting down in another class, believe that there is little to no difference in one collection over another so long as the reason for the collection is what defines the collection . (How they take their intuition as expressed in my class and think through intersectionality as expressed in another class is something I was trying, through conversations with them, to work out, because I find it helps me when I find my own intuitions about all of this so very different from theirs.) But I think the implicit part of their reasoning was that all of this dealt with force, the force they feel inside as pressure to conform on the outside with others, who are at this point for them undeniably also undergoing these inward pressures to regulate their outward expression.
But then I point out that music, or sports, or lovemaking, or dance, or a lot of other ordinary things we do enjoyably with others, show us how to form and move through groups because we share a similar drive or interest in something outside of both of us, and they seem to get that idea. I find myself coming back to this website just to read the comments, because I find it a refreshing change of pace, a host of interesting exchanges, and a good opportunity to face the perennial challenge of sitting within conflict, finding reasonable the disagreeing voice, and owning what makes myself uncomfortable with strangers.
If enough people share the desire to talk about things from conflicting perspectives, the conversations continue, but as people move in and out, the conversation itself changes and evolves. To shut down the conversation is to lock it in place, to keep it rigid and total. To walk away from the conversation in good spirits, is to hope that it will continue, in some spirit, some form, resembling how it was going before. To walk away from the conversation in bad spirits, is to hope it will change into something that either once was !in which case it can't naturally and so only through artifice! or should be !in which case, being based on the limitations of our own perspective, won't be open for the wonderful possibility of something entirely new and inconceivable happening in a conversation.
I sometimes wish politics were just conversations. I found Hannah Arendt to be one of the few thinkers who set the terms in such a way that I was liberated. Leftist thinking taught me a lot about fashion, I didn't realize until later. Paleoconservative thinking taught me a lot about how much either gets suppressed or gathers dust in the libraries, and yet still smolders underneath the haunted foundations of our civilization. I come back to Zhuangzi over and over again. I come back to these rambling conversations under heaven, over earth, within the noosphere.
But eventually the conversation does end, and you have to hammer a nail to keep the walls up. Winter is coming. Wood needs cutting. Grains need grounding. Papers need grading.
PavewayIV | Aug 20, 2017 10:19:52 PM | 17
Charles R@7 - Well said, Charles R. I loved this quote from Weil's book in one of the reviews of On the Abolition of All Political Parties :
"Political parties are a marvellous mechanism which, on the national scale, ensures that not a single mind can attend to the effort of perceiving, in public affairs, what is good, what is just, what is true. As a result – except for a very small number of fortuitous coincidences – nothing is decided, nothing is executed, but measures that run contrary to the public interest, to justice and to truth."Not sure I'm sold on eliminating them - this is another call to kill some of the existing victims in a futile effort to eliminate an infectious disease that permeates public affairs. It will irritate power- and control-seeking psychopaths temporarily. Political parties are just a convenient 'easy' button for them.
US society's problem is a child-like belief in some kind of magical innate integrity of organizations that feed us public affairs 'information' despite those organizations being obvious targets for exploitation. Part of psychopath's successful control and exploitation of the public is to obscure the fact that they are being controlled and exploited.
It's lonely here in tin-foil hat land, but I'm starting to see more visitors. I think our 'Taco Tuesday' promotion is starting to pay dividends!
psychohistorian | Aug 20, 2017 10:49:30 PM | 20
@ PavewayIV with his Taco Tuesday Tin Foil Hat promotion in response to Charles R@7 comment about political parties
I am reminded of the movie "Being There" with Peter Sellers as Chauncy Gardner. Chauncy Gardner has spent enough of his life inside so that when forced out on the street he carries a TV remote control and tries to change the channel when the situation starts to get dicey......Unfortunately, I see most Americans responding like Chauncy Gardner and keep banging on their TV remotes hoping the reality they see changes.
Does Waco Wednesday follow Taco Tuesday? or are you staying with a food meme?
|
|
|
Jul 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored via InternationalMan.com,... ... ...
The typical American day laborer has gained little.
And job competition from overseas made him feel like a loser. Now he wants walls – to keep out foreigners and foreign-made products. He wants win-lose deals that guarantee to make him a winner again.
He has no idea that he was set up by his own elite.
Former Fed chiefs Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan got their pictures on the cover of Time magazine. Most people think they are heroes, not rascals. Most people think they saved the economy from another Great Depression by dropping interest rates and injecting it with trillions of dollars in quantitative easing (QE) money.
Most people – even the POTUS – believe we need more fake money to "prime the pump" and get the economy rolling again.
Almost no one realizes it, but it was these stimulating, pump-priming, new credit-based dollars that fueled the trends that ruined America's working-class wage earner.
Overseas, his competitors used cheap credit to gain market share and take away his job. At home, the elite imposed their crony boondoggles their regulations and their win-lose deals – all financed with fake money.
The average American's medical care now costs him more than seven times more than it did in 1980. His household debt rose nearly 12 times since 1980.
... ... ...
Recently we've been wondering if it's possible that America could be on the brink of a second civil war. We did some digging and while the stuff we found may offend and shock you We recommend you take a look anyway by clicking here.
TeamDepends , Jul 21, 2017 6:32 PM
Captain Chlamydia -> TeamDepends , Jul 21, 2017 6:34 PMEverything "the elite" does betrays the working class.
Sonny Brakes , Jul 21, 2017 6:37 PMsilverer , Jul 21, 2017 6:42 PMAnd the working class played along knowing full well that they were being duped. Got to support the team.
GRDguy , Jul 21, 2017 6:42 PMMoney creation without productivity is a truly inspiring phenomenon.
They're not "elite," they're sociopaths. They lie and steal without empathy nor conscience.
People running independent businesses are not usually sociopaths. But top executives of major corporations usually are.
|
|
|
www.moonofalabama.org
pantaraxia | Jul 2, 2017 9:08:27 AM | 64
@45 smuks
Careful about that 'parasites' thing.
The conflict is systemic, deeply rooted in the current (dominant) socio-economic order. Reducing it to a narrative of 'parasitic global elites' risks encouraging simplistic 'answers', i.e. laying the blame on certain groups of people.
Last time it was the Jews...who's turn now?
...Your obvious apprehension over the demonization of 'parasitic global elites' is addressed here:
New Rule: Save the Rich Fcks | Real Time with Bill Maher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahpp27WAT2MPS: Its interesting to note that in the context of discussing 'parasitic global elites' you bring up the subject of Jews, contextually implying some sort of association. There are numerous Jewish organizations that would accuse you of practicing 'dog whistle politics' here.
|
|
|
Jun 12, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
PavewayIV | Jun 11, 2017 1:10:50 PM | 42jfl | Jun 11, 2017 4:58:36 PM | 50Robert Michels and the Iron Law of Oligarchy (1911)
"He who says organization, says oligarchy."Paraphrasing Lobaczewski c. 1959:
"Organizations and oligarchies are self-reinforcing psychopath magnets."PavewayIV's Magic Box of Death:
Put a few oligarchs in a box and set on floor. Soon, hundreds of 'little people' will be attracted inside. Close box and shake vigorously. Torrents of dead 'little people' will pour out, but never any oligarchs. Repeat as often as desired. It's magic!thanks for the link. reading what amounts to a short introduction, i discovered that Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy itself is available, as so many good books are available, from our friends and benefactors at library genesis.
Archive.org has one: Political parties; a sociological study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy Michels, Robert, 1876-1936 Free
|
|
|
Jun 11, 2017 | en.wikipedia.org
Neo-Gramscianism applies a critical theory approach to the study of International Relations (IR) and the Global Political Economy (GPE) that explores the interface of ideas, institutions and material capabilities as they shape the specific contours of the state formation. The theory is heavily influenced by the writings of Antonio Gramsci . [1]Neo-Gramscianism analyzes how the particular constellation of social forces, the state and the dominant ideational configuration define and sustain world orders. In this sense, the Neo-Gramscian approach breaks the decades-old stalemate between the realist schools of thought, and the liberal theories by historicizing the very theoretical foundations of the two streams as part of a particular world order, and finding the interlocking relationship between agency and structure . Furthermore, Karl Polanyi , Karl Marx , Max Weber , Niccolò Machiavelli , Max Horkheimer , Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault are cited as major sources within the Critical theory of International Relations. [1] York University professor emeritus, Robert W. Cox 's article "Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory", in Millennium 10 (1981) 2, and "Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method", published in Millennium 12 (1983) 2. In his 1981 article, Cox demands a critical study of IR, as opposed to the usual "problem-solving" theories, which do not interrogate the origin, nature and development of historical structures, but accept for example that states and the (supposedly) "anarchic" relationships between them as Kantian Dinge an sich .
However, Cox disavows the label Neo-Gramscian despite the fact that in a follow-up article, he showed how Gramsci's thought can be used to analyze power structures within the GPE. Particularly Gramsci's concept of hegemony , vastly different from the realists' conception of hegemony, appears fruitful. Gramsci's state theory, his conception of " historic blocs " – dominant configurations of material capabilities, ideologies and institutions as determining frames for individual and collective action – and of élites acting as "organic intellectuals" forging historic blocs , is also deemed useful.
The Neo-Gramscian approach has also been developed along somewhat different lines by Cox's colleague, Stephen Gill , distinguished research professor of political science at York University in Toronto . Gill contributed to showing how the elite Trilateral Commission acted as an "organic intellectual", forging the (currently hegemonic) ideology of neoliberalism and the so-called " Washington Consensus " and later in relation to the globalization of power and resistance in his book "Power and Resistance in the New World Order" (Palgrave 2003). Gill also partnered with fellow Canadian academic A. Claire Cutler to release a Neo-Gramscian inspired volume entitled "New Constitutionalism and World Order" (Cambridge 2014). The book brings together a selection of critical theorists and Neo-Gramscians to analyze the disciplinary power of legal and constitutional innovations in the global political economy. Co-editor A. Claire Cutler has been a pioneer scholar detailing a Neo-Gramscian theory of international law . [2] Outside of North America, the so-called "Amsterdam School" around Kees Van Der Pijl and Henk Overbeek (at VU University Amsterdam ) and individual researchers in Germany , notably in Düsseldorf , Kassel and Marburg as well as at the Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex in the UK, and other parts of the world, have adopted the neo-Gramscian critical method.
Basics of the neo-Gramscian perspective [ edit ]In the mainstream approaches to international or global political economy the ontological centrality of the state is not in question. In contrast, Neo-Gramscianism, using an approach which Henk Overbeek, Professor of International Relations at the VU University , calls transnational historical materialism , "identifies state formation and interstate politics as moments of the transnational dynamics of capital accumulation and class formation". [3]
Neo-Gramscianism perceives state sovereignty as subjugated to a global economic system marked by the emergence of a transnational financial system and a corresponding transnational system of production. The major players in these systems, multinational corporations and international financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF , have evolved into a "transnational historic bloc" that exercises global hegemony (in contrast to the realist view of hegemony as the "predominant power of a state or a group of states"). [4] The historic bloc acquires its authority through the tacit consent of the governed population gained through coercive techniques of intellectual and cultural persuasion, largely absent violence. It links itself to other social groups that have been involved in political struggles [5] to expand its influence and seeks to solidify its power through the standardization and liberalization of national economies, creating a single regulatory regime (e.g. World Trade Organization ).
There are powerful forces opposing the progress of this historic bloc who may form counterhegemonies to challenge it as part of an open-ended class struggle. These might include neo-mercantilists who depend on the protection of tariffs and state subsidies, or alliances of lesser developed countries , or feminist and environmentalist movements in the industrialized west. [6] If a counterhegemony grows large enough it is able to subsume and replace the historic bloc it was born in. Neo-Gramscians use the Machiavellian terms war of position and war of movement to explain how this is possible. In a war of position a counterhegemonic movement attempts, through persuasion or propaganda, to increase the number of people who share its view on the hegemonic order; in a war of movement the counterhegemonic tendencies which have grown large enough overthrow, violently or democratically, the current hegemony and establish themselves as a new historic bloc. [7] [8]
|
|
|
May 14, 2017 | failedevolution.blogspot.gr
The Pew Research Center, released a new study on the size of the middle class in the U.S. and in ten European countries. The study found that the middle class shrank significantly in the U.S. in the last two decades from 1991 to 2010. While it also shrank in several other Western European countries, it shrank far more in the U.S. than anywhere else. Meanwhile, another study also released last week, and published in the journal Science, shows that class mobility in the U.S. declined dramatically in the 1980s, relative to the generation before that.
A book released last March by MIT economist Peter Temin argues that the U.S. is increasingly becoming what economists call a dual economy; that is, where there are two economies in effect, and one of the populations lives in an economy that is prosperous and secure, and the other part of the population lives in an economy that resembles those of some third world countries.
MIT Economist Peter Temin spoke to Gregory Wilpert and the The Real News network.
As Temin states, among other things:
The middle class is shrinking in the United States and this is an effect of both the advance of technology and American policies . That is shown dramatically in the new study, because the United States is compared with many European countries. In some of them, the middle class is expanding in the last two decades, and in others it's decreasing. And while technology crosses national borders, national policies affect things within the country.
In the United States, our policies have divided us into two groups. Above the median income - above the middle class - is what I call the FTE sector, Finance, Technology and Electronics sector - of people who are doing well, and whose incomes are rising as our national product is growing. The middle class and below are losing shares of income, and their incomes are shrinking as the Pew studies, both of them, show.
The model shows that the FTE sector makes policy for itself, and really does not consider how well the low wage sector is doing. In fact, it wants to keep wages and earnings low in the low wage sector, to provide cheap labour for the industrial employment.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/BRs4VcHprqI" name="I1"
This model is similar to that pursued in eurozone through the Greek experiment. Yet, the establishment's decision centers still need the consent of the citizens to proceed. They got it in France with the election of their man to do the job, Emmanuel Macron.
As already described , the middle-class, which has not collapsed yet in France, still has the characteristics that fit to the neoliberal regime. However, it is obvious that this tank of voters has shrunk significantly, and the establishment is struggling to keep them inside the desirable 'status quo' with tricks like the supposedly 'fresh', apolitical image of Emmanuel Macron, the threat of Le Pen's 'evil' figure that comes from the Far-Right, or, the illusion that they have the right to participate equally to almost every economic activity.
For example, even in Greece, where the middle class suffered an unprecedented reduction because of Troika's (ECB, IMF, European Commission) policies, the last seven years, the propaganda of the establishment attempts to make young people believe that they can equally participate in innovative economic projects. The media promotes examples of young businessmen who have succeed to survive economically through start-up companies, yet, they avoid to tell that it is totally unrealistic to expect from most of the Greek youth to become innovative entrepreneurs. So, this illusion is promoted by the media because technology is automating production and factories need less and less workers, even in the public sector, which, moreover, is violently forced towards privatization.
As mentioned in previous article , the target of the middle class extinction in the West is to restrict the level of wages in developing economies and prevent current model to be expanded in those countries. The global economic elite is aiming now to create a more simple model which will be consisted basically of three main levels.
The 1% holding the biggest part of the global wealth, will lie, as always, at the top of the pyramid. In the current phase, frequent and successive economic crises, not only assist on the destruction of social state and uncontrolled massive privatizations, but also, on the elimination of the big competitors.
In the middle of the pyramid, a restructured class will serve and secure the domination of the top. Corporate executives, big journalists, scientific elites, suppression forces. It is characteristic that academic research is directed on the basis of the profits of big corporations. Funding is directed increasingly to practical applications in areas that can bring huge profits, like for example, the higher automation of production and therefore, the profit increase through the restriction of jobs.
The base of the pyramid will be consisted by the majority of workers in global level, with restricted wages, zero labor rights, and nearly zero opportunities for activities other than consumption.
This type of dual economy with the rapid extinction of middle class may bring dangerous instability because of the vast vacuum created between the elites and the masses. That's why the experiment is implemented in Greece, so that the new conditions to be tested. The last seven years, almost every practice was tested: psychological warfare, uninterrupted propaganda, financial coups, permanent threat for a sudden death of the economy, suppression measures, in order to keep the masses subservient, accepting the new conditions.
The establishment exploits the fact that the younger generations have no collective memories of big struggles. Their rights were taken for granted and now they accept that these must be taken away for the sake of the investors who will come to create jobs. These generations were built and raised according to the standards of the neoliberal regime 'Matrix'.
Yet, it is still not certain that people will accept this Dystopia so easily. The first signs can be seen already as recently, French workers seized factory and threatened to blow it up in protest over possible closure . Macron may discover soon that it will be very difficult to find the right balance in order to finish the job for the elites. And then, neither Brussels nor Berlin will be able to prevent the oncoming chaos in Europe and the West.
Read also:
|
|
|
May 07, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
... ... ...By Phil Soos, originally published at LF Economics
This is LF Economics' first review of a book, entitled Game of Mates: How Favours Bleed the Nation by economists Cameron K. Murray and Paul Frijters. The name is a play upon the wonderful TV series Game of Thrones and rightfully so, given both are about how a small number of wealthy and highly-connected individuals, often operating within a cluster of powerful networks, rig rules, policy, laws and ideology for their personal and class benefit.
Game of Mates is a gold mine of information on the racket of rent extraction for a number of reasons. First, it provides background on how the game slowly evolves (Chapter 1) by contrasting the hard-working Aussie Bruce with the connected insider and rent extractor known as James. By using the power of networking and soft corruption, the wealthy James (the 1%) is able to rip-off Bruce (the public) legally without violating the rule of law.
Second, the book goes on to detail the largest state-backed legal thefts carried out by the corporate sector for the benefit of rentiers. This term means those who obtain rents (unearned wealth and income over and above what is justified by perfectly-competitive markets). Unfortunately, Australia is a haven for robber barons, siphoning massive and illegitimate mountains of rents from the property market (Chapter 2), transportation (Chapter 3), superannuation (Chapter 5), mining (Chapter 7) and banking (Chapter 9) for the benefit of owners and managers.
... ... ... Game of Mates helps to reveal the absurdity of what is falsely called free-market capitalism, as it is thoroughly infected by rent extractors. Recent research has demonstrated that Australia's private sector is dominated by cartels of monopolists, duopolists and oligopolists to an even greater extent than the US, the latter of which is often considered the home of crony capitalism. This is no mean feat.Whoever said there is no such thing as a free lunch (perhaps it was Milton Friedman or someone he quoted) is speaking an utter absurdity. The term 'free lunch' doesn't do justice in describing the epic levels of legal grift in our economy. Indeed, it should be termed 'free banquets' as we argued in our article Australia's Real Lifters and Leaners .
The process of extracting free banquets has gained pace since the neo-liberal reformation of the economy by the Hawke-Keating government, lurching from the centre-left to the centre-right on economy policy during the 1980s. The Howard government continued and magnified these rackets when in power between 1996 and 2007. It should be important to note that these policies can hardly be termed 'neo-liberal' when they are not new and often have little to do with economic liberalisation. Perhaps neo-feudal capitalism is a better term.
...It should be important to note that these policies can hardly be termed 'neo-liberal' when they are not new and often have little to do with economic liberalisation. Perhaps neo-feudal capitalism is a better term.
....
The Game of Mates is about detailing the methods of redistribution from the poor, labour, productive competitive business and the environment into the pockets of those who benefit the most from non-work. There are some data on how much the wealthy steal from everyone else (Chapter 13). Hint: the redistributions are massive in scale and yet do not quantify the full extent of the rent extraction taking place.In addition, apart from criticising the upwards redistribution of wealth, they advocate solutions to rectifying these problems (Chapter 14). This can be done by reclaiming the value of the free banquets for the public, disrupting the coordination and networks used by rentiers, and shattering the myths peddled to justify their wholesale theft.
This book is a very timely addition to the emerging research in Australia and elsewhere which explains the processes and estimates the amount of wealth and income siphoned off by these schemes of legal theft. At 204 pages, it is not overly long and is makes for an easy read. Fortunately, the authors avoid the often opaque writing style and jargon often found in the economics and financial academic literature.
If one wants to understand how the country is being looted by the minority of the opulent for their own benefit, look no further.
Read more at gameofmates.com
JimTan , May 6, 2017 at 12:14 pmOpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , May 6, 2017 at 6:23 pmThe interesting thing about exploiting personal connections to extract rents, build cartels, capture regulators, gain legal protections, or generally restrict competition is that all these activities are essentially risk free. Gaining a rent or legal protection from a friend or colleague has zero risk, and guarantees higher profits. This is in contrast to innovation or product improvement which requires high risk, time, effort, capital, and expertise, but can return much higher profits. When opportunities for rent collection become systemic, I think economic rents can crowd out risky innovation because returns for economic rents are guaranteed. In this case the probabilities for (short-term) economic success are higher with economic rents, and as the saying goes 'firms act to maximize profitability'. That is a bad outcome for all of society.
In 2014 62 individuals owned one half of the world's wealth, now that's down to just 8 people (how they sleep at night is utterly beyond me). When it's down to one guy we can strangle him in the bathtub and redistribute, and usher in a new Golden Age of prosperity and peace.
|
|
|
www.truthdig.com
Editor's note: This article is the last in a four-part series on Truthdig called "Universal Empire" -- an examination of the current stage of the neocon takeover of American policy that began after World War ll. Read Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3 .
The recent assertion by the Trump White House that Damascus and Moscow released "false narratives" to mislead the world about the April 4 sarin gas attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria, is a dangerous next step in the "fake news" propaganda war launched in the final days of the Obama administration. It is a step whose deep roots in Communist Trotsky's Fourth International must be understood before deciding whether American democracy can be reclaimed.
Muddying the waters of accountability in a way not seen since Sen. Joe McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s, the " Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act " signed into law without fanfare by Obama in December 2016 officially authorized a government censorship bureaucracy comparable only to George Orwell's fictional Ministry of Truth in his novel "1984." Referred to as " the Global Engagement Center ," the official purpose of this new bureaucracy is to "recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests." The real purpose of this Orwellian nightmare is to cook the books on anything that challenges Washington's neoconservative pro-war narrative and to intimidate, harass or jail anyone who tries. As has already been demonstrated by President Trump's firing of Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian government airbase, it is a recipe for a world war, and like it or not, that war has already begun.
This latest attack on Russia's supposed false narrative takes us right back to 1953 and the beginnings of the cultural war between East and West. Its roots are tied to the Congress for Cultural Freedom, to James Burnham's pivot from Trotsky's Fourth International to right-wing conservatism and to the rise of the neoconservative Machiavellians as a political force. As Burnham's " The Struggle for the World " stressed, the Third World War had already begun with the 1944 Communist-led Greek sailors' revolt.In Burnham's Manichean thinking, the West was under siege. George Kennan's Cold War policy of containment was no different than Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. Détente with the Soviet Union amounted to surrender. Peace was only a disguise for war, and that war would be fought with politics, subversion, terrorism and psychological warfare. Soviet influence had to be rolled back wherever possible. That meant subverting the Soviet Union and its proxies and, when necessary, subverting Western democracies as well.
The true irony of today's late-stage efforts by Washington to monopolize "truth" and attack alternate narratives isn't just in its blatant contempt for genuine free speech. The real irony is that the entire "Freedom Manifesto" employed by the United States and Britain since World War II was never free at all, but a concoction of the CIA's Psychological Strategy Board 's (PSB) comprehensive psychological warfare program waged on friend and foe alike.
The CIA would come to view the entire program, beginning with the 1950 Berlin conference, to be a landmark in the Cold War, not just for solidifying the CIA's control over the non-Communist left and the West's "free" intellectuals, but for enabling the CIA to secretly disenfranchise Europeans and Americans from their own political culture in such a way they would never really know it.
As historian Christopher Lasch wrote in 1969 of the CIA's cooptation of the American left,
"The modern state is an engine of propaganda, alternately manufacturing crises and claiming to be the only instrument that can effectively deal with them. This propaganda, in order to be successful, demands the cooperation of writers, teachers, and artists not as paid propagandists or state-censored time-servers but as 'free' intellectuals capable of policing their own jurisdictions and of enforcing acceptable standards of responsibility within the various intellectual professions."
Key to turning these "free" intellectuals against their own interests was the CIA's doctrinal program for Western cultural transformation contained in the document PSB D-33/2 . PSB D-33/2 foretells of a "long-term intellectual movement, to: break down world-wide doctrinaire thought patterns" while "creating confusion, doubt and loss of confidence" in order to "weaken objectively the intellectual appeal of neutralism and to predispose its adherents towards the spirit of the West." The goal was to "predispose local elites to the philosophy held by the planners," while employing local elites "would help to disguise the American origin of the effort so that it appears to be a native development."
While declaring itself as an antidote to Communist totalitarianism, one internal critic of the program, PSB officer Charles Burton Marshall, viewed PSB D-33/2 itself as frighteningly totalitarian, interposing "a wide doctrinal system" that "accepts uniformity as a substitute for diversity," embracing "all fields of human thought -- all fields of intellectual interests, from anthropology and artistic creations to sociology and scientific methodology." He concluded: "That is just about as totalitarian as one can get."
Burnham's Machiavellian elitism lurks in every shadow of the document. As recounted in Frances Stoner Saunder's "The Cultural Cold War," "Marshall also took issue with the PSB's reliance on 'non-rational social theories' which emphasized the role of an elite 'in the manner reminiscent of Pareto, Sorel, Mussolini and so on.' Weren't these the models used by James Burnham in his book the Machiavellians? Perhaps there was a copy usefully to hand when PSB D-33/2 was being drafted. More likely, James Burnham himself was usefully to hand."
Burnham was more than just at hand when it came to secretly implanting a fascist philosophy of extreme elitism into America's Cold War orthodoxy. With "The Machiavellians," Burnham had composed the manual that forged the old Trotskyist left together with a right-wing Anglo/American elite.
The political offspring of that volatile union would be called neoconservatism, whose overt mission would be to roll back Russian/Soviet influence everywhere. Its covert mission would be to reassert a British cultural dominance over the emerging Anglo/American Empire and maintain it through propaganda.
Hard at work on that task since 1946 was the secret Information Research Department of the British and Commonwealth Foreign Office known as the IRD.
Rarely spoken of in the context of CIA-funded secret operations, the IRD served as a covert anti-Communist propaganda unit from 1946 until 1977. According to Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, authors of " Britain's Secret Propaganda War ," "the vast IRD enterprise had one sole aim: To spread its ceaseless propaganda output (i.e. a mixture of outright lies and distorted facts) among top-ranking journalists who worked for major agencies and magazines, including Reuters and the BBC, as well as every other available channel. It worked abroad to discredit communist parties in Western Europe which might gain a share of power by entirely democratic means, and at home to discredit the British Left."
IRD was to become a self-fulfilling disinformation machine for the far-right wing of the international intelligence elite, at once offering fabricated and distorted information to "independent" news outlets and then using the laundered story as "proof" of the false story's validity. One such front enterprise established with CIA money was Forum World Features, operated at one time by Burnham acolyte Brian Rossiter Crozier . Described by Burnham's biographer Daniel Kelly as a "British political analyst," in reality, the legendary Brian Crozier functioned for over 50 years as one of Britain's top propagandists and secret agents .
If anyone today is shocked by the biased, one-sided, xenophobic rush to judgment alleging Russian influence over the 2016 presidential election, they need look no further than to Brian Crozier's closet for the blueprints. As we were told outright by an American military officer during the first war in Afghanistan in 1982, the U.S. didn't need "proof the Soviets used poison gas" and they don't need proof against Russia now. Crozier might best be described as a daydream believer, a dangerous imperialist who acts out his dreams with open eyes. From the beginning of the Cold War until his death in 2012, Crozier and his protégé Robert Moss propagandized on behalf of military dictators Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, organized private intelligence organizations to destabilize governments in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa and worked to delegitimize politicians in Europe and Britain viewed as insufficiently anti-Communist.
The mandate of his Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC) set up in 1970 was to expose the supposed KGB campaign of worldwide subversion and put out stories smearing anyone who questioned it as a dupe, a traitor or Communist spy. Crozier regarded "The Machiavellians" as a major formative influence in his own intellectual development, and wrote in 1976 "indeed it was this book above all others that first taught me how [emphasis Crozier] to think about politics." The key to Crozier's thinking was Burnham's distinction between the "formal" meaning of political speech and the "real," a concept which was, of course, grasped only by elites. In a 1976 article, Crozier marveled at how Burnham's understanding of politics had spanned 600 years and how the use of "the formal" to conceal "the real" was no different today than when used by Dante Alighieri's "presumably enlightened Medieval mind." "The point is as valid now as it was in ancient times and in the Florentine Middle Ages, or in 1943. Overwhelmingly, political writers and speakers still use Dante's method. Depending on the degree of obfuscation required (either by circumstances or the person's character), the divorce between formal and real meaning is more of less absolute."
But Crozier was more than just a strategic thinker. Crozier was a high-level covert political agent who put Burnham's talent for obfuscation and his Fourth International experience to use to undermine détente and set the stage for rolling back the Soviet Union.
In a secret meeting at a City of London bank in February 1977, he even patented a private-sector operational intelligence organization known at the Sixth International (6I) to pick up where Burnham left off: politicizing and privatizing many of the dirty tricks the CIA and other intelligence services could no longer be caught doing. As he explained in his memoir "Free Agent," the name 6I was chosen "because the Fourth International split. The Fourth International was the Trotskyist one, and when it split, this meant that, on paper, there were five Internationals. In the numbers game, we would constitute the Sixth International, or '6I.' "
Crozier's cooperation with numerous "able and diligent Congressional staffers" as well as "the remarkable General Vernon ('Dick') Walters, recently retired as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence," cemented the rise of the neoconservatives. When Carter caved in to the Team B and his neoconservative National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski's plot to lure the Soviets into their own Vietnam in Afghanistan, it fulfilled Burnham's mission and delivered the world to the Machiavellians without anyone being the wiser.As George Orwell wrote in his "Second Thoughts on James Burnham": "What Burnham is mainly concerned to show [in The Machiavellians] is that a democratic society has never existed and, so far as we can see, never will exist. Society is of its nature oligarchical, and the power of the oligarchy always rests upon force and fraud. Power can sometimes be won and maintained without violence, but never without fraud."
Today, Burnham's use of Dante's political treatise "De Monarchia" to explain his medieval understanding of politics might best be swapped for Dante's "Divine Comedy," a paranoid comedy of errors in which the door to Hell swings open to one and all, including the elites regardless of their status. Or as they say in Hell, " Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate ." Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
This poart 4 of the series. For previous parts see
- Part 1: American Imperialism Leads the World Into Dante's Vision of Hell
- Part 3: How the CIA Created a Fake Western Reality for 'Unconventional Warfare'
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of " Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story ," " Crossing Zero: The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire " and " The Voice ." Visit their websites at invisiblehistory.com and grailwerk.com .
|
|
|
Apr 28, 2017 | www.truthdig.com
The ruling class is seriously rattled over its loss of control over the national political narrative-a consequence of capitalism's terminal decay and U.S. imperialism's slipping grip on global hegemony. When the Lords of Capital get rattled, their servants in the political class are tasked with rearranging the picture and reframing the national conversation. In other words, Papa Imperialism needs a new set of lies, or renewed respect for the old ones. Former president Barack Obama, the cool operator who put the U.S. back on the multiple wars track after a forced lull in the wake of George Bush's defeat in Iraq, has eagerly accepted his new assignment as Esteemed Guardian of Official Lies.At this stage of his career, Obama must dedicate much of his time to the maintenance of Official Lies, since they are central to his own "legacy." With the frenzied assistance of his first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, Obama launched a massive military offensive-a rush job to put the New American Century back on schedule. Pivoting to all corners of the planet, and with the general aim of isolating and intimidating Russia and China, the salient feature of Obama's offensive was the naked deployment of Islamic jihadists as foot soldiers of U.S. imperialism in Libya and Syria. It is a strategy that is morally and politically indefensible-unspeakable!-the truth of which would shatter the prevailing order in the imperial heartland, itself.
Thus, from 2011 to when he left the White House for a Tahiti yachting vacation with music mogul David Geffen and assorted movie and media celebrities, Obama orchestrated what the late Saddam Hussein would have called "The Mother of All Lies": that the U.S. was not locked in an alliance with al-Qaida and its terrorist offshoots in Syria, a relationship begun almost 40 years earlier in Afghanistan.
Advertisement Square, Site wide He had all the help he needed from a compliant corporate media, whose loyalty to U.S. foreign policy can always be counted on in times of war. Since the U.S. is constantly in a (self-proclaimed) state of war, corporate media collaboration is guaranteed. Outside the U.S. and European corporate media bubble, the whole world was aware that al-Qaida and the U.S. were comrades in arms. (According to a 2015 poll, 82 percent of Syrians and 85 percent of Iraqis believe the U.S. created ISIS .) When Vladimir Putin told a session of the United Nations General Assembly that satellites showed lines of ISIS tankers stretching from captured Syrian oil fields "to the horizon," bound for U.S.-allied Turkey, yet untouched by American bombers, the Obama administration had no retort. Russian jets destroyed 1,000 of the tankers , forcing the Americans to mount their own, smaller raids. But, the moment soon passed into the corporate media's amnesia hole-another fact that must be shed in order to avoid unspeakable conclusions.Presidential candidate Donald Trump's flirtation with the idea of ending U.S. "regime change" policy in Syria-and, thereby, scuttling the alliance with Islamic jihadists-struck panic in the ruling class and in the imperial political structures that are called the Deep State, which includes the corporate media. When Trump won the general election, the imperial political class went into meltdown, blaming "The Russians"-first, for warlord Hillary Clinton's loss, and soon later for everything under the sun. The latest lie is that Moscow is sending weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the country where the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan spent billions of dollars to create the international jihadist network. Which shows that imperialists have no sense of irony, or shame. (See BAR: " The U.S., Not Russia, Arms Jihadists Worldwide .")
After the election, lame duck President Obama was so consumed by the need to expunge all narratives that ran counter to "The Russians Did It," he twice yammered about " fake news " at a press conference in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Obama was upset, he said, "Because in an age where there's so much active misinformation and its packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television. If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won't know what to protect."
Although now an ex-president, it is still Obama's job to protect the ruling class, and the Empire, and his role in maintaining the Empire: his legacy. To do that, one must control the narrative-the subject uppermost in his mind when he used Chicago area students as props, this week, for his first public speech since leaving the White House.
"It used to be that everybody kind of had the same information," said Obama, at the University of Chicago affair. "We had different opinions about it, but there was a common base line of facts. The internet has in some ways accelerated this sense of people having entirely separate conversations, and this generation is getting its information through its phones. That you really don't have to confront people who have different opinions or have a different experience or a different outlook."
Obama continued:
"If you're liberal, you're on MSNBC, or conservative, you're on Fox News. You're reading The Wall Street Journal or you're reading The New York Times, or whatever your choices are. Or, maybe you're just looking at cat videos [laughter].
"So, one question I have for all of you is, How do you guys get your information about the news and what's happening out there, and are there ways in which you think we could do a better job of creating a common conversation now that you've got 600 cable stations and you've got all these different news opinions-and, if there are two sets of opinions, then they're just yelling at each other, so you don't get a sense that there's an actual conversation going on. And the internet is worse. It's become more polarized."
Obama's core concern is that there should be a "common base line of facts," which he claims used to exist "20 or 30 years ago." The internet, unregulated and cheaply accessed, is the villain, and the main source of "fake news" (from publications like BAR and the 12 other leftwing sites smeared by the Washington Post, back in November, not long after Obama complained to Merkel about "fake news").
However, Obama tries to dress up his anti-internet "fake news" whine with a phony pitch for diversity of opinions. Is he suggesting that MSNBC viewers also watch Fox News, and that New York Times readers also peruse the Wall Street Journal? Is he saying that most people read a variety of daily newspapers "back in the day"? It is true that, generations ago, there were far more newspapers available to read, reflecting a somewhat wider ideological range of views. But most people read the ones that were closest to their own politics, just as now. Obama is playing his usual game of diversion. Non-corporate news is his target: "...the internet is worse. It's become more and more polarized."
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC and Fox News all share the "common base line of facts" that Obama cherishes. By this, he means a common narrative, with American "exceptionalism" and intrinsic goodness at the center, capitalism and democracy as synonymous, and unity in opposition to the "common" enemy: Soviet Russians; then terrorists; now non-Soviet Russians, again.
Ayanna Watkins, a senior at Chicago's Kenwood Academy High School, clearly understood Obama's emphasis, and eagerly agreed with his thrust. "When it comes to getting information about what's going on in the world, it's way faster on social media than it is on newscasts," she said.
"But, on the other hand, it can be a downfall because, what if you're passing the wrong information, or the information isn't presented the way it should be? So, that causes a clash in our generation, and I think it should go back to the old school. I mean, phones, social media should be eliminated," Ms. Watkins blurted out, provoking laughter from the audience and causing the 18-year-old to "rephrase myself."
What she really meant, she said, was that politicians should "go out to the community" so that "the community will feel more welcome."
If she was trying to agree with Obama, Ms. Watkins had it right the first time: political counter-narratives on the internet have to go, so that Americans can share a "common base line" of information. All of it lies.
Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].
|
|
|
Mar 19, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs : March 18, 2017 at 08:39 PM , 2017 at 08:39 PM 'Paltering,' a new way to not tell the truth
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/03/17/paltering-new-way-not-tell-truth/TRB2ap22NK5Ya8KjF4x0GI/story.html?event=event25 via @BostonGlobe
Matthew Hutson - March 17, 2017... ... ..
Although paltering occurs in all realms of life, researchers at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government focused on its use in negotiation. In one of eight studies to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, study participants pretended to sell a used car on eBay. They answered the buyer's question "Has this car ever had problems?" with a response selected from a list supplied by the researchers.
The palter was to skip the fact that it had broken down twice in the last year, instead saying, "This car drives very smoothly and is very responsive. Just last week it started up with no problems when the temperature was 5 degrees Fahrenheit." The outright lie would have been: "This car has never had problems." Researchers learned that car sellers perceived paltering as more ethical than lying, and thus used it more.
In another study, half of surveyed executives said they paltered in more than "a few" of their negotiations, versus a fifth who said they actively lied more than a few times. Consistent with this discrepancy, executives viewed the behavior as more honest than lying.
Paltering allows people who consider themselves honest to deceive others while getting the same results that lying would. In a third experiment, participants in a pretend real estate negotiation performed just as well when they paltered as they did when they lied. Their successes didn't come without costs, however. When the deception was discovered, negotiation partners deemed palterers as untrustworthy as liars.
Another study found that victims saw palterers as less ethical than palterers saw themselves. We have a "broken mental model" of paltering, the researchers have concluded, seeing this behavior as honest when others do not.
One occasional advantage of paltering over lying is plausible deniability: You can blame any misunderstanding on the listener. Without knowing the speaker's intentions, it's difficult to diagnose paltering with certainty says Todd Rogers, a behavioral scientist at the Kennedy School and the paper's lead author. Few examples are as clear as Bill Clinton's response when asked if he'd had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky: "There is not a sexual relationship - that is accurate." (Note the slick use of present tense.)
So how can you avoid falling victim? "If you ask a specific question, that specific question should be answered, not a variant of it," Rogers says, even though insistence on clarification "often makes you look like a jerk."
Paltering relies on our tendency to trust others and not cause a scene. "It's pretty amazing how much you can get away with because of people's truth bias," says David Clementson, a researcher at Ohio State University's School of Communication, who was not involved in the study. "Paltering totally takes advantage of that, diabolically and deceptively."
Artful Paltering: The Risks and Rewards
of Using Truthful Statements to Mislead Others
Rogers, Todd; Zeckhauser, Richard; et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
Vol 112(3), Mar 2017,
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-pspi0000081.pdfThere's a Word for Using
Truthful Facts to Deceive: Paltering
HBR - Francesca Gino - October 05, 2016
https://hbr.org/2016/10/theres-a-word-for-using-truthful-facts-to-deceive-paltering
|
|
|
Mar 18, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
By Sandwichman. Originally published at Angry Bear
Jonathan Portes asks, " What's the role of experts in the public debate? " He assumes it is his prerogative, as an expert, to define that role:
I think we have three really important functions.
First, to explain our basic concepts and most important insights in plain English. Famously, Paul Samuelson, the founder of modern macroeconomics, was asked whether economics told us anything that was true but not obvious. It took him a couple of years, but eventually he gave an excellent and topical example – simply the theory of comparative advantage.
Similarly, I often say that the most useful thing I did in my 6 years as Chief Economist at DWP was to explain the lump of labour fallacy – that there isn't a fixed number of jobs in the economy, and increased immigration or more women working adds to both labour demand and labour supply – to six successive Secretaries of State. So that's the first.
Second is to call bullshit.
O.K. I call bullshit. What Portes explained "to six successive Secretaries of State" was a figment of the imagination of a late 18th century Lancashire magistrate, a self-styled " friend to the poor " who couldn't understand why poor people got so upset about having their wages cut or losing their jobs - to the extent they would go around throwing rocks through windows, breaking machines and burning down factories - when it was obvious to him that it was all for the best and in the long run we would all be better off or else dead.
I call bullshit because what Portes explained to six successive Secretaries of State was simply the return of the repressed - the obverse of "Say's Law" (which was neither Say's nor a Law) that "supply creates its own demand," which John Maynard Keynes demolished in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money and that John Kenneth Galbraith subsequently declared " sank without trace " in the wake of Keynes's demolition of it.
I call bullshit because when Paul Samuelson resurrected the defunct fallacy claim that Portes explained to six successive Secretaries of State, he did so on the condition that governments pursued the sorts of "Keynesian" job-creating policies that the discredited principle of "supply creates its own demand" insisted were both unnecessary and counter-productive.
But the lump of labor argument implies that there is only so much useful remunerative work to be done in any economic system, and that is indeed a fallacy . If proper and sound monetary, fiscal, and pricing policies are being vigorously promulgated , we need not resign ourselves to mass unemployment. And although technological unemployment is not to be shrugged off lightly, its optimal solution lies in offsetting policies that create adequate job opportunities and new skills.
[Incidentally, as Robert Schiller has noted, the promised prevention of mass unemployment by vigorous policy intervention did not imply the preservation of wage levels. Schiller cited the following passage from the Samuelson textbook, " a decrease in the demand for a particular kind of labor because of technological shifts in an industry can he adapted to - lower relative wages and migration of labor and capital will eventually provide new jobs for the displaced workers."]
I call bullshit because what Portes explained to six successive Secretaries of State was not even Paul Samuelson's policy-animated zombie lump-of-labour fallacy but a supply-side, anti-inflationary retrofit cobbled together by Richard Layard and associates and touted by Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder as the Third Way " new supply-side agenda for the left. " Central to that agenda were tax cuts to promote economic growth and "active labour market policies" to foster non-inflationary expansion of employment by making conditions more "flexible" and lower-waged:
Part-time work and low-paid work are better than no work because they ease the transition from unemployment to jobs.
Encourage employers to offer 'entry' jobs to the labour market by lowering the burden of tax and social security contributions on low-paid jobs.
I call bullshit because in defending the outcomes of supply-side labour policies, Portes soft-pedaled the stated low-wage objectives of the Third Way agenda. In a London Review of Books review, Portes admitted that "it may drive down wages for the low-skilled, but the effect is small compared to that of other factors (technological change, the national minimum wage and so on)." In the Third Way supply-side agenda, however, a low-wage sector was promoted as a desirable feature - making more low-skill jobs available - not a trivial bug to be brushed aside. In other words, in "driving down wages for the low skilled" the policy was achieving exactly what it was intended to but Portes was "too discreet" to admit that was the stated objectives of the policy.Adjustment will be the easier, the more labour and product markets are working properly. Barriers to employment in relatively low productivity sectors need to be lowered if employees displaced by the productivity gains that are an inherent feature of structural change are to find jobs elsewhere. The labour market needs a low-wage sector in order to make low-skill jobs available.
dk , March 18, 2017 at 4:47 am
PlutoniumKun , March 18, 2017 at 5:45 amI found this helpful in better understanding the economics discussed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#CriticismEconomist James K. Galbraith disputes these claims of the benefit of comparative advantage. He states that "free trade has attained the status of a god" and that ". . . none of the world's most successful trading regions, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and now mainland China, reached their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules." He argues that ". . . comparative advantage is based upon the concept of constant returns: the idea that you can double or triple the output of any good simply by doubling or tripling the inputs. But this is not generally the case. For manufactured products, increasing returns, learning, and technical change are the rule, not the exception; the cost of production falls with experience. With increasing returns, the lowest cost will be incurred by the country that starts earliest and moves fastest on any particular line. Potential competitors have to protect their own industries if they wish them to survive long enough to achieve competitive scale."[42]
Galbraith also contends that "For most other commodities, where land or ecology places limits on the expansion of capacity, the opposite condition – diminishing returns – is the rule. In this situation, there can be no guarantee that an advantage of relative cost will persist once specialization and the resultant expansion of production take place. A classic and tragic example, studied by Erik Reinert, is transitional Mongolia, a vast grassland with a tiny population and no industry that could compete on world markets. To the World Bank, Mongolia seemed a classic case of comparative advantage in animal husbandry, which in Mongolia consisted of vast herds of cattle, camels, sheep, and goats. Opening of industrial markets collapsed domestic industry, while privatization of the herds prompted the herders to increase their size. This led, within just a few years in the early 1990s, to overgrazing and permanent desertification of the subarctic steppe and, with a slightly colder than normal winter, a massive famine in the herds."
/L , March 18, 2017 at 6:39 amGalbraith, as always, is very succinct and readable. I well remember sitting in an economics lecture in the 1980's when the Professor mentioned Galbraith and described him as with distain someone 'who's ideas were more popular with the public than with economists'. The snigger of agreement that ran around the students in the hall made me realise just how ingrained the ideology of economics was as I'm pretty sure I was the only one of the students who'd actually read any Galbraith.
I'd also recommend Ha-Joon Chang as someone who is very readable on the topic of the many weaknesses of conventional ideas on comparative advantage.
/L , March 18, 2017 at 7:10 amJames K Galbraith is the son of the famous New Deal economist John K Galbraith.
John K G:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
"In the case of economics there are no important propositions that cannot be stated in plain language."
JEHR , March 18, 2017 at 8:24 amJohn K G on The Art of Good Writing
"I was an editor of Fortune under Henry Luce, the founder of Time, Inc., who was one of the most ruthless editors that I have ever known, that anyone has ever known. Henry could look over a sheet of copy and say, "This can go, and this can go, and this can go," and you would be left with eight to ten lines which said everything that you had said in twenty lines before.
And I can still, to this day, not write a page without the feeling that Henry Luce is looking over my shoulder and saying, "That can go." That illuminate one "problem" in our age of internet, unlimited space to be verbose and no editors that de-obscure the writers "thoughts".
sgt_doom , March 18, 2017 at 2:21 pm/L–This site is just wonderful! Anything you want to know about knowing seems to be here. Thanks for the great link.
Norb , March 18, 2017 at 8:54 amRecommendation: Wealth, Power and the Crisis of Laissez-Faire Capitalism , by Donald Gibson
craazyman , March 18, 2017 at 5:23 pmI wonder if this phenomenon – the desirability succinct communication -- was a holdover of earlier times, when accurate communication made the difference between life and death. Settling and developing a continent would place a high value on such purposeful human exchanges.
Today, we are awash in branding and marketing intended to maintain the current order. The language is used to obfuscate, not clarify experience or goals.
An expert in any field that has the ability to communicate in a general , popular mode, is of great value to society. Truth and understanding is its main function. Knowledge, or insight that cannot be shared is more often than not just an excuse to hide methods of control and exploitation.
If citizens can't get the generalities right, the specifics will be impossible to comprehend.
PlutoniumKun , March 18, 2017 at 9:18 amAlmost everything can go. I remember seeing a video of the photographer William Klein saying a master photographer is remembered for just a handfull of images. Maybe 10 or 15, tops. Out of probably at least 100,000 serious photos.
Of course what goes is necessary fertilizer for what doesn't go. You can't avoid it. Hahahah. But you have to let it go anyway. Or your editor has to be williing to cut.
I've noticed lots and lots of posts here could be a lot better if the post author had said the same thing in half as many words. Most wouldn't lose any persuasion, if they had any to begin with. And they'd gain reader attention for the pruning.
I've noticed many experts are especially bad at verbosity. Maybe they think somehow that quantity of words is a form of potency. Maybe that's it. Also individuals with a grievance who write posts about their grievance. I know when I have a grievance it's hard to shut up. I'm just being honest. I'll keep rambling and rambling, repeating myelf and fulminating. Thankfully I know better than to write like that.
Having saidd all that, Say was rite. If the supply of labor increases, that createes its own demand for jobs! How is that not completely obvious.
fresno dan , March 18, 2017 at 7:03 amAh yeah, sorry, getting my JK's mixed up. Both are good.
shinola , March 18, 2017 at 12:55 pmPlutoniumKun
March 18, 2017 at 5:45 amHuffington Post review has a synopsis of the Ha-Joon Change book. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/a-review-of-ha-joon-chang_b_840417.html
My favorite:
Thing 13: Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer. Trickle down economics doesn't work because wealth doesn't trickle down. It trickles up, which is why the rich are the rich in the first placesgt_doom , March 18, 2017 at 2:18 pmThanks for the tip PK & thank you fd for the link to the review. I'm going to check this fellow out; sounds like he has some interesting things to say. One of the "things" that may apply to the above article:
Thing 23: Good economic policy does not require good economists. Most of the really important economic issues, the ones that decide whether nations sink or swim, are within the intellectual reach of intelligent non-economists. Academic Economics with a capital "E" has remarkably little to say about the things that really matter. Concerned citizens need to stop being intimidated by the experts here.
Anonymous2 , March 18, 2017 at 8:10 amAlthough Ha Joon Chang is an excellent economist, I would also strongly recommend Michael Hudson, Michael Perelman, Steve Keen and E. Ray Canterbery - they are really great, along with Samir Amin of Senegal.
Mael Colium , March 18, 2017 at 8:39 amA word of warning from the UK. Denigrate experts too much and you end up like us with government by people who really are inexpert. That is not an improvement.
Anonymous2 , March 18, 2017 at 9:51 amHa! I think an anti brexiter just rolled the white eye.
Strange that the awful things that the experts told us all would happen haven't and don't look like happening since the people called bullshit on the EU mess. Britain with or without those blokes in dresses up north will do just fine as they steer themselves out of the EU quagmire. I'll take the people anytime anonymous – they have more common sense than the experts. Didn't you read the article?
sgt_doom , March 18, 2017 at 2:16 pmIf you are referring to economic forecasters, they, by definition, are not experts.
visitor , March 18, 2017 at 9:16 amThank you!!!
I remember back in the 1980s, when so-called "experts" were prattling about such nonsense as . . .
"Computers don't make mistakes, humans make mistakes !"
Which was surely untrue as anyone with any real IT expertise back then would have explained that 97% or more of hardware crashes generate software problems (for obvious reasons).
voislav , March 18, 2017 at 8:28 amA major issue is that those incapable politicians do rely upon experts, but they have consistently selected experts not on their track record (such as how good economists were at predicting the evolution of the economy, or how good political scientists were at predicting the evolution of communist or Arab societies), but on whether pronouncements of experts corresponded to their ideological preconceptions and justified their intended policies.
A bit like rejecting physicians' diagnoses when they do not suit you and preferring the cure of a quack.
Steve Ruis , March 18, 2017 at 8:55 amThis is not restricted to economists, it pervasive in science in general. I can't remember how many times I got a paper for peer review where I couldn't figure out what the person was trying to say because they layered the jargon ten levels deep. This is in chemistry, so things are typically straightforward, no need for convoluted explanations and massaging of the data.
But people still do it because that's the culture that they've been educated in, a scientific paper has to be high-brow, using obscure words and complicated sentences.
Paul Hirschman , March 18, 2017 at 9:03 amI think it is as simple as: if you create something that justifies the behaviors of the rich and powerful, you have something to sell and willing buyers. If you create something that delegitimizes the behaviors of the rich and powerful, you not only have no willing patrons but you have made powerful enemies.
It is the law of supply and demand for pretentious bullshit.
Paul Hirschman , March 18, 2017 at 9:09 amSo in the end, we wind up with Say's Law anyway, since creating a "low wages" sector is exactly how Say's Law functions–supply creates its own demand because declining wages means investment spending can increase, which keeps aggregate demand where it needs to be for full employment.
This is the solution, we are told, to Keynes "sticky prices." Jim Grant makes this very argument in his book about the "short-lived" crisis of the early 1920s. Leave workers exposed to starvation long enough and they'll work for next- to-nothing. The solution to James O'Connor's Fiscal Crisis of the State is to clean house in a big way, a very big way. Put everyone out on the street and start all over again. (Everyone but the 1% of course.)
It's Andrew Mellon's advice for getting out of the Depression: "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people."
The Reserve Army of Labor saves the Capitalist Day, once again. (Except for the little problem that the 1% won't accept their own liquidation, so Goldman Sachs and the rest must be exempted from the purging–which means that the purging can't work.)
Back to managing stagnation.
sgt_doom , March 18, 2017 at 2:12 pmManaging stagnation is what we have "experts" for in the first place.
Sandwichman , March 18, 2017 at 2:38 pmNot too long before he died, Paul Samuelson said: "Maybe I was wrong on the subject of jobs offshoring." (I.e., maybe offshoring all the jobs and dismantling the US economy wasn't so intelligent after all!)
Just finished a book called, The Death of Expertise , by a professor of national security (oh give me a frigging break!!!!), Tom Nichols.
Biggest pile of crapola I have ever read! The author was also yearning for the days when "experts" were blindly followed!
marku52 , March 18, 2017 at 3:25 pmC. Wright Mills called them "crackpot realists."
Altandmain , March 18, 2017 at 5:00 pmIt's all a part and parcel of the meritocracy. If you don't have a degree in Econ, your opinion doesn't matter about why your job moved to China. If you don't have a degree in Urban Planning, you don't get to comment on how the city wants to tear down the park and put up condos.
The answer is that said "experts" have failed the general public miserably.
Their advice helped lead to this 2008 Financial Crisis. The promise of neoliberalism was faster growth. It did not happen. Quite the opposite. It gave the rich intellectual cover to loot society. That"s what this was always about.
Now people wonder, why they don't trust "experts"?
Then there's the matter of the Iraq War. Another example. Many foreign policy "experts", particularly affiliated with the neoconservative assured the American people that invading Iraq would be easy to do and lead to lots of long term benefits. Others insisted, despite evidence to the contrary, that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction. Now look at where we are. No WMDs, long and cost war, with no long-term solutions. Many of said "experts" later endorsed Clinton.
We do not need pro-Establishment experts who sell themselves out to enrich themselves. We need experts who act in the public interest.
|
|
|
Feb 18, 2017 | nyti.ms
Everybody lies. But American politics has long rested on a shared understanding of what it is acceptable to lie about, how and to whom.
One of the many norms that Donald J. Trump has assaulted since taking office is this tradition of aspirational hypocrisy, of striving, at least rhetorically, to act in accordance with moral values - to be better. This tradition has set the standard of behavior for government officials and has shaped Americans' understanding of what their government and their country represent. Over the last four weeks, Mr. Trump has lashed out against any criticism of his behavior, because, as he never tires of pointing out, "We won." In requesting the resignation of his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, however, Mr. Trump made his first public concession to political expectations. Hypocrisy has scored a minor victory in America. This is a good thing.
The word "hypocrisy" was thrown around a lot during the 2016 presidential campaign. Both Mr. Trump and Bernie Sanders accused their respective parties and the country's elites of hypocrisy. As the election neared, some journalists tried to turn the accusation around on Mr. Trump, taking him to task, for example, for his stand on immigration. If Mr. Trump favored such a hard line on immigration, the logic went, should he not then favor the deportation of his own wife, Melania, who was alleged to have worked while in the United States on a visitor's visa?
The charge of hypocrisy didn't stick, not so much because it placed its proponents, unwittingly, in the distasteful position of advocating the deportation of someone for a long-ago and common transgression, but because Mr. Trump wasn't just breaking the rules of political conduct: He was destroying them. He was openly claiming that he abused the system to benefit himself. If he didn't pay his taxes and got away with it, this made him a good businessman. If he could force himself on women, that made him more of a man. He acted as though this primitive logic were obvious and shared by all.
Fascists the world over have gained popularity by calling forth the idea that the world is rotten to the core. In "The Origins of Totalitarianism," Hannah Arendt described how fascism invites people to "throw off the mask of hypocrisy" and adopt the worldview that there is no right and wrong, only winners and losers. Hypocrisy can be aspirational: Political actors claim that they are motivated by ideals perhaps to a greater extent than they really are; shedding the mask of hypocrisy asserts that greed, vengeance and gratuitous cruelty aren't wrong, but are legitimate motivations for political behavior.
In the last decade and a half, post-Communist autocrats like Vladimir V. Putin and Viktor Orban have adopted this cynical posture. They seem convinced that the entire world is driven solely by greed and hunger for power, and only the Western democracies continue to insist, hypocritically, that their politics are based on values and principles. This stance has breathed new life into the old Soviet propaganda tool of "whataboutism," the trick of turning any argument against the opponent. When accused of falsifying elections, Russians retort that American elections are not unproblematic; when faced with accusations of corruption, they claim that the entire world is corrupt.
This month, Mr. Trump employed the technique of whataboutism when he was asked about his admiration for Mr. Putin, whom the host Bill O'Reilly called "a killer." "You got a lot of killers," responded Mr. Trump. "What, you think our country's so innocent?" To an American ear, Mr. Trump's statement was jarring - not because Americans believe their country to be "innocent" but because they have always relied on a sort of aspirational hypocrisy to understand the country. No American politician in living memory has advanced the idea that the entire world, including the United States, was rotten to the core. ...
Hungary's PM Viktor Orban praises Trump for saying countries should put their own interests first
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/donald-trump-nationalist-hungary-pm-viktor-orban-praise-america-first-a7542361.htmlReply Saturday, February 18, 2017 at 02:26 PM
ilsm said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...
the dems' deep state have already trodden the Bill of Rights how worse can it get......
fascism is in the US for 8 years or so. Reply Saturday, February 18, 2017 at 05:35 PM
|
|
|
Feb 12, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
RGC : February 10, 2017 at 06:44 AMJulio -> RGC... , February 10, 2017 at 09:04 AMIf you wanted to bring sanity to a U.S. foreign policy that has spun crazily out of control, there would be some immediate steps that you – or, say, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – could take, starting with a renewed commitment to tell the truth to the American people.
Instead of the endless "perception management" or "strategic communication" or "psychological operations" or whatever the new code words are, you could open up the files regarding key turning-point moments and share the facts with the citizens – the "We the People" – who are supposed to be America's true sovereigns.
For instance, you could release what the U.S. government actually knows about the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack in Syria; what the files show about the origins of the Feb. 22, 2014 coup in Ukraine; what U.S. intelligence analysts have compiled about the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. And those are just three examples of cases where U.S. government propagandists have sold a dubious bill of goods to the American and world publics in the "information warfare" campaign against the Syrian and Russian governments.
If you wanted to base U.S. foreign policy on the firm foundation of reality, you also could let the American people in on who is actually the principal sponsor of the terrorism that they're concerned about: Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the Taliban – all Sunni-led outfits, none of which are backed by Shiite-ruled Iran. Yet, all we hear from Official Washington's political and media insiders is that Iran is the chief sponsor of terrorism.
Of course, that is what Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Israel want you to believe because it serves their regional and sectarian interests, but it isn't true. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are the ones arming and financing Al Qaeda and Islamic State with Israel occasionally bombing Al Qaeda's military enemies inside Syria and providing medical support for Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate operating near the Golan Heights.
The reason for this unsavory network of alliances is that Israel, like Saudi Arabia and the Sunni-led Gulf states, sees Iran and the so-called "Shiite crescent" – from Tehran through Damascus to Beirut – as their principal problem. And because of the oil sheiks' financial wealth and Israel's political clout, they control how pretty much everyone in Official Washington's establishment views the Middle East.
But the interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are not in line with the interests of the American people – nor the average European – who are not concerned about militant Shiites as much as militant Sunnis. After all, the worst terror attacks on Europe and the U.S. have come from Sunni extremists belonging to or inspired by Al Qaeda and Islamic State.
This gap between the reality of Sunni-extremist terrorism and the fantasy of Official Washington's "group think" fingering Shiite-ruled Iran explains the cognitive dissonance over President Trump's travel ban on people from seven mostly Muslim countries. Beyond the offensive anti-Muslim prejudice, there is the fact that he ignored the countries that produced the terrorists who have attacked the U.S., including the 9/11 hijackers.
This bizarre feature of Trump's executive order shows how deep Official Washington's dysfunction goes. Trump has picked a major constitutional battle over a travel ban that targets the wrong countries.
But there's a reason for this dysfunction: No one in Official Washington can speak the truth about terrorism without suffering severe political damage or getting blacklisted by the mainstream media. Since the truth puts Israel and especially Saudi Arabia in an uncomfortable position, the truth cannot be spoken.
There was some hope that President Trump – for all his irascibility and unpredictability – might break from the absurd "Iran is the principal source of terrorism" mantra. But so far he has not. Nor has Trump moved to throw open the files on the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts so Americans can assess how the Obama administration sought to manipulate them into supporting these "regime change" adventures.
But Trump has resisted intense pressure to again entrust U.S. foreign policy to the neoconservatives, a number of whom lost their jobs when President Obama left office, perhaps most significantly Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who helped orchestrate the violent overthrow of Ukraine's elected president and is an architect of the New Cold War with Russia.
Other neocons who angled for jobs in the new administration, including John Bolton and James Woolsey, have failed to land them. Currently, there is pressure to ensconce Elliott Abrams, a top neocon dating back to the Reagan administration, in the key post of Deputy Secretary of State but that idea, too, has met resistance.
The neocon threat to Trump's stated intent of restoring some geopolitical realism to U.S. foreign policy is that the neocons operate almost as an ideological cabal linked often in a subterranean fashion – or as I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's neocon chief of staff, once wrote in a cryptic letter to neocon journalist Judith Miller that aspen trees "turn in clusters, because their roots connect them."
In other words, if one neocon is given a key job, other neocons can be expected to follow. Then, any Trump deviation from neocon orthodoxy would be undermined in the classic Washington tradition of strategic leaking to powerful media and congressional allies.
So far, the Trump inner circle has shown the administrative savvy to avoid bringing in ideologues who would dedicate their efforts to thwarting any significant change in U.S. geopolitical directions.
What is less clear is whether Trump, Tillerson and his fledgling State Department team have the intellectual heft to understand why U.S. foreign policy has drifted into the chaos and conflicts that now surround it – and whether they have the skill to navigate a route toward a safe harbor.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/09/trumps-foreign-policy-at-a-crossroads/
Very good analysis.RGC -> Julio ... , February 10, 2017 at 09:43 AM
The first and obvious question about the ban is "why isn't Saudi Arabia included"? As the article shows, this question unravels this (Trump's) current version of dysfunctional foreign policy based on misleading the public.Yes, Trump seems to want to act directly but he also seems to often be off-target.sanjait said in reply to RGC... , February 10, 2017 at 10:56 AMMy first concern, however, is the USA predilection for 'regime change" wars - and for that I blame the neocons.
I am all for transparency but very strongly opposed to asinine conspiracy theories.RGC -> sanjait... , February 10, 2017 at 11:29 AMWhy should anyone care? Maybe you should actually learn something about a topic before you comment on it.
|
|
|
Snowden showed the world that the NSA wasn't just tracking terrorists, they were tracking pretty much everyone, everywhere. He deserves a full pardon.Feb 12, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Submitted by Alexander Mercouris via TheDuran.com,
On Friday 10th February 2017 NBC circulated a report the Russian government in order to improve relations with the Trump administration was preparing to hand Edward Snowden over to the US.
The report obviously worried Snowden himself, who tweeted that the report proved that he was not and never had been a Russian agent . That suggests that he took the report seriously.
Snowden should not be worried, since the report is groundless and is clearly a provocation. To see why it is only necessary to look at the NBC report itself , which makes it clear who is behind it...
U.S. intelligence has collected information that Russia is considering turning over Edward Snowden as a "gift" to President Donald Trump - who has called the NSA leaker a "spy" and a "traitor" who deserves to be executed.
That's according to a senior U.S. official who has analyzed a series of highly sensitive intelligence reports detailing Russian deliberations and who says a Snowden handover is one of various ploys to "curry favor" with Trump. A second source in the intelligence community confirms the intelligence about the Russian conversations and notes it has been gathered since the inauguration.
(bold italics added)
It turns out that the story does not originate in Russia. It originates with our old friends the 'anonymous officials' of the US intelligence community.
One of these officials claims that the story is based on "intelligence" of "Russian conversations" that the US intelligence community has 'gathered since the inauguration". We have no way of knowing at what level these "conversations" took place, assuming they took place at all, but it is inconceivable that the US intelligence community is genuinely informed of discussions within the top level of the Russian leadership – where such a question would be discussed – or if it is that it would publicise the fact by blurting the fact out to NBC.
The reality is that there is no possibility of the Russians handing Snowden over to the US in order to please Donald Trump . Not only would doing so almost certainly breach Russian law – as Snowden's lawyer, who has denied the whole story , has pointed out – but it contradicts what I personally heard Russian President Putin say at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2014 when the subject of Snowden was brought up, which is that Russia never hands over people like Snowden once they have gained asylum in Russia. That is indeed Russian practice extending far back into the Soviet period, and I can think of no exceptions to it.
As it happens Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova has denied the story in a Facebook post which links it to the ongoing struggle between the Trump administration and the US intelligence community (about which see more below). Here is how RT translates her post
Today, US intelligence agencies have stepped up their work, updating two stale stories, 'Russia can gift Snowden to Trump' and 'confirmation found on the details of the scandalous dossier on Trump allegedly collected by an ex-employee of British intelligence.' But it may seem so only to those who do not understand the essence of the game. None of these statements have been made by representatives of the special services, but is information coming from NBC and CNN, citing unnamed sources. The difference is obvious, but only to experts. Yet it is useful for scandalizing the public and maintaining a degree of [public outrage] .
It is evident that the pressure on the new administration on the part of political opponents within the United States continues, bargaining is going on. And that's why the US foreign policy doctrine has not yet been formed
It is just possible that US intelligence overheard some gossip in Moscow about the Kremlin handing Snowden over to Donald Trump in order to curry favour with him. The various reports the US intelligence community released during the Clinton leaks hacking scandal show that the US intelligence community is not actually very well informed about what goes on in Moscow or how the Russian government works. In light of that it would not be entirely surprising if someone overheard some gossip about Snowden in Moscow which the US intelligence community is over-interpreting.
Far more likely however is that – as Maria Zakharova says – this is a deliberate provocation, spread by someone within the US intelligence community who either wants to signal to Moscow what Moscow 'needs to do' if it wants better relations with the US, or (more probably) as a signal to Donald Trump of the minimum the US intelligence community expects of him if he wants the US intelligence community's support in seeking better relations with Russia.
This story is interesting not because of what it says about what the Russians are going to do to Snowden – which in reality is nothing. Rather it is interesting because it shows the degree to which Snowden continues to be an object of obsession for the US intelligence community.
The reason for that is that the US intelligence community knows that Snowden is not a Russian spy.
As Snowden has pointed out, if he really were a Russian spy no-one in Washington would be talking about the Russians handing him over. The Russians do not hand their spies over any more than the US does, and if Snowden really were a Russian spy no-one in Washington would talking about the Russians handing him over.
However if Snowden had been a Russian spy his actions would in that case have been simply a Russian intelligence operation of which the US intelligence community was the victim, of which there have been many since the Second World War. Espionage is what the US and Russia routinely do to each other, and there would be nothing remarkable about Snowden in that case.
It is the fact that Snowden is on the contrary a deeply patriotic American who acted from patriotic motives that has the US intelligence community enraged and alarmed. From their point of view having a patriotic American publicly expose their practices Jason Bourne style is a far greater threat than have a Russian spy penetrate their systems, since because of the far greater publicity it is far more likely to damage them politically.
This explains the extraordinary feud the US intelligence community has waged against Snowden, which in part explains why it has become so hostile to Russia, the country which has become his protector.
Mr.Sono -> knukles •Feb 12, 2017 5:41 PMPutin is a man of his words and not a little bitch like Obama. I was suprised that fake news was all over zerohedge regarding this topic, but at the end zerohedge confirmed the fake news.Giant Meteor -> FreeShitter •Feb 12, 2017 5:35 PMOne of the smartest plays the deep state could make is allowing him back, make small fuss, and issue a pardon. It would go far in deflating, diffusing the situation, de minimis so to speak. But, I suppose it is more about absolute control, control of the narrative, full spectrum dominance, cautionary tales etc. Pride goeth before the fall (destruction) I believe. Eventually this laundry is going to get sorted and cleaned, one way or the other.boattrash •Feb 12, 2017 5:13 PM" as Maria Zakharova says – this is a deliberate provocation, spread by someone within the US intelligence community who either wants to signal to Moscow what Moscow 'needs to do' if it wants better relations with the US, or (more probably) as a signal to Donald Trump of the minimum the US intelligence community expects of him if he wants the US intelligence community's support in seeking better relations with Russia."HumanMan -> boattrash •Feb 12, 2017 5:29 PMA full pardon from Trump would improve his standing with the American people, IMHO, on both the left and the right.
This was my thought when the story broke. Putin can no longer claim to be a protector of human rights if he hands over Snowden...Unless Trump is going to pardon him. As you pointed you, that would be great (politically) for Trump too. Done this way would be a win win for the two and another win for We The People. On top of that, Putin doesn't want to babysit Snowden. I'm sure the Russians would be happy to have a politically expediant way to get the American spy out of their country.HRClinton •Feb 12, 2017 5:16 PMThe Deep State rules, no matter what DJT thinks.FAKE NEWS:The roots go deep in my fomer DOS and in the CIA Even in the DOD and Senate. Bill and I know this better than anyone.
shovelhead •Feb 12, 2017 5:37 PMOn Friday 10th February 2017 NBC circulated a report the Russian government in order to improve relations with the Trump administration was preparing to hand Edward Snowden over to the US.
How many gringos were fooled???--- not many
Pissgate II...Mr. Crisp •Feb 12, 2017 5:50 PMBrought to you from your friends at the CIA
|
|
|
Feb 09, 2017 | stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com
Nick Cohen makes a good point : it is not congenital liars that should worry us, but congenital believers – those who fall for the lies of charlatans. We know that many do so: almost half of voters believed the lie that leaving the EU would allow us to spend an extra £350m a week on the NHS.
This poses the question: why do people fall for lies? Here, we can learn from behavioural economics and research (pdf) into criminal fraud. I reckon there are several factors that liars exploit in politics.
One is wishful thinking. People want to believe there's a simple solution to NHS underfunding (leave the EU!) or to low wages (cut immigration!) just as they want to believe they can get rich quick or make money by taking no risk: Ponzi schemers like Bernie Madoff play upon that last one. The wish is often the father to the belief.
Relatedly, perhaps, there are lottery-type preferences. People like long-odds bets and pay too much for them: this is why they back longshots (pdf) too much and pay over the odds for speculative shares . To such people, the fact that an offer seems too good to be true is therefore, paradoxically, tempting. A study of fraud by the OFT found :
Some people viewed responding to a scam as taking a long-odds gamble: they recognised that there was something wrong with the offer, but the size of the possible prize or reward (relative to the initial outlay) induced them to give it a try on the off-chance that it might be genuine.
There's a particular type that is especially likely to take a long-odds bet: the desperate. Lonely people are vulnerable to the romance scam; gamblers who have lost take big bets to get even; losing teams try "hail Mary" tactics. In like fashion, people who feel like they have lost out in the era of globalization were tempted to vote for Trump and Brexit.
There's another mechanism here: people are likely to turn to con-men if the alternatives have failed. Werner Troesken shows (pdf) how snake-oil sellers exploited this. They invested a lot in advertising and in product differentiation and so when other products failed they could claim that theirs would work when the others hadn't. I suspect that fund managers use a similar trick: the failure of many to beat the market leads investors simply to trust others rather than tracker funds. The fact that previous policies had failed working people thus encouraged them to try something different – be it Brexit or Trump.
Yet another trick here is the affinity fraud. We tend to trust people like ourselves, or who at least who look like ourselves. Farage's endless posturing as a "man of the people" – fag and pint in hand, not caring about "political correctness" – laid the basis for people to trust him, just as Bernie Madoff joined all the right clubs to encourage wealthy (often Jewish) folk to trust him. By contrast, the claims from the Treasury and various think-tanks that Brexit would make us poorer came from metropolitan elites who were so different from poorer working class people that they weren't trusted. And in fact the very talk of "liberal elites" carried the subtext: "don't trust them: they're not like you".
All of these tendencies have been reinforced by another – the fact that, as David Leiser and Zeev Kril have shown , people are bad at making connections in economics. The idea that Brexit would hurt us rested upon tricky connections: between the terms of Brexit and trade rules; from trade rules to actual trade; and from trade to productivity. By contrast, the idea that leaving the EU would save us money was simple and easy to believe.
Now, I don't say all this merely to be a Remoaner; complaining about liars is like a fish complaining that the water is wet. Instead, I want to point out that it is not sufficient to blame the BBC for not calling out Brexiters' lies. Yes, the BBC disgraced itself during the plebiscite campaign. But we must also understand how voters fall for such mendacity. As Akerlof and Shiller write:
Voters are phishable in two major ways. First, they are not fully informed; they are information phools. Second, voters are also psychological phools; for example, because they respond to appeals such as lawnmower ads [a candidate seen mowing his own lawn is regarded as a man of the people] ( Phishing for Phools , p 75)
All this raises a challenge for liberals. Many used to believe the truth would win out over lies in the marketplace for ideas. This is no longer true, if it ever were. Instead, the questions now are: what can we do about this? And what should we do? The two questions might well have different answers. But we can make a start by understanding how lies are sometimes believed. Keith | February 07, 2017 at 04:47 PM
The marketplace of ideas assumes that the consumers are able and willing to inform themselves and be rational rather than emotional. Clearly this is not true of a lot of voters when confronted by a manipulative press and Tories like Jim with their right wing agenda slyly hidden for the time being.Matthew Moore | February 07, 2017 at 05:37 PMEqually as in other areas such as health care shopping around is impossible to do as the consumers lack expert knowledge. Allowing the profit motive to apply to many areas is sure to be a disaster for human welfare as the profit incentive stops the experts using their knowledge for good. Finance is a classic example of the uninformed being repeatedly duped into unsound investments decade after decade. Benjamin Graham describes how in his first job selling Bonds to grannies he came to realise that he was being asked to steal the life savings of pensioners via commissions designed to get a sale of junk paper. Which is why he moved elsewhere to a more ethical line of work. But I am sure leaving the biggest most integrated market in the world where lots of foreigners have helpfully learned our language will surely increase our prosperity....Nigel says so.
There will always be gullible people (/ people constrained by high opportunity cost of information search, as I prefer to think of them)Dipper | February 07, 2017 at 07:47 PMAnd there will always be liars looking to take advantage of them. Like 99% of politicians ever.
It's very Marxist to wonder how we might change this basic fact of humanity, when the real solution is clear. Don't set up powerful central institutions that rely on coercion: it attracts liars, rewards them, and makes new liars out of honest people.
Oh, we Leavers are being lectured again by our Remainer betters on our stupidity.Dipper | February 07, 2017 at 08:09 PMIf the statements of the amount we pay to the EU were lies, how come we owe them €50 billion?
how come no-one ever asks why we have to implement the four freedoms when Germany gets a free pass on the Free market in Services?
the government announced house building plans today, and no-one asks whether a cause of high house prices and a housing shortage is too much immigration?
It's not the lies, it's the questions never asked that stand out.
@ Keith - "Tories like Jim"Ralph Musgrave | February 07, 2017 at 09:45 PMI don't read Jim as a Tory. I read him as someone who was a Labour supporter but now just stares in amazement at a group of people who have become EU Federalist fanatics spouting delusional slogans who can never answer a straight question and refuse to acknowledge the obvious problems of democratic accountability.
How on earth did that happen? How did apparently intelligent people completely lose their critical faculties and join a quasi-religious cult that chants empty slogans and denounces anyone who questions them?
But I'm sure Jim can speak for himself.
Chris missed out the fact that people tend to give others the benefit of the doubt. I.e. if X tells a monster lie, peoples' immediate reaction is: "X is is a bastard". But then on second thoughts they feel ashamed at accusing someone else of being a bastard, and assume it's they themselves that must be wrong.Sotto Voce | February 07, 2017 at 10:45 PM
There is a bit of a danger here of another comment thread being derailed with Brexit mud-slinging. Chris's post isn't really about the pros and cons of Brexit, it just offers a vivid example of the phenomenon under discussion.e | February 07, 2017 at 10:57 PMThe point Chris makes in the last paragraph is more general and profound. If any and all data/information/evidence/argument is interpreted in partisan fashion and subject to massive confirmation bias so that debates increasingly polarise - or if different sides in debates proffer their own favoured but incompatible versions of the truth - then meaningful dialogue, deliberation and compromise become near impossible. All we get is intolerance, mistrust and greater partisanship. Clearly these are not entirely new issues, but it seems undeniable that there has been a qualitative shift in 'quality' of public debate.
We appear to be witnessing the US political system at great risk of imploding, as enlightenment values are abandoned and key tenets of liberal democratic practice are wilfully rejected. This is the route to chaos.
The questions Chris poses are, to my mind at least, the right ones. The very nature of the problem means that the old/favoured remedies are unlikely to be effective. But what can replace them? Is a violent conflagration the only way of shocking the system out of hyper-partisanship and the rejection of the foundational belief that we live in a shared reality (i.e. for people to 'come to their senses')? Or can we back out of this particular cul-de-sac peacefully? You've got to hope so. But, if so, how?
Our upper echelon, i.e. our long-standing middle of the road Labour MPs and commentators, have long been successful in fighting off calls for left leaning policy/talk of how things work (because who knows where this will end) under a guise of fighting off racism/ a closed shop mentality; the routes of least resistance 50s – 00s which should alert us to the ability of the English working class to embrace immigration and avoid base philosophies. But it seems not. Seems to me our shared interest beyond race creed colour and gender continues to be deliberately and systematically no-platformed. What I fail to understand, given the rise of UKIP, is why this is not glaringly obvious; because if you're one of the majority who live life as best you might with as much consideration and tolerance as you can muster where does credence go when an ordinary workers tendency to sound 'populist' is marked up to racism no matter known history...aragon | February 07, 2017 at 11:53 PM
Not again!aragon | February 08, 2017 at 12:29 AM
Phishing for Phools. The Political Brain...http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/books/review/Brooks-t.html
"Serious thinkers set to work, and produced a long shelf of books answering this question. Their answers tended to rely on similar themes. First, Democrats lose because they are too intelligent. Their arguments are too complicated for American voters. Second, Democrats lose because they are too tolerant. They refuse to cater to racism and hatred. Finally, Democrats lose because they are not good at the dark art of politics. Republicans, though they are knuckle-dragging simpletons when it comes to policy, are devilishly clever when it comes to electioneering. They have brilliant political consultants like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, who frame issues so fiendishly, they can fool the American people into voting against their own best interests."
And immigration is about economics. This is Sweden an immigration superpower.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/755997/Sweden-Malmo-military-intervention-no-go-zone-crime-surge
"Swedish police last year issued a report where it detailed incidents from more than 55 areas which it branded as "no-go zones" as it detailed brutal attacks on police, sexual assaults, children carrying weapons and general turmoil sweeping across the country."
"A ban was supported by 71 per cent of people in Poland, 65 per cent in Austria, 53 per cent in Germany and 51 per cent in Italy.
In the UK, 47 per cent supported a ban.
In no country did more than 32 per cent disagree with a ban."
Phishing for PhoolsGuano | February 08, 2017 at 12:42 AM"It thereby explains a paradox: why, at a time when we are better off than ever before in history, all too many of us are leading lives of quiet desperation."
http://nfs.sparknotes.com/macbeth/page_162.html
"Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
Uproar the universal peace, confound
All unity on earth."Human Nature has not changed.
The truth is complicated.Tony Holmes | February 08, 2017 at 09:13 AMThe truth is challenging.
Chris, a bit off the point, but if everyone followed your advice and put money in tracker funds and active funds disappeared, what would happen to the stock market ? Instinct tells me it would become extremely volatile, but instinct is a bad guide...gastro george | February 08, 2017 at 09:35 AM
FFS aragon, that "report" from Sweden is from the Express quoting directly a Swedish fascist.reason | February 08, 2017 at 11:29 AM
Isn't the key point here prospect theory (I've just finished reading Kahneman). People with no good options gamble.reason | February 08, 2017 at 11:30 AM
P.S. The no good options bit is a very good reason for opposing first past the post and the limited options consequence.aragon | February 08, 2017 at 11:47 AM
gasto georgeDipper | February 08, 2017 at 12:03 PMIt is not an extreme story, I don't speak Swedish or have any contact with Sweden. I only read the main stream media which includes the Daily Express.
As you would expect most of the media does not report on Sweden, unless it has a British angle.
e.g. Birmingham Boy killed by a hand grenade.
(I don't know how you can spin Hand Grenade)The report originates with the Swedish Police the situation in Malmo is serious and individual police officers like Peter Springare's Facebook post.
Here is a report from the thelocal.se
http://www.thelocal.se/20170127/malmo-police-chief-help-us"After a wave of violence in Sweden's third city, police boss Stefan Sintéus has appealed to residents in Malmö: "Help us. Help us to tackle the problems. Cooperate with us.""
@ gastro georgeGuano | February 08, 2017 at 02:06 PMThis isn't the first time facists have made inflammatory comments about muslims. Nick Griffin did this and was prosecuted for inciting racial hatred in 2006. The summary of what he said is some way down this article.
Eleven years later we have this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-38845332
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with banning "fake news". You have to be really open, transparent and clear and be absolutely sure you are right, otherwise you end up making heroes of facists and stoking the notion that its all a plot to hide the truth from the people. And that is a really bad outcome.
MPs wrestling with their consciences, loud debates, arguments about the truth ... this is the sound of a properly functioning parliamentary democracy and long may that noise continue.
The first two words of the article: Nick Cohen.gastro george | February 08, 2017 at 02:24 PMNick Cohen does make some good points but he himself has a complicated relationship with the truth in some areas. When he isn't talking about congenital liars and congenital believers, he continues to get into a rage about people who opposed the invasion of Iraq. As far as I can see, the invasion of Iraq has been the disaster that some of us feared (because regime change involves putting in place a new regime change, which is very difficult and for which the USA and UK do not have the skills). And, as far as I can see, some of the assumptions made by Nick Cohen in 2002 and 2003 in supporting the invasion (such as the ability of the Iraqi National Congress to create a new regime) were very dubious and their weakness of these assumptions is why the invasion was a failure and has had created an array of other problems.
In his campaign to avoid a post-truth future, Nick Cohen claims that people like him "are on their own" and he explicitly rejects working with the kind of people who opposed the invasion of Iraq. That's a pity, really, because many people appear to have started their opposition to the invasion because the information provided and the logic used appeared to be dodgy. The period from August 2002 to March 2003 prefigured the Trump/Brexit era for post-truth information and arguments. Nick Cohen would be on stronger ground if he admitted that the invasion of Iraq has not necessarily worked to anyone's advantage.
I guess that what is going on in Nick Cohen's mind (and I can only guess) is that he has built up a negative image of the type of person who opposed the invasion of Iraq and he has difficulty getting past that image and come to terms with what those people were saying and what has actually happened in Iraq. Thus in between writing articles about the need for truth, Nick Cohen writes expressions of outrage about opponents of the invasion of Iraq as if they had been found to be wrong.
It seems to be a very extreme example of seeing the messenger and not the message, which is one of the issues with failing to recognise lies.
@aragonBarbara Konstant | February 08, 2017 at 05:36 PMOK, well I've worked most of my life with Swedes and Norwegians, and have regularly visited Malmo three or four times a year recently, although the last was a bit over a year ago.
So, yes, immigration is an issue, and the Sweden Democrats (fascists) have been rising in the polls. Malmo itself has some problems in the suburbs.
But there are no no-go areas. Armed violence has more traditionally been associated with biker-gang turf-related drug wars - otherwise with the far right (see Breivik in Norway) and then, as your last link discusses, lone serial killers.
Reading anything the Sweden Democrats have to say is the equivalent of believing Wilders in the Netherlands - they are loons.
Despairing as it seems, our humanity has not reached the necessary level of awareness needed to function peacefully in our world.
|
|
|
The Washington Post
Plunging crude oil prices are diverting hundreds of billions of dollars away from the treasure chests of oil-exporting nations, putting some of the United States' adversaries under greater stress.
After two years of falling prices, the effects have reverberated across the globe, fueling economic discontent in Venezuela, changing Russia's economic and political calculations, and dampening Iranian leaders' hopes of a financial windfall when sanctions linked to its nuclear program will be lifted next year.
At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States.
"Cheap oil hurts revenues for some of our foes and helps some of our friends. The Europeans, South Koreans and Japanese - they're all winners," said Robert McNally, director for energy in President George W. Bush's National Security Council and now head of the Rapidan Group, a consulting firm. "It's not good for Russia, that's for sure, and it's not good for Iran."
... ... ...
In Iran, cheap oil is forcing the government to ratchet down expectations.
The much-anticipated lifting of sanctions as a result of the deal to limit Iran's nuclear program is expected to result in an additional half-million barrels a day of oil exports by the middle of 2016.
But at current prices, Iran's income from those sales will still fall short of revenue earned from constrained oil exports a year ago.
Moreover, low prices are making it difficult for Iran to persuade international oil companies to develop Iran's long-neglected oil and gas fields, which have been off limits since sanctions were broadened in 2012.
"Should Iran come out of sanctions, they will face a very different market than the one they had left in 2012," Amos Hochstein, the State Department's special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, said in an interview. "They were forced to recede in a world of over $100 oil, and sanctions will be lifted at $36 oil. They will have to work harder to convince companies to come in and take the risk for supporting their energy infrastructure and their energy production."
Meanwhile, in Russia, low oil prices have compounded damage done by U.S. and European sanctions that were designed to target Russia's energy and financial sectors. And when Iran increases output, its grade of crude oil will most likely go to Europe, where it will compete directly with Russia's Urals oil, McNally said.
Steven Mufson covers the White House. Since joining The Post, he has covered economics, China, foreign policy and energy.
|
|
|
Oct 17, 2014 | consortiumnews.com
If you're nervously watching the stock market gyrations and worrying about your declining portfolio or pension fund, part of the blame should go to America's neocons who continue to be masters of chaos, endangering the world's economy by instigating geopolitical confrontations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Of course, there are other factors pushing Europe's economy to the brink of a triple-dip recession and threatening to stop America's fragile recovery, too. But the neocons' "regime change" strategies, which have unleashed violence and confrontations across Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran and most recently Ukraine, have added to the economic uncertainty.
This neocon destabilization of the world economy began with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 under President George W. Bush who squandered some $1 trillion on the bloody folly. But the neocons' strategies have continued through their still-pervasive influence in Official Washington during President Barack Obama's administration.
The neocons and their "liberal interventionist" junior partners have kept the "regime change" pot boiling with the Western-orchestrated overthrow and killing of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the proxy civil war in Syria to oust Bashar al-Assad, the costly economic embargoes against Iran, and the U.S.-backed coup that ousted Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February.
All these targeted governments were first ostracized by the neocons and the major U.S. news organizations, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, which have become what amounts to neocon mouthpieces. Whenever the neocons decide that it's time for another "regime change," the mainstream U.S. media enlists in the propaganda wars.
The consequence of this cascading disorder has been damaging and cumulative. The costs of the Iraq War strapped the U.S. Treasury and left less government maneuvering room when Wall Street crashed in 2008. If Bush still had the surplus that he inherited from President Bill Clinton – rather than a yawning deficit – there might have been enough public money to stimulate a much-faster recovery.
President Obama also wouldn't have been left to cope with the living hell that the U.S. occupation brought to the people of Iraq, violent chaos that gave birth to what was then called "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" and has since rebranded itself "the Islamic State."
But Obama didn't do himself (or the world) any favors when he put much of his foreign policy in the hands of Democratic neocon-lites, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Bush holdovers, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus. At State, Clinton promoted the likes of neocon Victoria Nuland, the wife of arch-neocon Robert Kagan, and Obama brought in "liberal interventionists" like Samantha Power, now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
In recent years, the neocons and "liberal interventionists" have become almost indistinguishable, so much so that Robert Kagan has opted to discard the discredited neocon label and call himself a "liberal interventionist." [See Consortiumnews.com's "Obama's True Foreign Policy 'Weakness.'"]
Manipulating Obama
Obama, in his nearly six years as president, also has shied away from imposing his more "realistic" views about world affairs on the neocon/liberal-interventionist ideologues inside the U.S. pundit class and his own administration. He has been outmaneuvered by clever insiders (as happened in 2009 on the Afghan "surge") or overwhelmed by some Official Washington "group think" (as was the case in Libya, Syria, Iran and Ukraine).
Once all the "smart people" reach some collective decision that a foreign leader "must go," Obama usually joins the chorus and has shown only rare moments of toughness in standing up to misguided conventional wisdoms.
The one notable case was his decision in summer 2013 to resist pressure to destroy Syria's military after a Sarin gas attack outside Damascus sparked a dubious rush to judgment blaming Assad's regime. Since then, more evidence has pointed to a provocation by anti-Assad extremists who may have thought that the incident would draw in the U.S. military on their side. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Was Turkey Behind Syrian Sarin Attack?"]
It's now clear that if Obama had ordered a major bombing campaign against Assad's military in early September 2013, he might have opened the gates of Damascus to a hellish victory by al-Qaeda-affiliated extremists or the even more brutal Islamic State, since these terrorist groups have emerged as the only effective fighters against Assad.
But the neocons and the "liberal interventionists" seemed oblivious to that danger. They had their hearts set on Syrian "regime change," so were furious when their dreams were dashed by Obama's supposed "weakness," i.e. his failure to do what they wanted. They also blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin who brokered a compromise with Assad in which he agreed to surrender all of Syria's chemical weapons while still denying a role in the Sarin attack.
By late September 2013, the disappointed neocons were acting out their anger by taking aim at Putin. They recognized that a particular vulnerability for the Russian president was Ukraine and the possibility that it could be pulled out of Russia's sphere of influence and into the West's orbit.
So, Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, took to the op-ed page of the neocon-flagship Washington Post to sound the trumpet about Ukraine, which he called "the biggest prize."
But Gershman added that Ukraine was really only an interim step to an even bigger prize, the removal of the strong-willed and independent-minded Putin, who, Gershman added, "may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad [i.e. Ukraine] but within Russia itself." In other words, the new neocon hope was for "regime change" in Kiev and Moscow. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Neocons' Ukraine/Syria/Iran Gambit."]
Destabilizing the World
Beyond the recklessness of plotting to destabilize nuclear-armed Russia, the neocon strategy threatened to shake Europe's fragile economic recovery from a painful recession, six years of jobless stress that had strained the cohesion of the European Union and the euro zone.
Across the Continent, populist parties from the Right and Left have been challenging establishment politicians over their inability to reverse the widespread unemployment and the growing poverty. Important to Europe's economy was its relationship with Russia, a major market for agriculture and manufactured goods and a key source of natural gas to keep Europe's industries humming and its houses warm.
The last thing Europe needed was more chaos, but that's what the neocons do best and they were determined to punish Putin for disrupting their plans for Syrian "regime change," an item long near the top of their agenda along with their desire to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," which Israel has cited as an "existential threat."
Putin also had sidetracked that possible war with Iran by helping to forge an interim agreement constraining but not eliminating Iran's nuclear program. So, he became the latest target of neocon demonization, a process in which the New York Times and the Washington Post eagerly took the lead.
To get at Putin, however, the first step was Ukraine where Gershman's NED was funding scores of programs for political activists and media operatives. These efforts fed into mass protests against Ukrainian President Yanukovych for balking at an EU association agreement that included a harsh austerity plan designed by the International Monetary Fund. Yanukovych opted instead for a more generous $15 billion loan deal from Putin.
As the political violence in Kiev escalated – with the uprising's muscle supplied by neo-Nazi militias from western Ukraine – neocons within the Obama administration discussed how to "midwife" a coup against Yanukovych. Central to this planning was Victoria Nuland, who had been promoted to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and was urging on the protesters, even passing out cookies to protesters at Kiev's Maidan square.
According to an intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland didn't think EU officials were being aggressive enough. "Fuck the EU," she said as she brainstormed how "to help glue this thing." She literally handpicked who should be in the post-coup government – "Yats is the guy," a reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who would indeed become prime minister.
When the coup went down on Feb. 22 – spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias who seized government buildings and forced Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives – the U.S. State Department quickly deemed the new regime "legitimate" and the mainstream U.S. media dutifully stepped up the demonization of Yanukovych and Putin.
Although Putin's position had been in support of Ukraine's status quo – i.e., retaining the elected president and the country's constitutional process – the crisis was pitched to the American people as a case of "Russian aggression" with dire comparisons made between Putin and Hitler, especially after ethnic Russians in the east and south resisted the coup regime in Kiev and Crimea seceded to rejoin Russia.
Starting a Trade War
Pressured by the Obama administration, the EU agreed to sanction Russia for its "aggression," touching off a tit-for-tat trade war with Moscow which reduced Europe's sale of farming and manufacturing goods to Russia and threatened to disrupt Russia's natural gas supplies to Europe.
While the most serious consequences were to Ukraine's economy which went into freefall because of the civil war, some of Europe's most endangered economies in the south also were hit hard by the lost trade with Russia. Europe began to stagger toward the third dip in a triple-dip recession with European markets experiencing major stock sell-offs.
The dominoes soon toppled across the Atlantic as major U.S. stock indices dropped, creating anguish among many Americans just when it seemed the hangover from Bush's 2008 market crash was finally wearing off.
Obviously, there are other reasons for the recent stock market declines, including fears about the Islamic State's victories in Syria and Iraq, continued chaos in Libya, and exclusion of Iran from the global economic system – all partly the result of neocon ideology. There have been unrelated troubles, too, such as the Ebola epidemic in western Africa and various weather disasters.
But the world's economy usually can withstand some natural and manmade challenges. The real problem comes when a combination of catastrophes pushes the international financial system to a tipping point. Then, even a single event can dump the world into economic chaos, like what happened when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008.
It's not clear whether the world is at such a tipping point today, but the stock market volatility suggests that we may be on the verge of another worldwide recession. Meanwhile, the neocon masters of chaos seem determined to keep putting their ideological obsessions ahead of the risks to Americans and people everywhere.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
|
|
|
Dec 22, 2015 | Zero Hedge
As if further proof were needed Orwell's dystopia is now upon us, China has now gamified obedience to the State. Though that is every bit as creepily terrifying as it sounds, citizens may still choose whether or not they wish to opt-in - that is, until the program becomes compulsory in 2020. "Going under the innocuous name of 'Sesame Credit,' China has created a score for how good a citizen you are," explains Extra Credits' video about the program. "The owners of China's largest social networks have partnered with the government to create something akin to the U.S. credit score - but, instead of measuring how regularly you pay your bills, it measures how obediently you follow the party line."
Zheping Huang, a reporter for Quartz, chronicled his own experience with the social control tool in October, saying that"in the past few weeks I began to notice a mysterious new trend. Numbers were popping up on my social media feeds as my friends and strangers on Weibo [the Chinese equivalent to Twitter] and WeChat began to share their 'Sesame Credit scores.' The score is created by Ant Financial, an Alibaba-affiliated company that also runs Alipay, China's popular third-party payment app with over 350 million users. Ant Financial claims that it evaluates one's purchasing and spending habits in order to derive a figure that shows how creditworthy someone is."
However, according to a translation of the "Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System," posted online by Oxford University's China expert, Rogier Creemers, it's nightmarishly clear the program is far more than just a credit-tracking method. As he described it,
"The government wants to build a platform that leverages things like big data, mobile internet, and cloud computing to measure and evaluate different levels of people's lives in order to create a gamified nudging for people to behave better."
While Sesame Credit's roll-out in January has been downplayed by many, the American Civil Liberties Union, among others, urges caution, saying:
"The system is run by two companies, Alibaba and Tencent, which run all the social networks in China and therefore have access to a vast amount of data about people's social ties and activities and what they say. In addition to measuring your ability to pay, as in the United States, the scores serve as a measure of political compliance.
Among the things that will hurt a citizen's score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like, such as about the Tiananmen Square massacre that the government carried out to hold on to power, or the Shanghai stock market collapse. It will hurt your score not only if you do these things, but if any of your friends do them."
And, in what appears likely the goal of the entire program, added, "Imagine the social pressure against disobedience or dissent that this will create."
Social pressure, of course, can be highly effective given the right circumstances. China seems to have found exactly that in the intricate linking of people's scores to their contacts, which can be seen publicly by anyone - and then upping the ante through score-based incentives and rewards. Rick Falkvinge pointed out a startling comparison:
"The KGB and the Stasi's method of preventing dissent from taking hold was to plant so-called agents provocateurs in the general population, people who tried to make people agree with dissent, but who actually were arresting them as soon as they agreed with such dissent. As a result, nobody would dare agree that the government did anything bad, and this was very effective in preventing any large-scale resistance from taking hold. The Chinese way here is much more subtle, but probably more effective still."
As Creemers described to Dutch news outlet, de Volkskrant,
"With the help of the latest internet technologies, the government wants to exercise individual surveillance. The Chinese aim […] is clearly an attempt to create a new citizen."
Chinese internet specialist at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Johan Lagerkvist, said the system is
"very ambitious in scope, including scrutinizing individual behavior and what books people read. It's Amazon's consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist."
James Corbett has been tracking the implementation of Sesame Credit for some time. Introducing the ubiquitous tracking system for a recent episode of the Corbett Report, he mused:
"Coming soon to a New World Order near you: social credit! Earn points by behaving like the government wants you to behave! Get penalized if you don't act like a doubleplusgood citizen! What could be more fun?"
Indeed, because mandatory enrollment in Sesame Credit is still a few years away, its true effectiveness won't be measurable for some time. But even a reporter's usual wariness appears knocked off-kilter, as Zheping Huang summarized his personal experience,
"Even if my crappy credit score doesn't mean much now, it's in my best interest I suppose to make sure it doesn't go too low."
And that, of course, is precisely why gamifying State obedience is so terrifying.
Cornfedbloodstool
We just have FICO scores in the US, that measures how obidient you are to the banks, the true rulers of the country.
ToSoft4Truth
And Facebook 'Likes'. Can't get laid without the Likes, man.
CAPT DRAKE
It is already here. There is a thing called an "NSA Score", based on your habits, contacts, and email/posts. Fortunately, porn surfing, even addiction, is not a negative. Only anti state stuff counts, and no, most of the posts on ZH don't count as they are seen as venting and not actionable intel.
knukles
I love Big Brother...
Miffed Microbiologist
"The children and adults, including his own parents, tiptoe nervously around him, constantly telling him how everything he does is "good," since displeasing him can get them wished away into a mystical "cornfield", an unknown place, from which there is no return. At one point, a dog is heard barking angrily. Anthony thinks the dog is "bad" and doesn't "like [him] at all," and wishes it into the cornfield. His father and mother are horrified, but they dare not show it."
Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
Miffed
Old Poor Richard
You beat me to it on FICO score. If you're off the grid, out of the electronic money system or not paying sufficient fealty to banksters, you are NOT being obedient to the state.
NoDebt
I'm as off the grid as you can get and still live a middle class lifestyle with electricity and a cell phone. I assure you they still score me and I'm usually over 800. I don't use credit much these days but what I use says nothing but "pays as agreed".
Now, if you start to factor in the "slightly to the right of the John Burke Society" shit I post on ZH I'd be down around -500.
Uchtdorf
http://qz.com/519737/all-chinese-citizens-now-have-a-score-based-on-how-...
Dated October 9th of this year.
savagegoose
thats it, in the communist version of facebook you can vote on gov post's, ie you can like them.
Government needs you to pay taxes
Cmon its China, where numbers are faked everyday. Ya think this number will be any different? And even if its effective in China, when the US .govbots roll this out, how effective can it be when US .gov employees 'at the wheel'?
The US .gov can fuck ANYTHING up.
roisaber
It will be funny to see who gets a low citizen loyalty oath score for unpredictable reasons, or from hacks, and their increasing radicalization as their honest efforts to try to get themselves back into good standing only makes them register as more anti-social.
techpriest
The other question is, how many services are going to pop up to help you boost your score, just like there are books, guides, and services for your credit score currently?
"Applying for a passport? Buy my book and learn how to boost your patriotism score by 400 points in 6 months! We can even give you a spambot to do the work for you!"
SgtShaftoe
China doesn't have enough enforcers to control the population. They will lose control. That is only a matter of time. They may be able to delay the inevitable for a while but eventually reality will arrive. Keep pushing that volatility into the tail and see what happens. When it goes, it will blow your fucking socks off.
Tick tock motherfuckers, and that goes for the US as well...
tarabel
That is the (evil) genius of this scheme. It is collectively enforced by the proletarians themselves. If you do anti-social things, that will reflect badly on your friends and family so they will excoriate you and, if necessary, shun you until you get with the program. Really, it's just a crowd-sourced Communist Block Warden program gone digital.
I don't worry about the Chinese. They're fooked any which way you slice it. But China invents nothing, merely imitates. So where did they get this idea from, hmmm?
techpriest
At this point, any good developer can write a program that reads Twitter/Facebook/Renren/WeChat feeds, gives the posts to IBM's Watson (or some simpler algorithm), and have the program spit out a score. And this program would take at most a month to make. I know, I write similar stuff ;)
With that in mind, what would you be able to accomplish with a team of 40-50 developers and several months? What scares me is how the initial assumptions that go into querying data can give you radically different results at the end, and these intelligence agencies do not exactly explain what methods they are using to determine who is a 'bad guy.'
cherry picker"I have nothing to hide"
Well, the bozos who coined the above term, have fun. You think keeping up with mortgage, car payments, Obama Care, taxes, raising kids and keeping a spouse happy is stressful, wait til .gov does a 'test' on you.
Me, I'm not worried. I'm a non conformist, live in the boonies and am too old. I tell my children and grandchildren they need to get rid of this 'evil eye' government encroachment.
They think I am crazy now, but I think they may be coming around.
techpriest
I would love to turn that "You shouldn't be afraid if you have nothing to hide" around by pointing out that the Fed shouldn't be afraid of an audit if they have nothing to hide.
Amish Hacker
Patriot Points.
Bopper09
Is this not what assface is? (facebook for people plugged in). I admit I went on it for the simple fact I couldn't find anything better for talking to my Russian fiance. But even a year before she got here, I said fuck it. Tried cancelling, but if you click a link that has something to do with facebook, your profile becomes active again. Fucking criminals. I left a computer for 3 weeks (not that I haven't done that before. TRY IT, no cell phone or computer for ONE WEEK. Take vacation days and see what's important in your life. Seriously, I've never owned a cell phone. Where I work I don't need one. Cell phones do not 'save your life'.
Consuelo
Interesting the references to FB, especially when one considers who's at the head and his position on censorship. Then again, what happened in Mao's China descended from the likes of Trotsky, so it kinda sorta follows...
Gantal
The article has taken some real, some proposed and some imaginary credit tracking programs and smushed them into one 'terrifying', freedom-destroying blob. In other words, it's irresponsible b.s. intended to make the Chinese government look even more diabolical and oppressive than our own.
The underlying cultural truth, though, is that Chinese are willing to cooperate with – and trust – their government much more than we are. They've always respected and looked up to their national leaders and expected those leaders to actually lead – morally and practically. It works for them, as we see.
The underlying lie is that the Chinese government needs to repress its people. It doesn't. Anyone purporting to be China 'experts' like Messrs. Lagerkvist and Creemers, should know that China's government is the most popular, most trusted government on earth.
By why let facts get in the way of a good story?
Fuku Ben
The score is created by Ant Financial
FedFunnyMoney
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer...Chinese style.
rejected
Digital will end up being our worse nightmare and our undoing. It is the "Perfect" tool for the crazed sociopaths around us and the insane psychopaths that want to control our every breath (literally).
Sure, it's cool, you can play games and other useless crap but even a blind man could see how governments are going to be useing it. The social networks are piped right into governments security complex. Wouldn't surprise me if everything we post even here on ZH is stored on some digital crap machine somewhere.
For sure it's on ZH servers and thus available to any Tom, Dick or Harry LEO. I myself am very close to going dark. This stuff isn't laughable anymore. It's getting DEADLY serious.
|
|
|
Zero Hedge
Neil Patrick HarrisI expect the lies....but the level of lies when it comes to "fighting ISIS" is off-the-fucking-charts!...and no one calls him on it!
>The USA/NATO Created ISIS.
>The USA/NATO is using ISIS to oust ASSAD because he's too friendly with Russia/Iran.
>The USA/NATO FUNDS ISIS via Turkey.
Obama: "ISIS is a seriously threat, they are contained and we will destroy ISIS"
Bill Clintons' mouth has got to be gaping; and I'm sure thoroughly impressed that Obama could tell a whopper like that without question...NOT ONE REPUBLICAN at the debate even called Obama on ISIS!
Peter PanYou gotta wonder how much money they promised him when he leaves office.
FireBranderUnfortunately Obama is beyond being a threat. He ( and whoever is pulling on his strings) is an actual attack on America.
FireBrander"Our government has become incompetent, unresponsive, corrupt, and that incompetence, ineptitude, lack of accountability is now dangerous" Carly won the sound bite of the century award with that one!
..and the new budget bill will fully fund ALL OF IT's desires....
I voted for "this turd" because you Rightwingnut Fuckheads gave me the option of McCain the first time and Romney the second time.
You're welcome for my vote saving you from those fuckheads...McCain would have nuked the planet by now and Romney would have handed the country to his VC friends and you'd be living in a "dorm" putting together iPhones.
Romney criticised Obama in one of the debates because "The number of battleships in our fleet is the lowest since the 50's"...battleships? Romney, you stupid fuck, it's 20xx you moron...battleships are pretty irrelevent in today's "theater of war"...Obama held it together and replied, I give the Admirals EVERYTHING THEY ASK FOR...and Romney dropped it.
Great ZH piece on Romney; what a piece of shit:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-17/rip-truman-show-bubble-finance-...
|
|
|
The New Yorker
Still, two interesting-and vexing-issues for the technology industry, and for the politicians who regulate it, emerged in the debate. The first came up in John Kasich's response to Trump's proposal. "Wolf, there is a big problem-it's called encryption," he said. "We need to be able to penetrate these people when they are involved in these plots and these plans. And we have to give the local authorities the ability to penetrate, to disrupt. That's what we need to do. Encryption is a major problem, and Congress has got to deal with this, and so does the President, to keep us safe."
The central question is whether American technology companies should offer the U.S. government, whether the N.S.A. or the F.B.I., backdoor access to their devices or servers. The most important companies here are Apple and Google, which, in the fall of 2014, began offering strong encryption on the newer versions of Android and iOS phones. If you keep your passcode secret, the government will be unable to, for instance, scroll through your contacts list, even if it has a warrant. This has, naturally, made the government angry. The most thorough report on the subject is a position paper put out last month by Cyrus Vance, Jr., Manhattan's district attorney. In the previous year, Vance wrote, his office had been "unable to execute approximately 111 search warrants for smartphones because those devices were running iOS 8. The cases to which those devices related include homicide, attempted murder, sexual abuse of a child, sex trafficking, assault, and robbery."
The solution isn't easy. Apple and Google implemented their new encryption standards after Edward Snowden revealed how the government had compromised their systems. They want to protect their customers-a government back door could become a hacker's back door, too-and they also want to protect their business models. If the N.S.A. can comb through iPhones, how many do you think Apple will be able to sell in China? In the debate, Carly Fiorina bragged about how, when she ran Hewlett-Packard, she stopped a truckload of equipment and had it "escorted into N.S.A. headquarters." Does that make you more or less eager to buy an OfficeJet Pro?
The second hard issue that came up indirectly in the debate-and, more specifically, in recent comments by Hillary Clinton-is how aggressive American companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google (with YouTube) should be in combatting the use of their platforms by ISIS. Again, there's no simple answer. You can't ban, say, everyone who tweets the hashtag #ISIS, because then you'd have to ban this guy. The algorithms are difficult to write, and the issues are difficult to balance. Companies have to consider their business interests, their legal obligations to and cultural affinities for free speech, and their moral obligations to oppose an organization that seeks to destroy the country in which they were built-and also kill their C.E.O.s.
|
|
|
economistsview.typepad.com
anne, December 17, 2015 at 11:50 AMhttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/world/asia/navy-seal-team-2-afghanistan-beating-death.htmlilsm said in reply to anne...December 16, 2015
Navy SEALs, a Beating Death and Complaints of a Cover-Up
By NICHOLAS KULISH, CHRISTOPHER DREW and MATTHEW ROSENBERGU.S. soldiers accused Afghan police and Navy SEALs of abusing detainees. But the SEAL command opted against a court-martial and cleared its men of wrongdoing.
Too much training to send to jail.
While E-4 Bergdahl does in captivity what several hundred officers did in Hanoi and gets life!
US militarism is Alice's Wonderland!
|
|
|
Dec 16, 2015 | The Guardian
Stumphole 16 Dec 2015 17:44Use a VPN and Start Page as a search engine. Nothing is saved from your search.
Fgt 4URIGHTS -> lefthalfback2 16 Dec 2015 19:44
sand44 16 Dec 2015 18:26Only the brain dead idiots who are deceived and under collective Stockholm syndrome are fine with it. Yeah, all the illegal surveillance in the world didn't stop the San Bernadinos attack. Also, let's not forget the treason and terrorism being conducted against innocent Americans (Cointelpro/Gangstalking) and hidden from the American people while their asleep to the crimes happening in secret all around them. Yeah for a fascist, totalitarian police state, isn't it cool?? I feel so safe knowing my criminal government is there to protect me because they love me so much.
Whistleblower: "Every Time There Is a Terrorist Attack, What We Really Need to Do Is Demand that They CUT the Budgets of All the Intelligence Agencies" - William Binney
AvZweeden 16 Dec 2015 14:53"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-Benjamin Franklin 1755How far has the standard of American politicians managed to fall?
Edward Snowden might as well not have blown any whistle, and saved himself a lot of trouble.
Most Americans think America is a democracy, but it is really an oligarchy in disguise. Probably always was. I read this earlier this year:
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/jimmy-carter-u-s-oligarchy-unlimited-political-bribery/
|
|
|
economistsview.typepad.com
anne said...
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countriesanne said in reply to anne...December 13, 2015
In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries
In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.
* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html
-- Dean Baker
"...about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military...."I do not understand this figure since currently defense spending is running at $738.3 billion yearly or which 6% would be $44.3 billion:
anne said in reply to anne...Correcting Dean Baker:December 13, 2015
In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries
In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 7.4 percent ** of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.
* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html
-- Dean Baker
anne said in reply to anne...Dean Baker clarifies:December 13, 2015
In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries
In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.
(I see my comment on military spending here created a bit of confusion. I was looking at the U.S. share of the commitment, 0.25 percent of its GDP and comparing it to the roughly 4.0 percent of GDP it spends on the military. That comes to 6 percent. I was not referring to the whole $100 billion.)
* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html
-- Dean Baker
djb said in reply to anne...100,000,000,000/0.06 = 1.67 trillionanne said in reply to djb...$100 billion a year, ........about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military100,000,000,000/0.06 = 1.67 trillion
[ This is incorrect, military spending is currently $738.3 billion. ]
anne said in reply to djb...http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0January 15, 2015
Defense spending was 60.3% of federal government consumption and investment in July through September 2015.
(Billions of dollars)
$738.3 / $1,224.4 = 60.3%
Defense spending was 23.1% of all government consumption and investment in July through September 2015.
$738.3 / $3,200.4 = 23.1%
Defense spending was 4.1% of Gross Domestic Product in July through September 2015.
$738.3 / $18,064.7 = 4.1%
djb said in reply to djb...oh never mind I get it.25 % is 6 percent of the percent us spends on military
the 40 trillion is the gdp of all the countries
got it
anne said in reply to djb..."I get it:.25 % is 6 percent of the percent US spends on military."
So .25 percent of United States GDP for climate change assistance to poor countries is 6 percent of the amount the US spends on the military.
.0025 x $18,064.7 billion GDP = $45.16 billion on climate change
$45.16 billion on climate change / $738.3 billion on the military = 0.61 or 6.1 percent of military spending
anne said in reply to anne...United States climate change assistance to poor countries will be .25 percent of GDP or 6% of US military spending.anne said in reply to anne...What the United States commitment to climate change assistance for poor countries means is spending about $45.2 billion yearly or .25 percent of GDP. Whether the President can convince Congress to spend the $45 billion yearly will now have to be answered.anne said in reply to djb..."I get it:anne said in reply to djb....25 % is 6 percent of the [amount] US spends on military."
[ This is correct. ]
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countriesDecember 13, 2015
In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries
In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.
(I see my comment on military spending here created a bit of confusion. I was looking at the U.S. share of the commitment, 0.25 percent of its GDP and comparing it to the roughly 4.0 percent of GDP it spends on the military. ** That comes to 6 percent. I was not referring to the whole $100 billion.)
* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html
-- Dean Baker
anne said in reply to djb...http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2007&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0January 15, 2015
Defense spending was 4.1% of Gross Domestic Product in July through September 2015.
$738.3 / $18,064.7 = 4.1%
ilsm said in reply to anne...UK is the only NATO nation beside the US that spend the suggested 2% of GDP. The rest run about 1.2%.Small wonder they need US to run their wars of convenience.
More telling US pentagon spending is around 50% of world military spending and has not won anything in 60 years.
|
|
|
Peak Prosperity
Mememonkey pointed my to a 2013 essay by Laurent Guyenot, a French historian and writer on the deep state, that addresses the question of "Who Are The Neoconservatives." If you would like to know about that group that sends the US military into battle and tortures prisoners of war in out name, you need to know about these guys.
First, if you are Jewish, or are a GREEN Meme, please stop and take a deep breath. Please put on your thinking cap and don't react. We are NOT disrespecting a religion, spiritual practice or a culture. We are talking about a radical and very destructive group hidden within a culture and using that culture. Christianity has similar groups and movements--the Crusades, the KKK, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, etc.
My personal investment: This question has been a subject of intense interest for me since I became convinced that 9/11 was an inside job, that the Iraq war was waged for reasons entirely different from those publically stated. I have been horrified to see such a shadowy, powerful group operating from a profoundly "pre-moral" developmental level-i.e., not based in even the most rudimentary principles of morality foundational to civilization.
Who the hell are these people?!
Goyenot's main points (with a touch of personal editorializing):
1. The American Neocons are Zionists (Their goal is expanding political / military power. Initially this is focused on the state of Israel.)
Neoconservativism is essentially a modern right wing Jewish version of Machiavelli's political strategy. What characterizes the neoconservative movement is therefore not as much Judaism as a religious tradition, but rather Judiasm as a political project, i.e. Zionism, by Machiavellian means.
This is not a religious movement though it may use religions words and vocabulary. It is a political and military movement. They are not concerned with being close to God. This is a movement to expand political and military power. Some are Christian and Mormon, culturally.
Obviously , if Zionism is synonymous with patriotism in Israel, it cannot be an acceptable label in American politics, where it would mean loyalty to a foreign power. This is why the neoconservatives do not represent themselves as Zionists on the American scene. Yet they do not hide it all together either.
He points out dual-citizen (Israel / USA) members and self proclaimed Zionists throughout cabinet level positions in the US government, international banking and controlling the US military. In private writings and occasionally in public, Neocons admit that America's war policies are actually Israel's war goals. (Examples provided.)
2. Most American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and do NOT share the perspective of the radical Zionists.
The neoconservative movement, which is generally perceived as a radical (rather than "conservative") Republican right, is, in reality, an intellectual movement born in the late 1960s in the pages of the monthly magazine Commentary, a media arm of the American Jewish Committee, which had replaced the Contemporary Jewish Record in 1945. The Forward, the oldest American Jewish weekly, wrote in a January 6th, 2006 article signed Gal Beckerman: "If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying. And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren".
3. Intellectual Basis and Moral developmental level
Goyenot traces the Neocon's origins through its influential writers and thinkers. Highest on the list is Leo Strauss. (Neocons are sometimes called "the Straussians.") Leo Strauss is a great admirer of Machiavelli with his utter contempt for restraining moral principles making him "uniquely effective," and, "the ideal patriot." He gushes over Machiavelli praising the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech.
Other major points:
- believes that Truth is harmful to the common man and the social order and should be reserved for superior minds.
- nations derive their strength from their myths, which are necessary for government and governance.
- national myths have no necessary relationship with historical reality: they are socio-cultural constructions that the State has a duty to disseminate.
- to be effective, any national myth must be based on a clear distinction between good and evil; it derives its cohesive strength from the hatred of an enemy nation.
- As recognized by Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt in an article "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence" (1999), for Strauss, "deception is the norm in political life" – the rule they [the Neocons] applied to fabricating the lie of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein when working inside the Office of Special Plans.
- George Bushes speech from the national cathedral after 9/11 exemplifies myth-making at its finest: "Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of Evil. War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. . . .[W]e ask almighty God to watch over our nation, and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. . . . And may He always guide our country. God bless America.
4. The Zionist/Neocons are piggy-backing onto, or utilizing, the religious myths of both the Jewish and Christian world to consolidate power. This is brilliant Machiavellian strategy.
- the "chosen people" myth (God likes us best, we are better than you)
- the Holy Land myth (one area of real estate is more holy than another)
- the second coming of Christ myth
- the establishment of God's Kingdom on Earth through global destruction/war (nuclear war for the Glory of God)
[The]Pax Judaica will come only when "all the nations shall flow" to the Jerusalem temple, from where "shall go forth the law" (Isaiah 2:1-3). This vision of a new world order with Jerusalem at its center resonates within the Likudnik and neoconservative circles. At the Jerusalem Summit, held from October 12th to 14th, 2003 in the symbolically significant King David Hotel, an alliance was forged between Zionist Jews and Evangelical Christians around a "theopolitical" project, one that would consider Israel… "the key to the harmony of civilizations", replacing the United Nations that's become a "a tribalized confederation hijacked by Third World dictatorships": "Jerusalem's spiritual and historical importance endows it with a special authority to become a center of world's unity. [...] We believe that one of the objectives of Israel's divinely-inspired rebirth is to make it the center of the new unity of the nations, which will lead to an era of peace and prosperity, foretold by the Prophets". Three acting Israeli ministers spoke at the summit, including Benjamin Netanyahu, and Richard Perle.
Jerusalem's dream empire is expected to come through the nightmare of world war. The prophet Zechariah, often cited on Zionist forums, predicted that the Lord will fight "all nations" allied against Israel. In a single day, the whole earth will become a desert, with the exception of Jerusalem, who "shall remain aloft upon its site" (14:10).
With more than 50 millions members, Christians United for Israel is a major political force in the U.S.. Its Chairman, pastor John Haggee, declared: "The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West, [...] a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ".
And Guyenot concludes:
Is it possible that this biblical dream, mixed with the neo-Machiavellianism of Leo Strauss and the militarism of Likud, is what is quietly animating an exceptionally determined and organized ultra-Zionist clan? General Wesley Clark testified on numerous occasions before the cameras, that one month after September 11th, 2001 a general from the Pentagon showed him a memo from neoconservative strategists "that describes how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan and finishing off with Iran".
Is it just a coincidence that the "seven nations" doomed to be destroyed by Israel form part of the biblical myths? …[W]hen Yahweh will deliver Israel "seven nations greater and mightier than yourself […] you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them."
My summary:
- We have a group that wishes greatly expanded power (to rule the world??)
- Among them are brilliant strategists
- They operate unrestrained by the most basic moral principles upon which civilization is founded. They are undisturbed by compassion for the suffering of others.
- They use consciously and skillfully use deception and "myth-making" to shape policy
- This is not a spiritual movement in any sense
- They are utilizing religious myths and language to influence public thinking
- They envision "winning" in the aftermath world war.
- They have infiltrated the highest levels of banking, US military, NATO and US government.
|
|
|
May 26, 2015 | ITworld
Are Windows and OS X malware?Richard Stallman has never been...er...shy about sharing his opinions, particularly when it comes to software that doesn't adhere to his vision. This time around he has written an opinion column for The Guardian that takes on Microsoft Windows, Apple's OS X and even Amazon's Kindle e-reader.
Richard Stallman on malware for The Guardian:
As you might imagine, Stallman's commentary drew a lot of responses from readers of The Guardian:Malware is the name for a program designed to mistreat its users. Viruses typically are malicious, but software products and software preinstalled in products can also be malicious – and often are, when not free/libre.
Developers today shamelessly mistreat users; when caught, they claim that fine print in EULAs (end user licence agreements) makes it ethical. (That might, at most, make it lawful, which is different.) So many cases of proprietary malware have been reported, that we must consider any proprietary program suspect and dangerous. In the 21st century, proprietary software is computing for suckers.
Windows snoops on users, shackles users and, on mobiles, censors apps; it also has a universal back door that allows Microsoft to remotely impose software changes. Microsoft sabotages Windows users by showing security holes to the NSA before fixing them.
Apple systems are malware too: MacOS snoops and shackles; iOS snoops, shackles, censors apps and has a back door. Even Android contains malware in a nonfree component: a back door for remote forcible installation or deinstallation of any app.
Amazon's Kindle e-reader reports what page of what book is being read, plus all notes and underlining the user enters; it shackles the user against sharing or even freely giving away or lending the book, and has an Orwellian back door for erasing books.
JohnnyHooper: "The Android operating system is basically spyware, mining your personal information, contacts, whereabouts, search activity, media preferences, photos, email, texts, chat, shopping, calls, etc so Google can onsell it to advertisers. Nice one, Google, you creep."
Ece301: "What the free software movement needs is more than just the scare stories about 'capability' - without reliable examples of this stuff causing real-world problems for real people such detail-free articles as this are going to affect nothing.
I'm quite willing to make the sacrifice of google, apple, the NSA etc. knowing exactly where I am if it means my phone can give me directions to my hotel in this strange city. Likewise if I want the capability to erase my phone should I lose it, I understand that that means apple etc. can probably get at that function too.
Limiting_Factor: "Or for people who don't want to mess about with command lines and like to have commercially supported software that works. Which is about 99% of the home computer using population. You lost, Richard. Get over it."
CosmicTrigger: "Selling customers the illusion of security and then leaving a great gaping hole in it for the government to snoop in return for a bit of a tax break is absolutely reprehensible."
Liam01: "This guy is as extreme as the director of the NSA , just at the other end of the spectrum. I'd be more inclined to listen if he showed a hint of nuance, or didn't open with an egoistic claim of "invented free software"."
AlanWatson: "My Kindle doesn't report anything, because I never turn the WiFi on. Just sideload content from wherever I want to buy it (or download if there is no copyright), format conversion is trivial, and for the minor inconvenience of having to use a USB cable I'm free of Amazon's lock-in, snooping and remote wipes. Simple."
Rod: "Here's my crazy prediction: Stallman's diatribes will continue to have zero measurable impact on adoption rates of Free software. Time to try a different approach, Richey."
Quicknstraight: "Not all snooping is bad for you. If it enhances your experience, say, by providing you with a better playlist or recommendations for things you like doing, what's the big deal?
Consumers don't have it every which way. You either accept a degree of data collection in return for a more enjoyable user experience, or accept that no data collection means you'll have to search out everything for yourself.
The average user prefers the easier option and has no interest in having to dig away through loads of crap to find what they want.
They key question should be what happens to data that is mined about users, not whether mining such data is bad per se."
Bob Rich: "As an author, I LIKE the idea that if a person buys a copy of my book, that copy cannot be freely distributed to others. With a paper book, that means that the original owner no longer has access to it. With an electronic book, "giving" or "lending" means duplicating, and that's stealing my work. The same is true for other creators: musicians, artists, photographers."
Mouse: "Stallman's a hero and we wouldn't have the level of (low-cost) technology all we enjoy today without him. I remember reading an article by him years ago and he said that the only laptop he'd use was the Lemote Yeeloong because it was the only system that was 100% open, even down to the BIOS - he was specifically paranoid about how government agencies might modify proprietary code for their own ends - and at the time I thought "Jeez, he's a bit of a paranoid fruitcake", but post-Snowden he's been proven to be right about what the security services get up."
|
|
|
hoocoodanode.org
Here's a link to Horowitz's article "Left-wing Fascism":
http://www.google.com/books?id=Au_Ktn22RxEC&pg=PA209&dq=%22left-wing+fascism%22Here's a link to Bale's article on "'Left-wing' Fascism":
http://www.google.com/books?id=kne26UnE1wQC&pg=PA267&dq=%22left-wing+fascism%22+bale
Here's an article about the phenomenon called "Rebranding Fascism" (although the term "left-wing fascism is not used):
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v23n4/rebranding_fascism.html
The basic concept is that neo-fascist groups (who are extreme right-wing) disguise themselves as leftists, e.g., they say they are anti-zionist when they are anti-semitic.Here's a link to Richard Wolin's chapter on "Left Fascism":
http://www.google.com/books?id=4H4BeyiYBuEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Seduction+of+Unreason:+The+Intellectual+Romance+with+Fascism+:+from+Nietzsche+to+Postmodernism#PPA153,M1
Talk:Left-wing fascism
I'm a first-time contributor to Wiki and felt it important to greatly revise this article, because, in its previous incarnation, it reduced the term "left-wing fascism" to an epithet. In fact the term is widely used in a literature, some from the left and some from the right, that is critical of absolutist a tendencies in some movements that identify themselves with the Left. The term is properly an epithet only if it lumps large segments of the left together as "fascist." OTherwise, it's a use...
[Dec 06, 2015] CIA personnel and assets had the strongest motives to murder Kennedy
www.nakedcapitalism.com
VatchroadriderJKF? I didn't know that the historian John King Fairbank was assassinated.
skkThen I guess you have solid evidence to account for the actions of Allen Dulles, David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey, David Morales, E. Howard Hunt, Richard Helms, James Angleton and other CIA personnel and assets who had
1) perhaps the strongest motives to murder Kennedy
2) the means to carry out the crime, namely, their executive action (assassination) capability and blackmail the government into aiding their cover up and
3) the opportunity to carry out such a plan given their complete lack of accountability to the rest of the government and their unmatched expertise in lying, deceit, secrecy, fraud.
Because if you actually took the time to research or at least read about their actions in this matter instead of just spouting bald assertions that you decline to back up with any facts you would find their behavior nearly impossible to explain other than having at, the very least, guilty knowledge of the crime.
skkRuby claimed he was injected with cancer in jail, which ultimately rendered his second trial (after winning appeal overturning his death sentence) moot. It sounded crazy, but so did the motive proffered at his first trial-- that he wanted to save Mrs. Kennedy the anguish...
that is such an amazing story.. i've yet to watch the video of Lyndon Johnson's swearing in - where Marr states he's seen to be winking and smiling etc -
Jim Marrs - Kennedy Assassination Lecturethose who wish - Pick it up at around 12 minutes. actually in that lecture he may well be showing videos of it - I wdn't know cos just listen to the audio.
JFK is the one 'safe' conspiracy to talk about without getting the extreme whacko label.
fascinating "lectures" - British Humanist Society and all - still you gotta listen to everything especially the other side:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/V6s_Jw3RU9g?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&list=PL44BEE83ED9D841A8Make a note of the names - rising stars in the I'm "left" but I'm not a conspiracist gaggle - ist a standard gaggle - Chomsky, Monbiot are in it ( to win it of course - their fabled "socialist" kingdom" ) - yeah yeah its BritLand so yeah why I care I suppose.
[Dec 06, 2015] The USA is number one small arms manufacturer in the world
peakoilbarrel.com
Glenn Stehle, 12/05/2015 at 2:54 pmVes,There was an article in one of the Mexico City dailies today, written in response to the shootings in San Bernardino, that cited some numbers that were news to me:
1) The United States is the #1 small arms manufacturer in the world
2) 83% of small arms manufactured in the world are manufactured in the United States
3) The US's closest competitor is Russia, which manufactures 11% of the world's small arms
4) Small arms are the US's third largest export product, surpassed only by aircraft and agricultural products
5) The US market itself consumes 15 million small arms per year, and there are 300 million small arms currently in the posession of US private citizens
6) Saudi Arabia, however, is by far and away the largest small arms consumer in the world, and purchases 33.1% of all small arms produced in the world
7) Saudi Arabia then re-distributes these small arms to its allies in Syria, Lybia, etc.
8) So far in 2015, there have been 351 "mass shootings" in the United States in which 447 persons have been killed and another 290 wounded
9) The world's leading human rights organizations never speak of the bloodbath ocurring around the world due to the proliferation of small arms, much less the United Nations Security Council.
10) Both the United States and Russia seem quite content to keep any talk of small arms proliferation off the agenda.
[Dec 04, 2015] The Neoconservative Movement is Trotskyism
"... Kristol argues in his book The Neoconservative Persuasion that those Jewish intellectuals did not forsake their heritage (revolutionary ideology) when they gave up Communism and other revolutionary movements, but had to make some changes in their thinking. America is filled with such former Trotskyists who unleashed an unprecedented foreign policy that led to the collapse of the American economy. ..."
"... Noted Australian economist John Quiggin declares in his recent work Zombie Economics that "Ideas are long lived, often outliving their originators and taking new and different forms. Some ideas live on because they are useful. Others die and are forgotten. But even when they have proved themselves wrong and dangerous, ideas are very hard to kill. Even after the evidence seems to have killed them, they keep on coming back. ..."
"... These ideas are neither alive nor dead; rather…they are undead, or zombie, ideas." Bolshevism or Trotskyism is one of those zombie ideas that keeps coming back in different forms. It has ideologically reincarnated in the political disputations of the neoconservative movement. ..."
"... As soon as the Israel Lobby came along, as soon as the neoconservative movement began to shape U.S. foreign policy, as soon as Israel began to dictate to the U.S. what ought to be done in the Middle East, America was universally hated by the Muslim world. ..."
"... In that sense, the neoconservative movement as a political and intellectual movement represents a fifth column in the United States in that it subtly and deceptively seeks to undermine what the Founding Fathers have stood for and replace it with what the Founding Fathers would have considered horrible foreign policies-policies which have contributed to the demise of the respect America once had. ..."
"... For example, when two top AIPAC officials-Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman-were caught passing classified documents from the Pentagon to Israel, Gabriel Schoenfeld defended them. ..."
"... Israel has been spying on the United States for years using various Israeli or Jewish individuals, including key Jewish neoconservative figures such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, who were under investigation for passing classified documents to Israel. ..."
January 22, 2013 | Veterans Today
Kristol argues in his book The Neoconservative Persuasion that those Jewish intellectuals did not forsake their heritage (revolutionary ideology) when they gave up Communism and other revolutionary movements, but had to make some changes in their thinking. America is filled with such former Trotskyists who unleashed an unprecedented foreign policy that led to the collapse of the American economy.
We have to keep in mind that America and much of the Western world were scared to death of Bolshevism and Trotskyism in the 1920s and early 30s because of its subversive activity.
Noted Australian economist John Quiggin declares in his recent work Zombie Economics that "Ideas are long lived, often outliving their originators and taking new and different forms. Some ideas live on because they are useful. Others die and are forgotten. But even when they have proved themselves wrong and dangerous, ideas are very hard to kill. Even after the evidence seems to have killed them, they keep on coming back.
These ideas are neither alive nor dead; rather…they are undead, or zombie, ideas." Bolshevism or Trotskyism is one of those zombie ideas that keeps coming back in different forms. It has ideologically reincarnated in the political disputations of the neoconservative movement.
... ... ...
As it turns out, neoconservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute are largely extensions of Trotskyism with respect to foreign policy. Other think tanks such as the Bradley Foundation were overtaken by the neoconservative machine back in 1984.
Some of those double agents have been known to have worked with Likud-supporting Jewish groups such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, an organization which has been known to have "co-opted" several "non-Jewish defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired general Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq."
Philo-Semitic scholars Stephen Halper of Cambridge University and Jonathan Clarke of the CATO Institute agree that the neoconservative agendas "have taken American international relations on an unfortunate detour," which is another way of saying that this revolutionary movement is not what the Founding Fathers signed up for, who all maintained that the United States would serve the American people best by not entangling herself in alliances with foreign entities.
As soon as the Israel Lobby came along, as soon as the neoconservative movement began to shape U.S. foreign policy, as soon as Israel began to dictate to the U.S. what ought to be done in the Middle East, America was universally hated by the Muslim world.
Moreover, former secretary of defense Robert Gates made it clear to the United States that the Israelis do not and should not have a monopoly on the American interests in the Middle East. For that, he was chastised by neoconservative Elliott Abrams.
In that sense, the neoconservative movement as a political and intellectual movement represents a fifth column in the United States in that it subtly and deceptively seeks to undermine what the Founding Fathers have stood for and replace it with what the Founding Fathers would have considered horrible foreign policies-policies which have contributed to the demise of the respect America once had.
... ... ...
Israel has been spying on the United States for years using various Israeli or Jewish individuals, including key Jewish neoconservative figures such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, who were under investigation for passing classified documents to Israel.
The FBI has numerous documents tracing Israel's espionage in the U.S., but no one has come forward and declared it explicitly in the media because most political pundits value mammon over truth.
For example, when two top AIPAC officials-Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman-were caught passing classified documents from the Pentagon to Israel, Gabriel Schoenfeld defended them.
In the annual FBI report called "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage," Israel is a major country that pops up quite often. This is widely known among CIA and FBI agents and U.S. officials for years.
One former U.S. intelligence official declared, "There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities directed against the United States. Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United States.
They undertake a wide range of technical operations and human operations. People here as liaisons… aggressively pursue classified intelligence from people. The denials are laughable."
[Dec 03, 2015] On That Video Where Some Egyptians Allegedly Say Obama Is Insane And On Drugs And Should Be Removed From Office
EconoSpeak
An old and close, but very conservative and increasingly out of touch with reality friend of mine posted a video some days ago on Facebook. He indicated that he thought it was both funny and also insightful. It seemed highly suspicious to me, so I googled it and found that the person who uploaded it onto you tube stated in the comments on it that it is a spoof. Here is a link that discusses why it is known it is a spoof as well as linking to the video itself and its comments. It has reportedly been widely distributed on the internet by many conservatives who think it is for real, and when I pointed out it is a spoof, my friend defriended me from Facebook. I am frustrated.
So, for those who do not view it, it purports to show a talk show in Egypt where a brief clip of Obama speaking last May to graduating military officers about how climate change is and will be a serious national security issue, something the Pentagon has claimed. He did not say it was the most serious such issue, and at least in the clip he said nothing about Daesh/ISIS/ISIL, although of course he has said a lot about it and not only has US drones attacking it but reportedly we have "boots on the ground" now against them in the form of some Special Ops.
So, the video then goes back to the supposed talk show where they are speaking in Arabic with English subtitles. According to these subtitels, which are partly accurate translations but also wildly inaccurate in many places (my Arabic is good enough that I have parsed out what is what there) the host asks, "Is he insane?" A guest suggests he is on drugs. Another claims he just does what Michelle says and that his biceps are small. Finally a supposed retired general pounds the table and denounces him over Libya policy (that part is for real, although his name is never mentioned) and suggests that Americans should act to remove him from office. Again, conservative commentators have found hilarious and very insightful, with this even holding among commenters to the video aware that it is a mistranslated spoof. Bring these guys on more. Obviously they would be big hits on Fox News.
So, I would like to simply comment further on why Egyptians would be especially upset about Libya, but that them being so against the US is somewhat hypocritical (I also note that there is reason to believe that the supposed general is not a general). Of course Libya is just to the west of Egypt with its eastern portion (Cyrenaica under Rome) often ruled by whomever was ruling Egypt at various times in the past. So there is a strong cultural-historical connection. It is understandable that they would take Libyan matters seriously, and indeed things in Libya have turned into a big mess.
However, the move to bring in outside powers to intervene against Qaddafi in 2011 was instigated by an Egyptian, Abu Moussa. This was right after Mubarak had fallen in the face of massive demonstrations in Egypt. Moussa was both leader of the Arab League and wanting to run for President of Egypt. He got nowhere with the latter, but he did get somewhere with getting
the rest of the world to intervene in Libya. He got the Arab League to support such an intervention, with that move going to the UN Security Council and convincing Russia and China to abstain on the anti-Qaddafi measure. Putin has since complained that those who intervened, UK and France most vigorously with US "leading from behind" on the effort.went beyond the UN mandate. But in any case, Qaddafi was overthrown, not to be replaced by any stable or central power, with Libya an ongoing mess that has remained fragmented since, especially between its historically separate eastern and western parts, something I have posted on here previously.So, that went badly, but Egyptians blaming the US for this seems to me to be a bit much, pretty hypocritical. It happens to be a fact that the US and Obama are now very unpopular in Egypt. I looked at a poll from a few months ago, and the only nations where the US and Obama were viewed less favorably (although a few not polled such as North Korea) were in order: Russia, Palestinian Territories, Belarus, Lebanon, Iran, and Pakistan, with me suspecting there is now a more favorable view in Iran since the culmination of the nuclear deal. I can appreciate that many Egyptians are frustrated that the US supported an election process that did not give them Moussa or El-Baradei, but the Muslim Brotherhood, who proceeded to behave badly, leading to them being overthrown by an new military dictatorship with a democratic veneer, basically a new improved version of the Mubarak regime, with the US supporting it, if somewhat reluctantly.
Yes, this is all pretty depressing, but I must say that ultimately the Egyptians are responsible for what has gone down in their own nation. And even if those Egyptian commentators, whoever they actually are, are as angry about Obama as they are depicted as being, the fact is that Obama is still more popular there than was George W. Bush at the same time in his presidency, something all these US conservatives so enamored of this bizarre video seem to conveniently forget.
Addenda, 5:10 PM:
1) The people on that video come across almost like The Three Stooges, which highlights the comedic aspect that even fans of Obama are supposed to appreciate, although it does not add to the credibility of the remarks of those so carrying on like a bunch of clowns.
2) Another reason Egyptians may be especially upset about the situation in Libya is that indeed Daesh has a foothold in a port city not too far from the Egyptian border in Surt, as reported as the top story today in the NY Times.
3) Arguably once the rest of the world got in, the big problem was a failure to follow through with aiding establishing a central unified government, although that was always going to be a problem, something not recognized by all too many involved, including Abu Moussa. As it was once his proposal got going, it was then Sec. of State Hillary Clinton who was the main person leading the charge for the US to get in over the reluctance of Obama. This was probably her biggest mistake in all this, even though most Republicans think the irrelevant sideshow of the unfortunate incident in Benghazi is the big deal.
4) Needless to say, Republican views at the time of the intervention were just completely incoherent, as symbolized at one point by Senator Lindsey Graham, who within the space of a single sentence simultaneously argued for the US to do nothing and also to go in full force with the proverbial "boots on the ground."
Further Addendum, 7:10 PM:
One of the pieces of evidence given that supposedly shows that the video is a spoof is that the supposed retired Brigadier General Mahmoud Mansour cannot be found if one googles his name, except in connection with this video. There are some other Egyptians named Mansour who show up, but this guy does not. However, it occurs to me that he might be for real, but simply obscure. After all, Brigadier is the lowest rank of General, one star, with Majors being two star, Lieutenants being three star (even though Majors are above Lieutenants), and with four and five star not having any other rank assigned to them. Furthermore, Egypt has a large military that has run the country for decades, so there may well be a lot of these Brigadier Generals, with many of them amounting to nothing. So, if he is for real, his claim to fame will be from jumping up and down, pounding on a table and calling for the overthrow of the POTUS.
Barkley Rosser
[Dec 01, 2015] US Intervention Before And After
Zero Hedge
WhackoWarnerKirk2NCC1701Before death in Libya....Ghadaffi's crime was in "not playing along and selling out". Kinda like Iraq and all. They all should just hand over everything and say thanks...but they did not . There is disinfo on both sides, But the "madman" and people who actually live there never seem to make the NYTimes.
"For 40 years, or was it longer, I can't remember, I did all I could to give people houses, hospitals, schools, and when they were hungry, I gave them food. I even made Benghazi into farmland from the desert, I stood up to attacks from that cowboy Reagan, when he killed my adopted orphaned daughter, he was trying to kill me, instead he killed that poor innocent child. Then I helped my brothers and sisters from Africa with money for the African Union.
I did all I could to help people understand the concept of real democracy, where people's committees ran our country. But that was never enough, as some told me, even people who had 10 room homes, new suits and furniture, were never satisfied, as selfish as they were they wanted more. They told Americans and other visitors, that they needed "democracy" and "freedom" never realizing it was a cut throat system, where the biggest dog eats the rest, but they were enchanted with those words, never realizing that in America, there was no free medicine, no free hospitals, no free housing, no free education and no free food, except when people had to beg or go to long lines to get soup.
No, no matter what I did, it was never enough for some, but for others, they knew I was the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only true Arab and Muslim leader we've had since Salah-al-Deen, when he claimed the Suez Canal for his people, as I claimed Libya, for my people, it was his footsteps I tried to follow, to keep my people free from colonial domination - from thieves who would steal from us.
Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer. So, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following His path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us, in the Libyan Jamahiriya.
I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it.
Let this testament be my voice to the world, that I stood up to crusader attacks of NATO, stood up to cruelty, stood up to betrayal, stood up to the West and its colonialist ambitions, and that I stood with my African brothers, my true Arab and Muslim brothers, as a beacon of light. When others were building castles, I lived in a modest house, and in a tent. I never forgot my youth in Sirte, I did not spend our national treasury foolishly, and like Salah-al-Deen, our great Muslim leader, who rescued Jerusalem for Islam, I took little for myself...
In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy", but they know the truth yet continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip, that my vision, my path, is, and has been clear and for my people and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free, may Allah almighty help us to remain faithful and free.
"they hate us for our freedoms"Max CynicalNo, "They hate us for our freebombs" that we keep delivering.
Suppose you lived in a town that was run by a ruthless Mafioso boss. Sure he was ruthless to troublemakers and dissenters, but if you went about your business (and paid your taxes/respects to him), life was simple but livable, and crime was negligible.
Now imagine that a crime Overlord came from another country and decided to wreck the town, just to remove your Mafioso Don. In the process, your neighborhood and house were destroyed, and you lost friends and family.
Now tell me that YOU would not make it YOUR life's mission to bring these War Criminals to justice -- by any and all means necessary. And tell me that these same Criminals could not have foreseen all this. Now say it again - but with a straight face. I dare you. I fucking double-dare you!
US exceptionalism!GhostOfDiogenesThe worst one, besides Iraq, is Libya.GhostOfDiogenesThe infrastructure we destroyed there is unimaginable.
Sure Iraq was hit the worst, and much has been lost there....but Libya was a modern arab oasis of a country in the middle of nothing.
We destroyed in a few days what took decades to build.
This is why I am not proud of my country, nor my military.
In fact, I would like to see Nuremberg type trials for 'merican military leaders and concentration gulags for the rest of enlisted. Just like they did to Germany.
Its only proper.
The USA did this murder of Libya and giving ownership to the people who did '911'? What a joke. http://youtu.be/aJURNC0e6EkBastiatLibya under Ghadaffi: universal free college education, free healthcare, free electricity. interest free loans. A very bad example of how a nation's wealth is to be distributed!CHowardThe average American has NO idea how much damage is being done in this world - all in the name of Democracy. Unbelivable and truly pathetic. Yet - most sheeple still believe ISIS and others hate us because of our "freedoms" and i-pods. What bullshit.BioscaleCzech public tv published a long interview in English with Asad, it was filmed in Damascus some days ago.Very unusual thing, actually. Terrorism being transported by US, Turkey and France to Syria is being openly debated. http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ct24/svet/1628712-asad-pro-ct-rebelove-jsou-...Overfed
Compare and contrast Assad, giving an interview very well in a second language, with O'bomb-a, who can't even speak to school children without a teleprompter. Sad.
Razor_Edge
Along with President Putin, Dr al Assad is consistently the most sane, rational and clearly honest speaker on the tragedy of Syria. By contrast, our satanic western leaders simply lie outrageously at all times. How do we know? Their lips are moving. They also say the most absurd things.
We in the west may think that at the end of the day, it's not going to harm us, so why discomfort ourselves by taking on our own elites and bringing them down. But I believe that an horrific future awaits us, one we richly deserve, because we did not shout stop at this ocean of evil bloodshed being spilt in our names. We pay the taxes that pay for it, or at least in my countrys case, (traditional policy of military neutrality), we facilitate the slaughter (troop transports through Shannon airport), or fail to speak out for fear it may impact FDI into Ireland, (largest recipient of US FDI in the world).
We are our brothers keepers, and we are all one. It is those who seek to separate us to facilitate their evil and psychopathic lust for power and money, who would have us beieve that "the other" is evil. Are we really so simple minded or riven by fear that we cannot see through the curtain of the real Axis of Evil?
Demdere
Israeli-neocon strategy is to have the world's economy collapse at the point of maximum war and political chaos.
Then they can escape to Paraguay. Sure as hell, if they stay here, we are going to hang them all. Treasonous criminals for the 9/11 false flag operation.
By 2015, every military and intelligence service and all the think tanks have looked at 9/11 carefully. Anyone who looks at the evidence sees that it was a false flag operation, the buildings were destroyed via explosives, the planes and evil Arab Muslims were show. Those agencies reported to their civilian leaders, and their civilian leaders spread the information through their societies.
So all of the politically aware people in the world, including here at home, KNOW that 9/11 was a false flag operation, or know that they must not look at the evidence. Currently, anyone who disagrees in MSM is treated as invisible, and I know of no prominent bloggers who have even done the bits of extention of 'what it must mean' that I have done.
- https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/166/
- https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/measures-of-propagandas-ef...
- https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/oil-is-the-excuse/
But it certainly means high levels of distrust for the US and for Israel. It seems to me that World Domination is not possible, because the world won't let you, and the means of opposition are only limited by the imaginations of the most creative, intelligent and knowledgable people. We don't have any of those on our side any more.
L Bean
In their farcical quest to emulate the Roman empire...
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant - Tacitus
They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.
[Nov 23, 2015] Tell me how Trump doesn't win the Republican nomination
Notable quotes:
"... By far the most important thing GOP voters are looking for in a candidate is someone to "bring needed change to Washington." ..."
"... He's very strong in several of the early states right now including NH, NV and SC. And he could do very well on "Super Tuesday" with all those southern states voting. I can't see anyone but Trump or Carson winning in Georgia right now, for example, most likely Trump. ..."
"... And as for the idea of the GOP establishment ganging up on him and/or uniting behind another candidate like Rubio, that's at least as likely to backfire as to work. And even if it works, what's to stop Trump from then running as an independent? ..."
"... Indeed. You have a party whose domestic policy agenda consists of shouting "death panels!", whose foreign policy agenda consists of shouting "Benghazi!", and which now expects its base to realize that Trump isn't serious. Or to put it a bit differently, the definition of a GOP establishment candidate these days is someone who is in on the con, and knows that his colleagues have been talking nonsense. Primary voters are expected to respect that? ..."
"... ... with Trump in the race, all of those states-which are more red than they were in '08-are likely out for Democrats. Swing states like Colorado and Virginia are clear toss-ups. There are few states that Romney or McCain won where Trump, as the Republican nominee, wouldn't be in the running, and an analysis of other key states shows that Trump's in far better position than his detractors would like to admit. If Trump were to win every state that Romney won, Trump would stand today at 206 electoral votes, with 55 electoral votes up for grabs in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire. Similarly, Trump does not necessarily lose in a single toss-up state versus Hillary Clinton and, in fact, is seemingly competitive in many. ..."
"... Which all means that the election comes down to Florida and Ohio, two states where Trump has significant advantages. In Florida (29 electoral votes), he is a part-time resident and is polling better than the state's former governor and sitting U.S. senator. ... ..."
"... A brokered convention, maybe? Even Romney would have a shot. ..."
"... Top-tier presidential campaigns are preparing for the still-unlikely scenario that the nomination fight goes all the way to the 2016 Republican National Convention. ..."
"... There hasn't been a brokered convention since 1976, but the strength of the GOP field, when coupled with the proliferation of super PACs, increases the chances that several candidates could show up in Cleveland next July with an army of delegates at their backs ..."
"... Since the November 13 attacks, every poll-in Florida, two in New Hampshire, and three nationwide-shows Trump maintaining or expanding his lead against his primary opponents. Poor Ben Carson, only recently Trump's chief rival, is losing energy like, well, you know who. In the Fox NH poll, it's Trump at 27, Rubio 13, Cruz 11, and Carson down there at 9 percent alongside Jeb! ..."
"... Play it out: an outsider who's dismissed by his party's elite, comes into the race and overwhelms a large, much more experienced group of candidates in a series of state primaries, both increasing his margins and improving as a candidate as he goes long. All the time riding a crisis that seems made for his candidacy. Does that sound like a sure loser? ... ..."
"... While the investigation into US bombing waste is keyed on who padded the figures rather than the ineptitude of bombing in any use other than taking out property owners to get the greedy to say uncle . The shame of Paris is attributable to the US war machine and every issue requires more money for the pentagon. ..."
"... No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time, the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS and such exists today! Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis, who would end up in CIA-overthrown countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example: Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending up as an advisor to Augusto Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame. ..."
"... The Devil's Chessboard ..."
Nov 23, 2015 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs said... November 23, 2015 at 06:49 AM(!Trump watch.)Thinking About the Trumpthinkable
http://nyti.ms/1jeD39I
NYT - Paul Krugman - Nov 22Alan Abramowitz reads the latest WaPo poll and emails:
'Read these results (#) and tell me how Trump doesn't win the Republican nomination? I've been very skeptical about this all along, but I'm starting to change my mind. I think there's at least a pretty decent chance that Trump will be the nominee.
Here's why I think Trump could very well end up as the nominee:
1. He's way ahead of every other candidate now and has been in the lead or tied for the lead for a long time.
2. The only one even giving him any competition right now is Carson who is even less plausible and whose support is heavily concentrated among one (large) segment of the base-evangelicals.
3. Rubio, the great establishment hope now, is deep in third place, barely in double digits and nowhere close to Trump or Carson.
4. By far the most important thing GOP voters are looking for in a candidate is someone to "bring needed change to Washington."
5. He is favored on almost every major issue by Republican voters including immigration and terrorism by wide margins. The current terrorism scare only helps him with Republicans. They want someone who will "bomb the shit" out of the Muslim terrorists.
6. There is clearly strong support among Republicans for deporting 11 million illegal immigrants. They don't provide party breakdown here, but support for this is at about 40 percent among all voters so it's got to be a lot higher than that, maybe 60 percent, among Republicans.
7. If none of the totally crazy things he's said up until now have hurt him among Republican voters, why would any crazy things he says in the next few months hurt him?
8. He's very strong in several of the early states right now including NH, NV and SC. And he could do very well on "Super Tuesday" with all those southern states voting. I can't see anyone but Trump or Carson winning in Georgia right now, for example, most likely Trump.
9. And as for the idea of the GOP establishment ganging up on him and/or uniting behind another candidate like Rubio, that's at least as likely to backfire as to work. And even if it works, what's to stop Trump from then running as an independent?'
Indeed. You have a party whose domestic policy agenda consists of shouting "death panels!", whose foreign policy agenda consists of shouting "Benghazi!", and which now expects its base to realize that Trump isn't serious. Or to put it a bit differently, the definition of a GOP establishment candidate these days is someone who is in on the con, and knows that his colleagues have been talking nonsense. Primary voters are expected to respect that?
#- Washington Post-ABC News poll, Nov. 16-19, 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-nov-16-19-2015/1880
Dan Kervick -> pgl... November 23, 2015 at 10:42 AM
My guess is that if people dug deeper into the support for Trump, they would find that there is a certain percentage of Republicans who have supported Trump because he was a business man - the only one in the pack - not because they wanted another crazy xenophobic racist wingnut. Now that Trump has gone full wingnut, they are frustrated with the mess they have created for themselves.
Fred C. Dobbs -> Dan Kervick...
Here's Why Donald Trump
Really Could Be Elected President http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/donald-trump-could-be-president via @VanityFair
David Burstein - October 22... with Trump in the race, all of those states-which are more red than they were in '08-are likely out for Democrats. Swing states like Colorado and Virginia are clear toss-ups. There are few states that Romney or McCain won where Trump, as the Republican nominee, wouldn't be in the running, and an analysis of other key states shows that Trump's in far better position than his detractors would like to admit. If Trump were to win every state that Romney won, Trump would stand today at 206 electoral votes, with 55 electoral votes up for grabs in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire. Similarly, Trump does not necessarily lose in a single toss-up state versus Hillary Clinton and, in fact, is seemingly competitive in many.
Virginia is trending blue, but could be a toss-up, particularly given the tale of Dave Brat, whose success in 2014 could be read as a harbinger of Trump. Colorado will have high Republican turnout, given that it is home to what's likely to be one of the country's most contested Senate races-which could make it more competitive than it should be, considering Trump's comments about Latinos. Depending on how well Trump shows in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, they too could be in play. In two of the remaining states, Wisconsin and Nevada, any Democratic nominee will have an upper hand-particularly Clinton.
But Trump will be able to effectively contest, particularly in a place like Wisconsin, with working-class white voters who elected Scott Walker three times in four years. Finally, Pennsylvania, which has been leaning ever-more blue and will likely go blue this year, will nonetheless require Clinton to spend some resources and time there-taking away from her efforts in other swing states.
Which all means that the election comes down to Florida and Ohio, two states where Trump has significant advantages. In Florida (29 electoral votes), he is a part-time resident and is polling better than the state's former governor and sitting U.S. senator. ...
Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...
Long time, still, from now to the GOP convention. (Curiously, less every week, however.)Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...Some GOPsters (including Bush, Rubio, various others) know in their hearts that eventually Trump & Carson will fade, or be dumped, and *their* star will ascend. Sure.
A brokered convention, maybe? Even Romney would have a shot.
NH primary poll puts non-candidate Romney first http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/11/21/gop-voters-would-prefer-romney/WiU9f86jd19UkXYQfb2yxM/story.html?event=event25 via @BostonGlobe - Nov 22
Could the GOP Really See a Brokered Convention
in 2016? http://natl.re/CLXxxf via @NRO
Joel Gehrke - May 14, 2015Ask around and you'll hear a consistent theme from political strategists in the Republican party: The 2016 primary is wide open. "It is by far the most interesting presidential year since I've been involved [in Republican politics]," says Steve Munisteri, a senior adviser to Senator Rand Paul.
How interesting? Top-tier presidential campaigns are preparing for the still-unlikely scenario that the nomination fight goes all the way to the 2016 Republican National Convention.
There hasn't been a brokered convention since 1976, but the strength of the GOP field, when coupled with the proliferation of super PACs, increases the chances that several candidates could show up in Cleveland next July with an army of delegates at their backs. "It's certainly more likely now than it's been in any prior election, going back to 1976," Thor Hearn, the general counsel to George W. Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, tells National Review. "I don't put it as a high likelihood, but it's a much more realistic probability than it's been in any recent experience." ...
Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...
Believe It: Trump Can Defeat Hillary
http://www.thenation.com/article/believe-it-trump-can-defeat-hillary/
The Nation - Leslie Savan - November 20, 2015The Paris attacks have made the demagogue even stronger.
Tt hurts to put these words in print, but… Ann Coulter may be right. Shortly after the Paris attacks began last Friday, she tweeted, "They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight."
Stephen Colbert agrees. He told us this week to get used to saying "President Trump"-and led his studio audience to repeat the words in unison and then pretend to barf.
Yes, it's hard to stomach. America's most entertaining demagogue winning the GOP primaries and then the general? It can't happen here, can it?
Democrats have been expressing absolute incredulity at the possibility, and quietly chuckling to themselves about the Clinton landslide to come if Donald is his party's nominee. The Huffington Post has banned Trump from its politics section and relegated him to Entertainment, as if there he'd be no more than a joke.
The problem is that our liberal incredulity mirrors that of the Republican establishment, which refuses to believe that their front-runner of five straight months could possibly win their nomination. Now even after the carnage in Paris, Beltway pundits are telling themselves that the base will sober up and turn toward "experienced" pols like Rubio or Bush and away from the newbie nuts. As the always-wrong Bill Kristol said of this latest terrorism crisis, "I think it hurts Trump and Carson, honestly."
But, honestly, it's only strengthened Trump. Since the November 13 attacks, every poll-in Florida, two in New Hampshire, and three nationwide-shows Trump maintaining or expanding his lead against his primary opponents. Poor Ben Carson, only recently Trump's chief rival, is losing energy like, well, you know who. In the Fox NH poll, it's Trump at 27, Rubio 13, Cruz 11, and Carson down there at 9 percent alongside Jeb!
It's easy to laugh at GOPers in denial, but progressives who pooh-pooh Trump's chances of beating Hillary may be whistling past the graveyard of American democracy.
A post-Paris Reuters/Ipsos poll asked 1,106 people which candidate, from the entire 2016 field, could best tackle terrorism, and respondents put Trump and Clinton on equal footing, at 20 percent each.
Not good-when it comes to taking on terrorists, a reality-show "carnival barker" who's never served in the military nor held elected office is tied with a decidedly hawkish former secretary of state?
Play it out: an outsider who's dismissed by his party's elite, comes into the race and overwhelms a large, much more experienced group of candidates in a series of state primaries, both increasing his margins and improving as a candidate as he goes long. All the time riding a crisis that seems made for his candidacy. Does that sound like a sure loser? ...
ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs...
847328_3527Media hype, more Americans died, most did not want to, from gun violence this past weekend......
While the investigation into US bombing waste is keyed on "who padded the figures" rather than the ineptitude of bombing in any use other than taking out property owners to get the greedy to say "uncle". The shame of Paris is attributable to the US war machine and every issue requires more money for the pentagon.
But they're still ... "jealous of our freedom" right?sgt_doomlogicalman"I dealt with terrorists in South America in the 1970s, but they never attacked innocent women and children indiscriminately," he said.
No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time, the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS and such exists today!
Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis, who would end up in CIA-overthrown countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example: Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending up as an advisor to Augusto Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame.
Recommended reading (to better understand why the USA is known as the Great Satan):
The Devil's Chessboard, by David Talbot
Funny how these fucks can come out and say this kind of shit and get away with it. The fucker's basically pleading guilty to murder, FFS.Ms NoThey didn't kill anybody in South America my ass.... The school of Americas, Operation Condor, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatamala, El Salvador .... who the hell are they kidding? The CIA has always been covered and nobody ever cared.Perimetr Perimetr's picture"If there's blame to be put. . ."It's on the CIA for running its global terrorist operations, funded by the $1 trillion dollars a year coming from its Afghanistan heroin operation.
US Gives Their Proxy Army ISIS 45 Minute Warning Before Air Strikes......http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/11/us-gives-their-prox...
blindman
sirs and madams,
.
"Christmas celebration this year is going to be a charade because the whole world is at war. We are close to Christmas. There will be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity scenes – all decked out – while the world continues to wage war.It's all a charade. The world has not understood the way of peace. The whole world is at war. A war can be justified, so to speak, with many, many reasons, but when all the world as it is today, at war, piecemeal though that war may be-a little here, a little there-there is no justification.
What shall remain in the wake of this war, in the midst of which we are living now? What shall remain? Ruins, thousands of children without education, so many innocent victims, and lots of money in the pockets of arms dealers."
Francis I
.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2015/11/here-is-british-banned-...Dinero D. Profit
Ladies and gentlemen of ZH.
In history, what must be, will be.
The discovery of America by Europe had to happen. The savages had to be eliminated and The Revolutionary War had to happen. Slavery had to begin, and after it, segregation had to begin, but, what must be, will be, slavery and segregation had to end. Old School colonization of poor nations had to happen. The Boer War had to happen. The Spanish American War had to happen. The Main had to be sunk. WWI had to happen. Calvary charges had to end. Totalitarian Communism had to happen. Germany's 20's depression had to happen, reactionary jingoism had to happen, and Kristallnacht and the Reichstag fire had to happen. The Allies had to win WWII, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to be publicity stunts, and the Cold War had to begin. JFK had to be wacked, the Vietnam War had to happen, the FED still was happening. Civil Rights laws had to be passed. Recognition of China had to happen, going off the gold standard had to happen, and Nixon had to be kicked out of office. Corporate Globalization had to begin. After Carter an actor had to be President. Unions had to be stifled. Perestroika and glasnost had to happen. The Berlin Wall had to come down. The MIC had to find another enemy, and suddenly 9/11 had to happen. …
Over population has to happen, poisoning the environment has to happen, and the NWO has to happen.
Ladies and gentlemen, the NWO is here, and there is nothing you can do, and nothing you could have done to stop it.
Edit. I see none of our supposed enemies 'truth bombing' 9/11, 7/7, and the 13th Paris attacks. I see no trade embagoes, I see no arguments in the Security Council over the illegality of US/Nato bombing in Syria.
blindman
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/jimmy-carter-is-correct-t_b_79...
Jimmy Carter Is Correct That the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy
Posted: 08/03/2015 11:48 am EDT
.
On July 28, Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end of his show (as if this massive question were merely an afterthought), asked him his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon decision, both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. Carter answered:It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell." ...
.
it is the money "system", man.blindman
corporations and hoodwink powers ride on the indifference of the damned, the silence of the dead and doomed.
Dinero D. Profit
Dick ButtkissThe Satus Quo can rely upon the loyalty of their employees, Congress, the military, the military industrial contractors, their workers and family members, the crime control establishment, all Uniersity professors and employees, and every employee of all publically traded companies, and every person employed by the MSM.
The dead and doomed are irrelevant. If you have an establishment job, you'll obey and ask no vital questions.
Sunnis and Shiites hate each other far more than they hate Christians, Jews, or anyone else. If it weren't for oil, the USG wouldn't give a flyiing fuck if they anihilated each other. Instead, it conspires with them in ways far beyond its ability to comprehend, much less navigate. Thus is the US ship of state heading for the shoals of its destruction, the only question being how much of the country and the outside world it takes down with it.ross81thats bullshit Western propaganda that Shiites hate Sunnis and vice versa. In the same way that the Brits stirred up Protestant hatred of Catholics in Ulster for centuries, the US/Israel/Saudi does the same with Sunnis vs Shiites on a much bigger scale in the Middle East. Divide and Conquer.geno-econThis is getting scary in that one or two more attacks will result in travel freezes, flow of Middle East oil and result in huge increase in military as well as Homeland security costs. A depression or economic collapse a real possibility Perhaps time for a Peace Conference of all interested parties. The US started this shit and should be the first to call for a Peace Conference. Macho talk will only make things worse.moonmacWe can print trillions out of thin air at the drop of a hat but we can't kill a small group of terrorists. Got it!sgt_doomOr, we pour billions of dollars every year into the CIA, NSA, and DIA, and only a poor old fart such as myself can figure out that Bilal Erdogan is the ISIS connection to oil trading (Turkish president, Erdogan's son) and Erdogan's daughter is with ISIS?GRDguyEx-CIA boss gets it wrong, again.Ban KKiller"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."
should be:
"When you have a small group of financial sociopaths willing to lie-to, steal-from and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."
and you'll probably be punished, jailed or shot for tryin' to protect yourself and your family.
War profiteer. That is it. Along wth James Comey, James Clapper, Jack Welch and the list is almost endless...BarnacleBill"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."Duc888Simply take out the word "their", and the description perfectly fits the CIA, MI6 and their like. For them, it's all a business deal, nothing more - a massive slum-clearance project. Destroy people's houses, provide accommodation and food, ship them somewhere else; do it again and again until the money-printing machine conks out. It's money for old rope.
http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2015/11/slum-clearance-on-massive-scale.html
And, yes, we're all vulnerable. The man got that right.
"You get the politicians you deserve."Duc888CIA types are appointed, not elected.
I do not know if there are any Catherine Austin Fitts fans on this web site but this is definitely worth the time. The FEDGOV came after her non stop for 6 years when she worked for HUD under Bush Sr. If nothing else this lady is tenacious. In this presentation she uncorks exactly HOW the deep black budgets are paid for...and it ain't your tax dollars. What she uncovered while at HUD was simply amazing..... and she made an excellent point. At the top... it's NOT "fraud" because that's how it was all deigned right from the get go after wwII. It brings to mind the funny computer saying....."it's a feature, not a bug". She digs right into how the CIA was funded... Truly amazing stuff. ...of course the dick head brigade will come along here and deride her because of the conference she is speaking at.... well, who the fuck cares, her presentation is excellent and filled with facts. Yes it is 1 hour 20 minutes long but imho it is well worth the watch...Dragon HAwkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0mimIp8mr8
After reading all these posts my only question is why does the CIA allow Zero Hedge to Exist ?except of course to collect names...
[Nov 23, 2015] The Crisis of World Order
It's the same PNAC propaganda all over again.
Notable quotes:
"... From the man who brought you the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS--how to solve the ISIS crisis. ..."
"... Youd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS. ..."
"... Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay for their income security. ..."
"... ... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul: ..."
"... And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy. ..."
"... It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board ..."
"... Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary of State, has deep neocon roots. ..."
"... A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan ( ..."
"... ), who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that." ... ..."
"... Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? http://nyti.ms/1qJ4eLN ..."
"... Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy http://nyti.ms/UEuqtB ..."
"... doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance. (Wikipedia) ..."
Nov. 20, 2015 | WSJ
...Europe was not in great shape before the refugee crisis and the terrorist attacks. The prolonged Eurozone crisis eroded the legitimacy of European political institutions and the centrist parties that run them, while weakening the economies of key European powers. The old troika-Britain, France and Germany-that used to provide leadership on the continent and with whom the U.S. worked most closely to set the global agenda is no more. Britain is a pale shadow of its former self. Once the indispensable partner for the U.S., influential in both Washington and Brussels, the mediator between America and Europe, Britain is now unmoored, drifting away from both. The Labor Party, once led by Tony Blair, is now headed by an anti-American pacifist, while the ruling Conservative government boasts of its "very special relationship" with China.
... ... ...
There is a Russian angle, too. Many of these parties, and even some mainstream political movements across the continent, are funded by Russia and make little secret of their affinity for Moscow. Thus Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has praised "illiberalism" and made common ideological cause with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In Germany, a whole class of businesspeople, politicians, and current and former government officials, led by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, presses constantly for normalized relations with Moscow. It sometimes seems, in Germany and perhaps in all of Europe, as if the only person standing in the way of full alliance with Russia is German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Now the Syrian crisis has further bolstered Russia's position. Although Europeans generally share Washington's discomfort with Moscow's support for Mr. Assad and Russia's bombing of moderate Syrian rebels, in the wake of the Paris attacks, any plausible partner in the fight against Islamic State seems worth enlisting. In France, former President Nicolas Sarkozy has long been an advocate for Russia, but now his calls for partnership with Moscow are echoed by President François Hollande, who seeks a "grand coalition" with Russia to fight Islamic State.
Where does the U.S. fit into all this? The Europeans no longer know, any more than American allies in the Middle East do. Most Europeans still like Mr. Obama. After President George W. Bush and the Iraq war, Europeans have gotten the kind of American president they wanted. But in the current crisis, this new, more restrained and intensely cautious post-Iraq America has less to offer than the old superpower, with all its arrogance and belligerence.
The flip side of European pleasure at America's newfound Venusian outlook is the perception, widely shared around the world, that the U.S. is a declining superpower, and that even if it is not objectively weaker than it once was, its leaders' willingness to deploy power on behalf of its interests, and on behalf of the West, has greatly diminished. As former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer recently put it, the U.S. "quite obviously, is no longer willing-or able-to play its old role."
Mr. Fischer was referring specifically to America's role as the dominant power in the Middle East, but since the refugee crisis and the attacks in Paris, America's unwillingness to play that role has reverberations and implications well beyond the Middle East. What the U.S. now does or doesn't do in Syria will affect the future stability of Europe, the strength of trans-Atlantic relations and therefore the well-being of the liberal world order.
This is no doubt the last thing that Mr. Obama wants to hear, and possibly to believe. Certainly he would not deny that the stakes have gone up since the refugee crisis and especially since Paris. At the very least, Islamic State has proven both its desire and its ability to carry out massive, coordinated attacks in a major European city. It is not unthinkable that it could carry out a similar attack in an American city. This is new.
... ... ...
In 2002, a British statesman-scholar issued a quiet warning. "The challenge to the postmodern world," the diplomat Robert Cooper argued, was that while Europeans might operate within their borders as if power no longer mattered, in the world outside Europe, they needed to be prepared to use force just as in earlier eras. "Among ourselves, we keep the law, but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle," he wrote. Europeans didn't heed this warning, or at least didn't heed it sufficiently. They failed to arm themselves for the jungle, materially and spiritually, and now that the jungle has entered the European garden, they are at a loss.
With the exercise of power barely an option, despite what Mr. Hollande promises, Europeans are likely to feel their only choice is to build fences, both within Europe and along its periphery-even if in the process they destroy the very essence of the European project. It is this sentiment that has the Le Pens of Europe soaring in the polls.
What would such an effort look like? First, it would require establishing a safe zone in Syria, providing the millions of would-be refugees still in the country a place to stay and the hundreds of thousands who have fled to Europe a place to which to return. To establish such a zone, American military officials estimate, would require not only U.S. air power but ground forces numbering up to 30,000. Once the safe zone was established, many of those troops could be replaced by forces from Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, but the initial force would have to be largely American.
In addition, a further 10,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops would be required to uproot Islamic State from the haven it has created in Syria and to help local forces uproot it in Iraq. Many of those troops could then be replaced by NATO and other international forces to hold the territory and provide a safe zone for rebuilding the areas shattered by Islamic State rule.
At the same time, an internationally negotiated and blessed process of transition in Syria should take place, ushering the bloodstained Mr. Assad from power and establishing a new provisional government to hold nationwide elections. The heretofore immovable Mr. Assad would face an entirely new set of military facts on the ground, with the Syrian opposition now backed by U.S. forces and air power, the Syrian air force grounded and Russian bombing halted. Throughout the transition period, and probably beyond even the first rounds of elections, an international peacekeeping force-made up of French, Turkish, American and other NATO forces as well as Arab troops-would have to remain in Syria until a reasonable level of stability, security and inter-sectarian trust was achieved.
Is such a plan so unthinkable? In recent years, the mere mention of U.S. ground troops has been enough to stop any conversation. Americans, or at least the intelligentsia and political class, remain traumatized by Iraq, and all calculations about what to do in Syria have been driven by that trauma. Mr. Obama's advisers have been reluctant to present him with options that include even smaller numbers of ground forces, assuming that he would reject them. And Mr. Obama has, in turn, rejected his advisers' less ambitious proposals on the reasonable grounds that they would probably be insufficient.
This dynamic has kept the president sneering at those who have wanted to do more but have been reluctant to be honest about how much more. But it has also allowed him to be comfortable settling for minimal, pressure-relieving approaches that he must know cannot succeed but which at least have the virtue of avoiding the much larger commitment that he has so far refused to make.
The president has also been inclined to reject options that don't promise to "solve" the problems of Syria, Iraq and the Middle East. He doesn't want to send troops only to put "a lid on things."
In this respect, he is entranced, like most Americans, by the image of the decisive engagement followed by the victorious return home. But that happy picture is a myth. Even after the iconic American victory in World War II, the U.S. didn't come home. Keeping a lid on things is exactly what the U.S. has done these past 70 years. That is how the U.S. created this liberal world order.
In Asia, American forces have kept a lid on what had been, and would likely be again, a dangerous multisided conflict involving China, Japan, Korea, India and who knows who else. In Europe, American forces put a lid on what had been a chronic state of insecurity and war, making it possible to lay the foundations of the European Union. In the Balkans, the presence of U.S. and European troops has kept a lid on what had been an escalating cycle of ethnic conflict. In Libya, a similar international force, with even a small American contingent, could have kept the lid on that country's boiling caldron, perhaps long enough to give a new, more inclusive government a chance.
Preserving a liberal world order and international security is all about placing lids on regions of turmoil. In any case, as my Brookings Institution colleague Thomas Wright observes, whether or not you want to keep a lid on something really ought to depend on what's under the lid.
At practically any other time in the last 70 years, the idea of dispatching even 50,000 troops to fight an organization of Islamic State's description would not have seemed too risky or too costly to most Americans. In 1990-91, President George H.W. Bush, now revered as a judicious and prudent leader, sent half a million troops across the globe to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, a country that not one American in a million could find on a map and which the U.S. had no obligation to defend. In 1989, he sent 30,000 troops to invade Panama to topple an illegitimate, drug-peddling dictator. During the Cold War, when presidents sent more than 300,000 troops to Korea and more than 500,000 troops to Vietnam, the idea of sending 50,000 troops to fight a large and virulently anti-American terrorist organization that had seized territory in the Middle East, and from that territory had already launched a murderous attack on a major Western city, would have seemed barely worth an argument.
Not today. Americans remain paralyzed by Iraq, Republicans almost as much as Democrats, and Mr. Obama is both the political beneficiary and the living symbol of this paralysis. Whether he has the desire or capacity to adjust to changing circumstances is an open question. Other presidents have-from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton-each of whom was forced to recalibrate what the loss or fracturing of Europe would mean to American interests. In Mr. Obama's case, however, such a late-in-the-game recalculation seems less likely. He may be the first president since the end of World War II who simply doesn't care what happens to Europe.
If so, it is, again, a great irony for Europe, and perhaps a tragic one. Having excoriated the U.S. for invading Iraq, Europeans played no small part in bringing on the crisis of confidence and conscience that today prevents Americans from doing what may be necessary to meet the Middle Eastern crisis that has Europe reeling. Perhaps there are Europeans today wishing that the U.S. will not compound its error of commission in Iraq by making an equally unfortunate error of omission in Syria. They can certainly hope.
Mr. Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order" and, most recently, "The World America Made."
Selected Skeptical Comments
anne said... , November 22, 2015 at 05:50 AMhttps://twitter.com/BrankoMilanBranko Milanovic @BrankoMilan
From the man who brought you the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS--how to solve the ISIS crisis.
Strobe Talbott @strobetalbott
A clarion call by @BrookingsFP's Bob Kagan. Hope (& bet) POTUS has read it. Would-be successors should as well. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crisis-of-world-order-1448052095 …
9:03 AM - 21 Nov 2015
anne said in reply to anne... , November 22, 2015 at 05:50 AM
https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan/status/668114578866221056
Branko Milanovic @BrankoMilan
You'd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS.
ilsm said in reply to anne...
Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay for their income security.
Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to anne...Neoconservativism Is Down But Not Out of the 2016 Race
http://bloom.bg/1EpwSou
via @Bloomberg - February 18, 2015... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul:
'Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in the New Republic this year that "it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya."
And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.
It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board.'
(The story also notes, prematurely, that the careers of older neocons like Wolfowitz are "permanently buried in the sands of Iraq.")
Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary of State, has deep neocon roots. He was part of the Project for a New American Century, a now-defunct think tank that spanned much of the second Bush presidency and supported a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity." PNAC counted Kagan, Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, and Jeb Bush among its members. In 1998, some of its members-including Wolfowitz, Kagan, and Rumsfeld-signed an open letter to President Bill Clinton asking him to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan (#), who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that." ...
*- Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? http://nyti.ms/1qJ4eLN
#- Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy http://nyti.ms/UEuqtB
Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...
(I may be a HRC supporter but Neocons still make me anxious.)
'doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance.' (Wikipedia)
[Nov 21, 2015] US Congresswoman Introduces Bill To Stop Illegal War On Assad; Says CIA Ops Must Stop
"Any candidate who supports a safe no-fly zone in Syria, must admit that US/Coalition ground/air troops are need to enforce [it]
Nov 21, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Last month, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard went on CNN and laid bare Washington's Syria strategy.In a remarkably candid interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gabbard calls Washington's effort to oust Assad "counterproductive" and "illegal" before taking it a step further and accusing the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are "sworn enemies."
In short, Gabbard all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting "World War III."
For those who missed it, here's the clip:
[Nov 20, 2015] Hillarys Heavy Obligations to Wall Street Money and The Banks Favorite Candidates
jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them.People are discouraged and disillusioned after almost thirty years of distorted governance, specially in the aftermath of the 'Hope and Change' which quickly became 'Vain Hope for Change.' Most cannot admit that their guys were in the pockets of Big Defense, Big Pharma, Big Energy, and Wall Street.Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."
Tacitus, Agricola
The real question about Hillary comes down to this. Can you trust her to do what she says she will do, the right things for her putative constituents and not her big money donors and paymasters, once she takes office?
Or will that poor family who left the White House 'broke' and then mysteriously obtained a fortune of over $100 million in the following years, thanks to enormous payments for 'speeches' from large financial firms and huge donations to their Trust once again take care of the hand that pays them the most?
This is not to say that there is a better alternative amongst the leading Republican candidates, who have been and are still under the same types of payment arrangements, only with different people signing the checks.
Or we could skip the middlemen entirely and just directly elect one of New York's most prominent of their narcissist class directly, instead of another witless stooge of big money, and hope for something different? And how will that likely work out for us?
It is an exceptionally hard time to be a human being in this great nation of ours.
And so what ought we to do? Wallow in cynicism and the sweet sickness of misanthropy and despair? Vote strictly on the hope of our own narrow self-interest no matter the broader and longer term consequences, and then face the inevitable blowback from injustice and repression?
Give up on our grandchildren and children because we are too tired and interested in our own short term comfort? Too filled with selfishness, anger and hate to see straight, and do anything but turn ourselves into mindless animals to escape the pain of being truly human? Do no thinking, and just follow orders? This latter impulse has taken whole nations of desperate people into the abyss.
Or do we stop wallowing in our specialness and self-pity, and 'stand on the shoulders of giants' and confront what virtually every generation and every individual has had to wrestle with since the beginning of recorded time?
Do we fall, finally stricken with grief in our blindness, on the road to Damascus and say at long last, 'Lord, what then wilt thou have me to do?'
This is the question that circumstance is posing to us. And hopefully we will we heed the answer that has been already given, to be 'steadfast, unshaken, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in Him our labor is not in vain.'
And the touchstone of the alloy of our actions is love.
And so we have before us what Franklin Roosevelt so aptly characterized as our own 'rendezvous with destiny.'
Related:
Wall Street Is Running the World's Central Banks
Wall Street's Favorite Presidential Candidates
|
|
|
Nov 03, 2015 | Al Arabiya News
Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi politician accused of providing false information that led to the United States toppling longtime dictator Saddam Hussein in the 2003 invasion, died on Tuesday of a heart attack, state television and two parliamentarians said.
Attendants found the controversial lawmaker, 71, dead in bed in his Baghdad home, according to parliament official Haitham al-Jabouri.
... ... ...
During his heyday, the smooth-talking Chalabi was widely seen as the man who helped push the U.S. and its main ally Britain into invading Iraq in 2003, with information that Saddam's government had weapons of mass destruction, claims that were eventually discredited.
... ... ...
Chalabi had also said Saddam - known for his secularist Baathist ideology - had ties with al-Qaeda.
After Saddam's fall by U.S.-led coalition forces, Chalabi returned from exile in Britain and the United States. Despite having been considered as a potential candidate for the powerful post of prime minister in the immediate aftermath of Saddam's 24-year reign, the politician never managed to rise to the top of Iraq's stormy, sectarian-driven political landscape.
His eventual fallout with his former American allies also hurt his chances of becoming an Iraqi leader.
"The neo-cons wanted to make a case for war and he [Chalabi] was somebody who is willing to provide them with information that would help their cause," Ali Khedery, who was the longest continuously-serving American official in Iraq in the years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, told Al Arabiya News.
|
|
|
Nov 14, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Submitted by Justin Raimondo via Anti-War.com,
Most Americans don't think much about politics, let alone foreign policy issues, as they go about their daily lives. It's not that they don't care: it's just that the daily grind doesn't permit most people outside of Washington, D.C. the luxury of contemplating the fate of nations with any regularity. There is one exception, however, and that is during election season, and specifically – when it comes to foreign policy – every four years, when the race for the White House begins to heat up. The President, as commander in chief, shapes US foreign policy: indeed, in our post-constitutional era, now that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, he has the de facto power to single-handedly take us into war. Which is why, paraphrasing Trotsky, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is certainly interested in you.
The most recent episode of the continuing GOP reality show, otherwise known as the presidential debates, certainly gave us a glimpse of what we are in for if the candidates on that stage actually make it into the Oval Office – and, folks, it wasn't pretty, for the most part. But there were plenty of bright spots.
This was supposed to have been a debate about economics, but in the Age of Empire there is no real division between economic and foreign policy issues. That was brought home by the collision between Marco Rubio and Rand Paul about half way through the debate when Rubio touted his child tax credit program as being "pro-family." A newly-aggressive and articulate Rand Paul jumped in with this:
"Is it conservative to have $1 trillion in transfer payments – a new welfare program that's a refundable tax credit? Add that to Marco's plan for $1 trillion in new military spending, and you get something that looks, to me, not very conservative."
Rubio's blow-dried exterior seemed to fray momentarily, as he gave his "it's for the children" reply:
"But if you invest it in your children, in the future of America and strengthening your family, we're not going to recognize that in our tax code? The family is the most important institution in society. And, yes…
"PAUL: Nevertheless, it's not very conservative, Marco."
Stung to the quick, Rubio played what he thought was his trump card:
"I know that Rand is a committed isolationist. I'm not. I believe the world is a stronger and a better place, when the United States is the strongest military power in the world.
"PAUL: Yeah, but, Marco! … How is it conservative … to add a trillion-dollar expenditure for the federal government that you're not paying for?
"RUBIO: Because…
"PAUL: … How is it conservative to add a trillion dollars in military expenditures? You can not be a conservative if you're going to keep promoting new programs that you're not going to pay for.
(APPLAUSE)"
Here, in one dramatic encounter, were two worldviews colliding: the older conservative vision embodied by Rand Paul, which puts domestic issues like fiscal solvency first, and the "internationalist" stance taken by what used to be called Rockefeller Republicans, and now goes under the neoconservative rubric, which puts the maintenance and expansion of America's overseas empire – dubbed "world leadership" by Rubio's doppelganger, Jeb Bush – over and above any concerns over budgetary common sense.
Rubio then descended into waving the bloody shirt and evoking Trump's favorite bogeyman – the Yellow Peril – to justify his budget-busting:
"We can't even have an economy if we're not safe. There are radical jihadists in the Middle East beheading people and crucifying Christians. A radical Shia cleric in Iran trying to get a nuclear weapon, the Chinese taking over the South China Sea…"
If the presence of the Islamic State in the Middle East precludes us from having an economy, then those doing their Christmas shopping early this year don't seem to be aware of it. As for the Iranians and their alleged quest for nuclear weapons, IAEA inspectors are at this very moment verifying the complete absence of such an effort – although Sen. Paul, who stupidly opposed the Iran deal, is in no position to point this out. As for the fate of the South China Sea – if we could take a poll, I wonder how many Americans would rather have their budget out of balance in order to keep the Chinese from constructing artificial islands a few miles off their own coastline. My guess: not many.
Playing the "isolationist" card got Rubio nowhere: I doubt if a third of the television audience even knows what that term is supposed to mean. It may resonate in Washington, but out in the heartland it carries little if any weight with people more concerned about their shrinking bank accounts than the possibility that the South China Sea might fall to … the Chinese.
Ted Cruz underscored his sleaziness (and, incidentally, his entire election strategy) by jumping in and claiming the "middle ground" between Rubio's fulsome internationalism and Paul's call to rein in our extravagant military budget – by siding with Rubio. We can do what Rubio wants to do – radically increase military expenditures – but first, he averred, we have to cut sugar subsidies so we can afford it. This was an attack on Rubio's enthusiasm for sugar subsidies, without which, avers the Senator from the state that produces the most sugar, "we lose the capacity to produce our own food, at which point we're at the mercy of a foreign country for food security." Yes, there's a jihadist-Iranian-Chinese conspiracy to deprive America of its sweet tooth – but not if President Rubio can stop it!
Cruz is a master at prodding the weaknesses of his opponents, but his math is way off: sugar subsidies have cost us some $15 billion since 2008. Rubio's proposed military budget – $696 billion – represents a $35 billion increase over what the Pentagon is requesting. Cutting sugar subsidies – an unlikely prospect, especially given the support of Republicans of Rubio's ilk for the program – won't pay for it.
However, if we want to go deeper into those weeds, Sen. Paul also endorses the $696 billion figure, but touts the fact that his proposal comes with cuts that will supposedly pay for the hike. This is something all those military contractors can live with, and so everybody's happy, at least on the Republican side of the aisle, and yet the likelihood of cutting $21 billion from "international affairs," never mind $20 billion from social services, is unlikely to garner enough support from his own party – let alone the Democrats – to get through Congress. So it's just more of Washington's kabuki theater: all symbolism, no action.
Paul's too-clever-by-half legislative maneuvering may have effectively exposed Rubio – and Sen. Tom Cotton, Marco's co-pilot on this flight into fiscal profligacy – as the faux-conservative that he is, but it evaded the broader question attached to the issue of military spending: what are we going to do with all that shiny-new military hardware? Send more weapons to Ukraine? Outfit an expeditionary force to re-invade Iraq and venture into Syria? This brings to mind Madeleine Albright's infamous remark directed at Gen. Colin Powell: "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"
In this way, Paul undermines his own case against global intervention – and even his own eloquent argument, advanced in answer to Rubio's contention that increasing the military budget would make us "safer":
"I do not think we are any safer from bankruptcy court. As we go further, and further into debt, we become less, and less safe. This is the most important thing we're going to talk about tonight. Can you be a conservative, and be liberal on military spending? Can you be for unlimited military spending, and say, Oh, I'm going to make the country safe? No, we need a safe country, but, you know, we spend more on our military than the next ten countries combined."
I have to say Sen. Paul shone at this debate. His arguments were clear, consistent, and made with calm forcefulness. He distinguished himself from the pack, including Trump, who said "I agree with Marco, I agree with Ted," and went on to mouth his usual "bigger, better, stronger" hyperbole that amounted to so much hot hair air.
Speaking of Trumpian hot air: Paul showed up The Donald for the ignorant blowhard he is by pointing out, after another of Trump's jeremiads aimed at the Yellow Peril, that China is not a party to the trade deal, which is aimed at deflecting Beijing. That was another shining moment for Paul, who successfully juxtaposed his superior knowledge to Trump's babbling.
This obsession with China's allegedly malign influence extended to the next round, when foreign policy was again the focus. In answer to a question about whether he supports President Obama's plan to send Special Operations forces to Syria, Ben Carson said yes, because Russia is going to make it "their base," oh, and by the way: "You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians." Unless he's talking about these guys, Carson intel seems a bit off.
Jeb Bush gave the usual boilerplate, delivered in his preferred monotone, contradicting himself when he endorsed a no-fly zone over Syria and then attacked Hillary Clinton for not offering "leadership" – when she endorsed the idea practically in unison with him. Bush added his usual incoherence to the mix by averring that somehow not intervening more in the region "will have a huge impact on our economy" – but of course the last time we intervened it had a $2 trillion-plus impact in terms of costs, and that's a conservative estimate.
Oddly characterizing Russia's air strikes on the Islamic State as "aggression" – do our air strikes count as aggression? – the clueless Marie Bartiromo asked Trump what he intends to do about it. Trump evaded the question for a few minutes, going on about North Korea, Iran, and of course the Yellow Peril, finally coming out with a great line that not even the newly-noninterventionist Sen. Paul had the gumption to muster:
"If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, one-hundred percent, and I can't understand how anybody would be against it."
Bush butted in with "But they aren't doing that," which is the Obama administration's demonstrably inaccurate line, and Trump made short work of him with the now undeniable fact that the Islamic State blew up a Russian passenger jet with over 200 people on it. "He [Putin] cannot be in love with these people," countered Trump. "He's going in, and we can go in, and everybody should go in. As far as the Ukraine is concerned, we have a group of people, and a group of countries, including Germany – tremendous economic behemoth – why are we always doing the work?"
Why indeed.
Trump, for all his contradictions, gives voice to the "isolationist" populism that Rubio and his neocon confederates despise, and which is implanted so deeply in the American consciousness. Why us? Why are we paying everybody's bills? Why are we fighting everybody else's wars? It's a bad deal!
This is why the neocons hate Trump's guts even more than they hate Paul. The former, after all, is the frontrunner. What the War Party fears is that Trump's contradictory mixture of bluster – "bigger, better, stronger!" – and complaints that our allies are taking advantage of us means a victory for the dreaded "isolationists" at the polls.
As for Carly Fiorina and John Kasich: they merely served as a Greek chorus to the exhortations of Rubio and Bush to take on Putin, Assad, Iran, China, and (in Trump's case) North Korea. They left out Venezuela only because they ran out of time, and breath. Fiorina and Kasich were mirror images of each other in their studied belligerence: both are aspiring vice-presidential running mates for whatever Establishment candidate takes the prize.
Yes, it's election season, the one time – short of when we're about to invade yet another country – when the American people are engaged with the foreign policy issues of the day. And what we are seeing is a rising tide of disgust with our policy of global intervention – in a confused inchoate sense, in the case of Trump, and in a focused, self-conscious, occasionally eloquent and yet still slightly confused and inconsistent way in the case of Sen. Paul. Either way, the real voice of the American heartland is being heard.
Bumpo
Im not so sure. If you see it in context with Trump's other message to make Mexico pay for the border fence. If you take the Iraq war on the face of it - that is, we came in to rescue them from Saddam Hussein - then taking their oil in payment is only "fair". It's hard to tell if he is playing a game, or actually believes the US company line, though. I think he isn't letting on. At least I hope so. And that goes double for his "Support" of Israel.
Joe Trader
@greenskeeper we get it, you get butt-hurt extremely easily
The thing about Donald Trump and oil - is that a few years ago, he said all that Saudi Arabia had to do was start pumping oil, and down it would go to $25. Guess what sweet cheeks - His prediction is coming true and the presidency could really use a guy like him who knows what he's doing.
MalteseFalcon
Say what you like about Trump. 'He is a baffoon or a blowhard'. 'He can't be elected president'.
But Trump has rocked the boat and raised some issues and viewpoints that none of the other bought and paid for 'candidates' would ever have raised. Has he changed the national discussion on these issues? At least he woken some people up.
illyia
oh.my.gawd. a rational adult series of comments on zero hedge: There is hopium for the world, after all.
Just must say: Raimondo is an incredibly good writer. Very enjoyable to read. I am sure that's why he's still around. He make a clear, concise argument, presents his case with humor and irony and usually covers every angle.
I wonder about people like him, who think things out so well... versus, say, the bloviator and chief?
P.S. don't blame me, i did not vote for either of them...
Oracle of Kypseli
The sentence of "We relied on the stupidity of the American voter" resonates.
TheObsoleteMan
What you did, was you fell for the oldest press trick in the book. It's called: "out of context". That's is where they play back only a segment of what someone says, only a part of what they want you to hear, so you will draw the wrong conclusion. What Trump said {had you listened to ALL of what he said} was that he was going to TAKE ISIL'S OIL. Oil is the largest source of revenue for them {then comes the CIA money}. If you were to remove their oil revenues from them, they would be seriously hurting for cash to fund their machine. I don't have a problem with that.
palmereldritch
Pure EvilThe thing about understanding the attack on The Donald is understanding what he is NOT. Namely he is not CFR connected:
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/trump-catches-attention-of...The attacks on Trump have been relentless yet he is still maintaining his position in the polls.
I expected a take out on Ben Carson, his next closest competitor to move up a CFR-aligned Globalist like Shrubio or Cruz given their fall-back JEBPNAC is tanking so bad...but not this early. They must be getting desperate...so desperate they are considering Romney?!
If it becomes 'Reagan/Bush Redux' again with Trump/Cruz, I hope The Donald has enough sense to say NO! or, if elected, be very vigilant knowing you are Reagan and you have the GHW Bush equivalent standing there to replace you...and we know how that unfolded early in Reagan's first term...NOT GOOD
EDIT: The goal is to have a CFR candidate in both the GOP and Dem fold. Although Hillary is not a CFR member ostensibly Slick Willie has been for more than 20 years and his Administration was rife with them...Hello Rubin and Glass Steagal!!..as is Chelsea... a newly elected member.
So that red vote I just got...was that you Hill?
Raymond_K._HesselThe point is Justin seems to believe the Iranians have no intention of building a nuclear bomb ever. I've read a lot of this guy's writing ever since he first came out on his own website and when he wrote for AsiaTimesOnline. He's always had the opinion that the Iranians are not building a nuclear bomb and have no intention to do so. He spews the same talking points about how they've never attacked anyone in over two hundred years.
Well that's because previously they were under the control of the Ottoman empire and that didn't break up until after WW1. I think he's got a blind spot in this regard. You can't tell me that even the Japanese aren't secretly building nuclear weapons since China is becoming militarily aggressive. And, stop being a prick. Your micro-aggressing against my safe place LTER and I'm gonna have to report you for "hurtful" speech.
You ignorant slut.
https://theintercept.com/2015/03/02/brief-history-netanyahu-crying-wolf-...
20 years plus of this accusation. Cia and dia both said no mil program.
If you have evidence summon it. Offering your suspicion as evidence is fucking absurd.
And if the israelis werent hell bent on taking the rest of palestine and brutalizing the natives (which, by and large, they actually are) that would sure wet some of the anti isrsel powder.
But no / they want lebensraum and years of war for expansion and regional total hegemony.
Thrn they can ethnically cleanse the historical inhabitants while everyones busy watching white european christisns kill each other, and muslims, as isis keeps not attacking israel or even isrseli interests.
Youre not dumb, you just reached conclusions that are very weakened of not refuted by evidence you wont even consider.
https://theintercept.com/2015/03/02/brief-history-netanyahu-crying-wolf-...
Bazza McKenzie
If you examine the policy detail Trump has provided, there is more substance there than any of the others. Add to that he has a long record of successful management, which none of the others have.
You don't manage successfully without self control. The persona he presents in politics at present may give the impression of a lack of self control, yet that persona and the policies which are/were verboten to the political class have quickly taken him to the top of the pack and kept him there.
If you apply to Trump the saying "judge people by what they do, not what they say", his achievements out of politics and now in politics show he is a more capable person than any of the others and that he is successful at what he sets out to do.
As the economy for most Americans continues to worsen, which is baked in the cake, who is going to look to the public a more credible person to turn it around, Clinton? Trump? one of the others? The answer is pretty obvious.
European American
"I cannot take Trump seriously."
It's not about Trump as President, a year from now. Who knows if he'll even be in the picture by then. It's ALL about Trump, RIGHT NOW. He's exposing the underbelly of a vile, hideous Z-creature that we, here at ZH have seen for some time, but the masses, those who haven't connected enought dots, yet, are getting a glimpse of something that has been foreign in politics, up until now. Everytime Trump is interviewed, or tweets or stands at the debates, another round is shot over the bow, or beak, of the monster creature that has been sucking the life out of humanity for decades, centuries, eons. As long as he's standing and he can pull it off, that is what this phenomenon is all about...one day at a time....shedding light where the stench of darkness has been breeding corruption for the last millenium.
MASTER OF UNIVERSE
Neocons hate because their collective ethos is that of a single misanthrope that crafted their existence in the first place. In brief, neocons are fascist narrow minded automatons not really capable of a level of consciousness that would enable them to think critically, and independently, of the clique orthodoxy that guides their myopic thinking, or lack thereof. Neocons have no history aside from Corporatism, and Fascism.
Escrava Isaura
American Decline: Causes and Consequences
Grand Area (after WW-2) to be under US control: Western Hemisphere, the Far East, the former British empire - including the crucial Middle East oil reserves - and as much of Eurasia as possible, or at the very least its core industrial regions in Western Europe and the southern European states. The latter were regarded as essential for ensuring control of Middle East energy resources.
It means: Africa resources go to Europe. Asia resources go to Japan. South America resources go to US.
Now (2019) the Conundrum: Where will China get the resources needed for its survival? And Russia is not Africa.
"[American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant." ? Zbigniew Brzezinski
Bazza McKenzie
Through either ignorance or malice the author repeats Rand Paul's statement about Trump's comments re China and the TPP.
Trump explicitly said the TPP provides a back door opportunity for China, thus noting he understands China is not an initial signatory to TPP.
The backdoor opportunity occurs in 2 ways. The ability for TPP to expand its signatory countries without going back to the legislatures of existing signatory countries AND the fact that products claiming to be made in TPP countries and eligible for TPP arrangements don't have to be wholly made in those countries, or perhaps even mainly made in those countries. China will certainly be taking advantage of that.
The fact that Paul does not apparently understand these points, despite being a Senator, displays an unfortunate ignorance unless of course he was just attempting to score a political point despite knowing it to be false.
Paul at least made his comment in the heat of the moment in a debate. Raimondo has had plenty of time to get the facts right but does not. How much of the rest of his screed is garbage?
socalbeach
I got the impression Trump thought China was part of the trade deal from this quote:
"Yes. Well, the currency manipulation they don't discuss in the agreement, which is a disaster. If you look at the way China and India and almost everybody takes advantage of the United States - China in particular, because they're so good. It's the number-one abuser of this country. And if you look at the way they take advantage, it's through currency manipulation. It's not even discussed in the almost 6,000-page agreement. It's not even discussed."
If China isn't part of the agreement, then what difference does it make whether or not currency manipulation is discussed? Your answer is that Trump meant they could be added to the agreement later, as in this previous quote of his:
"The TPP is horrible deal. It is a deal that is going to lead to nothing but trouble. It's a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone."
If that's the case, Trump didn't explain himself well in this instance.
Johnny Horscaulk
Johnny Horscaulk's picture
http://www.vdare.com/articles/why-so-much-jewish-fear-and-loathing-of-do...
Neocons should not be used as a synonym for 'militarist.'
That subset was absolutely a Jewish-Zionist movement originating at the U of Chicago whether you know the history or not. Its also obvious just verboden to discuss. Not because its false, but because its true.
Neocons aren't conservative - they are zioglobalists with primary concern for Israel.
There are several groups of militarists in the deep state, but the Israel Firster faction is predominant.
Fucking obviously.
Arthur
Gee I guess we should back Iran and Isis. Must be some great jewish conspiricy that keeps you impovrished, that or maybe you are just a moron.
Johnny Horscaulk
Idiot, the us, and israel ARE backing isis. Go back to watching fox news - this is all way over your willingness to spend time reading about. You clearly have an internet connection - but you utter palpable nonsense.
OldPhart
Arthur
When/where I grew up I'd never met a jew. I think there was one black family in the two hundred fifty square miles of the town, population 2,200 in 1976. I knew jackshit other than they were greased by nazis back in WWII.
Moved out of the desert to Orlando, Flawed?-Duh. Met a lot of regular jews. Good people, best man's dad and mom had tattoo'd numbers on thier arms. To me, their just regular people that have some other sort of religion that christianity is an offshoot from.
What I've learned is that Zionism is lead by a relative few of the jewish faith, many regular jews resent it as an abomination of jewish faith. Zionists are the self-selected political elite and are in no way keepers of the jewish faith. They are the equivalent, in Israel, to the CFR here. Oddly, they also comprise many of the CFR seats HERE.
Zionists do not represent the jews any more than Jamie Diamond, Blythe Masters, Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates represent ordinary Americans. Somehow, over time, Zionists came to wield massive influence within our government and corporate institutions.
Those are the simple facts that I have been able to glean from piles of research that are massively biased in both directions.
It's not a jewish conspiracy that keeps many impoverished, it's the Zionists that keep many impoverished, at war, divided, ignorant, and given bread and circuses. Not jews.
Perhaps you should spend a few years doing a little independent research of your own before belittling something you obviously have no clue about.
Johnny Horscaulk
That rhetorical ballet aside, Israel has far far too much influence on us policy, and that is so because of wildly disproportionate Jewish... As such... Political, financial, media, etc power. And they - AS A GROUP -act in their in-group interests even when resulting policy is not in this country's interest - demanding, with 50 million Scoffield JudeoChristians that Israels interests be of utmost value...
And heres the kicker - as defined by an Israel under likud and shas, parties so odious they make golden dawn look leftist, yet get no msm criticism for being so.
Its never 'all' any group - but Israels influence is excessive and deleterious, and that is due to jewish power and influence, with the xian zios giving the votes. Framed this way, it isnt 'Zionism' - it is simply a powerful minority with deep loyalty to a tiny foreign state warping us policy - and media coverage.
MEFOBILLS
Arthur,
Iran is formerly Persia, and its people are predominantly Shia. Shia's are considered apostates by Sunni's. Isis is Sunni. Sunnis get their funding via the Petrodollar system.
Persians changed their name to Iran to let northern Europeans know they were Aryans. Persians are not Arabs.
Neo-Con's are Jewish and they have fellow travelers who are non jewish. Many of their fellow travelers are Sayanim or Zionist Christians. So, Neo-Con ideology is no longer specifically Jewish, but it certainly has Jewish antecedents.
Your comment is full of illogic, is misinformed, and then you have the laughable temerity to call out someone else as a moron.
I Write Code
The only place "neocons" still exist is at ZH. Whatever Wikipedia says about it, the term had virtually no currency in the US before 2001, and had pretty much ceased to have any influence by about 2005.
Is Rubio sounding like an interventionist? Yes. Does he really know what he's talking about? Unclear. Is Trump sounding like a non-interventionist? Yes. Does he really know what he's talking about? Almost certainly not. Trump is the non-interventionist who wants to bomb the shit out of ISIS.
Rand didn't do anything to embarass himself at the latest debate, but he also didn't stand out enough to make up for many past errors. Give him a few years, maybe he'll grow up or something.
But the harder question is, what *should* the US do about stuff? Should we cowboy on alone, or pull back because none of the other kids want to help us. Can't we make common cause with Russia and France at this point? I mean instead of Iran and Turkey? The biggest problem is of course Obama - whatever various national interests at this point, nobody in the world thinks they can trust Nobel boy as far as they can spit a rat. Would anyone want to trust Rubio or Trump? Would you?
Johnny Horscaulk
Nonsense - read this for background beginning with the philosopher Strauss. It has a fixed meaning that was subjected to semantic drift in the media. It came to be conflated with 'militarist' and the conservative thing was a misnomer they were communists who wanted to use American power for israel.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article178638.html
Only on zh is absolutely absurd to claim.
TheObsoleteMan
After listening to the press for the last week, I have come to a conclusion concerning Mr. Bush: The party big wigs have decided he can not win and are distancing their support for him.
Their new golden boy? Marco Rubio. The press in the last week has barely mentioned Bush, but every breath has been about "the young Latino". "He's rising in the polls".
I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that on radio and the TV. They also had him on Meet The Press last Sunday. Just thought I'd mention it. I can't stand Rubio. When he ran for Senate down here a few years ago, he road to Washington on the Tea Party's back. As soon as he got there, he did what all good politicians do: Dumped their platform and forgot all about them. Scumbag.
neilhorn
Yes, I have also seen the new "golden boy" regaled in the media. Let's see where he goes. I wonder if anyone represents the American people any better than the corrupt piece of dried up persimmon that is Hillary?
Raymond_K._Hessel
Trump picks cruz as veep, offends moderate and lefty independents and latinos on the immigration stuff, kisses Likuds ass (2 million right wing batshit jews out of 8 million israeli voters in asia dominate us foreign policy via nutty, aipac, adl, jinsa, conf of pres, etc etc etc)
And he loses to hillary. The gop can not win this election. Sorry - but admit the direness of our situation - shitty candidates all and one of the very worst and most essentially disingenuous- will win because women and minorities and lefties outnumber right leaning white males.
This is super obviously the political situation.
So - how do we 'prepare' for hillary? She is more wars, more printing, more wall st, more israel just like everyone but sanders who is nonetheless a crazy person and arch statist though I respect his at least not being a hyperinterventionist mic cocksucker.
But fucking hillary clinton gets in.
What does it mean apart from the same old thing?
Red team blue team same thing on wars, banks, and bending the knee to batshit psycho bibi.
cherry picker
neilhornI don't think Americans are really ready for Bill to be the First Man, do you? I don't think Americans think about that aspect of Hillary becoming Pres.
Personally, I hope she doesn't get in. There are many other women that are capable who could fit the bill, if the US is bound and determined to have a female president.
"indeed, in our post-constitutional era, now that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, he has the de facto power to single-handedly take us into war. Which is why, paraphrasing Trotsky, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is certainly interested in you."
The post-constitutional era is the present time. Congress is stifled by politics while the rest of us only desire that the rights of the people are protected. The President has never been granted the right to take our nation to war. Other presidents have usurped that power and taken the power to themseves. Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all taken on the right to kill anyone who defied the right of the presidency. However, when the people ever abrogated their right to wage war it was only in response to a police state being established that threatened those who opposed the power of the established authority. Congress, the representatives of the people, has the right to declare war. Congress is also obligated to represent the people who elected them. When will we find a representative who has the backbone to stop the suicidal tendencies of the structures of power?
Captain Obvious.
Don't set store by any politician. They were all sent as a group to suck Israeli dick. Yes, dear Donald too. They will tell you what they think you want to hear.
Raymond_K._Hessel
Ivanka converted to judaism and all - was that for the grooms parents or genuine? Or a dynastic thing?
Wahooo
Another hit piece today in Barrons:
"Donald Trump is trying hard to look presidential these days. Too bad he's using Herbert Hoover as a role model. Hoover, of course, is best remembered as having been president during the stock market crash of 1929 that presaged the Great Depression. What helped turn a normal recession into a global economic disaster was the spread of protectionism, starting with the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which resulted in retaliation even before Hoover signed the bill in 1930."
If I recall my history, in 1927 amidst what everyone knew was already bubble stock market, the Fed dropped rates substantially. This was done against the protests of President Coolidge, his secretary of treasury, and many other politicians and business tycoons at the time. It ushered in a stock market bubble of massive proportions and the coming bust. Protectionism had little to do with it.
Faeriedust
Right. The "protectionism" meme is a piece of corporate persiflage that's been duly trotted out every time someone suggests even SLIGHTLY protecting our decimated economy. According to Wiki: "the general view is that while it had negative results, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was not one of the main causes of the Great Depression because foreign trade was only a small sector of the U.S. economy."
Faeriedust
Well, what REALLY caused the Depression were the bills from WWI. Every nation in Europe had spent years of GNP on the War through debt, all the debts were due, and nobody could afford to pay them. So they loaded the whole pile on Germany, and then screamed when Germany literally could NOT make its payments, and then played extend-and-pretend for a decade. Which eventually caused the Credit-Anstallt collapse, and then everything finally fell like a house of cards.
Very like today, but the current run of bills were run up by pure financial frivolity and corruption. Although one could say that fighting a war that killed 1/4 of all European males of fighting age was an exercise in frivolity and corruption on the part of Europe's senile ruling elites. Nobody was willing to divide a shrinking pie equitably; they all thought it would be better to try grabbing The Whole Thing. Rather like world powers today, again.
CAPT DRAKE
educated, responsible position in a fortune 200company, and yes, will be voting for trump. why? sick to death of the existing elites, and the way they run things. a trump vote is a protest vote. a protest against the neocons and all their types that have caused so much misery around the world.
NoWayJose
If Trump is the Republucan nominee, you can bet that he will point out a lot of things Hillary has done. You know several others in the field will say nothing bad about Hillary. (A la Romney).
Not sure why Rubio still has support - Rand clobbered him on spending, including his new entitlement, and add Rubio's position on amnesty.
Faeriedust
With JEB polling in single digits and hopelessly befuddled, Rubio is the Great Hispanic Hope of the establishment Republocrats. He is being well-pimped, is all. Paul is clearly more intelligent, more articulate, and more well-informed; Trump is more forceful and popular (but independent!). Neither suits an establishment that wants to hold the reins behind the throne.
thesoothsayer
The Military Industrial Complex became entrenched after Eisenhower left office and they murdered Kennedy. Since then, they have taken over. We cover the world to spread our seeds and enrich our corporations. Our government does not protect the people, it protects the corporations, wall street. That is the reality.
dizzyfingers
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/11/trump-was-right-about-tpp-benefitting-china
|
|
|
www.howtogeek.com
... ... ...
Ever since we found out just how much government spying is going on, the security community has been systematically looking into every piece of technology that we use, from operating systems to network protocols, and we've learned just how insecure everything is.
... ... ...
That's the good news. The bad news is that nothing has fundamentally changed as far as the spying is concerned, despite all of the stories and media attention online. Organizations like the ACLU have tried, and failed, to even bring cases to figure out what's actually going on. Very few politicians even talk about it, and the ones that do have no power to change anything. People not only haven't exploded in anger, they don't even know the details, as John Oliver illustrated brilliantly in his interview with Snowden.
Everybody knows the government is probably spying on everything, and nobody really cares.
|
|
|
Zero Hedge
CochoreThe Saker wrote a very insightful post on this matter a while back
US political culture and propaganda has deeply ingrained in the minds of those exposed to the corporate media the notion that weapons or technologies win wars. This is not so. Or, not really so.
Yes, when the difference in technologies is very big AND very wide, meaning a full generational change across most key weapon systems, this can help. But not one weapon system alone, and not when the difference in quality is marginal.
Furthermore, a simpler, more "primitive" weapon which totally outclassed on the testing range can suddenly become much better suited to real combat then some techno-marvel. This is, by the way, one of the biggest problems with US weapons. Here is how they are designed:
You take all the latest and most advanced technologies, put them together, then create a new "superior" design, then design a new mission profile to fit that design, then sell (figuratively and literally) the new concept to Congress, especially to those Congressmen who come from the districts where production is planned - and, voilà, you have your brand new top of the line US weapon. And the costs? Who cares?! Just print some more money, and that's it.
Russian weapons are designed in a totally different way:
Take a mission profile, determine a need, then take all the cheapest, simplest and most reliable technologies available and combine them into your weapon system, then have that prototype tested in military units, then modify the weapons system according to the military's reaction and then produce it.
In other words, US weapons are designed my engineers and produced by businessmen and politicians, they are not really designed for war at all. Russian weapons, in contrast, are ordered by the military and created by design bureaus and they have only one objective: real, dirty and ugly warfare.
This is why the good old MiG-29 could fly better with its old fashioned hydraulics then the F-18s with fly-by-wire. It was never that the Russians could not built fly-by-wire aircraft (the SU-27 already had it), but that for the MiG-29 design goals, it was not needed.
What I am getting at here is two things: a) US weapons are not nearly as good as their marketing and b) "older" Russian weapons are often much better for actual warfighting.
Let's say the US delivers large quantities of Javelin's to the junta. So what? All that Russia will have to do in reaction is deliver 9M133 Kornets to the Novorussians. Can you guess which system is both cheaper and better?
When the US gave the junta counter-battery radars what did Russia do? The same thing. Now both sides have them.
Now here comes the key question: which of the two sides relies more on armor and artillery? Exactly - the junta.
When confronted with a problems, Americans love to do to things: throw money at it and throw technological "solutions" at it. This never works, but that is what they are good at.
The fact is that even in the 21st century what wins wars is not money or fancy gear, but courage, determination, moral strength, willpower and the rage which seizes you when faced with brute, ugly evil.
Occident Mortal
Russia does have some technological advantages over the U.S. though.
Russian missile technology is superior.
The S-400 surface to air defence system is two generations better than anything else in the world.
Russian missiles are superior too. Their ICMB's fly random path trajectories. They are the masters of multiple engine rockets.
Only the Russians have the ability to put a man in space.
America is a little self deluded and they too often extrapolate their warplane technology advantage into a blanket technology advantage. That's just not the case.
Perimetr
"Well now, it seems entirely possible that the US may have to fight a conventional war against the Russians . . ."
Sorry, exactly how long do you think a war with Russia would remain CONVENTIONAL?
As soon a one side or the other started to lose, what do you think would happen? They will surrender?
Demdere
Guys, do not believe anyone who says that any part of any system is managable. Saying "I can win a war" is the same as saying "I can see the future and inside other men's minds". No you an't. You are throwing dice every time, and war is a very negative-sum game, most players don't even break even. Both can easily lose very badly, far more han they ever could have conceviablely won. I believe all modern wars have been of thar variety.
The cost of bad government keeps increasing. The cost of sufficient firepower to cause a 1% loss of GDP is within the budget of a religious cult with intelligence service ties. We spend more than 25$ of our GDP on policing, monitoring, checking, verifying. The overhead of our military is at least 10% of GDP, our industry would kill for that kind of cost advantage. The costs of dishonest are so huge.
runswithscissors
And why is the US seeking a "battle" with Russia anyway? This is completely absurd....are the neo-cons/neo-libs this fucked up?
V for ...Yep. The new Bolsheviks are criminally insane.
1033eruth
The US? No, Uncle Fraud is trying to get Americans to condone and approve another war through constant media manipulation.
Every major war needs public approval. It doesn't happen until the media maneuvers American zombies into acceptance.
Kent State was the beginning of the end of the Vietnam war. The losses we were incurring were too great for the public to accept. Which also helps to explain why we have switched over to remote control and drone warfare. We can still spend ocean carriers of money which the American public overlooks as a cost for "safety" and the loss of life is minimized therefore less backlash.
Tell me why this hasn't occurred to you?
booboo
More scarey bullshit to whip up more support for spending trillions on another armored up coffin, flying battleship or space shotgun, not that I am under any illusion that the U.S. would win but God Damn, if you don't start a fucking war then you won't have to fight a war.
Blankone
JustObservingYes, this. And it works well because all sides lap it up. The MIC has the politicians push the agenda and fear. TPTB have the MSM push it and the sheep eat it up like always. The Putin fan club jumps on the band wagon because its the fantasy they wish was true.
Russia Would "Annihilate" US In Head-To-Head BattleNo wonder the Nobel Prize Winner is pushing Putin into a new world war. CIA created ISIS blows up Russian passenger jet. F-15s sent to Turkey to attack Russian jets. Obama continues to attack oil to bankrupt Russia.
US deploys F-15s to Syria, targeting Russian jets
By Thomas Gaist, 7 November 2015
The US will send a squadron of F-15C fighter jets to Turkey's Incirlik air base, the US Defense Department (DOD) announced on Friday. The nature of the US war planes, which are specifically designed for dogfighting with other highly advanced fighter jets, indicates that the deployment carries a significance far beyond what its small scale would suggest.
The F-15 line of combat jets was developed in response to the unveiling in 1967 of the Soviet Union's MiG-25 "Foxbat" interceptor.
Because they are designed for air-to-air combat against other major powers, the US has, until now, seen no need to deploy the F-15C model to its Middle Eastern and Central Asian war theaters, where the opposing forces have no warplanes.
The sudden deployment, coming less than two months after Russia began sending its own SU-30 fighters to its new airbase at Latakia, makes clear that the jets have been deployed in response to Moscow's air campaign.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/11/07/syri-n07.html
Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, allegedly struck a deal with King Abdullah in September under which the Saudis would sell crude at below the prevailing market price. That would help explain why the price has been falling at a time when, given the turmoil in Iraq and Syria caused by Islamic State, it would normally have been rising.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/nov/09/us-iran-r...
Dark Daze
I dispute that the F-15 was ever intended as a dogfighter. It is fast, much faster than the SU-30 and it can carry an impressive bomb load, but I believe the original design was rapid penetration of enemy defenses and air to ground, not air superiority. All that of course comes only when the F-15 is loaded down with not only fuselage conformant fuel tanks but drop tanks as well, reducing it's effectiveness. When you compare thrust, aerodynamics, stand off weapons and sheer manoevering capability the SU-30 wins hands down. The only air-to-air weapon the F-15's have been retrofitted with that even comes close to the air-to-air that the Russians have is the British Meteor, but that has never been tested. It is a Mach 4 weapon so the SU-30 couldn't outrun it or out climb it, but I remain to be convinced about it's capabilities.
The larger problem for the Americans is that they are stationing their F-15's at Incirlik, which is only 15 minutes from Latakia. Incirlikk was a poor choice for them to be stationing those units when the stated intention was to fly missions against ISIS. If the Syrians/Russians detect the F-15's coming south instead of going east they will have only a few moments to decide on whether to launch S-400's against them, and in an environment that might have a heigntened level of intensity that is a danger. Needless to say, an S-400 launced against an F-15 will take the later out in seconds and no amount of chaffe of manoevering with change that scenario. Check mate.
Blankone
Check mate? They are moving that close to the Russian bases to squeeze Russia and occupy the area. It is a sign they have no fear of Russia being willng to confront.
Dark Daze
Either that or a sign of sheer stupidity and a willingness to sacrifice men and material.
Talleyrand
Russia is not going to attack the Baltic states. Russia is not going to invade Poland. Russia is not going to attack the anachronism that is NATO.
On the other hand, invading Russia has, historically, proven to be a bad idea.
cowdiddly
Just more of this Russophobia boogeyman bullshit to get more funds appropriated for their sick toys and paychecks so they can continue getting their butt kicked all over the globe by anyone more powerful than Somalia.
Parrotile
Jack, Russia has no reason to "invade Europe" since Europe has nothing of immediate benefit to Russia. Having said that Russia will certainly not "telegraph" their intentions by troop movements, and will certainly use their rather capable missile tech to "soften up" EU defences should the opportunity arise. Air defence needs runways, and armies need reliable bulk transport (motorways / rail), the key locations of which (marshalling yards / major intersections) are well known to Russia.
They will not just "roll over the border" and say "come and get us" to the West.
Having said the above, the prevailing view "on the ground" in Moscow is that it will be NATO that pre-emptively attacks Russia, hence the refurbishing and re-provisioning of their network of Civil Defence shelters, info via Brother in Law (BNP Paribas Moscow).
tarabel
Let's review here...
NATO is larger than it ever was before, and Russia is much smaller and weaker than the USSR/Warsaw Pact.
Soviet armor is not parked in central Germany any more.
Vladimir Putin complains endlessly about NATO forces being forward deployed to his border regions.
Virtually every single member of the US military and many cadres from other NATO nations have years of real world battlefield experience, while only a small number of Russians have been shot at.
US/EU GDP approaches 40 trillion dollars. Russia has fallen down below 2 trillion due to the drop in oil prices. 25 to 1 disparity.
US population 330 million. EU population 504 million. Russian population 142 million. 6-1 disparity.
Russian "breakout" from nuclear treaties that limited weapons to an approximate 1-1 parity means that they are stronger in nuclear weapons than the United States, but the nuclear forces of the UK and France mean that the West still possesses a slight but shrinking superiority here
And now you understand why Russia has officially and unilaterally renounced the solemn old Soviet declaration of "no first use" of nuclear weapons. Any conventional war between the West and Russia will end in ruin for Russia even if they can make some hay early on. The economic and population disparities are far too wide for Putin to prevail or even defend his country-- unless he goes nuclear. It is the only type of warfighting in which the sides are remotely equal.
The West has no need or interest in going nuclear on Russia in the event of hostilities. No matter what sort of initial success Russian armies may achieve in the early stages of a war that starts next door to their depots, the economic power of the West is far too much for him to overcome with conventional means.
Draw your own conclusions as to who needs to light the first Roman Candle.
rejected
"Virtually every single member of the US military and many cadres from other NATO nations have years of real world battlefield experience, while only a small number of Russians have been shot at."
Yes,,, but fighting who? Vietnam, a real war, was too long ago. The veterans are old so their experience will be of no use.
The Iraqi's were surrendering so fast it was slowing down the advance on Baghdad.
Libya,,, bombed into a failed state,,, other than the Marines having to defend the gun running US Ambassador there was no fighting.
In Syria our Ally "moderate terrorists" are / was doing the grunt work against Assad.
And we're still fighting (losing) the cave dwellers of Afghanistan 15 years later. In fact they are now advancing against the puppet US government.
Russia will never attack the West but the West will attack Russia because the West is broke. That GDP your referring to was purchased by central bank printing.
The Russian Army will be defending their nation, Nato/US Armies will be trying to establish an empire.
Who do you think will have the most incentive.
HyeM
This is all propaganda.... they're using words like "Annihilate" to terrify the public and get an even larger budget for the military-industrial complex to benefit them and their friends in the defense industry. For the last 80 years we were going to be "Annihilated", first by the Soviet Army, and now this crap.
rbg81
I remember freshman ROTC lectures back in 1979. The USSR was poised to invade West Germany via the Fulda Gap--they could come over at any minute. Ivan was ten feet tall. Blah, blah, blah. Then, after the Berlin Wall fell, two generations of scary propaganda looked like a big joke. Nothing ever changes.
I Write Code
Anybody interested, please click on the link and read the Politico article yourself.
This ZH posting completely misrepresents what the article says.
The article is really about McMaster and the good news that he's still in the game at the Pentagon.
And in two out of three scenarios the US beats Russia, apparently even in this expeditionary scenario.
Now, the whole thing is absurd. The idea that the US and Russia would end up firing major weapons at each other is a mutual nightmare. And the idea that the US would pit a small force against Russia, right against Russian territory, and expect to win, is doubly absurd.
But the Politico article is actually worth reading anyway, and for that, thank you ZH.
rejected
Great!!! Our team wins!
Could have went any way....
V for ...
Fairness, justice, freedom. These are more than words. They are deeds. That was the pledge of the U.S. Military code before it was overtaken by dual citizens like the Wolfowitz Doctrine, Project for a New American Century; those who declare to be the 'chosen ones', and use my country, my people's blood and treasure.
Get off your knees, US Military Code. I have no interest in the failures of dual citizens, and nor should you. My country, tis of thee. Foreigners should fund their own fight.
This:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces
Then this:
Temerity Trader
"Carter says Russia, China potentially threaten global order." WTF! These idiots really believe America rules the world! Every country should fear us and do as we say. No other country should EVER dare to challenge our oligarchy. Good for Russia and China for finally saying enough. We patrol the South China Sea like it's our own f***ing bathtub. If China did that to us in the Gulf of Mexico we would already be at war. The GLOBAL F***ING ORDER? Who made us kings of the world?
These guys are sick. We need to pull our fleets and troops out and go home and stay there. Let China and Russia deal with Japan, Taiwan and Syria. Guaranteed these guys will get us into a major war soon. Obama is too weak to fight the MIC. They fill his head with crap about how no country should dare to challenge us.
Americans cannot tolerate large losses. They expect to always kick ass and suffer few losses. The new missile technology has changed all that. Watch the reaction when one of our aircraft carriers goes to the bottom from a dozen simultaneous missile strikes. The oligarchs know they can count on Joe Sixpack believing all their propaganda spewing forth and set his 300lb ass in his living room chair saying, "Let's go kick China and Russia's asses."
seek
If the neocons think they can bring war to soil mere miles away from Russia and not get a nuclear response if they start losing or we breach a russian boder, they're insane. Unfortunately one look at current policy confirms that yes, indeed, they're insane. Just pray they only target political and financial centers when the missiles fly. Might leave us in a better place.
lasvegaspersona
Eisenhower said war is man's greatest folly and those who pursue it or fail to prevent it are a black mark on all of humanity
...wonder if these military geniuses have read THAT military history...
V for ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY
Eisenhower warned about a new thing in his time, something called a military industrial complex.
The modern Zionist talks about the MIC being a conspiracy theory, but Eisenhower said it would have 'grave implications', and we 'must guard against ...the military industrial complex...never let it endanger our liberties...'.
Charles Offdensen
What a bullshit article. If the US were to truly go all out war and not give a damn about public opinion, which is media driven for the purpose of tying our hands visa vie Amercan public feeling and emotions, we would by any stretch of the means and definition wipe the floor with any country any where.
The problem is that most people don't realize or care to understand what it takes to win a war. Since when did the enemy give a rats ass about how they killed us. They don't, so why should we care about them or the civilians who have been so brutalized to the point of pure survival who only want the pain to stop no matter who delivers it. And that includes their slave masters which has been discussed ad nausium her at ZH.
Ask yourself. Do you really think people who have been raped and brutalized are going to be better off if we play nice or are they going to do whatever it takes to survive and that means not giving a shit about anyone else but you.
War is hell. There are no two ways about it. But do you sacrifice your objective just to win the hearts and minds of those that would probably shoot you because they can't tell which way is up or down? Especially those from a distinction all third world and seventh century mentality.
To win you have to do what is necessary regardless of judgment because judgment is what defeats us in battle.
The horror!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o6tV1yfEPTk
For the record I tried!!!
V for ...
Blood is thicker than water. The dual citizens think they have captured the USA. I know they have a tiger by the tail.
'they' serve money first by their hideous Talmud, and 'they' are going to die by it.
'they' enjoyed the protection of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, yet strive to destroy those American ways.
F'ck 'em. Don't worry about them.. Let them die in their desert sandpit.
Dark Daze
There was a time, not so long ago, when the US at least tried to maintain the illusion that they were the 'good guys'. Of course history paints an entirely different picture. As I have written many times, from Latin America, South America, China, South East Asia, Africa and now the middle east, the US has overthrown, bombed, murdered, screwed over, enslaved and otherwise brutalised most of the worlds population. Let's not forget that it was less than 40 years from the American Revolution when the US started it's wars of conquest by trying to invade Canada while Britain was tied up with Napoleon.
Glad to see that there is at leasrt one American who makes no bones about his/her true intentions, which is total world domination. Unfortunately for you, you're economy is wrecked, your banks and government are bankrupt, you have no gold left, your population is seething in it's anger and you're vaunted war machine is phoney. So go ahead, try the Chinese or the Russians on for size and see what happens.
docinthehouse
If Russia and China were smart, they would improve theirr own country's infrastructure and let the West continue to rot of its own accord. You get what you accept Ameirca and the west have becomes slaves to debt and a tolerance of freeloading. You get what you accept.
Setarcos
Er! Russia and China ARE improving their infrastructures, Russia especially since sanctions gave a strong impetus.
Have you seen the new bridge being built to Crimea and what a about Sochi, the new technology centre near Moscow, revitalized Vladivostok and the new Cosmodrom, for instance.
Agricultural production is way up and manufacturing is being ramped up.
marcusfenix
as an aside to this piece there was another interesting disclosure regarding the growing gaps in capabilities the US would have to overcome if Washington ever engaged Russia in a conventional war.
namely the cruise missile strikes from the Caspian flotilla, while they did not make a difference in the course of the battle in Syria they did show that Russia has a capability that the US Navy does not and could put them at a serious disadvantage in any engagement. it wasn't the missiles themselves though they did show a vast improvement in Russian long range guided missile capabilities but how they were delivered that is cause for concern in DC.
unlike the US navy which relies exclusively on larger blue water destroyers for it's long range cruise missile delivery, the missiles fired from the Caspian sea were launched from much smaller, faster and more agile corvettes. long range strike capability from a package that is much harder to find, track, target and hit than the US navy's guided missile and aegis destroyers.
this capability has countless advantages but Washington never pursued it's development and apparently did not expect Moscow to either. but now not only did Moscow do just that they proved to the world that they can use it in combat in essence rendering the entire US navy's carrier fleet obsolete. consider this small of a ship, under 90 tons, can position itself anywhere up to 900 miles away and fire up to 12 LRAS missiles from areas where larger ships and even subs simply can not operate. all while still retaining blue water mission capabilities.
it is simply smaller, faster, more flexible, more cost effective and smarter than anything the US navy has to offer. these corvettes are relatively easy to produce and maintain and can be built in large numbers on short notice, they are hard to hunt and hard to kill and can sink carriers from hundreds of miles away.
instead of investing in practical, usable tech like this DC sinks one trillion dollars in the F-35 which still isn't near production and is already obsolete. as one US air force general testified before congress the Russians have had the ability to overcome the Lightnings stealth capabilities for at least 15 years now and in a dog fight it would get shredded by even a 1960's Mig 21 because it is to under powered to generate attack angels and "turns like a garbage truck".
now I wonder how many guided missile corvettes could one trillion dollars buy?
Flankspeed60
Any negative assessment of US military capability originating from within the military-industrial complex, must necessarily be considered suspect. First, that assessment would be considered highly classified, unless it was pre-approved and deliberately released to scare more money out of already fleeced taxpayers. Second, .Gov used the same propaganda in our decades-long cold war with the USSR to justify massive spending and involvement in global conflicts. Profligate spending and profligate lies leave them with no credibility.
tool
V for ...Exactly talking their own book fear mongering to increase their allocated budget and by god they will find away to spend every last cent. Remember the recent Afghan compressed natural gas outlet should have cost 500k actually cost billions!
Why? November 22 1963. A coup d'etat.
Jack defied the moneychangers, and Israel's want of nuclear weapons.
|
|
|
Nov 06, 2015 | The New York Time
Facebook is so far defying concerns about its spending habits - a criticism that has at times also plagued Amazon and Alphabet's Google - because the social network is on a short list of tech companies that make money from the wealth of mobile visitors to its smartphone app and website. The company said mobile advertising in the third quarter accounted for a colossal 78 percent of its ad revenue, up from 66 percent a year ago.
... ... ...
Revenue was also bolstered by Facebook increasing the number of ads it showed users over the past year, said David Wehner, the company's chief financial officer. And video advertising, a growth area for Facebook, is on the rise: More than eight billion video views happen on the social network every day, the company said.
Hand in hand with the increased advertising is more users to view the promotions. The number of daily active users of Facebook exceeded one billion for the first time in the quarter, up 17 percent from a year earlier, with monthly active mobile users up 23 percent, to 1.4 billion.
... ... ...
Beyond the properties it owns, Facebook is dabbling in partnerships with media companies that could prove lucrative in the future. In May, the company debuted a feature called Instant Articles with a handful of publishers, including The New York Times, which lets users read articles from directly inside the Facebook app without being directed to a web browser.
|
|
|
11/05/15 | Observer
On November 2, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in New York, President Barack Obama poked fun of the Republicans, joking that if they cannot handle CNBC moderators how could they possibly handle Russia's Vladimir Putin?
"Every one of these candidates says, 'Obama's weak, Putin's kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he's gonna straighten out.' …and then it turns out they can't handle a bunch of CNBC moderators!" Mr. Obama said.
"I mean, let me tell you: if you can't handle those guys," he continued, laughing, "I don't think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you."
While Mr. Obama had his fun, he neglected to mention more serious matters-the Russian plane crash over the Sinai peninsula on October 31 that took the lives of all 224 passengers on board.
Where Mr. Obama failed, other Western and world leaders expressed their condolences-British Prime-Minister David Cameron, Polish President Andzej Duda, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping among them.
On his Twitter page, Mr. Cameron wrote: "PM expresses condolences to President Putin over Sinai plane crash. Britain shares Russia's pain and grief."
Mr. Hollande wrote: "[A]fter the occurred tragedy [President] sends his condolences to President Putin and expresses his solidarity with the Russian people.."
Even Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko took to Twitter with the following: "I express my personal condolences to all the families of those perished in the catastrophe of the Russian passenger plane over Egypt."
Not Mr. Obama.
The Kremlin isn't worrying why Barack Obama didn't send condolences, reported Interfax. "Probably, this should not be explained by the Kremlin," said Dmitry Peskov, the Press Secretary to the Russian President, answering why there was no official telegram from Mr. Obama. Mr. Peskov said there were "a lot" of messages from other world leaders.
Secretary of State John Kerry expressed condolences on behalf of "all American people" to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov-that was all, said Putin's press secretary.
Russia's national news service Information Agency outed Mr. Obama as "the only world leader that did not express his condolences [to Russia] on the air catastrophe A-321."
"This is personal," wrote Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, adding "the current American administration will go down in history as one of the most weak and unprofessional with no affinity for etiquette and good manners."
|
|
|
11/05/15 | Observer
Firefox ups its privacy game with version 42.
Mozilla made a bit of a splash this week with the announcement of its updated "private mode" in Firefox, but it's worth spelling out exactly why: Firefox's enhanced privacy mode blocks web trackers.
Users familiar with Chrome's "Incognito Mode" may assume that's what it does as well, but it doesn't. It's no fault of Google or the Chromium Project if someone misunderstands the degree of protection. The company is clear in its FAQ: all Incognito Mode does is keep your browsing out of the browser's history.
'We think that when you launch private browsing you're telling us that you want more control over the data you share on the web.'
Firefox's new "Private Mode" one-ups user protection here by automatically blocking web trackers. Nick Nguyen, Vice President for Product at Mozilla, says in the video announcement, "We think that when you launch private browsing you're telling us that you want more control over the data you share on the web." That sounds right. In fact, most people probably think private modes provide more safety than they do.
Firefox has been working to educate web users about the prevalence of trackers for a long time. In 2012, it introduced Collusion to help users visualize just how many spying eyes were in the background of their browsing (a tool now known by the milquetoast name 'Lightbeam') and how they follow you around.
Privacy nuts might be thinking, "Hey, isn't the new Private Mode basically doing what the Ghostery add-on/extension does already? It looks that way. Ghostery was not immediately available for comment on this story. This reporter started using Ghostery in earnest in the last few weeks, and while it does bust the odd page, overall, it makes the web much faster. As Mr. Nguyen says in the video, Firefox's new mode should do the roughly the same.
The best way to update Firefox is within the 'About Firefox' dialogue. Open it and let it check for updates (if it doesn't say version 42.0 or higher, the browser doesn't have it). On Macs, find "About Firefox" under the "Firefox" tab in the menu bar. On a PC, find it in the hamburger menu in the upper right.
Competition in the browser battles keeps improving the functionality of the web. When Chrome first came along, Firefox had become incredibly bloated.
Notice of what's new in 'Private Mode' when opened in Firefox, after updating. (Screenshot: Firefox)
Then, Chrome popularized the notion of incognito browsing, back when the main privacy concern was that our roommate would look at our browsing history to see how often we were visiting Harry Potter fansites (shout out to stand-up comic, Ophira Eisenberg, for that one).
As the web itself has become bloated with spyware, incorporating tracker blocking directly into the structure of the world's second most popular browser is a strong incentive for web managers to be more judicious about the stuff they load up in the background of websites.
Don't forget, though, that even with trackers blocked, determined sites can probably identify visitors and they can definitely profile, using browser fingerprinting. If you really want to hide, use Tor. If you're mega paranoid, try the Tails OS.
|
|
|
Oct 01, 2015 | observer.com
Federal law enforcement began planning to use license plate readers in 2009 to track cars that visited gun shows against cars that crossed the border into Mexico, according to notes from a meeting between United States and Mexican law enforcement, released on Wikileaks. The notes were taken by Marko Papic, then of Stratfor, a company that describes itself as a publisher of geopolitical intelligence.
License plate readers are becoming a standard tool for local and national law enforcement across the country. In 2013, the ACLU showed that state and local law enforcement were widely documenting drivers' movements. Ars Technica looked at license plate data collected in Oakland. In January, the ACLU described documents attained from the Drug Enforcement Agency under the Freedom of Information Act that showed that agency has been working closely with state and local law enforcement. Many of the findings in these latter documents corroborate some of the insights provided by the 2009 meeting notes on Wikileaks.
Wikileaks began publishing these emails in February 2012, as the "Global Intelligence Files," as the Observer previously reported. The documents have to be read with some caution. These were reportedly attained by hackers in December 2011. A Stratfor spokesperson declined to comment on the leaked emails, referring the Observer instead to its 2012 statement, which says, "Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic. We will not validate either."
While it's hard to imagine that such a giant trove could be completely fabricated, there is also no way to know whether or not some of it was tampered with. That said, details about federal license plate reader programs largely square with subsequent findings about the surveillance systems.
The meeting appears to have been primarily concerned with arms control, but related matters, such as illegal drug traffic and the Zetas, come up as well. The focus of the meeting appears to be information sharing among the various authorities, from both countries. Among other initiatives, the notes describe the origins of a sophisticated national system of automobile surveillance.
Here are some findings on law enforcement technology, with an emphasis on tracking automobiles:
- The program wasn't fully live in 2009. The notes read, "Mr. 147 asked about the License Plate Reader program and Mr. 983 from DEA responded that they were still in the testing phase but that once completed the database would be available for use by everyone." However, an email found by the ACLU from 2010 said that the DEA was sharing information with local law enforcement as of May 2009. (People at the meeting are largely referred to by numbers throughout the notes)
- Gun shows. The officials in the meeting suspect that a lot of guns that reach Mexico come from American gun shows. The Ambassador from Mexico is cited as believing that shows were the main source of firearms coming into his country. The ATF then says that investigating gun shows is "touchy."
- Cross-referencing. Despite the sensitivity, the ATF hoped to be able to identify vehicles that visited gun shows and then crossed the border. The notes read, "[Mr. 192] noted that they would do the check once they came into Mexico. Mr. 009 stated part of the new ways that are being looked at is incorporating that type of information into license plate readers for local law enforcement. He added that DEA is going to provide more and more license plate readers especially southbound." This last point squares with ACLU's finding, which found a 2010 document that said the DEA had 41 readers set up in southern border states.
- ATF and the NRA. Apparently law enforcement checks in with the gun rights advocates. Mr. 123 is identified as an ATF employee in the hacked email. In a conversation about the federal government's gun tracking system, eTrace, the notes attribute to him the following, "He added that they are in constant communication with Mr. Templeton who has the Cross Roads of the West Gun Show as well as NRA attorneys and that there had been no complaints on how things were moving." Bob Templeton is shown as the President of the National Association of Arms Shows on this op-ed and runs the gun show mentioned, according to its site.
- Other data. The notes also indicate that the ATF was working on ways to identify people who bought more guns at gun shows than their income should allow. It also indicated that the United States' gun tracking system was being translated into Spanish, so that Mexican authorities could check guns against American records.
The notes themselves are not dated, but the email containing them is dated September 4, 2009. It provides no names, but it cites people from the Mexican Embassy, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firerearms, DEA, Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and others. The only person named is Marko Papic, who identifies himself in this hacked email. Stephen Meiners circulated Mr. Papic's notes from the summit's morning and afternoon session in one email.
The Supreme Court of California is set to review police's exemption to sharing information on how they use license plate reader data in that state. A court in Fairfax County, Virginia, is set to consider a suit against police there over local law enforcement keeping and sharing of data about people not suspected of a crime.
The DEA and the ATF did not reply to a request for comment for this story.
|
|
|
observer.com
When it was revealed in 2013 that the NSA and its UK equivalent, GCHQ, routinely spied on the German government, artists Mathias Jud and Christoph Wachter came up with a plan.
They installed a series of antennas on the roof of the Swiss Embassy in Berlin and another giant antenna on the roof of the Academy of Arts, which is located exactly between the listening posts of the NSA and GCHQ. This created an open communication network, meaning that with the use of any wifi-enabled device, anyone could send anything (text messages, voice calls, photos and files) anonymously for those listening to hear.
"If people are spying on us, it stands to reason that they have to listen to what we are saying," Mr. Jud said in a TED Talk on the subject that was filmed at TED Global London in September and uploaded onto Ted.com today.
This was perfectly legal, and they named the project "Can You Hear Me?"
To no surprise, there was a ton of trolling. One message read, "This is the NSA. In God we trust. In all others we track!!!!!" Another said, "Agents, what twisted story of yourself will you tell your grandchildren?" One particularly humorous message jokingly pleaded, "@NSA My neighbors are noisy. Please send a drone strike."
Watch the full talk here for more trolling messages and details about the project:
... ... ...
|
|
|
observer.com
The most secure and, at the same time, usable, method of creating, sharing and storing information is to write it up on a manual typewriter and store it in a locked filing cabinet
If the CIA's Director John Brennan can't keep his emails private, who can? Sadly, the fact that email and instant messaging are far more convenient than communicating via papers in envelopes or by actually talking on the phone, or (God forbid) face to face, these technologies are far more insecure. Could it be that the old ways protected both secrecy and privacy far better than what we have now?
The men and women in the United States government assigned to protect our nation's most important secrets have good reason to quote Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet who proclaimed, "The typewriter is holy." For that matter so are pens, pencils, carbon paper and ordinary paper. In the digital age privacy as we once knew it, is dead, not just for ordinary citizens, but for government officials including, apparently, the head of the CIA-not to mention our former Secretary of State. Neither the NSA nor the U.S. military have been able to keep their secrets from being exposed by the likes of WikiLeaks or Edward Snowden.
... ... ...
Given America's failures to protect our own secret information, one hopes and wishes that the U.S. is as successful at stealing information from our potential foes as they are at stealing from us.
In the private sector, hackers steal information from countless companies, ranging from Target to Ashley Madison. The banks rarely let on how badly or how often they are victimized by cybercrime, but rumor has it that it is significant. At least for now, the incentives for making and selling effective cyber security systems are nowhere near as powerful as the incentives for building systems that can steal secret or private information from individuals, as well as from corporations and governments. In the digital age, privacy is gone.
Increasingly, organizations and individuals are rediscovering the virtues of paper. Non-digital media are simply invulnerable to hacking. Stealing information from a typewriter is harder than stealing it from a word processor, computer or server. A physical file with sheets of paper covered in words written either by hand or by typewriter is a safer place to store confidential information than any electronic data storage system yet devised.
|
|
|
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Today it's race, class, gender, and sexuality that claim pride of place. The effect, whether intended or not, is that comforting fantasies go unchallenged and lodge themselves ever more deeply in the public consciousness. So the "Good War" remains ever good, with the "Greatest Generation" ever great.
|
|
|
The Guardian
Critics call it a revived snooper's charter, because the government wants police and spies to be given access to the web browsing history of everyone in Britain.
However, Theresa May says her measures would require internet companies to store data about customers that amount to "simply the modern equivalent of an itemised phone bill".
Who is right? And is there anything you can do to make your communications more secure?
What exactly is the government after?The government is attempting to push into law the ability for law enforcement agencies to be able to look at 12 months of what they are calling "internet connection records", limited to the website domains that UK internet users visit.
This is the log of websites that you visit through your internet service provider (ISP), commonly called internet browsing history, and is different from the history stored by your internet browser, such as Microsoft's Edge, Apple's Safari or Google's Chrome.
It does not cover specific pages: so police and spies will not be able to access that level of detail. That means they would know that a person has spent time on the Guardian website, but not what article they read.
Clearing your browser history or using private or incognito browsing modes do nothing to affect your browsing history stored by the ISP.
What will they be able to learn about my internet activity?Information about the sites you visit can be very revealing. The data would show if a person has regularly visited Ashley Madison – the website that helped facilitate extramarital affairs. A visit to an Alcoholics Anonymous website or an abortion advice service could reveal far more than you would like the government or law enforcement to know.
The logged internet activity is also likely to reveal who a person banks with, the social media they use, whether they have considered travelling (eg by visiting an airline homepage) and a range of information that could in turn link to other sources of personal information.
Who will store my web browsing data?The onus is on ISPs – the companies that users pay to provide access to the internet – to store the browsing history of its customers for 12 months. That includes fixed line broadband providers, such as BT, TalkTalk, Sky and Virgin, but also mobile phone providers such as EE, O2, Three and Vodafone.
... ... ...
Don't ISPs already store this data?
They already store a limited amount of data on customer communications for a minimum of one year and have done for some time, governed by the EU's data retention directive. That data can be accessed under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa).
The new bill will enshrine the storage of browsing history and access to that data in law.
Can people hide their internet browsing history?There are a few ways to prevent the collection of your browsing history data, but each way is a compromise.
The most obvious way is the use of virtual private networks (VPNs). They channel your data from your computer through your ISP to a third-party service before immersing on the internet. In doing so they can obfuscate your data from your ISP and therefore the government's collection of browsing history.
Companies routinely use VPNs to secure connections to services when off-site such as home workers. Various companies such as HotspotShield offer both free or paid-for VPN services to users.
Using the Tor browser, freely available from the Tor project, is another way to hide what you're doing from your ISP and takes things a stage further. It allows users to connect directly to a network of computers that route your traffic by bouncing it around other computers connected to Tor before emerging on the open internet.
Your ISP will see that you are connected to Tor, but not what you are doing with it. But not everybody has the technical skills to be comfortable using Tor.
Is there any downside to using a VPN?In using a VPN you are placing all your trust in the company that operates the VPN to both secure your data and repel third parties from intercepting your connection. A VPN based in the UK may also be required to keep a log of your browsing history in the same way an ISP would.
The speed of your internet connection is also limited by the VPN. Most free services are slow, some paid-for services are faster.
Tor also risks users having their data intercepted, either at the point of exit from the Tor network to the open internet or along the path. This is technically tricky, however. Because your internet traffic is bounced between computers before reaching you, Tor can be particularly slow.
Can I protest-browse to show I'm unhappy with the new law?One way to prevent an accurate profile of your browsing history from being built could be to visit random sites. Visiting nine random domains for every website you actually want to visit would increase the amount of data that your ISP has to store tenfold. But not everybody has the patience for that.
At some point it will be very difficult to store that much data, should everyone begin doing so.
... ... ...
|
|
|
www.nakedcapitalism.com
Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the Rise in the US naked capitalism
Uahsenaa, November 3, 2015 at 11:26 am
I want to expand on the point about feudalism, since it's even more apt than the article lets on. It was not "rule by the rich," which implies an oligarchic class whose members are more or less free agents in cahoots with one another. Rather, feudalism is a hierarchical system of distributed administration. A king is nominally in charge or "owns" a kingdom, but he has lords who administer its first primary division, the fiefdom. Lords in turn have vassals, who administer further subdivisions or, in the cases of smaller fiefs, different aspects of governance. Vassals may have their own captains and middle managers, typically knights but also clerks and priests, who in turn employ apprentices/novices/pages who train under them so as to one day move up to middle management. If this is starting to resemble modern corporate structure, then bonus points to you.
This means feudalism found a way to render complicit in a larger system of administration people who had no direct and often no real stake in the produce of its mass mobilization of labor. Anyone in a position of vassalage was dependent upon the largess of his immediate patron/lord/whatever for both his status and nominal wealth. The lowest rungs of the administrative ladder were responsible for keeping the peasants, the pool of labor, in line either through force or through the very same system of dependence upon largess that frames the lord/vassal relationship. Occasionally, the peasants recognize that no one is below them in this pyramid scheme, and so they revolt, but for the most part they were resigned to the status quo, because there seemed to be no locus of power to topple. Sure, you could overthrow the king, but that would do nothing to deter the power of the lords. You could overthrow your local lord, but the king could just install a new one.
Transpose to the modern day. A CEO may resign in disgrace over some scandal, but that does little to challenge the underlings who carried out his orders. You might get your terrible boss fired for his tendency to sexually harass anyone who walks in the door, but what's to stop the regional manager from hiring someone who works you to the bone. Sometimes the peas–err, employees revolt and form a union, but we all know what means have been employed over the years to do away with that.
tl;dr – Feudalism: it's about the structure, not the classes
Lambert Strether, November 3, 2015 at 2:19 pmHmm. I don't think a serf can be a vassal. The vassals sound a lot like the 20%. The serfs would be the 80%. I'm guessing class is alive and well.
James Levy, November 3, 2015 at 2:38 pm
You wouldn't be a vassal (that was a very small percentage of the population) but you could have ties of patronage with the people above you, and in fact that was critical to all societies until the Victorians made nepotism a bad word and the ethic of meritocracy (however bastardized today) took shape. If you wanted your physical labor obligation converted into a money payment so you could spend more time and effort on your own holding, or you needed help in tough times, or the 99 year lease on your leasehold was coming due, or you wanted to get your son into the local priory, etc. you needed a friend or friends in higher places. The granting or refusal of favors counted for everything, and kept many on the straight and narrow, actively or passively supporting the system as it was.
Uahsenaa, November 3, 2015 at 2:39 pm
It's not that peasants can be vassals in the overall order so much as they are in the subject position, but without the attendant capacity to then lord it over someone beneath them. Lord/vassal in feudalism are also generic terms to describe members of a fixed relationship of patronage. It's confusing, because those terms are also used for levels of the overall hierarchy.
The true outliers here are the contemporaneous merchants, craftsmen, and freeholders (yeomen) who are necessary for things to run properly but are not satisfactorily accounted for by the overall system of governance, in part because it was land based. Merchants and craftsmen in particular tended not to be tied to any one place, since their services were often needed all over and only for limited periods of time. The primary administrative apparatus for craftsmen were the guilds. Merchants fell into any number of systems of organization and often into none at all, thus, according to the old Marxist genealogy, capitalism overthrows feudalism.
Peasants may have had something like a class consciousness on occasion, but I'm not entirely convinced it's useful to think of them in that way. In Japan, for instance, peasants were of a much higher social status than merchants and craftsmen, technically, yet their lives were substantially more miserable by any modern economic measure.
visitor, November 3, 2015 at 4:01 pm
I think that the article gets it seriously wrong about feudalism - an example of what Yves calls "stripping words of their meaning".
First of all, feudalism was actually an invention of an older, powerful, even more hierarchical organization: the Catholic Church.
The Church realized early on that imposing its ideal of a theocratic State ("city of God") led by the Pope upon the strong-headed barbarian chiefs (Lombards, Franks, Wisigoths and others) that set up various kingdoms in Europe was impossible.
Hence the second best approach, feudalism: a double hierarchy (worldly and spiritual). The populations of Europe were subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation, judicial and other economic powers (such as the right to determine when and for whom to work).
Second, there was a class of wealthy people which did not quite fit in the feudal hierarchy - in particular, they had no vassals, nor, despite their wealth, any fiefdom: merchants, financiers, the emerging burger class in cities. They were the ones actually lending money to feudal lords.
Third, the problem for underlings was never to overthrow the king (this was a hobby for princely families), and extremely rarely the local lord (which inevitably brought the full brunt of the feudal hierarchy to bear on the seditious populace).
Historically, what cities and rural communities struggled for was to be placed directly under the authority of the king or (Holy Roman Germanic) emperor. This entailed the rights to self-administration, freedom from most egregious taxes and corvées from feudal seigneurs, recognition of local laws and customs, and the possibility to render justice without deferring to local lords.
The king/emperor was happy to receive taxes directly from the city/community without them seeping away in the pockets of members of the inextricable feudal hierarchy; he would from time to time require troops for his host, hence reducing the dependency on troops from his vassal lords; and he would rarely be called to intervene in major legal disputes. Overall, he was way too busy to have time micromanaging those who swore direct allegiance to him - which was exactly what Basque communities, German towns and Swiss peasants wanted.
Therefore, an equivalence between feudalism and the current organizational make-up of society dominated by for-profit entities does not make sense.
Lambert Strether, November 3, 2015 at 4:11 pm
"the problem for underlings was never to overthrow the King"
Not even in the peasant revolts?
visitor, November 3, 2015 at 5:15 pm
If you look at this list, it appears that they were revolts directed against the local nobility (or church) because of its exorbitant taxation, oppressive judiciary, rampaging mercenaries and incompetent leadership in war against foreign invasions.
The French Jacquerie took place when there was no king - he had been taken prisoner by the English and the populace blamed the nobility for the military defeats and the massive tax increases that ensued.
During the Spanish Guerra de los Remensas, the revolted peasants actually appealed to the king and he in turn allied with them to fight the nobles.
During the Budai Nagy Antal revolt, the peasants actually asked the Hungarian king to arbitrate.
In other cases, even when the king/emperor/sultan ultimately intervened to squash the revolt, the insurrection was directed against some local elite.
Peasants revolts in 16th century Scandinavia were against the king's rule, but they were linked to reformation and took place when feudalism was on the wane and the evolution towards a centralized monarchical state well advanced.
Apparently, only the John and William Merfold's revolt explicitly called for the overthrow of the English king.
Jim Haygood, November 3, 2015 at 4:51 pm
'The populations of Europe were subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation, judicial and other economic powers (such as the right to determine when and for whom to work).'
Just as Americans are subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation and judicial powers, the states and the fedgov.
Before 1914, federal criminal laws were few, and direct federal income taxation of individuals was nonexistent. Today one needs federal authorization (E-verify) to get a job.
Now that the Fifth Amendment prohibition on double jeopardy has been interpreted away, notorious defendants face both federal and state prosecution. Thus the reason why America has the world's largest Gulag, with its slam-dunk conviction machine.
Uahsenaa, November 3, 2015 at 4:58 pmExcept, first off, there were non-Christian societies that made use of the system of warrior vassalage, and the manorial system that undergirded feudal distribution of land and resources, as least as far as Bloch is concerned, is a fairly clear outgrowth of the Roman villa system of the late empire. Insofar as the Late Roman empire was nominally–very nominally–Christian, I suppose your point stands, but according to Bloch, the earliest manorial structures were the result of the dissolution of the larger, older empire into smaller pieces, many of which were beyond meaningful administrative control by Rome itself. Second, bishoprics and monasteries, the primary land holdings of the clergy, were of the same order as manors, so they fit within the overall feudal system, not parallel to it.
If Bloch is not right about this, I'm open to reading other sources, but that's what my understanding was based on. Moreover, the basic system of patronage and fealty that made the manor economy function certainly seems to have survived the historical phenomenon we call feudalism, and that parallel was what I was trying to draw attention to. Lord/vassal relationships are fundamentally contractual, not just quid pro quo but organized around favors and reputation, and maybe the analogy is a bit strained, but it does point to the ways in which modern white collar work especially is about more than fixed pay for a fixed sum of labor output.
Thure Meyer, November 4, 2015 at 7:30 am
Isn't this rather off-topic?
This is not a discussion about the true and correct history of European feudalism or whether or not it applies to the situation at hand, but a dialogue about Global fascism and how it expresses itself in this Nation.
HarrySnapperOrgans, November 4, 2015 at 4:46 am
I suspect that the similarity of medeavil fuedalism with the relationship between a large modern corporation and its employees is not properly appreciated because the latter, unlike the former, does not necessarily include direct control over living conditions (housing, land, rent), even though in the end there may be a similar degree of effective servitude (lack of mobility and alternatives, and so effective entrapment at low wages) .
|
|
|
November 3, 2015 | nakedcapitalism.com
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. Confucius
One of the distressing things about politics in the US is the way words have either been stripped of their meaning or become so contested as to undermine the ability to communicate and analyze. It's hard to get to a conversation when you and your interlocutors don't have the same understanding of basic terms.
And that is no accident. The muddying of meaning is a neo-Orwellian device to influence perceptions by redefining core concepts. And a major vector has been by targeting narrow interest groups on their hot-button topics. Thus, if you are an evangelical or otherwise strongly opposed to women having reproductive control, anyone who favors womens' rights in this area is in your vein of thinking, to the left of you, hence a "liberal". Allowing the Overton Window to be framed around pet interests, as opposed to a view of what societal norms are, has allowed for the media to depict the center of the political spectrum as being well to the right of where it actually is as measured by decades of polling, particularly on economic issues.
Another way of limiting discourse is to relegate certain terms or ideas to what Daniel Hallin called the "sphere of deviance." Thus, until roughly two years ago, calling an idea "Marxist" in the US was tantamount to deeming it to be the political equivalent of taboo. That shows how powerful the long shadow of the Communist purges of the McCarthy era were, more than a generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Similarly, even as authoritarianism is rapidly rising in the US and citizens are losing their rights (see a reminder from last weekend, a major New York Times story on how widespread use of arbitration clauses is stripping citizens of access to the court system*), one runs the risk of having one's hair on fire if one dares suggest that America is moving in a fascist, or perhaps more accurately, a Mussolini-style corporatist direction. Yet we used that very expression, "Mussolini-style corporatism," to describe the the post-crisis bank bailouts. Former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson, was more stark in his choice of terms, famously calling the rescues a "quiet coup" by financial oligarchs.
Now admittedly, the new neoliberal economic order is not a replay of fascism, so there is reason not to apply the "f" word wholesale. Nevertheless, there is a remarkable amount of inhibition in calling out the similarities where they exist. For instance, the article by Thom Hartmann below, which we've reposted from Alternet, is bold enough to use the "fascist" word in the opening paragraph (but not the headline!). But it then retreats from making a hard-headed analysis by focusing on warnings about the risks of fascism in America from the 1940s. While historical analysis is always enlightening, you'll see the article only selectively interjects contemporary examples. Readers no doubt can help fill out, as well as qualify, this picture.
By Thom Hartmann, an author and nationally syndicated daily talk show host. His newest book is "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America -- and What We Can Do to Stop It." Originally published at Alternet
Ben Carson's feeble attempt to equate Hitler and pro-gun control Democrats was short-lived, but along with the announcement that Marco Rubio has brought in his second big supporting billionaire, it brings to mind the first American vice-president to point out the "American fascists" among us.
Although most Americans remember that Harry Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt's vice-president when Roosevelt died in 1945 (making Truman president), Roosevelt had two previous vice-presidents: John N. Garner (1933-1941) and Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945).
In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice-President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"
Vice-President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in the New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.
"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "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."
In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word "fascist" -- the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word. (It was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini, however, affixed his name to the entry, and claimed credit for it.)
As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is, "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled "The Doctrine of Fascism" he wrote, "If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government." But not a government of, by, and for We The People; instead, it would be a government of, by, and for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.
In 1938, Mussolini brought his vision of fascism into full reality when he dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni -- the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to folks like Tom DeLay and covertly write legislation, they were openly in charge of the government.
Vice-President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his concern about the same happening here in America:
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. … They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.
Nonetheless, at that time there were few corporate heads who'd run for political office, and in Wallace's view, most politicians still felt it was their obligation to represent We The People instead of corporate cartels.
"American fascism will not be really dangerous," he added in the next paragraph, "until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information…."
Noting that, "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest that fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States itself."
In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician, Buzz Windrip, runs his campaign on family values, the flag and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy as anti-American.
When Windrip becomes president, he opens a Guantanamo-style detention center, and the viewpoint character of the book, Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, flees to Canada to avoid prosecution under new "patriotic" laws that make it illegal to criticize the President.
As Lewis noted in his novel, "the President, with something of his former good-humor [said]: 'There are two [political] parties, the Corporate and those who don't belong to any party at all, and so, to use a common phrase, are just out of luck!' The idea of the Corporate or Corporative State, Secretary [of State] Sarason had more or less taken from Italy."
And, President "Windrip's partisans called themselves the Corporatists, or, familiarly, the 'Corpos,' which nickname was generally used."
Lewis, the first American writer to win a Nobel Prize, was world famous by 1944, as was his book. And several well-known and powerful Americans, including Prescott Bush, had lost businesses in the early 1940s because of charges by Roosevelt that they were doing business with Hitler.
These events all, no doubt, colored Vice-President Wallace's thinking when he wrote:
Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases.
Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic. As the Free Dictionary (www.thefreedictionary.com) notes, fascism/corporatism is "an attempt to create a 'modern' version of feudalism by merging the 'corporate' interests with those of the state."
Feudalism, of course, is one of the most stable of the three historic tyrannies (kingdoms, theocracies, feudalism) that ruled nations prior to the rise of American republican democracy, and can be roughly defined as "rule by the rich."
Thus, the neo-feudal/fascistic rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and the middle class, an irony not lost on author Thomas Frank, who notes in his book What's The Matter With Kansas that, "You can see the paradox first-hand on nearly any Main Street in middle America -- 'going out of business' signs side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush."
The businesses "going out of business" are, in fascist administrations, usually those of locally owned small and medium-sized companies. As Wallace wrote, some in big business "are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage."
He added:
Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.
But American fascists who would want former CEOs as president, vice-president, House Majority Whip, and Senate Majority Leader, and write legislation with corporate interests in mind, don't generally talk to We The People about their real agenda, or the harm it does to small businesses and working people.
Instead, as Hitler did with the trade union leaders and the Jews, they point to a "them" to pin with blame and distract people from the harms of their economic policies.
In a comment prescient of Alabama's recent closing of every drivers' license office in every Alabama county with more than 75% black residents (while recently passing a law requiring a drivers' license or similar ID to vote), Wallace continued:
The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination…
But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation's largest corporations – who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media -- they could promote their lies with ease.
"The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy."
In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism, the vice-president of the United States saw rising in America, he added:
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
This liberal vision of an egalitarian America in which very large businesses and media monopolies are broken up under the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (which Reagan stopped enforcing, leading to the mergers & acquisitions frenzy that continues to this day) was the driving vision of the New Deal (and of "Trust Buster" Teddy Roosevelt a generation earlier).
As Wallace's president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party's renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia, "…out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties…. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction…. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man…."
Speaking indirectly of the fascists Wallace would directly name almost a decade later, Roosevelt brought the issue to its core:
These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power." But, he thundered, "Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!
In the election of 2016, we again stand at the same crossroad Roosevelt and Wallace confronted during the Great Depression and World War II.
Fascism is again rising in America, this time calling itself "conservativism." The Republican candidates' and their billionaire donors' behavior today eerily parallels that day in 1936 when Roosevelt said, "In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for."
It's particularly ironic that the "big news" is which billionaire is supporting which Republican candidate. Like Eisenhower's farewell address, President Roosevelt and Vice-President Wallace's warnings are more urgent now than ever before.
_____
* In trying to find the New York Times story again, I simply Googled "arbitration," on the assumption that given that the article was both high traffic and recent that it would come up high in a search. Not only did the story not come up on the first page, although a reference to it in Consumerist did, but when I clicked on "in the news" link, it was again not in the first page in Google. If this isn't censorship, I don't know what is. The story was widely referenced on the Web and got far more traffic than the "news" story that Google gave preference (such as, of all things, a Cato study and "Arbitration Eligible BrewersBrew Crew Ball-19 hours ago"). In fact, the NYT article does not appear on the first five pages of the Google news search, even though older and clearly lower traffic stories do. And when you find the first reference to the story on the news page, which is a Cato piece mentioning it, and you click through to the "explore in depth" page, again the New York Times story is not the prominent placement it warrants, and is listed fifth. Consider how many clicks it took to find it.
Crazy Horse, November 3, 2015 at 10:49 amAmen -- I've always detested the weasel words "neoliberal" and "neoconservative". Lets just be honest enough to call ideologies and political behaviors by their proper name.
timbers, November 3, 2015 at 11:17 am
I agree!
Telling my friends Obama is "neoliberal" means nothing to 99% of them, they couldn't care less, it does not compute. So instead I tell them Obama is the most right wing President in history who's every bit un-hinged as Sarah Palin and at least as bat shit insame as John McCain, but you think that's totally OK because you're a Dem and Dems think that because Obama speaks with better grammar than Sarah Palin and is more temperate than John McCain. Them I tell them to vote Green instead of the utlra right wing Dems
Call Dems what they are – corrupt right wingers, ultra conservatives.
Barmitt O'Bamney, November 3, 2015 at 11:01 am
LOL. You get to take your pick between TWO fascist parties in 2016. Just like you did for the last several elections. I wonder if the outcome will be different this time – will Fascism grab the prize again, or will it be Fascism coming out ahead at the last minute to save the day?
David, November 3, 2015 at 11:04 am
washunate November 3, 2015 at 11:28 amWhy didn't Wallace become President when Roosevelt died? From the St. Petersburg Times,
The Gallup Poll said 65 percent of the voting Democrats wanted Wallace and that 2 percent wanted Senator Truman. But the party bosses could not boss Wallace. They made a coalition with the Roosevelt-haters and skillfully and cynically mowed down the unorganized Wallace forces.
Take note Bernie fans.
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
Such a concise and cogent explanation. The go-to policy advice of the fascist is to do moar of whatever he's selling.
susan the other November 3, 2015 at 12:18 pm
I was just going to say something like this too. There is a logical end to fascism and if it is blocked and prolonged then when it finally runs its course it ends in a huge mess. And even the fascists don't know what to do. Because everything they were doing becomes pure poison. Moar money and power have an Achilles Heel – there is an actual limit to their usefulness. So this is where we find ourselves today imo – not at the beginning of a fascist-feudal empire, but at the bitter and confused end. Our implosion took far longer than Germany's, but the writing was on the wall from 1970 on. And then toss in the wages of prolonged sin – neoliberalism's excesses, the planet, global warming.
TarheelDem November 3, 2015 at 1:02 pm
Yes. This.
One would think that Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the killing of 1000 people by cops would be a clue. As would an understanding of the counter-New Deal that began to unfold in 1944, gained power in 1946, and institutionalized itself as a military and secret government in 1947. Or the rush to war after every peace, the rush to debt after every surplus, and perpetual inability of the IRS to collect taxes from the wealthiest.
Maybe not even a Franco-level fascist state or a fascist state with a single dictator, more like the state capitalism of the Soviet Union and current China without the public infrastructure. Just the oligarchs.
And yet it is in a state of failure, and inability to do anything but feather then nests of those who rule, all those King Midases.
participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 1:49 pm
Also, the increase of censorship (GMO labels or fracking chemicals), and persecution of whistleblowers and political prisoners, incarceration of whole swathes of black population, along w execution w no due process, continuous wars abroad w no apparent tbreat to domestic security and the state of the nation is apparent.
participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 2:56 pm
Whoops, almost forgot to include: mass surveillance.
Jim November 3, 2015 at 3:27 pm
Isn't it important to keep in mind that fascism, as it developed in Italy and Germany, were authentic mass based movements generating great popular enthusiasm and not merely a clever manipulation of of populist emotions by the reactionary Right or by capitalism in crisis.
The orthodox left made this mistake in the 1920s and early 1930s and in 2015 still appears wedded to this erroneous assumption.
washunate November 3, 2015 at 8:17 pm
Authentic augmented by the generous application of force, I'd say. That I think is a very interesting discussion about just how freely fascism develops. I don't think Italy and especially Germany developed with a particularly genuine popular enthusiasm. Very early on, the national socialists were arresting internal political opposition through parallel courts with explicit references to things like state security. Dachau, for example, was originally for German political prisoners. Jews and foreign nationals came later.
And of course there's the ultimate in false flags, the Reichstag Fire Decree. The whole point of that and the Enabling Act was to circumvent the checks and balances of democratic governance; Hitler himself certainly did not trust the German people to maintain the power he wanted of their own accord and discernment.
Or to put it differently, I'd say the appearance of popular enthusiasm from a mass movement was the result of fascist control as much as the cause. That's what's so unnverving about the American context of 21st century fascism. It does not require a mass movement to implement this kind of totalitarianism. It merely requires the professional class to keep their heads down long enough for a critical mass to be reached by the power structure in hollowing out the back-office guts of democratic governance.
Ishmael November 3, 2015 at 8:47 pm
Fascism was a counter revolution to Bolshevikism. The upper and upper-middle class was scared to death of what happen in Russia under Bolshevikism. They united with the military looking for someone to counter Bolshevikism and settled on Hitler and the Nazi's. The military thought they control him but they ended up being wrong.
You have to understand that after WW1 the allies kept a sea blockade on Germany and that resulted in over a million Germans starving to death. Then came depression followed by hyperinflation. Then there was the fear of Bolsheviks. The Nazi's showed up and things started working again. The Bolsheviks were driven from the street. The Nazi's started borrowing tons of money (yes they issued bonds) and started work programs. The economy started recovering. People had work and food and soon the Nazi's were furnishing free health care. After you had gone through hell this was heaven.
MathandPhysics November 3, 2015 at 10:18 pm
It's strange but 9/11 and the 3 steel frame buildings collapse into dust in few seconds isn't recognized by the masses as false flag Hitler style, then what do you expect ? Massmedia did what it could to confuse them all, only math and physics can help you to see the truth.
Jim November 3, 2015 at 11:23 pm
It would, indeed, be an extremely worthwhile discussion to analyze how freely fascism developed in Italy and Germany.
As a first step in that directkion, Washunate, you might take a look at studies like "Elections, Parties, and Political Traditions: Social Foundations of German parties and party systems.
In the July 1932 elections the SPD (Socialist Party) received 21.6 percent of the vote and was replaced by the NSDAP (Nazi party) as the countries largest political party (with 37.3% of the vote). with the KPD (the communists) capturing 14.5%of the vote.
It was at that time that the Nazi party become a true "people's party" with a support base that was more equally distributed among social and demographic categories than any other major party of the Weimar republic.
Tone November 3, 2015 at 11:42 am
The thing that troubles me most is that there are no leaders like Roosevelt or Wallace today. Where are the POPULAR politicians (Roosevelt was elected 4 times!) calling it like it is and publicly refuting conservative/fascist dogma? Sanders? Maybe. But he's trailing Clinton and certainly he's not a force in the Democratic party like Roosevelt was. At least not yet.
I agree with the "quiet coup" assessment, and I keep waiting for the next Roosevelt, the next Lincoln, the next Founding Father, to appear on the political stage and fight the battle against corporatist/fascist forces. Sadly, it hasn't happened yet.
Masonboro November 3, 2015 at 11:50 am
Unfortunately the next Founding Father to appear (or has appeared) will be John Jay (first Chief Justice among other roles) who was quoted as having said :
"Those who own America should govern it"
Jim
TarheelDem November 3, 2015 at 1:07 pm
Hank Paulson and George W. Bush prevented the situation in 2008 from forcing a Rooseveltian Congress. And the Congress went along with them. Then it was so easy for the do-nothings to argue for less and continue the austerity. And as in Roosevelt's era, racism helped prevent full change, which allowed the post-war rollback.
participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 1:52 pm
Even among the corporatists in govt or business, there are no distinctive shining exemplars of leadership or competence !
Massinissa November 3, 2015 at 2:12 pm
Founding fathers?
Who do you think put the basis of rule by the rich into practice in the first place? A series of 'popular movements' like Shays Rebellion was what forced the founding fathers to make voting rights not dependent on owning land, not because the Founding Fathers were really nice people who luvved 'Democracy'.
Oregoncharles November 4, 2015 at 1:57 am
We just might have to be that "leader" ourselves.
Masonboro November 3, 2015 at 11:46 am
"on the rise" or firmly entrenched ? We already have Homeland Security, Justice Thomas, Donald Trump ,Ted Cruz, and the Koch Brothers (who are running ads in NC extolling recently passed changes in the tax code to continue shifting from income to consumption taxes). What is missing?
Jim
susan the other November 3, 2015 at 12:32 pm
I always think of the Kochs when the word fascist is used. They are ostensibly great environmentalists. Never mind that they operate some of the filthiest industries on the planet. They sponsor NOVA; one brother is a raving environmentalist (that's fine with me) and the other two tone it down. But their brand of conservative politix is as pointless as it is ignorant. That's an interesting topic – the hypocrisy of rich corporatist environmentalists. They are living a contradiction that will tear them apart. But at least they are agonizing over the problem.
lou strong November 3, 2015 at 11:56 am
Maybe my English is too bad, but it seems there's a misunderstanding about "corporatism" meaning, which is unfortunately reflected, as it seems again, in some American dictionaries. Corporation in Italian has approximately the meaning of guild and has nothing to do with big enterprises.
So, while there is no doubt that fascists took power in Italy as the armed wing of big capital, big finance and big landholders against the unrests of the low classes, the idea of corporatist state for them meant the refusal of the principle of class war in favor of the principle of class (guilds, "corporations" :both for employers and employees/trade unions) collaboration , and all of them as subservients to the superior interest of the state.Fascism agenda wasn't primarily economic. There wasn't either a specific agenda : until '29 the regime acted as deeply "neoliberal" with privatizations, deflationary policies to fix a strong lira smashing labor rights and purchase power etc etc , after the crisis it nationalized the failed enterprises and introduced some welfare state elements.
So at least the regime got the property of the failed banks/enterprises, much unlike current situation , where we see the mere socialization of losses and privatization of profits .
Massinissa November 3, 2015 at 2:23 pm
You are correct, I have read this before.
But English speakers either dont know or dont care. Ive seen people talk about "Mussolini Corporatism" like this for what, five years, and they never get corrected.
I dont think theres anything we can do to get people to stop using that term as if it means what they think it means.
visitor November 3, 2015 at 3:19 pm
Massinissa and lou strong are correct -- corporatism in Mussolini's Italy meant structuring the State and the legislative body around organizations representing specific professional or economic sectors.
By the way: we should not forget another fascist State, Portugal, which during the entire Salazar regime officially defined itself as a "corporatist republic".
Barmitt O'Bamney November 3, 2015 at 4:21 pm
You can direct them to the Wikipedia entry for corporatism, which is extensive, or to Michael Lind's 2014 article on the multiple historical meanings and recent misuse of this term. But the term has currency and traction today for reason neither article quite puts a finger on. Under Italian Fascism, the traditional meanings of corporative representation and bargaining were invoked but fused tightly under the auspices -or control- of the nation state, which of course was a single party state. The theoretical representativeness of corporatism was as a facade for political control of all institutions of Italian life by the Fascist Party. In the present time, with unions and guilds a fading memory, regions homogenized and classes atomized, with churches that are little more than money making enterprises as transparent as any multilevel marketing scheme, there are few non-government institutions in western life with any weight besides for-profit corporations. When people struggle to describe what seems wrong to them with our political life, the subservience of our government – and therefore everything else – to profit seeking corporations, they need a term that reflects neatly what has happened and where we are. Democracy of course is defunct both as a term and in reality. We don't have a state of decayed democracy (passive, negative), we have a state of corporate diktat (active, positive). "Corporatism" is an attractive and convenient verbal handle for the masses to latch onto, no matter how much this disappoints the learned. In English, when enough people "misuse" a term for a sufficiently long time, what happens is that the OED adds a new sub-entry for it reflecting its current usage.
Vatch November 3, 2015 at 4:46 pm
I've tried to correct people's misunderstanding of corporazione, but it's probably a losing battle:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/neo-liberalism-expressed-simple-rules.html#comment-1919832
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/05/tpp-fascism-issue.html#comment-2439813
run75441 November 4, 2015 at 7:47 am
Try "corpocracy"
Les Swift November 3, 2015 at 12:09 pm
Corporatism is indeed an old idea, feudalism re-branded as "fascism." After Hitler ruined the term, fascism remained, but underground, until it reemerged in the 1960s as what George Ball termed the "world company," which is better known as the system of global corporations. The same general idea, but under a new marketing slogan. Today we have globalization, the raft of "trade" treaties, the Austrian/Libertarian ideology, all of which ultimately push the world toward yet another replay of feudalism. The box says "new and improved," but inside it's the same old crap.
kevinearick November 3, 2015 at 1:01 pm
Clone Dreams
"The more people that transact with one another, the greater the division of labour and knowledge, the greater the ability to develop comparative advantage and the greater the productivity gains."
What could possibly go wrong?
In any empire, virtual or otherwise, you are always surrounded by communist thieves that think they are going to control your output with a competitive advantage illusion, which conveniently ignores opportunity cost. Government is just a derivative piece of paper, the latest fashion for communists, all assuming that the planet is here for their convenience, to exploit. Well, the critters have blown right through 45/5000/.75, and Canada was supposed to be the proving ground for the Silicon Valley Method. Now what?
"Don't panic : world trade is down….Don't bet against the Fed….BTFD." Expect something other than demographic variability, financial implosion, and war.
The communists are always running head first over the cliff, expecting you to follow. Labor has no use for cars that determine when, where and how you will travel, and the communists can't fix anything, because the 'fix' is already inside, embedded as a feature. America is just the latest communist gang believing it has commandeered the steamroller, rolling over other communist gangs.
The Bear isn't coming down from the North, China isn't selling Treasuries, and families are not moving away from the city by accident. Only the latest and greatest, new-world-order communists, replacing themselves with computers, are surprised that technology is always the solution for the problem, technology. Facebook, LinkedIn and Google are only the future for communists, which is always the same, a dead end, with a different name.
Remember that Honda of mine? I told the head communist thief not to touch that car while I was gone, told his fellow thieves and their dependents that I told him so, and even gave him the advantage of telling him what the problem was. How many hours do you suppose the fools spent trying to control that car, and my wife with it?
I don't care whether the communists on the other side of the hill or the communists on this side of the hill think they are going to control Grace, and through her my wife, and through her me. And there are all kinds of communist groups using pieces of my work to advance their AI weapons development, on the assumption that my work will not find itself in the end. Grace will decide whether she wants to be an individual or a communist.
The only way the communists can predict and control the future is to control children. That's what financialization is all about. And all communism can do is train automatons to follow each other, which is a problem-solution addressed by the planet every three generations. You don't have to do anything for communism to collapse, but get out of the way.
Technology is just a temporary tool, discarded by labor for the communists to steal, and stealing a hammer doesn't make anyone a carpenter, much less a King, which is why the Queen always walks through the wreckage, to a worthless throne. The story of Jesus was in fact the story of a king, who had no use for a worldly kingdom, other than as a counterweight, always surrounded by communists, like pigs at a trough. Jesus was no more and no less a child of God than you are.
Labor loses every battle because it doesn't participate, leaving the communists to label each other as labour and knowledge. And if you look, you will see that all their knowledge is real estate inflation, baked into everything, with oil as grease. The name, Robert Reich, didn't give you a hint; of course he knew all along, and like a good communist, changes sides on a regular basis.
You can't pick your parents or your children, or make choices for them, but you can love them without pissing your life away. Navy hasn't disappeared just because the US Navy chose to be a sunk cost, at the beck and call of Wall Street, trying to defend the status quo of communism, for communists on the other side of the pond. A marine is not always a Marine, and a flattop can be turned on a dime.
"The Muses doe attend upon your Throne, With all the Artists at your becke and call…"
If you want to show up at WWIII with a communist and a dc computer as a weapon, that's your business, but I wouldn't recommend doing so. Labor can mobilize far quicker than the communists can imagine, which isn't saying much. Be about your business until the laws of physics have been overthrown, and that hasn't happened yet.
You can count on communists to be at an intersection, creating a traffic jam, building a bigger toll booth, and voting for more of the same, thinking that they are taking advantage of each other, doing the wrong thing at the wrong time at the wrong place. Any intersection of false assumptions will do.
alex morfesis November 3, 2015 at 1:12 pm
let the merry breezes blow synthetic winds…
his name was hanz…or so I was told…we had acquired a lease from the NYC HPD from a parking lot/marina that was at the very north edge of Harlem River Drive at Dyckman (pronounced dikeman)….there is a school there now…he "came" with the lease…years later I would find out he was working with Carlos Lehder and helping arrange for cash payments to conveniently amnesiastic police officers who used the hardly functioning marina to go fishing…in the east river & the hudson…go figure…the more I tried to get rid of him…the more "problems" occurred…my father begged me stop poking around and just "leave it alone"…I don't think he ever really knew what "hanz" was doing or who he was…oh well…might explain how we lost a billion dollars in real estate (ok…it was not worth a billion back then…but it had not debt other than real estate taxes…it was not lost for simply economic reasons)
we as a nation were "convinced" to allow 50 thousand former nazis to enter this country after ww2…under the foolish notion that "the russians" (who have never killed too many americans if my history serves me right) were a "new danger" and only the folks who LO$T to the russians had the knowledge needed to save us from those "evil communists"…(evil communists who helped the Koch Family make their financial start…details details…)
those nazis, from my research have probably grown to a force of about 250 thousand who are the basic clowns (MIC…see you real soon…KEY…why, because we like you…) Ike was talking about in January of 1961…
but…as Ike mentioned when talking about the Koch dad and his John Birch nonsense…they are small and they are stupid…
the use of "coup" in the context of some of the strange happenings in our history these last 55 years is probably not a reasonable term…
I would say we have had "coupettes" where certain groups threatened MAD if they did not get their way or were not left alone…and then those wimps in power decided…better you than me…and turned a blind eye for 30 pieces of silver…coincidence and causality sometimes are not just mathematical anomalies…
there is no need to "take back" our country…it is ours and has always been ours…the reason "the clowns that be" worry so much is that for all the use of bernaze sause…they can hardly fake half the population into showing up to vote on "one of the chosen ones"…and that 50% that are not fully mesmerized are the fear factor for the clowns that be…
remember…try as "they" might…can "they" keep you watching the same tv show for ever…or get you to buy their useless "branded" product without coupons or advertising…
it is not as bad or scary as they would like you to believe…they would not be working this hard if they were comfortable in their socks…they do not sleep well at night…you are the "zombie apocalypse" they are afraid off…
pass the popcorn please…
and may our freedom
"bloom again" at "the end of the century"
(or sooner…)
happy trails…
Les Swift November 3, 2015 at 1:24 pm
Huh? Many of the things you brand as "communist" existed long before Communism was created. To blame it all on "communists" is a serious error which blinds you to much older evils, some of which Communism was at least nominally intended to correct. It is important to recognize that the "Red scares" have been used by forces in the West to bolster their own power. One can both disagree with Communism and disagree with the "Red menace" propaganda at the same time. The people who scare you with the threat of Communism are more of a threat than the Communists themselves.
kevinearick November 3, 2015 at 1:33 pm
Funny thing about words…under the law, they mean whatever the author intends them to mean.
kevinearick November 3, 2015 at 1:50 pm
not a big believer in evil, just stupid, willful ignorance, aggregated.
Gio Bruno November 3, 2015 at 10:37 pm
GWBush is evil and stupid. Dick Cheney is evil, stupid, and ignorant, aggregated.
Doug November 3, 2015 at 1:58 pm
Time to re-read The Moneysburg Address:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/the-moneysburg-address.html
Jim November 3, 2015 at 2:32 pm
When talking about the rise of fascism(especially if the US experiences another economic/financial meltdown in the next few years) it is so important to get the historical context as accurate as possible.
Mussolini began his political career as an exponent of a different type of socialism. One of his early followers was Antonio Gramsci and they both deplored the passivity of orthodox Marxists.
Mussolini was attracted to the theoretical framework of Sorel to offset traditional left passivity and the syndicalist focus on the importance of human will. He founded a journal in 1913 called Utopia and called for a revision of socialism in which he began referring to "the people" and not the proletariat, as well as stressing the importance of the nation. He attempted to bring nationalist and syndicalist streams of thought together.
After World War I Mussolini helped found a new political movement in Italy which brought together both nationalist and socialist themes. Its first program was anticapitalist, antimonarchical and called for an 8 hour day, minimum wages, the participation of workers' representatives in industrial management and a large progressive tax on capital.
By the early 1920s the Fasci of Mussolini gained a powerful base of support in rural Italian areas, advocating of program of peasant proprtietorship rather than endorsing the calls for the nationalization of property of the orthodox left.
By this time fascism presented itself as an opponent of "Bolshevism" and a guardian of private property while emphasizing the collective good and criticizing absentee landlords and "exploitative capitalists"
For an excellent discussion of the development of these ideas as well as the concrete steps toward corporatism that took place after 1922 see Sheri Berman "The Primacy of Politics"
A key point to keep in mind was that the fascism that eventually developed in Italy was willing to assert unconditionally the power of the state over the market.
participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 2:37 pm
Relevant postbocer at Counterpunch too:
Not everybody just "wants what we have," as the common view here has it. In fact, from Bolivia, where the average person consumes perhaps 1/20th the total resources of her analogue in the US, comes the old-new idea of buen vivir (the good life): a life in which the health of your human community and its surrounding ecosystem are more important than the amount of money you make or things you own.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/03/the-browning-of-the-world-blame-the-greed-of-the-rich/
Jacob November 3, 2015 at 3:16 pm
"In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word fascist' -- the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word."
An Italian Jew by the name of Enrico Rocca is cited in "Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust" as the founder of Roman fascism. This name is completely unknown in the U.S. A large number of Italian Jews were founders and members of the Italian fascist party prior to 1938 when anti-Semitism became official. "Among Mussolini's earliest financial backers were three Jews: Giuseppe Toeplitz of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, Elio Jona [?], and the industrialist Gino Olivetti. . . ." The banker Toeplitz was the main financier behind Mussolini's blackshirts, which served as union busters for big business and land owners (also see "Fascism and Big Business" by Daniel Guerin). Undermining organized labor in order to drive down wages was a central aim of fascism in Italy and later under Hitler in Germany. In 1933, roughly ten percent of Italian Jews were members of the fascist party. These facts are important to know because moderns are led to believe that fascism is inherently anti-semitic, but that wasn't the case in the early years of fascism in Italy, where it was founded.
Jim November 3, 2015 at 3:58 pm
It is also important to keep in mind, as Sheri Berman has argued, that social democracy, the fascism of Mussolini and National Socialism in Germany agree on a set of key assumptions.
1. All assume the primary importance of politics and cross-class cooperation. Edward Bermstein at the turn of the 20th century began attacking the main pillars of orthodox Marxism, historical materialism and class struggle while arguing for an alternative vision based on state control of markets–social democracy became the complete severing of socialism from Marxism.
2. For these same Social Democrats the primacy of the political meant using the democratic state to institutionalize policies and protect society from capitalism.
3. For fascists and national socialists using a tyrannical state to control markets was supposedly necessary–but, of course, this postion deteriorated into moves to ensure the hegemony of the modern State.
But is it the case, in 2015, taken the power of our contemporary Surveillance regime, that a democratic state still exists?
Do contemporary democratic socialists first have to first focus on how to restore democracy in the U.S. rather than assuming that the contemporary political structure just needs the right leadership–someone like Bernie Sanders–and the right credit policy– such as MMT?
hemeantwell November 3, 2015 at 4:31 pm
Hartmann draws from Mussolini the idea that the fascist state prioritizes and organizes corporate interests, but misses what Mussolini left out of his harmonistic definition, which was that in both Germany and Italy organized terror was to be used to destroy opposition to corporate interests. The systematic use of terror had major implications for the way the internal politics of the fascist state developed, for the weight given in its organizational structure and tactical options to the elimination of internal enemies. Along with this, both political orders were infused with a leadership ethos that, particularly in Nazi Germany, could attain strikingly absolute forms, demanding absolute obedience and sacrifice. This encouraged a strong tendency to subordinate any institution that might serve as a point of coalescence to interests opposed to the regime. The Fuhrer's picture had to be both on your wall and in your heart.
Hartmann misses this political knife edge of fascism and the leadership fascination that supports it. It is not wildly speculative to say that this is largely because the domestic enemies against which it was directed, primarily leftist trade unions, are not a threat in the US. No such organizations need to be wrecked, no such memberships need to be decimated, imprisoned, and dispersed. It is simply astonishing that Hartmann says nothing specifically about labor organizations as the prime instigating target of both fascists and the corporations who supported them. In this respect his analysis unwittingly incorporates the ideological suppression of the labor movement that mirrored the fascist onslaught.
It is also telling that although Hartmann references Wallace and Roosevelt he fails to note that they themselves have also been accused of corporatism, albeit one that involved the imposition of a Keynesian, welfarist orientation to capitalist interests that were, at least in some quarters, inclined to "liquidate, liquidate" their way into a revolution against themselves. Instead, he quotes Wallace and Roosevelt as they render fascism as a kind of power-hungry, antidemocratic urge on the part of some "royalists," thereby blurring out how the central issue was how to manage labor. He misses that Roosevelt offered the state as an organizer of conflict between capital and labor within a framework in which labor was guaranteed bargaining status. Roosevelt was thereby moved to attack capitalists who wanted to deny labor that status and risk both devastating hardship and insurrection. Hartmann falls for Roosevelt's broad democratic rhetoric against them, more exhortation than analysis, and so he himself ends up talking ethereally of threats to "freedom" and "American institutions."
We're not living under fascism and Hartmann, whose criticism is often very useful, is wrong in trying to use the term as a rallying orientation. I agree that the social order is corporatist, but its maintenance has not required the kind of direct oppression + totalitarian/personalized leadership cult that is a marker of fascism. Concepts the Frankfurt School have used such as "total administration" and the like are perhaps too anodyne, not to mention absolute in their own way, but they fit better with a situation in which explicit violence does not have to be generalized.
Robert Paxton's "The Anatomy of Fascism" is a useful backgrounder on this.
Jim November 3, 2015 at 6:30 pm
Heamtwell stated directly above that " We're not living under fascism…"
Some concepts/ questions which may begin to get at our potential propensity for moving in that direction might include the following:
Paxton, mentioned by Heamtwell above, isolated five stages of fascism.
(1) the initial creation of fascist movements
(2) their rooting as parties in a political system
(3) the acquisition of power
(4) the exercise of power
(5) their radicalization or entropyPaxton has argued that Fascism can appear where democracy is sufficiently implanted to have aroused disillusion–a society must have known political liberty.
In regards to Paxtons first 2 stages and our situation in the US.
Are political fascists becoming rooted in political parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on our political scene?
Is our constitutional system in a state of blockage increasingly insoluble by existing authorities?
Is rapid political mobilization taking place in our society which threatens to escape the control of traditional elites to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?
hemeantwell November 3, 2015 at 7:16 pm
Is rapid political mobilization taking place in our society which threatens to escape the control of traditional elites to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?
I think that's the primary question, and it helps to define what we're facing with the current party system.
It is apparent that both corporate parties are increasingly incapable of properly deflecting and channeling the interests of the electorate. Whether you think of 2007-08 as simply another business cycle, one that was exacerbated by toxic assets, a product of increasing income and wealth disparity, etc. it seems that portions of the electorate have been shocked out of their confidence in the system and the steering capacity of economic and political elites.
This might lead the parties, under the pressure of events, to might reformulate themselves as the political cover of a "government of national unity" that, depending on the extremity of the next downturn, impose a "solidarity from above," blocking the development of popular organizations in a variety of ways. I certainly see this as possible. But treating the parties, or the system itself, as fascist at this point in time is not only not helpful, it is fundamentally disorienting.
Ron November 3, 2015 at 8:05 pm
F* is an ugly word as is all its close relatives, but your definitions are very interesting, and so maybe I've learned some things by reading them. However; by what contrivance did you manage to get any of these pages past the f* who own the internet? It seems I must suspend my disbelief to believe, Freunde von Grund
todde November 3, 2015 at 8:20 pm
I disagree.
In Fascism, corporations were subservient to the State. What we have is the State subservient to Corporations. Also Italian corporatism was more than just business, as a.corporation in Italy can have.non business functions.
tommy strange November 3, 2015 at 8:23 pm
Great post and great comments. Though I wonder why no one has brought up the only way to stop fascism. A militant class based libertarian left. Outside of the ballot box. If a liberal party still 'exists' they will then at least respond to the larger non party real left, just to nullify it's demands. Fascism has never been defeated by the ballot, only by a militant anarchist/socialist left. Or at the least, that 'left' fought back. Liberals rarely have fought back, and most often conceded. How do you do form such? Urban face to face organizing. With direct action and occupation and even organization towards workers' control of manufacturing.
Ishmael November 3, 2015 at 8:53 pm
tommy -Fascism has never been defeated by the ballot, only by a militant anarchist/socialist left.
I believe you should go re-look at history. Fascism has always defeated socialist left. Three examples -- Italy, Germany and Argentina. I welcome an example other wise and if it did how did it end.
visitor November 4, 2015 at 10:57 am
The paramount example is of course Spain, where all left-wing movements (communists, trotskists, anarchists, socialists) were ultimately defeated by fascists despite ferocious fighting.
Synoia November 3, 2015 at 9:48 pm
Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the
RiseWell Established in the USSet to Dominate World after TPP, TTIP and TISA ratified.
Keynesian November 3, 2015 at 11:03 pm
Much of Robert Paxton's work has focused on models and definition of fascism.
In his 1998 paper "The Five Stages of Fascism", he suggests that fascism cannot be defined solely by its ideology, since fascism is a complex political phenomenon rather than a relatively coherent body of doctrine like communism or socialism. Instead, he focuses on fascism's political context and functional development. The article identifies five paradigmatic stages of a fascist movement, although he notes that only Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy have progressed through all five:
1.Intellectual exploration, where disillusionment with popular democracy manifests itself in discussions of lost national vigor
2.Rooting, where a fascist movement, aided by political deadlock and polarization, becomes a player on the national stage
3.Arrival to power, where conservatives seeking to control rising leftist opposition invite the movement to share power
4.Exercise of power, where the movement and its charismatic leader control the state in balance with state institutions such as the police and traditional elites such as the clergy and business magnates.
5.Radicalization or entropy, where the state either becomes increasingly radical, as did Nazi Germany, or slips into traditional authoritarian rule, as did Fascist Italy.[4]In his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism, Paxton refines his five-stage model and puts forward the following definition for fascism:
[quote]Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.[5][/quote]
Here is a more contemporary analysis of politics in America using Paxton's model.
[quote]Fascist America: Are We There Yet?
Friday, August 07, 2009 -- by SaraIn the second stage, fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize their seat at the table of power. Interestingly, in every case Paxton cites, the political base came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country; and almost all of them came to power very specifically by offering themselves as informal goon squads organized to intimidate farmworkers on behalf of the large landowners. The KKK disenfranchised black sharecroppers and set itself up as the enforcement wing of Jim Crow. The Italian Squadristi and the German Brownshirts made their bones breaking up farmers' strikes. And these days, GOP-sanctioned anti-immigrant groups make life hell for Hispanic agricultural workers in the US. As violence against random Hispanics (citizens and otherwise) increases, the right-wing goon squads are getting basic training that, if the pattern holds, they may eventually use to intimidate the rest of us.
Paxton wrote that succeeding at the second stage "depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner." He further noted that Hitler and Mussolini both took power under these same circumstances: "deadlock of constitutional government (produced in part by the polarization that the fascists abetted); conservative leaders who felt threatened by the loss of their capacity to keep the population under control at a moment of massive popular mobilization; an advancing Left; and conservative leaders who refused to work with that Left and who felt unable to continue to govern against the Left without further reinforcement."
And more ominously: "The most important variables…are the conservative elites' willingness to work with the fascists (along with a reciprocal flexibility on the part of the fascist leaders) and the depth of the crisis that induces them to cooperate."[/quote]
hermes November 4, 2015 at 12:10 am
I think there is something missing from this analysis, having to do with the definition of corporatism itself. I think our contemporary definition of corporatism is rooted in neoliberalism and is actually a far cry from the definition used by the Fascists in forming the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Because to them corporatism wasn't simply business interests (which is how we know it today), but (from Wikipedia):
'[was] the sociopolitical organization of a society by major interest groups, or corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests. It is theoretically based on the interpretation of a community as an organic body. The term corporatism is based on the Latin root word "corpus" (plural – "corpora") meaning "body".'
In other words, corporatism was not only made up of business interests, but all major (and competing) interests within society.
This is not to downplay the importance and absolute seriousness of confronting the increasing absolutism of ruling business interests. It is also not to downplay the historical truth of who ultimately held power in Fascist Italy. But I think it is also important to place Fascism in it's own historical context, and not try to blur historical lines where doing so may be misleading. When Fascists spoke of corporatism they had something else in mind, and it does not help us to blur the distinction.
hemeantwell November 4, 2015 at 8:35 am
Good point, and it raises this question: how can institutional organicity, with its ideological aura of community, partnership, and good old Volkishness, develop when we're talking about corporations that are multinational in scope as well as financialized and thereby even more rootless and and community indifferent? How can organicity develop in the sort of institutional setup foreshadowed by the TPP?
sd November 4, 2015 at 1:09 am
My impression is that today Corporatism more closely represents the interests of multinational corporations and the people who hold executive leadership positions within those companies. What they have in common is a listing on NYSE.
Oregoncharles November 4, 2015 at 1:09 am
Anyone heard from Naomi Wolf lately? She was the most prominent author calling out fascism during the Bush administration, got wide coverage at least on the left. She re-emerged during the Occupy movement, for a little while.
I ask that because, at the time, she said she'd go silent if it looked like people like her (that is, writers/journalists) were being persecuted. Haven't heard from her, at least on this topic, since Obama started prosecuting whistleblowers. Didn't see a farewell, either.
And that leads to a personal question: how safe are our bloggers feeling? Arguably, this site is an exercise in personal courage. Any ugly straws in the wind?
|
|
|
Peak Prosperity
cmartensonSpeaking of not having a clear strategy or visionSnowden revealed some outrageous practices and constitutional abuses and the Obama administration - yes the same one that has not managed to bring a single criminal charge against a single senior banker - wants to charge Snowden with espionage.
It bears repeating; US Bankers committed literally hundreds of thousands of serious felonies and *not one* was ever charged by the Justice Dept. under Obama's two terms.
Recently the White House spokesman said "The fact is that Mr Snowden committed very serious crimes, and the US government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them."
Well, either you believe serious crimes should be prosecuted or you don't.
Pick one.
But to try and be selective about it all just makes one something of a tyrant. Wielding power when and how it suits one's aims instead of equally is pretty much the definition of tyranny (which includes "the unreasonable or arbitrary use of power")
However, the EU has decided to drop all criminal charges against Snowden showing that the US is losing legitimacy across the globe by the day.
EU parliament votes to 'drop any criminal charges' against whistle-blower
The European parliament voted to lift criminal charges against American whistle-blower Edward Snowden on Thursday.
In an incredibly close vote, EU MEPs said he should be granted protection as a "human rights defender" in a move that was celebrated as a "chance to move forward" by Mr Snowden from Russia.
This seems both right and significant. Significant because the US power structure must be seething. It means that the EU is moving away form the US on important matters, and that's significant too. Right because Snowden revealed deeply illegal and unconstitutional practices that, for the record, went waaaaAAaaay beyond the so-called 'meta-data phone records' issue.
And why shouldn't the EU begin to carve their own path? Their interests and the US's are wildly different at this point in history, especially considering the refugee crisis that was largely initiated by US meddling and warmongering in the Middle East.
At this point, I would say that the US has lost all legitimacy on the subject of equal application of the laws, and cannot be trusted when it comes to manufacturing "evidence" that is used to invade, provoke or stoke a conflict somewhere.
The US is now the Yahoo! of countries; cheerleading our own self-described excellence and superiority at everything when the facts on the ground say something completely different.
Quercus bicolor
cmartenson wrote:
Recently the White House spokesman said "The fact is that Mr Snowden committed very serious crimes, and the US government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them."
And this "serious crime" was committed by Snowden because he saw it as the only viable path to revealing a systematic pattern of crimes by none other than our own federal government that are so serious that they threaten the basic founding principles on which our REPUBLIC was founded.
lambertadTruth is treason
You know how the old saying goes "truth is treason in the empire of lies". I'm a staunch libertarian, but I wasn't always that way. Before that I spent most of my 20's in Special Operations wanting to 'kill bad guys who attacked us' on 9/11. It wasn't until my last deployment that I got ahold of Dr. Ron Paul's books and dug through them and realized his viewpoint suddenly made much more sense than anyone else's. Not only did it make much more sense, but it was based on Natural Law and the founding principals of our country.
A lot has been made of the fact that Snowden contributed money to Dr. Paul's 2008 presidential campaign and that this was an obvious tell that he was really an undercover (insert whatever words the media used - traitor, anarchist, russian spy, etc.). The part that I find troubling is the fact that Snowden revealed to the world that we are all being watched, probably not in real time, but if they ever want to review the 'tapes' they can see what we do essentially every minute of every day. That's BIG news to get out to the citizenry. If you've got access to that kind of data, you don't want that getting out, but here's the kicker - Very few in this country today even care. Nothing in this country has changed that I'm aware of. GCHQ still spies on us and passes the info to the NSA. The NSA still spys on everyone and the Brits and passes the info to GCHQ. Austrialia and NZ and Canda still spy on whoever and pass the info on to whoever wants it. It's craziness.
At the same time, as Chris and others have pointed out, we're bombing people (ISIS/Al Nusra/AQ) we supported ('moderate rebels) before we bombed them (AQ) after we bombed Sadaam and invaded Iraq. Someone please tell me the strategy other than the "7 countries in 5 years plan". Yup, sounds a lot like Yahoo!.
I'm looking forward to Christmas this year because I get to spend 5 days with my wife's family again. My father-in-law is a smart man, but thinks the government is still all powerful and has everything under control. It should make some interesting conversations and debating.
Thanks for the article Adam, interesting parallel between TPTB and Yahoo!.
|
|
|
derinsular.com
This paper argues that Mancur Olson's theory of distributional coalitions largely explains this network's raison d'être. The paper first outlines the main tenets of the theory, and then examines the historical roots of the Turkish deep state, as well as the paradigm shift its exposure caused in the public opinion. The network's
- exclusive character,
- impacts on the workings of the Turkish society, and finally
- efforts to sustain its dominating influence, which is manifested especially in its attempts to reverse the country's democratization process,
demonstrate that the emergence, influence, and the incentives of the Turkish deep state confirm the fundamental assumptions of Olson's theory.
The Theory of Distributional Coalitions Mancur Olson's theory of distributional coalitions holds that, as societies establish themselves, group interests become more identifiable, and subsets of the society organize in an effort to secure these interests. Since these interests are best served by coordinated action, institutions emerge. Yet, such institutions tend to be exclusive by nature, and pursue only the interests of their own members, who account to a very small minority.
This exclusivity factor is of special importance in the way these rent-seeking (or special-interest) groups operate, since, unlike highly-encompassing organizations, exclusive organizations do not have an incentive to increase the productivity of the society. This is due to the disproportion between the sizes of the exclusive organization and the population. To use Olson's idiom, such organizations are in a position either to make larger the pie the society produces or to obtain larger slices for their members.
"Our intuition tells us," Olson says, "that the first method will rarely be chosen."2 Because, on the one hand, it is very costly to increase the productivity of society as a whole, and on the other, even if this is achieved, the The Rise and Decline of the Turkish "Deep State": The Ergenekon Case 101 members of the minuscule organization will accordingly reap only a minuscule portion of the benefits.
Therefore, exclusive groups aim to present their own interests as being the interests of their constituencies, and to use all of their organizational power for collective action in that direction.
That is still the case even when the organization's cost to the society is significantly more than the benefits it seeks for its members. Such behavior is not at all unexpected of exclusive organizations, since it is the very policy of exclusion itself that enables the group to distribute more to its members.In that respect, disproportional allocation of resources goes hand in hand with barriers to entry into the favored areas of the special-interest group.
Yet the existence of barriers to entry further damages the society by reducing the economic growth.
When coupled with the interferences of the special-interest groups with the possibilities of change in the existing state of affairs, the level of the reduction in economic growth can be large.
In order to achieve their goals, special-interest groups engage in lobbying activities and collusion – both of which, by creating special provisions and exceptions, further increase not only inefficiency but also (1) the complexity of regulation, (2) the scope of government, and (3) the complexity of understandings.
The Formation and the Evolution of the Turkish Deep State The genesis of the Turkish deep state is traceable to the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti), a secret society founded in Istanbul in 1889 by a group of medical students who had a passion for reform in the Ottoman Empire.3 The CUP organized so extensively that, in less than two decades, it became a revolutionary political organization with branches inside and outside the Ottoman Empire.4 Within the organization existed numerous factions, and the body of membership was ethnically and even ideologically diverse.
Yet it was the commonly-shared goal of changing the regime rather than conformity that bound the members together, and they successfully achieved that goal with the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which restored the Constitution of 1876 (Kanun-ı Esasi) that restricted the powers of the Sultan, and made the Ottoman Empire a constitutional monarchy again after 32 years of absolutism.
The genesis of the Turkish deep state is traceable to the Committee of Union and Progress, a secret society founded in Istanbul in 1889 by a group of medical students who had a passion for reform in the Ottoman Empire SERDAR KAYA 102 What makes the CUP extraordinary as a case is that it never fully transformed into a genuine political party even after the revolution it brought about.
Instead, it continued to operate as the secret committee it always was.5 Back then, in reference to this fact, some of the critics of the CUP had coined the phrase "invisible people" (rical-i gayb).6 In the end, this code of conduct rendered the committee as a clandestine force that exerted influence by informal means in order to change the course of affairs the way it saw fit.
The reflections of that proclivity are traceable in many of the major occurrences of the time.
In what is today commonly referred to as the coup of 1913, for example, a group of CUP operatives broke into the Sublime Porte as the Cabinet was in session, murdered the minister of defense and two prominent government officials, and forced the Grand Vizier, the head of the Cabinet, to resign immediately.
The coup of 1913 is also important in that it set a precedent in the country for military interventions and ultimatums, the latest of which occurred on April 27, 2007.
A second example to the code of conduct of the CUP may be the clandestine activities of the Special Organization7 (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa).
Although the CUP established the Special Organization in 1913, ten months after the coup of 1913, it was in fact the continuation of the Fedaiin, the secret organization the CUP established in 1905 – that is, before the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.
The CUP used the Fedaiin to have its political opponents assassinated, among other things, and later on, employed the Special Organization in the mass killings of the Ottoman- Armenians in 1915.8 The CUP disbanded in 1918, a year that also marked the beginning of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.
However, many of its members as well as the political culture it created survived within the Republic of Turkey.
To this day, "Unionism" (İttihatçılık) has persisted in the political culture of Turkey, and has manifested itself primarily in (1) ultranationalism, (2) military involvement/ intervention in politics, and (3) justification of extrajudicial activities and violence in the name of the fatherland (vatan).
Nevertheless, different aspects of this political culture have gained primacy in different periods, and with the influence of the changes in the domestic and international conjuncture, it more or less evolved. For example, during the One Party Era (1925-45), the influence of interwarperiod fascism further radicalized the nationalist ideology of the ruling cadre. Then, in the 1960s, variations of the same Unionist background found expression The Rise and Decline of the Turkish "Deep State": The Ergenekon Case 103 in the rightist and leftist political movements, which, unsurprisingly, entered into violent conflict in the 1970s.
In the mid-1980s, the Kurdish question reemerged with the terrorist activities of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the separatist guerilla group, which became a source of instability in the southeast region of the country, and in so doing, provided a new fertile ground for the clandestine operations of the Turkish deep state.
Of particular importance among these clandestine operations were those by the Gendarmarie Intelligence and Counter-terror Unit (JİTEM, Jandarma İstihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele), which is allegedly responsible for thousands of extrajudicial executions and assassinations of PKK sympathizers and supporters.
Yet the same decade also marked the time period in which Turkey opened its borders and started to integrate with the rest of the world. As a result, after the 1980s, new social, political and economic perspectives started to emerge. However, this new West that Turkey came to closer contact with during and after the 1980s was fundamentally different from the West of the interwar period in that the former was democratic, and the latter fascist.
The increasing interaction with the West did not instantly trigger the demands for democratization in the country. It was the Susurluk scandal and a combination of other events that occurred approximately a decade later that started to dramatically shift the prevalant paradigms. On the one hand, these experiences created a more profound societal cognizance of questioning authority, and on the other, in line with these experiences, people came to attach new meanings to the nature of the state-society relations in Turkey in a manner which provided a more convenient ground for the democratization process in the country.
Apparently, these paradigm shifts also coincided with the developments since the Helsinki European Council of 1999, where the European Union (EU) formally referred to Turkey as a candidate and thus invigorated the country's accession process.
|
|
|
February 21, 2014 | billmoyers.com
Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought out nothing but loads of dung. That was their return cargo.
– The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (1871)
There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power. [1]
During the last five years, the news media has been flooded with pundits decrying the broken politics of Washington. The conventional wisdom has it that partisan gridlock and dysfunction have become the new normal. That is certainly the case, and I have been among the harshest critics of this development. But it is also imperative to acknowledge the limits of this critique as it applies to the American governmental system. On one level, the critique is self-evident: In the domain that the public can see, Congress is hopelessly deadlocked in the worst manner since the 1850s, the violently rancorous decade preceding the Civil War.
Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country…As I wrote in The Party is Over, the present objective of congressional Republicans is to render the executive branch powerless, at least until a Republican president is elected (a goal that voter suppression laws in GOP-controlled states are clearly intended to accomplish). President Obama cannot enact his domestic policies and budgets: Because of incessant GOP filibustering, not only could he not fill the large number of vacancies in the federal judiciary, he could not even get his most innocuous presidential appointees into office. Democrats controlling the Senate have responded by weakening the filibuster of nominations, but Republicans are sure to react with other parliamentary delaying tactics. This strategy amounts to congressional nullification of executive branch powers by a party that controls a majority in only one house of Congress.
Despite this apparent impotence, President Obama can liquidate American citizens without due processes, detain prisoners indefinitely without charge, conduct dragnet surveillance on the American people without judicial warrant and engage in unprecedented - at least since the McCarthy era - witch hunts against federal employees (the so-called "Insider Threat Program"). Within the United States, this power is characterized by massive displays of intimidating force by militarized federal, state and local law enforcement. Abroad, President Obama can start wars at will and engage in virtually any other activity whatsoever without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, such as arranging the forced landing of a plane carrying a sovereign head of state over foreign territory. Despite the habitual cant of congressional Republicans about executive overreach by Obama, the would-be dictator, we have until recently heard very little from them about these actions - with the minor exception of comments from gadfly Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Democrats, save a few mavericks such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, are not unduly troubled, either - even to the extent of permitting seemingly perjured congressional testimony under oath by executive branch officials on the subject of illegal surveillance.
These are not isolated instances of a contradiction; they have been so pervasive that they tend to be disregarded as background noise. During the time in 2011 when political warfare over the debt ceiling was beginning to paralyze the business of governance in Washington, the United States government somehow summoned the resources to overthrow Muammar Ghaddafi's regime in Libya, and, when the instability created by that coup spilled over into Mali, provide overt and covert assistance to French intervention there. At a time when there was heated debate about continuing meat inspections and civilian air traffic control because of the budget crisis, our government was somehow able to commit $115 million to keeping a civil war going in Syria and to pay at least £100m to the United Kingdom's Government Communications Headquarters to buy influence over and access to that country's intelligence. Since 2007, two bridges carrying interstate highways have collapsed due to inadequate maintenance of infrastructure, one killing 13 people. During that same period of time, the government spent $1.7 billion constructing a building in Utah that is the size of 17 football fields. This mammoth structure is intended to allow the National Security Agency to store a yottabyte of information, the largest numerical designator computer scientists have coined. A yottabyte is equal to 500 quintillion pages of text. They need that much storage to archive every single trace of your electronic life.
Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an "establishment." All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State's protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude. [2]
How did I come to write an analysis of the Deep State, and why am I equipped to write it? As a congressional staff member for 28 years specializing in national security and possessing a top secret security clearance, I was at least on the fringes of the world I am describing, if neither totally in it by virtue of full membership nor of it by psychological disposition. But, like virtually every employed person, I became, to some extent, assimilated into the culture of the institution I worked for, and only by slow degrees, starting before the invasion of Iraq, did I begin fundamentally to question the reasons of state that motivate the people who are, to quote George W. Bush, "the deciders."
Reactions: Andrew Bacevich on Washington's Tacit Consensus
Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called "groupthink," the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town's cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive. As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."A more elusive aspect of cultural assimilation is the sheer dead weight of the ordinariness of it all once you have planted yourself in your office chair for the 10,000th time. Government life is typically not some vignette from an Allen Drury novel about intrigue under the Capitol dome. Sitting and staring at the clock on the off-white office wall when it's 11:00 in the evening and you are vowing never, ever to eat another piece of takeout pizza in your life is not an experience that summons the higher literary instincts of a would-be memoirist. After a while, a functionary of the state begins to hear things that, in another context, would be quite remarkable, or at least noteworthy, and yet that simply bounce off one's consciousness like pebbles off steel plate: "You mean the number of terrorist groups we are fighting is classified?" No wonder so few people are whistle-blowers, quite apart from the vicious retaliation whistle-blowing often provokes: Unless one is blessed with imagination and a fine sense of irony, growing immune to the curiousness of one's surroundings is easy. To paraphrase the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, I didn't know all that I knew, at least until I had had a couple of years away from the government to reflect upon it.
The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street. All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the judiciary belong to the Deep State, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of Congress. Also included are a handful of vital federal trial courts, such as the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of Manhattan, where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are conducted. The final government component (and possibly last in precedence among the formal branches of government established by the Constitution) is a kind of rump Congress consisting of the congressional leadership and some (but not all) of the members of the defense and intelligence committees. The rest of Congress, normally so fractious and partisan, is mostly only intermittently aware of the Deep State and when required usually submits to a few well-chosen words from the State's emissaries.
I saw this submissiveness on many occasions. One memorable incident was passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008. This legislation retroactively legalized the Bush administration's illegal and unconstitutional surveillance first revealed by The New York Times in 2005 and indemnified the telecommunications companies for their cooperation in these acts. The bill passed easily: All that was required was the invocation of the word "terrorism" and most members of Congress responded like iron filings obeying a magnet. One who responded in that fashion was Senator Barack Obama, soon to be coronated as the presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. He had already won the most delegates by campaigning to the left of his main opponent, Hillary Clinton, on the excesses of the global war on terror and the erosion of constitutional liberties.
As the indemnification vote showed, the Deep State does not consist only of government agencies. What is euphemistically called "private enterprise" is an integral part of its operations. In a special series in The Washington Post called "Top Secret America," Dana Priest and William K. Arkin described the scope of the privatized Deep State and the degree to which it has metastasized after the September 11 attacks. There are now 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances - a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government. While they work throughout the country and the world, their heavy concentration in and around the Washington suburbs is unmistakable: Since 9/11, 33 facilities for top-secret intelligence have been built or are under construction. Combined, they occupy the floor space of almost three Pentagons - about 17 million square feet. Seventy percent of the intelligence community's budget goes to paying contracts. And the membrane between government and industry is highly permeable: The Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, is a former executive of Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the government's largest intelligence contractors. His predecessor as director, Admiral Mike McConnell, is the current vice chairman of the same company; Booz Allen is 99 percent dependent on government business. These contractors now set the political and social tone of Washington, just as they are increasingly setting the direction of the country, but they are doing it quietly, their doings unrecorded in the Congressional Record or the Federal Register, and are rarely subject to congressional hearings.
Reactions: Danielle Brian on Legalized Corruption
Washington is the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America, but it is not the only one. Invisible threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes. One is Wall Street, which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater. Should the politicians forget their lines and threaten the status quo, Wall Street floods the town with cash and lawyers to help the hired hands remember their own best interests. The executives of the financial giants even have de facto criminal immunity. On March 6, 2013, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder stated the following: "I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy." This, from the chief law enforcement officer of a justice system that has practically abolished the constitutional right to trial for poorer defendants charged with certain crimes. It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice - certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee. [3]The corridor between Manhattan and Washington is a well trodden highway for the personalities we have all gotten to know in the period since the massive deregulation of Wall Street: Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner and many others. Not all the traffic involves persons connected with the purely financial operations of the government: In 2013, General David Petraeus joined KKR (formerly Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) of 9 West 57th Street, New York, a private equity firm with $62.3 billion in assets. KKR specializes in management buyouts and leveraged finance. General Petraeus' expertise in these areas is unclear. His ability to peddle influence, however, is a known and valued commodity. Unlike Cincinnatus, the military commanders of the Deep State do not take up the plow once they lay down the sword. Petraeus also obtained a sinecure as a non-resident senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The Ivy League is, of course, the preferred bleaching tub and charm school of the American oligarchy. [4]
Petraeus and most of the avatars of the Deep State - the White House advisers who urged Obama not to impose compensation limits on Wall Street CEOs, the contractor-connected think tank experts who besought us to "stay the course" in Iraq, the economic gurus who perpetually demonstrate that globalization and deregulation are a blessing that makes us all better off in the long run - are careful to pretend that they have no ideology. Their preferred pose is that of the politically neutral technocrat offering well considered advice based on profound expertise. That is nonsense. They are deeply dyed in the hue of the official ideology of the governing class, an ideology that is neither specifically Democrat nor Republican. Domestically, whatever they might privately believe about essentially diversionary social issues such as abortion or gay marriage, they almost invariably believe in the "Washington Consensus": financialization, outsourcing, privatization, deregulation and the commodifying of labor. Internationally, they espouse 21st-century "American Exceptionalism": the right and duty of the United States to meddle in every region of the world with coercive diplomacy and boots on the ground and to ignore painfully won international norms of civilized behavior. To paraphrase what Sir John Harrington said more than 400 years ago about treason, now that the ideology of the Deep State has prospered, none dare call it ideology. [5] That is why describing torture with the word "torture" on broadcast television is treated less as political heresy than as an inexcusable lapse of Washington etiquette: Like smoking a cigarette on camera, these days it is simply "not done."
Reactions: Heidi Boghosian on Mass Surveillance
After Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent and depth of surveillance by the National Security Agency, it has become publicly evident that Silicon Valley is a vital node of the Deep State as well. Unlike military and intelligence contractors, Silicon Valley overwhelmingly sells to the private market, but its business is so important to the government that a strange relationship has emerged. While the government could simply dragoon the high technology companies to do the NSA's bidding, it would prefer cooperation with so important an engine of the nation's economy, perhaps with an implied quid pro quo. Perhaps this explains the extraordinary indulgence the government shows the Valley in intellectual property matters. If an American "jailbreaks" his smartphone (i.e., modifies it so that it can use a service provider other than the one dictated by the manufacturer), he could receive a fine of up to $500,000 and several years in prison; so much for a citizen's vaunted property rights to what he purchases. The libertarian pose of the Silicon Valley moguls, so carefully cultivated in their public relations, has always been a sham. Silicon Valley has long been tracking for commercial purposes the activities of every person who uses an electronic device, so it is hardly surprising that the Deep State should emulate the Valley and do the same for its own purposes. Nor is it surprising that it should conscript the Valley's assistance.
Still, despite the essential roles of lower Manhattan and Silicon Valley, the center of gravity of the Deep State is firmly situated in and around the Beltway. The Deep State's physical expansion and consolidation around the Beltway would seem to make a mockery of the frequent pronouncement that governance in Washington is dysfunctional and broken. That the secret and unaccountable Deep State floats freely above the gridlock between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is the paradox of American government in the 21st century: drone strikes, data mining, secret prisons and Panopticon-like control on the one hand; and on the other, the ordinary, visible parliamentary institutions of self-government declining to the status of a banana republic amid the gradual collapse of public infrastructure.
The results of this contradiction are not abstract, as a tour of the rotting, decaying, bankrupt cities of the American Midwest will attest. It is not even confined to those parts of the country left behind by a Washington Consensus that decreed the financialization and deindustrialization of the economy in the interests of efficiency and shareholder value. This paradox is evident even within the Beltway itself, the richest metropolitan area in the nation. Although demographers and urban researchers invariably count Washington as a "world city," that is not always evident to those who live there. Virtually every time there is a severe summer thunderstorm, tens - or even hundreds - of thousands of residents lose power, often for many days. There are occasional water restrictions over wide areas because water mains, poorly constructed and inadequately maintained, have burst. [6] The Washington metropolitan area considers it a Herculean task just to build a rail link to its international airport - with luck it may be completed by 2018.
It is as if Hadrian's Wall was still fully manned and the fortifications along the border with Germania were never stronger, even as the city of Rome disintegrates from within and the life-sustaining aqueducts leading down from the hills begin to crumble. The governing classes of the Deep State may continue to deceive themselves with their dreams of Zeus-like omnipotence, but others do not. A 2013 Pew Poll that interviewed 38,000 people around the world found that in 23 of 39 countries surveyed, a plurality of respondents said they believed China already had or would in the future replace the United States as the world's top economic power.
The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction. Washington is the headquarters of the Deep State, and its time in the sun as a rival to Rome, Constantinople or London may be term-limited by its overweening sense of self-importance and its habit, as Winwood Reade said of Rome, to "live upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face." "Living upon its principal," in this case, means that the Deep State has been extracting value from the American people in vampire-like fashion.
We are faced with two disagreeable implications. First, that the Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change. Second, that just as in so many previous empires, the Deep State is populated with those whose instinctive reaction to the failure of their policies is to double down on those very policies in the future. Iraq was a failure briefly camouflaged by the wholly propagandistic success of the so-called surge; this legerdemain allowed for the surge in Afghanistan, which equally came to naught. Undeterred by that failure, the functionaries of the Deep State plunged into Libya; the smoking rubble of the Benghazi consulate, rather than discouraging further misadventure, seemed merely to incite the itch to bomb Syria. Will the Deep State ride on the back of the American people from failure to failure until the country itself, despite its huge reserves of human and material capital, is slowly exhausted? The dusty road of empire is strewn with the bones of former great powers that exhausted themselves in like manner.
Reactions: Henry Giroux on Resisting the Neoliberal Revolution
But, there are signs of resistance to the Deep State and its demands. In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, the House narrowly failed to pass an amendment that would have defunded the NSA's warrantless collection of data from US persons. Shortly thereafter, the president, advocating yet another military intervention in the Middle East, this time in Syria, met with such overwhelming congressional skepticism that he changed the subject by grasping at a diplomatic lifeline thrown to him by Vladimir Putin. [7]Has the visible, constitutional state, the one envisaged by Madison and the other Founders, finally begun to reassert itself against the claims and usurpations of the Deep State? To some extent, perhaps. The unfolding revelations of the scope of the NSA's warrantless surveillance have become so egregious that even institutional apologists such as Senator Dianne Feinstein have begun to backpedal - if only rhetorically - from their knee-jerk defense of the agency. As more people begin to waken from the fearful and suggestible state that 9/11 created in their minds, it is possible that the Deep State's decade-old tactic of crying "terrorism!" every time it faces resistance is no longer eliciting the same Pavlovian response of meek obedience. And the American people, possibly even their legislators, are growing tired of endless quagmires in the Middle East.
But there is another more structural reason the Deep State may have peaked in the extent of its dominance. While it seems to float above the constitutional state, its essentially parasitic, extractive nature means that it is still tethered to the formal proceedings of governance. The Deep State thrives when there is tolerable functionality in the day-to-day operations of the federal government. As long as appropriations bills get passed on time, promotion lists get confirmed, black (i.e., secret) budgets get rubber-stamped, special tax subsidies for certain corporations are approved without controversy, as long as too many awkward questions are not asked, the gears of the hybrid state will mesh noiselessly. But when one house of Congress is taken over by tea party Wahhabites, life for the ruling class becomes more trying.
If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda. But recent congressional antics involving sequestration, the government shutdown and the threat of default over the debt ceiling extension have been disrupting that equilibrium. And an extreme gridlock dynamic has developed between the two parties such that continuing some level of sequestration is politically the least bad option for both parties, albeit for different reasons. As much as many Republicans might want to give budget relief to the organs of national security, they cannot fully reverse sequestration without the Democrats demanding revenue increases. And Democrats wanting to spend more on domestic discretionary programs cannot void sequestration on either domestic or defense programs without Republicans insisting on entitlement cuts.
So, for the foreseeable future, the Deep State must restrain its appetite for taxpayer dollars. Limited deals may soften sequestration, but agency requests will not likely be fully funded anytime soon. Even Wall Street's rentier operations have been affected: After helping finance the tea party to advance its own plutocratic ambitions, America's Big Money is now regretting the Frankenstein's monster it has created. Like children playing with dynamite, the tea party and its compulsion to drive the nation into credit default has alarmed the grown-ups commanding the heights of capital; the latter are now telling the politicians they thought they had hired to knock it off.
The House vote to defund the NSA's illegal surveillance programs was equally illustrative of the disruptive nature of the tea party insurgency. Civil liberties Democrats alone would never have come so close to victory; tea party stalwart Justin Amash (R-MI), who has also upset the business community for his debt-limit fundamentalism, was the lead Republican sponsor of the NSA amendment, and most of the Republicans who voted with him were aligned with the tea party.
The final factor is Silicon Valley. Owing to secrecy and obfuscation, it is hard to know how much of the NSA's relationship with the Valley is based on voluntary cooperation, how much is legal compulsion through FISA warrants and how much is a matter of the NSA surreptitiously breaking into technology companies' systems. Given the Valley's public relations requirement to mollify its customers who have privacy concerns, it is difficult to take the tech firms' libertarian protestations about government compromise of their systems at face value, especially since they engage in similar activity against their own customers for commercial purposes. That said, evidence is accumulating that Silicon Valley is losing billions in overseas business from companies, individuals and governments that want to maintain privacy. For high tech entrepreneurs, the cash nexus is ultimately more compelling than the Deep State's demand for patriotic cooperation. Even legal compulsion can be combatted: Unlike the individual citizen, tech firms have deep pockets and batteries of lawyers with which to fight government diktat.
This pushback has gone so far that on January 17, President Obama announced revisions to the NSA's data collection programs, including withdrawing the agency's custody of a domestic telephone record database, expanding requirements for judicial warrants and ceasing to spy on (undefined) "friendly foreign leaders." Critics have denounced the changes as a cosmetic public relations move, but they are still significant in that the clamor has gotten so loud that the president feels the political need to address it.
When the contradictions within a ruling ideology are pushed too far, factionalism appears and that ideology begins slowly to crumble. Corporate oligarchs such as the Koch brothers are no longer entirely happy with the faux-populist political front group they helped fund and groom. Silicon Valley, for all the Ayn Rand-like tendencies of its major players, its offshoring strategies and its further exacerbation of income inequality, is now lobbying Congress to restrain the NSA, a core component of the Deep State. Some tech firms are moving to encrypt their data. High tech corporations and governments alike seek dominance over people though collection of personal data, but the corporations are jumping ship now that adverse public reaction to the NSA scandals threatens their profits.
The outcome of all these developments is uncertain. The Deep State, based on the twin pillars of national security imperative and corporate hegemony, has until recently seemed unshakable and the latest events may only be a temporary perturbation in its trajectory. But history has a way of toppling the altars of the mighty. While the two great materialist and determinist ideologies of the twentieth century, Marxism and the Washington Consensus, successively decreed that the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the market were inevitable, the future is actually indeterminate. It may be that deep economic and social currents create the framework of history, but those currents can be channeled, eddied, or even reversed by circumstance, chance and human agency. We have only to reflect upon defunct glacial despotisms such as the USSR or East Germany to realize that nothing is forever.
Throughout history, state systems with outsized pretensions to power have reacted to their environments in two ways. The first strategy, reflecting the ossification of its ruling elites, consists of repeating that nothing is wrong, that the status quo reflects the nation's unique good fortune in being favored by God and that those calling for change are merely subversive troublemakers. As the French ancien régime, the Romanov dynasty and the Habsburg emperors discovered, the strategy works splendidly for a while, particularly if one has a talent for dismissing unpleasant facts. The final results, however, are likely to be thoroughly disappointing.The second strategy is one embraced to varying degrees and with differing goals, by figures of such contrasting personalities as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle and Deng Xiaoping. They were certainly not revolutionaries by temperament; if anything, their natures were conservative. But they understood that the political cultures in which they lived were fossilized and incapable of adapting to the times. In their drive to reform and modernize the political systems they inherited, their first obstacles to overcome were the outworn myths that encrusted the thinking of the elites of their time.
As the United States confronts its future after experiencing two failed wars, a precarious economy and $17 trillion in accumulated debt, the national punditry has split into two camps. The first, the declinists, sees a broken, dysfunctional political system incapable of reform and an economy soon to be overtaken by China. The second, the reformers, offers a profusion of nostrums to turn the nation around: public financing of elections to sever the artery of money between the corporate components of the Deep State and financially dependent elected officials, government "insourcing" to reverse the tide of outsourcing of government functions and the conflicts of interest that it creates, a tax policy that values human labor over financial manipulation and a trade policy that favors exporting manufactured goods over exporting investment capital.
Mike Lofgren on the Deep State Hiding in Plain Sight All of that is necessary, but not sufficient. The Snowden revelations (the impact of which have been surprisingly strong), the derailed drive for military intervention in Syria and a fractious Congress, whose dysfunction has begun to be a serious inconvenience to the Deep State, show that there is now a deep but as yet inchoate hunger for change. What America lacks is a figure with the serene self-confidence to tell us that the twin idols of national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas that have nothing more to offer us. Thus disenthralled, the people themselves will unravel the Deep State with surprising speed.
[1] The term "Deep State" was coined in Turkey and is said to be a system composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services, military, security, judiciary and organized crime. In British author John le Carré's latest novel, A Delicate Truth, a character describes the Deep State as "… the ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information denied to large swathes of Whitehall and Westminster." I use the term to mean a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.
[2] Twenty-five years ago, the sociologist Robert Nisbet described this phenomenon as "the attribute of No Fault…. Presidents, secretaries and generals and admirals in America seemingly subscribe to the doctrine that no fault ever attaches to policy and operations. This No Fault conviction prevents them from taking too seriously such notorious foul-ups as Desert One, Grenada, Lebanon and now the Persian Gulf." To his list we might add 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
[3] The attitude of many members of Congress towards Wall Street was memorably expressed by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the incoming chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, in 2010: "In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."
[4] Beginning in 1988, every US president has been a graduate of Harvard or Yale. Beginning in 2000, every losing presidential candidate has been a Harvard or Yale graduate, with the exception of John McCain in 2008.
[5] In recent months, the American public has seen a vivid example of a Deep State operative marketing his ideology under the banner of pragmatism. Former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates - a one-time career CIA officer and deeply political Bush family retainer - has camouflaged his retrospective defense of military escalations that have brought us nothing but casualties and fiscal grief as the straight-from-the-shoulder memoir from a plain-spoken son of Kansas who disdains Washington and its politicians.
[6] Meanwhile, the US government took the lead in restoring Baghdad's sewer system at a cost of $7 billion.
[7] Obama's abrupt about-face suggests he may have been skeptical of military intervention in Syria all along, but only dropped that policy once Congress and Putin gave him the running room to do so. In 2009, he went ahead with the Afghanistan "surge" partly because General Petraeus' public relations campaign and back-channel lobbying on the Hill for implementation of his pet military strategy pre-empted other options. These incidents raise the disturbing question of how much the democratically elected president - or any president - sets the policy of the national security state and how much the policy is set for him by the professional operatives of that state who engineer faits accomplis that force his hand.
Mike Lofgren is a former congressional staff member who served on both the House and Senate budget committees. His book about Congress, The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted, appeared in paperback on August 27, 2013.
Are you aware of our Comment Policy?
BillMoyers.com encourages conversation and debate around issues, events and ideas related to content on Moyers & Company and the BillMoyers.com website.
- The editorial staff reserves the right to take down comments it deems inappropriate.
- Profanity, personal attacks, hate speech, off-topic posts, advertisements and spam will not be tolerated.
- Do not intentionally make false or misleading statements, impersonate someone else, break the law, or condone or encourage unlawful activity.
If your comments consistently or intentionally make this community a less civil and enjoyable place to be, you and your comments will be excluded from it.
We need your help with this. If you feel a post is not in line with the comment policy, please flag it so that we can take a look. Comments and questions about our policy are welcome. Please send an email to [email protected]
Find out more about BillMoyers.com's privacy policy and terms of service.
- Anonymous
Another attribute of the "Deep State" is that is highly nepotistic. Entry into it relies on connections rather than skill. Many positions within it exist simply to provide suitably lucrative work for the children of the ruling class.
- Nisswapaddy
Lofgren has certainly provided a good overview of the situation, although what he postulates is by no means original thinking. However, it is particularly heartening to have this analysis come from a fellow who could easily have sold his soul like David Petraeus, to name just one in an endless line of the well connected who have cashed in. Yet I believe our situation is more dire than even Lofgren suggests. As the philosopher John Ralston Saul characterized it, we have undergone a coup d'etat in slow motion and now live, not in a constitutional democracy but 'Democracy Inc.' (described in detail in a book by the same name by Prof. Sheldon Wolin). LIke Lofgren, neither of these thinkers sees some carefully contrived conspiracy at work. It is merely the inevitable result of following a rigid ideology that allows unfettered corporate capitalism to have its way unopposed and essentially unregulated. Now that massive corporation have taken control of all the levers of power (as Lofgren summarizes above) it will be very, very difficult for 'the people' to take them back. Remember what Upton Sinclair observed over 100 years ago:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him NOT understanding it."
I give you men like Dave Petraeus, or Jamie Dimon or (fill in the blank) who are subject to this 'lack of understanding'. They are not co-conspirators, at least not in any active, conscious sense. However, the corporations they work for, whose only function is to maximize profits for the benefit of their shareholders and investors and to 'externalize' any and all costs and expenses possible, are, by definition, sociopaths. And those corporations, run by men and women simply doing their jobs and going home to a loving family, also have a 'lack of understanding'. When the corporation you work for has only reason for being, to make a profit 'come heck or high water', and that corporation and hundreds of others with the she mission, control the executive, congress, the judiciary and their regulators (who are now required to call the corporations they supposedly regulate "their customers" ) it doesn't take much imagination to see how we got where we are. Nor how it is that corporations get what they need, the rest of us be dammed. In short, the 'deep state' Lofgren shines a light on is much deeper than he indicates. And it will take more than spats between large corporations to bring it to an end.
- William Jacoby
Good essay but everybody should know this by now. In the next elections, in which good candidates will by definition not be viable because they won't be bankrolled by the Deep State, we must use the alternative media to coalesce around a few non-negotiable demands. Things like prosecuting Clapper for lying, immediate prohibition of the intelligence community's revolving door, nationalization of companies like Booz Allen, creation of public banks as suggested by Ellen Brown and nationalization of banks too big to fail, a student loan debt strike, and a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. Failure to grant these demands must be met with withdrawal from the two-party system; go Green or go Libertarian, whichever you prefer, but put a monkey wrench in the system. Keep using the alternative media, defend them from the Deep State, educate yourself, network with the growing numbers of people who are onto the Deep State, or the National Security State, or whatever you want to call it. But get over talking about how the Constitution is in danger; it's dead, and if there's anything you liked about it, you'll have to bring it back from the graveyard. Take action, and support others who do.
- cross1242
Unfortunately, I don't see anything changing the Deep State or the government in Washington until there is some kind of revolution. That revolution might be bloodless but nothing guarantees that. If the Deep State ultimately feels threatened, it will defend itself with all the national security forces at its command.
Yes. An example. Paper granted PhD's are "promised" suitably lucrative work in academia. So it's not just corporate.
- http://twilightirruption.blogspot.com/ abbeysbooks
Time for you to read Foucault's Discipline and Punish and all the rest of his work. Include Virilio, Baudrillard and the rest of Continental Philosophy. Lofgren is just catching up with a long way to go. Check out Zizek.
- Kibik
Look up "Bohemian Club" too.
- Peter Michaelson
The fact that an invisible government of elites is in charge of our democracy is entirely predictable. This political arrangement simply depicts the state of our psychological development. We have a "Deep State" within our unconscious mind. Our thoughts, desires, aspirations, and beliefs are all under the influence of this inner "Deep State." Through our ego we're each like a puppet prince, thinking we're in charge of the show. Both liberals and conservatives have too much invested in self-image and are afraid of facing what amounts to an inner tyranny. We're too egotistical and narcissistic; we don't want to be humbled by inner truth. We've produced superficial psychologies (behavioral, positive, cognitive, etc.) that refuse to face the inner reality. We'll have real democracy in America and the world when we establish inner democracy. It can be done, and it needs to be done soon. Start by tossing out all the so-called "scientific psychology" that academic psychologists are pedaling. Go back to Freud and understand what he's really saying, that we'll go on generating suffering and self-defeat until we become more conscious of our inner conflicts, psychological defenses, and entanglements in negative emotions.
- Anonymous
As has been mentioned the greatest power is the people. Without the cooperation of the people none of the pathological behavior described would be possible. The West Coast Strike of 1934 is an example of what can be done. A major way that the 1% control the 99% is through debt. That control could actually be reversed. What would happen if only 10% of the 99% decided to no longer to pay their debts? A movement like that could rapidly escalate once people realize that there is no system that could cope with massive non payment of debt.
What would happen if the pilots, truck drivers, rail workers and dock workers decided to strike? or the telecommunication workers? All or any of those could be implemented peacefully. No need to hit the streets. Just stay home and contribute nothing to the deep state. Imagine how long it could survive the massive non cooperation of the 99%. There is a multitude of possibilities.- Charles Shaver
'How can I thank thee [Bill Moyers], let me count the ways…' and now, too, Mike Lofgren. For some time I've been thinking that vastly superior aliens from deep space might be holding the U.S. Government hostage and causing all of the recent illegal, immoral, unconstitutional and just plain stupid national self-destruction. What a relief to learn it is only too-typical low IQ humanity that is responsible. Seriously, now, that which gives me the audacity and courage to comment on these things about which I personally know so little, is my lay acquired understanding of the basics. To me, in early 2014, these are mere, obvious, matters of the hierarchy of law, relevant laws and violations thereof.
Ignoring most of the basics and my personal lack of qualifications, suffice it to say for now that above and beyond the laws of man are those self-evident in nature. Insightfully, since August of 1975, I have observed not only do the higher laws apply to both machine and man but the U.S. Constitution is imbedded with them, intentionally or not. So, to finally get to the point, when Mike Lofgren says 'Groupthink' I think of The Universal Law of Order: "Whenever two or more individuals unite to form an organization the survival of the organization becomes paramount to the survival of the individual." and how the Constitution was ignored again. When someone says 'there's nothing I can do' I think of The Third Rule of Human Behavior: "Self-determination shall prevail." and how the Constitution was ignored again. Deep space, or 'Deep State,' it 'don't look good' for us when a vast majority keeps enabling a selfish minority to impose rule. Now, it will probably take a paradigm shift to fix what's broke but, fortunately, naturally, 'shift happens.'
- http://leisureguy.wordpress.com Leisureguy
Magnificent article-greatly extends the range of my awareness, since I was just starting to get a glimpse of this.
It should definitely be noted in the article that Senator Barack Obama pledged and promised that he would vote against telecom immunity and then he voted in favor of it. That did not auger well, albeit accurately.
- http://leisureguy.wordpress.com Leisureguy
This is why bloody revolutions happen: the course of last resort would certainly be violence, which hurts everyone. Elections were supposed to allow an orderly way to bring about change without violence, but once that mechanism is jammed and will no longer respond, violence is lapping at our heels.
- http://leisureguy.wordpress.com Leisureguy
I have the same feeling. We thought we had a mechanism that would enable us to respond to the need for revolutionary change in an orderly way, but that mechanism has been deliberately broken. That is very, very bad.
Although one must allow that much of this is driven by our deep nature: social animals acting as social animals do, with all sorts of social-driven instincts and responses. Biology is destiny?
- rleighton27
I am not part of the hallelujah chorus greeting this article. Some, if not most of it, smacks of the apologia of a professional bureaucrat who suddenly has found a conscience. Also, his claim that President Obama was itching to start a war in Syria, but was only held back from doing so by "overwhelming Congressional skepticism"…as if that wasn't a daily occurrence to be dealt with from day one of his tenure. I am convinced that it was part of his strategy from the outset…to rattle sabres loudly enough to frighten a bellicose Putin, who knew his own military prowess was hampered by an ill-trained and poorly equipped manpower pool, into making his lapdog Assad stop playing nasty with his population–and it worked. I agree with much of the article's commentary about the "boys in the back room" who, in fact, have commandeered the running of the country out of the hands of elected officials, but condemn it's tone of "it really doesn't matter who's in charge." It does matter. Articles of this type just encourage voter apathy, and that plays into the schematic laid out by the Powell Memorandum for the usurping of Democracy, placing it into the hands of the ALEC/Koch consortium of Plutocratic traitors.
- http://leisureguy.wordpress.com Leisureguy
This helps me understand why such an intensive effort is underway to destroy our educational system and the low value we seem to place on education. I'm thinking of privatization, charter schools, constant pressure to pay public money to religious schools, defunding of higher education, closures of departments of humanities and non-applied science and art-that sort of thing. And now I get it: the last thing the corporate state wants is people "wasting" time and effort on a bunch of abstract principles and reasoning and critical thinking, especially since it just causes trouble in the workplace and makes people question orders. Better to do away with that: turn the focus to what will make the most money, and your problem's solved. And then you can cut costs-always the imperative-by closing departments that seem to create the most troublemakers. Two birds, one stone.
- Bob Baldock
Peter Dale Scott articulated this first, and has it deeper and darker. Check his website.
- Anonymous
As I read the final sentence,
"What America lacks is a figure with the serene self-confidence to tell us that the twin idols of national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas that have nothing more to offer us. Thus disenthralled, the people themselves will unravel the Deep State with surprising speed."
I remembered the demise of individuals who fit "figure with serene self-confidence"…..
John F. Kennedy
Martin Luther King
Robert Kennedy
Malcolm X
Paul Wellstone- Joan Harris
It's been awhile since I have had anyone refer to Freud. Never mind the "new age" psychology. Defenses have always been the problem. In a perfect world we would all live consciously and greed and prejudices would give way to peace and harmony. In the meantime we must address all the ills, if for no other reason then to prevent us from becoming complacent. I shall retain a little healthy cynicism until the world is healthy.
- I. Spoke Umbra
Let's be clear about what the "group-think" means when speaking about the NSA:
As someone who was once in the bowels of the NSA beast, I observed a number of disturbing traits permeate every nook and cranny of the operation. If those traits were applied to an individual, they would be considered a very serious characterological disorder, perhaps warranting hospitalization:
1. Paranoid
2. Obsessive compulsive
3. Sociopathic
4. Grandiose
5. Narcissistic (self-rationalizing)
6. Uber-patriotic (self-justifying)The groupthink scenario in that place is as toxic as it can get for a human enterprise. It is a clear and present danger to the security of Democracy as we know it.
- Pamela Zuppo
This was no stroke of genius, this was Greenspan, Reagan, and the Bush clan. The better term for contemporary capitalism is "disaster capitalism" as coined by Naomi Klein. The big question is what are we to do about this? Do what Kiev has done? Due to "group think", or brain-washing of the masses who have lost their own control via their televisions, it seems the zombies outnumber the enlightened. It's clear to me something must be done.
- SufferinSuccotash,Pivoting
Randolph "War is the Health of the State" Bourne is also worth a read. Not to mention Jack London's The Iron Heel. These All-American doods had the National Security-Oligarchy State pretty much nailed down a century ago. Why people concerned with our current predicament skip over these Progressive Era radicals in favor of Continental Philosophy (which reminds me of a skimpy breakfast) is beyond me. I've been watching the emancipatory elements in this country floundering around for the past four decades now and it's pretty depressing, especially the seemingly chronic inability to connect with the USA's radical past. No historical knowledge=no sense of history=no political judgement=the Bad Guys keep on winning.
Ukrainians are my favorite people at the moment and you can bet that their sense of history is pretty sharp.
This concludes this Sunday morning rant.- Joseph Brant
It is commendable to preserve hope among reformers, but hopes do not solve problems.
While security agencies can serve democracy when better regulated, the failure to regulate is the result of failed democratic institutions which have not themselves been "vulnerable to a vigilant public." The dark state invisible power corrupts invisibly, but gold is the invisible power which had already corrupted the visible institutions.
We need more than a "self-confident figure" to tell us that "national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas" so that "the people themselves will unravel the Deep State." The "deep…hunger for change" was deeper in 2008 when so easily destroyed by its self-confident Obama by simply not mentioning what "outworn dogmas" he would change. The hawkish Hillary is not about to "unravel the Deep State" and mere self-confidence will not finance campaigns or buy media support to do more than split the vote of reformers. The media and elections must first be freed of gold, and the people cannot do that without free media and free elections.
While history is full of surprises, the succession of cold-war fearmongering by global war upon diffuse "terrorist" backlash and political opposition to half-witted right wing imperialism does not suggest a passing reaction, nor that any lesson was learned from three generations of failed military adventures with no relationship to the declared national principles. The cancerous dark state has grown in proportion to the failure of right wing foreign policy, the failure of its own rationales. It is the triumphant institution of right wing tyranny as the immune sovereign over a failed democracy.
Democracy may make further ultimate progress in China than in the US, or may survive only in micropowers of no interest to the right wing. But we must have faith in the power of the people, or we lose hope and take no action.
- Barbara Mullin
I call it vulture capitalism.
- jrdel
Since the People of United States overthrew British ruling class government of our country and after the revolution, through wise government, and luck we got out from under the thumb of any rulers whether clerics, nobility, landlords, businessmen, political dictators, banks, etc. etc. these forces have been working to reestablish their control over our lives and by gradual steps have done so. Great Americans turned back the tide here and there for a while, Jackson ended the national bank, T. Roosevelt broke up monopoly corporations, F. Roosevelt supported efforts for economic democracy, etc. but the enemies of liberty never rest and always find new ways to undermine it.
So every few generations the People are faced with another fight if they are to keep their liberties. This time the odds look particularly bad, Enemies stronger, richer, more devious, more insidious, more corrupt; the People weaker, more divided, confused, distracted. What the hell do we do? Voting just doesn't do much. Big money floods the media with their point of view. The People, relatively poorer than ever; don't have enough money to reply.
Petitions, reforms, protests, revolution? All impractical, or impossible (imagine a revolution in the streets against the power of the U.S. military.) The days when we can grab our muskets and go out and make a revolution have long gone folks.
I think humanity will have to wait for another age, and another nation to see real liberty and real democracy in control of the world again.- SufferinSuccotash,Pivoting
Given that back in his day "merchants" were often interchangeable with "bankers" Smith certainly scored a bulls-eye with that one. The perfect Horrible Example in the 1770s was the East India Company, which couldn't govern Bengal without trashing its economy and couldn't keep off the financial rocks either. Eventually the British government put the Company on a shorter leash and still later the Company lost its monopoly over East Indian trade. But one short-term measure to bail out the Company was to give it a monopoly over selling tea to the dumb colonists over in America. Oops. That was a real "tea party", not some bogus affair staged by geezers in funny hats.
- SufferinSuccotash,Pivoting
Of course. I spent quite a few years rationalizing and pretending that Everything Was Pretty Much OK In These Here United States myself. The problem with being a history teacher–at least in this case–is that the past, which as William Faulkner famously said wasn't only not dead but not even past, can catch up with you. This country is paying and will continue to pay pretty heavily for decades of folly which anyone with a sense of history could have predicted at least 40 years ago.
- joanne
We have had millenia to "cage the beast", tame the beast, train, heal, and/or defang the beast. Predatory behavior is mediated, never extinguished. The Deep State is both institutionalized predation and paradoxically, a grotesque attempt to protect itself from itself.
- Anonymous
The ideology is hinted at throughout the article. Capitalism; The premise that money is a form of commodity and the winner is whomever has the most. Unfortunately money is a contract and while such notional promises seemingly can be manufactured to infinity, through the creation of the other side of the ledger, debt, their underlaying value is dependent on the increasingly precarious solvency of those taking on that debt. It is what is referred to in hindsight as a bubble. If you want to see the future of the US in about fifty years, it will likely be in the states and regions.
- J Timothy
The US military-intelligence-industrial aparatus is filled with loyal American patriots who love this country and have sworn to uphold the US Constitution. Unfortunately, they don't seem to understand that the system is extremely expensive and is impoverishing the middle class of America. We have nine air craft carrier groups while the next closest military has just two. Air craft carriers are incredibly expensive.
In my opinion, the next revalation to hit the mainstream media will be that SOME of the covert, clandestine, black budget projects have been financed via securities fraud. They've done it before. Arms for hostages, Hmong drug running in Vietnam, etc, are examples of this. Catherine Austin Fitts has also made a great point that HUD, of all agencies, has funded some black budget procurements.
Clearly, either the CIA or the NSA are at the center of the cabal. So, what is the justification for all of this secracy? What is soooo important that the adult eagle scout christians of America can't tell us? What could it be? Terrorism? Russians? Soverign citizens? Shoe bombers?
Here is where i will lose most people over 50 years old. IN MY OPINION, a the core of the military industrial aparatus and its wall street enablers is a desperate race to achieve near technological parity with….(pregnant pause) (dramatic pause) other entities, species, e.t. collectives, etc, who are visiting sol 3 (earth). This effort is extremely expensive and involves spending trillions of dollars covertly to build spacecraft and weapons systems based on both advanced human originated technology and also technology from the reverse engineering of recovered alien vehicles.
Many people belive that securities fraud funds this effort. It sounds crazy, but, YES, building trillion dollar weapon systems and spaceships is at the core of the secrecy cult. Nothing else makes sense. What else could possibly require siphoning trillions out of the US economy? Many many authors are written on the subject and it is most definitely NOT a joke. Yes, Bill, lets ask the awkward questions.
Is there a secret space program funded via securities fraud? Have we received help from ET visitors?
One man who asked the awkward question was Congressman Steve Schiff of New Mexico. He asked the Congressional General Accounting Office to inquire about the alleged Roswell alien craft recovery. He got the USAF to give us a third story – (first was a disc, second a weather baloon and third was project mogul) This all took place in the mid 90's.
He was only about 50 yrs old when he caught agressive skin cancer. He resigned from congress and was dead soon after. He was 51.
- aTomsLife
I disagree that Mr. Lofren's article provokes apathy. It sheds light on the duopoly that is the two-party system and encourages voters to seek an alternative, namely a more libertarian, decentralized form of government.
"Overwhelming Congressional skepticism" to Syria included party-line Democrats as well: Unlike the usual D vs. R bickering, it was D's and R's forced to contradict the military industrial complex. It was a powerful moment.
Syria proved the American people - and perhaps only the American people - are capable of muzzling the Deep State. The only reason we didn't intervene there was because constituencies throughout the country stood united, not because of potential international condemnation. The irony of Putin's victory is that he achieved it because he had the backing of the American people. He morphed into our de-facto representative.
Even for the plutocrats, Putin represented the the lesser of two evils. It would have been a catastrophic loss of face to have to admit that D.C. remains beholden to the American people when, united, we're unwilling to follow the script.
Until there's meaningful campaign finance reform, "it really doesn't matter who's in charge." That's the simple truth. But it's a reason to become more engaged in politics, not less.
- J Timothy
One of the problems with dealing with the intelligence services is that they have people embeded within the media to get their point of view across. So, when Moyers talks about asking "Awkward Questions" he underestimates how difficult this is.
Ed Bernays and Walter Lippman were the gentleman geniuses who showed us that marketing and propaganda could be used to manage public opinion without limits.
Yes, lets ask the awkward questions. What is so important to the military-industrial-complex that it needs to siphon, literally, trillions of dollars out of the US economy?
One man asked an awkward question. His name was Congressman Steve Schiff. After he asked his question, he died of agressive skin cancer. He was 51 years old. Sure. It cold have been coincidence. But he was the only one asking awkward questions at the time and he was the only one who got agressive skin cancer. Meanwhile, the CIA's top spooks like George HW Bush and Kissinger are still alive into their 90's. Go figure.
- http://daybrown.org Dale H. (Day) Brown
Mother Nature bats last. When we look at the list of empires crashed because bad weather ruined crops, we see it includes all of them. People will put up with appalling corruption- until they are hungry. The Deep State has not picked up on the risk of unusual weather on agriculture, altho the price of crop insurance rose dramatically. Agribusiness will do fine with govt checks, but people cant eat insurance.
Part of the problem is that ag policy is set to reduce the cost of the hobby operations of politicians, like Bush's ranch, but failing to support the backbone of American agriculture, the family farm. The average age of farmers now is over 60, and because of land speculation by friends of elected representatives, the next generation cant afford to buy farms. The result is land owned by absent aristocracy and worked by men whose only interest is their immediate benefit and not the condition of land to be inherited by sons.
Another of the many reasons we need a Gnu Party not run by lawyers.
- Thomas Milligan
Can't blame you for feeling ripped off. You have been. We all have been, except for those in the very top income brackets. Lofgren does a pretty good job of detailing the forces that have perpetrated the heist. I've come to call it The Money; it includes the actors Lofgren details, plus billionaire types like the Koch brothers and Richard Mellon Scaife, plus the mainstream media (even much of PBS, unfortunately), which has become the Ministry of Propaganda for The Money. All Is Well. The USA Is Number 1. The Government Is Keeping Us Safe from Terrorism. Buy More Stuff. Whistleblowers Are Traitors. The Economy Is Recovering. Buy More Stuff. If Things Aren't Getting Better for You It's Because You're a Loser. So Buy More Stuff.
Don't romanticize the '50's too much. The discontent that exploded in the 60's was just under the surface even then. To the extent that it was "better" then it was because the prosperity of the nation *was* more broadly shared. A single "breadwinner" (usually Dad) could feed a family, with enough left over to save for old age, and Mom was available to nurture the kids. Do you know *any* families for whom that could be true today? And the mainstream media was populated by actual journalists rather than mouthpieces for The Money who look good in suits and understand what their owners want said. Bill Moyers, obviously, is an exception to this rule. One of the few.
I'm surprised you're not angry. You have every reason to be.
- Thomas Milligan
Mr. Lofgren does a pretty good job of detailing the forces that have perpetrated the sad parody of self-government into which our nation has devolved, but he left out a couple. I've come to calling the whole thing "The Money." It includes the actors Lofgren details, plus billionaire types like Scaife and the Koch brothers, plus the mainstream media (even much of PBS, unfortunately), which has become the Ministry of Propaganda for The Money and the so-called "Washington Consensus." Where once we had journalists, now we have (with the almost-sole exception of Bill Moyers) pretty people who look good in suits and like to be on TV, reading the scripts they're given.
- Anonymous
Well, that's rather a 'rose colored glasses' view of the Tea Party given their current platform position. While I agree there are some redeeming qualities – not because I deem them to be but because they do contribute to the discussion – But, by-n-large the solutions offered by the Tea Party platform will only serve to weaken any hopes of salvaging the Democracy. One such example is this meme that 'all Govt. is bad' which only someone disingenuous would suggest does not prominently inhabit the TP. Another would be the position on so called 'entitlements'. Yet another would be the Tea Party backing of the likes of Ted Cruz or Rand Paul who adopt a position on health care that is antithetical toward a robust Democracy. (And spare me the notion that private enterprise provides better health care etc. – it's simply untrue and there's no evidence to support these fictions.).
One has to examine a few things about the Tea Party – It is quite clear why individuals such as the Koch brothers have gone to great lengths to fund the Tea Party because it is the entrenched Plutocrats and Corporate elite who benefit the most from a weakened Govt. Many TP members see their quality of life eroding and have chosen to go after the wrong entity why? Well, those reasons are numerous – for some it is fear, for others racism, others an inability to grasp the weight of their decisions, etc. and Irrespective of their reasons the actions of the party, quite ironically, will only strengthen the grasp of the very problems you wish to suggest they will address. While a nice sentiment to feel the Tea Party could work with others the reality is much different.
- Anonymous
Wow, how do you create such a canvas of revisionist history? I also found it quite tragic that you espouse 'we need to stop this R vs L' dichotomy but you make every effort to assault the left – exclusively. While that would be with merit if it were true (indeed both parties have played a role in where we now sit) it becomes quite another matter when viewed against, oh idk, the backdrop of reality. A.) Historically it is regulation that keeps corporate interests in check and deregulation promotes the 'crony capitalism' you mention. It's hysterical to assume the inverse. B.) Progressive policies have, again in reality, led to the greatest moments of growth and prosperity in this country. I"m sorry you don't believe those facts. And, why didn't you mention the inequality gap on steroids since Reagan? or the Bush tax cuts that benefitted the richest Americans? Or the subsidization of big pharma. and big oil? Both parties have no interest in representing people without money and every incentive not to. But, don't prattle on this nonsense about the dangers of progressivism. it's ill-thought and smells of ideological belief hungering to trump facts and history; it smells.
- Anonymous
It is quite disheartening and the road forward most uncertain. I'm fairly confident those you allude to will not act from a position of reason and evidence that is fact based. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine circumstances in which those guided by fantasy, belief, and hate (one or all) will shift ideological positions and address the problems that inhabit this country by the corporate state. Individuals like Ted Cruz, Jamie Dimon (more subtly), the Koch brothers are gifted in their cunning ability to take advantage of these, what Thom Hartmann calls 'low information voters' – I've little reason for optimism and plenty of evidence for pessimism without hope.
- Anonymous
After reading this all I can say God help us. I think I can speak for millions of Americans who grew up in a different country. We use to believe that hard work, play by the rules and everything would work out for the Middleclass American. All could share in the American dream. Those beliefs are not what I hear anymore. Apathy and fear are rampant..I fear for the country my children with inherit.
- fenway67
yeah, i don't think that is his main point. it's the corporations and the banks that have infiltrated and that is the fault of both sides of the aisle. The author notes that the bipartisan divide is mostly noise obscuring the bigger picture.
- fenway67
i am hopeful that firstlook.org will be a source of honest journalism. Scahill, Poitras, Greenwald and Taibbi are real journalists working toward finding the truth.
- Anonymous
Wars forced us into debt slavery to the Big banks that financed them, thus we are slaved to the NWO BANKS and corporations Federal Reserve Banks buys and owns most of our debt, they are international now We are controlled by the bankers and the secret NWO financial network running the governments of the world. Everything trickles down from these taskmasters. Follow the money and everything is controlled by where it leads. Globalization, one financial system running the world into their vision of one world government controlled by their big money. They been ruling us for a long time now. CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM would fix us election process and would scare them knowing they can't put their bag men in office anymore.
- Anonymous
So you believe the blame for big government lies only with the liberals? Give me a break. Here are just four Presidents who expanded Government. They are named Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush. Flaming liberals to you I would assume.
- John Gregor
Looking forward to odering some of those books. Have read all Foucault's books. The author wrote quite a nice essay about contemporay American politics. Our majot export seems to be Dollars, like manure they have some value, but I imagine alot of the people who are getting them are not entirely happy
- Anonymous
I saw Mike on c-span Sunday and enjoyed his comments, and now reading this piece I have trouble with a GOP former congressional analysis troubled about how the govt is working or not working beginning in 2009.
As with many of former GOP legislators or analysts never do they dig deeper into the underlying problems that cause the congress to not work. Mentioning the Deep State reminds me of Washington Post investigation exposing the 2nd govt in DC. It's where all the retired legislators or lost elections legislators, the congressional staff, the retired military generals go. They pop up in media (tv, radio, newspapers) spewing out a talking point for their respective 2nd govt think tank in DC. C-span is a major platform that they use, and 99% of them promote some corporation dealing with the 1st govt.
Too bad we don't see the name tags of the corporations they represent. Now that we have citizens united we're back into the age of the Robber Barons.
- Andrew Kloak
This insightful essay shows that Silicon Valley is not be what it claims to be. Neither is Wall Street or the massive build-up of federal government power around Washington, D.C.
The article also alludes to the notion that these companies in Silicon Valley are waking and trying to resist Deep State regime. California can't save American society. We are only 12% of the entire population. Plus, they don't want to, they have to answer to shareholders. Profit is the highest good for companies and government. They want influence and money.
All this is like marionette theatre. James Clapper from the NSA used misdirection when reporters started to zero-in on the scale of the deception and breach of trust last Fall. Enormous change is just ahead but not without enormous turmoil. People intuitively know that national security and corporate power are worn out dogmas.
There is an urgency to all this. Many of these people in these positions of power have no soul. It doesn't have to be this way, it just is. I think they want it this bad because they profit and garner influence when it is this ineffectual.
The biggest changes are within anyway. We have to go deeper in ourselves. That shift in consciousness is already underway. The confluence of forces will sweep away these external constructs. The hidden factors not discussed in the article are the unconscious forces (emotion). Once people are more aware of the light and darkness in themselves things will open up. There is dynamic tension (a good thing) in each person. Self-awareness, integrity and connection to others will change everything.
This article makes interesting connections to something that is hidden in
plain sight. It will change.- richard anderson
I have been giving the political system another chance since Vietnam. Each time we have an election I hear some good things. But when these people are in office they change. When Ralph Nader ran for office he was kept out by various means and not allowed to debate. The system is rigged. This talk of voting for the right person is not going to cut it. With the problems this deep and the protection that has been set up to keep this system in place there is NOT a way to change it. In other words voting will not work. Something more is needed. Demonstrations don't work either. Just look at how long the Vietnam war was protested and when Bush stumped for invasion of Iraq. They didn't care. Resistance may be the answer.
- Anonymous
Rothschild family made their banking trillions beginning from financing Napoleon's wars up until now. Their family owns media houses, governments, etc and their influence knows no bounds. You will never see their family listed on Forbes richest people lists because they own the media and do not want to see their names or advertise their wealth. The Bankers truly own the world and War debt was the fastest way to do it.
- Anonymous
lol. good comment and link.
I will be interested in seeing what First Look does, but I really don't trust the bazillionaire who is starting it up – or at least his motives. Once a plutocrat, always a plutocrat. I predict it will start like Arianna Huffington's HuffPo, initially game changing and valuable, then slowly just another click generating tabloid profit machine with a bubble like mentality forced on contributers, moderators and commentors alike. Time will tell.
- Ellie
We have all this information, but nothing ever comes of it! No one goes to jail The laws are changed to help the criminals . We still have a two party system which is a joke. Unless people are hungry and cold and willing to die for a cause nothing is going to change in this country.
- J.G. Sandom
We have become almost as much a plutocracy as our former Cold War nemesis, Russia. Tech, Big Oil and Wall Street oligarchs, combined with the military-industrial complex (which Eisenhower tried to warn us against) collude (in spirit, if not in actual boardrooms) to keep the people's power in check via libertarian deregulation, union-busting, Citizens United (and other activist SCOTUS rulings), privatization of the Intelligence Community (IC), the opiate of digital media that pushes the idolatry of money & all things celebrity to distract us, and our collective fear of terrorism (hence our perpetual war footing). This is what my forthcoming novel, 404, is all about-not just how IP tech is invading our lives, but how this invasion is a metaphor for the larger invasion. (HAL2, in my book, IS what Mike Lofgren calls the Deep State.) Wake up, America! Our country is being stolen from us in plain sight. Thank you Bill Moyers, and thank you Mike Lofgren for helping to alert the American public. You are 21st century Paul Reveres! Al Qaeda is less of a threat to America because of some future possible terrorist threat, and more because the collective American fear it engenders helps the Deep State sink its claws more effectively into our national flesh.
- Anonymous
What rings clear is we now have a non-elected government operating outside our constitutional government and is purposely gridlocked. Our government and judicial system have been hijacked and steps must be taken to remove Big Hidden money that is controlling our constitutional government. Great interview Bill, thanks as always!
- Jack Wolf
Mike forgot something. There is a simple fact that rules the deep state, the reformists, and the declinests, whether they accept it or not: Natural Law. Abrupt climate change can not be controlled now. To suggest that any of these groups are in control or have the ability to make substantial change belies what is really going on. From now on, all these groups can only react and as far as I can tell, today will be the best day of the rest of our lives. It's all downhill from here and there is irreversible.
- Thomas Milligan
Oh, I know about those guys and I love what they do. The trouble is, somehow *their* work doesn't, as a rule, get picked up, amplified and developed in the mass media the way, say "Watergate" was back when we had real journalists. Meanwhile every load of BS that comes out of the Heritage Foundation, Cato et. al. somehow becomes received wisdom. I'm also a bit concerned that by going off on their own they're setting themselves up to be marginalized and ignored. Trees may fall, but very few people will hear them.
- Thomas Milligan
Somehow your response above… to *my* response… to your original post… got posted under a *separate* post I offered… scroll down far enough, you'll find your original post & my response.
Can't blame you for wanting to shield your children. The thing is, you can't, neither from the anger nor from global climate change. I have grandchildren and grieve when I look at them for the world they're apparently going to inhabit.
One last thing: it's possible… theoretically at least… to have anger without hatred. Anger at what's been done can be a spur to action… and effective action could be taken while still treating the perpetrators with the compassion we know all sentient beings deserve. I'm not sure *I* could manage it because truth to tell I'm not a very good Christian… or Buddhist either… but it's at least theoretically possible.
- Thomas Milligan
Good point about our old nemesis, The Evil Empire.
I always found it ironic that as the Soviet Union was collapsing, the United States was moving toward one-party rule. You can write the Nov. 5 headline right now: "Republocrats Win Yet Again!"
- fenway67
Agreed, the MSM has a vested interest in having their product on the shelf at eye-level and it's hard for the little guy to buy space in this market. I'll be doing my part by re-posting and tweeting important stories that they cover and I just hope the quality will get them noticed. I'm sure the smear campaign against them will begin soon.
- fenway67
I wasn't aware of his motives beyond providing a platform for real journalists. What have you heard? I am hopeful that the high quality work of the people he has hired so far will keep it in the same company as the Moyers people.
- Kenneth Killiany
This is an issue that concerns me greatly actually. Both sides have adopted policies that have fed it. I find it interesting that you mention Allen Drury, who was my uncle. Al was a dogged reporter, uncovering, in his day, the Manhattan Project, which he did not report on because of World War II. Should he have? He never doubted his judgment. However, he was very concerned about how the State just grew and operated on its won. You can see mentions of it in ADVISE AND CONSENT and MARK COFFIN, where he discusses the whole public-private daisy chain and how irresponsible it is. It's true, you can't get drama out of it, but he mentions it, but in PENTAGON, he wrote a whole book about a bureaucracy can be diverted from what it is meant to do by concerns for its own prerogatives. A&C and MARK COFFIN have just been re-released, and PENTAGON will follow next year. This kind of reporting in your article is the kind he admired and it is a great service.
- freelance-writer
A.k.a.:Ukraine 2014. Though there are many factors and stake-holders at work in the Ukraine issue, it behooves the citizenry of all western nations tainted by the same `deep-state' tyranny to bear witness. It will take bricks against bullets to resolve this global crisis once and for ever.
- Mary Brown
The only terrorists we have to face in the USA are our own government and the ones that government is purposely importing to continue their reign of fear. Problem is a large part of America is now well armed and a terrorist would die rather quickly long before any government police forces arrives.
- Len
Most of us frogs are in a pot of water that is getting hotter and hotter and we don't feel it. As quoted from this essay "After
a while, a functionary of the state begins to hear things that, in another
context, would be quite remarkable, or at least noteworthy, and yet that simply
bounce off one's consciousness like pebbles off steel plate". Replace "a functionary of the state" with "we the people".This essay was terrific.
- Anonymous
I am worried that the boiling pot will lead to the elimination of Social Security. For years now politicians been saying it will end to each generation. When it does, a very high percentage of Americans will be at poverty level. I don't want to be living in American cities when that happens, crime and robberies will be common place.
- Anonymous
Yes, this is not a new development… The funny thing is that Bill Moyers' Iran-Contra era expose entitled "The Secret Government" actually covers this subject better than the piece we are commenting on. And iirc, he interviews Peter Dale Scott about the CIA in that report…
- Anonymous
There is a world of difference between bailouts and nationalization. I cannot begin to quantify the folly of calling this system "Marxist" when the party on the left of the two party system has moved so far to the right as to make Eisenhower seem like Trotsky by comparison.
- Anonymous
For Gods sake, not this again. What Banking family who made the bulk of their fortune from War debt and being worth $500 Trillion dollars are you referring to? Everybody is afraid to print anything on these influential banking members. Their influence in this world has no bounds. As we all know Bankers always protect their money and are devising new ways to make more money. If you naively think that Bankers in this world are Godly benevolent people, you better look around the state of the world again and formulate a revised opinion. but there you go, I got my opinion and you have yours and we will respectfully leave it as that. Thanks for your comment!
- Anonymous
Last time I looked capitalism is buying and bought our election process. In fact, in the past the main focus of our government has been on business priorities and concerns. Doesn't look anything as Marxism to me.
- Jimmy Solomon
I read this article and watched your interview. Both are most enlightened. What happened, however, on the eleventh day of the ninth month thirteen years ago was clearly a result of this deep state and it is too bad you won't recognize this glaring example of the corruption of which you write.
- Anonymous
"the party on the left of the two party system"
There is little or no difference between the two faces of the party of state power. They use different words, and then enact the same policies.
Politics is about power, nothing more. There is no "left" or "right", only power.
- Antonio Germano
Again, what filibusters? You have provided no examples. Except for the (unfortunately) pathetic attempts of Cruz, Paul and Lee to derail Obamacare and the recent debt ceiling/government shutdown (I wish) affair, where has there been any effective Republican opposition to any of Obama's agenda?
You are typical of the person who blames one side for our problems, when it's both sides (i.e., the government) that is the problem. Both sides are playing their respective constituencies like a Stradivarius. get over your obsession with partisanship and see the real issue – the whole system is corrupt and needs to be abolished.
Your pining for 'majority rules' is a recipe for tyranny. The filibuster rules were put into place to prevent temporary majorities from steam-rolling temporary minorities. I think it should be even harder to pass laws, not easier, so mischief is avoided.
I repeat – the State is the enemy of us all. get over blaming one side or the other. You are being played.- Anonymous
amazing that such a powerful article was written. too bad its several years too late, and ever so slightly off the mark. you need to let go of the rhetoric of bipartisanship. the DNC and GOP establishments are both operating on the same basic policies. while they offer crumbs to their bases, they are both pushing the agenda of the deep state.they are both to blame, and until people declare that both have no clothes, the powers behind the curtain will continue to rule.
- Anonymous
Thanks, well said.
There's also the "Shallow State" of American campaign consultants like David Axelrod and Mark Penn who make big money in places like Ukraine and Georgia because the locals assume they wield influence over their clients in Washington. If American foreign policy became less aggressive, foreigners wouldn't pay them so much money:
- Auntie Analogue
"F]inancialization, outsourcing, privatization, deregulation and the commodifying of labor."
Yes, "commodifying of labor" thanks to Teddyquiddick pushing the 1965 Hart-Cellers act that began the importation of million Third World unskilled laborers per year, thanks also to the Deep State paralyzing all efforts of us, the People, to force our so-called "representatives" to close, fortify, and defend our borders – to stop the massive flow of scores of millions of illegal immigrants. Immigration has done more to stagnate and reduce Americans' wages and to destroy what had been our historically unprecedented middle class affluence and economic-political power.
Objective One for those of us who would dismantle the Deep State and restore our democracy is obvious: Stop All Immigration. Accomplish this by these measures: one, end birthright citizenship (and thus also end birth tourism); two, abolish State Department power to import refugees and government funding of NGO's that "resettle" refugees; deport all illegal aliens; impose massive, draconian fines on employers that hire illegal alien labor. Why are these measures Objective One? Simple: when we allow our Dear Rulers to displace and dispossess us on our own soil, we forfeit – we surrender – our power to control our representatives and their appointees and their wealth transfer from ourselves to foreigners.- Mil
This is just a small list. But it at least provides some of the examples you are asking to see.
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/bills-blocked-by-republican-filibusters
- rgrisham
This is not a revelation. Noam Chomsky has been pointing this out clearly for the past 40 years… There a couple public documents that might help explain to the educated class exactly what has been going in the U.S. for the past 40 years… The Powell Memo written by Lewis Powell in 71 and the Crisis of Democracy a document publicly published by the Trilateral Commission in the mid 70's these are both damning omissions by powerful groups that control both the business world and governments at all levels of governance. These two documents that we know about are internal look at the dogma of the ruling class.. Neo Liberalism is the term they used but it sure aint new and it sure aint liberal. It just another way for the ruling class to re-institute Feudalism.
- Anonymous
What you say is essentially true. Fascism by definition is the merger of corporations and the military. Another amusing quote: "A capitalist will sell you the rope you hang him with." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
These Deep State proponents will succeed in fully displaying their stupidity when the global environment collapses under the weight and consequence of their actions and humanity becomes extinct. In the meantime, they will be having fun and braying like jackasses as they descend into the abyss.
- Anonymous
What about the level of organization required to create the Trilateral Commission and its formal takeover of the US executive branch when Carter took office? The majority of the cabinet (all but one) were Trilateralists in the newly created group of only 300 worldwide members. Trilateralists were placed in high level international corporate and political positions and this paradigm holds today. Scholars Antony Sutton and Patrick Wood wrote extensively on this international power dynamic with its influence now extending to every part of the globe. It was Trilateralist Larry Summers, former US Secretary of Treasury and Goldman Sachs executive, who was sent to Russia when it's economy imploded to advise Putin on how to privatize the Russian peoples' state owned assets leading the to rise of eight powerful oligarchs with internationalist sensibilities, a very deliberate centralization of capital and a means to control Russian political power players. From the beginning of the transfer of the US manufacturing sector to China, it became Brzezinski's model Technocracy, Brzezinski being the a founder of the Trilateralists, Carter's National Security Adviser, and author of The Grand Chessboard. (reference: Patrick Wood's augustforecast.com) These actions and the concomitant level of organization goes beyond the Deep State model.
- Anonymous
.. if there were no abuses by the IRS, then why did IRS official Lois Lerner plead the fifth ? If my boss asked me to explain possible abuses of power at my job and I pleaded the fifth, my new office would be on the curb.
- Anonymous
The meetings happen in Rancho Mirage and other places for Koch Brothers, and ALEC, etc. They are the ones paying the Pols and they definitely meet and plan conspiracies to disenfranchise voters. And, William Pepper wrote a book that reveals the conspiracies within those security agencies that control pols. It is great the Lofgren is talking about the Deep State. But, to deny the conspiracies within it is naive. The crashing of the Obama garden party by Robert Gates associates is a case in point. The Supreme Court ultimately is the last point of call to stop this Deep State within all the branches. They have judicial oversight, and they are not using it.
- scratphd
The great swamp philosopher Pogo got it right. "I have meet the enemy and he is us."
A complacent America.- Christanne
Lofgren: What America lacks is a figure with the serene self-confidence to tell us that the twin idols of national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas that have nothing more to offer us. Thus disenthralled, the people themselves will unravel the Deep State with surprising speed.
This essay echoes Ivan Illich's "Tools for Convivality," which, although written in the '70s is even more applicable today. This is not new. Lofgren is an important wedge to cauterize the deep state and dispell delusions of unending "progress." However, I don't see any evidence for his assertion that the people themselves will unravel the Deep State. What we've done so far is just buy a new toy, both literally and figuratively, even when so many of us are going hungry.
- Anonymous
Excellent essay. A very good (semi-) insider's look at happenings within the Beltway. However, my instinct tells me that the real nexus of power doesn't lie there, but that the Deep State operatives are allowed to continue their game-playing at public expense in order to serve a larger agenda–the ultimate bankrupting of the US and the ushering in of a new world order which has been in the making for centuries by the real powers-that-be. Uber-conspiratorial? Maybe, but I just can't shake the feeling.
- The One
There is no doubt that the great american experiment has ended in ruin. There is hope on the horizon though. Due to technological progression and its rapid increase in power, the very fabric of society will change. Our social and economic models must change radically due to technological improvements. There is no end in sight to the technological pace we have been blazing at, and if there is an end it seems to be distant. The tremendous benefits of creative AI and the automation of white and blue collar workers must be built into a new social and economic model in which the benefits are distributed evenly and equally among the peoples of planet earth. Even now, if we used our technology wisely, we could unshackle large swaths of the labor markets with automated robots.
The current state of unimaginable corruption which is inflicting the world, not just the US, is a dying last grasp for air as the oligarchies face a new powerful threat, the connection of all things. The internet has the power to upend these corrupt power structures which lie at the heart of society, and thus at the heart of every human life on this planet. Our current economic model is not situated in reality. I can't say if the market will be up or down tomorrow, but what I know for certain is that earth is 196.9 million square miles. Which is a finite space. Not a good place for an economic model which requires economic expansion for survival. The labor markets will be greatly dis-stressed due to technological displacement. The current scientific revolution is unlike any that has ever happened on the surface of this planet. Even highly skilled workers such as surgeons have the capacity to be replaced by highly advanced robots specializing in surgery. People will see awaken to the fact that this "annoying high unemployment" is actually the new normal and will only get worse. This REQUIRES a new economic model.
If a business refused to integrate their business with the latest automation technology, a rival that had enough foresight to not oversee this would drive his competitor out of business. Then, in our current economic model, that rival that just won the market would reap all the rewards. BUT, it will also be in the best interest of that company, if in some new economic manner, a portion of those profits would go into a general citizens fund which would provide all humans with a basic income. This type of model will be absolutely necessary due to mass unemployment. This leaves the motive for profit intact which also leads a motive for innovation, creation, and competition that humans need. With scarcity gone, and universal income for all, the future will look very very bright for our young human species. The seas of interstellar space beckon.
- Anonymous
"…another thing" – yup – if they changed the rule so they could get what they claimed was their agenda passed, the Reps might have been able to do the same – however the Reps could do that anyway themselves if they regained power –
In any case, what does that say about a Party that would refuse to advance a decent agenda just so the other party couldn't advance its own at another date – in essence, cutting off our noses to spite the Reps face – they could have done what they knew we sent them there to do, and they refused, hiding behind rules they could have changed – more and more folks are waking up …
ISTM it oughta be obvious by now that this "struggle" between the Reps and the Dems isn't about principle or ideology and it certainly isn't about representing us – it is about who gets to be in charge of handing out the perks and who gets the perks – those in power are the ones who get both ….
- Charles Shaver
Nice to keep learning of a plethora of ambiguous symptoms but, short of too costly general strikes or domestic insurrection, only voting proved corrupt politicians of both major parties out of high office every other November will eventually restore legal functionality to the U.S. Government. So, vote in every general election and vote against those who stray. 'How to know' one might ask? Simply vote 'out with the old; in with the new,' every time, until we have the kind of America the Founders prescribed in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.
- Anonymous
It only depends on your definition of "the US." Yes, a panel of CEOs famously declined Ralph Nader's invitation to join him in the Pledge of Allegiance, but in the State Department memo that outlined the policy of containment of the USSR, George Kennan said the vast wealth disparity between the US and the rest of the world must be maintained, while civil rights and democracy could be neglected.
By then, the post-World War One idealists who'd joined calls for socialism and one-world government, to prevent another such catastrophe, had seen things differently once Russia turned Eastrrn Europe into a barricade against further invasions from the West. They could not bring themselves to reb against their banker fathers, but they still believed in a one-world government – it would simply be the government of the United States. The entire world would be brought into the economc system we ran, no matter what citizens and their elected governments wanted.
During the Cold War, NATO was used to bring European intelligence agencies and militaries under domnance by the CIA and the Pentagon. Putting ordnance, money and men in place to resist a Soviet takeover made perfect sense, but it operated in peacetime to keep left-wingers out of Continental governments. We overthrew an Italian government, for example. Not by ourselves, of course: the secret "stay-behind" troops were nitorious right-wing fanatics, who could be trusted to carry out their missions regardless of law, Constitutionality or morality. False-flag shootings and bombings in public squares and supermarkets killed many innocent civilians and were blamed on leftist radical groups which had been thoroughly penetrated already anyway. This was to win public support for stricter security policies and, perhaps, punish citizens for voting in liberal-to-left governments. This was admitted in the Italian parliament by the Prime Minister in 1990. Operation GLADIO, as it was called, involved every NATO country. Investigations were promised, but were aborted or came to mothing.
This is what Putin knows will happen if Ukraine joins NATO, for instance, so don't expect him to take it lying down. He operates a Russian version.
In the US, a group of Wall Street financiers discussed literally overthrowing FDR in order to end the New Deal regulatory state, but didn't get past the talking stage. The Senate held hearings but J. Edgar Hoover declined to investigate becayse "no crime was committed." This is the same FBI director who opened pressure dossiers on citizens who carried protest signs or wrote letters to newspapers or the government opposing our war policies, and tried to get Martin Luthed King to commit suicide.
Note the secrecy surrounding current trade-agreement negotiations, and accompanying high security. This dates back to the fiaco of the world trade talks in Seattle some years ago, when street protests neatly brought them to a halt. An Italian citizen was killed during protests against trade talks in Genoa yeats later.
- Anonymous
This was a superb essay–one I have been awaiting for years. One minor addition: there is another non DOD component to the aforementioned group, which is DOE. Admittedly,
it's rather easy to forget about them–but one should not. Ever.- Anonymous
But I really wonder if voting is a sufficient tool for the citizenry to tell the government what it thinks.
Elections are not very frequent, they are deeply manipulated by complex "strategists" (look at the connection between the now-slowly-debunked gay marriage referenda and the re-election of Bush Jr).
Though I find it tedious and at times inefficient I wouldn't mind being part of a citizenry like France that literally shuts the country down until the government says "uncle".- Anonymous
I believe the fourth estate and the way the US government interacts with it have a lot to do with the opacity of the veil I find floating between myself and whatever happens inside the beltway.
The US government keeps journalists begging for the tiniest crumbs. No one is willing to leak anything for fear of being caught.
When I asked a friend in the diplomatic corps what was the most striking about his stint in DC he said the depth at which government officials changed with each new administration compared to other countries. DC's moving business is booming beyond anything imaginable. This is also a tidy way to keep a tight grip on "messaging" – a skill each administration seems to get better and better at.
There is a reason wikileaks has emerged and parody has replaced the stale format of the evening news.
- Charles Shaver
Voting is still an effective tool. Unfortunately, statistically, a majority of manipulated voters will only dirty their hands to install and re-install soluble Democrats and Republicans when seeking water tight integrity; insane, by Einstein's definition. Now is well past the best time to make some real repairs but, perhaps, not yet too late to save a sinking ship. And, shutting the engine down won't plug the leaks.
- Pat Kittle
We Americans are already plenty overcrowded, but Israel lobby billionaires want open borders and they've paid big bucks to both Republicans & Democrats. So open borders and endless population growth it is, ecological sustainability be damned.
And don't give me that "anti-Semitic" hooey, I'm just stating facts.
Zuckerberg, Bloomberg, Soros, Gelbaum, Adelson, etc., etc., Israel lobby, all of them.
No serious discussion of the "deep state" would ignore that elephant in the living room.
- Anonymous
This is not a valid critique. The Deep State serves organized wealth and works to further increase inequality and social stratification. Thus the Deep State represents entrenched right-wing power. It is a matter of state capture. Both parties support this consensus and are thus supremely conservative. The same goes for the media which is owned by these same centers of organized wealth.
- Matt P.
It's not a matter of keeping one's mouth shut, but actions speak louder than words. Being angry and contentious all the time is not the same as being productive about the issues you believe in. Whenever I see an inequality in the street, on the subway, or at a party I react. I stand up for the person, I intervene and get involved. The rest of the time I do keep my mouth shut because there's nothing to say. It doesn't help anyone to spread unhappiness around. In fact it drains your energy so you're not ready or as effective for the next opportunity.
- Sean Kurnow
I get a laugh at people who yell, whine and complain about politicians and party politics….It's like yelling at a ventriloquist dummy instead of the person controlling it. America became a plutocracy in 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created. Since then, we all know that special interest groups control almost every aspect of government policy.
- Anonymous
I will assume you simply did not understand what I wrote or what 'slouching' wrote – ironic eh?
Lets remove Thom Hartmann from the equation, as it seems to be where you flew off the rails…what then is your defense of the idiots we allude to?- Anonymous
I well understand the argument about brainwashing – have heard it a gazillion times ….
The "idiots" you refer to – who are these folk? And while the corp media was brainwashing them, what were the rest of us doing? Sitting on our hands?
- Bill Wesley
well for once I have no comment, its not required in that the writer has made the case with expert precision, I find no flaws, no omissions, no theory or dogma obstructing the writers view. Its nice to see such well presented intellectual compitance, it allows me to feel relief, I can take a break since others are seen to be on the ball
- FroboseTF
Charles:
Voting used to be an effective tool. Unfortunately with the advent of "Electronic Voting Machines" which must be "Programmed", and leave no paper trail to allow a recount; I fear that if the truth be known our elections are probably rigged on a regular basis to reflect the will of those in actual power now.I believe it was Joseph Stalin who said "It's not who casts the votes that's important. It's who counts them.
- Anonymous
Actually, it was a Mossad (Israeli Intel)/US Intel op. US organized it and funded the Al Qaeda end of it via Paki intel officer General Mahmoud Ahmed, while the Mossad prepped the US targets and ran the anthrax mail op. I'm not sure that Mossad didn't dream it up in the first place, but, whatever the details, Al Qaeda was definitely just a bit player in the op with the real culprits being our own fearless leaders.
- Reuben_the_Red
Winner-takes-all elections (as opposed to proportional representation) and the Electoral College are inherently undemocratic and present the illusion of voter participation without the danger of undue voter influence.
- Reuben_the_Red
Excellent discussion of the intersection of money, power, and early 21st century technology in the US today. Food for thought, especially paired with Moyer's recent documentary about ALEC.
One caveat: Paragraph 21 starts out saying, "the Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by
surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that
it is almost impervious to change," but in paragraph 22, "there are signs of resistance to the Deep State and its demands." Paragraph 21 has already made the case that resistance is irrelevant and impotent in the face of the Deep State apparatus, power/wealth reserves, and democracy-subverting methodology. And that's probably true. There may be no way to actually extricate the Deep State from The Superficial State.We are left in the final few paragraphs with a series of reasons that the Deep State might reverse course voluntarily, or unravel of its own accord, but in the end what we really need is "a figure with the serene self-confidence to tell
us that the twin idols of national security and corporate power are
outworn dogmas that have nothing more to offer us": in other words, some kind of charismatic, messianic Jesus-person, to save us from ourselves. I don't object to the author trying to end with a hopeful note of optimism, but how would this person reach us with that message? Are there not already a host of people who have been saying exactly that for decades, from Noam Chomsky to Angela Davis, from Daniel Quinn to Arundhati Roy, from Mark Twain to John Lennon? Have we not managed to ignore and disregard a notable and widely-published list of people trying to tell us that national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas that do nothing to elevate humanity nor the human condition?"Thus disenthralled,
the people themselves will unravel the Deep State with surprising speed." It seems clear that we will be forever enthralled with our credit scores and our televised sporting events and other televised virtual realities until the government of the US actually collapses due to a variety of currently known and unknown factors (economic, ecological, etc). And that's not gonna be pretty either. And even then there is the further possibility that in such an event of complete destabilization (not unthinkable, has happened throughout history, around the world), the Deep State could become simply The State.- Reuben_the_Red
Agreed. Presumably there is no incentive in the Deep State to undermine the omnipotence of the Deep State.
There are ways to increase voter participation (non-participation fines and penalties as I understand Australians are subject to; make voting day a federal holiday or even better a three-day weekend; give the right to vote back to felons and inmates alike; etc.) but wouldn't we still be left to choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee?
- Charles Shaver
I haven't voted for Tweedledee or Tweedledum for President since Ronald Reagan and, since learning of Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 2012, I don't vote for either for Congress. I'd rather take a chance on a third, fourth or fifth party unknown, a blank ballot or a write-in candidate than on another known destroyer from one of the two major parties. Participation alone is not enough; it has to be informed participation, referenced against the clear, plain and simple language of the U.S. Constitution. So, how do we get the word out?
- Reuben_the_Red
It would have been a very different election in 2012 if the Republican establishment and the corporate media machine had not colluded to rig the primaries so that Mitt Romney was the nominee, and not the one that the majority of voting Republicans wanted, Ron Paul, who ran on a platform that ironically appealed to many leftists, because of his insistence that foreign military interventions and US global military incursions cease immediately.
It's possible that the realistic threat of a viable third party candidate on the outer fringe of the left or the right could be enough to force that respective party to yield to those fringe demands, incorporating those demands into a mainstream platform, more or less like the Tea Party did with the Republican party in recent years, threatening to take their votes elsewhere.
At the same time, more Americans voted for left wing platforms than right wing platforms in 2000, but due to the winner-takes-all elections, we didn't get a government that was 5% Nader, 45% Gore, 45% Bush, majority leftist reflecting the vote. We got 100% Bush. We got corporate welfare, tax cuts for the uber wealthy which did not result in higher employment, we got two decade-long unprovoked foreign wars riddled with war crimes, and we got persistent recession. Some of these things, if not all of them, would not and could not have happened under a Nader/Gore-led government. The Deep State expanded massively with the Bush/Cheney administration's complicity. I wish that it was worthwhile to vote for third-party candidates, but we can expect them to receive no media coverage, few votes overall despite the possibly broad appeal of their platform, and in the end it would be irrelevant because of the Electoral College. If I live in Oregon and vote for Romney my vote is thrown away as surely as if I live in Utah and vote for Obama.
In answer to your question, how do we get the word out, I think the only answer is media ownership. Our lives are more consumed by media today than ever before in the history of the world, and all of the media is concentrated in fewer hands, with more consensus among those few hands, than ever before.
- Charles Shaver
It would be a very different election every time, and nation, if the majority would simply quit believing in the now defunct two-party system, corporate owned media and an extremist capitalist system that values the gains of the uber wealthy over the lives and limbs of workers and the poor. It's okay to question the status quo, ignore corporate media, do independent research, vote totally independent of family tradition and elect questionable strangers (as opposed to proved bipartisan failures) to defund the Deep State. Need a little more direction? Review the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. It pretty well sums it all up in rather clear, plain and simple English, if you keep in mind that not just millionaires, billionaires and multi-national corporations (allegedly) are 'people.' Good conversation.
- jeffries
Mike Lofgren wrote the essay. Bill Moyers was allowed to interview him. PBS has its hands tied by the "deep state" too. If you doubt this talk ask PBS why they pulled the plug on the Koch Brothers expose.
- jeffries
The "deep state," like a parasite, will continue until its host is dead. My guess is they are in a state of panic-their host is on life support. The party is over- the rest of the world has had enough of the U.S. The petro dollar has been broken. The dollar will be dethroned as the world reserve currency and the torch will be passed to China no later than 2018. The players of the "deep state" will not be able to infiltrate and latch onto this new host and so they will fight to the death, more accurately our sons and daughters death, to keep the U.S. in its position. Resist war is all we can do and not buy into the steady stream of propaganda that will be bombarding us at every turn.
- Hatha Sunahara
I haven't read all 328 comments so far, but I just wonder if anybody has picked up on the reason the deep state has developed. I think it's development stems from the evolution of the United States from a Republic into an Empire. No empire can exist with restrictions on its power like those put on the United States by the Constitution. So, instead of discarding the Constitution, the United States was subsumed into an 'extra-constitutional government'. Of course, nobody bothered to tell the people of the United States that their power had been usurped by a lawless Imperial overlord. Responsibility for that egregious oversight can be laid to the mainstream media, which is owned by the owners of the extra-constitutional government. These are the global media corporations.
If you view politics this way, it explains a lot of things. Empire relies on it's military power and the acceptance of its money. Anyone who does not accept the empire's money generates hostility from the empire. The empire wages war without any declaration of war. The extra constitutional government allows that. The empire cannot tolerate privacy because that would allow people to plot against the empire without interference. So the empire puts everyone under surveillance. The empire cannot tolerate resistance or disobedience, so it develops a police state to instil fear and obedience in people. There are many many more examples of how empire rules America and usurps the US government–which exists for the people of the United States. Americans, and the people of the other countries in the world understand this viscerally, but are unable to express this in coherent thought because their language has been corrupted by the forces of empire. Mike Lofgren doesn't make this connection because iit violates the rules of political correctness. Everyone's career is tied to strict adherence to political correctness, and
- Anonymous
And many of the voters have been brainwashed by the 5 or 6 corporations that control the media. Fear entertainment.
- Anonymous
After I read Top Secret America I came to the conclusion that since 9/11 Homeland Security has become so incredibly humongous and so political it will keep growing until the US is bankrupt. The was the goal of Benladen. Europe did not fall for it be we did.
- Anonymous
Some contemporary books Blackwater, Bloodmoney, and especially Confessions if a Economic Hit Man. Also Top Secret America.
- Charles Shaver
I think a better name for 'Homeland Security' is 'elitist money addict insecurity.' And, it and treasonous corporate media propaganda will keep growing until we as an injured people finally 'Just say NO!' to the 'perpetraitors.' Thanks for commenting, above and below.
- Anonymous
There is a small very readable book written by John Perkins named Confessions of an Economic hit Man. This is the way the Corporatocracy has used the IMF and World Bank to take over the assets of less developed countries. And if their leaders do not agree to go along well then read what happens to them.
- Anonymous
In many states felons are legally allowed to vote if they have served their sentences. And if they moved to Florida their vote was legal. But Jeb Bush broke the law and did not allow their vote to count in the Bush/Gore election. The Republicans also paid a fortune to a company named Choice Point to scrub the polls. They also did this in the latest election for Governor. How can they get away with these tactics? The tactics that are being used in North Carolina lately are extremely difficult to counteract.
- Anonymous
Funny (not ha ha) when I try to tell friends what is going on within Homeland Security (the redundancy, the extreme size of it and the number of government and private buildings all around the Washington suburbs) they respond by stating that they approve of all this. Homeland security is so political that this state if affairs will be sucking up our tax dollars forever.
- Neil Kitson
"These men, largely private, were functioning on a level different from the foreign policy of the United States, and years later when New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan read through the entire documentary history of the war, that history known as the Pentagon Papers, he would come away with one impression above all, which was that the government of the United States was not what he had thought it was; it was as if there were an inner U.S. government, what he called 'a centralized state, far more powerful than anything else, for whom the enemy is not simply the Communists but everything else, its own press, its own judiciary, its own Congress, foreign and friendly governments – all these are potentially antagonistic.
It had survived and perpetuated itself,' Sheehan continued, 'often using the issue of anti-Communism as a weapon against the other branches of government and the press, and finally, it does not function necessarily for the benefit of the Republic but rather for its own ends, its own perpetuation; it has its own codes which are quite different from public codes.
Secrecy was a way of protecting itself, not so much from threats by foreign governments but from detection from its own population on charges of its own competence and wisdom.' Each succeeding Administration, Sheehan noted, was careful, once in office, not to expose the weaknesses of its predecessor. After all, essentially the same people were running the governments, they had continuity to each other, and each succeeding Administration found itself faced with virtually the same enemies.
Thus the national security apparatus kept its continuity, and every outgoing President tended to rally to the side of the incumbent President.
"Out of this of course came a willingness to use covert operations; it was a necessity of the times, to match the Communists, and what your own population and your own Congress did not know was not particularly important; it was almost better if they did not know…"
David Halberstam
The Best and The Brightest- Charles Shaver
Very typically, you appear to be better informed and better read on some aspects of our failed and failing nation-state than I. Admittedly, I don't have all the answers. Briefly, though, respective of all you cite, I find the vast majority of Americans just don't want to be burdened any more with good citizenship (e.g., election statistics). Most recently, another symptom of the underlying problem was highlighted when the billionaire owner of a mere commercial (as opposed to 'professional') basketball team in a society that tolerates abject poverty and illegal war was severely chastised and sanctioned for only elitist, racist remarks. Summarily, let me say that my America took a big turn for the worse when the 'Pied Piper' was bribed to play the National Anthem. Nope, not 'ha ha' funny, at all. And, I don't know whether to dread or rejoice the day when the coerced laughter finally ends, and the music dies.
- Anonymous
During the 2nd Bush administration I started to notice all the books listed in the Washington Post book section about his administration. After awhile I thought maybe I should start reading. The first page turner was one by Bob Woodward about the lead up to the Iraq war. It showed me that we were not getting truth from the media so I kept on reading books. First about Iraq-Fiasco, The man who got is into the war Amad Chalabi, Blackwater, Bloodmoney and many others. I keep telling people to read more but they choose not to. They are either working too hard or if retired playing too hard. They just want to be spoon fed and are addicted to outrage entertainment. I continued my reading on economics, finance, climate change and understand much more than I did before. Keynes vs Hyeck explains the history of the two economic theories. Also how the shift to the right happened during The Reagan and Thatcher administrations. Age of Greed explains how a few very greedy men influenced congress to repeal laws and pass laws in their favor. Tim Flannerys book The Weather Makers explains Climate change. And there are too many books written on income disparity and the danger to democracy. What is happening is out of control and a nightmare. I don't think people understand that when a government service for the commons is privatized it becomes a corporation with lobbyists that influence Congress and that we taxpayers must pay their employees at a much higher rate. Like the army contractors, prisons and so on. People do not put on their thinking caps. Sorry for the rant.
- Charles Shaver
Interesting, impressive; different paths, one destination; better a rant than a sell-out or surrender. Beware of putting too much faith in the opinions of others, myself included. We all are products of our past and there is a natural tendency for the adult progeny to emulate the parent; the student to mimic the teacher; the reader to quote the author. I find the U.S. Constitution is the best source of information about how America should function but I don't hear or see much of that from any of the so-called 'experts.' If electrical engineers treated Ohm's Law like authors, bankers, government, lawyers and the 'people' treat the U.S. Constitution, you'd be reading this in script on parchment by candlelight, if at all. And, don't let me discourage you; where I fail you may succeed. Let reason prevail. Thanks for the stimulating conversation.
- Anonymous
Yes we all have the tendency to read whatever validates our worldview. I read Gretchen Morgensterns book named Reckless Endangerment about Fannie Mae. Saw her talk on Cspan book channel. Needed to get to the bottom of that mess. Jim Johnson was and still is a very shady character. It is strange however that the Republicans reduced the entire 2008 recession down to two sound bites Fannie Mae and the CRA (I think that is the acrynom) for the program to stop the redlining. No one knows anything about the history and purpose of Fannie Mae and it's original purpose until Johnson got his hands on it. If one has critical thinking one can sift out the truth. I just cannot believe that people will believe a sound bite without any hesitation.
- Charles Shaver
Been 'deep thinking' a lot more about the Deep State but, without yesterday's lost credentials or celebrity (good or bad), there's not much I can presently do. One clever sound-bite might do the trick but none I've composed and tried so far have caught on. Still, probably, is tomorrow.
- Anonymous
I actually thought of a really good sound bite and communicated it to the White House. No one took me up on it. Wish I could remember what it was. If you have any you could try. But they are not very confrontational.
- Charles Shaver
I liked candidate Obama's words but never voted for him, because he already belonged to one of two already proved dysfunctional major political parties. Writing the Obama White House and even getting a few generic replies while watching him fail the office, too, I do not regret 'wasting' my vote on a 'green' third party candidate. After rereading The Anatomy of the Deep State, today, I'm sure I could read more and probably phrase things better but am still confident in my decades of working-class experience-based conclusions and suggestions.
- sorval
"Land of the Free, Home of the Brave"
has become
Land of the "Free", Home of the "Brave".
- johnnyomaha
Privatization of the US constitution to serve the elite…..
- http://www.rrstevens.net/ Robert Stevens
… OR is it "Land of the Greed, Home of the Knave" -- Let's sing it all together before the next Football Game and Circus: ♫ "o'er the Land of the Greed …" ♫
- Anonymous
Where's the who, what, when, where, and why? Collected everyday simple observations will awaken one to the existence of a higher controlling entity. No more problem identification or descriptions, thank you very much. We need 1) facts and 2) solutions.
- unheilig
Lofgren gives both. Did you read the article? Confirmation is easy enough too: all you need is a browser and a few hours searching off-off-lamestream information sources.
- Jocelyn Hawley
To both dn7904 and Charles Shaver, I read your back and forth discussion and realize that I so crave that type of intelligent, informed and aware discussion within my interactions in my daily life, but none can really exist. Most people are so concerned with the outcomes of the game, or fantasy football, or the latest t.v. series, and how on earth to pay rent and other minutia. The little bit of news comes from prime time networks like Fox, NBC and CNN and they think they know what is happening in the world, but don't actually want to know what is really happening. The trick to an article like this one, is not yet how we change the problem, but how we get people to notice, be aware and to care. That is the real question and the first- most prominent problem to be solved.
- Anonymous
I think there are more creative ways for the citizenry to communicate their discontent than to wait four years for the next highly-funded election.
I remember being in an international conference and the minister of Health from a major developed country came on stage just days after making a very unpopular move. One person stood up and simply turned her back on the Minister, then another, then a dozen, then the whole auditorium of major players in the scientific community.
It made headlines.
I resent the fact that a movement like MoveOn now just asks me for money like all the other PAC's. They used to send out flyers and have photos posted of people all over the country holding the same flyer.
What comes to mind is that we remain the developed country in which the fewest people take vacation. How can we possibly stop and think about creative democracy? Ironically the revolutionary thought that was the spark that set off the flames of this country came from the leisure class who had plenty of time to think and write about things like freedom and liberty.- Charles Shaver
Thank you for prodding me to do some additional 'Deep Thinking.' The harm is done. Thanks to the apathetic and/or ignorant majority of a voting minority, the balance of power in the U.S. has now been transferred from the left hand of organized crime to the right hand, for the next two years. At least the majority is consistent in its failure to self-govern by voting, and voting wisely.
While (if) still allowed, voting wisely is the only reasonable solution. Creative protesting (e.g., 'occupy' them, pass out flyers, shout them down, turn your back or throw them a shoe) means nothing when the final vote is counted to determine who actually makes and enforces the rules. Not omniscient or perfect, either, I'm open to suggestions but with very little to work with after several decades of too-typical abuse, betrayal, exploitation and oppression, served in the pseudonyms of loyalty, patriotism, sacrifice and service. If mere reasoning worked then Bill Moyers and 'company' would have already solved most of the major problems. Don't let me discourage you, though, keep on with your own deep thinking.
- John Schoneboom
Two flaws jump out at me from this otherwise rather good and useful article. The first is that Mr. Lofgren implies that the Deep State is mainly a Republican thing. In the picture he paints, it's the Republicans who want to pay the national security state, while the poor hapless Democrats just want to increase social spending. Similarly, he makes excuses for Obama in footnote 7. (Presidents are surely mostly puppets, but Obama's 2008 FISA vote as Senator betrays his own predilections well enough.) At best, this is the farcical veneer of Deep State Theatre. I suspect Mr. Lofgren knows better and didn't mean to imply otherwise.
Secondly, government shutdowns and budgetary problems may be an inconvenience to the Deep State, but no accounting of the Deep State is complete without figuring in off-the-books revenue from the global drug trade. International partnerships and oil interests also help diversify the income stream nicely. There are many billions feeding this thing that have nothing to do with the US budget.
It's also somewhat criminal not to name-check Peter Dale Scott in this subject area. But I'm nitpicking. I'll not bother criticizing the piece for not addressing Deep State ties with terrorism, that kettle of fish deserves its own barrel. Like I said, nice piece, useful, well done, thank you.
- Douglas Harris
does no one see there is a reason for the immense defense spending as America becomes #2 in world economy and the dollar might be replaced as the reserve currency?
The Chinese own enough treasury paper to close the American economy, alone or with several willing partners. BUT…America even as a declining economic dictator will still have the arms to maintain world control…- Anonymous
I had no real a-ha moment reading this well written piece. Nothing jumped out at me as something foreign or unknown. Instead, I had the sense of deja vu, the kind of deja vu I'd rather not have. All these things have been known if the consumer of this good piece has been paying attention to the not-mainline press. What is so exciting about this is the writer put all the information in one place and drew out the connections that weren't always so obvious. Though Mr. Lofgren paints a somewhat plausible picture of how this State may rather suddenly crumble, I'm a bit dubious.
What seems missing are the global links among many of these actors especially the oligarchs reach and connection to many things terrorism. What I'm saying is that I'm not terribly optimistic that a leader will come along who is sufficiently unbeholden to the state and who can remain un-co-opted and call this state for what it is thus raising our fellow Americans sustained interest and desire to see through the mess it will take to overthrow this Deep State.. In any case, thanks so much for such a thoughtful and creepy picture.
- Anonymous
None of this is news. A President who cared could smash the Deep State in, probably, nine months. The key lockhold the Deep State has at the moment is on the nomination process, which is used to filter out any Presidents, and most Congressional nominees, who show signs of independent thought. They've been doing this since Reagan (Carter was the last President with independent thought; Reagan was ideal, being an actor with Alzheimer's and so not thinking much at all.) There are two ways this can play out: either they lose their lockhold on the nomination process, or the entire system is discredited and we get a revolution.
The Deep State is actually very fragile due to their fundamental incompetence. But they're quite capable of wrecking our existing system, at which point there will be an opening for a Caesar or a Napoleon or a Lenin who *is* competent. That is the true danger moment. The worst scenario is revolving-door coups, such as Mexico suffered for decades in the 18th and 19th century.
- Anonymous
The American Empire is, however, in decline phase. You can identify that by the inability to conquer territory and the slow loss of territory from the edges. The peak of the American Empire was actually in the late 19th century… A collapsing empire follows a weird trajectory. Many comparisons have been made to the Roman Empire. That worked out poorly.
- Anonymous
You could also read the much older "War is A Racket" by Smedley Butler.
The IMF/World Bank scam was working for a while. It doesn't work any more: South American countries simply reject it. And the US has no power to muscle South American countries any more; I'm not quite sure how they managed to become immune to US military intervention, but they have. They have had about 200 years of trial and error in figuring out how.
Now, the rest of the world just needs to copy the South American model and the US IMF/World Bank scam becomes untenable.
- Anonymous
Proportional representation is critical, but I haven't figured out how to get anyone to pay attention to it. Even at the local level, where the deep state has no traction because it's paying no attention.
- Anonymous
Thankfully the fight against electronic voting machines is already pretty strong. This is something people understand viscerally and this is a key plank for whatever party is going to dethrone the Rs & Ds. Basically, if electronic "voting" machines are delegitimized (as they should be), this means people will actually fight for their paper ballots…
- Anonymous
I think you're wrong about how most Americans will react. The levels of disillusionment are very, very high now and you can measure them in polls.
Just before the Civil War, we saw the same dynamic: most of the country was completely disillusioned about the "slavocracy", as they called the corrupt US government dominated by slaveholders. This led to the election of Lincoln, the destruction of the Whig Party, and finally, the Civil War.
This is the sort of situation we have now. The Deep State can't win; it will be smashed as Americans unite behind a Lincoln-like figure. The only questions are when this will happen, and more importantly *what comes next*. Things are wide open after that happens: Sun Yat-Sen led (unfortunately) to Mao.
- jeffries
Well it will be interesting how the Greece situation plays out. It seems strange we don't hear much or read much in main stream media about it. They are challenging the status quo. At first the banks gave them until the 28th and then cut it to 10 days. It would be in everyone's best interest if this was the beginning of the end for the EU. Diffused power is the best power. If the EU fails we won't be pressured into a union with Canada and Mexico. I think that was the plan of the global deep state. Aggregate nations into regions and then larger regions and then it would not be such a jump to global government.
- Anonymous
"….. Americans sustained interest…."
Lack of interest is the real killer of all empires.
|
|
|
January 20, 2015 | Homeland Security Watch
That's the question Michael J. Glennon asks in his book "National Security and Double Government."
His answer: national security policy is determined largely by "the several hundred managers of the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies who are responsible for protecting the nation and who have come to operate largely immune from constitutional and electoral restraints." The president, congress and the courts play largely a symbolic role in national security policy, Glennon claims.
You can read a Harvard National Security Journal article that outlines Glennon's argument at this link: http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf. The paper is not an especially easy read, but I found it to be well researched and – for me – persuasive.
His book adds more analysis to the argument, using (from Graham Allison's Essence of Decision) the rational actor model, the government politics model, and the organizational behavior model. Glennon extends that framework by discussing culture, networks, and the myth of alternative competing hypotheses. The book is richer, in my opinion. But the core of Glennon's position is in the paper.
This link takes you to a video of Glennon talking about his book at the Cato Institute: http://www.cato.org/events/national-security-double-government (the talk starts at the 5:20 mark).
From the Cato site:
In National Security and Double Government, Michael Glennon examines the continuity in U.S. national security policy from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. Glennon explains the lack of change by pointing to the enervation of America's "Madisonian institutions," namely, the Congress, the presidency, and the courts. In Glennon's view, these institutions have been supplanted by a "Trumanite network" of bureaucrats who make up the permanent national security state. National security policymaking has been removed from public view and largely insulated from law and politics. Glennon warns that leaving security policy in the hands of the Trumanite network threatens Americans' liberties and the republican form of government.
Some blurb reviews:
- "If constitutional government is to endure in the United States, Americans must confront the fundamental challenges presented by this chilling analysis of the national security state."
Bruce Ackerman- "Glennon shows how the underlying national security bureaucracy in Washington – what might be called the deep state – ensures that presidents and their successors act on the world stage like Tweedledee and Tweedledum." John J. Mearsheimer
- "National Security and Double Government is brilliant, deep, sad, and vastly learned across multiple fields–a work of Weberian power and stature. It deserves to be read and discussed. The book raises philosophical questions in the public sphere in a way not seen at least since Fukuyama's end of history." David A. Westbrook
- "In our faux democracy, those we elect to govern serve largely ornamental purposes, while those who actually wield power, especially in the realm of national security, do so chiefly with an eye toward preserving their status and prerogatives. Read this incisive and richly documented book, and you'll understand why." Andrew J. Bacevich
- "…Michael Glennon provides a compelling argument that America's national security policy is growing outside the bounds of existing government institutions. This is at once a constitutional challenge, but is also a case study in how national security can change government institutions, create new ones, and, in effect, stand-up a parallel state…." Vali Nasr
- "Instead of being responsive to citizens or subject to effective checks and balances, U.S. national security policy is in fact conducted by a shadow government of bureaucrats and a supporting network of think tanks, media insiders, and ambitious policy wonks. Presidents may come and go, but the permanent national security establishment inevitably defeats their efforts to chart a new course…."Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer
I've spoken to three people I consider to be members of the "shadow national security state." One person said Glennon's argument is nothing new. The second told me he's got it exactly right. The third said it's even worse.
William R. Cumming, January 20, 2015 @ 8:38 am
ah! the deep state analyzed correctly imo!
and imo only the nuclear priesthood rivals the deep state but not exactly part of it yet its original source!
like the mayan priests only those in it know how accurate this book is in its analysis!
and a congress marches on in complete ignorance!
Mike Mealer, January 21, 2015 @ 7:48 pm
Great article. Read it a few months ago. I didn't know whether I should feel more secure or afraid. Looking the items I highlighted and a few standout.
"The dirty little secret here," a former associate counsel in the Bush White House, Brad Berenson, explained, "is that the United States government has enduring institutional interests that carry over from administration to administration and almost always dictate the position the government takes."178 P34
Its cohesion notwithstanding, the Trumanite network is curiously amorphous. It has no leader. It is not monolithic. It has no formal structure. P32
The maintenance of Trumanite autonomy has depended upon two conditions. The first is that the Madisonian institutions appear to be in charge of the nation's security. The second is that the Madisonian institutions not actually be in charge. P34
Public opinion is, accordingly, a flimsy check on the Trumanites; it is a manipulable tool of power enhancement. It is therefore rarely possible for any occupant of the Oval Office to prevail against strong, unified Trumanite opposition, for the same reasons that members of Congress and the judiciary cannot; a non-expert president, like a non-expert senator and a non-expert judge, is intimidated by expert Trumanites and does not want to place himself (or a colleague or a potential political successor) at risk by looking weak and gambling that the Trumanites are mistaken. So presidents wisely "choose" to go along. P70
John Comiskey, January 22, 2015 @ 7:14 am
Civic Education 101
Glennon laments as did Justice Souter, the pervasive civic ignorance of the citizenry. Democracy requires an informed and engaged citizenry. The recent and ongoing debates about the role the police in society raise similar question and doubts about our social contract and governance for the 21st century.
Where to from here?
A national conversation about civics and K-12 civic education.
What is the proper role of citizens in society?
What is the proper role of our polity?William R. Cumming, January 22, 2015 @ 8:53 am
Again interesting thread and comments. The use of the term "Trumanite" is unfortunate and totally inaccurate IMO! Truman reluctantly signed the National Security Act of 1947 to resolve the documented failures of Jointness between the Army and Navy in WWII [the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy--Stimson and King]! Truman was personally opposed to the establishment of the CIA for many good reasons.
What is the real failure is the creation of the Nuclear Priesthood which largely failed to guard its secrets from other Nation-States and individuals and the warping into the DEEP STATE [the better term than DOUBLR GOVERTNMENT]!
And now IMO the DEEP STATE is about to DEEP SIX the Career military in the US as it organizes violence and the SURVEILLANCE STATE outside the ARMED FORCES.
A close study of the overturning of the ALIEN AND SEDITION Acts of 1798 which destroyed chances for a second term for John Adams and created the first real Presidential Election in the USA, the Presidential Election of 1800, which brought into officer Jefferson, but almost brought Aaron Burr to real power.
Study of James Madison so-called VIRGINIA RESOLUTION opposing the ASA is fully warranted. Too bad John Yoo did not know this history.
William R. Cumming, January 22, 2015 @ 2:43 pm
I need to mention that I did read the article and listened to the Cato Institute Panel.
The Panel presentations might lead one to argue that Double or nothing or the DEEP STATE what difference does it make past, present, or future?
My short answer is that Government of the people, by the people, and for the people [the Lincoln formulation] probably expired with the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Perhaps not but until argued and proven otherwise that is my conclusion! Perhaps wrong and hoping so!
Jack, January 24, 2015 @ 2:47 pm
A fascinating and needful argument, though I think we could make as much of the supine legislature that lends weight to Glennon's argument as he does the "permanent" executive agency security apparatus. If they're to be properly responsive to public will, executive agencies need better written laws.
The Critical Infrastructure Protection Act or CIPA, which passed the house in 2014, would, "require the Assistant Secretary of the National Protection and Programs Directorate to: (1) include in national planning scenarios the threat of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events…" (emphasis mine). The national planning scenarios were rescinded in 2011, making CIPA either a very easy or very hard law to execute.
Likewise, the Biggert-Waters flood insurance reform act of 2012 altered regulatory definitions for "substantial damage" and "substantial improvement" by misunderstanding the way field damage assessments are performed under the National Flood Insurance Program.
Which means, I suppose, that we need more able legislators…which may be unlikely if more Americans don't know Publius from Curly.
|
|
|
October 27, 2015 | The American Conservative
In May 2003, in the wake of the Iraq War and the ousting of Saddam Hussein, events took place that set the stage for the current chaos in the Middle East. Yet even most well-informed Americans are unaware of how policies implemented by mid-level bureaucrats during the Bush administration unwittingly unleashed forces that would ultimately lead to the juggernaut of the Islamic State.
The lesson is that it appears all too easy for outsiders working with relatively low-level appointees to hijack the policy process. The Bay of Pigs invasion and Iran-Contra affair are familiar instances, but the Iraq experience offers an even better illustration-not least because its consequences have been even more disastrous.
The cast of characters includes President George W. Bush; L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, the first civilian administrator of postwar Iraq; Douglas Feith, Bush's undersecretary of defense for policy; Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's deputy secretary of defense; I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Richard B. Cheney (and Cheney's proxy in these events); Walter Slocombe, who had been President Clinton's undersecretary of defense for policy, and as such was Feith's predecessor; Richard Perle, who was chairman of Bush's defense policy board; and General Jay Garner, whom Bremer replaced as the leader of postwar Iraq.
On May 9, 2003, President Bush appointed Bremer to the top civilian post in Iraq. A career diplomat who was recruited for this job by Wolfowitz and Libby, despite the fact that he had minimal experience of the region and didn't speak Arabic, Bremer arrived in Baghdad on May 12 to take charge of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA. In his first two weeks at his post, Bremer issued two orders that would turn out to be momentous. Enacted on May 16, CPA Order Number 1 "de-Baathified" the Iraqi government; on May 23, CPA Order Number 2 disbanded the Iraqi army. In short, Baath party members were barred from participation in Iraq's new government and Saddam Hussein's soldiers lost their jobs, taking their weapons with them.
The results of these policies become clear as we learn about the leadership of ISIS. The Washington Post, for example, reported in April that "almost all of the leaders of the Islamic State are former Iraqi officers." In June, the New York Times identified a man "believed to be the head of the Islamic State's military council," Fadel al-Hayali, as "a former lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi military intelligence agency of President Saddam Hussein." Criticism of de-Baathification and the disbanding of Iraq's army has been fierce, and the contribution these policies made to fueling extremism was recognized even before the advent of the Islamic State. The New York Times reported in 2007:
The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents.
This year the Washington Post summed up reactions to both orders when it cited a former Iraqi general who asked bluntly, "When they dismantled the army, what did they expect those men to do?" He explained that "they didn't de-Baathify people's minds, they just took away their jobs." Writing about the disbanding policy in his memoir, Decision Points, George W. Bush acknowledges the harmful results: "Thousands of armed men had just been told they were not wanted. Instead of signing up for the new military, many joined the insurgency."
... ... ...
In his memoir, Bremer names the officials who approached him for his CPA job. He recounts telling his wife that:
I had been contacted by Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and by Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense. The Pentagon's original civil administration in 'post-hostility' Iraq-the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, ORHA-lacked expertise in high-level diplomatic negotiations and politics. … I had the requisite skills and experience for that position.
Regarding the de-Baathification order, both Bremer and Feith have written their own accounts of the week leading up to it, and the slight discrepancy between their recollections is revealing in what it tells us about Bremer-and consequently about Wolfowitz and Libby for having selected him. At first blush, Bremer and Feith's justifications for the policy appear to dovetail, each comparing postwar Iraq to postwar Nazi Germany. Bremer explains in a retrospective Washington Post op-ed, "What We Got Right in Iraq," that "Hussein modeled his regime after Adolf Hitler's, which controlled the German people with two main instruments: the Nazi Party and the Reich's security services. We had no choice but to rid Iraq of the country's equivalent organizations." For his part, Feith goes a step further, reasoning in his memoir War and Decision that the case for de-Baathification was even stronger because "The Nazis, after all, had run Germany for a dozen years; the Baathists had tyrannized Iraq for more than thirty."
Regarding the order itself, Bremer writes,
The day before I left for Iraq in May, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith presented me with a draft law that would purge top Baathists from the Iraqi government and told me that he planned to issue it immediately. Recognizing how important this step was, I asked Feith to hold off, among other reasons, so I could discuss it with Iraqi leaders and CPA advisers. A week later, after careful consideration, I issued this 'de-Baathification' decree, as drafted by the Pentagon.
In contrast, Feith recalls that Bremer asked him to wait because "Bremer had thoughts of his own on the subject, he said, and wanted to consider the de-Baathification policy carefully. As the new CPA head, he thought he should announce and implement the policy himself."
The notion that he "carefully" considered the policy in his first week on the job, during which he also travelled halfway around the globe, is highly questionable. Incidentally, Bremer's oxymoronic statement-"a week later, after careful consideration"-mirrors a similar formulation of Wolfowitz's about the disbanding order. Speaking to the Washington Post in November 2003, he said that forming a new Iraqi army is "what we're trying to do at warp speed-but with careful vetting of the people we're bringing on."
Simply put, Bremer was tempted by headline-grabbing policies. He was unlikely to question any action that offered opportunities to make bold gestures, which made him easy to influence. Indeed, another quality of Bremer's professional persona that conspicuously emerges from accounts of the period is his unwillingness to think for himself. His memoir shows that he was eager to put Jay Garner in his place from the moment he arrived in Iraq, yet he was unable to defend himself on his own when challenged by Garner, who-according to Bob Woodward in his book State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III-was "stunned" by the disbanding order. Woodward claims that when Garner confronted Bremer about it, "Bremer, looking surprised, asked Garner to go see Walter B. Slocombe."
What's even more surprising is how Bremer doesn't hide his intellectual dependence on Slocombe. He writes in his memoir:
To help untangle these problems, I was fortunate to have Walt Slocombe as Senior Adviser for defense and security affairs. A brilliant former Rhodes Scholar from Princeton and a Harvard-educated attorney, Walt had worked for Democratic administrations for decades on high-level strategic and arms control issues.
In May 2003, the Washington Post noted of Slocombe that "Although a Democrat, he has maintained good relations with Wolfowitz and is described by some as a 'Democratic hawk,'" a remark that once again places Wolfowitz in close proximity to Bremer and the disbanding order. Sure enough, in November 2003 the Washington Post reported:
The demobilization decision appears to have originated largely with Walter B. Slocombe, a former undersecretary of defense appointed to oversee Iraqi security forces. He believed strongly in the need to disband the army and felt that vanquished soldiers should not expect to be paid a continuing salary. He said he developed the policy in discussions with Bremer, Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. 'This is not something that was dreamed up by somebody at the last minute and done at the insistence of the people in Baghdad. It was discussed,' Slocombe said. 'The critical point was that nobody argued that we shouldn't do this.'
Given that the president agreed to preserve the Iraqi army in the NSC meeting on March 12, Slocombe's statement is evidence of a major policy inconsistency. In that meeting, Feith, at the request of Donald Rumsfeld, gave a PowerPoint presentation prepared by Garner about keeping the Iraqi army; in his own memoir, Feith writes, "No one at that National Security Council meeting in early March spoke against the recommendation, and the President approved Garner's plan." But this is not what happened. What happened instead was the reversal of Garner's plan, which Feith attributes to Slocombe and Bremer:
Bremer and Slocombe argued that it would better serve U.S. interests to create an entirely new Iraqi army: Sometimes it is easier to build something new than to refurbish a complex and badly designed structure. In any event, Bremer and Slocombe reasoned, calling the old army back might not succeed-but the attempt could cause grave political problems.
Over time, both Bremer and Slocombe have gone so far as to deny that the policies had any tangible effects. Bremer claimed in the Washington Post that "Virtually all the old Baathist ministers had fled before the decree was issued" and that "When the draftees saw which way the war was going, they deserted and, like their officers, went back home." Likewise Slocombe stated in a PBS interview, "We didn't disband the army. The army disbanded itself. … What we did do was to formally dissolve all of the institutions of Saddam's security system. The intelligence, his military, his party structure, his information and propaganda structure were formally disbanded and the property turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority."
Thus, according to Bremer and Slocombe's accounts, neither de-Baathification nor disbanding the army achieved anything that hadn't already happened. When coupled with Bremer's assertion of "careful consideration in one week" and Wolfowitz's claim of "careful vetting at warp speed," Bremer and Slocombe's notion of "doing something that had already been done" creates a strong impression that they are hiding something or trying to finesse history with wordplay. Perhaps Washington Post journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran provides the best possible explanation for this confusion in his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, when he writes, "Despite the leaflets instructing them to go home, Slocombe had expected Iraqi soldiers to stay in their garrisons. Now he figured that calling them back would cause even more problems." Chandrasekaran adds, "As far as Slocombe and Feith were concerned, the Iraqi army had dissolved itself; formalizing the dissolution wouldn't contradict Bush's directive." This suggests that Slocombe and Feith were communicating and that Slocombe was fully aware of the policy the president had agreed to in the NSC meeting on March 12, yet he chose to disregard it.
♦♦♦
Following the disastrous decisions of May 2003, the blame game has been rife among neoconservative policymakers. One of those who have expended the most energy dodging culpability is, predictably, Bremer. In early 2007, he testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and the Washington Post reported: "Bremer proved unexpectedly agile at shifting blame: to administration planners ('The planning before the war was inadequate'), his superiors in the Bush administration ('We never had sufficient support'), and the Iraqi people ('The country was in chaos-socially, politically and economically')."
Bremer also wrote in May 2007 in the Washington Post, "I've grown weary of being a punching bag over these decisions-particularly from critics who've never spent time in Iraq, don't understand its complexities and can't explain what we should have done differently." (This declaration is ironic, given Bremer's noted inability to justify the disbanding policy to General Garner.) On September 4, 2007, the New York Times reported that Bremer had given the paper exculpatory letters supposedly proving that George W. Bush confirmed the disbanding order. But the Times concluded, "the letters do not show that [Bush] approved the order or even knew much about it. Mr. Bremer referred only fleetingly to his plan midway through his three-page letter and offered no details." Moreover, the paper characterized Bremer's correspondence with Bush as "striking in its almost nonchalant reference to a major decision that a number of American military officials in Iraq strongly opposed." Defending himself on this point, Bremer claimed, "the policy was carefully considered by top civilian and military members of the American government." And six months later Bremer told the paper, "It was not my responsibility to do inter-agency coordination."
Feith and Slocombe have been similarly evasive when discussing President Bush's awareness of the policies. The Los Angeles Times noted that "Feith was deeply involved in the decision-making process at the time, working closely with Bush and Bremer," yet "Feith said he could not comment about how involved the president was in the decision to change policy and dissolve the army. 'I don't know all the details of who talked to who about that,' he said." For his part, Slocombe told PBS's "Frontline,"
What happens in Washington in terms of how the [decisions are made]-'Go ahead and do this, do that; don't do that, do this, even though you don't want to do it'-that's an internal Washington coordination problem about which I know little. One of the interesting things about the job from my point of view-all my other government experience basically had been in the Washington end, with the interagencies process and setting the priorities-at the other end we got output. And how the process worked in Washington I actually know very little about, because the channel was from the president to Rumsfeld to Bremer.
It's a challenge to parse Slocombe's various statements. Here, in the space of two sentences, he claims both that his government experience has mostly been in Washington and that he doesn't know how Washington works. As mentioned earlier, he had previously told the Washington Post that the disbanding order was not "done at the insistence of the people in Baghdad"-in other words, the decision was made in Washington. The inconsistency of his accounts from year to year, and even in the same interview, adds to an aura of concealment.
This further illustrates the disconnect between what was decided by the NSC in Washington in March and by the CPA in Iraq in May. In his memoir, Feith notes that although he supported the disbanding policy, "the decision became associated with a number of unnecessary problems, including the apparent lack of interagency review."
... ... ...
John Hay is a former executive branch official under Republican administrations.
|
|
|
therealnews.com
Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. He has written nine books, including "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle" (2009), "I Don't Believe in Atheists" (2008) and the best-selling "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" (2008). His book "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
CHRIS HEDGES, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING JOURNALIST: Hi. I'm Chris Hedges. And we are here in Salem, Oregon, interviewing Dr. Sheldon Wolin, who taught politics for many years at Berkeley and, later, Princeton. He is the author of several seminal works on political philosophy, including Politics and Vision and Democracy Inc.. And we are going to be asking him today about the state of American democracy, political participation, and what he calls inverted totalitarianism.So let's begin with this concept of inverted totalitarianism, which has antecedents. And in your great work Politics and Vision, you reach back all the way to the Greeks, up through the present age, to talk about the evolution of political philosophy. What do you mean by it?
SHELDON WOLIN, PROF. POLITICS EMERITUS, PRINCETON: Well, I mean by it that in the inverted idea, it's the idea that democracy has been, in effect, turned upside down. It's supposed to be a government by the people and for the people and all the rest of the sort of rhetoric we're used to, but it's become now so patently an organized form of government dominated by groups which are only vaguely, if at all, responsible or even responsive to popular needs and popular demands. But at the same time, it retains a kind of pattern of democracy, because we still have elections, they're still relatively free in any conventional sense. We have a relatively free media. But what's missing from it is a kind of crucial continuous opposition which has a coherent position, and is not just saying, no, no, no but has got an alternative, and above all has got an ongoing critique of what's wrong and what needs to be remedied.
HEDGES: You juxtapose inverted totalitarianism to classical totalitarianism -- fascism, communism -- and you say that there are very kind of distinct differences between these two types of totalitarianism. What are those differences?
WOLIN: Well, certainly one is the -- in classic totalitarianism the fundamental principle is the leadership principle and the notion that the masses exist not as citizenry but as a means of support which can be rallied and mustered almost at will by the dominant powers. That's the classical one. And the contemporary one is one in which the rule by the people is enshrined as a sort of popular message about what we are, but which in fact is not really true to the facts of political life in this day and age.
HEDGES: Well, you talk about how in classical totalitarian regimes, politics trumps economics, but in inverted totalitarianism it's the reverse.
WOLIN: That's right. Yeah. In classic totalitarianism, thinking here now about the Nazis and the fascists, and also even about the communists, the economy is viewed as a tool which the powers that be manipulate and utilize in accordance with what they conceive to be the political requirements of ruling. And they will take whatever steps are needed in the economy in order to ensure the long-run sustainability of the political order. In other words, the sort of arrows of political power flow from top to bottom.
Now, in inverted totalitarianism, the imagery is that of a populace which is enshrined as the leadership group but which in fact doesn't rule, but which is turned upside down in the sense that the people are enshrined at the top but don't rule. And minority rule is usually treated as something to be abhorred but is in fact what we have.
And it's the problem has to do, I think, with the historical relationship between political orders and economic orders. And democracy, I think, from the beginning never quite managed to make the kind of case for an economic order that would sustain and help to develop democracy rather than being a kind of constant threat to the egalitarianism and popular rule that democracy stands for.
HEDGES: In your book Politics and Vision, you quote figures like Max Weber who talk about capitalism as in fact being a destructive force to democracy.
WOLIN: Well, I think Weber's critique of capitalism is even broader. I think he views it as quintessentially destructive not only of democracy, but also, of course, of the sort of feudal aristocratic system which had preceded it. Capitalism is destructive because it has to eliminate the kind of custom /ˈmɔːreɪz/, political values, even institutions that present any kind of credible threat to the autonomy of the economy. And it's that -- that's where the battle lies. Capitalism wants an autonomous economy. They want a political order subservient to the needs of the economy. And their notion of an economy, while it's broadly based in the sense of a capitalism in which there can be relatively free entrance and property is relatively widely dispersed it's also a capitalism which, in the last analysis, is [as] elitist as any aristocratic system ever was.
HEDGES: You talk in the book about about how it was essentially the engine of the Cold War, juxtaposing a supposedly socialist Soviet Union, although like many writers, including Chomsky, I think you would argue that Leninism was not a socialist movement. Adam Ulam talks about it as a counterrevolution, Chomsky as a right-wing deviation. But nevertheless, that juxtaposition of the Cold War essentially freed corporate capitalism in the name of the struggle against communism to deform American democracy.
And also I just want to make it clear that you are very aware, especially in Politics and Vision, of the hesitancy on the part of our founding fathers to actually permit direct democracy. So we're not in this moment idealizing the system that was put in place. But maybe you could talk a little bit about that.
WOLIN: Well, I think that's true. I think the system that was consciously and deliberately constructed by the founders who framed the Constitution -- that democracy was the enemy. And that was rooted in historical realities. Many of the colonial governments had a very strong popular element that became increasingly prominent as the colonies moved towards rebellion. And rebellion meant not only resisting British rule, but also involved the growth of popular institutions and their hegemony in the colonies, as well as in the nation as a whole, so that the original impulses to the Constitution came in large measure from this democratizing movement. But the framers of the Constitution understood very well that this would mean -- would at least -- would jeopardize the ruling groups that they thought were absolutely necessary to any kind of a civilized order. And by "ruling groups", they meant not only those who were better educated, but those who were propertied, because they regarded property as a sign of talent and of ability, so that it wasn't just wealth as such, but rather a constellation of virtues as well as wealth that entitled capitalists to rule. And they felt that this was in the best interests of the country.
And you must remember at this time that the people, so-called, were not well-educated and in many ways were feeling their way towards defining their own role in the political system. And above all, they were preoccupied, as people always have been, with making a living, with surviving. And those were difficult times, as most times are, so that politics for them could only be an occasional activity, and so that there would always be an uneasy relationship between a democracy that was often quiescent and a form of rule which was constantly trying to reduce, as far as possible, Democratic influence in order to permit those who were qualified to govern the country in the best interests of the country.
HEDGES: And, of course, when we talk about property, we must include slaveholders.
WOLIN: Indeed. Indeed. Although, of course, there was, in the beginning, a tension between the northern colonies and the southern colonies.
HEDGES: This fear of direct democracy is kind of epitomized by Thomas Paine, --
WOLIN: Yeah. Yeah.
HEDGES: -- who was very useful in fomenting revolutionary consciousness, but essentially turned into a pariah once the Revolution was over and the native aristocracy sought to limit the power of participatory democracy.
WOLIN: Yeah, I think that's true. I think it's too bad Paine didn't have at his disposal Lenin's phrase "permanent revolution", because I think that's what he felt, not in the sense of violence, violence, violence, but in the sense of a kind of conscious participatory element that was very strong, that would have to be continuous, and that it couldn't just be episodic, so that there was always a tension between what he thought to be democratic vitality and the sort of ordered, structured, election-related, term-related kind of political system that the framers had in mind.
HEDGES: So let's look at the Cold War, because in Politics and Vision, as in Democracy Inc., you talk about the framing of what Dwight Macdonald will call the psychosis of permanent war, this constant battle against communism, as giving capital the tools by which they could destroy those democratic institutions, traditions, and values that were in place. How did that happen? What was the process?
WOLIN: Well, I think it happened because of the way that the Cold War was framed. That is, it was framed as not only a war between communism and capitalism, but also a war of which the subtext was that communism was, after all, an ideology that favored ordinary people. Now, it got perverted, there's no question about that, by Lenin and by Stalin and into something very, very different.
But in the Cold War, I think what was lost in the struggle was the ability to see that there was some kind of justification and historical reality for the appearance of communism, that it wasn't just a freak and it wasn't just a kind of mindless dictatorship, but that the plight of ordinary people under the forms of economic organization that had become prominent, the plight of the common people had become desperate. There was no Social Security. There were no wage guarantees. There was no union organization.
HEDGES: So it's just like today.
WOLIN: Yeah. They were powerless. And the ruling groups, the capitalist groups, were very conscious of what they had and what was needed to keep it going. And that's why figures like Alexander Hamilton are so important, because they understood this, they understood it from the beginning, that what capitalism required in the way not only of so-called free enterprise -- but remember, Hamilton believed very, very strongly in the kind of camaraderie between capitalism and strong central government, that strong central government was not the enemy of capitalism, but rather its tool, and that what had to be constantly kind of revitalized was that kind of relationship, because it was always being threatened by populist democracy, which wanted to break that link and cause government to be returned to some kind of responsive relationship to the people.
HEDGES: And the Cold War. So the Cold War arises. And this becomes the kind of moment by which capital, and especially corporate capital, can dismantle the New Deal and free itself from any kind of regulation and constraint to deform and destroy American democracy. Can you talk about that process, what happened during that period?
WOLIN: Well, I think the first thing to be said about it is the success with which the governing groups manage to create a Cold War that was really so total in its spread that it was hard to mount a critical opposition or to take a more detached view of our relationship to the Soviet Union and just what kind of problem it created. And it also had the effect, of course, of skewing the way we looked at domestic discontents, domestic inequalities, and so on, because it was always easy to tar them with the brush of communism, so that the communism was just more than a regime. It was also a kind of total depiction of what was the threat to -- and complete opposite to our own form of society, our old form of economy and government.
HEDGES: And in Politics and Vision, you talk about because of that ideological clash, therefore any restriction of capitalism which was defined in opposition to communism as a kind of democratic good, if you want to use that word, was lifted in the name of the battle against communism, that it became capitalism that was juxtaposed to communism rather than democracy, and therefore this empowered capital, in a very pernicious way, to dismantle democratic institutions in the name of the war on communism.
WOLIN: Oh, I think there's no question about that, the notion that you first had to, so to speak, unleash the great potential capitalism had for improving everybody's economical lot and the kind of constraints that had been developed not only by the New Deal, but by progressive movements throughout the 19th century and early 20th century in the United States, where it had been increasingly understood that while American economic institutions were a good thing, so to speak, and needed to be nurtured and developed, they also posed a threat. They posed a threat because they tended to result in concentrations of power, concentrations of economic power that quickly translated themselves into political influence because of the inevitably porous nature of democratic representation and elections and rule, so that the difficulty's been there for a long time, been recognized for a long time, but we go through these periods of sleepwalking where we have to relearn lessons that have been known almost since the birth of the republic, or at least since the birth of Jeffersonian democracy, that capitalism has its virtues, but it has to be carefully, carefully watched, observed, and often controlled.
HEDGES: Thank you. Please join us for part two later on with our interview with Professor Sheldon Wolin.
|
|
|
therealnews.com
CHRIS HEDGES, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING JOURNALIST: Welcome back to part three of our discussion with Professor Sheldon Wolin.You talk in both of your books, Politics and Vision and Democracy Incorporated, about superpower, which you call the true face of inverted totalitarianism. What is superpower? How do you describe it?
SHELDON WOLIN, PROF. EMERITUS POLITICS, PRINCETON: Well, I think it's important to grasp that superpower includes as one of its two main elements the modern economy. And the modern economy, with its foundations in not only economic activity but scientific research, is always a dynamic economy and always constantly seeking to expand, to get new markets, to be able to produce new goods, and so on. So the superpower's dynamism becomes a kind of counterpart to the character of the modern economy, which has become so dominant that it defines the political forms.
I mean, the first person to really recognize this -- which we always are embarrassed to say -- was Karl Marx, who did understand that economic forms shape political forms, that economic forms are the way people make a living, they're the way goods and services are produced, and they determine the nature of society, so that any kind of government which is responsive to society is going to reflect that kind of structure and in itself be undemocratic, be elitist in a fundamental sense, and have consumers as citizens.
HEDGES: And Marx would also argue that it also defines ideology.
WOLIN: It does. It does define ideology. Marx was really the first to see that ideology had become a kind of -- although there are antecedents, had become a kind of preconceived package of ideas and centered around the notion of control, that it represented something new in the world because you now had the resources to disseminate it, to impose it, and to generally make certain that a society became, so to speak, educated in precisely the kind of ideas you wanted them to be educated in. And that became all the more important when societies entered the stage of relatively advanced capitalism, where the emphasis was upon work, getting a job, keeping your job, holding it in insecure times. And when you've got that kind of situation, everybody wants to put their political beliefs on hold. They don't want to have to agonize over them while they're agonizing over the search for work or worrying about the insecurity of their position. They're understandably preoccupied with survival. And at that point, democracy becomes at best a luxury and at worst simply an afterthought, so that its future becomes very seriously compromised, I think.
HEDGES: And when the ruling ideology is determined by capitalism -- corporate capitalism; you're right -- we have an upending of traditional democratic values, because capitalist values are about expansion, exploitation, profit, the cult of the self, and you stop even asking questions that can bring you into democratic or participatory democracy.
WOLIN: I think that's true to an extent. But I would amend that to say that once the kind of supremacy of the capitalist regime becomes assured, and where it's evident to everyone that it's not got a real alternative in confronting it, that I think its genius is it sees that a certain relaxation is not only possible, but even desirable, because it gives the impression that the regime is being supported by public debate and supported by people who were arguing with other people, who were allowed to speak their minds, and so on. And I think it's when you reach that stage -- as I think we have -- that the problematic relationship between capitalism and democracy become more and more acute.
HEDGES: And yet we don't have anyone within the mainstream who questions either superpower or capitalism.
WOLIN: No, they don't. And I don't think it's -- it may be a question of weakness, but I think -- the problem is really, I think, more sort of quixotic. That is, capitalism -- unlike earlier forms of economic organization, capitalism thrives on change. It presents itself as the dynamic form of society, with new inventions, new discoveries, new forms of wealth, so that it doesn't appear like the old regime -- as sort of an encrusted old fogey type of society. And I think that makes a great deal of difference, because in a certain sense you almost get roles reversed. That is, in the old regime, the dominant powers, aristocracy and so on, want to keep the lid on, and the insurgent democracy, the liberalizing powers, wanted to take the lid off.
But now I think you get it -- as I say, I think you get it kind of reversed, that democracy, it now wants -- in its form of being sort of the public philosophy, now wants to keep the lid on and becomes, I think, increasingly less -- more adverse to examining in a -- through self-examination, and becomes increasingly, I would say, even intolerant of views which question its own assumptions, and above all question its consequences, because I think that's where the real issues lie is not so much with the assumptions of democracy but with the consequences and trying to figure out how we've managed to get a political system that preaches equality and an economic system which thrives on inequality and produces inequality as a matter of course.
HEDGES: Well, in all totalitarian societies there's a vast disconnect between rhetoric and reality, which, of course, would characterize inverted totalitarianism as a species of totalitarianism.
WOLIN: Well, I guess that's true. I think I'd probably qualify that, because I'd qualify it in the sense that when you look at Naziism and fascism, they were pretty upfront about a lot of things -- leadership principle, racist principles -- and they made no secret that they wanted to dominate the world, so that I think there was a certain kind of aggressive openness in those regimes that I think isn't true of our contemporary situation.
HEDGES: And yet in the same time, in those regimes, I mean, you look at Stalin's constitution as a document, it was very liberal, --
WOLIN: Sure.
HEDGES: -- it protected human rights and free speech. And so on the one hand -- at least in terms of civil liberties. And we have, as superpower, exactly replicated in many ways this call for constant global domination and expansion that was part of what you would describe as classical totalitarianism. And that -- you're right, in that the notion of superpower is that it's global and that that constant global expansion, which is twinned with the engine of corporate capitalism, is something that you say has diminished the reality of the nation-state itself -- somehow the nation-state becomes insignificant in the great game of superpower global empire -- and that that has consequences both economically and politically.
WOLIN: Well, I think it does. I think one has to treat the matter carefully, because a lot of the vestiges of the nation-states still are, obviously, in existence. But I think one of the important tendencies of our time -- I would say not tendencies, but trends -- is that sovereign governments based on so-called liberal democracy have discovered that the only way they can survive is by giving up a large dose of their sovereignty, by setting up European Unions, various trade pacts, and other sort of regional alliances that place constraints on their power, which they ordinarily would proclaim as natural to having any nation at all, and so that that kind of development, I think, is fraught with all kinds of implications, not the least of [them] being not only whether -- what kind of actors we have now in the case of nation-states, but what the future of social reform is, when the vehicle of that reform has now been sort of transmuted into a system where it's lost a degree of autonomy and, hence, its capacity to create the reforms or promote the reforms that people in social movements had wanted the nation-state to do.
HEDGES: And part of that surrender has been the impoverishment of the working class with the flight of manufacturing. And I think it's in Politics and Vision you talk about how the war that is made by the inverted totalitarian system against the welfare state never publicly accepts the reality that it was the system that caused the impoverishment, that those who are impoverished are somehow to blame for their own predicament. And this, of course, is part of the skill of the public relations industry, the mask of corporate power, which you write is really dominated by personalities, political personalities that we pick. And that has had, I think (I don't know if you would agree), a kind of -- a very effective -- it has been a very effective way by which the poor and the working class have internalized their own repression and in many ways become disempowered, because I think that that message is one that even at a street level many people have ingested.
WOLIN: Yeah. I think you're right about that. The problem of how to get a foothold by Democratic forces in the kind of society we have is so problematic now that it's very hard to envision it would take place. And the ubiquity of the present economic system is so profound (and it's accompanied by this apparent denial of its own reality) that it becomes very hard to find a defender of it who doesn't want to claim in the end that he's really on your side.
Yeah, it's a very paradoxical situation. And I don't know. I mean, I think we all have to take a deep breath and try to start from scratch again in thinking about where we are, how we get there, and what kind of immediate steps we might take in order to alter the course that I think we're on, which really creates societies which, when you spell out what's happening, nobody really wants, or at least not ordinary people want. It's a very strange situation where -- and I think, you know, not least among them is, I think, the factor that you suggested, which is the kind of evaporation of leisure time and the opportunities to use that for political education, as well as kind of moral refreshment. But, yeah, it's a really totally unprecedented situation where you've got affluence, opportunity, and so on, and you have these kinds of frustrations, injustices, and really very diminished life prospects.
HEDGES: You agree, I think, with Karl Marx that unfettered, unregulated corporate capitalism is a revolutionary force.
WOLIN: Oh, indeed. I think it's been demonstrated even beyond his wildest dreams that it -- yeah, you're just -- you just have to see what happens when a underdeveloped part of the world, as they're called, becomes developed by capitalism -- it just transforms everything, from social relations to not only economic relations, but prospects in society for various classes and so on. No, it's a mighty, mighty force. And the problem it always creates is trying to get a handle on it, partly because it's so omnipresent, it's so much a part of what we're used to, that we can't recognize what we're used to as a threat. And that's part of the paradox.
HEDGES: You take issue with this or, you know, point out that in fact it is a revolutionary force. And yet it is somehow, as a political and economic position, the domain of people as self-identified conservatives.
WOLIN: Yeah, it is. I think they're conservative on sort of one side of their face, as it were, because I think they're always willing to radically change, let's say, social legislation that's in existence to defend people, ordinary people. I think they're very selective about what they want to preserve and what they want to either undermine or completely eliminate.
That's, of course, the kind of way that the political system presents itself in kind of an interesting way. That is, you get this combination of conservative and liberal in the party system. I mean, the Republicans stand for pretty much the preservation of the status quo, and the Democrats have as their historical function a kind of mild, modest, moderate reformism that's going to deal with some of the excesses without challenging very often the basic system, so that it kind of strikes a wonderful balance between preservation and criticism. The criticism -- because the preservation element is so strong, criticism becomes always constructive, in the sense that it presumes the continued operation of the present system and its main elements.
HEDGES: Of both corporate capitalism and superpower.
WOLIN: Absolutely.
HEDGES: And yet you say that at this point, political debate has really devolved into what you call nonsubstantial issues, issues that don't really mean anything if we talk about politics as centered around the common good.
WOLIN: Yeah, political debate has become either so rhetorically excessive as to be beside the point, or else to be so shy of taking on the basic problems. But again you're back in the kind of chasing-the-tail problem. The mechanisms, i.e. political parties, that we have that are supposed to organize and express discontent are, of course, precisely the organs that require the money that only the dominant groups possess. I mean, long ago there were theories or proposals being floated to set up public financing. But public financing, even as it was conceived then, was so miniscule that you couldn't possibly even support a kind of lively political debate in a modest way.
You know, politics has become such an expensive thing that I think really the only way to describe it realistically is to talk about it as a political economy or an economic kind of political economy. It's got those -- those two are inextricable elements now in the business of the national or state governments, too.
HEDGES: And yet I think you could argue that even the Democratic Party under Clinton and under Obama, while it continues to use the rhetoric of that kind of feel-your-pain language, which has been part of the Democratic establishment, has only furthered the agenda of superpower, of corporate capitalism, and, of course, the rise of the security and surveillance state by which all of us are kept in check.
WOLIN: Yeah, I think that's true, because the reformers have simply hesitated -- really, really hesitated -- to undertake any kind of a focus upon political reform.
HEDGES: Haven't the reformers been bought off, in essence?
WOLIN: I think it's the no-no subject. I don't think it even has to be bought off anymore. I think that it is such a kind of third rail that nobody wants to touch it, because I think there is a real in-built fear that if you mess with those kind of so-called fundamental structures, you're going to bring down the house. And that includes messing with them even by constitutional, legal means, that it's so fragile, so delicate, so this that and the other thing that inhibit all kinds of efforts at reforming it. As the phrase used to go, it's a machine that goes of itself -- so they think.
HEDGES: Thank you.
Stay tuned for part four, coming up, of our interview with Professor Sheldon Wolin.
|
|
|
forums.allaboutjazz.com
Saundra HummerFebruary 26th, 2007, 05:07 PM
.^^^^^^^
President Carter Rips Cheney Over Iraq: 'His Batting Average Is Abysmally Low'
Last week, Vice President Cheney attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) for supporting Iraq redeployment. He charged that their plan would "validate the al Qaeda strategy."
Today, former President Jimmy Carter rejected Cheney's charges, stating that calls for a change of policy in Iraq are "not playing into the hands of al Qaeda or the people who are causing violence and destruction over there." He added, "If you go back and see what Vice President Cheney has said for the last three or four years concerning Iraq, his batting average is abysmally low. He hasn't been right on hardly anything."
Click on the following URL to view.Watch it:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/25/carter-cheney/
Digg It!
Transcript:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Vice President Cheney this week has been very harsh on those kinds of measures in the Congress.
[CHENEY CLIP]: If we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we'll do is validate the al Qaeda strategy. The al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people.
CARTER: If you go back and see what Vice President Cheney has said for the last three or four years concerning Iraq, his batting average is abysmally low. He hasn't been right on hardly anything and his prediction of what is going to happen, reasons for going over there and obviously this is not playing into the hands of al Qaeda or the people who are causing violence and destruction over there, to call for a change in policy in Iraq.
^^^^^
.
Saundra HummerFebruary 26th, 2007, 05:34 PM
..........
Iraq 101:
The Iraq Effect
The War in Iraq and Its Impact on the War on Terrorism - Pg. 1All right, no more excuses, people. After four years in Iraq, it's time to get serious. We've spent too long goofing off, waiting to be saved by the bell, praying that we won't get asked a stumper like, "What's the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?" Okay, even the head of the House intelligence committee doesn't know that one. All the more reason to start boning up on what we-and our leaders-should have learned back before they signed us up for this crash course in Middle Eastern geopolitics. And while we're at it, let's do the math on what the war really costs in blood and dollars. It's time for our own Iraq study group. Yes, there will be a test, and we can't afford to fail.
March 01 , 2007By Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank
Research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law. Bergen is also a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C."If we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people." So said President Bush on November 30, 2005, refining his earlier call to "bring them on." Jihadist terrorists, the administration's argument went, would be drawn to Iraq like moths to a flame, and would perish there rather than wreak havoc elsewhere in the world.
The president's argument conveyed two important assumptions: first, that the threat of jihadist terrorism to U.S. interests would have been greater without the war in Iraq, and second, that the war is reducing the overall global pool of terrorists. However, the White House has never cited any evidence for either of these assumptions, and none appears to be publicly available.
The administration's own National Intelligence Estimate on "Trends in Global Terrorism: implications for the United States," circulated within the government in April 2006 and partially declassified in October, states that "the Iraq War has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists...and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."
Yet administration officials have continued to suggest that there is no evidence any greater jihadist threat exists as a result of the Iraq War. "Are more terrorists being created in the world?" then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rhetorically asked during a press conference in September. "We don't know. The world doesn't know. There are not good metrics to determine how many people are being trained in a radical madrasa school in some country." In January 2007 Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte in congressional testimony stated that he was "not certain" that the Iraq War had been a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda and played down the likely impact of the war on jihadists worldwide: "I wouldn't say there has been a widespread growth in Islamic extremism beyond Iraq. I really wouldn't."
Indeed, though what we will call "The Iraq Effect" is a crucial matter for U.S. national security, we have found no statistical documentation of its existence and gravity, at least in the public domain. In this report, we have undertaken what we believe to be the first such study, using information from the world's premier database on global terrorism. The results are being published for the first time by Mother Jones, the news and investigative magazine, as part of a broader "Iraq 101" package in the magazine's March/April 2007 issue.
<< Breaking The Army << >> The Iraq Effect Pg. 2 >> Iraq Effect (continued)
Our study shows that the Iraq War has generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third.We are not making the argument that without the Iraq War, jihadist terrorism would not exist, but our study shows that the Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of the Al Qaeda ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea.
In our study we focused on the following questions:Has jihadist terrorism gone up or down around the world since the invasion of Iraq?
What has been the trend if terrorist incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan (the military fronts of the "war on terrorism") are excluded?
Has terrorism explicitly directed at the United States and its allies also increased?
In order to zero in on The Iraq Effect, we focused on the rate of terrorist attacks in two time periods: September 12, 2001, to March 20, 2003 (the day of the Iraq invasion), and March 21, 2003, to September 30, 2006. Extending the data set before 9/11 would risk distorting the results, because the rate of attacks by jihadist groups jumped considerably after 9/11 as jihadist terrorists took inspiration from the events of that terrible day.We first determined which terrorist organizations should be classified as jihadist. We included in this group Sunni extremist groups affiliated with or sympathetic to the ideology of Al Qaeda. We decided to exclude terrorist attacks by Palestinian groups, as they depend largely on factors particular to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Our study draws its data from the MIPT-RAND Terrorism database (available at terrorismknowledgebase.org), which is widely considered to be the best publicly available database on terrorism incidents. RAND defines a terrorist attack as an attack on a civilian entity designed to promote fear or alarm and further a particular political agenda. In our study we only included attacks that caused at least one fatality and were attributed by RAND to a known jihadist group. In some terrorist attacks, and this is especially the case in Iraq, RAND has not been able to attribute a particular attack to a known jihadist group. Therefore our study likely understates the extent of jihadist terrorism in Iraq and around the world.
Our study yields one resounding finding: The rate of terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the average fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, which accounts for fully half of the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks in the post-Iraq War period. But even excluding Iraq, the average yearly number of jihadist terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities still rose sharply around the world by 265 percent and 58 percent respectively.
And even when attacks in both Afghanistan and Iraq (the two countries that together account for 80 percent of attacks and 67 percent of deaths since the invasion of Iraq) are excluded, there has still been a significant rise in jihadist terrorism elsewhere--a 35 percent increase in the number of jihadist terrorist attacks outside of Afghanistan and Iraq, from 27.6 to 37 a year, with a 12 percent rise in fatalities from 496 to 554 per year.
Of course, just because jihadist terrorism has risen in the period after the invasion of Iraq, it does not follow that events in Iraq itself caused the change. For example, a rise in attacks in the Kashmir conflict and the Chechen separatist war against Russian forces may have nothing to do with the war in Iraq. But the most direct test of The Iraq Effect--whether the United States and its allies have suffered more jihadist terrorism after the invasion than before--shows that the rate of jihadist attacks on Western interests and citizens around the world (outside of Afghanistan and Iraq) has risen by a quarter, from 7.2 to 9 a year, while the yearly fatality rate in these attacks has increased by 4 percent from 191 to 198.
One of the few positive findings of our study is that only 18 American civilians (not counting civilian contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan) have been killed by jihadist groups since the war in Iraq began. But that number is still significantly higher than the four American civilians who were killed in attacks attributed to jihadist groups in the period between 9/11 and the Iraq War. It was the capture and killing of much of Al Qaeda's leadership after 9/11 and the breakup of its training camp facilities in Afghanistan--not the war in Iraq--that prevented Al Qaeda from successfully launching attacks on American targets on the scale it did in the years before 9/11.
Also undermining the argument that Al Qaeda and like-minded groups are being distracted from plotting against Western targets are the dangerous, anti-American plots that have arisen since the start of the Iraq War. Jihadist terrorists have attacked key American allies since the Iraq conflict began, mounting multiple bombings in London that killed 52 in July 2005, and attacks in Madrid in 2004 that killed 191. Shehzad Tanweer, one of the London bombers, stated in his videotaped suicide "will," "What have you witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq." There have been six jihadist attacks on the home soil of the United States' NATO allies (including Turkey) in the period after the invasion of Iraq, whereas there were none in the 18 months following 9/11; and, of course, the plan uncovered in London in August 2006 to smuggle liquid explosives onto U.S. airliners, had it succeeded, would have killed thousands.
Al Qaeda has not let the Iraq War distract it from targeting the United States and her allies. In a January 19, 2006 audiotape, Osama bin Laden himself refuted President Bush's argument that Iraq had distracted and diverted Al Qaeda: "The reality shows that that the war against America and its allies has not remained limited to Iraq, as he claims, but rather, that Iraq has become a source and attraction and recruitment of qualified people.... As for the delay in similar [terrorist] operations in America, [the] operations are being prepared, and you will witness them, in your own land, as soon as preparations are complete."
Ayman al Zawahiri echoed bin Laden's words in a March 4, 2006, videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera calling for jihadists to launch attacks on the home soil of Western countries: "[Muslims have to] inflict losses on the crusader West, especially to its economic infrastructure with strikes that would make it bleed for years. The strikes on New York, Washington, Madrid, and London are the best examples.
One measure of the impact of the Iraq War is the precipitous drop in public support for the United States in Muslim countries. Jordan, a key U.S. ally, saw popular approval for the United States drop from 25 percent in 2002 to 1 percent in 2003. In Lebanon during the same period, favorable views of the United States dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, and in the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia, favorable views plummeted from 61 percent to 15 percent. Disliking the United States does not make you a terrorist, but clearly the pool of Muslims who dislike the United States has grown by hundreds of millions since the Iraq War began. The United States' plummeting popularity does not suggest active popular support for jihadist terrorists but it does imply some sympathy with their anti-American posture, which means a significant swath of the Muslim population cannot be relied on as an effective party in counter-terrorism/insurgency measures. And so, popular contempt for U.S. policy has become a force multiplier for Islamist militants.
The Iraq War has also encouraged Muslim youth around the world to join jihadist groups, not necessarily directly tied to Al Qaeda but often motivated by a similar ideology. The Iraq War allowed Al Qaeda, which was on the ropes in 2002 after the United States had captured or killed two-thirds of its leadership, to reinvent itself as a broader movement because Al Qaeda's central message--that the United States is at war with Islam--was judged by significant numbers of Muslims to have been corroborated by the war in Iraq. And compounding this, the wide dissemination of the exploits of jihadist groups in Iraq following the invasion energized potential and actual jihadists across the world.
How exactly has The Iraq Effect played out in different parts of the world? The effect has not been uniform. Europe, the Arab world, and Afghanistan all saw major rises in jihadist terrorism in the period after the invasion of Iraq, while Pakistan and India and the Chechnya/Russia front saw only smaller increases in jihadist terrorism. And in Southeast Asia, attacks and killings by jihadist groups fell by over 60 percent in the period after the Iraq War. The strength or weakness of The Iraq Effect on jihadist terrorism in a particular country seems to be influenced by four factors: (1) if the country itself has troops in Iraq; (2) geographical proximity to Iraq; (3) the degree of identification with Iraq's Arabs felt in the country; and (4) the level of exchanges of ideas or personnel with Iraqi jihadist groups. This may explain why jihadist groups in Europe, Arab countries, and Afghanistan were more affected by the Iraq War than groups in other regions. Europe, unlike Kashmir, Chechnya, and Southeast Asia for example, contains several countries that are part of the coalition in Iraq. It is relatively geographically close to the Arab world and has a large Arab-Muslim diaspora from which jihadists have recruited.
European intelligence services are deeply concerned about the effect of the Iraq War. For example, Dame Eliza Mannigham-Buller, the head of Britain's MI5, stated on November 10, 2006, "In Iraq, attacks are regularly videoed and the footage is downloaded onto the Internet [and] chillingly we see the results here. Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers. We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and damage our economy...30 that we know of. [The] threat is serious, is growing, and, I believe, will be with us for a generation." Startlingly, a recent poll found that a quarter of British Muslims believe that the July 7, 2005, London bombings were justifiable because of British foreign policy, bearing out Dame Eliza's concern about a new generation of radicals in the United Kingdom.
While Islamist militants in Europe are mobilized by a series of grievances such as Palestine, Afghanistan, the Kashmir conflict, and Chechnya, no issue has resonated more in radical circles and on Islamist websites than the war in Iraq. This can be seen in the skyrocketing rate of jihadist terrorist attacks around the Arab world outside of Iraq. There have been 37 attacks in Arab countries outside of Iraq since the invasion, while there were only three in the period between 9/11 and March 2003. The rate of attacks in Arab countries jumped by 445 percent since the Iraq invasion, while the rate of killings rose by 783 percent. The November 9, 2005 bombings of three American hotels in Amman, Jordan, that killed 60, an operation directed by Abu Musab al Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq network, was the most direct manifestation of The Iraq Effect in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has seen an upsurge in jihadist terrorism since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There were no jihadist terrorist attacks between 9/11 and the Iraq War but 12 in the period since. The reason for the surge in terrorism was a decision taken by Al Qaeda's Saudi branch in the spring of 2003 to launch a wave of attacks (primarily at Western targets) to undermine the Saudi royal family. These attacks were initiated on May 12, 2003 with the bombing of Western compounds in Riyadh, killing 34, including 10 Americans. While Saudi authorities believe that planning and training for the operation predated the war in Iraq, the timing of the attack, just weeks after the U.S invasion is striking.
The fact that the Iraq War radicalized some young Saudis is underlined by studies showing that more Saudis have conducted suicide operations in Iraq than any other nationality. For instance, Mohammed Hafez, a visiting professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, in a study of the 101 identified suicide attackers in Iraq from March 2003 to February 2006, found that more than 40 percent were Saudi. This jihadist energy was not just transferred over the Saudi border into Iraq. It also contributed to attacks in the Kingdom. The group that beheaded the American contractor Paul Johnson in Riyadh in June 2004 called itself the "Al Fallujah brigade of Al Qaeda" and claimed that it had carried out the killing in part to avenge the actions of "disbelievers" in Iraq. In January 2004 Al Qaeda's Saudi affiliate launched Al Battar, an online training magazine specifically directed at young Saudis interested in fighting their regime. The achievements of jihadists in Iraq figured prominently in its pages. Indeed, a contributor to the first issue of Al Battar argued that the Iraq War had made jihad "a commandment" for Saudi Arabians " the Islamic nation is today in acute conflict with the Crusaders."
The Iraq War had a strong impact in other Arab countries too. Daily images aired by Al Jazeera and other channels of suffering Iraqis enraged the Arab street and strengthened the hands of radicals everywhere. In Egypt, the Iraq War has contributed to a recent wave of attacks by small, self-generated groups. A Sinai-based jihadist group carried out coordinated bombing attacks on Red Sea resorts popular with Western tourists at Taba in October 2004, at Sharm el-Sheikh in July 2005, and at Dahab in April 2006, killing a total of more than 120.
One of the cell's members, Younis Elian Abu Jarir, a taxi driver whose job was to ferry the group around, stated in a confession offered as evidence in court that "they convinced me of the need for holy war against the Jews, Americans, Italians, and other nationalities that participated in the occupation of Iraq." Osama Rushdi, a former spokesman of the Egyptian terrorist group Gamma Islamiyya now living in London, told us that while attacks in the Sinai were partly directed at the Egyptian regime, they appeared to be primarily anti-Western in motivation: "The Iraq War contributed to the negative feelings of the Sinai group. Before the Iraq War, most Egyptians did not have a negative feeling towards American policy. Now almost all are opposed to American policy."
Since the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan has suffered 219 jihadist terrorist attacks that can be attributed to a particular group, resulting in the deaths of 802 civilians. The fact that the Taliban only conducted its first terrorist attacks in September 2003, a few months after the invasion of Iraq, is significant. International forces had already been stationed in the country for two years before the Taliban began to specifically target the U.S.-backed Karzai government and civilians sympathetic to it. This points to a link between events in Iraq and the initiation of the Taliban's terrorist campaign in Afghanistan.True, local dynamics form part of the explanation for the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the use of terrorism, particularly suicide attacks, by the Taliban is an innovation drawn from the Iraqi theater. Hekmat Karzai, an Afghan terrorism researcher, points out that suicide bombings were virtually unknown in Afghanistan until 2005. In 2006, Karzai says, there were 118 such attacks, more than there had been in the entire history of the country. Internet sites have helped spread the tactics of Iraqi jihadists. In 2005 the "Media Committee of the Al Qaeda Mujahideen in Afghanistan" launched an online magazine called Vanguards of Kharasan, which includes articles on what Afghan fighters can learn from Coalition and jihadist strategies in Iraq. Abdul Majid Abdul Majed, a contributor to the April 2006 issue of the magazine, argued for an expansion in suicide operations, citing the effectiveness of jihadist operations in Iraq.
Mullah Dadullah, a key Taliban commander, gave an interview to Al Jazeera in 2006 in which he explained how the Iraq War has influenced the Taliban. Dadullah noted that "we have 'give and take' with the mujahideen in Iraq." Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who is writing bin Laden's biography, told us that young men traveled from the Afghan province of Khost to "on-the-job training" in Iraq in 2004. "They came back with lots of CDs which were full of military actions against U.S. troops in the Mosul, Fallujah, and Baghdad areas. I think suicide bombing was introduced in Afghanistan and Pakistan after local boys came back after spending some time in Iraq. I met a Taliban commander, Mullah Mannan, last year in Zabul who told me that he was trained in Iraq by Zarqawi along with many Pakistani tribals."
Propaganda circulating in Afghanistan and Pakistan about American "atrocities" and jihadist "heroics" has also energized the Taliban, encouraging a previously somewhat isolated movement to see itself as part of a wider struggle. Our study found a striking correlation in how terrorist campaigns intensified in Iraq and Afghanistan. The rate of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan gathered pace in the summer of 2005, a half year after a similar increase in Iraq, and in 2006 the rate of attacks in both countries rose in tandem to new, unprecedented levels.
While the Iraq War has had a strong effect on the rise in terrorism in Afghanistan, it appears to have played less of a role on jihadists operating in Pakistan and India, though terrorism did rise in those countries following the invasion of Iraq. (Of course, neither Pakistan nor India has foreign troops on its soil, which accounts, in part, for the high terrorism figures in Afghanistan.) The rate of jihadist attacks rose by 21 percent while the fatality rate rose by 19 percent. There were 52 attacks after the Iraq invasion, killing 489 civilians, while there were 19 in the period before, killing 182. The local dynamics of the Kashmir conflict, tensions between India and Pakistan, and the resurfacing of the Taliban in eastern Pakistan likely played a large role here. That said, there is evidence that the Iraq War did energize jihadists in Pakistan. Hamid Mir says, "Iraq not only radicalized the Pakistani tribals [near the Afghan border] but it offered them the opportunity for them to go to Iraq via Iran to get on-the-job training."
There is also evidence that the Iraq War had some impact in other areas of Pakistan. In the summer of 2004, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the head of the Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba, told followers in Lahore, "Islam is in grave danger, and the mujahideen are fighting to keep its glory. They are fighting the forces of evil in Iraq in extremely difficult circumstances. We should send mujahideen from Pakistan to help them." And Pakistan, inasmuch as it has become Al Qaeda's new base for training and planning attacks, has become the location where significant numbers of would-be jihadists--including some young British Pakistanis such as the London suicide bombers, radicalized in part by the Iraq War--have traveled to learn bomb-making skills.
In Russia and Chechnya, the Iraq War appears to have had less of an impact than on other jihadist fronts. This is unsurprising given the fact that jihadist groups in the region are preoccupied by a separatist war against the Russian military. Whilst following the invasion of Iraq there was a rise in the number of attacks by Chechen groups that share a similar ideology with Al Qaeda, the total rate of fatalities did not go up. The Iraq War does seem to have diverted some jihadists from the Russian/Chechen front: Arab fighters who might have previously gone to Chechnya now have a cause at their own doorstep, while funds from Arab donors increasingly have gone to the Iraqi jihad.
Southeast Asia has been the one region in the world in which jihadist terrorism has declined significantly in the period since the invasion of Iraq. There was a 67 percent drop in the rate of attacks (from 10.5 to 3.5 attacks per year) in the post-invasion period and a 69 percent drop in the rate of fatalities (from 201 to 62 fatalities per year). And there has been no bombing on the scale of the October 2002 Bali nightclub attack that killed more than 200. However, jihadist terrorism in Southeast Asia has declined in spite, not because of, the Iraq War. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was deeply unpopular in the region, as demonstrated by the poll finding that only 15 percent of Indonesians had a favorable view of the United States in 2003. But the negative impact of the Iraq War on public opinion was mitigated by U.S. efforts to aid the region in the wake of the devastating tsunami of December 2004--Pew opinion surveys have shown that the number of those with favorable views towards the United States in Indonesia crept above 30 percent in 2005 and 2006.
However, the main reason for the decline of jihadist terrorism in Southeast Asia has been the successful crackdown by local authorities on jihadist groups and their growing unpopularity with the general population. The August 2003 capture of Hambali, Jemaa Islamiya's operational commander, was key to degrading the group's capacity to launch attacks as was the arrest of hundreds of Jemaa Islamiya and Abu Sayyaf operatives in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore in the years after the October 2002 Bali bombings. Those arrested included most of those who planned the Bali attacks, as well as former instructors at Jemaa Islamiya camps and individuals involved in financing attacks. And in November 2005 Indonesian security services killed Jemaa Islamiya master bomber Azhari bin Husin in a shoot-out. The second wave of Bali attacks in 2005 killed mostly Indonesians and created a popular backlash against jihadist groups in Indonesia, degrading their ability to recruit operatives. And Muslim leaders such as Masdar Farid Masudi, the deputy leader of the country's largest Islamic group, condemned the bombings: "If the perpetrators are Muslims, their sentences must be multiplied because they have tarnished the sacredness of their religion and smeared its followers worldwide."
Iraq Effect (continued)
Our survey shows that the Iraq conflict has motivated jihadists around the world to see their particular struggle as part of a wider global jihad fought on behalf of the Islamic ummah, the global community of Muslim believers. The Iraq War had a strong impact in jihadist circles in the Arab world and Europe, but also on the Taliban, which previously had been quite insulated from events elsewhere in the Muslim world. By energizing the jihadist groups, the Iraq conflict acted as a catalyst for the increasing globalization of the jihadist cause, a trend that should be deeply troubling for American policymakers. In the late 1990s, bin Laden pushed a message of a global jihad and attracted recruits from around the Muslim world to train and fight in Afghanistan. The Iraq War has made bin Laden's message of global struggle even more persuasive to militants. Over the past three years, Iraq has attracted thousands of foreign fighters who have been responsible for the majority of suicide attacks in the country. Those attacks have had an enormous strategic impact; for instance, getting the United Nations to pull out of Iraq and sparking the Iraqi civil war.Emblematic of the problem is Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian woman who on November 9, 2005, near the town of Baquba in central Iraq, detonated a bomb as she drove past an American patrol. In the bomb crater, investigators found travel documents that showed that she had arrived in Iraq from Belgium just a few weeks earlier with her Moroccan-Belgian husband Hissam Goris. The couple had been recruited by "Al Qaeda in Iraq." Goris would die the following day, shot by American forces as he prepared to launch a suicide attack near Fallujah.
The story of Muriel Degauque and her husband is part of a trend that Harvard terrorism researcher Assaf Moghadam terms the "globalization of martyrdom." The London suicide bombings in July 2005 revealed the surprising willingness of four British citizens to die to protest the United Kingdom's role in the Coalition in Iraq; Muriel Degauque, for her part, was willing to die for the jihadist cause in a country in which she was a stranger.
This challenges some existing conceptions of the motivations behind suicide attacks. In 2005 University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape published a much-commented-upon study of suicide bombing, "Dying to Win," in which he used a mass of data about previous suicide bombing campaigns to argue that they principally occurred "to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland." (Of course, terrorism directed against totalitarian regimes rarely occurs because such regimes are police states and are unresponsive to public opinion.) Pape also argued that while religion might aggravate campaigns of suicide terrorism, such campaigns had also been undertaken by secular groups, most notably the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, whose most spectacular success was the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a female suicide attacker in 1991.
Pape's findings may explain the actions and motivations of terrorist groups in countries such as Sri Lanka, but his principal claim that campaigns of suicide terrorism are generally nationalist struggles to liberate occupied lands that have little to do with religious belief does not survive contact with the reality of what is going on today in Iraq. The most extensive suicide campaign in history is being conducted in Iraq largely by foreigners animated by the deeply-held religious belief that they must liberate a Muslim land from the "infidel" occupiers.
While Iraqis make up the great bulk of the insurgents, several studies have shown that the suicide attackers in Iraq are generally foreigners, while only a small proportion are Iraqi. (Indeed, the most feared terrorist leader in Iraq until his death earlier this year, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was a Jordanian.) The Israeli researcher Reuven Paz, using information posted on Al Qaeda-linked websites between October 2004 and March 2005, found that of the 33 suicide attacks listed, 23 were conducted by Saudis, and only 1 by an Iraqi. Similarly, in June 2005 the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Institute of Washington, D.C. found by tracking both jihadist websites and media reports that of the 199 Sunni extremists who had died in Iraq either in suicide attacks or in action against Coalition or Iraqi forces, 104 were from Saudi Arabia and only 21 from Iraq. The rest were predominantly from countries around the Middle East. And Mohammed Hafez in his previously cited study of the 101 "known" suicide bombers in Iraq found that while 44 were Saudi and 8 were from Italy (!), only 7 were from Iraq.
In congressional testimony this past November, CIA Director General Michael Hayden said that "an overwhelming percentage of the suicide bombers are foreign." A senior U.S. military intelligence official told us that a worrisome recent trend is the rising number of North Africans who have joined the ranks of foreign fighters in Iraq, whose number General Hayden pegged at 1,300 during his November congressional testimony. A Saudi official also confirmed to us the rising number of North Africans who are being drawn into the Iraq War.
The globalization of jihad and martyrdom, accelerated to a significant degree by the Iraq War, has some disquieting implications for American security in the future. First, it has energized jihadist groups generally; second, not all foreign fighters attracted to Iraq will die there. In fact there is evidence that some jihadists are already leaving Iraq to operate elsewhere. Saudi Arabia has made a number of arrests of fighters coming back from Iraq, and Jordanian intelligence sources say that 300 fighters have returned to Jordan from Iraq. As far away as Belgium, authorities have indicated that Younis Lekili, an alleged member of the cell that recruited Muriel Degauque, had previously traveled to fight in Iraq, where he lost his leg. (Lekili is awaiting trial in Belgium.)
German, French, and Dutch intelligence officials have estimated that there are dozens of their citizens returning from the Iraq theater, and some appear to have been determined to carry out attacks on their return to Europe. For example, French police arrested Hamid Bach, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, in June 2005 in Montpellier, several months after he returned from a staging camp for Iraq War recruits in Syria. According to French authorities, Bach's handlers there instructed him to assist with plotting terrorist attacks in Italy. Back in France, Bach is alleged to have bought significant quantities of hydrogen peroxide and to have looked up details on explosives and detonators online. (Bach is awaiting trial in France.)
This "blowback" trend will greatly increase when the war eventually winds down in Iraq. In the short term the countries most at risk are those whose citizens have traveled to fight in Iraq, in particular Arab countries bordering Iraq. Jamal Khashoggi, a leading Saudi expert on jihadist groups, told us that "while Iraq brought new blood into the Al Qaeda organization in Saudi Arabia, this was at a time when the network was being dismantled. Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia could not accommodate these recruits so they sent them to Iraq to train them, motivate them, and prepare them for a future wave of attacks in the Kingdom. It is a deep worry to Saudi authorities that Saudis who have gone to Iraq will come back." That's a scenario for which Khashoggi says Saudi security forces are painstakingly preparing.
Several U.S. citizens have tried to involve themselves in the Iraq jihad. In December an American was arrested in Cairo, Egypt, accused of being part of a cell plotting terrorist attacks in Iraq. And in February 2006 three Americans from Toledo, Ohio, were arrested for allegedly plotting to kill U.S. military personnel in Iraq. According to the FBI, one of these individuals, Mohammad Zaki Amawi, was in contact with an Arab jihadist group sending fighters to Iraq and tried unsuccessfully to cross the border into Iraq. However, to date there is no evidence of Americans actually fighting in Iraq so the number of returnees to the United States is likely to be small. The larger risk is that jihadists will migrate from Iraq to Western countries, a trend that will be accelerated if, as happened following the Afghan jihad against the Soviets, those fighters are not allowed to return to their home countries.
Already terrorist groups in Iraq may be in a position to start sending funds to other jihadist fronts. According to a U.S. government report leaked to the New York Times in November 2006, the fact that insurgent and terrorist groups are raising up to $200 million a year from various illegal activities such as kidnapping and oil theft in Iraq means that they "may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside Iraq." Indeed, a letter from Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al Zawahiri, to Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi in July 2005 contained this revealing request: "Many of the [funding] lines have been cut off. Because of this we need a payment while new lines are being opened. So if you're capable of sending a payment of approximately one hundred thousand we'll be very grateful to you."
The "globalization of martyrdom" prompted by the Iraq War has not only attracted foreign fighters to die in Iraq (we record 148 suicide-terrorist attacks in Iraq credited to an identified jihadist group) but has also encouraged jihadists to conduct many more suicide operations elsewhere. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there has been a 246 percent rise in the rate of suicide attacks (6 before and 47 after) by jihadist groups outside of Iraq and a 24 percent increase in the corresponding fatality rate. Even excluding Afghanistan, there has been a 150 percent rise in the rate of suicide attacks and a 14 percent increase in the rate of fatalities attributable to jihadists worldwide. The reasons for the spread of suicide bombing attacks in other jihadist theaters are complex but the success of these tactics in Iraq, the lionization that Iraqi martyrs receive on jihadist websites, and the increase in feelings of anger and frustration caused by images of the Iraq War have all likely contributed significantly. The spread of suicide bombings should be of great concern to the United States in defending its interests and citizens around the world, because they are virtually impossible to defend against.
The Iraq War has also encouraged the spread of more hardline forms of jihad (the corollary to an increase in suicide bombing). Anger and frustration over Iraq has increased the popularity, especially among young militants, of a hardcore takfiri ideology that is deeply intolerant of divergent interpretations of Islam and highly tolerant of extreme forms of violence. The visceral anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Shiism widely circulated among the Internet circles around ideologues such as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada (both Jordanian-Palestinian mentors to Abu Musab al Zarqawi) and Al Qaeda's Syrian hawk, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, are even more extreme, unlikely as it may sound, than the statements of bin Laden himself.
Our study shows just how counterproductive the Iraq War has been to the war on terrorism. The most recent State Department report on global terrorism states that the goal of the United States is to identify, target, and prevent the spread of "jihadist groups focused on attacking the United States or its allies [and those groups that] view governments and leaders in the Muslim world as their primary targets." Yet, since the invasion of Iraq, attacks by such groups have risen more than sevenfold around the world. And though few Americans have been killed by jihadist terrorists in the past three years it is wishful thinking to believe that this will continue to be the case, given the continued determination of militant jihadists to target the country they see as their main enemy. We will be living with the consequences of the Iraq debacle for more than a decade.
Special thanks to Mike Torres and Zach Stern at NYU and Kim Cragin and Drew Curiel at RAND.<< The Iraq Effect Pg.5 << >> The Data: The Iraq War and Jihadist Terrorism >>
Go on-site for sources, charts, etc. Just click on the following URLs:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_101.htmlhttp://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_effect_1.html [B]
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2015 | coreyrobin.com
Sheldon Wolin's the reason I began drinking coffee.
I was a freshman at Princeton. It was the fall of 1985. I signed up to take a course called "Modern Political Theory." It was scheduled for Mondays and Wednesdays at 9 am. I had no idea what I was doing. I stumbled into class, and there was a man with white hair and a trim white beard, lecturing on Machiavelli. I was transfixed.
There was just one problem: I was-still am-most definitely not a morning person. Even though the lectures were riveting, I had to fight my tendency to fall asleep. Even worse, I had to fight my tendency to sleep in.
So I started-- drinking coffee. I'd show up for class fully caffeinated. And proceeded to work my way through the canon-Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, along with some texts you don't often get in intro theory courses (the Putney Debates, Montesquieu's Persian Letters, and for a last hurrah: Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations)-under the guidance of one of the great readers of the twentieth century.
More than anything else, that's what Sheldon Wolin was: a reader of texts. He approached The Prince as if it were a novel, identifying its narrative voice, analyzing the literary construction of the characters who populated the text (new prince, customary prince, centaur, the people), examining the structural tensions in the narrative (How does a Machiavellian adviser advise a non-Machiavellian prince?), and so on. It was exhilarating.
And then after class I'd head straight for Firestone Library; read whatever we were reading that week in class; follow along, chapter by chapter, with Wolin's Politics and Vision, which remains to this day the single best book on Western political theory that I know of (even though lots of the texts we were talking about in class don't appear there, or appear there with very different interpretations from the ones Wolin was offering in class: the man never stood still, intellectually); and get my second cup of coffee.
This is all a long wind-up to the fact that this morning, my friend Antonio Vazquez-Arroyo, sent me a two-part interview that Chris Hedges conducted with Wolin, who's living out in Salem, Oregon now. From his Wikipedia page, I gather that Wolin's 92. He looks exactly the same as he did in 1985. And sounds the same. Though it seems from the video as if he may now be losing his sight. Which is devastating when I think about the opening passages of Politics and Vision, about how vision is so critical to the political theorist and the practice of theoria.
Anyway, here he is, talking to Hedges about his thesis of "inverted totalitarianism":
In classic totalitarianism, thinking here now about the Nazis and the fascists, and also even about the communists, the economy is viewed as a tool which the powers that be manipulate and utilize in accordance with what they conceive to be the political requirements of ruling. And they will take whatever steps are needed in the economy in order to ensure the long-run sustainability of the political order. In other words, the sort of arrows of political power flow from top to bottom.
Now, in inverted totalitarianism, the imagery is that of a populace which is enshrined as the leadership group but which in fact doesn't rule, but which is turned upside down in the sense that the people are enshrined at the top but don't rule. And minority rule is usually treated as something to be abhorred but is in fact what we have. And it's the problem has to do, I think, with the historical relationship between political orders and economic orders. And democracy, I think, from the beginning never quite managed to make the kind of case for an economic order that would sustain and help to develop democracy rather than being a kind of constant threat to the egalitarianism and popular rule that democracy stands for.
… ... ...
Capitalism is destructive because it has to eliminate the kind of custom, mores, political values, even institutions that present any kind of credible threat to the autonomy of the economy. And it's that–that's where the battle lies. Capitalism wants an autonomous economy. They want a political order subservient to the needs of the economy. And their notion of an economy, while it's broadly based in the sense of a capitalism in which there can be relatively free entrance and property is relatively widely dispersed it's also a capitalism which, in the last analysis, is [as] elitist as any aristocratic system ever was.
Have a listen and a watch. Part 1 and then Part 2.
Pt 1-8 Hedges & Wolin Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist
Pt 2:
see also
- Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Parts 2-3, interviewed by Chris Hedges
- Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Part 4, interviewed by Chris Hedges (transcript in naked capitalism)
- Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Part 5, interviewed by Chris Hedges
- Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Part 6, interviewed by Chris Hedges
- Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Part 7, interviewed by Chris Hedges
- Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Part 8, interviewed by Chris Hedges
- Chris Hedges: The Disease of Imperialism + Transcript
- Chris Hedges, Cornel West, Richard D. Wolff Respond to Thomas Paine's Question: What Is To Be Done? by Jill Dalton
- "Inverted Totalitarianism" by Guadamour
|
|
|
Zero Hedge
Guest Post: Inequality Undermines Democracy
Authored by Sean McElwee, originallyu posted at AlJazeera.com,
In recent years, several academic researchers have argued that rising inequality erodes democracy. But the lack of international data has made it difficult to show whether inequality in fact exacerbates the apparent lack of political responsiveness to popular sentiment. Even scholars concerned about economic inequality, such as sociologist Lane Kenworthy, often hesitate to argue that economic inequality might bleed into the political sphere. New cross-national research, however, suggests that higher inequality does indeed limit political representation.
In a 2014 study on political representation, political scientists Jan Rosset, Nathalie Giger and Julian Bernauer concluded, "In economically more unequal societies, the party system represents the preferences of relatively poor citizens worse than in more equal societies." Similarly, political scientists Michael Donnelly and Zoe Lefkofridi found in a working paper that in Europe, "Changes in overall attitudes toward redistribution have very little effect on redistributive policies. Changes in socio-cultural policies are driven largely by change in the attitudes of the affluent, and only weakly (if at all) by the middle class or poor." They find that when the people get what they want, it's typically because their views correspond with the affluent, rather than policymakers directly responding to their concerns.
In another study of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, researcher Pablo Torija Jimenez looked at data in 24 countries over 30 years. He examined how different governmental structures influence happiness across income groups and found that today "politicians in OECD countries maximize the happiness of the economic elite." However, it was not always that way: In the past, left parties represented the poor, the center and the middle class. Now all the parties benefit the richest 1 percent of earners, Jimenez reports.
In a recent working paper, political scientist Larry Bartels finds the effect of politician's bias toward the rich has reduced real social spending per capita by 28 percent on average. Studying 23 OECD countries, Bartels finds that the rich are more likely to oppose spending increases, support budget cuts and reject promoting the welfare state - the idea that the government should ensure a decent standard of living.
JustObserving
What f*cking democracy in the land of the free? It's a fascist, police state run by a troika of the MIC, Wall Street and Spooks.
JustObserving
Who rules America?
The secret collaboration of the military, the intelligence and national security agencies, and gigantic corporations in the systematic and illegal surveillance of the American people reveals the true wielders of power in the United States. Telecommunications giants such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, and Internet companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, provide the military and the FBI and CIA with access to data on hundreds of millions of people that these state agencies have no legal right to possess.
Congress and both of the major political parties serve as rubber stamps for the confluence of the military, the intelligence apparatus and Wall Street that really runs the country. The so-called "Fourth Estate"-the mass media-functions shamelessly as an arm of this ruling troika.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/06/10/pers-j10.html
Snowden's documents revealed that the NSA spies on everyone:
The most extraordinary passage in the memo requires that the Israeli spooks "destroy upon recognition" any communication provided by the NSA "that is either to or from an official of the US government."
It goes on to spell out that this includes "officials of the Executive Branch (including the White House, Cabinet Departments, and independent agencies); the US House of Representatives and Senate (members and staff); and the US Federal Court System (including, but not limited to, the Supreme Court)."
The stunning implication of this passage is that NSA spying targets not only ordinary American citizens, but also Supreme Court justices, members of Congress and the White House itself. One could hardly ask for a more naked exposure of a police state.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/13/surv-s13.html
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." -- William Colby, former CIA Director
LetThemEatRand
LetThemEatRandPaul Craig Roberts had a great take on this a while back. He pointed out that unions used to have significant political influence because of their financial resources. Democrats by and large sought their backing, and had to toe the line. Now, not so much. So, he observed, both parties began seeking out contributions from the same oligarchs. Even if you hate unions, it is a valid observation.
I get your point and I'm not your downvote, but in my view the MSM has hijacked the issue of "inequality." The real issue is the oligarch class that has more wealth than half the country. We were a successful, functioning society when we had a middle class. There were rich people, poor people, and a whole lot in between. And it's the whole lot in between that matters. The minimum wage is a distraction. The two big issues are loss of manufacturing base and offshoring in general, and financialization of the economy (in large part due to Fed policy).LetThemEatRand
...A big part of the "inequality" discussion is equal application of law. I recall when TARP was floated during the W administration, the public of all persuasions was against it. Congress passed it anyway, because of Too Big to Fail. TBTF should not be a liberal or conservative issue. Likewise, the idea that no bankers went to jail is an issue of "inequality." The laws do not apply equally to bankers. And the same with Lois Lerner. She intentionally sent the IRS to harass political groups based upon ideology. She got off scott free. Inequality again.
MASTER OF UNIVERSE
Inequality does not undermine democracy because democracy does not really exist. Faux democracy is actually Totalitarianism under the guise of 'democracy'. In brief, democracy is just a word that has been neutered, and bastardized too many times to count as anything real, or imagined.
They should name a new ice cream DEMOCRACY just for FUN.
|
|
|
www.theguardian.com
This is the state of such legislation in this country, where lawmakers wanted to do something but, by passing Cisa, just decided to cede more power to the NSA
Under the vague guise of "cybersecurity", the Senate voted on Tuesday to pass the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa), a spying bill that essentially carves a giant hole in all our privacy laws and allows tech and telecom companies to hand over all sorts of private information to intelligence agencies without any court process whatsoever.
Make no mistake: Congress has passed a surveillance bill in disguise, with no evidence it'll help our security.
eminijunkie 28 Oct 2015 17:34
Being competent requires work. Actual work.
You can't honestly say you expected them to do actual work, now can you?
david wright 28 Oct 2015 13:44
'The Senate, ignorant on cybersecurity, just passed a bill about it anyway '
The newsworthy event would be the Senate's passage of anything, on the basis of knowledge or serious reflection, rather than $-funded ignorance. The country this pas few decades has been long on policy-based evidence as a basis for law, rather than evidence-based policy. Get what our funders require, shall be the whole of the law.
Kyllein -> MacKellerann 28 Oct 2015 16:49
Come ON! You are expecting COMPETENCE from Congress?
Wake up and smell the bacon; these people work on policy, not intelligence.VWFeature -> lostinbago 28 Oct 2015 13:37
Bravo!
"...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing." -- Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837
"If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions." -- Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787
lostinbago -> KhepryQuixote 28 Oct 2015 12:09
We became the enemy when the people started attacking the Military Industrial Corporate complex and trying to regain our republic from the oligarchs.
lostinbago 28 Oct 2015 12:07
Congress: Where Catch 22 melds with Alice in Wonderland
Phil429 28 Oct 2015 11:44
we now have another law on the books that carves a hole in our privacy laws, contains vague language that can be interpreted any which way, and that has provisions inserted into it specifically to prevent us from finding out how they're using it.
They were counting on nobody paying much attention. Didn't you hear somebody got killed on Walking Dead? Who's got time to talk about boring nonsense like a Congressional bill?
guardianfan2000 28 Oct 2015 08:53
This vote just showed the true colors of the U. S. Government,...that being a total disregard for all individuals' privacy rights.
newbieveryday 28 Oct 2015 02:11
Inverse totalitarianism. Read Sheldon Wolin. We're sliding down the slippery slope. Who's going to be der erster Fuehrer? David Koch?
Triumphant George -> alastriona 27 Oct 2015 18:55
From elsewhere:
On Tuesday afternoon, the Senate voted 74 to 21 to pass a version of CISA that roughly mirrors legislation passed in the House earlier this year, paving the way for some combined version of the security bill to become law.
CISA still faces some hurdles to becoming law. Congressional leaders will need to resolve remaining differences between the bills passed in the Senate and the House.
President Obama could also still veto CISA, though that's unlikely: The White House endorsed the bill in August, an about-face from an earlier attempt at cybersecurity information sharing legislation known as CISPA that the White House shut down with a veto threat in 2013.
--"CISA Security Bill Passes Senate With Privacy Flaws Unfixed", Wired
|
|
|
Amazon
J. Roth on October 14, 2015
A Groundbreaking Resource, Second Only to "JFK and the Unspeakable"
A tremendous resource of breathtaking depth and clarity. Talbot builds on the now decades-old body of research - initiated by investigative reporters Tom Mangold ("Cold Warrior") and David Wise ("Molehunt"), and largely developed by assassination researchers James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease ("The Assassinations") - and adds groundbreaking new information.
Talbot focusses extensively on James Jesus Angleton, the shadowy counterintelligence figure at the heart of the domestic assassinations of the 1960s, and examines the inner-workings of Dulles' ambitious (and dastardly) plot to consolidate and control global political power. "The Devil's Chessboard" is a startling and revelatory masterwork. In terms of easy-to-access assassination research, this book is second only to James Douglass' "JFK and the Unspeakable." In terms of biographies of Dulles and Angleton, two of history's most infamous figures, this work is second to none.
Note: Be wary of one-star reviews for this book. Some trace back to commissioned-review services, the same services that give five-star reviews to shady/suspicious health and beauty products. Go figure.
James Norwood on October 14, 2015
The Shadow Government of Allen Dulles: Organized Irresponsibility
To read this magnificent book by David Talbot is to understand how the JFK assassination occurred and how the truth was concealed by officialdom in the Warren Report. Unlike his brother, John Foster Dulles, the younger Allen Welsh Dulles rarely makes it into American history textbooks. In this extremely detailed study, the singular importance of Allen Dulles is demonstrated as being central to a watershed period in the American Century.
First and foremost, "The Devil's Chessboard" is a beautifully written and meticulously researched volume. Talbot drew upon archives at Princeton University, where the Allen Dulles papers are housed. He also conducted research in other archives across the country. The documentary work is buttressed and amplified by interviews with the surviving daughter of Dulles, as well as interviews with the children of Dulles' colleagues and over 150 officials from the Kennedy administration. Nearly forty pages of notes serve to document the author's sources.
One of the most revealing moments about Allen Dulles was when he was ten years old and spending time at the family's lake home in upstate New York. After his five-year-old sister fell into the lake and was drifting away from him, Allen stood stock still, "strangely impassive. The boy just stood on the dock and watched as his little sister drifted away." (p. 19) Fortunately, the child was rescued by the mother. The behavior of young Allen is representative of a lifelong predilection for observing the imponderables of life as an insider while looking to others to "risk their skins." For this little boy, the world was already forming into a chessboard with pawns to manipulate for his self-serving needs. Talbot describes Dulles' rogue actions in allowing Nazi war criminals to avoid prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials in these chilling words: "Even in the life-and-death throes of wartime espionage, Dulles seemed untouched by the intense human drama swirling around him." (p. 120)
In one of the most riveting moments of the book, Talbot describes an interchange between Dulles and researcher David Lifton at a colloquium on the JFK assassination at the campus of UCLA in 1965. Lifton came prepared to challenge Dulles on major deficiencies of the Warren Report. By the end of the evening, the students attending the session were more interested in Lifton's findings than Dulles' unsuccessful attempts to deflect the tough questions. In retrospect, Lifton apparently claimed that he "was in the presence of 'evil' that night." (p. 591)
A heretofore unanswered question about the JFK assassination is what was Allen Dulles was doing between the time he was fired by JFK as Director of the CIA in 1961 until the moment of the assassination on November 22, 1963. A related question is how was it conceivable for Dulles to have been appointed to the Warren Commission that eventually produced the conclusions that are still accepted by mainstream historians and the media? Talbot's intensive research helps to shed on light on those questions by tracing the arc of development of the career of Allen Dulles as a high-powered attorney at the center of the elitist East Coast establishment, his shocking collaboration with the Nazis while working in the OSS, and his career in clandestine activities at the CIA
Talbot's research probes not merely the activities of Dulles as Director of the CIA, but explores the broader context of his function over three decades as a power broker, whose "efforts were directed not against hostile governments but against his own." (p. 3) Talbot cites revelations from the Columbia University sociology professor C. Wright Mills about the secret government of Allen Dulles, which was comprised of a "power elite" and based on the anti-Constitutional premise of "organized irresponsibility."
In many ways, "The Devil's Chessboard" is a companion volume to Talbot's essential study "Brothers," which focuses on the relationship of John and Robert Kennedy, the assassination of JFK, and the aftereffects on RFK. But the more recent book on Dulles covers the broader scope of how the American government was transformed into the national security state in the years following World War II. Talbot's goal in preparing this book is to demonstrate the urgency of coming to terms with our past and how "it is essential that we continue to fight for the right to own our history." (p. xii) An excellent place to begin that quest is to own this book.
|
|
|
February 23, 2012 | YouTube
Former Member of Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov: Russia Is Ready to Use Military Power to Defend Iran and Syria; Attack on Syria or Iran Is Indirect Attack on Russia.
Falamu445 10 months ago
And what about China? Should China also seek to protect Iran and Syria with military force if they are attacked?
hudzz
Pakistan will be with Russia if they go to war with usa or isreal
Benny Morris 1 year ago
Good thing that arrogant America is going down. America has spent nearly 70 years being a nuisance to Russians. What a bunch of swine they are when they refuse to admit what the whole world has always known that it was the Soviet Union that won WW2 and America only did so in its dreams.
optionrider12 2 years ago in reply to Brian Hynes
No, you don't understand and I'm not going to fall for your quasi-Hegelian dialectic. Communism can be categorized as a utopia and you're kindly advised to find the definition of Utopia by yourself. Fair enough?
Tristan Xavier 1 year ago in reply to Kati Kati
I understand what you mean but I would never wish the horrors of war on anybody. Peace can be done in different ways. Both Americans and Russians should focus on the corrupted governments that they both possess. The previous generations had their time and they chose either to conform or neglect to the systems. Now we see the results. It's us that needs to stand up and stop this. Why are we going to war for governments that are currently at war with it's own people? N.D.A.A,S.O.P.A and drones etc
|
|
|
ftmdaily.com
Feb 22, 2012 | youtube.comFTM (Jerry Robinson): Alright, well, joining me on the program today is Stephen Kinzer. He is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has worked in more than 50 countries. He has been a New York Times Bureau Chief in Istanbul, Berlin, and Nicaragua. He's the author of many books, including the best-selling book All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.
He's also a professor of international relations at Boston University. My guest today is Stephen Kinzer. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me on Follow the Money Weekly Radio.
KINZER (Stephen Kinzer): Great to be with you.
FTM: I am looking at your book right now-at the Preface to the 2008 edition: "The Folly of Attacking Iran." And I would say, Stephen, that many of the people who are listening to the program today are…I don't want to assume that they're not familiar with the 1953 event, but I want to assume that perhaps they don't know as much about it as perhaps maybe they should. And especially now, as we take a look at the news cycle, we see that Iran is all over the news: talk about invasion; talk about stopping the nuclear program (whether it's even occurring or not is a debate). But the issue at hand right now is, "Should we invade Iran for the benefit of our foreign policy, for the benefit of our security interests?" And you have written a book here that really peels back the layers about this entire question. Why don't you begin by sharing with our audience why you wrote this book and why this topic is important to you?
KINZER: In the first place, you're right that that 2008 edition of the book, which was the new edition, contains this Foreword, "The Folly of Attacking Iran. Now, in the last couple of years, I've been looking at that new edition and thinking, "Boy, that's kind of out of date now." That was at the end of the Bush Administration when we were being really hyped up that Iran was a mortal threat to the rest of the world, but now that introduction is really kind of outdated. Boy, was I wrong! You're absolutely right that Iran has now emerged as the Number One foreign policy issue in this presidential campaign, as candidates flail around for foreign policy issues to beat each other over the head with, Iran really seems to rise to the top of the list. We are in a situation now where we're looking for a demon in the world. I think this is not just an American impulse, but in many countries, it's almost thought that if you don't have an enemy in the world, you should try to find one. It's a way to unite your population and give people a sense of common purpose.
So, you look around the world and pick some country that you want to turn into your enemy and inflate into a terrible, mortal threat to your own security. Iran seems to be filling that role right now. It's an odd situation, because in a sense, the world looks very different from Iran's point of view than it does from here. Iran has four countries in the immediate neighborhood that are armed with nuclear weapons. That's India, Pakistan, Russia, and Israel. Iran also has two countries on its borders that have been invaded and occupied by the United States: that is, Iraq and Afghanistan. So the idea that Iran might be a little unsure as to its defense and wants to make sure that it can build whatever it needs to protect itself doesn't seem so strange when you're sitting in Iran. But even more interesting than all that, when you're looking at differences between the way the world looks when you see it from the United States and the way it looks when you see it from Iran has to do with history.
Whenever I travel in the world, particularly when I travel to a country that I'm not familiar with, I like to ask myself one question: and that is, "How did this country get this way? So, why is this country rich and powerful?" Or, "Why is this country poor and miserable?" When I was traveling in Iran and getting to know Iran for the first time, I came to realize that there's a huge gap between what Iran should be based on its culture and history and size and the education of its people, and what it is. This is a country that has thousands of years of history. It was the first empire in history-the Persian Empire. It has produced a huge amount of culture over many centuries. Its people are highly educated. Nonetheless, it's isolated from the world; poor; unhappy. And I've always wondered on my first trips there why this was. What happened? And as I began to read more, and talk to Iranians, people told me, "We used to have a democracy here. But you Americans came over here and destroyed it. And ever since then, we've been spiraling down." So I decided, "I gotta find out what really happened. I need to find a book about what happened to Iranian democracy." And then I looked around and found there was no such book.
FTM: Wow.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/pW_Rbka6eZ8?rel=0
KINZER: I finally decided that if I was going to read that book, I was going to have to write it myself. And that's how All the Shah's Men came about.
FTM: Well, I would imagine that many in the listening audience would immediately take issue with some of the things that you've stated, and I want to hit those directly head-on. You state in your book some of the reasons why to attack Iran, at least, some of the reasons that are stated.
Number One: Iran wants to become a nuclear power, and that should not be allowed. Iran poses a threat to Israel. Iran sits at the heart of the emerging Shiite Crescent which threatens to destabilize the Middle East. Iran supports radical groups on nearby countries. Iran helps kill American soldiers in Iraq. Iran has ordered terror attacks in foreign countries. Iran's people are oppressed and need Americans to liberate them.
So there's a plethora of ideas as to why American invasion, or some other type of invasion into Iran would possibly be beneficial, not only to our security interests, but also to Iran's state of health so to speak, and bringing them liberty. So you made a good case against it. What do you say to those who say, "You're crazy, Stephen. We need to go over there; we cannot allow them to have a nuclear weapon.
KINZER: In the first place, we don't have any evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon; in fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency has made clear that it has never seen any such evidence, and those inspectors are all over those plants, the uranium is under seal, the seals are under constant video surveillance. It's not as urgent a problem as we're making it out to be.
Nonetheless, I would add a kind of larger perspective, and it's this. When you look at a map of the Middle East, one thing jumps right out at you and it is that Iran is the big country right in the middle. It's not possible to imagine a stable Middle East without including Iran. It's a little bit comparable to the situation that we faced after the end of World War II when there was tremendous anger at Germany for very good reasons.
There was a great move afoot (in fact, we actually followed this policy for a few months) to crush Germany. We were going to slice Germany into pieces, then we were going to forbid it from ever building another factory or industrial plant again. Fortunately, cooler minds prevailed. And we decided to take the opposite tactic. And that was to realize that this country, Germany, had been stirring up trouble in Europe for a hundred years or more, and that the way to prevent that cycle from continuing was not to isolate Germany and kick it and push it into a corner, but to integrate Germany into Europe, and to make it a provider of security rather than a consumer of security. That's what we need to do with Iran. Iran needs to be given a place at the table that's commensurate with its size, and its tradition, and its history, and its regional role.
Now, the United States doesn't want to do that because when Iran is at that table, it's not going to be saying things that are pro-American. It has an agenda that's different than ours. So we don't want it at the table. We want to crush Iran. It sounds like a tempting option, and in fact, if you could wave a wand and make the regime in Iran go away and make Iran be wonderfully friendly to the United States, I'd be all for that. But bombing Iran is likely to produce the opposite result.
First of all, one thing that really surprises me when I'm in Iran is how unbelievably pro-American the people of Iran are. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that there's no country in the world where the population is so pro-American as in Iran. I have been stopped on the streets by people who are practically shrieking when they find out I'm American and tell me how much they love the United States. You don't even get that in Canada! If we're smart, we're gonna realize that this is the Middle Eastern country with the most pro-American population. And this pro-American sentiment in Iran is a huge strategic asset for us going forward. If we liquidate that asset by bombing Iran, we will be greatly undermining our own strategic power. And this is a pattern we've been following in that part of the world for a long time.
The war in Iraq greatly eroded American strategic power. It had the opposite effect that we thought it would have. And this is the real object lesson that we need to keep in mind. When we intervene in countries, we have enough power to achieve our short-term goal, but then we go away; our attention goes to other places. And the resentment and the anger festers and burns in the hearts and minds and souls of people in these countries, and ultimately, we wind up with backlash that we never anticipated and we can't control. In this rush now in these last months to demonize Iran and set the groundwork for an attack on Iran, we are doing something that Americans, and maybe all human beings do too often, and that is: we think about the short term; we never think about the long-term effects of our interventions.
FTM: You open the book with a quote, a quintessential quote, which is kind of common for a book, and it's by President Harry Truman: "There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know." And I would probably say that most of us are obviously familiar with the history of September 11th, 2001, and I would go even further and perhaps say that we are familiar with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and people may remember those days back in the Carter years. But your book goes back to 1953.
In the Preface of your book, you state that the 1953 intervention by the United States into Iran may be seen as a decisive turning point in the 20th Century history from our perspective today. Now I don't know how many people in our listening audience know what happened in 1953. What event are you referring to, and why is it important to what's happening today?
http://www.youtube.com/embed/H8ybj5KULmA?rel=0
KINZER: For most Americans, the history of U.S.-Iran relations begins and ends with the Hostage Crisis. That's all we know, and we know that everything went bad since then. But Iranians don't think that way. For them, the Hostage Crisis is just one of a number of incidents that have happened over the past 50 years. For them, the key moment in the history of U.S.-Iran relations came in 1953. This is an episode that completely defines Iranian history and the Iran-United States relationship. Yet, many people in the United States are not even aware this happened.
Very briefly, this is the story (and I tell it in much more detail in my book): In the period after World War II, Iranian democracy, which had come about at the beginning of the 20th Century through a revolution against a corrupt monarchy, really began to take form. It took on a reality. You had elections; competing parties; parliament. This was something that had not been seen in any Muslim country. So, Iran was truly in the vanguard of democracy. But, because Iran was a democracy, it elected a leader who represented the public will-not the will of outside powers. In Iran, there was one obsession. Iran is sitting, as we know, on an ocean of oil. But all through the 1920's and '30's and '40's, that oil was completely controlled by one British company.
The entire standard of living in Britain all during that period was based on oil from Iran, since Britain has no oil or any colonies that have any oil. Meanwhile, people in Iran were living in some of the most miserable conditions of anyone in the world. Once they had a democracy, they elected a leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, who, as prime minister, proceeded to pass a bill in congress in which Iran nationalized its oil industry. This sent the British into a panic. They tried all kinds of things to crush Mosaddegh. Finally, when he closed their embassy and chased out all their diplomats, including all the secret agents who were trying to overthrow him, the British decided, "We're going to ask the Americans to do this for us." So, Churchill asked President Truman to "do this for us. Please go over to Iran and overthrow this guy who took away our oil company. And Truman said, "No." But then, a few years later, when Dwight Eisenhower became president, and John Foster Dulles became Secretary of State, and his brother, Allen Dulles, became Director of the CIA, things changed.
The United States decided that we would work with the British to overthrow Mosaddegh -mainly because he was challenging the fundamentals of corporate globablism, the principle that international companies should be allowed to function all over the world according to conditions that they considered fair. Mosaddegh was saying, "No, we are going to determine the conditions under which foreign companies can function in our country." As a result, the United States sent a team CIA agents into Iran. They went to work in the basement of the American Embassy. They threw Iran into total chaos, and that chaos finally resulted in the overthrow of the Mosaddegh government. That put the Shah back on his peacock throne; he ruled with increasing oppression for 25 years; his repressive rule produced the explosion of the late 1970's, what we call "The Islamic Revolution"; that brought the power, this clique of fanatically anti-American mullahs who are in power now. So, when you do what they call in the CIA "walking back the cat," when you walk back the cat, that is, to see what happened before, and before, and before, you come to realize that the American role in crushing Iranian democracy in 1953 was not only the defining event in the history of U.S.-Iran relations, but it set Iran in the Middle East into turmoil from which it has never recovered.
FTM: In 1953, in the book you point out that democracy was beginning to take root there.
KINZER: It's a remarkable story. This, as I said, is something that had never happened in a Muslim country before. Iran is a remarkable country; very different from the other countries in the Middle East. And I'm not sure that people in the United States realize this. Most of the countries in the Middle East are what you might call "fake countries." They're made-up countries that were invented by some British or French diplomat drawing lines on a map at some men's club after World War I.
Iran is not a fake country by any means. It has lived for thousands of years within more or less the same boundaries, with more or less the same language, and the same kind of population. It's a country with a deep, rich culture and very strong sense of itself. We are treating Iran as if it's Honduras or Barundi or some little place where we can just go and kick sand in people's face and they'll do whatever we want. Iran is not a country like that. And, given its size, and its location, you see that that region will never be stable as long as Iran is angry and ostracized. The only way to stabilize that part of the world is to build a security architecture in which Iran has a place.
The world needs a big security concession from Iran. The world also needs big security concessions from Israel. But countries only make security concessions when they feel safe. Therefore, it should be in interest of those who want stability in the Middle East to try to help every country in the region feel safe. But our goal in the Middle East isn't really stability; it's "stability under our rule…under our dominance." And we realize that when Iran emerges as a strong, proud, independent, democratic country, it's not gonna be so friendly to the United States. So I think there is some feeling that "we prefer it this way" being poor and isolated and unhappy.
FTM: I was looking at a map the other day of the Middle East, just noticing the U.S. military bases in the Middle East, and Iran, if you look at it very objectively, and take a look at the Middle East military base map, you'll discover that Iran is completely surrounded. And as you mentioned, there are four other nations in their general vicinity that have nuclear weapons, and it seems as if pretty much the only way to keep the United States away from your country if you aren't playing by their rules is to have a nuclear weapon. So logically, it does seem to make sense that the Iranians are perhaps seeking a nuclear weapon, but what you point out here again in your book is that the program, to have a nuclear program, was first proposed by the United States to Iran back in the 1970's.
KINZER: We thought it was a great idea for Iran to have a nuclear program-when it was run by a regime that was responsive to Washington. Now that it's a different kind of regime, we don't like this idea. You're absolutely right about the lessons that Iran has drawn about the value of having a nuclear weapon, or the ability to make a nuclear weapon, based on what's happened in the world. Why did the United States attack Iraq, but not attack North Korea? I think it's quite obvious: if North Korea didn't have a nuclear weapon, we would have crushed them already; and if Sadaam did have a nuclear weapon, we probably never would have invaded that country.
An even more vivid example is Libya. We managed to persuade Gaddafi to give up his nuclear program; as soon as he did that, we came in and killed him. I think that the Iranians are acutely aware of this. They would like, if I'm gonna guess, to have the ability to put together a nuclear deterrent, a nuclear weapon-something like Japan has. Japan has something that is in the nuclear business called a "screwdriver weapon." They're not allowed to have nuclear weapons, but they have the pieces and the parts around, so that in a matter of weeks, they could probably put one together. Now, we hear a lot about how the Israelis are terrified that as soon as Iran gets a nuclear weapon, it's gonna bomb Israel. But, in fact, as people in the Israeli security establishment have made clear, none of them really believe that. They fear the Iranian nuclear weapon for a couple of other reasons.
One is, that as Israel well-knows, when you have a nuclear weapon, you don't need to use it. It gives you a certain power; a certain authority. You can intimidate people around you. And second, of course, if there's another nuclear power in that region, it's going to set off perhaps another nuclear race, and other countries like Turkey or Saudi Arabia or Egypt would want to have nuclear weapons, too. But when the Iranians look around, I think the first country they see (and I've heard this from a number of Iranians) is Pakistan. Pakistan is a far more volatile and far more dangerous country than Iran. We have serious Taliban/al-Qaeda types not only running around in Pakistan, but doing so under the egious of the government and they have a prospective to take over that government! This is not going to happen in Iran. Pakistan is far more volatile, yet the United States thought that is was fine that Pakistan should have a nuclear weapon. I'm against all countries having nuclear weapons.
I'd like to see all countries that have them abandon them, and I don't want any more countries to get them. But that's a dream world. The fact is, the most that we can do by attacking Iran (as our own Defense Secretary has said) is to postpone the day when Iran has a nuclear weapon, and in the process, make them a lot angrier. The way to reduce this danger is to build a security system in the Middle East where people don't feel the need to be threatening each other. But that requires dialogue, and dialogue requires compromise, and the United States is not ready to compromise with Iran.
FTM: Interesting. And that's where I want to take this in conclusion: What does that look like? Because obviously, the goal of your book here is to see some sort of peace reached. I mean, no one wants to see war. But the Middle East obviously is just an issue that has been debated for a long time. There are all kinds of geopolitical reasons for being involved in the Middle East-namely, oil. But predominantly, as we look at all of this, the question really boils down to this: What are we going to do? If we don't bomb Iran, then how do we prevent them from potentially becoming an explosive nation in that region? You say "security system" over there and also "dialogue." If you were President, what would you do? How do you start that process?
KINZER: The first place, we have never really tried serious diplomatic overtures to Iran. We've got some of our most senior retired diplomats in the United States now who are chafing at the bit to be sent to Iran. People like Thomas Pickering, who was George Bush's ambassador to the United Nations and ambassador to Moscow, and William Lords, another titan of 20th Century diplomacy. These are people who are itching to go to Iran and see what they can do. We have not even asked Iran the fundamental question, "What would it take from us for you to do what we would like you to do with your nuclear program?"
Forget about deciding whether we want to do it or not; we don't even know what the quid pro quo would be! So, we need first to get into a mindset where we're willing to have a real dialogue on an equal basis with Iran. We are not at that point. We feel that any dialogue with them is only going to legitimize their position in the Middle East and is going to make them feel that they're a powerful country, because we will be making concessions to them-that's what you do when you have negotiated solutions. But the fact is, Iran already is a powerful country. It doesn't need us to legitimize it. We need to understand that in dealing with Iran, we're not going to get everything we want. And we are going to have to concede Iran a measure of power in that region that's commensurate with its size, and its history, and its location. We're not even at that point yet. I think that's the first step. We have to make a psychological transition to realize that we're not going to be able to dictate to Iran if we want to reach a peaceful settlement. We're going to have to compromise. We're going to have to accept some things that Iran wants in order to get things that we want. Before we even get to the point of figuring out what those would be, we need to get over that psychological, political, diplomatic hurdle. And we haven't done that yet.
FTM: My guest today has been Stephen Kinzer. He's the author of the book All the Shah's Men. Very enlightening stuff; very illuminating. Stephen, if the folks would like to learn more about you and your work, how can they do so?
KINZER: I've got a website: stephenkinzer.com. My books are all available on that mass website that I don't want to advertise that it's named after a giant river in South America.
FTM: (laughter)
KINZER: But if you want to support your local independent bookstore, I'm sure it would be happy to order All the Shah's Men for you or any of my other books.
FTM: Very good, Stephen. Thank you so much for coming on our program today, Stephen.
KINZER: It was a great pleasure. Thank you.
(Audio Transcript - Saturday, February 11, 2012)
|
|
|
Nov 7, 2013 | YouTube
Our guest is journalist and author Stephen Kinzer to discuss his most recent book titled, "The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War."
softclay4thought
When Harry Truman decided not to run for president in 1952, he unwittingly released the relatively stable foreign policy situation to the poison chaos of two pathetically misguided and hypocritical brothers. And the world is still reaping the chaos, pain, and death created by them and a misguided Eisenhower.
RPenta 1 year ago
Allan Dulles-CEO of CIA plot to murder President Kennedy. Of course, real history cannot concern this court historian
Rob Gainey 1 year ago
With all due respect, to fully understand the importance of the Dulles connection to JFK, you have to understand both Dulles'. In that objective, Kinzer has done a great job: as far JFK goes (and I'm with you on this), that would fill an entire library of context.
katsdeelite 1 year ago
I first heard Mr Kinzer interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR, I was intrigued and wanted to learn more. This interview is a real mind opener as to how our government policies were shaped then, and still, by the Dulles Brothers.
One point that Kinzer made with Terry Gross is how stunned he was by the realization that history is made and moved by the psychology of single individuals, at times. I've seen this in companies--that the person/group at the top filters and picks those who make up the company valuing particular traits and points of view. I never thought about that on the scale of governments, countries and continents. I look forward to reading his book!
|
|
|
May 15, 2012 | YouTube
Qeis Kamran 1 year ago
I just love Prof. Bacevic. Nobody has more credit then him on the subject. Not only for his unmatched scholarship and laser sharp words, but moreover for the unimaginable personal loss. He is my hero!!!!
Boogie Knight 1 year ago
How many sons did the NeoCon-Gang sacrifice in their instigated Wars in foreign lands....? Not one. Bacevich lost his son who was fighting in Iraq in 2007 - for what?!
Yet the NeoCon warcriminals Billy Cristol, Wolfowitz and/or Elliott Abrams are all still highly respected people that the US media/political elite loves to consult - in 2014!
|
|
|
Nov 7, 2003 | YouTube
Phil AndersonExcellent as always. Lecture by Bacevich starts around 13:42.Wendell FitzgeraldWe need to reexamine what it means to be free. A moral reorientation of the country as Carter suggested in 1979. Bacevich says it isn't ever going to happen.
|
|
|
Oct 21, 2015 | RT USA
US government 'engaged' in spying activities on US soil
- A 2007 draft position paper on the role of the intelligence community in the wake of the 9/11 attacks shows that Brennan was already aware that numerous federal agencies – the FBI, CIA, NSA, Defense Department and Homeland Security – "are all engaged in intelligence activities on US soil." He said these activities "must be consistent with our laws and reflect the democratic principles and values of our Nation."
- Brennan added that the president and Congress need "clear mandates" and "firm criteria" to determine what limits need to be placed on domestic intelligence operations.
- When it comes to situations beyond US borders, Brennan said sometimes action must be taken overseas "to address real and emerging threats to our interests," and that they may need to be done "under the cover of secrecy." He argued that many covert CIA actions have resulted in "major contributions" to US policy goals.
Debate over torture restrictions
- WikiLeaks published two documents related to the CIA's use of so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques, though notably neither was written by Brennan.
- One was written by then-Senator Kit Bond (R-Missouri), vice chairman on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which outlined a proposal to limit the CIA's torture techniques without restricting the development of new techniques complying with the law.
- The document suggests listing the types of techniques that the CIA is barred from using instead of restricting the agency to only those explicitly listed in the Army Field Manual.
- Some of the techniques Bond suggested that Congress ban included: forcing the detainee to be naked; forcing them to perform sexual acts; waterboarding; inducing hypothermia; conducting mock executions; and depriving detainees of food, water, or medical care.
Bond's suggestions get a bill
- The final document appears to show Bond's suggestions making their way into a legislative proposal titled "Limitations on Interrogation Techniques Act of 2008."
- The bill prohibited the use of many of the same techniques listed in the previous document, though it was not passed. Ultimately, President Obama issued an executive order banning officials from using techniques not in the Army Field Manual.
|
|
|
www.theguardian.com
Paul C. Dickie 20 Oct 2015 12:32
With a properly run service provider, neither the helpdesk drones nor the admin staff should be able to see any user's password, which should be safely stored in an encrypted form.
AmyInNH -> NigelSafeton 21 Oct 2015 11:59
You seriously underestimate the technical incompetence of the federal government. They buy on basis of quantity of big blue arrows, shown on marketing slideware.
Laudig 21 Oct 2015 05:31
This is great. This man is a serial perjurer to Congress. Which does eff-all about being lied to [they lie to everyone and so don't take offense at being lied to] and now he's hacked by a 13 year-old who, until a few weeks ago was protected by the The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998.
Well done, CIA or whatever you are.So your well constructed career gets collapsed by someone who is still in short pants. The Age of Secrets is over now.
Stieve 21 Oct 2015 02:54
Er, why has no-one mentioned, why has there been no press coverage, why has not a single presidential candidate been asked to comment on the fact that The USA has been the victim of a military coup?
All pretence of government oversight has been dropped. The NSA, CIA and most likely every other arm of the "intelligence service" have simply taken over the elected government, ripped up The Constitution and transformed The US into a police state. Seven thousand people disappeared in Chigaco? Exactly why have there not been massive arrests of these Stasi? Or riots on the streets? Exactly why has there not been an emergency session of The Senate or Congress to find out why Chicago is being run like an Eastern Bloc dictatorship? Exactly why are police departments been given military hardware designed to be used by an occupying army?
I'll tell you exactly why.Because The US actually has been taken over
Glenn J. Hill 21 Oct 2015 01:28
LOL, the Head of the CIA put sensitive info on an personal AOL ACCOUNT !!!!! What an total idiot. Just proves the " Peter Principle", that one gets promoted to one`s point of incompetent!
Can he be fired ? Locked up for gross stupidity ?? Will he come hunting for me, to take me out for pointing out his asinine stupidity ??
Fnert Pleeble -> Robert Lewis 20 Oct 2015 23:42
Congressmen are self motivating. They want the gravy train to continue. The carrot is plenty big, no need for the stick.
Buckworm 20 Oct 2015 21:51
Those old, tired, incompetent, ignorant, trolls are asking for more and more access to citizens data based on the assumption that they can catch a terrorist or another type of psycho before they act out on something. Don't they realize that so far, after 15 years of violating the citizen's constitutional rights, they HAVE NEVER CAUGHT not even ONE single person under their illegal surveillance.
This is the problem: they think that terrorists are as stupid as they are, and that they will be sending tons of un-encrypted information online- and that sooner or later they will intercept that data and prevent a crime. How many times have they done so? Z E RO . They haven't realized that terrorists and hackers are waaaaayyy ahead of them and their ways of communicating are already beyond the old-fashioned government-hacked internet. I mean, only a terrorist as stupid as a government employee would think of ever sending something sensitive through electronic communications of any kind - but the government trolls still believe that they do or that sooner or later they will!! How super-beyond-stupid is that? Congress??
Don't even talk about that putrid grotesque political farce - completely manipulated by the super-rich and heated up by the typical white-trash delusional trailer park troll aka as the "tea party". We've had many killing in the homeland after 9/11 - not even one of them stopped by the "mega-surveillance" - and thousands committed by irresponsible and crooked cops - and this will continue until America Unites and fight for their constitutional rights. That will happen as soon as their priority is not getting the latest iPhone with minimal improvement, spends endless hours playing candy crush,stand in long lines to buy pot, get drunk every evening and weekends, and cancel their subscription to home-delivered heroin and cocaine. So don't hold your breath on that one.
Wait until one of those 13-yr old gets a hold of nuclear codes, electric grid codes, water supply or other important service code - the old government farts will scream and denounce that they could have prevented that if they had had more surveillance tools - but that is as false as the $3 dollar bills they claim to have in their wallets. They cannot see any further from their incompetence and ignorance.
Robert Lewis -> Giants1925 20 Oct 2015 18:38
Did the FSB cook data so the US would invade Iraq and kill 1,000,000 civilians?
yusowong 20 Oct 2015 18:20
This is a turf war between bureaucrats who are born incompetent. The NSA has been increasing its share of budgetary largesse while the CIA and other security units have each been fighting to keep up. Politicians, being bureaucrats themselves, engage in the turf war. To them it's all great fun.
Triumphant -> George Giants1925 20 Oct 2015 14:41
Are you saying that because you aren't in a concentration camp, everything's pretty good? That's a pretty low bar to set.
Most people probably didn't vote for your current leader. To compare, in the UK, only 37% of the popular vote went for the current government. And once you leader is voted in, they pretty much do as they please. Fortunately, there are checks and balances which are supposed to prevent things getting out of control. Unfortunately, bills like the cybersecurity bill are intend to circumvent these things.
Let's be clear: it is very hard to see how blanket surveillance of American citizens is beneficial to American citizens. It tips over the power balance between government and citizen - it is undemocratic. It is unAmerican.
Red Ryder -> daniel1948 20 Oct 2015 14:16mancfrank 20 Oct 2015 13:27The whole freakin government is totally incompetent when it comes to computers and the hacking going on around this planet. Hillary needs to answer for this email scandal but currently she is making jokes about it as if nothing happened. She has no clue when she tried to delete her emails. Doesn't the government know that this stuff is backed up on many computers and then stored it a tape vault somewhere. Hiding emails is a joke today.
Giants1925 20 Oct 2015 12:53It would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that the kid will most likely regret this for the rest of his life and nothing will change for Government or Brennan.
I still don't understand why Russia is allowed to have the FSB but the US is forbidden from having the CIA Who makes these rules again? Because frankly I'm tired of the world being run by popular opinion.
bcarey 20 Oct 2015 12:33The bill is so bad that the major tech companies like Google and Amazon all came out against it last week, despite the fact that it would give them broad immunity for sharing this information with the government.
The usual show... "We're totally against it, but it's okay."
Donald Mintz 20 Oct 2015 12:02I've said it before and I'll say it again: incompetence is the main bulwark against tyranny. So let us be grateful for John Brennan.
|
|
|
... my former CSIS colleague, Zbigniew Brzezinski, normally a sensible if sometimes misguided person, has written in the Financial Times that Washington should deliver an ultimatum to Russia to "cease and desist from military actions that directly affect American assets." By "American assets," Brzezinski means the jihadist forces that Washington has sicced on Syria.
Brzezinski's claim that "Russia must work with, not against, the US in Syria" is false. The fact of the matter is that "the US must work with, not against Russia in Syria," as Russia controls the situation, is in accordance with international law, and is doing the right thing.
Ash Carter, the US Secretary for War, repeats Brzezinski's demand. He declared that Washington is not prepared to cooperate with Russia's "tragically flawed" and "mistaken strategy" that frustrates Washington's illegal attempt to overthrow the Syrian government with military violence.
Washington's position is that only Washington decides and that Washington intends to unleash yet more chaos on the world in the hope that it reaches Russia.
... ... ...
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a former director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's intelligence organization, said that Washington needs to understand that "Russia also has foreign policy; Russia also has a national security strategy" and stop crossing Russia's "red lines." Gen. Flynn thus joins with Patrick J. Buchanan as two voices of sense and sensibility in Washington. Together they stand against the arrogance and hubris that will destroy us.
Several commentators, such as Mike Whitney and Stephen Lendman, have concluded, correctly, that there is nothing that Washington can do about Russian actions against the Islamic State. The neoconservatives' plan for a UN no-fly zone over Syria in order to push out the Russians is a pipedream. No such resolution will come out of the UN. Indeed, the Russians have already established a de facto no-fly zone.
Putin, without issuing any verbal threats or engaging in any name-calling, has decisively shifted the power balance, and the world knows it.
... ... ...
worbsid
It is completely impossible for Obama to admit he is wrong. Note the 60 Min interview.
Mini-Me
Wondering which host the neocons will attach themselves to after having sucked the US dry. A parasite should never kill its host.
A Lunatic
Following advice from the likes of Brzezinski is a large part of the problem......
BarnacleBill
I've posted this before, but... we can't ask the question too often: Who sold ISIS all those Toyotas? ISIS didn't buy them themselves out of some Texas showroom, custom-built for desert warfare! Right?
http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2014/10/who-sold-isis-all-those-toyotas.html
johmack2
I must admit this certainly seems like a wild BEAST in action. Wreakless, seemingly unpredictable causing mass chaos in its wake
Chad_the_short_...Why don't they want to hit israel? I thought all muslims wanted a piece of Israel.
Macon Richardson
Do you really have to ask?
Reaper
ISIS are the nutured harpies of Barack, McCain and the neo-cons, which inflict death and mayhem upon their targets. ISIS's evil is Barack's, McCain's and the neo-con" projected evil.
In US law, they are called principles and as such deserve equal punishment. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2 ISIS's acts are war crimes. The principles abetting ISIS are as guilty as ISIS. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441
War crimes text (Geneva Convention): "To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
a)violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
b)taking of hostages;
c)outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and de-grading treatment." https://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/publications/icrc-002-0173.pdf
SalahAnyone making these bullshit comments about ISIS being the USA's extra-military arm (or Israel's) has obviously NEVER BEEN IN THE MILITARY. Ditto any of the alphabet covert services.
ISIS is the enemy, period. They cleverly arose in a vacuum, and disperse at the first sign of military opposition that has its shit together.
Yeah, go out there and tell some US special ops his buddy's death, maybe at the hands of ISIS, was his own govt's doing.
Go do it you insulated fucks...I dare you. And see what happens. First rule in clandestine warfare; don't shit in your own mess tent.
SgtShaftoe
I was in the military, enlisted and officer corps. I lost a few of good friends from my unit in Iraq II. ISIS is absolutely a creation of CIA/DoD (at a distance, like planting seeds and watering them), just as so many other tragedies have the blood squarely on the hands of the same. I've seen it with my own eyes. Sorry dude, you're fucking wrong. When military people see shit they shouldn't have seen, they're either brought in, or they accidentally fall out of the sky. That's just the way it is.
Winston Smith 2009
Dre4dwolf"ISIS is the enemy, period."
Absolutely.
"They cleverly arose in a vacuum"
And what created that vacuum? The lack of the only thing, apparently, that can keep these religious fanatics absolutely infesting that area of the world in line: a dictator. Who foolishly removed the dictator in Iraq? These ignorant, arrogant assholes:
-----
In his book, "The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End," Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
A year after his "Axis of Evil" speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq's first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.
Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, "I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!"
"From the president and the vice president down through the neoconservatives at the Pentagon, there was a belief that Iraq was a blank slate on which the United States could impose its vision of a pluralistic democratic society," said Galbraith. "The arrogance came in the form of a belief that this could be accomplished with minimal effort and planning by the United States and that it was not important to know something about Iraq."
-----
"Yeah, go out there and tell some US special ops his buddy's death, maybe at the hands of ISIS, was his own govt's doing."
Only indirectly, but the astoundingly arrogant stupidity at the highest levels of his government unnecessarily caused the conditions that led to it. It was and is their absolutely clueless meddling that is the problem.
And don't get the idea that I'm a pacifist. Far from it. Geopolitical gaming including the use of military force has been and always will be the way the world works. There's nothing I or anyone else can do or ever will be able to do about that. Since that is the case, I want the "coaches" of my "team" to be smart. They aren't.
They're f'ing bumbling idiots!
I would agree it is in bad taste to go tell someone who is active military that they are fighting an enemy their own govt created.
But
When something is hard to say, a lot of times its just the truth.
Now if the people listening aren't open minded to the possibility, well . . . there exists the potential to get decked in the face by a marine.
Also, ISIS is not a direct branch of U.S. forces, its a group the U.S. funded, created to perpetuate a war so that the U.S. can spill into borders outside of current combat zones .... the scenario is sorta like well ..."O I know we attacked Iraq, but there is this new boogieman and he is called Isis and BTW hes living in your garage so I have to invade your land now... "and so on and on new invasion one after the other into new areas all blamed on the spread of isis ISIS IS HERE, WE NEED TO INVADE, ISIS IS THERE WE NEED TO INVADE,
ISIS IS EVERYWHERE ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO U.S.
Thats probably what the strategy was, and it failed horribly when Russia exposed the hypocrisy when it directly decided to engage and terminate the ISIS group , it revealed that the U.S. has no intention of squelching ISIS, and now you have proof that the U.S. govt is just para-dropping weapons in random locations all around the middle east..... they dont even care who gets the weapons, they just want a bunch of pissed off people armed to the teeth . . .
The greatest hypocrisy of all is the fact that while the U.S. govt is dropping weapons all over the place (its a weapons free-for-all bonanza ) right now, they are pushing Gun Control and Confiscation here at home....
What does that say about your govt? when it is actively caught red handed arming terrorists, while pushing gun confiscation domestically ??? lol its not that far of a stretch to connect the dots... cmon
SuperRay
Salah you sure are righteous. Like you've been in the deep shit. Maybe we should call you four leaf instead. What do you think?
Bullshitting a soldier who's risking his life for what he thinks is a noble cause, is unconscionable. You're saying - trust your leaders, they know best. I say, what planet on you on, you fucking moron? The neocon assholes who are guiding, or mis-guiding, policy in the middle east should be lined up and shot for treason. Why is Russia destroying ISIS at blistering speed? Because they want to destroy it. We could've done the same thing, but is we destroyed ISIS and 'won' the battle against terrorism, the defense contractors might not make tons of money this year. We always need an enemy. Get It? We've always been at war with Eurasia? There's no money for the Pentagon without war, so we have to always have an enemy. Duh
datura
I feel awful that Russia is now almost alone in this enormous fight:-(....We in the West won't help them. It feels like WWII again and Russians will have to bear the grunt alone again. Westerners don't seem to change. We are practically good for nothing cowards. Sorry to say, but it is so. And we even dare to judge them in any way??? We dare to judge their leader or their level of democracy? It just makes me sick.
These is how Russian ladies, who fought in WWII, looked like. These seemingly fragile creatures...more valiant than Western men at those times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kraFEWO7Z44
Dre4dwolf
They aren't alone, the U.S. is leaving care packages full of weapons and supplies all over the middle east for Russia to discover. Its like an easter egg hunt, except there is no easter because your in a Muslim shit-hole, and.... there are no bunnies, just pissed of Jihadis who want to shoot you.
Better find the eggs before they do.
Mike Masr
The Indelicate ...And the US regime change in Ukraine resurrected Frankensteins' monster Nazism!
ISIS meaning CIA/Mossad.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islam...
I think the world is beginning to understand that the anglo-Zionist Banking and Warfare Empire can not be reasoned with.
|
|
|
One week ago, when summarizing the current state of play in Syria, we said that for Obama, "this is shaping up to be the most spectacular US foreign policy debacle since Vietnam." Yesterday, in tacit confirmation of this assessment, the Obama administration threw in the towel on one of the most contentious programs it has implemented in "fighting ISIS", when the Defense Department announced it was abandoning the goal of a U.S.-trained Syrian force.But this, so far, partial admission of failure only takes care of one part of Obama's problem: there is the question of the "other" rebels supported by the US, those who are not part of the officially-disclosed public program with the fake goal of fighting ISIS; we are talking, of course, about the nearly 10,000 CIA-supported "other rebels", or technically mercenaries, whose only task is to take down Assad.
The same "rebels" whose fate the AP profiles today when it writes that the CIA began a covert operation in 2013 to arm, fund and train a moderate opposition to Assad. Over that time, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters, although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear.
The effort was separate from the one run by the military, which trained militants willing to promise to take on IS exclusively. That program was widely considered a failure, and on Friday, the Defense Department announced it was abandoning the goal of a U.S.-trained Syrian force, instead opting to equip established groups to fight IS.
It is this effort, too, that in the span of just one month Vladimir Putin has managed to render utterly useless, as it is officially "off the books" and thus the US can't formally support these thousands of "rebel-fighters" whose only real task was to repeat the "success" of Ukraine and overthrow Syria's legitimate president: something which runs counter to the US image of a dignified democracy not still resorting to 1960s tactics of government overthrow. That, and coupled with Russia and Iran set to take strategic control of Syria in the coming months, the US simply has no toehold any more in the critical mid-eastern nation.
And so another sad chapter in the CIA's book of failed government overthrows comes to a close, leaving the "rebels" that the CIA had supported for years, to fend for themselves.
CIA-backed rebels in Syria, who had begun to put serious pressure on President Bashar Assad's forces, are now under Russian bombardment with little prospect of rescue by their American patrons, U.S. officials say.
Over the past week, Russia has directed parts of its air campaign against U.S.-funded groups and other moderate opposition in a concerted effort to weaken them, the officials say. The Obama administration has few options to defend those it had secretly armed and trained.
The Russians "know their targets, and they have a sophisticated capacity to understand the battlefield situation," said Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who serves on the House Intelligence Committee and was careful not to confirm a classified program. "They are bombing in locations that are not connected to the Islamic State" group.
... ... ..
Incidentally, this is just the beginning. Now that the U.S. has begun its pivot out of the middle-east, handing it over to Putin as Russia's latest sphere of influence on a silver platter, there will be staggering consequences for middle-east geopolitics. In out preview of things to come last week, we concluded by laying these out; we will do the same again:
The US, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, attempted to train and support Sunni extremists to overthrow the Assad regime. Some of those Sunni extremists ended up going crazy and declaring a Medeival caliphate putting the Pentagon and Langley in the hilarious position of being forced to classify al-Qaeda as "moderate." The situation spun out of control leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and when Washington finally decided to try and find real "moderates" to help contain the Frankenstein monster the CIA had created in ISIS (there were of course numerous other CIA efforts to arm and train anti-Assad fighters, see below for the fate of the most "successful" of those groups), the effort ended up being a complete embarrassment that culminated with the admission that only "four or five" remained and just days after that admission, those "four or five" were car jacked by al-Qaeda in what was perhaps the most under-reported piece of foreign policy comedy in history.
Meanwhile, Iran sensed an epic opportunity to capitalize on Washington's incompetence. Tehran then sent its most powerful general to Russia where a pitch was made to upend the Mid-East balance of power. The Kremlin loved the idea because after all, Moscow is stinging from Western economic sanctions and Vladimir Putin is keen on showing the West that, in the wake of the controversy surrounding the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia isn't set to back down. Thanks to the fact that the US chose extremists as its weapon of choice in Syria, Russia gets to frame its involvement as a "war on terror" and thanks to Russia's involvement, Iran gets to safely broadcast its military support for Assad just weeks after the nuclear deal was struck. Now, Russian airstrikes have debilitated the only group of CIA-backed fighters that had actually proven to be somewhat effective and Iran and Hezbollah are preparing a massive ground invasion under cover of Russian air support. Worse still, the entire on-the-ground effort is being coordinated by the Iranian general who is public enemy number one in Western intelligence circles and he's effectively operating at the behest of Putin, the man that Western media paints as the most dangerous person on the planet.
As incompetent as the US has proven to be throughout the entire debacle, it's still difficult to imagine that Washington, Riyadh, London, Doha, and Jerusalem are going to take this laying down and on that note, we close with our assessment from Thursday: "If Russia ends up bolstering Iran's position in Syria (by expanding Hezbollah's influence and capabilities) and if the Russian air force effectively takes control of Iraq thus allowing Iran to exert a greater influence over the government in Baghdad, the fragile balance of power that has existed in the region will be turned on its head and in the event this plays out, one should not expect Washington, Riyadh, Jerusalem, and London to simply go gentle into that good night."
Which is not to say that the latest US failure to overthrow a mid-east government was a total failure. As Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma says "probably 60 to 80 percent of the arms that America shoveled in have gone to al-Qaida and its affiliates."
Which is at least great news for the military-industrial complex. It means more "terrorist attacks" on U.S. "friends and allies", and perhaps even on U.S. soil - all courtesy of the US government supplying the weapons - are imminent.
BlueViolet
It's not a fiasco. It's a success. AlQaeda/ISIS created by Israel and financed by US.
Stackers
Never forget the first chapter of this story happened in 2011 Benghazi Libya when the Turkey brokered arms deal went bad, Obama admin abandoned them and one CIA op posing as an ambasador and his security detail were killed.
This thing has been a shit show from day one and involves scandal after scandal
The Indelicate ...
Video: Israeli forces open fire on Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza killing seven
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/10/israeli-palestinian-demonstrators
Paveway IV
There is no such thing as 10,000 CIA 'rebels' - that's only their on-line name.
There is a 10,000-man CIA assassination team or better still - mafia hit squad - in Syria. They're not rebels, they're not terrorists, they're not even mercs. They are paid criminal assassins, nothing more. My country hired them, so my country is guilty of racketeering and assassination. There are no degrees of separation here - the U.S. is directly responsible. Since the acts were perpetrated by people who are also violating the Constitution of the U.S., they are criminals and traitors.
We should do something about them... right after this season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
WTFRLY
White House still ignores murder of American reporter Serena Shim who filmed western aid to ISIS February 27, 2015
1 year almost since her death. Today would have been her 30th birthday.
SWRichmond
You and I (and perhaps others) wonder how 10,000 "moderate rebels" were vetted before being trained and equipped. I am guessing an interview with some commander-wannabee, who said "yes I am a moderate" and then CIA said "awesome, here's $500,000,000.00 and a boatload of sophisticated weapons. Go hire and train some more moderates." Or maybe CIA just asked McCain and took his word for it.
...but few believe the U.S. can protect its secret rebel allies
Some secret...
This kind of shit is what you get when the deep state breathes its own fumes.
Lore
Exactly. American hands are drenched in blood. It's not enough just to withdraw from Syria and leave a bunch of mercs and "assets" to burn, and it's not enough to go after the individuals behind specific atrocities like 911, the bombing of the hospital, or the weddings, or Abu Ghraib, or Benghazi, or, or... Nothing will be fixed or resolved until those responsible for drafting, approving and implementing the pathological policy behind all the loss of life over the past decade are prosecuted and brought to justice. Unless and until that happens, America has abandoned its moral foundation and is doomed as a nation. It's just a practical observation.
geno-econ
Neocons went a step too far with their marauder agenda in Ukraine and Syria. Now they have been silenced by Putin with a show of force exposing US weakness. Both Bush and Obama showed weakness in not controllling Neocon influence in Wash. and is now reflectrd in political party turmoil. EU should rejoice because US policy in Syria caused refugee problem which will subside with end of civil war in Syria. Kiev government now also realizes US will not support real confrontation with Russia and Russia will not give up Crimea. Neocon experiment in achieving growth through regime change has been a total failure and huge drain on US economy.
greenskeeper carl
I agree 100%. What I'm dreading is listening to all the republitards in the next debate trying to one up each other on the war mongering. The problem with 'let Russia have it' is that it will be talked about by the right as though that's a bad thing. It will be spun as an Obama fuck uo(which it is) not because of the simple fact that it was never any of our business in the first place. To them, EVERYTHING is our business, and they will be spending the next few weeks talking tough about how they will stand up to Putin.
RockyRacoon
You got it right, Carl. If they want to see Russia get its butt kicked, give them Syria, and Afghanistan, and Iraq and all the other crappy countries that the U. S. has managed to destabilize. Wish the Russians luck in putting that all back together. Better yet, encourage them to annex the whole shootin' match into the Russian alliance!
Hey, wait.... could this have been the long term plan all along? Hmmm.... Maybe them thar neocons are smarter than they look. Nah, never mind.
sp0rkovite
The article implies the CIA "lost" Syria. When did it ever "win" it? Total political propaganda.
datura
There are some risks, yes, dead Iranian general, perhaps soon some dead Russian soldiers. But unlike the USA, Iran is fighting for its existence here. They know if Syria falls, they could be next. As for Russia, it is very similar. As one expert said: "When the USA looks at Syria, they see pipelines, profit from weapons, money and power." But the first thing Putin sees, when looking at Syria, is Chechnya. Syria is very close to Russia, but very far from the USA. And that is a huge difference.
For example, yesterday, some ISIS fighters were arrested in Chechnya. Luckily, FSB discovered them before they could do some harm. Not even talking about those ISIS fighters, who came to Ukraine, to fight against the pro-Russian rebels!!! You can see, how close and how important is this to Russia and why Russia cannot give up here and has to go to all the extremes. Including the parked nuclear submarine near Syria.
I could say to the US lunatics: you shouldn't have kept poking the bear. You shouldn't have supported terrorists in Chechnya. You should have left Ukraine to Russia. As Putin said very clearly in Valdai: "Russia does not intend to take an active role in thwarting those who are still attempting to construct their New World Order-until their efforts start to impinge on Russia's key interests. Russia would prefer to stand by and watch them give themselves as many lumps as their poor heads can take. But those who manage to drag Russia into this process, through disregard for her interests, will be taught the true meaning of pain."
Bring the GoldDo you have a link for that Putin statement?
JohninMK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdai_speech_of_Vladimir_Putin
agent default
House of Saud better be careful, because once Syria is taken care of, they will pay dearly for arming ISIS. If Russia wins in the ME Qatar and SA are up for regime change and the US cannot stop it.
Neil Patrick Harris
no no no. It's a about Israel seizing legal authority to drill for oil and nat gas in the Golan Heights/Southern Syria. The plan was to arm ISIS, help ISIS defeat Assad, let ISIS be terrible ISIS who will then threaten Israel, giving the Israelis a perfect excuse to invade Syria, defeat ISIS and look like a hero, then build a pipeline through Turkey, right in to Europe.
But thankfully Putin cockblocked those racist Zionists, and he is going to get all the oil and gas for himself. Poor ol' Bibi gets nothing. Checkmate.
Freddie
ThirdWorldDude
http://www.moonofalabama.org/Moon of Alabama web site is saying the See Eye Aye and Pentagram are not giving up. If anything, they plan on ramping it up. How many more civilians do they want to kill? Sickening.
This shitshow is far from over. It might be just a coy in their efforts to improvise another Afghanistan.
techpreist
Given our military spending I think we actually could win an all-out war. We have enough nukes to glass the planet a dozen times after all.
However, bullies don't want to fight with someone who could actually fight back, and who could change the wars from this abstract thing that "creates jobs" and only hurts a few Americans (10k Americans = 0.003% of the population), to something that people actually might not want.
viahj
if this is framed as an Obama failure in foreign policy (it will) in the upcoming US political Presidential selection, the candidates will all be falling over themselves to come to the aide of our "ME Allies" to restore order. there will be a push to re-escalate US involvement in the ME especially with the pressure of Israel over their owned US politicians. a US retreat in the short term while fortunate for the American people, will not stand. the warmongers will be posturing themselves as to which will be the loudest in calling for re-engagement.
|
|
|
Oct 10, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Warren , September 25, 2015 at 2:25 pmet Al , September 26, 2015 at 4:23 am
et Al, September 26, 2015 at 4:48 amA top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people's visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.
Other websites listed as "sources" of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.'s Channel 4.
…A top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people's visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.
Other websites listed as "sources" of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.'s Channel 4…
###And I bet the Guardian too as it is 'the world's most widely read new site'. They probably keep automatic tabs on this site considering how it has grown over the last couple of years.
I do wonder though, with all those stories about those thousands of Kremlin controlled Russian trolls on British news websites, whether some of this comes from carefully massaged data from GCHQ through third parties to the Pork Pie News Networks via 'unnamed sources', i.e. the usual bollox.
May I suggest to fellow commenters here, if at any point you loose your smart phone (etc.) just call GCHQ and they'll tell you where you left it. I wonder if they provide a data back up service?!
et Al , September 26, 2015 at 9:52 am…The agency operates a bewildering array of other eavesdropping systems, each serving its own specific purpose and designated a unique code name, such as: …and INFINITE MONKEYS, which analyzes data about the usage of online bulletin boards and forums…
…Authorization is "not needed for individuals in the U.K.," another GCHQ document explains, because metadata has been judged "less intrusive than communications content." All the spies are required to do to mine the metadata troves is write a short "justification" or "reason" for each search they conduct and then click a button on their computer screen…
…When compared to surveillance rules in place in the U.S., GCHQ notes in one document that the U.K. has "a light oversight regime."
The more lax British spying regulations are reflected in secret internal rules that highlight greater restrictions on how NSA databases can be accessed. The NSA's troves can be searched for data on British citizens, one document states, but they cannot be mined for information about Americans or other citizens from countries in the Five Eyes alliance….
#####It's just what is expected from the junior in the US/UK relationship. For the UK to retain privileged access to the US' global spy network, it needs to give the US what it wants, a way to circumvent the US' own laws. Dial back to when Gary Powers & his U-2 were shot down over the Soviet Union. All subsequent overflights by US manned and operated aircraft were prohibited, so, the US used British pilots and Canberras.
Once you understand the relationship and the goals that they have, you can work backwards and make fairly good conclusions about what tools would be required and used to get to those conclusions and try not think whether they are legal or not. What people can do to protect themselves is a) don't change most of your digital habits (as this would raise a flag); b) just don't do or say obvious things that you wouldn't do in real life in your digital life; c) use encryption such as PGP for email and products using perfect forward secrecy for chat/etc.; d) don't write about what not to do on the Internet as I have just done! ;)
The most disturbing thing about it all is that it puts us one step away from a totalitarian system. All that is required is a political decision. All the tools are in place and depending on how much information they have actually kept they can dip in to it at any time throughout your life as a rich source of blackmail, probably via third parties. It's not exactly threatening to send you to a concentration camp (or disappeared to one of Britain's (and others) many small overseas territories, but it is total control.
If the European economy completely crashes and mass instability ensues (or whatever), then the politicians will be told, or even ask, "What tools do we have to control this?".
Forget about 'checks and balances' – they're the first thing to be thrown out of the window in an emergency. Arbeit macht frei!marknesop , September 26, 2015 at 2:38 pmThis should be a massive story as the parliamentary security committee gave the intelligence services a 'clean bill of health' not so long ago.
Since then, they've lost intelligence 'yes man' Malcolm Rifkind to an expenses scandal so the make up of the committee has changed a bit.
What it does show is that we cannot even trust the gatekeepers (above) who are give very limited info from the security services.
And let us not forget the dates that this occurred under a Labor administration and continued under a Conservative-Liberal Democrat and now a Conservative one.
It will be interesting to see if this story gains any traction, though I suspect that it will be much bigger outside of the UK, at least initially,
The cat is, again, out of the bag!
GCHQ and the CIA are in bed with one another, and have been for years. This might be a timely occasion to mention once again that both are capable of hacking into smartphones by all leading manufacturers; in the case of the IPhone the CIA uses a program application called Dropout Jeep.
We can thank Edward Snowden for that; the NSA spying scandal revealed a great deal more than just the information the CIA is snooping on your phone calls and collecting information on everyone. As the second reference relates, the CIA also diverted laptops ordered online so that government spyware could be installed on them. Intelligence agencies are determined that citizens shall have no privacy whatsoever. You might as well assume they are watching everything you do and listening to everything you say. Give the window the finger at random times just in case, and slip embarrassing revelations on the sexual proclivities of intelligence agents into your telephone conversations.
Canada's Blackberry was once safe, but GCHQ broke that. So now there is no smartphone that is private, except maybe for Russia's YotaPhone. Probably not that either, though, since it is sold in the USA, and if they couldn't break into the phone they would just hack the carrier. And the Canadian government bought all of its Secure Telephone Units (STU) from the NSA, so say no more about the "security" of those.
A few companies, like Silent Circle, pitch a privacy phone like the Blackphone, but it originates in the USA and everyone's paranoia has become so acute that the instant suspicion is they are telling you it is more private just because it is wired straight to the NSA. You can't believe anyone any more.
|
|
|
Oct 07, 2015 | Zero Hedge
4-Star General Wesley Clark noted:In 1991, [powerful neocon and Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz] was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy – the number 3 position at the Pentagon. And I had gone to see him when I was a 1-Star General commanding the National Training Center.
***
And I said, "Mr. Secretary, you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm."
And he said: "Yeah, but not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn't … But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won't stop us. And we've got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us."
Crocodile
Putin has put an end to the Wolfowitz doctrine - end
Then Putin has found a cure for psychopathy; unlikely.
As you know, October is "Pink" month, the month they remind women of the deadly disease brought on women in which the big corporations are raping in billions and they would/will NEVER give you the cure, for their is no profit in a cure. Stupid is as stupid does.
Pinkwasher: (pink'-wah-sher) noun. A company or organization that claims to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon product, but at the same time produces, manufactures and/or sells products that are linked to the disease.
Here are the results of those efforts: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/statistics/trends.htm (NONE from the disease perspective)
Minburi
This shit is from 2007? Wow... Just Wow!! It's only gotten worse since then!
Why is nothing being done?
Crocodile
The rich are getting richer and the middle class is being dismantled and you say "why is nothing being done?"
Johnny_Dangerously
So is the Greater Israel thing just a wild conspiracy theory? Along with the 3rd temple and "cleansing" the rest of Palestine?
Because I'd bet you my life savings that it is not a conspiracy theory as to Netanyahu and his ilk in Likud.
shutterbug
the USA people have some cleaning up to do, starting in the White House, every governmental agency and after that probably other federal departments...
BUT have you ever seen Walking Dead clean something up???
Icelandicsaga.....
Wolfowitz type thinking is spin off of Angl American establishment that grew out of Brtish empire/banking/trade ..some say reverts back to East India Trade cartel..but recent history, read for free online insider chronicler Georgetown U. Professor Carrol Quigley, who lays it out in Tragedy and Hope.http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X........ of his uotes: It is this power structure which the Radical Right in the United States has been attacking for years in the belief that they are attacking the Communists.
Thus, the use of fiat money is more justifiable in financing a depression than in financing a war.
By the winter of 1945-1946, the Russian peoples were being warned of the dangers from the West.
In post Cold War guys like Harvards Samuel Huntington...discussed Anglo..American hegemony in Clash of Civilizations. Another who laid out the post Cold War game plan ..Francis Fukuyama in his The End of History. pentagon adviser Thomas Barnett laid out the countries to be taken sown in The Pentagons New Map. The guy is a wack job, but pentagon took him seriously.
Followed by PNAC..Project for a New American Century?..guys like Wolfowitz, Kagan, Kristol, Cheney et al first proposed invading Iraq a second time. But the genesis for fucked up US policy on steroids, was fall of Soviet Union. That is when elite, shadow govt and banking class from IMF TO World Bank to BIS came into their own. I recall this invade and bring democracy and KFC capitalism began in major policy journals in 1992..just about same time HW BUSH gave his ""new world order" speech at UN. It has been FUBAR evrr since.
Given what ""economic advisers" from US like Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Summers, Jonathan Hays caused in early days of new Russia, I do not blame them if they hate our guts. We have created chaos and destruction from Balkans ""war" to Ukraine ..Iraq..Libya..Syria. we have turned into a rabid stupid uncontrollable beast. Wolfowitz and his ilk were midwives. Enclosed pertinent links that may be helpful.
http://www.amazon.com/Clash-Civilizations-Remaking-World-Order/dp/145162......
and Francis Fukuyama...
Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. Fukuyama is known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argued that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government. However, his subsequent book Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity (1995) modified his earlier position to acknowledge that culture cannot be cleanly separated from economics. Fukuyama is also associated with the rise of the neoconservative movement,[2] from which he has since distanced himself.[3]
Fukuyama has been a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy,
MEAN BUSINESSNo expense is too great to send a message. Until it is.
MSimonFalse. What's your fucking problem?
Johnny_DangerouslyOK no expense is too great.
An estimate of what the war is costing Russia.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/countingthecost/2015/10/russia-econo...
Looking around I found out that Russia depends on Western companies for oil field eqpt. The war is causing it to defer projects.
On top of that Russia needs to balance its economy with more consumer manufacturing. The war is deferring some of that that.
War steals from the future. And then there is this bit of news. Propaganda or reality? Or a set up for a false flag attack?
FBI has foiled four plots by gangs to sell nuclear material to ISIS: Authorities working with federal agency stop criminals with Russian connections selling to terroristshttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3262821/FBI-foiled-four-attempts...
Hell In A Ha..."FBI has foiled four plots by gangs to sell nuclear material to ISIS:"
Sure they did.
And they *did not* assassinate that kid down in Florida for refusing to sign a confession.
"An estimate of what the war is costing Russia."
The cost of this bombing campaign against ISIS is costing Russia, there is no hiding from this fact, but the cost is also being burdened by Syria and Iran. Secondly, the Military Industrial Complex(MIC) does not have total control Iran, Syria and most importantly Russia, like it does over the U.S government. IE; The Russians have flown to date less than 100 sorties and have significantly downgraded ISIS, to the point western governments and media have been bitching about the loss of innocent civilian life(translated; U.S, U.K and allied special forces are being killed by Russian bombs). Conversely the U.S air-force have officially flown over 1800 sorties in an attempt to downgrade ISIS and have been unsuccessfu to datel. 1800 sorties and a lot of bombing achieving nothing, is a great payout for the MIC.
So an obvious question must be asked. The Russians have flown and bombed just 4% compared to the U.S air-force and have downgraded ISIS. Are the Yanks vastly inferior and incompetent than the Russians? And if the answer is no, then the only logical conclusion must be the Americans never really targeted ISIS and we the public are being fed a pack of lies and propaganda.
falak pema
Well said.
Putin is trying to put an end to a doctrine that has caused 25 years of Bushist Crusader mayhem. Will he succeed is another question.
But having got the ball rolling is a tipping moment and Humpty Dumpty of NWO is now a broken toy of a bygone age, especially as its created the destruction of Pax Americana's main hold on the world : Oil duopoly and monetary hegemony all gone down the shute in debt debasement folly.
Dear Henry's legacy to the Trilateral world now looking like Petrodollar's metamorphosis into Humpty Dumpty.
But where it leads to is a debatable question.
Quo Vadis.
flapdoodle
The *really* big problem with the US Deep State is the following:
1) The US Dollar as World Reserve Currency is based on, well, the fact that it is the WRC. The "faith" the rest of the world invests in the Dollar is only backed by momentum - and the perceived preeminence of the US armed forces.
2) Just as the first Iraqi war was seminal in the fall of the Soviet Union IMHO when the world (and particularly the Soviet military analysts) were able to see the overwhelming technical superiority of the US smart weapons and the ease with with the US disposed of Saddam's huge standing army (breaking the illusion that the Soviet Union was a superpower on the par with the US), the move into Syria by Russia by the invitation of the legal government of Syria is in my opinion just as historic and seminal, the bell weather for a major sea-change in the the power structure of the world.
3) Russia in Syria has, at least in its first appearances, greatly neutralized ISIS, which was touted as a huge almost invincible juggernaut, putting on a clinic of technical prowess and coordination almost comparable to the US effort in Iraq 1.
4) The paradigm of the all powerful US military has taken a big hit, if not by its lack of technical superiority (the F35 fiasco does not inspire confidence in US technical capability), but by its intentions, will, and competence. the MSF hospital in Kunduz fiasco in juxtaposition with the well planned Russian strikes against ISIS (which the US supposedly has been attacking for 13 months), raises the question: if you needed someone to protect you, do you trust the Russian military or the US military?
5) The above question is a fatal doubt intruding into the all powerful US paradigm - if the Saudis and other important players (Germany!) start to question US power and cozy up to the Russians, the US petrodollar is done for, and with it US dollar as WRC - the US as a nation will start an inevitable slide into third world status if that occurs. Imagine what happens for example if the US has to pay its military budget from actual assets or savings rather than just print dollars it needs to buy the hugely expensive F35 or send billions to Israel...
6) What gives pause are what the US might do about what has just happened in Syria. The most rabid neocons may push the US into a poorly thought out confrontation, and get us all killed in the worst case.
7) Whatever response the US tries will not change the death of the US Dollar as WRC. The only question is how soon it will be cast aside (and my gut tells me it will be relatively soon, regardless of how "oversubscribed" dollar denominated debt is to the actual number of dollars in circulation)
GMadScientist
Fuck off. Neocons can own their fucking mistake until the end of time. It was stupid. You did it (and elected the fucker TWICE!). So get the fuck over it.
falak pema
You are missing the point : Its PAX AMERICANA's mess; but it was the Wolfowitz doctrine of the BUSHES (father and son Incorporated along with Cheney) that started it.
Boy King is just a mouthpiece (reluctant now but gung-ho in Libya) of that same imperial game.
History is a bitch and you can't play King Canute with it !
NuYawkFrankie
re Putin Ends Wolfowitz Doctrine
Now we should do our part, and put an end - a permanent end -to Mastermind War-Criminal "Rat Face" Wolfowitz; then the demonic KAGAN KLAN.
The other NeoCON warmongers can be rounded-up shortly thereafter trying to board flights to Tel Aviv, Israel
dreadnaught
Seen on a wall in a bus station: "Kill a NeoCON for Christ"
WTFUD
Long time GW! Nice watching all dem US made Saudi bought weapons go up in smoke. Now that's what i call Change you can believe in. Go Vlad, some US base collateral damage in Baghdad would be equally welcome.
The Plan to keep Russia busy with Ukraine mischief is another multi-billion farce gone up in smoke.
Really nice watching the EU erupt in a burden of refugees, none of which was ear-marked in the austerity budgets of the poodle-piss vassal states.
Cat-Al-Loan-iA here i come, right back where we started from . . .
Reaper
Evil is power. What has Putin proved? That the US desires not to destroy ISIL, but to empower ISIL. When has Assad ever attacked the US? Never.
Everything the US government says is a lie. Everything the government's Ministry of Truth's media reports is a lie. With every lie the sheeple to emote for government. Barack is evil incarnate. The US is a tool of neo-cons and the exceptional American fools. Evil succeeds, when the American sheeple follow.
bunnyswanson
You leave out the most important detail. STATE CAPTURE
Share the insults with the nation who has trained our cops in methods used against Palestinians, beating the crap out of everyone who shows the least bit of hesitation to obey their orders.
Okeefe = Full page of videos explaining ISRAEL EXPANSION PROJECT Greater Israel.
Dead politicians, dead journalists and many dead business people, all strangely similar yet some nobody from nowhere is sent to prison, with wide eyed drugged look.
ISRAEL is the source of the evil so fucking remember that prickface.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=israel+expansion+project+o%...
gezley
The source of the evil is not Israel, at least not the political entity known as Israel in the Middle East. The source of the evil is something far deeper, a Power of Darkness that exists somewhere else, a Power that created this modern state of Israel in the first place. In my opinion, that power of darkness, the truly evil "Israel", occupies the City of London, otherwise known as the Jewish Vatican, the counterpoint in this world to the other square mile that matters, the Holy See.
That's where the problems for the US and the Middle East have their beginning, middle and end. Solve that problem and America and the Middle East will both wake up to a bright new future.
Luther van Theses
"Soviet client regimes?" Didn't it ever occur to this dummy they are countries in their own right, people live there, you can't just take their countries away from them?
Bismarck said 'God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.' We must be in good shape considering we've had fools like Wolfowitz and drunks like G.W Bush running the country.
opport.knocks
jcdentonLet's not give too much credit to Paul Wolfowitz, and his "doctrine". It was just a restatement of Halford MacKinder's "Heatland Theory" and Zbigniew Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard"
Speaking of Ziggy, the guy just snapped ..
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/06/is-terrorists-may-blast-mosques-...
August
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/06/zbig2putin/
Decent article....i.e. better than aveage for veteranstoday. IMHO.
Ol' Zbigniew sez that he USA should "disarm" Russian forces in Syria.
Guess the US Police will have to use some flash-bangs on the Russkies, and shoot their dogs, too.
fleur de lis
Brzezh has been a psycho for a long time, and has harbored a seething hatred for the Russians that still spews poison to this day. He pushed the idiots in DC to support the serial killer Pol Pot who murdered more than a million Cambodians, and that was a long time ago. He was sly enough to get the Chinese to do the direct support. Still crazy after all these years.
The Cambodians were fightng with the Vietnamese who were allied with the Russians, so that was reason enough for him regardless of all the Cambodian deaths.. The Western powers had no good reason to be mixed up in Asia except as blood sport.
Jorgen
"Putin has put an end to the Wolfowitz doctrine."
Don't praise the day before the sunset. Imho, the more accurate statement would be: Putin has challenged the Wolfowitz doctrine.
jeff montanye
The neocons are not defeated until the truth about 9-11 if widely accepted, or, more properly, that which is untrue is widely rejected. it is their achilles' heel. The crime is too great, too evil and too poorly done to be explained away or ignored. once a growing majority of the nation sees through this lie (and the fraction is already larger than many imagine), new things become possible. this is not yesterday's news. There is no statute of limitations on treason or murder. The day will be won mind by mind. do your part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsoY3AIRUGA .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GNww9cmZPo
http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticl...
11b40
Here are some examples of people in senior government position who have Israeli citizenship. Will America ever wake up and end this idiocy, which was brought about in 1967 by a Supreme Court decision guided by Justice Abe Fortas, a prominent Jewish American. If some these names are not familiar, google them for a real surprise, or follow this link:
http://www.kickthemallout.com/article.php/Story-Dual_Citizenship_Loyal_T...
Jonathan Jay Pollard
Michael Mukasey
Michael Chertoff
Richard Perle\
Paul Wolfowitz
Lawrence (Larry) Franklin
Douglas Feith
Edward Luttwak.
Henry Kissinger
Dov Zakheim
Kenneth Adelman
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Robert Satloff
Elliott Abrams
Marc Grossman
Richard Haass
Robert Zoellick
Ari Fleischer
James Schlesinger
David Frum
Joshua Bolten
John Bolton
David Wurmser
Eliot Cohen
Mel Sembler
Steve Goldsmith
Adam Goldman
Joseph Gildenhorn
Christopher Gersten
Mark Weinberger
Samuel Bodman
Bonnie Cohen
Ruth Davis
Daniel Kurtzer
Cliff Sobel
Stuart Bernstein
Nancy Brinker
Frank Lavin
Ron Weiser
Mel Sembler
Martin Silverstein
Lincoln Bloomfield
Jay Lefkowitz
Ken Melman
Brad BlakemanBeginning to see the problem?
OldPhart
Here's a full taste of Wolfowitz as he was interviewed by some metro-sexual I've never heard of...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0-wwFE_DaM
The faggot's got some solid points over Wolfowitz.
|
|
|
YouTube
OldPhart
Here's a full taste of Wolfowitz as he was interviewed by some metro-sexual I've never heard of...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0-wwFE_DaM
The faggot's got some solid points over Wolfowitz.
|
|
|
Oct 05, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Former US army colonel and Chief of Staff for Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson unleashed a most prescient speech on the demise of the United States Empire.As Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith notes, Wilkerson describes the path of empires in decline and shows how the US is following the classic trajectory. He contends that the US needs to make a transition to being one of many powers and focus more on strategies of international cooperation.
The video is full of rich historical detail and terrific, if sobering, nuggets, such as:
"History tells us we're probably finished.
The rest of of the world is awakening to the fact that the United States is 1) strategically inept and 2) not the power it used to be. And that the trend is to increase that."
Wilkerson includes in his talk not just the way that the US projects power abroad, but internal symptoms of decline, such as concentration of wealth and power, corruption and the disproportionate role of financial interests.
Wilkerson also says the odds of rapid collapse of the US as an empire is much greater is generally recognized. He also includes the issues of climate change and resource constraints, and points out how perverse it is that the Department of Defense is the agency that is taking climate change most seriously. He says that the worst cases scenario projected by scientists is that the world will have enough arable land to support 400 million people.
Further key excerpts include:
pretty bird"Empires at the end concentrate on military force as the be all and end all of power… at the end they use more mercenary based forces than citizen based forces"
"Empires at the end…go ethically and morally bankrupt… they end up with bankers and financiers running the empire, sound familiar?"
"So they [empires] will go out for example, when an attack occurs on them by barbarians that kills 3000 of their citizens, mostly because of their negligence, they will go out and kill 300,000 people and spend 3 trillion dollars in order to counter that threat to the status quo. They will then proceed throughout the world to exacerbate that threat by their own actions, sound familiar?…This is what they [empires] do particularly when they are getting ready to collapse"
"This is what empires in decline do, they can't even in govern themselves"
Quoting a Chinese man who was a democrat, then a communist (under Mao) then, when he became disenchanted, a poet and writer…"You can sit around a table and talk about politics, about social issues, about anything and you can have a reasonable discussion with a reasonable person. But start talking about the mal-distribution of wealth and you better get your gun" …."that's where we are, in Europe and the United States".
America is going through a tough time right now. But she's been through tougher times. I wouldn't bet against her.
Manthong
Gee, might this be a Smedley Butler moment?
Crud.. looking at the Roman Empire, and Revolutionary France, you do not need to be a Phd in economics (theory, not science) or political science (?) er, NO.. theory.. to figure out where this is heading.
Oh regional Indian
It's pretty clear that the Empire dream is crumbling.
Which does not bode well for people on the INSIDE of the empires gates.
Perhaps more true for the west in general right now and to a lesser or greater extent, cultures world-wide that have been brought to their knees by the false (Jewish/Zio inspired and funded) libertarianism of freedom via sex drugs and rock and roll.....it's time to go inwards.
The next 4-5 years are going to be shocking hard in the west as everything you were brought up to believe in shows it's true, tattered colours of specious beginnings, ugly/lost individuals (Sanger, Kinsey, Steinem, Leary, Greatful Dead etc. etc. to name but a few) and a funding hand that showed it's biases early but a populace with their eyes on the TV, hands on their (or someone else's gentalia), beer and bad food...too far gone to rise in any manner of protest at all...
America is definitely sliding down a deep dark hole...
Not finger pointing, just reality...
Apathy is a cancer...
Everyone should give this a listen...
Handful of Dust
Did I read "Colin Powell"? The same Colin Powell who sold his country down the river into one of the most costly bloodiest wars in American history with a bareface lie about non-existent WMDs and a phantom threat from a cave-dwelling desert country of camel jocks?
THAT Colin Powell?
omniversling
"Chief of Staff for Colin Powell"...was it Wilko who prepped the vial of ANNNNTTHHHRRAAX for Powel to present to the world via the UN PROVING the WMD case for bombing Iraq back to the stoneage?
TAALR Swift
Nothing wrong with reading Machiavelli, but you're better off watching this YT 11 minute clip from a former CIA agent:
"Ex CIA agent explains how to delete the elite!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLr8ZvgURg0
luckylongshotGreat article. However while it exposes the cycle of power centralisation that leads to empires growing and collapsing it does not propose what needs to be done to stop this cycle occurring. This can be done by teaching the public to think critically, having a constitution that you stick to and decentralising power so different arms keep each other from becoming too powerful. Imagine if the NSA reported to the public and was tasked with ensuring politicians were not bribed and that businesses did not try to influence politics? In business the formula is decentralise power, treat people with respect and weed out the narcissists...and then enjoy large profits: This works wih nations and empires as well....why not try it.
Urban Redneck
The military and civil unrest threats due of climate change are not BS. What is BS are the contortions (both distortions and outright lies) and that the brass knob jockeys at the Pentagram will perform to receive moar funding for reducing competition for potentially much more scarce resources.
The larger threat isn't actually rising temperatures, but rather falling temperatures and changes in average precipitation. A single freeze in Florida can decimate citrus production, a wetter or drier than "Goldilocks" year can wreak havoc on production of various grains, and that is all without the .gov idiocy that is the People's Republic of Draughtifornia.
On a one-year timeline the weather costs are bad enough, but on a slightly longer climate timeline... not even the EBT equipped North American Land Whale has enough stored fat to wait out new McFodder if production has to migrated to follow climate change, which for some perennials (e.g the trees necessary for the all-American apple pie) means much more than a one year wait for first harvest.
So anyway... reducing competition... assuming you are a major power grand poobah (instead of a neo-Ethiopian Arab Spring despot), you can invade someone else to steal their food, invade someone else to reduce your domestic demand for food, or you can FEMA camp the useless eaters and put them on la diète noir, (if you can't afford Zyklon B, and the infrastructure to properly deploy it). Regardless, this is Military Planning 101 level stuff.
AMPALANCE
Industrial farming it destroying top soil on a massive scale, we reached peak production years ago. Combine that with a decrease in biodiversity from unconstrianed Trojan Horse GMO's, and the prospect of a catastrophic food shock is very real. Don't forget peak Phosphorus is expected to be reached around 2030, and depleated in 50 to 100 years, it true would prove devastating for humanity.
Motasaurus
Reached peak production years ago?
Pleasr do explain then how all food crops have increased yield every year while reducing the amount of both land and fertilisers used to do so.
We're no-where near peak production, and the higher the atmospheric CO2 content climbs, and the milder the winters we have (from a warming atmosphere), the more food we will be able to produce. We're not even half way to the optimal atmospheric CO2 levels of 1000ppm for food crop growth yet.
techpreist
Here's a fun graphic from the journal Nature (Science and Nature being the two most prestigious journals in modern science):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/fig_tab/461472a_F1.html#...
By mainstream academia's own numbers, industrial farming (the primary cause of nitrogen pollution is a far bigger problem than official global warming. But you never hear a peep about it because the main cause of this type of pollution is a combination of 1) subsidies and 2) GMOs which require much higher N input to get the growth that's possible from genetic modification. Since the solution is less control over farming, they have no problem driving the Earth off a cliff.
junction
Wilkerson has the freedom to travel and talk because he receives a fairly large military pension. What neither Wilkerson or any other critic of the current rulers of the United Staes will say is that the United States has no economic future anymore. The Wall Street looters have pillaged the country, first stealing the assets of corporate pension funds and now finishing off their brigandage by stealing all the future tax income of this country through the criminal use of derivatives. America is now a country with poisoned water supplies (fluoridation which causes heart disease), poisoned food (glyphosates and antbiotic contamination) and a poisoned electoral system where the top 0.1% chooses the winners.
The super-rich have their bolt holes outside the USA because they don't want to be around when this country, now a near Nazi state complete with death squads and Nazi People's Court-type hanging judges and prosecutors, completes its transformation by setting up concentration camps.
pachangueroThis asshole is part of the problem. Fuck him and his bullshit Glow-Ball warming scam. He should be in jail for the Iraq War along with Obama and Bush.
TheObsoleteMan
What do you expect from him, he is a CFR member and a CIA/NSA asset. No one ever retires from the CIA, you just aren't assigned projects and you are pensioned, but the only way you ever leave the CIA is in a box. He is not an American, he is a globalist. You have to be, or your not allowed into the CFR.
Dark DazeHere's a fucking news flash for you Einstein. Your 'team' as you so quaintly put it has spent the last 250 years murdering, bombing, assassinating and fucking over 3/4's of the planet. Originally, just after the revolution, there was a period of say 20 years (just as Jefferson suggested) where the citizenry of the US was peacful and productive. Then, not long after the death of the last of the original Father's of the Revolution, the psychopaths arrived (General Hull at Fort Detroit) and started their crap with an attempted invasion of Canada (1812-14). That didn't work out so well, so you went south and fought with the Spanish, the Mexicans, every country in central and south america, declaring that the US had a god given right to control the entire area of North and South America (the Monroe doctrine). On the way you made sure you wiped out virtually every 'dirty injun' you could find, burned a few dozen 'witches' at the stake, invaded China and brought the opium/heroin trade to America (the Connecticut Yankees in their Clipper ships) and generally forced yourselves on an unwilling world. There are only two western democracies that have never engaged in empire, Australia and Canada. All the rest, the UK, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece, the Macedonians (greeks), France, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Hungary have all tried and failed at establishing empires, killing millions along the way. I read your Constitution a few years back (probably one of the most enlightened documents ever created), and I seem to remember a passage about 'not becoming entangled in foreign intrigues'. Too bad you didn't take that to heart. They left you a clear, easy to understand, definitive document on how to live and you fucking destroyed it, and yourselves in the process.
The rest of the history is available to anybody that cares to investigate, which means not very many Americans, who prefer to remain conveniently ignorant of your bloody history.
in4mayshun
News flash for YOU...All significant Governments throughout history have killed lots of people to remain in power. And FYI, Canada and Australia don't matter cause they're really just extensions of Europe, as they follow in lockstep.
The Old Man
Refernce France: 1790 through 1816. Sorry. But paper doesn't work unless you feed it war. When war is always an option, society fails in the common place. Reinvent society. I mean you got iPhones and all this crap. How hard is it to think this through?
Lyman54
Australia and Canada were just proxy extensions of the British Empire. Canadians served in the Napoleonic wars, Crimea, the Boer War, WW-1, WW-2 and Korea. It wasn't until Korea that the media would actually call Canadian troops Canadians.
Socratic Dog
Aussie eh. While I don't dispute anything you say, I have to suggest the Aussie government is even worse in that it slavishly follows the US lead in fucking EVERYTHING, including killing and maiming women and children in their millions in places far from its shores. I saw a couple of days ago in the SMH (once-great local rag) that Australia is waiting for US direction on how to respond to the Russian "provocation" in Syria. They're ready to go to war with russia to protect, err, not exactly sure what they're ready to protect, but it must be important. Israel maybe? Australia has become a pathetic lap dog, starting with Vietnam. And just like the USSA, the people support the government position in most anything.
conscious being
Mossad did 9-11. Terrerists come in a lot of shapes and sizes.
Memedada
Both Mr. Banzai and rbg81 are displaying a surprising (this forum taken into account) lack of insight into the power-structures of the US empire.
I thought it was obvious to all – who pays attention – that the 'electorate' (especially the president) are mere pawns of a hidden (not that well hidden) power-elite. The people actually ruling US are not named in MSM (the 0,01 % - and no, that's not anyone on the Forbes list). That US have a 'colored president' does not make any difference – his masters are the same.
Second: US have no real elections. An election requires an informed and educated population. US has the opposite. The medias are controlled by the 0,01%, the public education system have been eroded and made into an extension of the 0,01%'s propaganda-machine and there's no independent think tanks and/or institutions that can help the population get informed (the absolute majority of think tanks and research institutions in US are founded and funded by and for the 0.01%). Moreover, since you got 'Diebold' it doesn't matter – the votes are counted the way the 0,01% wants them to be counted.
Third: communist in what way? What's your definition of communism? If he – I don't listen to him – actually said anything that could be interpreted as communist it doesn't count (he speaks nothing but BS – distractions). What political actions has he taken that you would consider 'communist'?
+ who don't despise USA for what it has become today? US deserves nothing but contempt – and until there's a real revolt/revolution the US population deserves the same contempt.
IridiumRebel
My wife, who has been involved with Doctors Without Borders albeit briefly, asked about the errant strike that killed 19+. I stated what happened. After she gasped, I went on to say that our current leadership and trajectory as a nation has to be purposeful in its fuckery and stupidity. It's willful. They HAVE to be making these stupid decisions on purpose. There is no other possible answer. No way they could be making these decisions and think they will do anything but make us weaker and less trusted if it's even possible.
AmericanFUPAcabra
The GPS coordinates for that hospital had been given to the US months in advance. They knew it was there (probably helped build it with your money) In fact when the first bombs started falling phone calls were made to the US and NATO that they were hitting the wrong place- and guess what? The air strikes kept coming down for 30 minutes.
You can go on Youtube and watch Robert Ford (john negroponte's protege) making the news circuits lately blaming the people in the hospital for not having an evacuation plan. THEY DO NOT FUCKING CARE ABOUT CIVILIAN CASUALTIES. It has nothing to do with fucking up. A handful of Kissinger quotes come to mind.
Dark DazeWell, it is very coincidental that less than 24 hours after 'the taliban' shot down a cargo plane carrying 'contractors' (CIA?), the hospital was bombed. There is more to this story than we know. Regardless, it still shows basially one thing which is that governments everywhere are out of control.
delacroix
Jorgena fuckup would be if they bombed the opium wharehouse.
"a fuckup would be if they bombed the opium wharehouse."
Yes, indeed, it would be...
Rumors Persist That the #CIA Helps Export #Opium from #Afghanistan http://t.co/yeihvYEvB3 pic.twitter.com/MYiDWqdPYV
- The Anti Media (@TheAntiMedia1) September 26, 2015
Paveway IV
"...No way they could be making these decisions and think they will do anything but make us weaker and less trusted if it's even possible..."
It would be most unhelpful to think of the actions of any branch of the U.S. government or military today as being in the interests of the people they serve. You can be certain that psychopaths running the U.S. (many groups with overlapping, occasionally competing but generally complementary interests) are in TOTAL control, and the organizations have morphed to serve ONLY psychopathic leaders, not normal ones. Arguing about which specific group of psychopaths is at the top of the heap or what their motivations are is also totally meaningless - it just doesn't matter. THAT isn't the problem.
The real problem is that the machinery of all of these government organizations has been fundamentally changed to serve only psychopathic leaders. They can no longer accomodate a 'normal' leader in any sense of the word. Replacing the heads of every one of these organizations today wouldn't work - the organizations themselves would reject a 'normal' person in charge and would oppose them at every turn or simply drive them out. It's well past the point of just getting 'the right' leaders in place.
The U.S. is on psychopath auto-pilot. There are no personal consequences for 'bad' decisions by those in charge of our government organizations. The leaders are making the exact same kind of decisions that every other failing empire has made during its decline since forever.
Perceptions of strength/weakness or trust/distrust are immaterial to the psychopaths in charge, as long as everybody seems to obey them. They're in a desperate scramble to maintain their OWN illusion of control before things go full-retard - they could care less what anyone else thinks of them or their decisions today.
o r c k
JorgenAgree, but just imagine living in most European Countries and knowing that the end of your ancient culture is only a few decades away due to the psychopathy of your "leaders".
Being surrounded by a warlike, mean-spirited and superstitious clan of early humans and NO way out whatsoever.
"They HAVE to be making these stupid decisions on purpose. There is no other possible answer."
Here is one theory on why the MSF hospital was bombed:
This is interesting... Did Obama Bomb Doctors Without Borders for Opposing TPP? http://t.co/2GEIbaQKyd
- AntiMedia UK (@AntiMediaUK) October 5, 2015
Flying Wombat
The Processes and Logic of The Deep State - Professor Peter Dale Scott
Unusually, just a single speaker this week: one two hour interview with the doyen of deep political research, Canadian Professor Peter Dale Scott. He provides not only a lot of details of the evolution of the post WW2 deep state in the USA, but also sketches out its guiding principles, some of the deeper patterns which allow one to understand the superficially confusing and contradictory actions of the US deep state.
Access show here: http://thenewsdoctors.com/?p=516544
SFopolis
Colin Powell has been treated as a great man for doing what? Semi-admitting that he knew we had it all wrong and everybody in power was (is) a war criminal?
In my opinion he is worse than all of the rest, because he had the platform and could have single handidly prevented this whole mess and exposed so many falshoods. Instead he did exactly what he knew was wrong. If he were a patriot and such a great man, he wouldn't have done what he did.
tool
WTF happen to him. Did he disappear into obscurity because of the extreme shame he felt for presenting that huge steaming pile of horse shit to the UN in front of the world .
I'm guessing not because people like that don't feel remorse or shame. They just get paid and live happily ever after!
conscious being
Colin proved himself to be a useful tool when he was brought in as the black face to do his part in covering up The Mai Lai Massacre in VietNam. His career took off after that.
|
|
|
Crooked Timber
5566hh, 10.04.15 at 2:02 am
Seriously though, I think a non-plan isn't really that useful. Why not have an actual plan? Something like this:
- End all drone strikes
- Cut off all military aid to countries in the Middle East
- Cut off diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia
- End all CIA or other covert support for groups in the region
- Put sanctions on any state in the region that funds terrorist groups
- Abolish the CIA, or at least covert CIA political interventions (this would help to address a lot of other problems outside the region too)
- Withdraw all US forces from the Middle East
- Encourage Britain to abandon its plans for a base in Bahrain
- Provide development aid (non-military) to the region
- Put diplomatic pressure on repressive regimes in the region
Val, 10.04.15 at 3:12 am
A U.S. air strike killed 20 MSF workers and patients in Afghanistan. A U.S. spokesperson called it collateral damage
It's bullshit. That's what contemporary warfare does – kills civilians. The vast majority of those who die in contemporary warfare are civilians. It's not collateral damage, it's what war does. I don't know (as I've written on my blog) how anyone can justify war these days.
Frank Wilhoit, 10.04.15 at 3:17 am
The United States has only one option left in the Middle East. That is to build a time machine, go back to 1911, and prevent Winston Churchill and Jacky Fisher from converting the British Navy from coal to oil. Admittedly, serious obstacles stand in the way of implementing this approach, but there is no alternative.
John Quiggin, 10.04.15 at 3:40 am
@5 This amounts to spelling out my plan
@8 Or, alternatively, set the time machine for 2015, when the US is virtually self-sufficient in oil, and the price is at a historic low (the supposed need to control ME oil was always nonsense, but it's nonsense on stilts now)
|
|
|
March 25, 2010 | Populist Daily
The word "Fascist" as with the terms "Socialist" and "Communist" are thrown around a lot by people who have no idea what they mean. If you want to know what those terms really mean, find someone who was in some branch of military counterintelligence, the CIA, the security section of the State Department, Defense Intelligence, or in the FBI.In all those areas, the first day of basic training involves comparative forms of government. You can't spot a Communist if you don't know what a Communist is. You can't tell the difference between a Communist and a Fascist unless you know the difference in the two systems. It is Intelligence, and more specifically, Counterintelligence 101.
So, let's go right to Fascism. A Fascist is one who believes in a corporatist society. In other words, it is a political philosophy embodying very strong central government, with the authority to move in decisive steps to accomplish goals. It would be characterized by a unity of purpose, with more or less all the levels of the hierarchy in unison, starting at the top and working down. It is a top-down government involving an alliance of industry, military, media and a political party.
Because Fascism has been associated with the 1930s German Nazis, the Italian Fascists under Mussolini and the Falangists, under the Spanish Dictator, Francisco Franco, the term "Fascist" has taken on a sinister meaning. Not fewer than 10 million direct deaths resulting from the rule of these three may have something to do with it. On the other hand, philosophies don't kill people; people kill people.
It is interesting to note that at least two of the three Parties had origins as Socialist and morphed into strong, Right Wing, authoritarian rules as a result largely of expediency. It is also interesting to note that all three were not only intimately connected to the largest industrial corporations, but as soon as possible with the military leadership. While Fascism as a political philosophy is not innately evil, given the results, it is worth noting how things turned out.
Both the German and the Italian Fascist parties were also both revolutionary and conservative at the same time. Both Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini were aggressive, anarchic leaders. Both served time in jail. Both served in the enlisted ranks with the military in war. Both used that experience to organize mobs of thugs to agitate against an established government, not for a more democratic regime, but for a more authoritarian one. You can begin to see some similarities with contemporary political activities.
As soon as they took power, which they did partially through gangs and mobs, intimidation and demonstrations and-in Mussolini's case an outright coup - they allied themselves with the biggest corporations and the military general staff. In addition, even before taking complete power, they began to wrest control of the media away from other political parties, and to use it for their own propaganda.
Once they had control of the radio and newspapers, which were then the prominent sources of information, they could begin to broadcast their messages. Hitler's "Big Lie" basically blamed rampant inflation and lack of jobs on the Jews. He blamed all their economic ills on the restraint of Germany by other nations and the presumed taking over of German lands (which they themselves had only won through aggressive wars.)
But let's for a minute assume that we know nothing about Fascism except that it exists. We have a group, here in America that believes in a corporatist political philosophy. What would that look like? If it were a true Fascist organization, they would ally themselves with big corporations, like the health care industry, oil and mining, pharmaceuticals, media corporations and the military-industrial complex.
They would try to control the message, particularly in radio and television. They would become as closely allied with the top military brass as possible, offering them a seat at the table in the running of the economy. Retired Generals would be assured of positions involved with military hardware and strategic planning.
And what about the people? In a fascist system, the whole idea is to have an efficient method of getting things done. If you want to build an "autobahn" you simply tell the transportation minister to get started. You control everything at every level. It will go faster because it is for the good of all the people, so no one will have the right to object or interfere. It is, Fascists would say, about efficiency, getting things done for the people.
Defense is about protecting the people. You attack other countries so that they cannot attack you. You start wars (Iraq) to prevent dangerous men from attacking you. It makes sense. Military efficiency in a Fascist state means that if the top guy (President or Dictator) wants to be absolutely certain that no other country is superior, he can build up the military industry and the military at any pace or at any cost.
In a Fascist state the idea is to have one set of rules, coming from the top down. No one votes as an individual, only as a part of the group that is assigned a task. It is corporate, total-totalitarian. So, if you decide that a national health care program is not right for the country, you all vote against it in a totally militaristic way. Everyone salutes and follows the lead from the top down. The only problem is when you do not have a strong leader.
The Democrats, for example, want to farm decisions out to others, let the opposition have their input. It slows the process. A Fascist health care program would be one decided upon by the President, discussed and worked out with the corporations, mandated to his staffs and enacted without any discussion or public debate in a matter of a few months.
In a Fascist state, policy is largely being written through a cooperative effort with the industries involved, in this case the health care industry. The slow, ragged, messy and Democratic process involved with our current health care reform process would never happen under a Fascist government. Whatever the decision, there would be no appeal. If a million or fifty million were left out, because, let's say, that the President needed more money for war machines that would be the decision- with no question or appeal.
So, if you want efficiency, you not only should you look to the Republicans, but you may have no choice. The Republicans, remember, have the complete support of Fox News, the Fox television Network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and any number of television stations around the country, plus somewhere between 600 and 1600 radio stations on which literally 9 out of 10 commentators are paid by those network owners to be Conservative (Neoconservative Republican.) They have expanded to very large numbers of web site bases, delivering whatever type of information they want, truth, lies, anything in between… accusations without proof…Socialist, Communist, government takeover of this or that…no need to be truthful. It is all propaganda.
Just as Herr Goebbels and Mussolini did in the 1930s-and except in the Communist counties and a few Latin American dictatorships there hasn't been anything to speak of similar to this in the Western advanced societies since then-the unchallenged message of the Right Wing goes out. The radio commentators today get their message from the top, from the Republican Party. Fox News Channel internal memos have shown that they literally decide what policies the Republican Party wished to champion, and then they attack rather than merely delivering the news.
So do we need to be civil about it-about these lies? Is it important to challenge people, like these Right Wing commentators who tell you that your current health care is sufficient? It is good for corporations, for health care insurance companies. But is it good for you not to be sure you can get health insurance? So if they tell you that something is a government takeover and it is not, so you vote against health care or you respond to a poll in a way that is against your own best interests…do you need to be civil about being lied to? You shouldn't be lied to by media. You need the truth, the facts, to make decisions.
It is a pretty simple answer. Should you be civil to people who lie to you and urge you to buy something that turns out to hurt you, or your family, or cause you to lose your job, or kill your sister, brother, neighbor? If I lie to you and say it is safe to swim across the channel and you are attacked by sharks that I knew were there…should you not care? This is what is happening, right now…today. In the consumer products market, we call that fraud and companies can be criminally liable.
So let's describe what a Fascist government or a political party attempting to introduce a Fascist government would look like and see if either or any of our political parties fits that description:
- Allies with big corporations, planning strategy together, interchangeable.
- Works to have control of the political process at all levels, starting with the top down.
- Does not cooperate with and actually tries to undermine other political parties.
- Uses mobs and demonstrations, and attempts to make individuals working in other parties afraid of violent reactions.
- Advocates ownership of weapons as a fear factor to intimidate others. (Wayne La Pierre…"the people with the guns make the rules.")
- Decides what is best for all citizens based on what corporations want.
- Uses "big lie" propaganda technique, of top-down distributed propaganda message for each issue.
- Allies with military on most issues, with ultra-aggressive military posture.
- Total control of the political process is the ultimate goal.
If any of this seems familiar to you, then you see something "Fascist" in the current political process. Of course, one thing that wasn't mentioned. Fascists always need someone to stigmatize. In Germany, it was the Jews. In Italy it was the Socialists. In Spain it was the Communists. It seems clear that, in this country it is the Democrats.
The Neocons are out of power, but they are unrelenting in their efforts to control as much of the political discourse as possible, no matter how damaging to society. They bring mobs and riff-raff out, some with guns, trying to scare the average citizen. They send messages out over radio with lunatic commentators, some who are not even allowed to visit other countries because of their hate speech…yet we tolerate it.
We even allow asininely preposterous lies from a possibly psychotic television commentator…to be used to stoke the race-hatred of many tea party members, and thugs against a distinguished African-American President who won 54% of the vote, the largest since Ronald Reagan and who also won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The case is pretty clear. The Neoconservative Republicans are headed for Fascism if they are not there already. The latest round of insults, threats, lies, window breakings all contribute to the evidence. Sooner or later this totalitarian attitude will either be denounced or will have serious responses. One thing is sure, with the problems facing our country, we cannot afford the kind of anarchist attacks as were exhibited in the bombing of a Federal building in Oklahoma City or the flying of an aircraft into a building housing an IRS office.
This radical, violent, arrogant Fascist attitude has to stop. The first step in preventing this kind of political outcome is to identify and react to Fascism when it appears. Neoconservative Republicanism is Fascism. Republicans must return to sanity or be treated as a very dangerous and radical political party.
Mike // Mar 30, 2010 at 12:01 pm
I agree with everything you say, except for the statement that the fascists have chosen the Democrats as a focus for hate. They have chosen everyone who is not a fascist republican, and esp. the 'middle to the left', which they label 'liberal'.
It is frightening to see the second party of a two party system turn fascist in the United States. Anyone who says it isn't so, isn't paying attention. What is even more frightening is the level of ignorance that must exist for people to believe those fascists. When you watch that certain mentally mal-adjusted on Fox and see him ramble on incoherently for an hour while he spews lies and distortions, any thinking individual has to ask him/her self "What moron would fall for this drivel?" But they do.
It is truly frightening, and it is easy to see how people like Hitler manage to rise to power, when people wilfully shut off any reasoning skills they ever had.
|
|
|
J. Lindner, June 7, 2004
In the Tragedy of American Diplomacy, William Appleman Williams illustrates how America fails to honor its own principles when it approaches foreign policy. America believes in self-determination and the right to develop its own brand of democracy. Unfortunately, no other nation is afforded the luxury of self discovery. Other nations must conform to America's vision of democracy or face the terror of America?s military might. This, to Williams, is the tragedy.
Cuba is his first case. America wanted Cuba to adhere to American visions which meant wealth for the sugar planters and their American backers. When Cuba sought its own course and threw off a repressive regime, America objected. The rift has existed ever since as no American administration will ever acknowledge Cuba's right to govern its own affairs so long as Castro is in power.
Williams then systematically follows the years from 1898 through 1961 and paints a similar picture. It does not take the reader long to get the idea and carry the argument beyond Williams' parameters and show that everything from Grenada to Lebanon to Afghanistan to Iraq can be shown in the same light. American puppet governments are not granting freedom and democracy to their constituents as much as they are part of a ruling class dominated by the business interests that exploit their workforce and deny requests for reform until the entire population is ripe for rebellion (remember the Shah of Iran). One wonders if the Saudi government is the next great western ally to fall victim to a popular revolt of Muslim fundamentalists.Williams is a master of detail and works his arguments creatively in an entertaining fashion. Neoconservatives of today will have the same objections as their predecessors from the 1950s in acknowledging Williams as a valid author. But Williams makes a strong case and if more people were exposed to his writing, our country might even find a way to avoid the same pitfalls. A Saudi revolution would disrupt oil markets and jeopardize world economies. Perhaps if some thought is put into policy such a scenario is avoidable and preventable. If people are willing to give Williams a chance American foreign policy might eventually reflect a broader American vision rather than the interests of a few.
Karun Mukherji, April 8, 2006
Erudite, splendidly crafted, fine piece of scholarhip
Williams book explores paradoxical nature of US Foreign Policy.
Firstly author refutes orthodox view that accidental, inadvertent turn of events transformed America into a global power. Williams has argued market forces unleashed by private free enterprise economy dictated the growth of American power; it has also molded country's foreign policy and continues to do so. To comprehend this fully one has to understand the intricacies of Capitalism.
It goes without saying that Capitalism carries within it the seed of self destruction. Late 19th century American economy was convulsed by frequent bouts of economic depression which led to wide spread social unrest. Home markets saturated with goods which people find difficult to absorb as they had only limited purchasing power. 'Frontier' had close down and country's leading intellectuals [William Jackson Turner ,Brooke Adams, Alfred Thayer Mahan] frantically called for overseas expansion avert an impending economic doom
Thus economic considerations compelled successive American Presidents [Grover Clevland, William Mckinley, Thedore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson] to remake the world in America's image. Unfortunately this policy boomeranged because Afro ,Asian, Latin American world refused to share American view.
Iniquitous, unfair trade practised by US helped Washington to enrich in detriment to welfare of latter economies. This was closely followed by American tendency to externalise evil. It posits the view that other nations have a stake in America's continued, prosperous existence. This preposterous notion, according to the author, has been the starting point America's troubles. Actually problem lay in fundamental nature of capitalist economy. Attempts to reverse this trend triggered counter revolutionary wars in Asia, Latin America. The above feature forms essence of this book; this idea continues to permeate the book.
Williams provide fresh interpretation on the onset of Cold War. He holds Truman administration accountable for the coming of iron curtain in Eastern Europe. Firstly in immediate postwar years US taking advantage of its economic might tried to extend its 'open door' policy into Eastern Europe. Further exploiting atomic monopoly the President tried to reverse political order which emerged in areas under Soviet control.
We may pause here try to establish reasons behind America's post war hostility toward Soviet Union. Unlike Britain which during the days of the empire could invest and dominate worldwide, America upon the end of World War II inherited a divided world.
Soviet economy with its emphasis on industrial self sufficiency apart from shutting the door US investment was in the process of curtailing imports substantially. With the success of Communist revolution 1/3rd of world's population had wrenched free from capitalist sphere influence. With so much production capacity lying idle, US by the end of World War II was haunted by a spectre of another depression. Challenge before America -- challenges her still-wheather market will shrink.
Marshall plan leading to massive post war reconstruction Western Europe must be seen from this angle. Rebuilding war-ravaged economies stimulated economic growth in US. Thus in my opinion Marshall plan must not be construed as a manifestation of American altruism; it was motivated by economic self interest.
Author's stress upon market forces dictating the American destiny broadly agrees with Marxian interpretation of History. Perhaps this was reason why Williams was dubbed Marxist, Stalinist by conservative, liberal elite of his country. This book deserves to be read by those who believe current anti American sentiment sweeping the world stems from sheer envy for American prosperity.
Tim, December 31, 2009
Creates a clear path through 20th century American history
The fact that this book has become a classic is hardly debatable. Williams' examination of American foreign policy is now in its fourth printing with this 50th anniversary edition. The book takes a detailed look at "The Open Door Policy" which evolved out The Open Door Notes of the late 19th century. It shows that, for better or worse, American Capitalism had to find and constantly expand into foreign markets in order for there to be freedom and prosperity at home.
Williams argues that not only American leaders but the general population internalized this belief so deeply that it was considered the very basis of morality in the world. Any other way of looking at society was believed to be simply wrong, and in fact, evil. Williams undoubtedly knew that this way of looking at Capitalism, and the world at large, coincided directly with the predictions of Marx concerning Capitalism's globalization. The Policy of the Open Door can be used to explain the objectives of every foreign military excursion we have undertaken since the end of the 1800's.
It continues to this day in our oil-hungry drive for control of the nations in the Middle East and South Asia. It creates real and imagined enemies that have accounted for the build up of America's military might over the years. Overall I found this examination of American foreign policy to be quite satisfactory and rational in explaining the successes and failures of American actions over the years. Where I would criticize Williams is in his characterization of America's leaders having a truly benevolent anti-colonial attitude towards the lesser nations in which America invested and set up "trade".
Williams argued repeatedly, and the commentators in the 50th anniversary edition did as well, that the government really believed they were benefiting mankind as a whole by not only exporting America's goods, but American values, and that the only "Tragedy" was the failure of these policies. I think it a bit uncritical to state this unequivocally. To argue that American leaders (both government and civilian) did NOT know that they were exploiting nations and purposely directing the trade to benefit Americans regardless of the effect on foreigners is quite bold. I believe that the greed of Americans and the drive that is inherent in Capitalistic countries meant that these leaders knew EXACTLY what they were doing, and that they had little true regard for the welfare of nations.
Our failure to see that there is more than one way for societies to organize themselves is certainly a problem of ignorance in American culture, and Williams is right to argue that blaming America's leaders becomes a scapegoat. Americans need to change themselves first and realize the error of their ways...that it will cause destruction at home and abroad...before we will see any change in leadership and our destructive policies.
However, the American empire is really not that different than others in history. The drive for power becomes all consuming, and ultimately leads to disregard for humanity...unless that humanity happens to be at the top of the American food chain.
|
|
|
Oct 03, 2015 | fortruss.blogspot.be
October 1, 2015 | Fort Russ
Translated from German by Tom Winter
Translator's note: I like satire: just change a few words, and this could be your newspaper, or some pages in the Congressional Record. Satire actually helps one realize what is going on.
The Federal government of Germany wants to supply weapons to insurgents in the US.
"The red line has been crossed!" With these words, a visibly frayed Foreign Minister Steinmeier appeared this morning before the press. "With the murder of yet another black activist, the Obama regime once again shows its ugly head!". Background: On August 09, the totally unarmed black civil rights activists Michael Brown was shot by police. Now on August 19, another black activist in St. Louis, not far from Ferguson, has been shot in cold blood by white policemen."The world can not continue to stand idly by," Steinmeier stressed at the press conference. "Here are peaceful human rights activists protesting against heavily armed police in a profoundly racist apartheid regime."
Therefore, the point now been reached, "in which Germany, too, must take responsibility for the oppressed peoples of the world," said Steinmeier.
As several media have unanimously reported, the government is now considering supplying arms to the rebels.
Next comes consideration what to supply in support of the rebels in Ferguson: protective vests, helmets, and night vision devices, and light infantry weapons?
Many MPs in the government coalition feel this does not go far enough. Given that the police and National Guard are geared up with weapons of war like an army, several CDU MPs are calling for supplying the rebels with heavier munitions. "We are currently discussing the proposals," an unnamed deputy is quoted. "We cannot rule out that the weapons may end up falling into the wrong hands."
In view of these events in the US, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen will not rule out the use of Bundeswehr soldiers. However, out of sensitivity and respect for the local activists "only colored members of the Bundeswehr would participate in such a mission."
|
|
|
Sep 30. 2015 | The Guardian
Revelations about the hack that allowed Greek politicians to be spied on in 2004 come at a time when the White House is set to announce its encryption policyJust as it seems the White House is close to finally announcing its policy on encryption - the FBI has been pushing for tech companies like Apple and Google to insert backdoors into their phones so the US government can always access users' data -= new Snowden revelations and an investigation by a legendary journalist show exactly why the FBI's plans are so dangerous.
One of the biggest arguments against mandating backdoors in encryption is the fact that, even if you trust the United States government never to abuse that power (and who does?), other criminal hackers and foreign governments will be able to exploit the backdoor to use it themselves. A backdoor is an inherent vulnerability that other actors will attempt to find and try to use it for their own nefarious purposes as soon as they know it exists, putting all of our cybersecurity at risk.
In a meticulous investigation, longtime NSA reporter James Bamford reported at the Intercept Tuesday that the NSA was behind the notorious "Athens Affair". In surveillance circles, the Athens Affair is stuff of legend: after the 2004 Olympics, the Greek government discovered that an unknown attacker had hacked into Vodafone's "lawful intercept" system, the phone company's mechanism of wiretapping phone calls. The attacker spied on phone calls of the president, other Greek politicians and journalists before it was discovered.
According to Bamford's story, all this happened after the US spy agency cooperated with Greek law enforcement to keep an eye on potential terrorist attacks for the Olympics. Instead of packing up their surveillance gear, they covertly pointed it towards the Greek government and its people. But that's not all: according to Snowden documents that Bamford cited, this is a common tactic of the NSA. They often attack the "lawful intercept" systems in other countries to spy on government and citizens without their knowledge:
Exploiting the weaknesses associated with lawful intercept programs was a common trick for NSA. According to a previously unreleased top-secret PowerPoint presentation from 2012, titled "Exploiting Foreign Lawful Intercept Roundtable", the agency's "countries of interest" for this work included, at that time, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt and others. The presentation also notes that NSA had about 60 "Fingerprints" - ways to identify data - from telecom companies and industry groups that develop lawful intercept systems, including Ericsson, as well as Motorola, Nokia and Siemens.It's the exact nightmare scenario security experts have warned about when it comes to backdoors: they are not only available to those that operate them "legally", but also to those who can hack into them to spy without anyone's knowledge. If the NSA can do it, so can China, Russia and a host of other malicious actors.
... ... ...
Disclosure: Trevor Timm works for Freedom of the Press Foundation, which is one of the many civil liberties organizations to have called on the White House to support strong encryption.
TDM MCL -> LePloumesCleau 30 Sep 2015 21:21You are getting very warm near the real reasons why the government does not want your to have full privacy....encryption (of a certain type, not your usual off the shelf type mind you), is the threat that all power greedy controlling tyrant governments phreak out about....they tell you it's about national security...
if you don't find the contradiction in that line of thinking...you are not thinking carefully.
which is precisely what the elites desire..you ! no thinking...do what you are told..get in line..work hard...don't ask questions...
this is the world powers at work...and the minions of narrow minded geeks that support them in exchange for unbelievable amounts of money, influence and true freedom...it's ironic, really..that the world's smartest people have to steal your power from you, in order to have any themselves.
but it is what makes the current regimes' clock ticking.
TDM MCL -> Ehsan Tabari 30 Sep 2015 21:16
only by the most self favored moralistic nationalist bigotry can one assume that a "certain" kind of government can pull off mass surveillance "responsibly"!
and apparently, the USA would have you believe there is some significant difference in how well they perform the freedom robbing than their comrades..
I call them both tyrants..how bout them apples?!
TDM MCL -> ACJB 30 Sep 2015 21:12
what makes you believe that ALL NON-TRIVIAL communications are not being surveilled in real time at this moment, now?
If any entity of any significance is communicating, it is surely being tracked... this isn't some conspiratorial thinking either...
The vast reach and capacity for surveillance infrastructure is many time more then necessary to capture all real time communications. The most important significant communications are in fact the target...
Mom sending her sister a recipe on her aol account never registers....the "machine"...listens specifically.. it is far more intelligent and directed than most people understand.
But it also has the capacity to target just about anything..and that is the danger... What happens to the newsie or the everyday fella that takes note of something very disturbing...illegal even..or morally objectionable?
Remember why the tor network was designed for...mostly to allow people that could not talk freely to do so..in warzones..or where their discussions would bring grave danger to them and others....
Tor was hacked and it a dead animal to privacy for over 6 years now...don't use it, unless you want to the information to be used against you...
There are very few private venues anymore...the world has gone to shit
TDM MCL -> Crashman55 30 Sep 2015 20:58It happens more often than most people understand.
If you want to get a reality test of this, here is how you too can verify that the spy agencies are very prevalent in every day communications.
btw: this simple type of test, is best applies using several of the off the shelf encryption programs ...in this way, you get verification of what snowden and many others have acknowledged for quite some time.
a. create a secure email ...join a secure vpn..use encrypted off the shelf s/w for your message.
b. send "someone" that you know ..that you call first ...that wants to play along...and within the email message...write some off the wall content about terrorism...bombs...etc..use all the sorted "key words"..it's easy to locate a list...google is your friend. Just make sure they understand that the purpose of the test to to verify that security exists..you will find..it doesn't...
c. it is best that your "friend" be localed outside of the us...middle east ...or russia...or china...ukraine...gernamny.,.,..etc..you get the idea.
d. repeat, rinse and wash using all the garden variety of the shelf security...PGP...GPG...CRYPTZONE...SYMANTEC...HPSECURE...ETC..ETC...DO ANY AND ALL OF THEM THAT YOU LIKE TO TEST. Fire them out like a shotgun...if you can enlist the help of hundreds to chain the mail along, even better.
When the agencies contact you...and they will depending on how authentic you have decided to mask your traffic and how authentic they consider your email content exchange merited inspection...you will discover what anyone who has actually used encyption in a real world way has come to understand...
if you are using typical commercially available encryption..there is NO privacy.
meaning it is not simple possible to crack..but easily...
Zhubajie1284 GoldMoney 30 Sep 2015 20:29Facebook and Twitter were banned in China after someone posted a bunch of gruesome photos from some rioting in Xinjiang. It looked to me, as an outsider, that someone was trying to provoke anti-Muslim rioting elsewhere in China. It would be reasonable for Chinese security people to suspect the CIA or some other US agency famous for destabilizing foreign governments. The US had already announced it's strategic pivot towards Asia, which can easily be interpreted as a declaration of Cold War on China.
I don't know the whole truth of the incident, but people in PR China have good reason to be suspicious.
now, what is the risk...you may be harassed..but unless I am missing some new law, none of this type of testing is unlawful...
for real world security that works...similar kinds of penetration tests are used as above....
hey you can even honey pot a public network if you wanted to....you know just to prove to yourself there is no such thing as secrecy achieved by using a public library or a "shared" computer.
note: one of the first indications that you are being surveilled, is that there will a subtle but noted performance hit on your machine..if you attach a security gateway with logging, even better...or a high end hardware firewall-gateway, that sniffs...
watch also for some very interesting emails to hit all of your "other" accounts.
if you do this, I can predict at least the following:
your machine will take a hit...
you will get notified most likely by the FBI, via your isp.
if you do this on your smartphone and that is linked to other accounts..you can guarantee to have spread malware abundantly to all other accounts linked.
if the FBI asks that you reveal the content of emails...ask them to show you first...and grin very large when you say that...if it's a low end non-tech....force them to gain a warrant...and contact your lawyer...is it a waste of time for law enforcement to show their hand in how intimately they have backended encyption..? or is worth it to you to understand that it is common..and secret..and very broad...
that time when making things better is waning...and narrowing..if you aren't willing to take a stand and object and posit your own resistance to overreaching spying..then the awful dreadful future that awaits you, is just as much your own fault.
that is where I land on the issue.
for the issue, now...not later!take a stand!
TDM MCL martinusher 30 Sep 2015 20:27
the real issue with the "legal tacK' wrt to halting the fed from building backdoors or mandating them, is the reality that most of the high level secret business of spy agencies DEFY any law. As is the case with most software and hardware corporations..there is massive financial and intelligence capitol that depends on building backdoors in secret..sharing them with the government simply provides "cover"...
the real threat of all of this of course is the very reason why the constitution was written and preoccupied with protecting freedom and liberty...eventually, abuses from a tyranny government or fascist state comes into power.
some say we have already passes that threshold...given the broad "known" abuses of the 300+ secret spy agencies and the secret laws that not only authorize them but threaten companies who do not comply...you really can't deny the fact that the target is you and me. And sometimes, although, seemingly unproven, some existential external terror organization.
I've long since held that a formal security arrangement can implemented by ISP's where ALL internet traffic is routed...and where the most inteligent and efficient means to shut down malware and other activities that are unlawful and harmful...
I has never been seriously considered or even suggested by the government .....you have to serious be suspicious why that has never been considered...
perhaps too much intelligent security programs, would put all of the security industry and fear agencies out of business...What else would they do with their time...
I have zero faith in the US government to do the right thing anymore..they have been vacant at their core responsibility to protect its citizens. They have built a wall of mistrust by their abuses.
to the technologically talented, what this all means is that the US government has created a niche market that is growing ever larger...and that is to establish highly secure networks for end users. It also happens to make them appear to be criminals.
Imagine that...a software engineer who is actually doing the business of protecting a persons right to privacy...immediately falls into the long list of persons of interest!
the government has parted company with its responsibilities..and has created a adversarial rife with the people of its own country...I give it less than 10 years before the people perform their own arab spring...it really is going to get very bad in this country.
beelzebob 30 Sep 2015 17:34
This is all very interesting from a certain standpoint. 21 CFR Part 11 requires all drug companies, and other companies doing business before the FDA to take reasonable steps to ensure the security of all of their data to guarantee that the data are not tampered with. If the FBI and CIA are inserting backdoors into electronic communications devices, defined broadly to include everything from telephones to the Internet, there is no reasonable way to ensure that unauthorized parties can not use these devices to alter drug company data. Thus, it appears that drug companies, and their employees, contractors and suppliers, can not use the internet or anything connected to the internet as part of their FDA regulated operations.
kenalexruss 30 Sep 2015 14:02
Data is big business and ironically, only serves big business. The US government couldn't tell it's head from its ass regarding the stuff, but the data is critical for corporations. Since corporations are people and dictate government policy and are also the primary government interest, there will be back doors. Apple, google, microsoft, et.al. are ALL big business and they don't want you knowing how they really feel about it, so they feign objections. It's all about money, as usual.
martinusher 30 Sep 2015 13:23
There was an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times yesterday that suggested that adding backdoors or otherwise hacking into people's computers was a violation of the 3rd Amendment.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gatto-surveillance-3rd-amendment-20150929-story.html
Quite apart from that never making it past the Roberts court (although it might be worth trying) I daresay proponents of universal surveillance will argue that businesses aren't covered by this so hacking into servers &tc. is OK.
Government agencies do appear to be out of control. Its not the snooping so much as their general ineffectiveness when it comes to crime and the Internet -- you can get your identity stolen, your back account hacked and so on and they shrug as if to say "What's this got to do with us?". The seem to be only interested in a very narrow range of political activities.
Phil429 30 Sep 2015 12:14
Coming out strongly against such a mandate [to eliminate everyone's security] would be huge on multiple fronts for the Obama administration: it would send a strong message for human rights around the world, it would make it much harder for other governments to demand backdoors from US tech companies and it would also strengthen the US economy.
Only if you assume some connection between the administration's stated policies and its actions.
GoldMoney -> RoughSleeper 30 Sep 2015 12:05I don't care about mass surveillance, because I have nothing to hide! I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear, those that are trying to hide private lives, must have something to fear"....Signed GCHQ/MI5/Police/Council troll
haha - I loved that post, so true!
GoldMoney -> koichan 30 Sep 2015 11:49The TSA travel locks for use in air travel have a backdoor and now can be opened by pretty much anyone in the world now. Now imagine the same thing applying to bank transactions, credit/debit card payments and so on...
Very good point.
By having backdoors you compromise the entire security of the system and make it vulnerable to attackers in general.
Snowden deserves the Nobel peace prize if you ask me....
While we are on the topic - lets take back the prize from Obama....
GoldMoney -> LePloumesCleau 30 Sep 2015 11:39If people don't trust the security of encryption then there is no point in using it.
Exactly right.
I think the internet as we know it will break down in the future as countries will not trust foreign technology companies colluding with their home intelligence agencies.
Its already happening in China - most western technology companies like FB, Twitter, etc. are banned there for fear they could be used by the US to spy on Chinese citizens or to orchestrate a "Chinese Spring" there....
Crashman55 30 Sep 2015 11:13You can go online and get the source codes off of several excellent encryption websites, and then develop your own. My brother and I did this, and we were sending our weekly NFL football picks back and forth each week. We stopped after the FBI came to my brother's place of business, after a couple months, and questioned him. When my brother asked how they able to even look at our emails, they said they had a computer program in place that kicked out encrypted emails. After being threatened with arrest at his job in front of everyone, he showed them the unencrypted versions.
They said that our silliness had wasted valuable FBI time and resources. If you don't think Big Brother is watching...
Peter Dragonas -> Ehsan Tabari 30 Sep 2015 10:25Why do you think the anti-American Muslim Community and others, call us TERRORISTS? OUR COMPASS is as faulty as ????????. The world situation is a mirror of Grandiose Individuals who look down on reality. Reality is an obstruction to their neediness for attracting attention and control.
Peter Dragonas 30 Sep 2015 10:19Another major "foundation section" removed from our Country's integrity. Sick, paranoia, similar to the "J. EDGAR HOOVER ERA & CONTINUATION THROUGH HIS LEGACY FUNDS TO THIS DAY". Could this be true, I could think the "The Athens Affair" predates the elements that brought down Greece, in favor of pushing Turkey to becoming the American doorway into Asia & the Middle East. Just a theory. Yet, where there is smoke, something is cooking, which requires political FIRE.
RoughSleeper 30 Sep 2015 08:50I don't care about mass surveillance, because I have nothing to hide! I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear, those that are trying to hide private lives, must have something to fear"....Signed GCHQ/MI5/Police/Council troll
I don't care about State cameras recording everyone out, because I don't go out. I don't care about those that do.
I don't care about State cameras recording wives, girlfriends, children, because I don't have any. I don't care about those that do.
I don't care about the right to privacy because I have nothing of any value to hide. I don't care about those that have.
I don't care about freedom of speech because I have nothing of any value to say. I don't care about those that have.
I don't care about freedom of the press because I have nothing of any value to write. I don't care about those that have.
I don't care about freedom of thought, because I have no thoughts of any value. I don't care about those that have.
I don't care about the right to privacy of intellectual property, because I have no intelligence of any value. I don't care about those that have.
I don't care about the right to privacy of bank details, because I have nothing of any value in my bank account. I don't care about those that have.
I don't care about the right to privacy of love letters, because I have no love of any value. I don't care about those that have.
I don't care about the rights of HR activists, because I don't contribute anything to HRs. I don't care about those that do.
I don't care about society, community, future, because I don't contribute anything to them. I don't care about those that do.
I don't care about the right to privacy of my vote, because we have no democracy of any value anyway. I don't care about countries that have.
I don't care about Gypsies, Blacks, Jews, Invalids, Unions, socialists, Untermensch, because I am not one. I don't care about those that are.
I only care about me, here & now! It's look after number one, as the Tories tell us.
koichan 30 Sep 2015 08:39
For the less technically minded, heres another example of whats wrong with government backdoors:
http://boingboing.net/2015/09/17/3d-print-your-own-tsa-travel-s.html
The TSA travel locks for use in air travel have a backdoor and now can be opened by pretty much anyone in the world now. Now imagine the same thing applying to bank transactions, credit/debit card payments and so on...
LePloumesCleau 30 Sep 2015 08:10
I would only ever trust open source encryption software. I don't trust the "encryption" built into Windows or Apple software at all.
If people don't trust the security of encryption then there is no point in using it.
|
|
|
Zero Hedge
DuttiCongratulations to Russia and Iran to standing up [to neocons strategy], I hope their strategy will work.
Why can Saudi-Arabia with the approval of the western powers bomb a foreign country, Jemen, without Jemen having attacked Saudi? Of course Saudi claims they do it at the request of the president Hadi of Jemen who fled to Saudi. If that is accepted by western powers, then how would those western powers have reacted if Russia would have attacked and bombed the Ukraine, at the request of the democratically elected president Yanukovich who fled to Russia?
I think the house of Saud is setting itself up for real bad long-term Karma or, if you prefer, the Saudis create a lot of enemies for themselves by destroying the people and their neighboring country of Jemen. Reminds me of why Americans are often times not liked in many parts of the world.
Americans often claim that Assad is a Tyrant, a Murderer and a Dictator and that's why he must go. Why does the US not call the House of Saud by the same names and try to overthrow them? I guess because the House of Saud is an obedient servant of the US, and Assad is cooperating with a different power - Russia.
The western mainstream media treats the Saudi atrocities in Jemen as a sideshow, while blowing up the story about Assad and demonizing him. What's the alternative to Assad?
Let's see how other countries, Iraq and Libya, with worse Tyrants - Saddam Hussein and Ghaddafi have "developed", thanks to western intervention.
In addition, the US is always talking about the evil Iranians, and how they took American hostages back in 1979. You don't hear much about the fact that the US staged a coup in 1953, deposed the democratically elected president Mossadegh and installed the Shah, who, just like the House of Saud became a servant for US interests. After the Iranians were finally able to get rid of the Shah who had been in power for over 25 years they understandably did not have much love left for the US. The pendulum went to the other side.
If you look at all these facts in context, it's easy to see the hypocrisy of the US and it's western "allies".
Lost My Shorts
It sounds like -- we are covertly supporing ISIS while pretending to attack them, and getting huffy because Putin is really attacking them. Or wandering around like a headless chicken. Or just wasting money. Not sure.
Crash Overide
"Remind me ... WTF are we doing in Syria ?!"
Trying to profit from destruction and keep control on the US civilian population through fear of boogeyman terrorists.
Just remember, when they fail abroad, they will start chaos at home.
Lock and load my fellow countrymen... eyes open.
|
|
|
October 02, 2015 | Information Clearing House
...Vladimir Putin in his U.N. address summarized his indictment of a U.S. foreign policy that has produced a series of disasters in the Middle East that we did not need the Russian leader to describe for us.
- Fourteen years after we invaded Afghanistan, Afghan troops are once again fighting Taliban forces for control of Kunduz. Only 10,000 U.S. troops still in that ravaged country prevent the Taliban's triumphal return to power.
- A dozen years after George W. Bush invaded Iraq, ISIS occupies its second city, Mosul, controls its largest province, Anbar, and holds Anbar's capital, Ramadi, as Baghdad turns away from us - to Tehran. The cost to Iraqis of their "liberation"? A hundred thousand dead, half a million widows and fatherless children, millions gone from the country and, still, unending war.
- How has Libya fared since we "liberated" that land? A failed state, it is torn apart by a civil war between an Islamist "Libya Dawn" in Tripoli and a Tobruk regime backed by Egypt's dictator.
- Then there is Yemen. Since March, when Houthi rebels chased a Saudi sock puppet from power, Riyadh, backed by U.S. ordinance and intel, has been bombing that poorest of nations in the Arab world. Five thousand are dead and 25,000 wounded since March. And as the 25 million Yemeni depend on imports for food, which have been largely cut off, what is happening is described by one U.N. official as a "humanitarian catastrophe." "Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years," said the international head of the Red Cross on his return. On Monday, the wedding party of a Houthi fighter was struck by air-launched missiles with 130 guests dead. Did we help to produce that?
What does Putin see as the ideological root of these disasters?
"After the end of the Cold War, a single center of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think they were strong and exceptional, they knew better."
Then, adopting policies "based on self-conceit and belief in one's exceptionality and impunity," this "single center of domination," the United States, began to export "so-called democratic" revolutions.
How did it all turn out? Says Putin:
"An aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions. … Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life."
Is Putin wrong in his depiction of what happened to the Middle East after we plunged in? Or does his summary of what American interventions have wrought echo the warnings made against them for years by American dissenters?
Putin concept of "state sovereignty" is this: "We are all different, and we should respect that. No one has to conform to a single development model that someone has once and for all recognized as the right one." The Soviet Union tried that way, said Putin, and failed. Now the Americans are trying the same thing, and they will reach the same end.
Unlike most U.N. speeches, Putin's merits study. For he not only identifies the U.S. mindset that helped to produce the new world disorder, he identifies a primary cause of the emerging second Cold War.
To Putin, the West's exploitation of its Cold War victory to move NATO onto Russia's doorstep caused the visceral Russian recoil. The U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine that overthrew the elected pro-Russian government led straight to the violent reaction in the pro-Russian Donbas.
What Putin seems to be saying to us is this: If America's elites continue to assert their right to intervene in the internal affairs of nations, to make them conform to a U.S. ideal of what is a good society and legitimate government, then we are headed for endless conflict. And, one day, this will inevitably result in war, as more and more nations resist America's moral imperialism.
Nations have a right to be themselves, Putin is saying. They have the right to reflect in their institutions their own histories, beliefs, values and traditions, even if that results in what Americans regard as illiberal democracies or authoritarian capitalism or even Muslim theocracies.
There was a time, not so long ago, when Americans had no problem with this, when Americans accepted a diversity of regimes abroad. Indeed, a belief in nonintervention abroad was once the very cornerstone of American foreign policy.
Wednesday and Thursday, Putin's forces in Syria bombed the camps of U.S.-backed rebels seeking to overthrow Assad. Putin is sending a signal: Russia is willing to ride the escalator up to a collision with the United States to prevent us and our Sunni Arab and Turkish allies from dumping over Assad, which could bring ISIS to power in Damascus.
Perhaps it is time to climb down off our ideological high horse and start respecting the vital interests of other sovereign nations, even as we protect and defend our own.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
|
|
|
Antiwar.com
If there was any doubt that Washington has learned absolutely nothing since George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, then President Obama's address to the United Nations has confirmed the world's worst fears. It was an oration that combined the most egregious lies with the wooly-minded "idealism" that has been such a destructive force in world affairs since the days of Woodrow Wilson. First, the lies:"The evidence is overwhelming that the Assad regime used such weapons on August 21st. U.N. inspectors gave a clear accounting that advanced rockets fired large quantities of sarin gas at civilians. These rockets were fired from a regime-controlled neighborhood and landed in opposition neighborhoods. It's an insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the regime carried out this attack."
The evidence is far from "overwhelming," and the only insult to human reason is the dogmatic repetition of this American talking point. As Seymour Hersh pointed out in the London Review of Books:
"Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country's civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad."
And this isn't the only time this President hasn't told the whole story when it comes to the findings of US intelligence agencies: that's why fifty intelligence analysts are in open revolt at his cherry-picking of intelligence in order to show we're making progress in the fight against the Islamic State. And now we have former CIA chief David Petraeus, who was forced to resign, openly coming out with a proposal that we ally with the al-Nusra Front in order to overthrow Assad and edge out the Islamic State. Shouldn't that arouse suspicion that Washington has been covertly cooperating with al-Nusra – the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda – all along, and that Petraeus merely wants to formalize his deal with the Islamist Devil?
Here's another lie:
"[I]n Libya, when the Security Council provided a mandate to protect civilians, America joined a coalition that took action. Because of what we did there, countless lives were saved and a tyrant could not kill his way back to power.
"I know that some now criticize the action in Libya as an object lesson, that point to the problem that the country now confronts, a democratically elected government struggling to provide security, armed groups in some places, extremists ruling parts of the fractured land. And so these critics argue that any intervention to protect civilians is doomed to fail. Look at Libya.
"And no one's more mindful of these problems than I am, for they resulted in the death of four outstanding U.S. citizens who were committed to the Libyan people, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, a man whose courageous efforts helped save the city of Benghazi.
"But does anyone truly believe that the situation in Libya would be better, if Gadhafi had been allowed to kill, imprison or brutalize his people into submission? It's far more likely that without international action, Libya would now be engulfed in civil war and bloodshed."
It is beyond embarrassing that the President of the United States is going before the world assembly of nations proclaiming that he and his allies prevented Libya from being "engulfed in civil war and bloodshed." What does he think is happening there at this very moment?
The reality is that the intelligence did not show a "genocide" was in the making. Officials at the Defense Intelligence Agency – the same agency now being accused by its analysts of "cooking" intelligence to suit the administration's political agenda – could provide no empirical evidence for the assertions made by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Col. Moammar Gaddafi was planning on slaughtering civilians en masse.
The claims made by the Obama administration that intervention was the only alternative to "genocide" were contested, at the time, by Alan J. Kuperman, writing in the Boston Globe:
"The best evidence that Khadafy did not plan genocide in Benghazi is that he did not perpetrate it in the other cities he had recaptured either fully or partially – including Zawiya, Misurata, and Ajdabiya, which together have a population greater than Benghazi."
"It is hard to know," Kuperman continues, "whether the White House was duped by the rebels or conspired with them to pursue regime-change on bogus humanitarian grounds." With the truth-challenged Hillary Clinton at the helm of this misbegotten misadventure, it isn't at all hard to draw the conclusion that the "genocide" claim was an outright lie perpetrated by the administration and its Libyan Islamist allies.
That these brazen falsehoods are coupled with phrases oozing with liberal "idealism," calls for "international cooperation," and proclamations that all Washington desires is "peace" throughout the Middle East and the world makes for a toxic and particularly nauseating cocktail. Bashar al-Assad is a "tyrant," but the regime of Gen. Abdel al-Sisi, which overthrew the democratically elected government, is merely guilty of making "decisions inconsistent with inclusive democracy."
Speaking of Assad, Obama's focus wasn't on the spread of the Islamic State but on the Syrian strongman, who is barely holding on to power by his fingernails. He cited Washington's support for the so-called "moderate" rebels, but complained that – for some unspecified reason – "extremist groups have still taken root to exploit the crisis." What he didn't mention – although Putin did – is that these alleged "moderates" have gone over to the extremists in droves, raising the question: were these US-funded Good Guys always Bad Guys in an ill-fitting disguise?
[Editorial note: This is the first part of a two-part column contrasting President Obama's UN speech to the address delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The second part, dealing with Putin's remarks, will be published on Friday.]
|
|
|
September 30, 2015 | Asia Times
The best thing about the ninety-minute meeting between the US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in New York on Monday was that they agreed there was not going to be any recourse to rhetoric. Putin, accordingly, handled the media himself and the White House refrained from releasing the customary readout.
A senior US official said the talks were "productive" and he calmed down the American media, explaining "this was not a situation where either one of them [Obama or Putin] was seeking to score points". Putin's interaction with the Russian media conveyed the impression that he too was satisfied with the outcome of the meeting.
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had previously met US Secretary of State John Kerry and handed over to him a 'flow chart' on the implementation of the Minsk agreements on Ukraine. Indeed, Putin also used an interview with Charlie Rose at CBS to speak without diplomatese on the Kremlin thinking regarding Syria and Ukraine.
In remarks to Russian media, Putin described his talks with Obama as "very useful and what is particularly pleasant, it was very sincere". He struck a positive tone, saying the American side explained their position "quite clearly" and "indeed, surprising as it may seem, we have many coinciding points and opinions".
Putin acknowledged the differences, but refused to be drawn into them – except on the central issue that the air strikes in Syria by the US-led coalition are incompatible with international law.
... ... ...
Obama could not have agreed with the line of Russian thinking on strengthening "al-Assad's army" – at least, not yet openly. But an increasingly wider audience in the West has learnt to live with that thought. Putin simply drew satisfaction for the moment that despite differences, "we have agreed to work together".
However, a senior US official maintained separately that the two sides fundamentally disagreed on the role that President Bashar al-Assad will play in resolving the civil conflict in Syria. The official explained that while Moscow sees Assad as a bulwark against the extremists, the Americans see him as continuing to fan the flames of a sectarian conflict in Syria.
Of course, Putin insists that the future of al-Assad is not for outsiders to propose but is the exclusive business of Syrian citizens. The principle is unquestionable. The US faces an acute dilemma here insofar as in a democratic election, Assad's re-election as president still remains a strong possibility, since secular-minded Syrians cutting across religious sects or ethnic divides would still see him as the best bet against an extremist takeover.
... ... ...
The discussions relating to Syria and the Islamic State apparently marginalized the Ukraine crisis, but tensions are not so acute on that front lately. Putin hinted that the US is now putting its weight behind the Normandy Format (comprising the leaderships of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine), allowing it to spearhead the conflict resolution in Ukraine. A Normandy Format summit meeting is due to take place Friday in Paris.... ... ...
|
|
|
September 29, 2015
In his Orwellian September 28, 2015 speech to the United Nations, President Obama said that if democracy had existed in Syria, there never would have been a revolt against Assad. By that, he meant ISIL. Where there is democracy, he said, there is no violence of revolution.
This was his threat to promote revolution, coups and violence against any country not deemed a "democracy." In making this hardly veiled threat, he redefined the word in the international political vocabulary. Democracy is the CIA's overthrow of Mossedegh in Iran to install the Shah. Democracy is the overthrow of Afghanistan's secular government by the Taliban against Russia. Democracy is the Ukrainian coup behind Yats and Poroshenko. Democracy is Pinochet. It is "our bastards," as Lyndon Johnson said with regard to the Latin American dictators installed by U.S. foreign policy.
A century ago the word "democracy" referred to a nation whose policies were formed by elected representatives. Ever since ancient Athens, democracy was contrasted to oligarchy and aristocracy. But since the Cold War and its aftermath, that is not how U.S. politicians have used the term. When an American president uses the word "democracy," he means a pro-American country following U.S. neoliberal policies. No matter if a country is a military dictatorship or the government was brought in by a coup (euphemized as a Color Revolution) as in Georgia or Ukraine. A "democratic" government has been re-defined simply as one supporting the Washington Consensus, NATO and the IMF. It is a government that shifts policy-making out of the hands of elected representatives to an "independent" central bank, whose policies are dictated by the oligarchy centered in Wall Street, the City of London and Frankfurt.
Given this American re-definition of the political vocabulary, when President Obama says that such countries will not suffer coups, violent revolution or terrorism, he means that countries safely within the U.S. diplomatic orbit will be free of destabilization sponsored by the U.S. State Department, Defense Department and Treasury. Countries whose voters democratically elect a government or regime that acts independently (or even that simply seeks the power to act independently of U.S. directives) will be destabilized, Syria style, Ukraine style or Chile style under General Pinochet. As Henry Kissinger said, just because a country votes in communists doesn't mean that we have to accept it. It is the style of "color revolutions" sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy.
In his United Nations reply, Russian President Putin warned against the "export of democratic revolution," meaning by the United States in support of its local factotums. ISIL is armed with U.S. weapons and its soldiers were trained by U.S. armed forces. In case there was any doubt, President Obama reiterated before the United Nations that until Syrian President Assad was removed in favor of one more submissive to U.S. oil and military policy, Assad was the major enemy, not ISIL.
"It is impossible to tolerate the present situation any longer," President Putin responded. Likewise in Ukraine. "What I believe is absolutely unacceptable," he said in his CBS interview on 60 Minutes, "is the resolution of internal political issues in the former USSR Republics, through "color revolutions," through coup d'états, through unconstitutional removal of power. That is totally unacceptable. Our partners in the United States have supported those who ousted Yanukovych. … We know who and where, when, who exactly met with someone and worked with those who ousted Yanukovych, how they were supported, how much they were paid, how they were trained, where, in which countries, and who those instructors were. We know everything."
Where does this leave U.S.-Russian relations? I hoped for a moment that perhaps Obama's harsh anti-Russian talk was to provide protective coloration for an agreement with Putin in their 5 o'clock meeting. Speak one way so as to enable oneself to act in another has always been his modus operandi, as it is for many politicians. But Obama remains in the hands of the neocons.
Where will this lead? There are many ways to think outside the box. What if Putin proposes to air-lift or ship Syrian refugees – up to a third of the population – to Europe, landing them in Holland and England, obliged under the Shengen rules to accept them?
Or what if he brings the best computer specialists and other skilled labor for which Syria is renowned to Russia, supplementing the flood of immigration from "democratic" Ukraine?
What if the joint plans announced on Sunday between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Russia to jointly fight ISIS – a coalition that US/NATO has refrained from joining – comes up against U.S. troops or even the main funder of ISIL, Saudi Arabia?
The game is out of America's hands now. All it is able to do is wield the threat of "democracy" as a weapon of coups to turn recalcitrant countries into Libyas, Iraqs and Syrias.
By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is "KILLING THE HOST: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy."
nippersdad, September 29, 2015 at 10:22 am
"We know who and where, when, who exactly met with someone and worked with those who ousted Yanukovich, how they were supported, how much they were paid, how they were trained, where, in which countries, and who those instructors were. We know everything."
That sounds like a pretty clear threat to the Democratic front runner for the Presidency to come to terms, or else. While it is good to see someone threatening accountability, it would be nice if it didn't have to come from Russia.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
nippersdad, September 29, 2015 at 1:41 pmSeptember 29, 2015 at 11:49 am
Accountability will not come from an Administration that made Victoria Nuland an Assistant Secretary of State in the first place.
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/13/the-mess-that-nuland-made/
No doubt, but I was kind of hoping that the progressive caucuses might make more of a fuss than they did over our "the king is dead, long live the king", foreign policy. That is, after all, what got many of them elected. It never ceases to amaze me how fast candidates become coopted by the establishment once elected.
Synoia, September 29, 2015 at 2:03 pm
The establishment has files on them. Hudson's piece reads as a prelude to war.
Nick, September 29, 2015 at 10:38 am
This post is nothing but tinfoil-hattery. I can assure you, the US is shedding no tears for the pain Russia is about to inflict on itself by putting Russian boots on the ground in Damascus.
OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 11:10 am
Did a latter-day Charlie Wilson tell you that? I have no doubt that the stuck-in-the-past meatheads in DC have a wet dream over just such a scenario. I also have no doubt that Russia (as well as China and Iran) have no intention of falling into such a trap. The ongoing peeling-off of Euro/NATO lemmings is as clear indication as any that the US will end up either backing off or try to go it alone. The latter is a recipe for disaster, as even Obama realizes. So right now it's all posturing for domestic consumption, behind the scenes things are a bit different as certain recent incidents would seem to indicate. But hey, we can dream the Russophobic/Slavophobic dreams, amiright?
lylo, September 29, 2015 at 12:05 pmYeah, my reading too.
I also have to point out how ironic it is that a country stuck in several unresolved conflicts that continue to drain resources and produce instability years later is hoping that, somehow, their opponents get suckered into a quagmire in a country they are already stuck in.
So, sure, I guess that's what they're hoping for. Makes about as much sense as anything else they've come up with recently (including direct confrontation with Russia just to enrich a few ME and corporate pals.)
And "tinfoil hattery" is generally used as things not accepted and proven. Which part of this isn't proven? US toppling democracies and installing dictators who we then call democratic? That we have less pull on the international stage than anytime in our lives? That the other bloc has a serious advantage in this conflict, and going forward? These are all facts…
washunate, September 30, 2015 at 12:10 pmGive Nick a little credit now; there is a shred of cleverness to the comment(!). He's trying to plant a big lie inside of the framing – namely, that the rise of IS is a legitimate rebellion within Syria.
When of course the truth is the opposite. It's IS that is the foreign invader; Russian boots on the ground would be working with the recognized government, not against it. Indeed, the comparison might inadvertently be quite apt. Syria looks more and more like a marker on the road from Pax Americana to a multipolar world. Just like the Soviet-Afghan war was a marker on the road from the Cold War to Pax Americana.
Perhaps another incident is a better comparison. Maybe Syria is our Suez moment.
Thure Meyer, September 29, 2015 at 11:15 am
Nick,
Tinfoil-hattery, interesting choice of words. So who's conspiracy are you talking about?
As to your assurance; well it would be a bit more convincing if you were to unveil your identity so that I know who speaks for all of us (US)...
readerOfTeaLeaves, September 29, 2015 at 2:32 pm
Oh, crikey Nick.
What codswaddle!As near as I can tell, the US Foreign Policy establishment is driven by think tanks that are funded by oil companies, Saudis, Israelis, and others for whom 'putting America first' means covering their own asses and letting the US military (and well-compensated military contractors) do all the heavy lifting.
As if that weren't bad enough, we also have the R2Pers ("responsibility to protect"), whose hypocrisy could gag a maggot - the R2Pers seem to think it is urgent to solve every other nation's (and corporations) problems - indeed, so very urgent that kids from Iowa, Arkansas, Louisiana, Idaho, etc should all be sent into harm's way in distant lands, whose languages the R2Pers don't happen to speak, whose histories the R2Pers are ignorant about, and whose cultural nuances are unknown to the R2Pers.
IOW, Washington DC appears to be awash in egoism and careerism.
I think that Russians have managed to figure that out.
washunate, September 30, 2015 at 11:54 am
I find it rather amusing that this is the best the Democratic establishment can throw at posts pointing out the idiocy of imperialism. How the Obots have fallen.
steelhead23, September 29, 2015 at 10:56 am
It isn't just the lies and abject stupidity that keeps the U.S. constantly at war, it is our alliances with repressive dictators, like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that is leading the U.S. toward confrontation with civilization, and Russia. Not so much a leader, the U.S. has become the militant vassal of KSA. The undying irony is that it was wealthy Saudis who started the most recent mess on 9/11/01. This will not end until the U.S. turns its back on the KSA.
Sufferin' Succotash, September 29, 2015 at 11:15 am
Or KSA self-destructs.
http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/collapse-saudi-arabia-inevitable-1895380679
Ranger Rick, September 29, 2015 at 11:00 am
Russia has always maintained that the Ukrainian revolution was CIA-backed if not -instigated. It's a shrewd move given the US's track record with regime change. No one will ever be sure if the new Ukrainian government is entirely legitimate or not.
What really gets terrifying is when you take a step back and realize that the 1800s imperialist regime never really changed. When you start talking about "superpower" or "regional power" you are no longer talking about power in the military or economic sense. These countries regularly meddle in, if not directly control, the politics in other countries. It honestly does not matter to the United States or Russia or any other country what your government chooses to do as long as it does what the other country wants.
NotTimothyGeithner, September 29, 2015 at 11:48 am
The Kiev rump failed to meet constitutional standards for impeachment even with the threats of the mob, and with elections just three or four months away in September following the Maidan event, there was no practical reason for a forceful removal of the government. Third party or not, the Kiev rump government has the same legality as the Confederacy. The "separatists" and the Crimeans saw their country dissolved by a mob, not an election with a regularly scheduled one on the horizon. The Ukraine was not a case where they would be waiting four years under a tyrant. If they had made it to September with electioneering issues, then the situation would be different, but as the current cabal didn't do that, they are akin to Jefferson Davis just with a better hand.
Americans as celebrators of the Declaration of Independence should note it is not legitimate to change established governing customs because your side might lose there has to be a litany of grievances with no possibility of redress. By Mr. Jefferson's standards, this country should have nothing to do with the Kiev government until the concerns of the separatists have been addressed. Unfortunately the use of law doesn't exist in this country.
Eureka Springs, September 29, 2015 at 11:11 am
Obamacrats rhetoric and behavior (policy) are both reminiscent and escalation of Bushco in so many ways.
Wasn't it Bush Jr. who said something along the line of "Democracies don't attack each other"?
NotTimothyGeithner, September 29, 2015 at 12:03 pm
It's just the old Democratic peace theory. It's utter garbage. I'm sure 43 said it because he repeated the last thing he heard anyway. World War I is pitched as a battle between old world tyrannical such as Germany (with universal male suffrage for its power base) versus shining beacons of democracy such as the UK and France which weren't quite democracies yet. Hitler sort of won a national election. Churchill was selected in a secret meeting when Chamberlain had to step down. So where is the democratic line? It's always been subjective test.
Of course, all governments rule by the consent of the governed.
JerseyJeffersonian, September 29, 2015 at 5:37 pm
Actually, Leander, the vaunted "independence" of the central banks of the US, Great Britain, and Deutschland is largely a fiction. And this very fiction has the effect of hyper-empowering both the financial sector and the oligarchs with whom the financial sector exists in a symbiotic relationship; in point of fact, these "independent" central banks are largely mere creatures of the financial sector and the symbiont oligarchs. The carefully cultivated appearance of independence is a sham under whose cover the truth about how central bank policies cater slavishly to the interests of the financial sector and oligarchs remains unrecognized.
Careerist movement back and forth between the central banks and the financial sector (along with the academic and think tank communities in which neo-liberalism reigns supreme as the only accepted school of economics) facilitates the group-think that culminates in the intellectual capture of the "independent" central banks. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Welcome to Naked Capitalism; our hosts provide us with a rich spread of knowledge and analysis, rather as Col. Lang does at his blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, at which I have also read your posts.
MaroonBulldog, September 29, 2015 at 11:13 pm
In United States administrative law, the word "independent" has an interesting meaning: it refers to an executive regulatory agency that is "independent of the president," in the sense that the president cannot easily remove the head of the agency. The Fed is independent in this sense: the president cannot easily fire Chair Yellen or any other member of the Fed's board of governors.
An agency can be "independent" in this sense and still completely captured by the industry it purports to regulate.
Yves Smith, September 30, 2015 at 3:42 am
*Sigh*
The Fed is NOT owned by banks.
Banks hold shares of non-voting preferred stock in regional Feds. The Board of Governors, which approves the hiring of all regional Fed presidents, is most assuredly part of the Federal government. The regional Feds are more like a nasty public-private partnership with a bad governance structure (as in the regional Fed boards on which banks have some, and I stress some, director seats, cannot hire or fire ANYONE at a regional Fed, they do not approve budgets or other policy actions. Their role is strictly advisory, although the regional Feds, being more than a little captured cognitively, give that advice a fair bit of weight.
To give an idea how much power those banks you incorrectly deem to be owners have: Congress is looking at passing a bill to cut the dividends of the all but small banks how hold shares in the Fed by 75%. Pray tell, can Congress tell a private company to cut its dividends?
TedWa, September 30, 2015 at 10:21 am
Hi Yves : I don't see any Fed "independence" in action and haven't for quite some time.
Max, September 29, 2015 at 11:40 amAh yes, the notoriously secular and definitely legitimate PDPA government of Afghanistan 'overthrown' by the US. Is that a joke? Has Michael Hudson ever read a book about the Afghan civil war, a highly complex, decade-plus asymmetrical conflict with constantly shifting actors and allegiances? Reducing it to a narrative about US imperialism is intellectually dishonest on its own (there is no evidence that the US ever provided material support to the Taliban – everything from HRW to internal US documents to the academic consensus to journalistic accounts such as Ahmed Rashid's Taliban (2001?) contradicts that claim), nevermind that the Khalqi-Parcham government was a Soviet puppet government and an imperial construct in its own right. Check out any works by Barnett Rubin (U Nebraska?) or Thomas Barfield (B.U.)
The Mujahideen debacle (Which is both a separable and conjoined issue to the rise of the Taliban depending on time frame) was a result of poor US oversight of Pakistan, an internal US policy failure (no accountability or human intelligence on the ground) and of course intimately tied to the USSR's campaign of genocide in Afghanistan. Yes, the CIA gave the ISI $2-3bil in loose change to funnel into the Mujahideen (which were not united in any meaningful sense at any point in time, and frequently factionalized over pork-barrel / ethnic / tribal issues), however, the US policy at the time was hands-off with regard to how that money was spent, and if you read Peter Tomsen's book about his time as HW's special envoy it becomes quite clear that the blinders were on in Washington with regard to what was actually happening there on the ground.
Here's a quick and outdated overview for anyone who would like to educate themselves about this conflict: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan2/Afghan0701-02.htm
I understand that the Russophilia on this blog runs strongly but the inhumane destruction visited upon the Afghan people by the USSR's geopolitics is and was sickening, imperialistic and functionally a genocide. How am I supposed to take any of this polemic seriously when the author can't even be bothered to read about a conflict? This is a prime example of ideology driving discourse. There are plenty of fair-game examples to call out the US's short-sighted and globally destructive foreign policy. I do not see the point in allowing ideology to cover for misinformation and misrepresentation of historical facts – that's the playbook of neoliberal hustlers.
Faroukh Bulsara, September 29, 2015 at 2:53 pm
"…the notoriously secular and definitely legitimate PDPA government of Afghanistan 'overthrown' by the US. Is that a joke?"
Umm, Max buddy, where in this article did Hudson say such a thing? Right, he didn't. But thanks for the Afghan history lesson anyway.
Max, September 29, 2015 at 3:13 pm
"Democracy is the overthrow of Afghanistan's secular government by the Taliban against Russia."
It's right there in the opening paragraph, and the accusation is rather explicit.
juliania, September 29, 2015 at 8:53 pm
That's an awkward sentence to be sure, Max – I puzzled over that one myself. I'm more in favor of this extract from Putin's speech at the UN:
". . .We should all remember the lessons of the past. For example, we remember examples from our Soviet past, when the Soviet Union exported social experiments, pushing for changes in other countries for ideological reasons, and this often led to tragic consequences and caused degradation instead of progress. . ."
Sort of 'puts paid' to trying to equate the Russian Federation with the Soviet Union, doesn't it?
OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 3:15 pm
Is that the same HRW that can't find evidence of Kiev purposefully targeting and killing civilians? The same HRW that has never said a thing about the US support for murderous regimes in Latin America? Or about US war crimes? Yeah OK, I will take their word on how Afghanistan went down, over the US' proven track record of destroying any and all left-leaning Third World governments from 1950 onward.
Max, September 29, 2015 at 3:38 pm
Attack one of my sources, fine – the others still exist in far greater numbers. Barnett Rubin is my favorite, his book "Blood on the Doorstep" is excellent.
Is everything part of the US capitalist plot or is there some verifiable source that you will accept without dismissing out of hand? You didn't even attempt to read the source.
The Afghan government was left leaning in the sense that it was more socially progressive than the population living outside of Kabul, all 80% of the country that the government did not control in fact; and their authoritarian approach to instituting gender equality and abolishing Islam had a disastrous effect on the government's popularity and tribal credit, which was and is necessary to gain the support of the rural population. Other than that it was your typical post-Stalinist tankie failed experiment in land redistribution and Party education apparatus that only served to create a new class of insular elites & alienating/disenfranchising the majority of the population while hamstringing developmental progress made by actual Afghans in the decades before the Soviets (and eventually Pakistan and the US) got their hands in the pot.
OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 3:55 pm
IOW, the Soviets and the US were like peas in a pod. Funny that the "accomplishments" cited by Empire apologists also used to include gender equality and the creation of insular elites. So what's your point, that the Soviets tried to prop-up their flunkies by force? Pot calling the kettle black, much like 0bama's speech yesterday. And HRW has often acted in concert with the US to cover up its crimes while hypocritically calling out those who weren't "our sonzofbiatches."
likbez, September 30, 2015 at 9:23 pm
The Afghan government was left leaning in the sense that it was more socially progressive than the population living outside of Kabul, all 80% of the country that the government did not control in fact; and their authoritarian approach to instituting gender equality and abolishing Islam had a disastrous effect on the government's popularity and tribal credit, which was and is necessary to gain the support of the rural population. Other than that it was your typical post-Stalinist tankie failed experiment in land redistribution and Party education apparatus that only served to create a new class of insular elites & alienating/disenfranchising the majority of the population while hamstringing developmental progress made by actual Afghans in the decades before the Soviets (and eventually Pakistan and the US) got their hands in the pot.
That's plain vanilla propaganda. Or more charitably you are oversimplifying the issue and try to embellish the USA behavior. Which was a horrible crime. Soviets were not that simplistic and attempts to abolish Islam were not supported by Soviets. They tried to create a secular country that's right but with Islam as a dominant religion.
And how many years Afghan government survived after the USSR dissolved and financial and technical aid disappeared. You need to shred your post and eat it with borsch. It's a shame.
fajensen, September 30, 2015 at 5:35 am
Ah, but: "A man is known by the company he keeps".
Whatever Putin is besides, he is *not* a friend, ally and global protector of Saudi Arabic Wahhabism!
With friends like that, it is clear o everyone else that you people are circling pretty close to the drain already and we non-USA-nian un-people prefer to not be sucked into your decline via TTIP et cetera.
Michael Hudson, September 29, 2015 at 11:17 pm
Max, your comment does not make sense.
All I can say is that this blog is NOT Russiaphilia. That's name calling. It is not Russiaphilia to note the effect of U.S. foreign policy on bolstering the most right-wing fundamentalist Islamic groups, Latin American right-wing kleptocracies or other dictatorships.
Whatever Soviet oppression was in Afghanistan, it did not back religious extremism. Just the opposite.
OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 11:38 pm
Nick was probably one of those who screamed about cheese-eating surrender monkeys while stuffing themselves with supersized freedom fries orders.
September 29, 2015 at 3:47 pm
Ahem. Egypt. Egypt had a brief democracy.Iran had a very real and true democracy (1955) but it was wiped out by the US.
Lot's of countries actually have democratic elections but when the people elect someone the US disapproves of, that democracy has to go and is ALWAYS replaced by a dictatorship.
Obama's a corrupt idiot. Syria is a mess only because the US made it that way, NOT because Assad is a meanie.
Reply ↓
cwaltz
September 30, 2015 at 2:50 am
It's possible that Assad is a meanie AND that Syria is a mess because as usual we half assed support people who are just as horrible as him. It isn't like Saddam wasn't our great friend before we declared him horrible, terrible awful leader.Reply ↓
OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL, September 29, 2015 at 5:39 pm
The words in their respective UN speeches were very clear. Obomba: "I believe that what is true for America is true for virtually all mature democracies". Putin: "No one is obliged to conform to a single development model that is considered by someone else as the right one".
Ask yourself which statement the Founding Fathers of the U.S. would agree with. Yankee go home.bh2, September 29, 2015 at 10:40 pm
"Hope and change", baby! The long arc of history bends toward despotism.
Knute Rife, September 29, 2015 at 11:25 pm
This has been a favorite US tactic since the Marines hit Tripoli (anti-piracy myths notwithstanding), took off with the Spanish-American War, went through the roof when the Latin American interventions started in earnest in the 20s, and became our peculiar and cherished institution with the Cold War. Obama is just continuing the tradition.
cwaltz , September 30, 2015 at 2:37 am
I'll give him this- it's as close to being transparent on our foreign policy as I've seen any of his predecessors come.
At least, he's admitting that our end game has always been first and foremost about our own interests. Now if he'll only admit that THIS is why the world really hates us. Being selfish and protecting only your own interests at the cost of others is never going to be a winning plan to encourage people to like you or trust you(particularly when you collude behind closed doors to carry out those interests.)
*Sigh* We're America. We set the bar low when it comes to caring about how others wish to govern themselves, our only criteria is that your leader always consider US interests first(nevermind that they aren't actually a US leader and should be putting their own inhabitants first.)
|
|
|
Sep 28, 2015 | RT News
The export of so-called 'democratic' revolutions has continued, but has unleashed poverty and violence instead of the triumph of democracy, Russian President Vladimir Putin said addressing the UN General Assembly.
Attempts to push for changes in other countries based on ideological preferences have led to "tragic consequences and degradation rather than progress," said Putin in his speech to world leaders and policy makers gathered at the UN General Assembly's anniversary 70th session in New York on Monday.
"We should all remember what our past has taught us," Putin said. "We, for instance, remember examples from the history of the Soviet Union."
It seems however that some are not learning from others' mistakes, but keep repeating them, he said, adding that "the export of so-called 'democratic' revolutions continues."
"I cannot help asking those who have caused this situation: Do you realize now what you have done?" he asked. "But I am afraid the question will hang in the air, because policies based on self-confidence and belief in one's exceptionality and impunity have never been abandoned."
He cited the example of revolutions in the Middle East and Northern Africa, where people have wished for change. However, instead of reforms and the triumph of democracy and progress "we've got violence, poverty and social disaster, and human rights, including the right to life, to which no weight is given."
"Rather than bringing about reforms, aggressive foreign interference has resulted in the brazen destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself," he said.
... ... ...
A single center of domination emerged in the world after the Cold War era ended, Putin stated. Those who were at the "top of this pyramid" were tempted to think that "if they were so strong and exceptional, they knew what to do better than others."
"Therefore they do not have to reckon with the UN, which instead of automatically authorizing, legitimizing the necessary decisions often creates obstacles or in other words 'stands in the way'."
|
|
|
Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Warren, September 25, 2015 at 2:25 pmhttps://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/gchq-radio-porn-spies-track-web-users-online-identities/
et Al, September 26, 2015 at 4:23 am
A top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people's visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.et Al, September 26, 2015 at 4:48 amOther websites listed as "sources" of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.'s Channel 4.
…A top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people's visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.
Other websites listed as "sources" of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.'s Channel 4…
###And I bet the Guardian too as it is 'the world's most widely read new site'. They probably keep automatic tabs on this site considering how it has grown over the last couple of years.
I do wonder though, with all those stories about those thousands of Kremlin controlled Russian trolls on British news websites, whether some of this comes from carefully massaged data from GCHQ through third parties to the Pork Pie News Networks via 'unnamed sources', i.e. the usual bollox.
May I suggest to fellow commenters here, if at any point you loose your smart phone (etc.) just call GCHQ and they'll tell you where you left it. I wonder if they provide a data back up service?!
…The agency operates a bewildering array of other eavesdropping systems, each serving its own specific purpose and designated a unique code name, such as: …and INFINITE MONKEYS, which analyzes data about the usage of online bulletin boards and forums…et Al, September 26, 2015 at 9:52 am…Authorization is "not needed for individuals in the U.K.," another GCHQ document explains, because metadata has been judged "less intrusive than communications content." All the spies are required to do to mine the metadata troves is write a short "justification" or "reason" for each search they conduct and then click a button on their computer screen…
…When compared to surveillance rules in place in the U.S., GCHQ notes in one document that the U.K. has "a light oversight regime."
The more lax British spying regulations are reflected in secret internal rules that highlight greater restrictions on how NSA databases can be accessed. The NSA's troves can be searched for data on British citizens, one document states, but they cannot be mined for information about Americans or other citizens from countries in the Five Eyes alliance….
#####It's just what is expected from the junior in the US/UK relationship. For the UK to retain privileged access to the US' global spy network, it needs to give the US what it wants, a way to circumvent the US' own laws. Dial back to when Gary Powers & his U-2 were shot down over the Soviet Union. All subsequent overflights by US manned and operated aircraft were prohibited, so, the US used British pilots and Canberras.
Once you understand the relationship and the goals that they have, you can work backwards and make fairly good conclusions about what tools would be required and used to get to those conclusions and try not think whether they are legal or not.
What people can do to protect themselves is
- don't change most of your digital habits (as this would raise a flag);
- just don't do or say obvious things that you wouldn't do in real life in your digital life;
- use encryption such as PGP for email and products using perfect forward secrecy for chat/etc.;
- don't write about what not to do on the Internet as I have just done! ;)
The most disturbing thing about it all is that it puts us one step away from a totalitarian system. All that is required is a political decision. All the tools are in place and depending on how much information they have actually kept they can dip in to it at any time throughout your life as a rich source of blackmail, probably via third parties. It's not exactly threatening to send you to a concentration camp (or disappeared to one of Britain's (and others) many small overseas territories, but it is total control.
If the European economy completely crashes and mass instability ensues (or whatever), then the politicians will be told, or even ask, "What tools do we have to control this?".
Forget about 'checks and balances' – they're the first thing to be thrown out of the window in an emergency. Arbeit macht frei!
This should be a massive story as the parliamentary security committee gave the intelligence services a 'clean bill of health' not so long ago. Since then, they've lost intelligence 'yes man' Malcolm Rifkind to an expenses scandal so the make up of the committee has changed a bit.marknesop, September 26, 2015 at 2:38 pmWhat it does show is that we cannot even trust the gatekeepers (above) who are give very limited info from the security services. And let us not forget the dates that this occurred under a Labor administration and continued under a Conservative-Liberal Democrat and now a Conservative one.
It will be interesting to see if this story gains any traction, though I suspect that it will be much bigger outside of the UK, at least initially. The cat is, again, out of the bag!
GCHQ and the CIA are in bed with one another, and have been for years. This might be a timely occasion to mention once again that both are capable of hacking into smartphones by all leading manufacturers; in the case of the IPhone the CIA uses a program application called Dropout Jeep.We can thank Edward Snowden for that; the NSA spying scandal revealed a great deal more than just the information the CIA is snooping on your phone calls and collecting information on everyone. As the second reference relates, the CIA also diverted laptops ordered online so that government spyware could be installed on them. Intelligence agencies are determined that citizens shall have no privacy whatsoever. You might as well assume they are watching everything you do and listening to everything you say. Give the window the finger at random times just in case, and slip embarrassing revelations on the sexual proclivities of intelligence agents into your telephone conversations.
Canada's Blackberry was once safe, but GCHQ broke that. So now there is no smartphone that is private, except maybe for Russia's YotaPhone. Probably not that either, though, since it is sold in the USA, and if they couldn't break into the phone they would just hack the carrier. And the Canadian government bought all of its Secure Telephone Units (STU) from the NSA, so say no more about the "security" of those.
A few companies, like Silent Circle, pitch a privacy phone like the Blackphone, but it originates in the USA and everyone's paranoia has become so acute that the instant suspicion is they are telling you it is more private just because it is wired straight to the NSA.
You can't believe anyone any more.
|
|
|
Sep 27, 2015 | www.brookings.edu
Sep 1, 2015 | Brookings Institution4
Ukraine is no longer the top priority for American diplomats. They are understandably absorbed with selling the Iran nuclear deal to a reluctant Congress. But, if Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is to be believed, there are a number of senior officials who have also been sending signals to Russia suggesting that President Obama wants to turn a page and improve his frosty relations with President Vladimir Putin. "We are already getting such signals from the Americans," Lavrov said, "though for now not very clear." Would Russia be open to better relations? Russia, responded the foreign minister, would "consider constructively" any such possibility.
... ... ...
Though Russia is not the Soviet Union, it still remains the boss of Eastern Europe. When it sneezes, as we have learned, Ukraine can catch a bad cold. These days, everything in and around Ukraine seems to be in what one journalist called "managed instability." Putin can bring the crisis closer to a possible solution or he can widen the war. Or, more simply, he can "freeze" it. The key question is: What does Putin have in mind? What are his plans, assuming that he has plans, and is not winging the crisis day by day?
... ... ...
With respect to Ukraine, Putin's position is hardly ideal, but it is still manageable. He now owns Crimea and controls two rebellious provinces in the southeast Donbas region. He knows Ukraine faces the possibility of economic collapse, even though it has made some progress. The more it slips toward the abyss, the better his chances, he thinks, of keeping Ukraine out of the Western orbit, which has always been one of his principal goals. Putin has the assets to throw Ukraine into further chaos at any time.
Marvin Kalb is a nonresident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, and senior advisor at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He focuses on the impact of media on public policy and politics, and is also an expert in national security, with a focus on U.S. relations with Russia, Europe and the Middle East. His new book, scheduled for September 2015 publication, is Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine and the New Cold War (Brookings Institution Press, 2015).
|
|
|
Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com
marknesop, September 26, 2015 at 10:30 pm
Oh, oh!! Is it too late to get the civil engineers in to change the plate on Yatsenyuk's door to "Saakashvili"?yalensis, September 27, 2015 at 4:58 amYeah, we're going to need a stronger Barcalounger. One with more width between the arms, too.
"Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, President Petro Poroshenko's chief of staff Borys Lozhkin and an ally of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov have been targeted by investigators and whistleblowers in Ukraine and abroad this week."
I like that boy, Oleg Sukhov. I don't agree with his political views, but I have to say, of all the "journalists" on KyivPost staff, he is maybe the only one who looks and smells like an actual journalist. He is a good muck-raker, and I think he has a future, even after Ukraine goes down the tubes.
|
|
|
Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al, September 27, 2015 at 2:41 ammarknesop, September 27, 2015 at 9:45 amNeuters: Analysis – EU 'ring of friends' turns into ring of fire
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/09/27/uk-europe-migrants-neighbourhood-analysi-idUKKCN0RR09820150927?The European Union's dream of building "a ring of friends" from the Caucasus to the Sahara has turned into a nightmare as conflicts beyond its borders send refugees teeming into Europe.In contrast to the success of its eastward enlargement drive that transformed former communist countries into thriving market democracies, the European Neighbourhood Policy launched in 2003 has been a spectacular flop…
…The failure to stabilise or democratise the EU's surroundings was partly due to forces beyond Brussels' control: Russian resentment over the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as political and sectarian strife in the Middle East.
Five of the six Eastern Partnership countries – Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – are weakened by unresolved "frozen conflicts" in which Moscow has a hand. The sixth, Belarus, is so authoritarian that it is subject to EU sanctions and has eschewed the offer of a free trade deal.
EU officials now acknowledge that the framework designed to engage and transform the bloc's neighbours was flawed from the outset due to a mixture of arrogance and naivety.
"The idea was to have a ring of friends who would integrate with us but not become EU members. That was rather patronizing, with the European Union telling everyone what to do because we believed they wanted to be like us," said Christian Danielsson, head of the European Commission department for neighborhood policy and enlargement.
…Now the EU neighborhood policy is undergoing a fundamental rethink, with a more modest, flexible and differentiated approach due to be unveiled on Nov. 17.
Whether it will prove more effective remains to be seen.
Ian Bond, a former British ambassador now at the Centre for European Reform, called the current policy a "mess of inconsistency and wishful thinking". ..
…EU officials talk of the need for a new realism, putting the pursuit of common interests with partners ahead of lecturing them on human rights and democracy.
But the European Parliament and member states such as Germany and the Nordic countries will be loath to soft-pedal promoting such values….
…Michael Leigh, a senior adviser at the German Marshall Fund think-tank and former head of the EU's enlargement department, said Brussels had responded to the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings by offering a "top-heavy, long, cumbersome, demanding" DCFTA process rather than swift but limited market access. …
####
Wise after the fact as usual. Too late mofos. For Stollenberg, its not the clever clever strategy being wrong, its always Russia. F/wit. I'm still waiting for van Rompuy to admit he has blood on his hands for the Ukraine.
What they allude to but don't make a point of is that they wholly dismissed Russia from their calculations as if it was just going to become the EU's cuddly toy, a larger version of Serbia. No mention either that Russia is 'part of the solution' and cooperation with Russia is essential.
It looks like some have got past anger and denial and have moved on to bargaining & depression.
"In contrast to the success of its eastward enlargement drive that transformed former communist countries into thriving market democracies, the European Neighbourhood Policy launched in 2003 has been a spectacular flop…"Umm…say what?? I thought we had already looked at the Baltics as examples, and determined their populations peaked just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and their subsequent snatching by NATO, at which point they commenced a slide which was the mirror image of their ascent. Why are citizens fleeing a thriving market democracy?
I agree with your analysis – too late. However, the recent article linked which revealed Europe was just covering itself when it pretended to oppose the Gulf War has added another layer of cynicism to my hide, and I don't interpret this as the scales falling from anyone's eyes at all. They're not wiser, simply acknowledging that a ploy to get their own way did not work out as planned. There's no remorse, at all. They'll just try something else.
I particularly loved the line,
"The failure to stabilise or democratise the EU's surroundings was partly due to forces beyond Brussels' control: Russian resentment over the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as political and sectarian strife in the Middle East."
I see. So the angst of Russians missing Stalin wafted in the air over the borders of Europe's neighbors, and caused them to make irrational decisions and, against all common sense, to bite the soft pink European hand extended to them? Let me ask another – is there to be no limit of silliness and self-pity beyond which Europe will not go?
|
|
|
Sep 26, 2015 | yro.slashdot.org
September 24, 2015
Ars Technica reports that a Federal court in Pennsylvania ruled Wednesday that the Fifth Amendment protects from compelled disclosure the passwords that two insider-trading suspects used on their mobile phones. In this case, the SEC is investigating two former Capital One data analysts who allegedly used insider information associated with their jobs to trade stocks-in this case, a $150,000 investment allegedly turned into $2.8 million. Regulators suspect the mobile devices are holding evidence of insider trading and demanded that the two turn over their passcodes.However, ruled the court , "Since the passcodes to Defendants' work-issued smartphones are not corporate records, the act of producing their personal passcodes is testimonial in nature and Defendants properly invoke their fifth Amendment privilege. A"
|
|
|
Sep 26, 2015 | www.zerohedge.com
Sep 26, 2015 | Zero H4edge
GreatUncleSgtShaftoeDrop the random number generator method that is already venerable now.
Go for an encryption key of length > data length instead so each data bit is uniquely encrypted by a unique key bit.
Break one bit has no bearing on breaking any other bit.
For the NSA comes the headache under such an encryption method a 10 letter statement can be any other 10 letter statement from different keys.
Now it gets interesting "I love you" is from one encryption key whilst another key says "I hate you".
Now each message generated if asked for the key you provide one of an infinite number of keys where the the key you give is for the message you wish them to see provided it makes sense any evidence used through a prosecution on this is only ever circumstantial evidence and quite easily refuted questioning only the key being used.
Kind of like it myself.
logicalmanBullshit. Encryption works. Even if the NSA had some back-door in a particular encryption algorithm, or weakened a random number generator (Microsoft, cough), the NSA does not have the processing power to decrypt everything.
Snowden has stated as much, I've seen the same thing in .mil circles during my time there. Using decent encryption works. It's far easier to attack the people directly with social engineering than crack decent encryption.
John_ColtraneThe world has gone totally batshit crazy.
NSA want to watch everyone and also have the ability to plant damaging or malicious files on targeted computers.
What a fucking trick!
On a good day you can trust yourself.
blindmanWhat type of encryption is being discussed? I've notice very few actually understand how encryption works. When public/private key encyption is used only the public key is ever available to the counterparty and can be freely published. The secret key is kept on your machine only and never shared. Both parties/computers use the others public key to encrypt the plaintext and only the person with the unique secret key on both ends can read it. Authentication is also facile: You simply sign using the secret key. Only your public key can decrypt the signature so anyone intercepting and attempting to change your message cannot do so (spoofing impossible). Unbreakable and requires no secure key exchange like like two way keys such as AES, for example. This is what happens on https sites where key pairs are generated by both parties and the secret keys are never exchanged or shared-new key pairs are generated each visit. Intercepting the encrypted message is useless since the secret key remains physically in your possesion. That's why the NSA and any government hates this algorithm. Make the key at least 2048 bits long and you'll need more time than the age of universe to crack it by brute force with the entire computing power of every machine on earth. Even 256 bits is sufficient to protect against anyone before they die.
q99x2information is power and access to information is big business. the taxpayer pays the bills for the gathering, hell, the individual "user" of the technology pays for the surveillance and data collection themselves. we are paying to have our privacy sold to corporations. get that, it is freakin' brilliant! and the "officials" sell the access for personal gain. the corporations love to eat it all up and reward the loyal local success story dupes, pimps and prestitutes. everyone is on stage 24/7 and no one is the wiser in the field of cultural normalcy bias, mind control and entertaining with the Jones's. soft control moving into hard up confiscation, then incarceration. wonderfully yokel deterioration impersonating culture and civilization, what many call government, but i take exception to every term and wonder wtf.
Gaius Frakkin' ...The NSA works for corporations and they need to break into peoples stuff to steal from them as well as to steal from other corporations. There is a war going on but it is much larger than a war on nations or citizens of bankster occupied nations.
HenryHallWith one-time pad, the software is trivial.
There are two big challenges though:
1) Building a hardware random number generator which is truly random, or as close as possible.
2) Getting the keys to your counter-party, securely. It has to be down physically ahead of time.
Lookout MountainE.R.N.I.E. - the electronic random number indicator equipment was used with British Premium Bonds in the 1950s. A chip based on digital counting of thermal noise must be easy to make. Getting the keys to thye other party just involves handing over a chip. 16Gigabytes or so miniSD should be good for enough emails to wear out a thousand or more keyboards.
It just needs to be made into a product and sold for cash.
Open source encryption software may or may not be trivial, but it sure isn't easy to use for folks who aren't experts in encryption.
ah-ooog-ahThe NSA decided that offense was better than defense. Suckers.
Write your own encryption. Use AES - freely available. Exchange keys verbally, face to face, or use One Time Pads (once only!!). If you didn't write, don't trust it.
NelsWriting your own encryption is a recipe for disaster. Only peer-reviewed algorithms and implementations should ever be used. They must also use reliable random number generators.
If you don't know what you're doing and are very very careful and exacting in running a OTP system (One time pad) you will be fucked. That's why they aren't typically used except in very small use cases. They're hard to run properly.
Anyone claiming to have an encryption product for a computer based on a one time pad is full of shit. Cough, Unseen.is, cough. It's a glorified Cesar cypher and the NSA will have your shit in 2.5 seconds or less.
Good encryption works. Snowden stated that fact. Don't use shitty encryption, unless you want everyone to know what you're doing.
There's plenty of open source projects out there based on good encryption, twofish, serpent, AES, or ideally a combination of multiple algorithms. Truecrypt is still alive and has been forked with a project based in Switzerland. I think that's still a good option.
I wouldn't use MS bitlocker or PGP unless you trust symantec or microsoft with your life. Personally I wouldn't trust those companies with a pack of cigarettes, and I don't even smoke.
. . . _ _ _ . . .Writing your own encryption is a recipe for disaster. Only peer-reviewed algorithms and implementations should ever be used. They must also use reliable random number generators.
I read the original note to mean you use a peer reviewed algorithm, but write the code yourself. Or, at least review it well. Some open source code tends to be a bit tangled. Checkout Sendmail and its support for X.400 and other old mail protocols, as well as a convoluted configuration setup. At some point, with code with that much historical baggage and convoluted setup becomes impossible to really check all possible configurations for sanity or safety.
If you believe that the simpler the code the safer it is, code it yourself.
SgtShaftoePower grab by the NSA (deep state) basically saying that they don't trust the hand that feeds it. So why should we? What level of classification would this entail? Are we then supposed to trust the NSA? Civil War 2.0.???
Sorry for all the questions, but... WTF?
S.N.A.F.U.
Urban RomanIt really starts with asymmetry of power. If some agency or person has a asymmetric level of power against you and lack of accountability, you should be concerned about them.
That's a much easier test case vs enemy/friend and far more reliable.
Long self-published certificates, Novena and Tails.
|
|
|
Sep 26, 2015 | naked capitalism
And not only is Benn's speech refreshingly direct, it's inspiring to see how energetic he was at the age of 83. And I agree with him on the importance of anger and hope. Anger is depicted as a very bad emotion to have, at least here in America, and the resulting self-censorship stifles dissent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=158&v=qX-P4mx1FLU
Published on Aug 6, 2012Mark P. September 26, 2015 at 5:04 amTony Benn - 10 min History Lesson for Neoliberals
See more Tony Benn videos and other great speeches at http://www.counterfire.org
Counterfire is a revolutionary socialist organisation dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism by the working class.
"Tony Benn | People Before Profit | the Budget | Nov 24 2008" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPREZ... Adrian Counsins https://www.youtube.com/user/adycousins
Great stuff man genuine feeling in it!
Homage to Tony Benn rap by Dan Bull: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y76us...
Eulogy Galloway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYPea...
"An MP is the only job where you have 70,000 employers, and only one employee."
"It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you."
"The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain."
"I'm not frightened about death. I don't know why, but I just feel that at a certain moment your switch is switched off, and that's it. And you can't do anything about it."
"Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that."
"I've got four lovely children, ten lovely grandchildren, and I left parliament to devote more time to politics, and I think that what is really going on in Britain is a growing sense of alienation. People don't feel anyone listens to them."
"If one meets a powerful person - Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler - one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system."
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
Aneurin Bevan, primary founder of the NHS, during speech at the Manchester Labour rally 4 July 1948 –
'…no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party …. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation.
'Now the Tories are pouring out money into propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you, young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now … I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were.'
TheCatSaid, September 26, 2015 at 7:59 am
Brooklin Bridge, September 26, 2015 at 8:42 amAmazing talk–clear, powerful, direct, and well-grounded in Benn's many years of personal experience. His perspective on Thatcher's policies is eye-opening, and his perspective on British politics in general.
Does anyone know what event he spoke at, and when? The link doesn't say.
Brooklin Bridge, September 26, 2015 at 9:06 amWell, hew was born in 1925 and he talked about 80 years ago when he was 3 so he probably gave this talk sometime around 2008.
People Before Profit Alternative Economic summit , Nov 24, 2008
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPREZNbITH8&list=PL2227023797EAE9CF
ben, September 26, 2015 at 8:00 am
I call the self-censorship "American positivism" which is a great play by the elite. The poor, in the face of overwhelming evidence, somehow try to "be positive". They also censor others who complain.
It's an amazing system.
Synoia, September 26, 2015 at 9:58 am
Your so called "self-censorship" is driven by the press, in their role of propaganda distribution.
As in: The lying liars, lied again.
Synoia, September 26, 2015 at 9:55 am
What Benn does not address was the tremendous amount of Labor (Worker) strife in the 50s, 60s and 70s, and the cause of the strife.
I will quote a socialist song, the Red Flag:
The Working Class can kiss my arse
I've got the foreman's job at lastEnterprises get the Unions they deserve. If the management is toxic, so is the worker sentiment.
My experience in graduating and going to work for a major Bank in the UK, was such a revelation I never again worked for British management.
No only do the working people need unions, the working people need to believe the management care about both the customers and the workers in an enterprise. Contempt for both customers and workers become a cancer on society, and is, in my opinion a hallmark of our large enterprise who serve citizens.
Management needs to be answerable to its employees, because employees have more invested, their lives, that shareholders. Money is liquid, livelihood, employment, is not.
Examples: Walmart, large Banks, BP, Volkswagen, Centralized Government….
As a side note, Benn's comments on spending are completely in harmony with the monetary part of MMT, but not with its treatment of trade, tariffs and local production, which are complete nonsense.
flora, September 26, 2015 at 12:14 pm
"Every single generation has to fight the same battles again and again and again. There's no final victory and no final defeat. And therefore, a little bit of history may help." -Benn
Thanks for this post.
flora, September 26, 2015 at 2:12 pm
Regarding Thatcher's scheme of encouraging people to take on too much debt to buy houses even as her govt undermined wages; Reagan and co did the same in the US. 20-30-year-olds were encouraged to spend more for housing, and banks encouraged to lend more for housing than the traditional lending formula allowed, because (they were told) incomes for the young would only keep rising, just as their parents incomes had kept rising. The young were told they could pre-pay for their inevitable future prosperity by taking on too much debt. At the same time Reagan and co were undermining wages for most workers.
Now 20-30-year-olds are being told that they can pre-pay for their inevitable future prosperity by taking on too much debt for college educations. It's the same con.
skippy, September 26, 2015 at 4:28 pm
Did someone say Thatcher and Reagan – ???????????
Liberation Theologies, Postmodernity and the Americas
By David Batstone, Eduardo Mendieta, Lois Ann Lorentzen, Dwight N. Hopkins
"In 1985 David Stockman. who came from a fundamentalist back-ground, resigned from his position as chief of budget for Regan's government and he published a book entitled "the Triumph of Politics. He reproached Reagan for having been a traitor to the clean model of neoliberalism and for having favored populism. Stockmans.s book develops a neoliberally positioned academic theology, that does not denounce utopias, but presents neoliberalism as the only efficient and realistic means to realized them. It attacks the socialist "utopias" in order to reclaim them in favor of the attempted neoliberal realism. according to Stockman, it is not the utopia that threatens, but the false utopia against which he contrasts his "realist utopia of neoliberalism."
Michel Camdessus, Secretary General of the IMF, echoes the transformed theology of the empire grounding it in certain key theses of liberation theology. In a conference on March 27, 1992 he directed the National Congress of French Christian Impresarios in Lille Mid discussion he summaries his central theological theses:
Surely the Kingdom is a place: these new Heavens and this new earth of which we are called to enter one day, a sublime promise; but the Kingdom is in some way geographical, the Reign is History, a history in which we are the actors, one which is in process and that is close to us since Jesus came into human history. The Reign is what happens when God is King and we recognize Him as such, and we make possible the extension, spreading of this reign, like a spot of oil, impregnating, renewing and unifying human realities. Let Thy Kingdom come…." – read on
Page – 38, 39, 40
Skippy…. this is why some stare at walls…. better option…
Paul Tioxon, September 26, 2015 at 1:42 pm
Benn said that just as in war, we should in peace time do whatever is necessary for our economic well being. This is an echo of the great public intellectual William James, whose famously pronounced that we need the moral equivalent of war in politics to serve the public interest to eradicate social problems and create widespread prosperity. Jimmy Carter repeated this phrase, the moral equivalent of war, in trying to marshal the energy of society to snap out of the 1970s stagflation and national malaise.
From The Moral Equivalent of War:
"I spoke of the "moral equivalent" of war. So far, war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until and equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of organizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other just as effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a question of time, of skillful propogandism, and of opinion-making men seizing historic opportunities."
Masonboro, September 26, 2015 at 3:23 pm
Every generation must fight it's own battles. Another politician held the same view:
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson
|
|
|
March 25th, 2010 | Populist Daily
The word "Fascist" as with the terms "Socialist" and "Communist" are thrown around a lot by people who have no idea what they mean. If you want to know what those terms really mean, find someone who was in some branch of military counterintelligence, the CIA, the security section of the State Department, Defense Intelligence, or in the FBI.
In all those areas, the first day of basic training involves comparative forms of government. You can't spot a Communist if you don't know what a Communist is. You can't tell the difference between a Communist and a Fascist unless you know the difference in the two systems. It is Intelligence, and more specifically, Counterintelligence 101.
So, let's go right to Fascism. A Fascist is one who believes in a corporatist society. In other words, it is a political philosophy embodying very strong central government, with the authority to move in decisive steps to accomplish goals. It would be characterized by a unity of purpose, with more or less all the levels of the hierarchy in unison, starting at the top and working down. It is a top-down government involving an alliance of industry, military, media and a political party.
Because Fascism has been associated with the 1930s German Nazis, the Italian Fascists under Mussolini and the Falangists, under the Spanish Dictator, Francisco Franco, the term "Fascist" has taken on a sinister meaning. Not fewer than 10 million direct deaths resulting from the rule of these three may have something to do with it. On the other hand, philosophies don't kill people; people kill people.
It is interesting to note that at least two of the three Parties had origins as Socialist and morphed into strong, Right Wing, authoritarian rules as a result largely of expediency. It is also interesting to note that all three were not only intimately connected to the largest industrial corporations, but as soon as possible with the military leadership. While Fascism as a political philosophy is not innately evil, given the results, it is worth noting how things turned out.
Both the German and the Italian Fascist parties were also both revolutionary and conservative at the same time. Both Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini were aggressive, anarchic leaders. Both served time in jail. Both served in the enlisted ranks with the military in war. Both used that experience to organize mobs of thugs to agitate against an established government, not for a more democratic regime, but for a more authoritarian one. You can begin to see some similarities with contemporary political activities.
As soon as they took power, which they did partially through gangs and mobs, intimidation and demonstrations and-in Mussolini's case an outright coup-they allied themselves with the biggest corporations and the military general staff. In addition, even before taking complete power, they began to wrest control of the media away from other political parties, and to use it for their own propaganda.
Once they had control of the radio and newspapers, which were then the prominent sources of information, they could begin to broadcast their messages. Hitler's "Big Lie" basically blamed rampant inflation and lack of jobs on the Jews. He blamed all their economic ills on the restraint of Germany by other nations and the presumed taking over of German lands (which they themselves had only won through aggressive wars.)
But let's for a minute assume that we know nothing about Fascism except that it exists. We have a group, here in America that believes in a corporatist political philosophy. What would that look like? If it were a true Fascist organization, they would ally themselves with big corporations, like the health care industry, oil and mining, pharmaceuticals, media corporations and the military-industrial complex.
They would try to control the message, particularly in radio and television. They would become as closely allied with the top military brass as possible, offering them a seat at the table in the running of the economy. Retired Generals would be assured of positions involved with military hardware and strategic planning.
And what about the people? In a fascist system, the whole idea is to have an efficient method of getting things done. If you want to build an "autobahn" you simply tell the transportation minister to get started. You control everything at every level. It will go faster because it is for the good of all the people, so no one will have the right to object or interfere. It is, Fascists would say, about efficiency, getting things done for the people.
Defense is about protecting the people. You attack other countries so that they cannot attack you. You start wars (Iraq) to prevent dangerous men from attacking you. It makes sense. Military efficiency in a Fascist state means that if the top guy (President or Dictator) wants to be absolutely certain that no other country is superior, he can build up the military industry and the military at any pace or at any cost.
In a Fascist state the idea is to have one set of rules, coming from the top down. No one votes as an individual, only as a part of the group that is assigned a task. It is corporate, total-totalitarian. So, if you decide that a national health care program is not right for the country, you all vote against it in a totally militaristic way. Everyone salutes and follows the lead from the top down. The only problem is when you do not have a strong leader.
The Democrats, for example, want to farm decisions out to others, let the opposition have their input. It slows the process. A Fascist health care program would be one decided upon by the President, discussed and worked out with the corporations, mandated to his staffs and enacted without any discussion or public debate in a matter of a few months.
In a Fascist state, policy is largely being written through a cooperative effort with the industries involved, in this case the health care industry. The slow, ragged, messy and Democratic process involved with our current health care reform process would never happen under a Fascist government. Whatever the decision, there would be no appeal. If a million or fifty million were left out, because, let's say, that the President needed more money for war machines that would be the decision- with no question or appeal.
So, if you want efficiency, you not only should you look to the Republicans, but you may have no choice. The Republicans, remember, have the complete support of Fox News, the Fox television Network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and any number of television stations around the country, plus somewhere between 600 and 1600 radio stations on which literally 9 out of 10 commentators are paid by those network owners to be Conservative (Neoconservative Republican.) They have expanded to very large numbers of web site bases, delivering whatever type of information they want, truth, lies, anything in between… accusations without proof…Socialist, Communist, government takeover of this or that…no need to be truthful. It is all propaganda.
Just as Herr Goebbels and Mussolini did in the 1930s-and except in the Communist counties and a few Latin American dictatorships there hasn't been anything to speak of similar to this in the Western advanced societies since then-the unchallenged message of the Right Wing goes out. The radio commentators today get their message from the top, from the Republican Party. Fox News Channel internal memos have shown that they literally decide what policies the Republican Party wished to champion, and then they attack rather than merely delivering the news.
So do we need to be civil about it-about these lies? Is it important to challenge people, like these Right Wing commentators who tell you that your current health care is sufficient? It is good for corporations, for health care insurance companies. But is it good for you not to be sure you can get health insurance? So if they tell you that something is a government takeover and it is not, so you vote against health care or you respond to a poll in a way that is against your own best interests…do you need to be civil about being lied to? You shouldn't be lied to by media. You need the truth, the facts, to make decisions.
It is a pretty simple answer. Should you be civil to people who lie to you and urge you to buy something that turns out to hurt you, or your family, or cause you to lose your job, or kill your sister, brother, neighbor? If I lie to you and say it is safe to swim across the channel and you are attacked by sharks that I knew were there…should you not care? This is what is happening, right now…today. In the consumer products market, we call that fraud and companies can be criminally liable.
So let's describe what a Fascist government or a political party attempting to introduce a Fascist government would look like and see if either or any of our political parties fits that description:
Allies with big corporations, planning strategy together, interchangeable.
Works to have control of the political process at all levels, starting with the top down.
Does not cooperate with and actually tries to undermine other political parties.
Uses mobs and demonstrations, and attempts to make individuals working in other parties afraid of violent reactions.
Advocates ownership of weapons as a fear factor to intimidate others. (Wayne La Pierre…"the people with the guns make the rules.")
Decides what is best for all citizens based on what corporations want.
Uses "big lie" propaganda technique, of top-down distributed propaganda message for each issue.
Allies with military on most issues, with ultra-aggressive military posture.
Total control of the political process is the ultimate goal.
If any of this seems familiar to you, then you see something "Fascist" in the current political process. Of course, one thing that wasn't mentioned. Fascists always need someone to stigmatize. In Germany, it was the Jews. In Italy it was the Socialists. In Spain it was the Communists. It seems clear that, in this country it is the Democrats.
The Neocons are out of power, but they are unrelenting in their efforts to control as much of the political discourse as possible, no matter how damaging to society. They bring mobs and riff-raff out, some with guns, trying to scare the average citizen. They send messages out over radio with lunatic commentators, some who are not even allowed to visit other countries because of their hate speech…yet we tolerate it.
We even allow asininely preposterous lies from a possibly psychotic television commentator…to be used to stoke the race-hatred of many tea party members, and thugs against a distinguished African-American President who won 54% of the vote, the largest since Ronald Reagan and who also won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The case is pretty clear. The Neoconservative Republicans are headed for Fascism if they are not there already. The latest round of insults, threats, lies, window breakings all contribute to the evidence. Sooner or later this totalitarian attitude will either be denounced or will have serious responses. One thing is sure, with the problems facing our country, we cannot afford the kind of anarchist attacks as were exhibited in the bombing of a Federal building in Oklahoma City or the flying of an aircraft into a building housing an IRS office.
This radical, violent, arrogant Fascist attitude has to stop. The first step in preventing this kind of political outcome is to identify and react to Fascism when it appears. Neoconservative Republicanism is Fascism. Republicans must return to sanity or be treated as a very dangerous and radical political party.
what is the difference between neocons and neofascists Yahoo Answers
Best Answer:
Not much. Neocons don't dress up in silly uniforms, neo fascists probably do and practice funny salutes when they think no-one is looking.
Joaquin B · 8 years ago
neocons are the new conservatives of the Cheney/Bush/Karl Rove school. These people bleeds the country of its resources in corporate welfare. In other words, they would give all sorts of money and incentives to corporations such as Halliburton and big oil companies at our expenses. They would like to impose a fascist system like thee ones of the early 20th century in Italy and Germany and it is been tried at this time in China..
Neofascists are those who would like the early 20th century geopolitical model. I would think that the Chinese government edges on this type of model. The Chinese call themselves communist yet they have a pseudo-free enterprise system with no democracy and total repression.
Lucky for the American people, we have waken up just in time to undo the damage done to our country from our once prestigious Republican Party.
Paranormal I · 8 years ago
The difference is that neoconservatism uses the language of democracy and freedom while neofascism openly admit they want the opposite. Otherwise they are quite similar. Including the fact that originally, they came from the Left from which they converted to rightwing politics.
|
|
|
Sep 26, 2015 | original.antiwar.com
Sep 26, 2015 | Antiwar.com
Pope Francis' address to Congress was almost certainly not what John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and other congressional leaders had in mind when they invited the pope to speak.
It probably wasn't what they were all thinking about during the last standing ovations. But here was Pope Francis, revered as the People's Pope, calling out war profiteers and demanding an end to the arms trade. Just as simple and as powerful as that.
... ... ...
"Being at the service of dialogue and peace also means being truly determined to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed conflicts throughout our world," the pope said. Then he asked the critical question: "Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?"He answered it himself: "Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade."
Stop the arms trade. What a simple, clear call.
That means the ending things like the $60 billion arms deal the US made a few years back with Saudi Arabia, where those weapons are, in the pope's words, "inflicting untold suffering on individuals and society," especially in Syria and Yemen. It means ending things like the $45 billion in new military aid – mostly in the form of advanced new weapons – the Israeli government has requested from Washington between now and 2028. It means ending the provision of new arms to scores of unaccountable militias in Syria, where even the White House admits a nonmilitary solution is needed. And it means ending things like the $1.1 billion in arms sales the United States has made to Mexico this year alone.
And, of course, it means no longer diverting at least 54 cents of every discretionary taxpayer dollar in the federal budget to the US military.
Actually, members of Congress – so many of whom rely on huge campaign donations from arms manufacturers, and so many of whom refuse to vote against military procurement because often just a few dozen jobs connected to it might be in their district – really should have expected the pope to say exactly what he did.
It was only last May, after all, that Pope Francis told a group of schoolchildren visiting the Vatican that the arms trade is the "industry of death." When a kid asked why so many powerful people don't want peace, the pope answered simply, "because they live off wars!" Francis explained how people become rich by producing and selling weapons. "And this is why so many people do not want peace. They make more money with the war!"
The pope's speech to Congress was quite extraordinary on a number of fronts.
... ... ...
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of the forthcoming Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer. Manuel Perez-Rocha is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Reprinted with permission from Foreign Policy In Focus.
|
|
|
Sep 25, 2015 | The Guardian
JoeCorr -> Erazmo 25 Sep 2015 23:57
The US has no class...
They call it 'American directness'. In fact it's gross bad manners but thats how the Empire of the Exceptionals sees itself.
A John Wayne mindset and a Lex Luthor worldview. Being dismantled with astonishing ease by the PRC.
Eugenios -> SuperBBird 25 Sep 2015 23:58The Chinese Communists are humanists itself compared to the brutality of the US.
Just compare prison populations, for examine. The US has more people in prison both proportionately and absolutely than all of China.
HollyOldDog -> TheEqlaowaizer 25 Sep 2015 21:30Looks like the wise words of the Pope has not penetrated the 'brains' American State Department or its President, if all that Obama can say is to threaten sanctions against another country. Is the BRICS alternative bank such a worry to the Americans as their first thoughts are bullying tactics.
ID240947 25 Sep 2015 21:22How can the U.S. say cyber hacking must stop when we know very well that they have been cyber spying and hacking for years, Snowden spilt the beans on that issue, big brother raising his head again.
JoeCorr -> goatrider 25 Sep 2015 21:08Take all that cheap junk
Cheap junk? Its 2015 can you even just try to keep up. We're buying Chinese flat screens the size of billboards and China leads the world in home appliances. BYD and Shanghai Auto sales are expanding at warp speed. I could go on but thats enough.
The US and Europe made the same stupid jibes at Japan before they decimated our electrics, shipbuilding, auto manufacturing and every single electronics company outside military patronage.
Its not China whos at fault here. It's people like you with your head so deeply wedged in the sand your shitting pebbles.
JoeCorr 25 Sep 2015 21:01My daughter drew speech balloons on this photo and mages it to the fridge.
Obama is saying. " Sanctions are still on the table". Xi is saying. " Poor thing. Allah will look after you"
Which I thought kinda perceptive for a 13 year old.
HauptmannGurski -> Sam3456 25 Sep 2015 20:46I see a contradiction here that you critcize for not warring with Xi/China and then bemoaning the obviously damaging costs of what looks like perpetual wars. Never mind, we all get emotional in these troubled times and find ourselves in contraction with ourselves.
In the main, Obama has not slipped out of his arrogant school master's tone and role, but we keep hearing he does it to please the American electorate. If the NSA in Germany (Bad Aibling) is allowed to sniff out commercial secrets on German computers (an issue for over 10 years, it's only the spinlessness of the elites that keep allowing that) then surely it's all 'open platform'. I only read German and English well enough to ascertain what's what in the spying game, so I can only refer to Germany. Maybe we get some Spanish, Italian, French etc reading people to tell us if sniffing out Germany's company secrets is unique, probably not.
(PS: if we think that the perpetual wars are too costly, in the sense that the populations miss out more and more, then we ought to keep an eye on the US job figures. There's a view out there that it's been US arms sales under Obama which underpin the 'recovery'. The Nobel Peace prize committee would take the prize back now, I gues, but that's not in the rules.)
goatrider 25 Sep 2015 20:37
How is America going to sanction a country that produces a majority of the items sold in America? Take all that cheap junk off the shelves of box stores and the American people will revolt----they are addicted consumers of cheap junk and fast food.
JoeCorr -> vr13vr 25 Sep 2015 20:15Whom exactly did we fire, prosecute or whatever else after all those NSA revelations?
Bradley Manning. Aaron Swartz driven to Suicide having never broken a single law. Snowden driven to exile. There are many others.
JoeCorr 25 Sep 2015 20:00News of this deal, first revealed on Thursday, was followed up before...
Nice little bit of spin here. It gives the impression that the US is telling the PRC what to do when the reality is this is part of the previous and current five year plan.
The 'sanctions' are another interesting bit of spin. How would you enforce sanctions against almost a quarter of the worlds population when they are your most reliable customer and literally thousands of American companies have invested and relocated there.
what I am hoping that President Xi will show me is that we are not sponsoring these activities and that … we take it seriously and will cooperate to enforce the law."
This looks a bit odd to me. Is he saying that Snowden forged the ten thousand records detailing US cyber spying on fifty countries or is he asking for Chinas assurance that the CCP are not sponsoring the attacks. In any case...I Obamas full of shit.
Erazmo 25 Sep 2015 19:12The US has no class and is a paper tiger. First, no one in the administration met President Xi when arrived on American soil. This is an insult to the Chinese and shows no class on the part of the Obama administration. Sure, the Pope was here at the same time but I don't understand why some schedules couldn't have been changed a little to accommodate the visit the leader of the world's most populous country. Second, the US continues to accuse and scold China as if they were a kid. Yet, the US has offered no proof that China hacked American records, while the world knows that the worse hacker on the planet is the US as shown via the Snowden documents - we even hack our allies. You know, there is a saying about glass houses and throwing stones.
Chin Koon Siang 25 Sep 2015 19:05Its a fallacy that you can separate business spying and state secrets spying. If there is going to be war, it will be all out, no sacred cows. Don't expect an agreement to leave space satellites out for example. People are still living in this utopia that a war can happen somewhere else and life will go on as normal. For China, the war will be for its own existence and there will be no holds barred. Look at the Vietnam war for example and you will see how much the Vietnamese sacrificed for that ultimate victory. So I believe that a more comprehensive framework is required for the assured future for both nations.
vr13vr -> CitizenCarrier 25 Sep 2015 18:42
Whom exactly did we fire, prosecute or whatever else after all those NSA revelations?
vr13vr 25 Sep 2015 18:40
Obama never stops surprising with his manners. Or actually a lack of such. He just made an agreement with a leader of another country, a large and powerful country mind you. And right away he publicly expresses a doubt whether the other party intends to carry the agreements. Basically calling his counterpart a liar for no good reason. And as a cheap bully, inserts more threats of more sanctions. Sure, the president of the other country had more class, he stayed there and smiled friendly, but with such arrogant display of disrespect and bullying, nobody would ever take Obama serious. And nobody should.
shawshank -> CitizenCarrier 25 Sep 2015 18:24
Grasping at straws? Xi is not Hitler. Also, Snowden already exposed that the US was spying on China.
Book_of_Life -> CitizenCarrier 25 Sep 2015 18:10"Acts of war"
USA are worlds biggest warmongers instigators including false flags and regime changes covert activity black opsyou better check yourself before you wreck yourself
cause i'm bad for your health, i come real stealth
droppin bombs on ya moms
So chikity-check yo self before you wreck yo self
Come on and check yo self before you wrikity-wreck yourself
Lrgjohnson -> canbeanybody 25 Sep 2015 18:00Every year the same blame the Chinese happens. US agencies will always fabricate foreign threat so annual budgets can be increased $$$. The fiscal year ends in Sept. "My dept. needs more taxpayer funding, the Chinese and Russians are attacking!"
Book_of_Life CitizenCarrier 25 Sep 2015 17:22American Hypocrisy "fuck off"
say countries spied on
http://time.com/2945037/nsa-surveillance-193-countries/
canbeanybody 25 Sep 2015 15:59It is plain silly and ridiculous to pin blame of the so-called theft of finger prints of American 5.6 millions employees.
Those rubbish finger prints have zero value to anyone other than those who are at position to manipulate, modify or even fabricate them.
In any case why should a technological so advanced American system need to keep the finger prints of their own employees? Is it impossible for American government to keep the finger prints of own employees safe?
peternh 25 Sep 2015 15:57"President Xi indicated to me that with 1.3 billion people he can't guarantee the behaviour of every single person on Chinese soil."
Although that is, in fact, what his government is entirely dedicated to attempting to do, by controlling all education, all media, what may and may not be said publicly, and controlling everything that happens on the Internet inside the Great Firewall.
Utter hypocrisy.
bujinin 25 Sep 2015 15:24Analysis:
In the name of "National Security" anything goes (except sabotage in peace time), so long as it is not used for "competitive advantage". Nice to have a mutually approved set of labels to continue doing what both sides have always been doing.
Sam3456 25 Sep 2015 15:24Another useless summit with a lame duck President who achieved the Nobel Peace Prize for being an ineffectual player on the world stage and propagating constant war for the profit of his corporate puppet masters.
|
|
|
September 23, 2015 | theantimedia.org
Michaela Whitton(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom - Jeremy Corbyn delivered his uncompromising stance on Western warmongering from the back of a London taxi last week. As the cab raced through the streets of the capital, the new Labour leader revealed his vision for an ethical foreign policy in his 17-minute interview with Middle East Eye.
Asked how he would deal with ISIS, the anti-war campaigner was uncompromising. "ISIS didn't come from nowhere, they've got a lot of money that's come from somewhere. They have a huge supply of arms that have come from somewhere and they are, not in total but in part, a creation of western interventions in the region," he said.
According to Corbyn, he would deal with the terror group by economically isolating its members. He says he would attempt to unite other groups in the region and stressed the importance of supporting autonomy for Kurdish groups. On the rise of ISIS, he pointed to the vast amount of arms that Britain sells, particularly to Saudi Arabia, declaring they must have ended up somewhere and are now being used.
Corbyn was vehemently opposed to the 2013 Parliamentary vote on military intervention in Syria and remains adamant that bombing the country now would create more mayhem. He told Middle East Eye it would be very unclear who the alliances would be with.
On the region in general, he referred to Israel and Palestine as a massive issue. Unlike his British counterparts, he expressed grave concern at the illegal Israeli settlements, military occupation of the West Bank, and lack of reconstruction in Gaza.
Praising the recent agreement with Iran, he said he wished it had included the issue of human rights, and when asked if he would have invited Egyptian leader Abdel al-Sisi to the U.K., he was clear:
"No, I would not, because of my concerns over the use of the death penalty in Egypt, the treatment of people who were part of the former government, and the continued imprisonment of President Morsi." He went on to clarify that his statement wasn't passing judgement on different parties, but on the meaning of democracy.
On Britain's relationship with Saudi Arabia, Corbyn expressed concern on what he referred to as a "huge number of issues," naming the treatment of women, the frequent use of the death penalty - including public beheadings - and the treatment of migrant workers.
At a recent Parliamentary debate, Corbyn raised the question of whether British arms sales to Saudi Arabia are more important than genuine concerns about human rights. Most of us already know the answer to this question.
"We need to be a constant irritant on human rights," he said.
Asked how Britain can make itself safer, both at home and abroad, Corbyn was frank:
"We make ourselves safer by not being part of U.S. foreign policy at every single turn. And we become a force for human rights rather than military intervention."
Asked why he has such good judgement compared with other MPs, Corbyn admitted that he reads a lot, travels a lot, and learns from people wherever he goes. "The issue is the ability to listen to people," he said.
Describing what an ethical foreign policy under a Corbyn-lead British government would look like, he said, "My basis would be that I want to see the protection and preservation of human rights around the world, deal with issues of global hunger and global inequality, and the environmental disaster that is facing this planet."
He added, "I think that should be the basis rather than what it is at the moment which seems to be to see what the White House wants, and how we can deliver it for them."
This article (Corbyn Says ISIS Partly Created by Western Intervention) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email [email protected].
|
|
|
Sep 24, 2015 | TheAntiMedia.org,
For decades, extreme ideologies on both the left and the right have clashed over the conspiratorial concept of a shadowy secret government pulling the strings on the world's heads of state and captains of industry.
The phrase New World Order is largely derided as a sophomoric conspiracy theory entertained by minds that lack the sophistication necessary to understand the nuances of geopolitics. But it turns out the core idea - one of deep and overarching collusion between Wall Street and government with a globalist agenda - is operational in what a number of insiders call the "Deep State."
In the past couple of years, the term has gained traction across a wide swath of ideologies. Former Republican congressional aide Mike Lofgren says it is the nexus of Wall Street and the national security state - a relationship where elected and unelected figures join forces to consolidate power and serve vested interests. Calling it "the big story of our time," Lofgren says the deep state represents the failure of our visible constitutional government and the cross-fertilization of corporatism with the globalist war on terror.
"It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street," he explained.
Even parts of the judiciary, namely the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, belong to the deep state.
How does the deep state operate?A complex web of revolving doors between the military-industrial-complex, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley consolidates the interests of defense contracts, banksters, military actions, and both foreign and domestic surveillance intelligence.
According to Mike Lofgren and many other insiders, this is not a conspiracy theory. The deep state hides in plain sight and goes far beyond the military-industrial complex President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about in his farewell speech over fifty years ago.
While most citizens are at least passively aware of the surveillance state and collusion between the government and the corporate heads of Wall Street, few people are aware of how much the intelligence functions of the government have been outsourced to privatized groups that are not subject to oversight or accountability. According to Lofgren, 70% of our intelligence budget goes to contractors.
Moreover, while Wall Street and the federal government suck money out of the economy, relegating tens of millions of people to food stamps and incarcerating more people than China - a totalitarian state with four times more people than us - the deep state has, since 9/11, built the equivalent of three Pentagons, a bloated state apparatus that keeps defense contractors, intelligence contractors, and privatized non-accountable citizens marching in stride.
After years of serving in Congress, Lofgren's moment of truth regarding this matter came in 2001. He observed the government appropriating an enormous amount of money that was ostensibly meant to go to Afghanistan but instead went to the Persian Gulf region. This, he says, "disenchanted" him from the groupthink, which, he says, keeps all of Washington's minions in lockstep.
Groupthink - an unconscious assimilation of the views of your superiors and peers - also works to keep Silicon Valley funneling technology and information into the federal surveillance state. Lofgren believes the NSA and CIA could not do what they do without Silicon Valley. It has developed a de facto partnership with NSA surveillance activities, as facilitated by a FISA court order.
Now, Lofgren notes, these CEOs want to complain about foreign market share and the damage this collusion has wrought on both the domestic and international reputation of their brands. Under the pretense of pseudo-libertarianism, they helmed a commercial tech sector that is every bit as intrusive as the NSA. Meanwhile, rigging of the DMCA intellectual property laws - so that the government can imprison and fine citizens who jailbreak devices - behooves Wall Street. It's no surprise that the government has upheld the draconian legislation for the 15 years.
It is also unsurprising that the growth of the corporatocracy aids the deep state. The revolving door between government and Wall Street money allows top firms to offer premium jobs to senior government officials and military yes-men. This, says Philip Giraldi, a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer for the CIA, explains how the Clintons left the White House nearly broke but soon amassed $100 million. It also explains how former general and CIA Director David Petraeus, who has no experience in finance, became a partner at the KKR private equity firm, and how former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell became Senior Counselor at Beacon Global Strategies.
Wall Street is the ultimate foundation for the deep state because the incredible amount of money it generates can provide these cushy jobs to those in the government after they retire. Nepotism reigns supreme as the revolving door between Wall Street and government facilitates a great deal of our domestic strife:
How did the deep state come to be?"Bank bailouts, tax breaks, and resistance to legislation that would regulate Wall Street, political donors, and lobbyists. The senior government officials, ex-generals, and high level intelligence operatives who participate find themselves with multi-million dollar homes in which to spend their retirement years, cushioned by a tidy pile of investments," said Giraldi.
Some say it is the evolutionary hybrid offspring of the military-industrial complex while others say it came into being with the Federal Reserve Act, even before the First World War. At this time, Woodrow Wilson remarked,
"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
This quasi-secret cabal pulling the strings in Washington and much of America's foreign policy is maintained by a corporatist ideology that thrives on deregulation, outsourcing, deindustrialization, and financialization. American exceptionalism, or the great "Washington Consensus," yields perpetual war and economic imperialism abroad while consolidating the interests of the oligarchy here at home.
Mike Lofgren says this government within a government operates off tax dollars but is not constrained by the constitution, nor are its machinations derailed by political shifts in the White House. In this world - where the deep state functions with impunity - it doesn't matter who is president so long as he or she perpetuates the war on terror, which serves this interconnected web of corporate special interests and disingenuous geopolitical objectives.
"As long as appropriations bills get passed on time, promotion lists get confirmed, black (i.e., secret) budgets get rubber stamped, special tax subsidies for certain corporations are approved without controversy, as long as too many awkward questions are not asked, the gears of the hybrid state will mesh noiselessly," according to Mike Lofgren in an interview with Bill Moyers.
Interestingly, according to Philip Giraldi, the ever-militaristic Turkey has its own deep state, which uses overt criminality to keep the money flowing. By comparison, the U.S. deep state relies on a symbiotic relationship between banksters, lobbyists, and defense contractors, a mutant hybrid that also owns the Fourth Estate and Washington think tanks.
Is there hope for the future?
Perhaps. At present, discord and unrest continues to build. Various groups, establishments, organizations, and portions of the populace from all corners of the political spectrum, including Silicon Valley, Occupy, the Tea Party, Anonymous, WikiLeaks, anarchists and libertarians from both the left and right, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and others are beginning to vigorously question and reject the labyrinth of power wielded by the deep state.
Can these groups - can we, the people - overcome the divide and conquer tactics used to quell dissent? The future of freedom may depend on it.
|
|
|
Sep 21, 2015 | www.ronpaulinstitute.org
Sep 20, 2015 | Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
Is the current refugee crisis gripping the European Union "all America's fault"? That is how my critique of US foreign policy was characterized in a recent interview on the Fox Business Channel. I do not blame the host for making this claim, but I think it is important to clarify the point.It has become common to discount any criticism of US foreign policy as "blaming America first." It is a convenient way of avoiding a real discussion. If aggressive US policy in the Middle East – for example in Iraq – results in the creation of terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda in Iraq, is pointing out the unintended consequences of bad policy blaming America? Is it "blaming America" to point out that blowback – like we saw on 9/11 – can be the result of unwise US foreign policy actions like stationing US troops in Saudi Arabia?
In the Fox interview I pointed out that the current refugee crisis is largely caused by bad US foreign policy actions. The US government decides on regime change for a particular country – in this case, Syria – destabilizes the government, causes social chaos, and destroys the economy, and we are supposed to be surprised that so many people are desperate to leave? Is pointing this out blaming America, or is it blaming that part of the US government that makes such foolish policies?
Accusing those who criticize US foreign policy of "blaming America" is pretty selective, however. Such accusations are never leveled at those who criticize a US pullback. For example, most neocons argue that the current crisis in Iraq is all Obama's fault for pulling US troops out of the country. Are they "blaming America first" for the mess? No one ever says that. Just like they never explain why the troops were removed from Iraq: the US demanded complete immunity for troops and contractors and the Iraqi government refused.
Iraq was not a stable country when the US withdrew its troops anyway. As soon as the US stopped paying the Sunnis not to attack the Iraqi government, they started attacking the Iraqi government. Why? Because the US attack on Iraq led to a government that was closely allied to Iran and the Sunnis could not live with that! It was not the US withdrawal from Iraq that created the current instability but the invasion. The same is true with US regime change policy toward Syria. How many Syrians were streaming out of Syria before US support for Islamist rebels there made the country unlivable? Is pointing out this consequence of bad US policy also blaming America first?
Last year I was asked by another Fox program whether I was not "blaming America" when I criticized the increasingly confrontational US stand toward Russia. Here's how I put it then:
I don't blame America. I am America, you are America. I don't blame you. I blame bad policy. I blame the interventionists. I blame the neoconservatives who preach this stuff, who believe in it like a religion - that they have to promote American goodness even if you have to bomb and kill people.
In short, I don't blame America; I blame neocons.
Copyright © 2015 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2015 | naked capitalism
bh2 September 20, 2015 at 3:26 pmThe witch-burning craze would be best suited as yet another unwritten chapter in Mackay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds".
If both men and women were charged and tried for this imaginary crime driven by baseless superstition, a narrative proposing it was really an ancient war on women is logically absurd - and therefore also a baseless superstition.
craazyman September 20, 2015 at 6:54 pm
It wasn't unwritten. He wrote it!
"The Witch Mania" between "The Crusades" and "The Slow Poisoners".
Laughingsong September 20, 2015 at 5:03 pm
We could lump it all together and I do agree that the context is important, but it is much easier to see why members of new religions were targeted than peasants being accused of being witches.
I find the theory fascinating because it does provide a possible explanation for something that does not really fit the usual "threat to power/otherness" explanations. I don't know if the theory is correct but I find it intriguing, especially after reading the Sonia Mitralias article yesterday.
sd September 20, 2015 at 2:25 pm
sd September 20, 2015 at 3:48 pmNot having read the book, is there any mention of c (ergot) in relation to witch hunts? I first heard of this thesis in my college botany class. The theory seems controversial even though there's archaeological evidence of rye cultivation as far north as Scandinavia by 500 AD.
Worth noting that rye blight typically affects the poor and those with limited food resources.
http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/BOT135/LECT12.HTMskippy September 20, 2015 at 7:10 pm
If memory serves, the Salem witch saga was defined by topographical elevation e.g. poor down the hill, the soggy bottom, elites up the hill, w/ poor consuming the lesser status rye whilst the elites consumed wheat.
Its not hard to imagine the elites with their religious "self awarded" superiority complex, that any, straying from the narrative would just reinforce the aforementioned mental attitude. As such any remediation would be authoritatively administered by the elites as they owned the code [arbiters of religious interpretation].
Skippy…. the old NC post on that provincial French town would make a great book end to this post, by Lambert imo….
BEast September 20, 2015 at 3:07 pm
Jim September 20, 2015 at 4:42 pmTwo other noteworthy aspects of he witch hunts: one, they were an attempt by the Catholic Church to destroy non-Church authorities; and two, they were an attempt by physicians (nobles) to destroy alternate sources of medical care.
Thus, the targets were frequently midwives and herbalists.
(It's also worth noting that the court physicians had no scientific basis for their treatments - that was shoehorned in later. So the traditional healers were, and remained for centuries, to the extent they and their methods survived, the better choice for health care, particularly for childbirth.)
False Foundations of Capitalism?
"Primitive accumulation is the term that Marx uses in Capital vol.1, to characterize the historical process upon which the development of capitalist relations was premised. It is a useful term, for it provides a common denominator through which we can conceptualize the changes that the advent of capitalism produced in economic and social relations. But its importance lies, above all in the fact that primitive accumulation is treated by Marx as a foundational process, revealing the structural conditions for the existence of capitalist society."
Marx seemed to seek the determinants of capitalism's genetic process in the logic of the preceding mode of production–in the economic structure of feudal society. But is such a description an explanation for the transition from feudal to capitalistic society?
Doesn't Marx's explanation of the origins of capitalism seems to presuppose capitalism itself?
Doesn't Marx's use of only economic variables lead into a blind alley in terms of understanding the origins of capitalism?
Shouldn't the collapsing Left finally take a serious look at cultural and political explanations for the origins of capitalism?
What about a cultural explanation in which the creation and role of nationalism in 16th century England provided a key competitive individual motivating factor among its citizens– as a possible cause of capitalism? What about the emergence of the autonomous city as a primary political cause of capitalism? Was capitalism born in Catholic, urban Italy at the end of the Middle Ages?
Why has the search for explanations of the origins of capitalism, only in the economic sphere, come to occupy such a central place in our thinking?
craazyman September 20, 2015 at 5:45 pm
I think this analysis is off the mark and probably a convolution of an array of underlying variable and functions.
It's as if the author says z = g(x); when in fact x = f(z,t,u and v).
To conclude that z relies on x is a distortion of the underlying phenomenological structure and also distorts the agency by which z, t, u and v correspond to z.
one item that is quite significant to note, and perhaps is one of the underlying variables, is the urgency by which authorities demanded "confessions' by witches, which in and of itself was sometimes enough to ameliorate punishment.
The other underlying variable is the reality of paranormal phenomenon. We think witchcraft is a doddering myth invented by overly imaginative minds, but the reality is quite other than that.
Relating "capitalism" to persecution of witches on the basis of their femaleness lacks all precision. The Roman empire was capitalist but accepted paganism. Our current culture would view persecution on the basis of witchcraft as daftminded lunacy. yet pagan cultures in Africa do so even today.
The book author throws up an interesting cloud of ideas but doesn't seem capable of credible navigation, based simply on the summary offered here. I suspect it has to do less with capitalism and femaleness in particular and more, in general, in terms of threats posed by alternative consciousness structures to the dominant structure of social organization (inclusive of economics, theology, eshatology, etc.) These would be the z, t, u and v of the underlying f-function. It's seen the world over in varying guises, but the underlying variables manifest in different costumes, in varying degrees of malision.
DJG September 20, 2015 at 6:24 pm
The problem of witches depends on the history of individual countries and also on religious orthodoxies, Catholic as well as Calvinist and Lutheran.
As is often the case, Italy is contradictory and somewhat of an exception. Yet the exceptions are regional. The peasants on the Peninsula ruled by Naples were treated differently from northern Italians. Venice was an exception.
The process of liberation seems to have begun earlier in Italy than the Black Death. While doing research about Bologna, I ran across this:
"Liber Paradisus
The Liber Paradisus (Heaven Book) is a law text promulgated in 1256 by the Comune of Bologna which proclaimed the abolition of slavery and the release of serfs (servi della gleba)."So you have emancipation and the development of an idea of human rights a hundred years before the Black Death. But the source was a social war and a desire for higher wages.
Throughout Italy, too, the Inquisition and its treatment of witches was highly uneven. I happen to have studied the benandanti, who didn't consider themselves witches, but had visions and myterious rituals. Some were healers. The Franciscans who investigated them were considered lousy Inquisitors (not tough enough) and the results are highly ambiguous. See Carlo Ginzburg's works, and see the work of Italian scholars who found even more ambiguities. Many of the benandanti in trouble were men–and the women and men reported the same mystical experiences, many of which are astounding and rather beautiful. Reports of benandanti extend into the early 1800s.
Piero Camporesi also wrote about the economic status of Italian peasants, the rituals of their year (which didn't always coincide with Catholic orthodoxy), and the strength of ancient pagan customs.
I realize that your point is witchcraft as a kind of collision with the growth of the state and "modern" markets. Yet I'd encourage you to consider Italy as a counterexample. On the other hand, fragmented Italy was the most highly developed economy in Europe during most of the middle ages and up to roughly 1550, so the markets may have developed (capitalistically as well as by state intervention, especially in Venice) more slowly, more peculiarly, and less disruptively. There are peasant revolts in Italian history, but not regions in flames and years and years of scorched-earth actions against rebellious peasants.
Chauncey Gardiner September 20, 2015 at 6:37 pm
Enlightening observations regarding the premeditated, planned and organized use of witch-hunts by the elite of that period as a vehicle of social control. I was surprised at the level of elite information and coordination in what I had previously viewed as a very primitive era of considerable physical isolation. The events discussed here suggest there was a fairly high level of communication and organization among and by the elite.
However, I would question to what extent the extreme 14th century depopulation of Europe and Britain caused by the great plague pandemics, the Great Famine, wars and weather would have led to similar elite initiatives, regardless of the transition to capitalism.
Appears to share some common threads with events and behaviors which have occurred in our own time – from those mentioned in the article to the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, the Powell memorandum of 1971 and related subsequent behavior, including the forms of "primitive accumulation" cited that led to the 2008 financial collapse.
Thank you for the review of Silvia Federici's book, Lambert, and your related observations. Seems worthwhile reading.
LifelongLib September 20, 2015 at 7:33 pm
There was at least one man in the Salem witch trials who did save his wife. At the preliminary hearing he cursed the judges for allowing her to be imprisoned, saying God would surely punish them. When she was bound over for trial anyway, he broke her out of jail and fled with her to New York.
Would that all of us men had that kind of courage and resourcefulness. Sadly most of us don't.
|
|
|
The American Conservative,It has frequently been alleged that the modern Turkish Republic operates on two levels. It has a parliamentary democracy complete with a constitution and regular elections, but there also exists a secret government that has been referred to as the "deep state," in Turkish "Derin Devlet."
The concept of "deep state" has recently become fashionable to a certain extent, particularly to explain the persistence of traditional political alignments when confronted by the recent revolutions in parts of the Middle East and Eastern Europe. For those who believe in the existence of the deep state, there are a number of institutional as well as extralegal relationships that might suggest its presence.
Some believe that this deep state arose out of a secret NATO operation called "Gladio," which created an infrastructure for so-called "stay behind operations" if Western Europe were to be overrun by the Soviet Union and its allies. There is a certain logic to that assumption, as a deep state has to be organized around a center of official and publicly accepted power, which means it normally includes senior officials of the police and intelligence services as well as the military. For the police and intelligence agencies, the propensity to operate in secret is a sine qua non for the deep state, as it provides cover for the maintenance of relationships that under other circumstances would be considered suspect or even illegal.
In Turkey, the notion that there has to be an outside force restraining dissent from political norms was, until recently, even given a legal fig leaf through the Constitution of 1982, which granted to the military's National Security Council authority to intervene in developing political situations to "protect" the state. There have, in fact, been four military coups in Turkey. But deep state goes far beyond those overt interventions. It has been claimed that deep state activities in Turkey are frequently conducted through connivance with politicians who provide cover for the activity, with corporate interests and with criminal groups who can operate across borders and help in the mundane tasks of political corruption, including drug trafficking and money laundering.
A number of senior Turkish politicians have spoken openly of the existence of the deep state. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit tried to learn more about the organization and, for his pains, endured an assassination attempt in 1977. Tansu Ciller eulogized "those who died for the state and those who killed for the state," referring to the assassinations of communists and Kurds. There have been several significant exposures of Turkish deep state activities, most notably an automobile accident in 1996 in Susurluk that killed the Deputy Chief of the Istanbul Police and the leader of the Grey Wolves extreme right wing nationalist group. A member of parliament was also in the car and a fake passport was discovered, tying together a criminal group that had operated death squads with a senior security official and an elected member of the legislature. A subsequent investigation determined that the police had been using the criminals to support their operations against leftist groups and other dissidents. Deep state operatives have also been linked to assassinations of a judge, Kurds, leftists, potential state witnesses, and an Armenian journalist. They have also bombed a Kurdish bookstore and the offices of a leading newspaper.
As all governments-sometimes for good reasons-engage in concealment of their more questionable activities, or even resort to out and out deception, one must ask how the deep state differs. While an elected government might sometimes engage in activity that is legally questionable, there is normally some plausible pretext employed to cover up or explain the act.
But for players in the deep state, there is no accountability and no legal limit. Everything is based on self-interest, justified through an assertion of patriotism and the national interest. In Turkey, there is a belief amongst senior officials who consider themselves to be parts of the status in statu that they are guardians of the constitution and the true interests of the nation. In their own minds, they are thereby not bound by the normal rules. Engagement in criminal activity is fine as long as it is done to protect the Turkish people and to covertly address errors made by the citizenry, which can easily be led astray by political fads and charismatic leaders. When things go too far in a certain direction, the deep state steps in to correct course.
And deep state players are to be rewarded for their patriotism. They benefit materially from the criminal activity that they engage in, including protecting Turkey's role as a conduit for drugs heading to Europe from Central Asia, but more recently involving the movement of weapons and people to and from Syria. This has meant collaborating with groups like ISIS, enabling militants to ignore borders and sell their stolen archeological artifacts while also negotiating deals for the oil from the fields in the areas that they occupy. All the transactions include a large cut for the deep state.
If all this sounds familiar to an American reader, it should, and given some local idiosyncrasies, it invites the question whether the United States of America has its own deep state.
First of all, one should note that for the deep state to be effective, it must be intimately associated with the development or pre-existence of a national security state. There must also be a perception that the nation is in peril, justifying extraordinary measures undertaken by brave patriots to preserve life and property of the citizenry. Those measures are generically conservative in nature, intended to protect the status quo with the implication that change is dangerous.
Those requirements certainly prevail in post 9/11 America, and also feed the other essential component of the deep state: that the intervening should work secretly or at least under the radar. Consider for a moment how Washington operates. There is gridlock in Congress and the legislature opposes nearly everything that the White House supports. Nevertheless, certain things happen seemingly without any discussion: Banks are bailed out and corporate interests are protected by law. Huge multi-year defense contracts are approved. Citizens are assassinated by drones, the public is routinely surveilled, people are imprisoned without be charged, military action against "rogue" regimes is authorized, and whistleblowers are punished with prison. The war crimes committed by U.S. troops and contractors on far-flung battlefields, as well as torture and rendition, are rarely investigated and punishment of any kind is rare. America, the warlike predatory capitalist, might be considered a virtual definition of deep state.
One critic describes deep state as driven by the "Washington Consensus," a subset of the "American exceptionalism" meme. It is plausible to consider it a post-World War II creation, the end result of the "military industrial complex" that Dwight Eisenhower warned about, but some believe its infrastructure was actually put in place through the passage of the Federal Reserve Act prior to the First World War. Several years after signing the bill, Woodrow Wilson reportedly lamented, "We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
In truth America's deep state is, not unlike Turkey's, a hybrid creature that operates along a New York to Washington axis. Where the Turks engage in criminal activity to fund themselves, the Washington elite instead turns to banksters, lobbyists, and defense contractors, operating much more in the open and, ostensibly, legally. U.S.-style deep state includes all the obvious parties, both public and private, who benefit from the status quo: including key players in the police and intelligence agencies, the military, the treasury and justice departments, and the judiciary. It is structured to materially reward those who play along with the charade, and the glue to accomplish that ultimately comes from Wall Street. "Financial services" might well be considered the epicenter of the entire process. Even though government is needed to implement desired policies, the banksters comprise the truly essential element, capable of providing genuine rewards for compliance. As corporate interests increasingly own the media, little dissent comes from the Fourth Estate as the process plays out, while many of the proliferating Washington think tanks that provide deep state "intellectual" credibility are similarly funded by defense contractors.
The cross fertilization that is essential to making the system work takes place through the famous revolving door whereby senior government officials enter the private sector at a high level. In some cases the door revolves a number of times, with officials leaving government before returning to an even more elevated position. Along the way, those select individuals are protected, promoted, and groomed for bigger things. And bigger things do occur that justify the considerable costs, to include bank bailouts, tax breaks, and resistance to legislation that would regulate Wall Street, political donors, and lobbyists. The senior government officials, ex-generals, and high level intelligence operatives who participate find themselves with multi-million dollar homes in which to spend their retirement years, cushioned by a tidy pile of investments.
America's deep state is completely corrupt: it exists to sell out the public interest, and includes both major political parties as well as government officials. Politicians like the Clintons who leave the White House "broke" and accumulate $100 million in a few years exemplify how it rewards. A bloated Pentagon churns out hundreds of unneeded flag officers who receive munificent pensions and benefits for the rest of their lives. And no one is punished, ever. Disgraced former general and CIA Director David Petraeus is now a partner at the KKR private equity firm, even though he knows nothing about financial services. More recently, former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell has become a Senior Counselor at Beacon Global Strategies. Both are being rewarded for their loyalty to the system and for providing current access to their replacements in government.
What makes the deep state so successful? It wins no matter who is in power, by creating bipartisan-supported money pits within the system. Monetizing the completely unnecessary and hideously expensive global war on terror benefits the senior government officials, beltway industries, and financial services that feed off it. Because it is essential to keep the money flowing, the deep state persists in promoting policies that make no sense, to include the unwinnable wars currently enjoying marquee status in Iraq/Syria and Afghanistan. The deep state knows that a fearful public will buy its product and does not even have to make much of an effort to sell it.
Of course I know that the United States of America is not Turkey. But there are lessons to be learned from its example of how a democracy can be subverted by particular interests hiding behind the mask of patriotism. Ordinary Americans frequently ask why politicians and government officials appear to be so obtuse, rarely recognizing what is actually occurring in the country. That is partly due to the fact that the political class lives in a bubble of its own creation, but it might also be because many of America's leaders actually accept that there is an unelected, unappointed, and unaccountable presence within the system that actually manages what is taking place behind the scenes. That would be the American deep state.
rehypothecator
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
Martian Moon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3xgjxJwedA
Latest on 911 by James Corbett
Educate yourself
All Risk No Reward
This is all you need to know to prove, beyond all doubt, that the official pile driving narrative is false.
The reality is that anyone can OBSERVE that the top of the building DID NOT DO WHAT A CUE BALL DOES EVERY SINGLE TIME IT HITS ANOTHER BILLIARD BALL - the top of the building did not decelerate.
It did not decelerate because IT DID NOT HIT THE LOWER SECTION OF THE BUILDING. For if it had hit the lower section of the building, IT WOULD HAVE DECELERATED.
The official story never addressed this point. They wisely stopped their investigation at the initiation of collapse. That was no accident.
AitT - Sir Isaac Newton Weighs in on the World Trade Center North Tower Collapse Official Narrative
http://www.weaponsofmassdebt.com/index.php/blog/aitt-sir-isaac-newton-we...
Now, some people will attack either me or this factual, observable, and repeatable information based on their programmed "crimestop" response...
crimestop - Orwell's definition: "The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short....protective stupidity."
http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html
But what nobody will do - because they can't do it - is to explain a physics based scenario where the top of the building hit a structurally solid lower section of the building WITHOUT DECELERATING.
There are NO CONTRADICTIONS in reality. One leading blogger claimed he had done lots of research that showed the official story was correct.
But what he didn't do before he stopped the conversation (smart subconsciousness!) was to explain how the top of the building could have hit a structurally sound lower section of the building without experiencing marginal deceleration.
This is the video that needs to replace all the complex theories that are too easily dismissed by the masses.
No, make the masses exclaim the physics equivalent of 2+2=5 in order to continue believing in the Debt-Money Monopolist false narratives engineered to damage ordinary people across the globe.
NeoLuddite
Elections are just advance auctions of stolen goods.
junction
"Deep State" operatives killed Michael Hastings and Philip Marshall. Whether Paul Walker was also killed by the "Murder, Inc." - type agents of the "Deep State," to make flaming car crashes look normal, is an open question. When Tennessee Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)employee Katherine Smith died in a flaming car crash in 2002, her death was called a murder (still unsolved) because a Tennessee state trooper driving behind her saw her car explode into flames before going off the road.
Smith was the DMV employee who sold driver's licenses to Arabs, licenses they used to identify themselves when they did work on the sprinkler systems at the World Trade Center before 9/11.
Sprinkler systems which all did not work on 9/11, even though they were ruggedized after the 1993 WTC truck bombing.
And who can forget the California policeman, on a 100% disability pension, who turned up in Orlando, Florida as the FBI agent who murdered a martial arts associate of Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The guy murdered had just undergone knee surgery and could only walk with a cane, yet he supposedly lunged at this crooked FBI agent, illegally collecting a disabilty pension tax free of some $60,000 a year.
The initial report from the agent said this guy had a sword cane but that report was false.
doctor10
Politics is merely the entertainment wing of the MIC/Anglo-American Central Banking junta.
Has been since November 23rd 1963. Reagan required a 22 cal message to that effect after he thought he'd been elected President.
kliguy38
Of course I know that the United States of America is not Turkey. But there are lessons to be learned from its example of how a democracy can be subverted by particular interests hiding behind the mask of patriotism.
no of course its not Turkey......its a hundred times worse
Ms No
Turkey's deep state is our deep state with some local players. This is going global, I thought everybody knew that. Turkey has been a vassal for the Ziocons as long as anyone can remember and they are one of many. Most of our presidents seem to prefer the term The New World Order. It's funny how people snicker about that term but I didn't catch a grin off of any of our presidents going back to Bush I snickering about it when they mention it in their State of the Union addresses and this current clown is not an exception.
It's quite real and not at all funny. People need to take a look around they have even spelled it out for you. What do these guys have to do send us our own eulogies? Lets just hope that while everybody else is trying to figure this out that we don't end up getting too familiar with our torture state.
Majestic12
"America is in deep shit as are all governments run by central banks neo-Keynesian fascist economic policy."
I got you on the "deep shit" and "run by central banks", but lost you on "Keynesian Fascist economic policy".
ZH is full of half truths and obfuscation.
I do not agree with much of Keynes, but most here support Von Mises (the Rockefeller Foundation product) and the London School of Economics.
These "institutions" are profoundly contradictory, corrupt and were born of the 00001%.
At least Keynes decried relying soley on monetary policy and "supply side" economics.
Most here have only known "supply side" (Reagan and after), so they have nothing to compare it to.
Listen to boomers talk of the 60s and 70s...there were always jobs, it didn't take 2 earners, it didn't take a degree, everyone took vacation, and the "information" deluge ended at 11:00pm until the next morning.
And, you really didn't have to lock your doors, unless you lived in urban Chicago, NY, LA any other huge metropolis.
So, it was all "Keynes"'s fault?
Keynes, who promoted "demand-side" and "fiscal policy"...really? Fascist?
Remember, there are 94 Million people out of the work force...but the poulation is 100 million more than in 1977, and the dollar was worth 70% more.
Salah
Seminal piece on the US 'deep state': http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/
Why the Clintons & Obama are both CIA No-doubt-about-it.
2nd Big Question: why was the CIA rushed into existence (bill signed in an airplane at end of National Airport by Truman) 45 days after the crash at Roswell?
Freddie
David Rockefeller as a young man was an OSS officer in WW2. Mi6 is the Red Shield.
They are just instruments of terror used by the elites,
Majestic12
"2nd Big Question: why was the CIA rushed into existence 45 days after the crash at Roswell?"
I am glad you asked.....the CIA's involvement was temporary.
The NSA (who now administers the black space program) began as the Armed Forces Security Agency, just 2 years later in 1949.
... ... ...
unitwar
Bill Moyers? I wonder why he doesn't report on those Bilderberg meetings he attends? He reports what he is told to report. Everything he does is a limited hangout.
Usurious
JustObservingthe french called the guillotine the national razor.........just sayin...
monica jewinsky was a honey pot.....
IgnatiusThe Deep State runs everything in America since at least Nov 22, 1963. Kennedy promised to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. Instead, the CIA shattered his brains into a thousand pieces.
The NSA spies on the Supreme Court, Congress and the White House and you.
The most extraordinary passage in the memo requires that the Israeli spooks "destroy upon recognition" any communication provided by the NSA "that is either to or from an official of the US government." It goes on to spell out that this includes "officials of the Executive Branch (including the White House, Cabinet Departments, and independent agencies); the US House of Representatives and Senate (members and staff); and the US Federal Court System (including, but not limited to, the Supreme Court)."
The stunning implication of this passage is that NSA spying targets not only ordinary American citizens, but also Supreme Court justices, members of Congress and the White House itself. One could hardly ask for a more naked exposure of a police state.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/13/surv-s13.html
Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State
There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/
Who rules America?
The secret collaboration of the military, the intelligence and national security agencies, and gigantic corporations in the systematic and illegal surveillance of the American people reveals the true wielders of power in the United States. Telecommunications giants such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, and Internet companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, provide the military and the FBI and CIA with access to data on hundreds of millions of people that these state agencies have no legal right to possess.
Congress and both of the major political parties serve as rubber stamps for the confluence of the military, the intelligence apparatus and Wall Street that really runs the country. The so-called "Fourth Estate"-the mass media-functions shamelessly as an arm of this ruling troika.
It's a big club, and we ain't in it.
jmcoombs
Institutions, left unchecked, eventually come to worship themselves. The Catholic Church during the Spanish Inquisition is a sterling example.
Majestic12
jcdenton"What happened to all those bags of money that were in Iraq that disappeared?"
That was only $8 BBBBBillion in cash....chump change.
Remember last year the DoD stated that they cannot account for $8.5 TTTTTTTTrillion.....
1 Billion = One Thousand Millions.
1 Trillion = One Thousand Billions.
If your head has stopped spinning, then please, tel me....what could they spend $8.5 TTTTrillion on?
Remember, all the wars to date are paid for in the "open" and "public" military budget...so this is "extra"....
Now maybe you can see why some of us here take whistle blowers seriously about a secret space program.
Engineers, secret construction hangars and bases ain't cheap....the shoe fits.
So, there are a shit load of "Amercians" taking a big paycheck to help the elite and off-world assholes plan our demise.
I don't know how you feel about "sell-outs", but they make me think of guillotines.
Some believe that this deep state arose out of a secret NATO operation called "Gladio,"
Well it's more than logical, more than plausible ..
This Deep State arose out of ........................ you figure it out for your own sake, and convince yourself. I'll just assist ..
Directive 166
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/09/22/fraud-on-the-u-s-supreme-court-b...
The Deutsche Verteidigungs Dienst (DVD)
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/05/04/neo-so-much-more-than-nukes/
http://wantarevelations.com/2014/01/wanta-plan-macro-financial-economic-...
Tesla's Assistant
http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20070405.htm
(do a quick search for "Jesuit" and see how many hits you get. Notice who the DVD answer to.)
Go here: https://app.box.com/s/hfgvcqg7gqh7i27at6sv53ywu87lwarp
Go to Rulers of Evil, pg. 170. Start reading from Adam Weishaupt. Now you know the purpose of the creation of the United States of America ..
Ms No
I think Hitler was right about one thing, most people cannot see the big lie, it just seems to complex to them and thus ludicrous. Just look at a small portion of a military you have cores, divisions, brigades, betallions, generals, colonals, companies, Air Force, Navy, Special Forces, intelligence, espionage, propaganda depts, indoctrination depts, etc, all under one umbrella of centralized control.
Is it really that hard to believe that a organized self serving entity who has had plenty of time and very little opposition can grow to a gargantuan empire that nearly global in scale?
Two good reads among at least a hunderd that prove otherwise Sibel Edmonds and Tales of an Economic Hit Man.
tumblemore
"most people cannot see the big lie, it just seems to complex to them"
I think it's more to do with not being sociopaths.
People tend to think other people are like them so say the average person can only tell level 6/10 lies before they feel ashamed then they have a hard time believing other people can tell level 10/10 lies. They couldn't do it themselves so it's hard for them to imagine other people being that shameless - hence the bigger and more shameless the lie the more likely it is to be believed.
Only part-sociopaths can see it.
Ms No
There maybe an element of that occuring because a psychopath can identify another path immediately which would lead one to believe they may be able to identify their activities as well but over all there is something else going on.
There most certainly is something different about people who can go against the grain and challenge common propaganda but it isn't a lack of empathy. Some people are more resistant to indoctrination and we really don't know why. We do know that there has been a large amount of research on and use of subliminal technology and trauma disassociation. I would hazard a guess that there has been a ton of research on this subject that we will probably never see.
tumblemore
JRThe thing about the deep state idea is generally they exist to keep the members in power *and* keep the state in question strong in the long-term so that power is worth something.
What's odd about the US deep state is it doesn't seem to care about the long term at all and seems only really interested in selling America piece by piece.
For example from their behavior it's pretty blatant now that lobbyists have bought the GOP's foreign policy position but the dark side of that is it probably means every other aspect of policy is for sale also.
It's like the US deep state is living off the capital rather than the interest.
"On 9/11/2001, America received its new Pearl Harbor"…to strike fear into the hearts of Americans and pave the way for the perpetrators' profitable and soul-destroying global "war on terror"... Enough is enough! "There are at least 8.5 trillion reasons to investigate the money trail of 9/11" and to end the perversion of law that has bolstered the power of those who hold the reins in Washington, DC, and use the law, perverted, as a weapon for every kind of global control and personal greed!
NEW VIDEO: 9/11 Trillions: Follow The Money
One of the best documentaries on 9/11... "The first suspects of a big crime should be those who benefit from it."
Published on Sep 11, 2015
TRANSCRIPT, SOURCES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=16167
"Forget for one moment everything you've been told about September 11, 2001. 9/11 was a crime. And as with any crime, there is one overriding imperative that detectives must follow to identify the perpetrators: follow the money. This is an investigation of the 9/11 money trail."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3xgjxJwedA&feature=youtu.be
RichardParker
Engagement in criminal activity is fine as long as it is done to protect the Turkish people...
I call bullshit on this one. More like engagement in criminal activity is fine as long as it is done to preserve/enhance the Turkish government's power.
ddsoffice
Ja, diese ist eine gutte fragge. Aber, es ist wie die 'Jetzt Neue Deutschland' uber alles vielleicht seit WWI! (Yes, this is a good topic. But, it is like the 'New Germany Now' perhaps since WWI!)
(laughing now that I still remember some of my high school German lessons over 25 years ago.)
Eine Gutte Fragge. (A good topic)
Sehr Gut. (Very good)
Jetz Deuschtland ober alles. (Now Germany over all)
krage_man
There are various terms for this - deep state, elite, etc.
But ultimately, current political system so-called democracy is far from original definition of democracy. And I dont mean that original "greek" democracy is the better one.
This is a feature of modern democracy to pretend to be old-fashioned peoples democracy. This is to make sure people do feel their power to elect (ans they have it to a degree)
This is a feature of modern democracy to have 2-3 alternative parties. Each is more attractive to a certain human personality category. This way each can find something to associate with and be associated against. This means satisfaction of citizens with having a choice even though the choice is created for them based on 2-3 major types of their personalities.
All 2-3 parties are really backed by this deep state or elite institution which manages all things behand the curtain. For instance, foreign policy basixally ghe same no matter which party has power.
Political elected officcials do not really manage the affairs, they commmunicate but the final decisions are not theirs but come deep from the state departments which are receiving instructions from deep state.
Elected president is supervised by a vise president with direct access to deep state. He would take state affairs in his hands if the president is not cooperaring or incapacited ( could be related)
Deep state controls 95% of mass media via proxy corporations. A special mass-media department of the deep state issues directives to the editors of mainstream TV/news media. This department coordinates with other depaetments like one managing foreign affairs linked or even located in official state department. One may notice a delay when a certain major events take place and mass media delays reporting by 24-48 hours while waiting for the right spin of the reporting to the nation.
Latitude25
Interesting that Turkey is mentioned. When I was in college my room mate was a Turkish guy who was definitely from the .001%, second richest family in Turkey. He said that turkey has 100s of years of experience keeping the masses occupied with one war or another and that the economy could not run without it. He also liked chasing the most beautiful blondes he could find and with his money he sure found them.
Burticus
"The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests." - Rothschild Brothers of London
withglee
Ordinary Americans frequently ask why politicians and government officials appear to be so obtuse, rarely recognizing what is actually occurring in the country.
Ordinary Americans are clueless ... witness less than 8% know anything about WTC7.
That notwithstanding, government officials "appear" to be obtuse to what is going on in the country because they "are" obtuse. At the Federal level, at best, a representative speaks for 500,000 people. He can't know those people and they can't know him.
Our system is a "fake" representative democracy. What we get is what we should expect from such a charade.
ISEEIT
"Deep State America"?
FRAUD is the singular truth. Deception, corruption.
"Rational actor" absent philosophically (and with increasing clarity, empirically via what little remains of classical scientific method)..a once socially respected 'norm' of ethics.
Morality has become hostage to maniacal narcissism. World "leaders" are simply apparatchiks of the now fully globalized machinations of failing souls.
History is repeating itself.
All indications are that death is just fine. Inevitable...
It's just the dying part that causes pain.
NuYawkFrankie
re In truth America's deep state (...) operates along a New York to Washington axis.
In an even bigger truth America's deep state (...) operates along a New York to Washington to TEL AVIV axis
- FIXED
Atomizer
Time to go to bed Zero Hedge family. Mrs. Atomizer is getting cranky for me to shut off the computer. I wanted to leave you with a Friday night boost of laughter. turn up the volume. See you bitchez in the morning!
Mortgage Thrift Shop (Macklemore WALL STREET parody ...
Usurious
good nite
John Coltrane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmD16eSy-Mg
|
|
|
Sep 19, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Note that this is a bitter defeat for Washington. Moscow, realizing that instead of undertaking an earnest effort to fight terror in Syria, the US had simply adopted a containment strategy for ISIS while holding the group up to the public as the boogeyman par excellence, publicly invited Washington to join Russia in a once-and-for-all push to wipe Islamic State from the face of the earth. Of course The Kremlin knew the US wanted no such thing until Assad was gone, but by extending the invitation, Putin had literally called Washington's bluff, forcing The White House to either admit that this isn't about ISIS at all, or else join Russia in fighting them.
... ... ...
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the man some suspect of masterminding the entire effort to restore the Assad regime, Quds commander Major General Qassem Soleimani, seems to understand the US strategy all too well - we close with the following from Iran's PressTV:Commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Qassem Soleimani said Wednesday that the policy of the US with regards to Daesh and other Takfiri groups operating in the region is to only have them under control and not eliminate them.
nnnnnn
don't forget who's creating this so called "terrorists"?
Motasaurus
It's entirely possible to forget though, since there's so many.
There's Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, London, the USA, France, Australia, and NATO. I'm probably still missing some.
Stackers
Assad is still stuck with the same big problem. He does not have the infantry numbers to defeat ISIS.
You can see prime example of this on YouTube clips of Syrian T-72 tanks doing close quarters street fighting and getting taken out by RPG's because they have no supporting infantry to sweep out the enemy infantry. Heavy tactical equipment like artillary, tanks and fighter aircraft is fine, but at the end of the day you have to be able to sweep through with enough boots to control the area.
At best Assad can wage a holding stalemate until the Russians actually deploy 10's of thousands of ground troops.
Latina Lover
Not true. Cut off the supply lines and cash funnel, and ISIS will fall apart. When the USSA, Turkey, Saudi Arabia figure out the game is over, they will cut off money.
Money Counterfeiter
Someone needs to tell Putin Israel is right next door to the south. Why let a crisis go o waste?
Manthong
Now that the Rooskies have changed the battlescape from US State's obsession to displace secular Assad with some Muslim Arab terrorist pipeline puppet to solving the US/Saudi/NATO/ISIS chaos problem, maybe the ISIS terror mercenaries will finally get a taste of their own medicine.
Everyday Europeans should be rooting for Russia and Assad if they want to solve the root cause of their Islamic invasion problem.
Manthong
Those ISIS shills really had it made for a while.. like, where else could you get money, training, military bases, unused armor and weapons parachute delivered to your doorstep?
sun tzu
Yes, against that vaunted American ISIS mercenary fighting force that is known for its military prowess LOL. Your fearsome ISIS with full US military training, weapons, and air support can't even defeat Assad's little military force with 40 year old tanks.
They're good at chopping off heads of unarmed people and that's about it. Most are foreign jihadist idiots born and raised in Western nations under rap and hiphop MTV music. Unlike the Taliban and in Iraq, they are not fighting for their homeland. The western mercs leading the ISIS forces are also a bunch of cowards. Once they face death from air attacks, the paycheck no longer means anything. Those mercs are good at overthrowing third world countries. They didn't sign up to be attacked by cruise missiles.
847328_3527
I remember when George Bush said, "God talked to him."
wtf?!
You would a thought Americans would have wised up at least after THAT!
The Indelicate Genius
ISIS Leader Admits to Being Funded by the US
http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-leader-admits-to-being-funded-by-the-u...Now, who knows how reliable that site it - but who still thinks that whatever makes it into the NY Times is reliable?
two hoots
News:
Kerry in UK to push for end to Syrian conflict:
nope-1004
Kerry in UK to push for end to Syrian embarrassment:
fify
Clearly the US could wipe ISIS if they wanted to, but since ISIS is a USA asset, used to destabilize the region so "democracy" can be forced once "humanitarian problems arise", it will be kept until no longer useful.The origins of ISIS are quite interesting. The flow of supplies are rather obvious. .GOV is the worlds largest terrorist if you follow the dots.
After being caught red-handed shipping USA vehicles for ISIS militants, .gov has come out saying that the image was doctored. LMFAO!!!! The propaganda is mind blowing.
This photo, taken from a propaganda video, shows a near identical scene featuring a different truck, raising questions as to the authenticity of the photo featuring Mr Oberholtzer's truck
"Raising questions....". From whom?
Fascism. It's obvious.
shovelhead
Wait until ISIS has some Truly Nolan trucks...
http://www.trulynolen.com/images/locations/service-tabs/commercial-pc-ba...
trulz4lulz's picture
How anyone could down vote that is beyond me, but one thing is for certain, Murikistan still wouldnt be able to find them with their hundreds of billions of dollars worth of satelites raoming the lower atmosphere of Earth.
Fractal Parasite
Kerry in UK to push for end to Syrian calamity.
Oh, now that the State Dept's takfiris are getting their asses whipped, suddenly Horse Face wants a negotiated peace.
Mr al-Assad has been offering talks for four years.
Freddie
Just like the Ukraine. The NovoRussians (DPR and LPR) get the Ukie Army in a cauldron (surrounded) and we have Minsk 1 then they get surrounded again and Minsk 2. There were probably mercs and Spec Ops in those cauldrons. they sue for peace when they are losing.
Kudos to the Ukie soldiers who quit and surrendered knowing they were being used by Kiev and kudos for the NovoRussians for treating the Ukies humanely when they surrendered.
PM Zakarchenko of DPR has said there will be no Minsk 3.
johngaltfla
BigK spot on. And once they are bottled up there, it becomes a Saudi problem again. Because what is left of the "rebels" in Syria will be ashes and incinerated bodies. The Syrian AF is doing this without the Russian AF; wait until the Russians start dropping their bombs at altitude and square blocks of terrorists begin to get vaporized.
Zero Point
A bit like how they pushed the Mujahadeen out of Afghanistan? Wait... what?
NeedtoSecede
"We are only going to arm the moderate rebels."
From the second that phrase came out of .gov's piehole I know this was going to turn into a cluster fuck of epic proportions. What a fucking joke...
Kayman
The Indelicate ..."moderate rebels"
But first we are going to round up some Unicorns for transportation.
"Christmas Greetings to the Fatherland from your brave and successful army in Stalingrad."
PacOpsThe Jesuits are about 2500 old men. Apart from a few colleges and on campus mansions with well-stocked bars - they don't control dick.
I see this notion all over CNN and youtube comments, like it is an organized effort.
Lots of valid criticisms to offer about the RCC - but controlling the world smacks of obvious gatekeeping for the usual suspects
... ... ...
Carpenter1Good interview: al-Assad and Russian media.
President al-Assad to Russian media outlets.. We cannot implement anything unless we defeat the terrorism.. The army is the most important symbol for any society.
misnomerHere's Putin paying homage to the Pope and Vatican.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/11/26/article-2513236-19A3B6AA000005...
When will you stupid fucks figure this out??
Fractal ParasiteNo. He chose to kiss the book and NOT the Pope's ring because Orthodox Christian's do not believe the Pope should be venerated or exalted as Christ. It is very telling that he chose to kiss the Bible instead.
BlankoneHere it is on youtube. All in English (mostly dubbed).
40-minute RT interview with Bashar al-Assad by a Russian delegation in Damascus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wELCDCPsw6MFractal ParasiteRe comment by Publicus:
"Russia is showing the world the correct way to deal with terrorists. EXTERMINATION."
BUT Russia is not doing any fighting. None. Putin still has not fired a shot.
What has happened is that Syria now has some accurate weapons. Finally! Which begs the question.
Why was Syria not supplied accurate weapons before now. They have been fighting and losing and dieing for several years. Much of Syria is destroyed, cities destroyed and the people killed or refugees in other countries. And it appears Putin was not suppling Russia's better quality weapons. I am not even talking about suppling the S-300, as was contracted for in 2007, but rocket launchers, decent air to ground missiles for air strikes and accurate artillery. What kind of support is it when you refuse to sell those types of weapons to an "allie' who is under attack?
Putin/Russia has not fired a shot, flown a mission or put people in the field. Russia has finally supplied some weapons that might help Assad punish the insurgents who hold much of northern Syria. If the west ups the stakes in their support will Russia finally take a direct role in flying missions or launching real missiles?
And why is Putin trying to negotiate a political agreement that includes the removal of Assad? How is that being supportive or is that just being opportunistic to do regime change using a new Russian puppet?
BlankoneReasonable questions. Re-read the article for the answers. It explains how Emperor Washington & co have been exposed as without clothes after a year of off-target "air strikes against ISIS in Syria" while Russia steps in and gets the job done in a week.
Pity ¼ millions Syrians got killed before then, but who did that?
The claim that Putin is negotiating Assad's removal is bullcrap.
Lurk SkywatcherYou need to re read the article. Russia did not fly any missions or fire a single shot. Nothing.
Also, read who got killed. Seems most were civilians. But those here seem to think it is ok when their side kills the innocent.
Putin held negotiations with the leaders of the insurgents and even hosted them as his guests recently in Russia. Why do you think he flew them to Russia, to drink vodka? It was reported that Putin wanted some figure head role for Assad and the insurgents want him dead.
Crash OverideWhere does that BBC article say "civilians"?
You have as much evidence for them being civilians as I do for them being US/UK handlers and "trainers".
Why hasn't he supported Assad until now? Why did he fly insurgent leaders to Russia for talks? Why are you confused and critical of everything he has done?
Because constantly you try to squeeze Putins opaque actions into your own flawed concept of statesmanship, and assume to understand completely what is happening. Constantly you read things into events that suit your own bias.
He knows what he is doing - twice in as many years he has deftly avoided a trap set to mire Russia in war.
If he had acted as you critisize him for not acting, he would have been long caught in the first one.
And that shows exactly how worthless and wrong your opinion is.
There are a lot of people that should be in jail... start 1, 2, 3 wars! no problem, get promoted.
Being a veteran that fought in so called wars and smokes pot for PTSD, you will be shot in your own home and arrested.
Amerika!
General Wesley Clark:
Because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" - meaning the Secretary of Defense's office - "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"
indygo55
I know the puppet masters are very good but sorry, I think Putin is the real deal. I think the puppet masters are NOT in total control of the world and Russia and China are really not going for the murder criminal cabal that does control the West.
I-am-not-one-of-them
Motasaurus"Russia and the US serve the same master"
Boris Yeltsin ain't President anymore
Carpenter1It's a proxy war. For at least the last three years Iran and Saudi Arabia have been fighting each other tooth and nail all over the Middle East. Sauid Arabia through their Islamist irregulars and Iran through their regular army (though in the case of Yemen the roles are reversed), brough in by Iraq and Syria to fight them off.
But now that the U.S. and her allies have openly entered the proxy war (remember, the U.S. has been bombing Syria for a couple of weeks now) it released Russia to do the same.
The proxy is a whole lot more direct now, and it looks like the U.S. will blink first. She doesn't like being met by capable oponents that she has to confront directly - despite all the military spending.
Look at all the fools here, thinking Russia is actually against the US.
Russia has a central bank, therefore it attends the BIS meetings in Switzerland and is a major part of the globalist agenda.
indygo55
There is a break in the force. Putin may break away this year from The London based Rothschild central bank system. He needs and now has a reason (need) to do so:
http://yournewswire.com/putin-to-nationalise-rothschild-central-bank/
Fractal Parasite
Paveway IVRussia's central bank was established under Yeltsin, the drunkard puppet who 'invited' advisors from Washington to write Russia's laws after the USSR was surrendered dismembered to the victorious hegemon in 1991.
As soon as the pathetic legislating cretins in the Duma grow a pair and take some action to reform the Central Bank Law and undo the subordination to BIS, then the people can have their country back.
chunga"...It's a proxy war. For at least the last three years Iran and Saudi Arabia have been fighting each other tooth and nail all over the Middle East...."
I agree in part, Motasaurus. This is a huge part of what's happening that's often relegated to a footnote of 'causes'. But the situation is far more complex. Years of European and American empire-building, Oil interests, ZATO's Russian 'containment' attempt, religious extremism, Israel land-grabbing and Turkish criminal clownfuckery are all rolled into one here. Every one is needed to trace the path that ended us up here.
"...Sauid Arabia through their Islamist irregulars and Iran through their regular army (though in the case of Yemen the roles are reversed), brough in by Iraq and Syria to fight them off."
That's a part of it, but I will offer an alternative: this is a banker war between Saudi Arabia/Qatar and Iran/Iraq/Syria, with the U.S. squarely backing the Saudi Arabia/Qatar side, cheered on by Israel and ZATO.
The neocon/Kagan/ISW noise about armed intervention is kind of the after-show for Syria. How did all their wars start? Iraq started with sanctions. Iran started with sanctions. Syria started with sanctions. Economic destruction followed by political stability exploited for regime change. The most damaging of those sanctions (and the easiest for the U.S. financial bully to enforce) are banking sanctions. Those are also easiest to ram through the tratiorous little bitches in congress with the least amount of hand-wringing and public outcry. No bad PR from Twitter pictures of dead babies or mutilated kids and destroyed homes, but destruction of the 'target' just the same.
Case in point [from Kenneth Rijock's Financial Crime Blog]:
Adam Szubin, formerly the Director of OFAC, and now the Acting Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Crimes, at his confirmation hearing, asserted that, should any Iranian bank, released from sanctions, due to the comprehensive nuclear agreement, re-offend, meaning conducting any transactions with Hezbollah or the IRGC Quds Force, American sanctions will be reimposed forthwith.
So if this guy is going to be the Terrorism and Financial Crimes guy, why was he silent about the same sanction threat for Saudi Arabia and Qatar? They regularly use the banking system to move massive amounts of money to finance their terrorist war in both Syria and Iraq. Where's the outrage there? How many Americans have already died (and will die) because dual-citizen israeli-firster Szubin (his two predecessors in the job were the same) pees his pants about any Iranian funds going to 'enemies of Israel' but he - just like his predecessors - will completely ignore ANY of the widely-known money transfer mechanisms the Saudis and Qatar use to fund terrorists?
The joke in all this is that the U.S. is the first to employ sanctions when it suits Israel's whims, but refuses to even acknowledge the river of money flowing to ISIS, al Nusra and the dozens of other head-chopper clans that the Saudis and Qatar fund. Why? Because to Israel (and their little bitches in the U.S. congress) any dime spent on terrorists that oppose Iran or any of their allies is not terrorist funding - it's democracy building. Ever heard of a Saudi or Qatar bank sanctioned? Ever hear of a U.S. or European bank sanctioned for moving terrorist payrolls every week to ISIS? ISIS steals and extorts a lot of money from it's imprisoned populations, but they hardly have the financial wherewithal to fund a damn global war. ISIS isn't running a cash war with suitcases of fiat - they have to use banks like everyone else for the big stuff.
Russia knows this. It wasn't going to feed it's soldiers into a meatgrinder again (like Afghanistan) funded by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.. Putin supports Assad, but would not take Russia down merely to defend Syria. All Putin had to do was wait until enough corruption and theft corroded the terrorism financing pipeline. Now it doesn't matter how much money goes in - very little gets to the terrorists on the front lines. The head-choppers are starving. Let's just say Putin has some experience on both sides of the fence dealing with corrupt psychopaths and their criminal regimes' amazing ability to self-destruct from rot.
Turkey got greedy and took too much skim from the terrorist logistics network. The jihadis themselves have been robbing ISIS and al Nusra blind of everything - weapons, radios, cash. Mostly to support their two biggest habits: food and ampehtamines. Although they continue to fund the terrorists, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have to be convinced by now that it's like storing water in a sieve (but maybe I give them too much credit here).
ISIS and al Nusra are on their financial death-bed from corruption. Good at head-chopping, not so good handling money. Putin merely has to get Assad to kick a few pegs out from under them to hasten the collapse. There will be no mass influx of Russian troops because it's unnecessary. Russia is not trying to annihilate ISIS in a war of attrition - they're letting it rot on the hoof, and giving it an occasional well-placed kick. Back-door Turkish-ISIS deals for oil? Bomb the f'king oil wells - no more oil sales. U.S.-ZATO intelligence via scrambled SATCOM links? Take out the ground stations - six months to get the new crap there which Russia will direct Assad to take out again. Takfiri payday? Smoke the al Raqqa branch of the ISIS/ZATO central bank. Next up: main branch in Mosul.
Russia has no desire, and Putin just has enough common sense not to fight ZATO terrorists on their (or the Kagan's) terms: rivers of blood and money. Russia has neither to waste and has demonstrated over and over again that they won't fall for ZATO's usual tricks. They let the ZATO terrorists in Syria bleed out by self-inflicted cuts, and will merely direct Assad where to inflict the final set of wounds to finish them off.
In the mean time, ISW and the Kagans are still trying to decide if there's some other way they can get the sieve to hold water. As of late, the strategy seems to be to send Kerry to negotiate something based on the premise that the sieve is still holding water. It's kind of pathetic when you think about it.
sandhillexitI'd like to see a stinging rebuke that causes the Murikans to reel in their policy of maliciously fucking with everybody's shit all over the world. The trouble is, in order to preserve the petro dollar and reserve status the military must maintain it's aura of invincibility because everything else is coming into question.
Therefore it seems likely they'll do something very stupid to antagonize nuclear armed Russia. Unlike China or other countries, Russian nukes are not in the experimental phase of development and every ICBM they launch is likely to perform flawlessly.
U.S. leadership abdicated and let Bibi and Nuland take the Syria fight to Russia's door, using the cousins...nearly everyone in Israel still has a cousin in Ukraine. Russia was not supposed to respond like this was a existential threat, but they did. First he locked down the Crimea. Despite hardship, the country is rallying behind Putin. You won't starve on red beets and chicken, in fact you'll be pretty healthy...that is, the Russians can outlast the French and Italian farmers who have lost their market. And the Russians understand that the same Chechen mercs who blow up their trains and schools....and are on the Saudi payroll.....are running training camps now in Syria.
There might be a deeper "game." It is highly plausible that the City of London looked around twenty years ago for someone competent, not a klepto and backed the Putin horse to protect their investments in Russia. Not a bad choice. The British foreign service is so much more competent than ours. And they have just reopened their embassy in Teheran, having turned Basra over to the Iranians before they pulled troops out. USA is so badly served.
The definitive book on Russian & Jewish relations was written by Solzynitzin. It's called "200 Years Together" and it has not been translated/published in English. You can't buy it at Amazon. THINK about that.
But that isn't so important right now. At the level of families living or dying, 2000-year old Christian treasures being obliterated by ISIS Bolsheviks, he is the only thing that stands up to Bibi's lunacy. The Germans seem to be making the same calculus. They think the US has lost the plot.
Remember Bibi is expendable. All it takes is a vote of no-confidence by the military. Livni could step up. BHO isn't going to reach out ot help a 'friend' because...well...
AmericanFUPAcabra
The people of Crimea voted on a referendum to join Russia and 95+% voted in favor of doing so. Other than that nice post @@
My Days Are Getting Fewer
Excellent summary here:
http://www.vho.org/tr/2004/3/Strauss342-351.html
Read the last sentence...
godiva chocolate
The US is neither free nor a democracy itself. How dare it spread its oligarchy onto other countries.
FireBrander
max2205The USA in 2015 is the end result of a "Free Market"...it is what happens when the concentration of wealth/power goes unchecked...even ecouraged....Corporate Crony Capitalism...where the bulk of the "profits" fall into the hands of th e few...That is America today.
Show me someone that thinks "Socialism" has brought us to this point, and I'll show you a complete fucken Rightwing moron.
researchfixThe killing fields. Putin helping EU to stop the mass exodus as well
But they will blame him nonetheless.
They always doooooooo............
world map of US military installations........
It's Russian payback time for Afghanistan.
It's not that I'm rooting for the Russians and Syrians. I don't give a shit who stuffs the USSA, NATO and Israel, as long as it's done.
withglee
NoWayJosemay have turned the tide in the country's four-year civil war.
This is a propaganda marker. Syria is not having a "civil" war. They are under attack by the USA CIA and Israel Mossad.
NeoRandianI have always wondered how ISIS continues to operate tanks and Humvees across open desert without any coalition air strikes. They have training camps and barracks and offices without worrying about air strikes. They have parades and convoys of vehicles without fear. They operate oilfields and refineries at will, and transport and sell the output. The U.S. is allowing this. Putin will not.
The U.S. wants to track my $10,000 withdrawal, freeze Iranian money, seize Russian billionaire's funds, peek into Swiss bank accounts -- yet cannot track ISIS oil revenues and huge financial transactions?
But at least we will have an openly gay Secretary of the Army!
bthunderAlso seems a little strange that ISIS can openly recruit people through Twitter and Facebook. Would anything remotely similar ever be permitted on any other site?
Keep an eye on the Joshua Goldberg story; I bet the CIA offers him a job after he is debriefed by the FBI.
BendGuyhereYou, ZeroHedgers, never seem to learn from history: "checkmate, courtesy of The Kremlin. " - SERIOUSLY?
35 years ago the CIA lured USSR into Afghanistan, and when the oil prices dropped in the mid-1980s, the USSR was no more.
Oil prices are already down (son to go down even more thanks to Iran.) The Chinese already refuse to pay prices they agreed to just 8 months ago, and Gazprom is offering Ukraine 50% discounts!), Russia is already is involved in Ukraine, and now it's getting itself stuck in the sandbox in Syria.
How is it different from Afghanistan in 1980s? And while the USSR could hide the dead in 60000 zinc coffins, do you think in the age of Twitter and Facebook they'll be able to do that? You think that Russian people are sheepple just like the americans?
Seems to me it's checkmate to Putin, courtesy of the CIA and the Saudis.
P.S. When evryone keeps telling a dictator how great and brilliant he is, he starts believing that shit. Even as state revenues drop by 50%, even as his newest missiles explode at launch and the only target they hit are passenger jets. His pride takes over and he sends his best forces into the "sandbox" to defend his ally, a palce where every great army has been defeated. Checkmate, indeed.
P.P.S. Since the reports of Russians in Syria has surfaced, there's unusual "quietness" in Eastern Ukraine. Could it be that Russia cannot conduct war on 2 fronts? I can't wait until the CIA tests that theory, gives Ukes some of the new weaponry to "probe" russkies closer to thir homeland.
bthunderJaw-dropping inanity.
"35 years ago the CIA lured USSR into Afghanistan, and when the oil prices dropped in the mid-1980s, the USSR was no more."
Yes, the brilliant CIA created the TALIBAN, which WE just spent 12 years fighting with 4 TRILLION$ and thousands DEAD, maimed. WAY TO FUCKING GO USA! OH, and now our home-grown USA SHALE OIL 'MIRACLE' has been destroyed by said engineered low oil prices. DUH. Blowback's a bitch.
rejectedUSA is still here, where's USSR?
USA (or USSA) is in deep sh*t, but Russia is waaaayyyy deeper.
Indeed, CIA was brilliant in using the Taliban to defeat USSR. It was Dick 'the Dick" Cheney who caused 12 years of fighting and spent $4T.
Just let the CIA do their thing and in no time China and USA will be dividing siberian oil amoung themselves, with Putin looking through jail window.
MeBizarro"How is it different from Afghanistan in 1980s? "
In 1980 the usa debt was 980 billion. Today the ussa debt is 18 trillion dollars (what they admit to) and growing exponentially.
In 1980 the usa was a manufacturing giant of quality merchandise. Now all the ussa produces is fiat and the tools of war.
In 1980 the usa had robust economy with much opportunity. Today the ussa has no work, no economy and no opportunity unless you call playing in the stock casino's opportunity.
In 1980 the usa had individual privacy and still could depend on the constitution. Today the ussa spies on everyone, and has totally eviscerated the constitution.
In 1980 the usa was at war with no one, for a change. Today the ussa is at war with half the world.
In 1980 the usa had a space program. Today the ussa depends on China and Russia to get people into space.
In 1980 the usa had a president. Today the ussa has a dictatorial executive.
In 1980 Afghanistan was eradicating the opium crop. Today the ussa armed forces guards and ships the bumper crops.
Comparing 1980 to now is like comparing Day to Night. On September 11, 2001 a darkness descended on the usa which gave birth to the ussa
AnunnakiThis has nothing to due with Afghanistan. As for the US economy in '80, it was pretty crappy and the only reason we weren't officially at war was because of Carter in the White House. Plenty on the Hill and in the DOD were pushing for a fight in Central America, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.
I would agree though on several point and since 9-11 we have been a scared, scitterish, anxiety-ridden mess on the whole.
Terrific article. Superb narrative. Essentially Obama can no longer bleed Assad through ISIS. And he will have to coordinate with Putin or it looks mightily suspicious to Europe overwhelmed by refugees
And this aggressive Syrian air force display makes a No Fly Zone moot
Obama and Kerry come off as sore losers. Give Hezbollah all the small arms they need and tell Netanyahoo to gack to murdering Gazan children which is all he is good at
Admittedly, I am a Putin supprter, but he just caught Obama with his pants down.
Wait till Putin's speech before the UN General Assembly. America will go apoplectic over being on the brunt end of a scolding
I had been impatient with Putin over Syria. I should have had faith that he would not fold
Obama by telling Carter to callShoigu means he lost his nerve
BendGuyhere
Yet another neocon fiasco. Uncounted billions gone, Syriah shattered forever, oh, and our dearest allies in Europe overrun with filthy penniless refugees. Way to go Team America!
falak pema
the russian axis now in place.
Obama cedes Syria to Putin and thus allows an Iranian initiative also which will have repercussions in Lebanon (Hezbollah), in Yemen (Houthi) and Palestine (Hamas).
A major shift in the ME power structure now seems in the making as the Lausanne Deal between US/IRan has changed the game.
What will Saud do now?
And watch the French and Germans try and win some contracts both in Iran and in Saud...when alliances fold new ambitions are born.
Pax Americana...wither now?
litemine
Like the Americans in control say.........."American Interests" are what the Military fight for....Right or wrong, Obama said.....We have No Friends, only Opportunities".
That being said, and the dumbed down General American Population with an Army pumped on Roids think thier shit doesn't stink. Wrap the stars and stripes around you and die for your freedom......Well now, How did that work out?
The Congress is bought, the army is Mercinary and the financial system controls. The Biggest lobby group is Israel...who profits from this? Not mainsteet. They own you. If you don't have a problem with that.....Carry On .
|
|
|
September 14, 2015 | grahamefuller.com
Washington has been wrapped in confusion and indecision for years now in trying to sort out just what its real objectives are in Syria. Its obsessive, and ultimately failed goal of denying Iran influence in the Middle East has notably receded with Obama's admirable success in reaching a deal with Iran on the nuclear issue and gradual normalization of Iran's place in the world.
But while the Israel lobby and its Republican allies failed to block Obama's painstaking work in reaching that agreement, they now seem determined to hobble its implementation in any way possible. This is utterly self-defeating: unable to block Iran's re-emergence they seem determined to deny themselves any of the key payoffs of the agreement-the chance to work with Iran selectively on several important common strategic goals: the isolation and defeat of ISIS, a settlement in Syria that denies a jihadi takeover, the rollback of sectarianism as a driving force in the region, a peaceful settlement in Iran's neighbor Afghanistan, and the freeing up of energy/pipeline options across Asia.
But let's address this Syrian issue. There's a new development here-stepped up Russian involvement-that poses new challenge to the American neocon strategic vision. So here is where Washington needs to sort out what it really wants in Syria. Is the main goal still to erode Iranian influence in the region by taking out Iran's ally in Damascus? Or does it want to check Russian influence in the Middle East wherever possible in order to maintain America's (fast becoming illusory) dominant influence? These two goals had seemed to weigh more heavily in Washington's calculus than Syrian domestic considerations. In other words, Asad is a proxy target.
There are two major countries in the world at this point capable of exerting serious influence over Damascus-Russia and Iran. Not surprisingly, they possess that influence precisely because they both enjoy long-time good ties with Damascus; Asad obviously is far more likely to listen to tested allies than heed the plans of enemies dedicated to his overthrow.
The overthrow of Asad seemed a simple task in 2011 as the Arab Spring sparked early uprisings against him. The US readily supported that goal, as did Turkey along with Saudi Arabia and others. As the Asad regime began to demonstrate serious signs of resilience, however, the US and Turkey stepped up support to nominally moderate and secular armed opposition against Damascus, thereby extending the brutal civil war.
That calculus began to change when radical jihadi groups linked either to al-Qaeda or to ISIS (the "Islamic State") began to overshadow moderate opposition forces. As ruthless as Asad had been in crushing domestic opposition, it became clear that any likely successor government would almost surely be dominated by such radical jihadi forces-who simply fight more effectively than the West's preferred moderate and secular groups who never got their act together.
Enter Russia. Moscow had already intervened swiftly and effectively in 2013 to head off a planned US airstrike on Damascus to take out chemical weapons by convincing Damascus to freely yield up its chemical weapons; the plan actually succeeded. This event helped overcome at least Obama's earlier reluctance to recognize the potential benefits of Russian influence in the Middle East to positively serve broader western interests in the region as well.
Russia is of course no late-comer to the region: Russian tsars long acted as the protector of Eastern Orthodox Christians in the Middle East in the nineteenth century; the Russians had been diplomatic players in the geopolitical game in the region long before the creation of the Soviet Union. During the West's Cold War with the Soviet Union the two camps often strategically supported opposite sides of regional conflicts: Moscow supported revolutionary Arab dictators while the West supported pro-western dictators. Russia has had dominant military influence in Syria for over five decades through weapons sales, diplomatic support, and its naval base in Tartus.
With the collapse of the USSR in 1991 Russian influence in the area sharply declined for the first time as the new Russia sorted itself out. America then began declaring itself the "world's sole superpower," allegedly now free to shape the world strategically as it saw fit. And the significant neoconservative and liberal interventionist factions in Washington still nourish the same mentality today-predicated on the belief that the US can continue to maintain primacy around the world-economic, military, and diplomatic. In this sense, any acknowledgment of Russian influence in the Middle East (or elsewhere) represents an affront, even "a threat" to US dominance and prestige.
For similar reasons Iran's long-time open challenge against American ability act with impunity in the Middle East has always constituted a deep source of American strategic anger-viscerally surpassing the more Israel-driven nuclear issue.
Today the combination of Russia and Iran (whose interests do not fully coincide either) exert major influence over the weakening Asad regime.
If we are truly concerned about ISIS we must recognize that restoration of a modicum of peace in Syria and Iraq are essential prerequisites to the ultimate elimination of ISIS that feeds off of the chaos.
Russia appears now to be unilaterally introducing new military forces, stepped up weapons deliveries, and possibly including limited troop numbers into Syria specifically to back the Asad regime's staying power. Washington appears dismayed at this turn of events, and has yet to make up its mind whether it would rather get rid of Asad, or get rid of ISIS. It is folly to think that both goals can be achieved militarily.
In my view, the fall of Asad will not bring peace but will instead guarantee deadly massive long-term civil conflict in Syria among contending successors in which radical jihadi forces are likely to predominate-unless the west commits major ground forces to impose and supervise a peace. We've been there once before in the Iraq scenario. A replay of Iraq surely is not what the West wants.
So just how much of a "threat" is an enhanced Russian military presence in Syria? It is simplistic to view this as some zero-sum game in which any Russian gain is an American loss. The West lived with a Soviet naval base in Syria for many decades; meanwhile the US itself has dozens of military bases in the Middle East. (To many observers, these may indeed represent part of the problem.)
Even were Syria to become completely subservient to Russia, US general interests in the region would not seriously suffer (unless one considers maintenance of unchallenged unilateral power to be the main US interest there. I don't.) The West has lived with such a Syrian regime before. Russia, with its large and restive Muslim population and especially Chechens, is more fearful of jihadi Islam than is even the US. If Russia were to end up putting combat troops on the ground against ISIS (unlikely) it would represent a net gain for the West. Russia is far less hated by populations in the Middle East than is the US (although Moscow is quite hated by many Muslims of the former Soviet Union.) Russia is likely to be able to undertake military operations against jihadis from bases within Syria. Indeed, it will certainly shore up Damascus militarily-rather than allowing Syria to collapse into warring jihadi factions.
What Russia will not accept in the Middle East is another unilateral US (or "NATO") fait accompli in "regime change" that does not carry full UN support. (China's interests are identical to Russia's in most respects here.)
We are entering a new era in which the US is increasingly no longer able to call the shots in shaping the international order. Surely it is in the (enlightened) self-interest of the US to see an end to the conflict in Syria with all its cross-border sectarian viciousness in Iraq. Russia is probably better positioned than any other world player to exert influence over Asad. The US should be able to comfortably live even with a Russian-dominated Syria if it can bring an end to the conflict-especially when Washington meanwhile is allied with virtually every one of Syria's neighbors. (How long Asad himself stays would be subject to negotiation; his personal presence is not essential to 'Alawi power in Syria.)
What can Russia do to the West from its long-term dominant position in Syria? Take Syria's (virtually non-existent) oil? Draw on the wealth of this impoverished country? Increase arms sales to the region (no match for US arms sales)? Threaten Israel? Russia already has close ties with Israel and probably up to a quarter of Israel's population are Russian Jews.
Bottom line: Washington does not have the luxury of playing dog in the manger in "managing" the Middle East, especially after two decades or more of massive and destructive policy failure on virtually all fronts.
It is essential that the US not extend its new Cold War with Russia into the Middle East where shared interests are fairly broad-unless one rejects that very supposition on ideological grounds. The same goes for Iran.
We have to start someplace.
Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official, author of numerous books on the Muslim World; his latest book is "Breaking Faith: A novel of espionage and an American's crisis of conscience in Pakistan." (Amazon, Kindle) grahamefuller.com
|
|
|
Sep 16, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Submitted by George Washington on 09/16/2015 00:42 -0400
The Daily Mail reported last year:
A self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that [Gaddafi offered to abdicate as leader of Libya.]
'Gaddafi wasn't a good guy, but he was being marginalized,' [Retired Rear Admiral Chuck ] Kubic recalled. 'Gaddafi actually offered to abdicate' shortly after the beginning of a 2011 rebellion.
'But the U.S. ignored his calls for a truce,' the commission wrote, ultimately backing the horse that would later help kill a U.S. ambassador.
Kubic said that the effort at truce talks fell apart when the White House declined to let the Pentagon pursue it seriously.
'We had a leader who had won the Nobel Peace Prize,' Kubic said, 'but who was unwilling to give peace a chance for 72 hours.'
The Washington Times wrote in January:
"I have been contacted by an intermediary in Libya who has indicated that President Muammar Gadhafi is willing to negotiate an end to the conflict under conditions which would seem to favor Administration policy," [former U.S. Congressman Dennis] Kucinich wrote on Aug. 24.
***
Mrs. Clinton ordered a general within the Pentagon to refuse to take a call with Gadhafi's son Seif and other high-level members within the regime, to help negotiate a resolution, the secret recordings reveal.
A day later, on March 18, Gadhafi called for a cease-fire, another action the administration dismissed.
***
"Everything I am getting from the State Department is that they do not care about being part of this. Secretary Clinton does not want to negotiate at all," the Pentagon intelligence asset told Seif Gadhafi and his adviser on the recordings.
Communication was so torn between the Libyan regime and the State Department that they had no point of contact within the department to even communicate whether they were willing to accept the U.N.'s mandates, former Libyan officials said.
***
"The decision to invade [Libya] had already been made, so everything coming out of the State Department at that time was to reinforce that decision," the official explained, speaking only on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
***
"The Libyans would stop all combat operations and withdraw all military forces to the outskirts of the cities and assume a defensive posture. Then to insure the credibility with the international community, the Libyans would accept recipients from the African Union to make sure the truce was honored," Mr. Kubic said, describing the offers.
"[Gadhafi] came back and said he was willing to step down and permit a transition government, but he had two conditions," Mr. Kubic said. "First was to insure there was a military force left over after he left Libya capable to go after al Qaeda. Secondly, he wanted to have the sanctions against him and his family and those loyal to him lifted and free passage. At that point in time, everybody thought that was reasonable."
But not the State Department.
Gen. Ham was ordered to stand down two days after the negotiation began, Mr. Kubic said. The orders were given at the behest of the State Department, according to those familiar with the plan in the Pentagon. Gen. Ham declined to comment when questioned by The Times.
"If their goal was to get Gadhafi out of power, then why not give a 72-hour truce a try?" Mr. Kubic asked. "It wasn't enough to get him out of power; they wanted him dead."
Similarly, Saddam Hussein allegedly offered to let weapons inspectors in the country and to hold new elections. As the Guardian reported in 2003:
In the few weeks before its fall, Iraq's Ba'athist regime made a series of increasingly desperate peace offers to Washington, promising to hold elections and even to allow US troops to search for banned weapons. But the advances were all rejected by the Bush administration, according to intermediaries involved in the talks.
Moreover, Saddam allegedly offered to leave Iraq:
"Fearing defeat, Saddam was prepared to go peacefully in return for £500million ($1billion)".
"The extraordinary offer was revealed yesterday in a transcript of talks in February 2003 between George Bush and the then Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar at the President's Texas ranch."
"The White House refused to comment on the report last night. But, if verified, it is certain to raise questions in Washington and London over whether the costly four-year war could have been averted."
According to the tapes, Bush told Aznar that whether Saddam was still in Iraq or not, "We'll be in Baghdad by the end of March." See also this and this.
Susan Lindauer (after reading an earlier version of this essay by Washington's Blog) wrote:
That's absolutely true about Saddam's frantic officers to retire to a Villa in Tikrit before the invasion. Except he never demanded $1 BILLION (or $500 MILLION). He only asked for a private brigade of the Iraqi National Guard, which he compared to President Clinton's Secret Service detail for life throughout retirement. I know that for a fact, because I myself was the back channel to the Iraqi Embassy at the U.N. in New York, who carried the message to Washington AND the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. Kofi Annan was very much aware of it. So was Spain's President Asnar. Those historical details were redacted from the history books when George Bush ordered my arrest on the Patriot Act as an "Iraqi Agent"– a political farce with no supporting evidence, except my passionate anti-war activism and urgent warnings that War in Iraq would uncover no WMDs, would fire up a violent and bloody counter-insurgency, and would result in Iran's rise as a regional power. In 2007, the Senate Intelligence Committee hailed my warnings in Jan. 2003 (as the Chief Human Intelligence covering Iraq at the U.N.) to be one of the only bright spots in Pre-War Intelligence. Nevertheless, in 2005 and again in 2008, I was declared "incompetent to stand trial," and threatened with "indefinite detention up to 10 years" on Carswell Air Force Base, in order to protect the cover up of Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence.
(The New York Times has covered Lindauer at least 5 times, including here and here.)
On October 14, 2001, the Taliban offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country if the US halted bombing if the Taliban were given evidence of Bin Laden's involvement in 9/11.
Specifically, the Guardian noted in 2001:
Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban "turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty" …
Afghanistan's deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
"If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved" and the bombing campaign stopped, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country", Mr Kabir added.
However, as the Guardian subsequently pointed out:
A senior Taliban minister has offered a last-minute deal to hand over Osama bin Laden during a secret visit to Islamabad, senior sources in Pakistan told the Guardian last night.
For the first time, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial in a country other than the US without asking to see evidence first in return for a halt to the bombing, a source close to Pakistan's military leadership said.
And the Guardian reports today:
Russia proposed more than three years ago that Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, could step down as part of a peace deal, according to a senior negotiator involved in back-channel discussions at the time.
Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world's gravest refugee crisis since the second world war.
Ahtisaari held talks with envoys from the five permanent members of the UN security council in February 2012. He said that during those discussions, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, laid out a three-point plan, which included a proposal for Assad to cede power at some point after peace talks had started between the regime and the opposition.
But he said that the US, Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall, they ignored the proposal.
***
"There was no question because I went back and asked him a second time," he said, noting that Churkin had just returned from a trip to Moscow and there seemed little doubt he was raising the proposal on behalf of the Kremlin.
Ahtisaari said he passed on the message to the American, British and French missions at the UN, but he said: "Nothing happened because I think all these, and many others, were convinced that Assad would be thrown out of office in a few weeks so there was no need to do anything."
Similarly, Bloomberg reported in 2012:
As Syria slides toward civil war, Russia is signaling that it no longer views President Bashar al-Assad's position as tenable and is working with the U.S. to seek an orderly transition.
***
After meeting with French President Francois Hollande, among the most adamant of Western leaders demanding Assad's departure, Putin said Russia was not invested in Assad staying.
***
"We aren't for Assad or for his opponents," Putin told reporters in Paris on June 1. "We want to achieve a situation in which violence ends and a full-scale civil war is avoided."
And yet, as with Gaddaffi, Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, the U.S. turned down the offer and has instead prosecuted war. See this and this.
Postscript: An offer by Russia for Assad to leave is not the same as an offer by Assad himself. However, because the Syrian government would have long ago fallen without Russia's help, the distinction is not really that meaningful.
demurWhat the USSA is doing is pure evil. At least Germany had a logical reason for aggressions. The treaty of Versailles unfairly took German lands. Germany wanted them back. It wasn't till Poland resisted that Germany let loose.
The USSA destroys leaders seeking a truce and does so in the name of peace. Then it rams its immoral, family destroying sterilizing geo-political socio economic system down traditional pious soverigns throats.
so this make us what? the evil emipire? officially the bad guys?
Sudden DebtI don't call them the predators-that-be for nothing.
Why did we go to war in the first place?
War industry, they run shit.
And sure they did it so they could steal all the money in the world.
That's why we're broke and half the world is at war.
That can never be ended.
This is far from a new phenomena, we did the same against Spain until we took the Philippines, Wilson and House were against a settlement of the then still European War until the US had shed its blood on European soil, which clearly would have resulted in a pre-hostilities border settlement and maintained political structures instead of unconditional surrender.
All the blood, misery and human carnage that could have been subsequently avoided had we just stuck to the principles of the nations founders.
But capital requires war, war for profits, war to cull excess supply of capital, war to rebuild and war to dominate.
Power and money forged with American myth has been a potent mixture that directly and indirectly has murdered 100's of millions of innocent lives. And we are to destroy the cultural heritage of nations because one boy died on the beaches escaping a war that we initiated and fostered?
yellowsub
Turdy Brown"War is Peace", why do you think they didn't negotiate?
pFXTimAdmiral Kubic is a good friend of mine. I was in Libya and Afghanistan with him. He is one of the smartest, bravest men that I have ever met.
In fact a quick story about him. We were both working on a project at the US Embassy in Kabul in 2011. I had just landed in the morning and as soon as I got to the Embassy, a group of Taliban started lobbing rocket towards the Embassy. Anyhow, it was a 24 hour ordeal but Kubic was the only person that I saw that grabbed an AK from a Ghurka guard (btw Ghurkas are cowards!), and rushed towards the attackers! Most people, including security personell were running away from the fire. Not Kubic: he was charging the Taliban! Never seen anything like it in my life!
I also have personal knowledge of what he has said in this article. ALL TRUE!
wouldn't be the first time...
Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet stated in a public address given at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945:
- The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 329, Chapter 26) . . . [Nimitz also stated: "The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. . . ."]
http://www.doug-long.com/guide1.htm
somewhat different than the widely accepted official narrative.
SUNKNIGHT2010
Saddam Hussein switched from using the US dollar to the euro in selling Iraqi oil. The same with Libya, they were friends with the USA until plans were established to set up a currency (Dinar) backed by gold .for the USA's economy to survive, it MUST maintain world currency reserve status --
ANYTHING that threatens this position WILL be neutralized, irregardless of what it takes -- When Iraq started selling oil using the euro, Saddam Hussein signed his death warrant, as did Libya -- The true reason for all this conflict is to maintain & support the US dollar & economy, namely all the wealthy of Wall Street & Washington DC .
But for some weird reason ALOT of people here seem to think Israel is responsible for everything bad that has or will ever happen !
Sad how in 2015 , people are still so racist -- How far humanity has advanced in technology but how primitive an foolish the human race still is in MANY ways !
Reaper
There is glory in military victories. Exceptional trained sheeple die for that glory. Does the sheeple's god reward them for their stupidity? Do the gods praise as exceptional those whom they'll destroy?
11b40
Wall Street controls Washington.
Who controls Wall Street?
(if you don't know, I'm sure someone here could help you find out)
Motasaurus
RagnarReduxLondon controls Wall Street. And Riyadh. And Tel-Aviv. Not England, London. And the Bankers who control that city, control the world.
Yep, sounds just like ethno-oligarch subverted Western nations, nothing has changed.
What the World Rejected
Hitler's Peace Offers, 1933- 1939
BullyBearish
There's no money in PEACE..
Max Steel
Why is the West reporting this NOW? It is a negotiating ploy. They know they have lost. Now they are trying to see if this old offer could still be put on the table.
silverer
No, the US leadership is a bunch of sore losers. That's what US voters wanted, prayed for, hoped for, and then mandated with an election. US leaders can't admit defeat, so next is probably a nuclear escalation, because they've convinced themselves that they have dug their protection deep enough into a number of mountains at taxpayer expense so that they will win and then survive.
In Russia, they built billions of dollars worth of fallout shelters over the last 20 years for the ordinary Russian. Every citizen in Moscow is within three minutes of a fallout shelter. The Russian leadership knows the US leadership better than the US voters do. In the US, they haven't built anything at all to protect the general population, and apparently consider everyone expendable.
This way, if the US calls it all wrong and totally screws it up, they won't have to answer to anyone who voted for them when they walk out of their fallout shelters a year after it's all over.
OpTwoMisticDo not confuse America with its leadership.
Motasaurus
So long as the leadership remains in power and not dangling by their necks from the White House balcony, America and the leadership are the same.
SmittyinLA
The US didn't want an election, Kaddaffi would have won, he was loved by his people, Libyans wouldn't vote for their own liquidation, Libya had the highest living standards in Africa, Libyan citizenship was a valuable commodity -- like US citizenship.
Libya was looted in an international war crime.
To Hell In A Handbasket
Looted is the understatement of the year.
The narrative by the MSM was Gaddaffi is a dictator and the people need freedom and democracy. What the MSM ommitted was a background history of the country, Libya's achievments under Gaddaffi vs the total plunder of Libya under our puppet leader King Idris(who was overthrown by Gaddaffi), who were the Libyian National Transitional Council (NTC), what was the price of French(NATO) intervention for the treasonous (NTC)? (Mining rights to 35% of Libya's hydro carbons)
On 3 April a letter was sent by Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) to a coalition partner, Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, which mentioned that France would take "35 percent of crude oil...in exchange for its total and permanent support" of the NTC. France's Liberation daily reported on Thursday that it had a copy of the letter, which stated that the NTC's Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam, would negotiate the deal with France. In 2010 France was the second purchaser of Libyan oil after Italy, with over 15 percent of its "oil" imported from Tripoli.
But that's not all as we must apply logic. Who was the first country to recognise the NTC? Which was the only country Gaddaffi broke off diplomatic ties? Which country was the first to bomb? The answer is France, to all 3 of those questions, but there is more the MSM avoided talking about and the biggest mystery is WHERE IS LIBYA'S 148 METRIC TONNS OF GOLD? Western leaders are not interested in peace, but in conquest and plunder for their paymasters.. Even the doubters who believed in freedom and humanitarian intervention, had to sit up, pause and think, when the NTC before they had even reached Trippoli and was losing the ground offensive, created their own central bank that was recognised by the NATO coalition inside of 2 days.. Case closed.
OpenThePodBayDoorHAL
Gaddafi had loaned Unicredito multiple billions in 2009 and they didn't feel like paying it back. Follow the money.
Bankster Kibble
We don't trust elections in our client states. When the Iraqis had their first election after the fall of Saddam, they elected some mullah we didn't like so we made them hold another election. "Do it again until you do it right!"
rsnoble
There's no profit in peace. Or not nearly as much I should say. A little dribble just won't cut it, steal the whole fucking enchilada at once. Get to test weapons. Get to play with cool toys like drones. See people get blown to pieces for the sick-minded. Move closer to world domination, etc. All ideas of crazy people. The only problem is, since this is human nature, if the US wasn't doing it or preventing others, would others step in with the same crazy ass plan? I would venture to guess yes.
GRDguy
BurnUnitWhatever is of benefit to peaceful citizens is not profitable to the financial sociopaths. Hence, fighting increases. Your real enemy hides in financial institutions, surrounded by minions and voracious lawyers.
rwe2lateDo you think the white collar crime of Wall Steet and the Federal Reserve is bad ?
For more crimes against humanity go to www.firecrusade.com and see Free Document page and click link A Crime Against Humanity
The very gov agencies that are supposed to be protecting the public from dangers of fire and hazardous products, CPSC and NFPA as well as the non gov testing facility UL which often tests products on the governments behalf, have been covering up a deadly conspiracy to commit fraud that has resulted in the deaths of 10's of 1000's and horrible, often times, disfiguring injuries of 100's of 1000's of unsuspecting consumers over last 5 decades.
These agencies have all been in the back pocket of ionized alarm manufactures for over 50 years , which was exposed back in 1976 by a Fire Protection Engineer, Richard Patton. Mr. Patton revealed that the government funded Dunes Test which tested smoke alarms, was not only rigged so ionized alarms would pass the smoldering smoke stage of test but the data was falsified so that ionized detectors could keep the UL stamp of approval, while the superior, safer and more reliable heat detector technologies were deliberately set up to fail the tests.
With each day that passes and the CSPC fails to make a mandatory recall of ion alarms , many more victims will either be killed and or suffer serious injuries as the ionized alarm manufactures flooded the market with ion alarms and it is estimated that over 90% of all homes and habitable structures have these deadly devices, providing the public with a false sense of security.
Buyer beware -- These deaths and injuries have been and are preventable, as the safer more reliable photoelectric / heat smoke alarms have been available for over 40 years. The ion manufactures are fully aware of the problem and have been sued multiple times and paid $10's of millions in damages and the UL has been sued as well. Manufactures, in one lawsuit back in 2001 were ordered to provide disclosure on ion alarm packaging which ended up being a watered down disclosure / recommendation to use both photoelectric and ionized alarms. Being ion alarms are less expensive and majority of consumers do not read fine print on packaging which omits the actual dangers / death / injury factors, consumers assume a smoke detector is a smoke detector, and most people still opt to buy the less expensive and dangerous ion alarms.
Most everyone you know is at risk and should be made aware of these deadly devices as the government agencies will continue to cover up the fraud from the public until such a time a civil lawsuit and verdict is reached to force CPSC to execute a mandatory recall which could take several years. Please post this message on your facebook and twitter sites and forward to as many others as possible. More information and 60 minutes segment / news videos that have covered this issue can be found on www.smokealarmwarning.org
and in Ukraine,
Poroshenko (the elected guy who didn't want the IMF-NATO offer for Ukraine),
had agreed in a EU brokered deal to hold early elections and step down.
Guess who said "Fuck the EU" and instead backed a coup by jackbooted jingoists?
nor should we forget the US-led attack on Yugoslavia, in complete violation of the UN charter, a devastating bombing campaign destroying the civilian infrastructure, done with the hypocritical alleged motive to prevent "human rights violations".
In that case, Yugoslavia's refusal to accept a non-negotiable ultimatum to surrender sovereignty of its territory (Kosovo) to the Mafia-run KLA was falsely depicted as Yugoslavia's refusal to negotiate.
http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/22_rambo.htm
Now Turkey destabilises Western Europe by funnelling refugees into the EU in an invasion force. Germany takes in 1,000,000 in 2015 which exceeds its own birth rate. Won't be long before Europe disintegrates into civil war and regional conflicts like so much of its history. Soon the US will have created global chaos and it will not be able to restore order anywhere because it dare not put "boots on the ground" and it will need 4-5 million soldiers to restore order the way things are going.
When the Ukrainian refugees start towards Western Europe it should be clear the EU has destroyed peace in Europe for generations
It seems that the US "leaders" have made it a game to violate every law of the Geneva conventions.
All those kids who were taking, like, loads of drugs in the '70's, those kids are now running US foreign policy - and still taking the drugs.
the "kids" who Turned On went into music, computing, design, family, travel, and more ...
but yeah, those alcoholic kids did go on to run foreign policy, i give you that ...
...coke heads too, but less likely the potheads...
Global Geopolitical Chessboard:rita
Psychopathic Players and Cynical Moves
Guarantee a Future of Perpetual War "From the Black Sea to the Baltic"Explosive Presentation Hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Reveals
What No Government Official, No Political Representative, No NGO Executive
and No Think Tank Director Has Ever Said Before in Public
When will the American people demand that Cheney, Bush Hillary and Obama face justice for war crimes committed against humanity. Hopefully in 2016 Americans remember the crimes these people have committed and vote for somehing with not such a past.
Are you Dreaming Amigo? Los Gringos will Never admit what they Refuse to Believe! Bush and Cheney will go to their graves as Heroes in their eyes! Otherwise Intelligent Peoples Refuse to Entertain what They Consider to be "Treasonous" Notions. I have Three Brother-in-Laws that work in Govt Related Fields. I get along with them all just fine now that I have learned what Topics to Avoid in Conversation!
Buen Suenos, Amigo
http://libyasos.blogspot.de/p/gaddafi.html
With the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, a very poor desert country became a very rich little western protectorate. US and European companies had huge stakes in the extremely lucrative petroleum and banking sectors, but these were soon nationalized by Gaddafi. Thus Libya overnightjoined the list of US 'enemy' or 'rogue' states that sought autonomy and self-determination outside the expanding sphere of western Empire. Further cementing western hatred of the new regime, Libya played a leading role of the 1973 oil embargo against the US and maintained cooperative relations with the Soviet Union. Gaddafi also reportedly channeled early oil wealth into national free health care and education.
Life in Libya with Leader Gaddafi:1. Electricity for household use is free,
2. interest-free loans
3. during the study, government give to every student 2 300 dolars/month4. receives the average salary for this profession if you do not find a job after graduation,
5. the state has paid for to work in the profession,6. every unemployed person receives social assistance 15,000 $/year,
7. for marriage state pays first apartment or house (150m2),8. buying cars at factory prices,
9. LIBYA not owe anyone a cent,10. free higher education abroad,
11. 25% of highly educated,12. 40 loaves of bread costs $ 0.15,
13. water in the middle of the desert, drinking water,14. 8 dinars per liter of oil (0.08 EUR),
15. 6% poor people,16. for each infant, the couple received $ 5,000 for their needs.
etc.
etc."9. LIBYA not owe anyone a cent,"
That's the problem right there...
HamRoveand i didn't see any mention of the golden Squid in the article, so more obfuscation still ....
Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, and Condoleeza Rice among many others all need to spend a better portion of their earthly existence in an 8x8 cell watching the rest of us enjoying their sudden departure.
That's a rather incomplete list, but it's a start.
MotasaurusDon't forget Blair...
What's that? The UK and their US and NATO puppets weren't at all interested in peaceful solutions to the middle-east conflicts? It's almost exactly like the way Israel targetted assasinations against the moderate Palistinian politicians for the express purpose of making the radicals powerful, meaning that no peace would be possible.
One would think that the aim has been to kill as many people as possible, and not regime change at all.
HowdyDoodyYes that and in many of these countries in the end its all about the physical gold they hold, a new leader doesn't matter we need to go there kill whoever and take their shit.
Saddam had lots and lots of gold, I think Ghadaffi had more.
Many of these places we end up going had loads of gold all of which now belongs to us aka the west aka the bankers aka the tribe. So in the end maybe we are all doing gods work just by being part of that system.
We also had to get the results of the effects of nukes on undamaged cities and their inhabitants - a magnificently evil medical experiment.
|
|
|
Sep 14, 2015 | The Washington Post
Over the summer, while Washington was preoccupied with the Iran nuclear deal, U.S. and European diplomats quietly leaned on the democratically elected, pro-Western Ukrainian government of Petro Poroshenko. In Sochi, Kerry had offered full-throated U.S. support for the implementation of an accord known as Minsk 2 - a deal hastily brokered by Germany and France in February, at a moment when regular Russian troops were cutting the Ukrainian army to ribbons. The bargain is a terrible one for Kiev: It stipulates that Ukraine must adopt a constitutional reform granting extraordinary powers to the Russian-occupied regions, and that the reforms must satisfy Moscow's proxies. That gives Putin a de facto veto over Ukraine's governing structure.
Dryly 41
First, the instability in the Middle East is a direct result of the disaster caused the Bush II-Cheney administration's war against Iraq to fine Weapons of Mass Destruction. There were none. Any normal person would conclude that it would have been much cheaper and saner to have let the United Nations Monitoring and Verification Inspection Commission inspectors continue their inspections and find there were no WMD than to start a Pre-emptive War. Jackson is not a normal person as he supported the Bush II-Cheney war.
Second, Bush II-Cheney administration's war against Iraq at a time Iraq posed no military threat to the U.S. or any other nation did enormous damage to the standing, stature and prestige of the United States of America. How can the United States argue that it is fine for the us to invade the sovereign nation of Iraq if we want to but Russia cannot invade Ukraine?
Stranger9
Putin is extremely articulate on the subject of international ethics and law. Sure, he's corrupt as the day is long, but he seems to believe in certain basic Judeo-Christian-based tenets of international conduct. The West seems tied to Islamic jihad tenets, so the United States and its allies don't believe in the most basic rules. Thus, the moral high ground goes to Putin.
Whizdom
Diehl wants us to tie up our military assets trying to take down Hezbollah and Iran, while China is free to consolidate in the South China Sea
Whizdom
Iran is unlikely to be a Russian client, but strategic cooperation is likely.
Diehl and the Neocons over reached in trying to pry Ukraine out of Russians orbit before the time was right, and also massive fail in Syria A naive and stupid strategy.Luke W
Putin has a right to conduct a foreign policy without the permission of the United States.
American statecraft and military performance in the region as been abysmal and is the font for much of the chaos now evident in Iraq and Syria thus, its credibility is in tatters.
Russia can certainly do no worse than what we have accomplish.
Livin_in_MD
Please, let us do all we can to entangle Russia into Syria's civil war. Let them bleed slowly their national treasure and the blood of their soliders. Let it become their NEXT Afghanistan. And while they're at it, please allow them to incite Muslims across the Middle East because they are helping the Butcher Assad.
You don't think they're Muslims in Russia who would like to strike back at Putin for this?
Obama, playing the long game, is going to give just enough rope to let the Russians hang themselves.
Whizdom
Let Russia be the magnet for Islamic terror instead of us? That's a concept.
Whizdom
Russia just wants its naval base and its hand on the valves of new Friendship pipeline that will cross Syria from Iran's Pars fields. Putin doesn't care if it Is Assad or some other stooge.
mike-sey
Who is in whose face depends on which side of the border one sits. Diehl seems to think that the US has or should have a free hand to do what it wants wherever and whenever it wants, and gets all twitchy when he discovers that the 'end of history' hasn't arrived just yet. He forgets that Russia was in Crimea and Syria long before the US showed up with its solutions in hand.
Stranger9
"Putin is meddling in the Middle East out of desperation because his bid for Ukraine has failed."
Putin's "bid for Ukraine"? His bid is not for all of Ukraine, as this statement implies; it is to keep Crimea within the orbit of Russia, since the great majority of its denizens are Russian by choice, history and culture. The word "Crimea" is not once mentioned.Then there's this: "Putin has an agenda as clear as it is noxious. He wants to block any attempt by the West and its allies to engineer the removal of Bashar al-Assad ..."
Noxious? What's noxious is the West's and Israel's unfounded claim on Assad's regime.
danram
It take a real Putin boot-licker to defend Bashir Assad. Congratulations.
And if Putin is only concerned with Crimea, then why are his forces in southeastern Ukraine?
Oh yeah, that's right ... They really aren't. Got it.
Stranger9
An international code of conduct must be maintained. It cannot be broken by engineering coups and installing unelected leaders, as was done in Ukraine. The same applies In Syria. You simply cannot take over a sovereign country simply because you can. There are rules that even the U.S. -- "exceptional" though it claims to be -- must abide by.
MyCountry2
Syria will [be] Russia's second Afghanistan.
Whizdom
Do we get to arm the Islamists again?
IWH_rus
Why? did you stop it already? When?
jack406
Where's Reagan when we need him?
Didn't he build Al Quaida?Michael DeStefano
We can dress Yatsenyuk up like Osama. His days in Ukraine are numbered anyway and he's about the right height. Not quite as handsome but the beard will cover most of that.
-shiloh-
The flood of refugees into Europe will continue until somebody stops the source of the flood. Does anybody really care who's fingers are in the dike? The only way to end the refugee crisis is to end the civil war(s) and insurgencies in the region. A cooperative effort among Europe, Russia, and Iran with the assistance of the US is preferable to the status quo. Ports, pipelines, and political ideologies are incidental issues.
Whizdom
So Russia and Iran are moving to crush ISIS and restore stability in Syria, which will ease the refugee crisis. And Diehl is unhappy? Syria has been a client of Russia's for a half century. Ending that relationship is a neocon goal, but does it even make sense now? Worth the price?
Forest Webb
What's the big deal? the editor makes this sound if this is some brilliant strategy on the part of Putin. If the Russians want to throw away their sons in the Mid-east quagmire let them.
It's a complicated stew and Putin has easier choices in the arena than the U.S. For Putin he simply supports Assad.
For the U.S. we want Assad out, so we cannot support him. We cannot support ISIL, half or the other opposition is supported by al Qaeda, the Kurds would just as soon fight the Turks our erstwhile Nato ally rather than fight the Assad regime. A complicated messy stew, we should try to keep our spoons out of.
Let Putin send his Russian boys to Syria, and let's count how many weeks pass before the terrorists take the war to Russian soil.
Michael Cook
Putin won in Ukraine. He has the Crimea back and has secured an overland gas pipeline corridor from Mother Russia to the peninsula, which was his objective. All it really cost him was dozens of scoldings from Obama.
Obama already scolds and threatens Vladimir Putin about Syria. The problem is that Moscow is absolutely right---if someone does not step in and rescue Syria RIGHT NOW the country will fall to ISIS before the end of the year. Assad's forces are exhausted.
Iran, of course, besides Russia is Bashar al Assad's other ally. The interesting point about that is that neither Russia nor Iran had much money available to make war.
Until last week. Now that Obama is freeing up frozen Iranian funds ($50-150 Billion!) suddenly the militant mullahs in Tehran have plenty of money for war making.
Can anyone smell a win-win for Putin? He gets to be the only leader of a major nation around to have the guts and intelligence to realize that allowing Syria to fall to ISIS would be a global catastrophe of the first magnitude. Better yet, Putin gets to sell lots and lots of Russian weapons, which helps his own struggling economy! Has Putin studied "The Art of the Deal?"
SELL weapons for cash money! Courtesy of Obama! Now that is worth putting up with more of these tiresome tongue-lashings that POTUS likes to dole out when he is clueless about what is going on. Since Obama is clueless all the time, Putin just has to put up with the noise.
Michael DeStefano
Putin's objective was to secure a gas pipeline corridor across the Kerch Strait?
So he could what, erect one of those ancient Greek fire breathing dragon flame throwers on the Crimean coast?
Not everything's about gas, Mr. Cook.
Ethernum
Russian airstrike in Syria won't perform better than the US (with a more advanced technology) against the Islamic state.
Can Putin engage a ground assault in Syria with regular/irregular troops the way he did in Ukraine ?
He can try but the result won't be the same, there's some wealthy countries supporting the Islamic State and they will provide them a lot of money, weapons and soldiers coming from everywhere to beat the Russian army, Putin will be unable to veto this support to the Islamic state, and it will restart what the US army experienced in Iraq, with permanent IED and kamikazes, while there will be no target for planes and drones....
IWH_rus
How many countries should be invaded and ravaged before USA became appeased?
simon7382
Nice try, no cigar....The US invasion of Iraq was a grave mistake, BUT it does not justify Putin's naked aggression in Georgia, in Ukraine or now in Syria in any way.
IWH_rus
Iraq is all you know about? Right now you involved in seven wars. And you never stop to invade all the last century. With all your history USA have only 21 year of peace, all the time invading, conquering, overthrowing legal governments to replace it with puppets. As it YOU made in Georgia, and Ukraine, and try to in Syria.
r2rnot
Putin is like a shark in the water, detecting blood around him. With the appeasers in our current administration, he has nothing to be worried about. He knows that Obama will do nothing but fire more drones and try to find some targets for bombs, as long is no non-combat person is in the area.
Michael DeStefano
If Putin's like a shark in water, McCain and Nudelman were like hyenas going after Ukraine's carcass,
SG2118
Refugees from Syria are a welcome relief to the Assad regime. It's hundreds of thousands of people who they need no longer worry about. Good riddance is Assad's feeling on the matter. Same holds for those from Iraq and Afghanistan. Rebels and those opposed to the government are leaving in droves and the regime couldn't be happier.
Russian troops in Syria? Russian warplanes and drones? They're going to be busom-buddies with the Iranian Quds Force which has been there for years, alongside Hezbollah fighters who are there to ensure the supply lines from Teheran remain open and aid, money and weapons continue to flow into the Bekaa Valley.
The Fall of Assad would be a cataclysm to Iranian hopes and dreams for the Middle East. They will not give up without a serious fight. Russia is there now, like in Vietnam 50 years ago, to "advise" and "train" local "militias" to "resist aggression".
choppy1
And if Putin's plan is to make himself look significant by "confronting" the U.S., he has succeeded, at least with Jackson Diehl. The question isn't whether Russia is pushing the U.S. around, it's whether U.S. national interests are involved. The U.S. has lived with the Assad regime for 45 years. Is it really so crucial that we get rid of it now? Ukraine is hardly a linchpin of Europe. Sure, it would be nice if it were free and western. But it has historic ties to Russia, is more important to Russia than to us, and has not shown laser-like focus on becoming a serious western democracy. Meanwhile Putin presides over an economy that's shrinking 5% a year, with a population that's also shrinking. And he made the choice to keep power for himself and his cronies rather than modernize. No matter what he does abroad, Russia itself is on a decline that he will only exacerbate. He's dangerous, not because he's strong, but because he's weak. We should not let his actions fool us into losing sight of where our core interests lie.
IWH_rus
While world sleeps, Putin moves stars with his finger, to disrupt NATO's operations and disturb dreams.
Greyhounds
Right. Because NATO is operating in Syria?
IWH_rus
NATO is a theatre of one actor. And this multifaced actor is operating in Syria, arming terrorists.
RealChoices
If anything, Russian aid to Assad should be encouraged. We may find Assad too repulsive to aid, but given a choice between Assad and ISIS, he is definitely the lesser of two evils. It's time to dispense with a notion of a "moderate pro-Western rebel force", it was always wishful thinking.
Greyhounds
There's this little thing called "human rights" and another little thing called "the Leahy Ammendment" that prevent us from providing aid to terrorists like Assad or even giving a nod to Putin to do so.
Michael DeStefano
But you seem to be all hunky dory with Poroshenko and our Saudi and Israeli allies bombing civilians into oblivion. Funny how that 'human rights' business pops up and down on demand.
Slava Besser
So Assad is a terrorist, but Poroshenko is allowed to bomb Donetsk at willSmile Saudi Arabia is allowed to bomb Yemen with cluster munitions we provide because they don't like the revolution there, but Russia should not provide aid to Donetsk despite the fact that people that came to power in Ukraine illegally and are blatantly anti-Russian are using air-force, tanks and artillery against civilian population that happens to have pro-Russian views?
Michael Cook
Spot On! Assad's forces are exhausted and extremely weak. If Russia doesn't come in and save the day, Syria will fall to ISIS with all the slaughter of minorities and hate crimes against archeology that entails.
I can't believe that the Obama administration is playing this like it is more important to uphold fictional political straw men than to actually stop ISIS from scoring their most important strategic victory ever!
SG2118
Iran is deeply involved in propping up Assad. It is through Syria that Iranian supplies reach their proxy lap-dog Hezbollah. Without that vital lifeline open, Hezbollah is cut off from their patron, and cannot be used against Iranian enemies (i.e. Israel). The Iranian Quds Force is in Syria now doing front-line fighting. Hezbollah too is deeply engaged. Without that level of aid, Assad's control would shrink dramatically, if not topple over altogether.
SG2118
News of the day. Iranian special forces moved into Syria to help Russians. Source - Israeli intelligence.
Slava Besser
I'm a Jew, are you implying that it is better for Israel if ISIS comes to power in Syria?
nativeson7
I would respectfully suggest that Russia's participation in the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts are different means to accomplish the identical objective, the undermining, if not outright dismemberment, of the EU and NATO.
While the Ukrainian gambit failed, taking the Russian economy with it, the "Syrian play" shows far more promise in its early stages and at the very least is likely to erode the unanimous support required for an extension of the EU's economic sanctions against Russia.
Merkel's misguided response to the initial flood of Syrian refugees has transformed the matter into an existential crisis in the minds of many Europeans and "right wing" parties throughout the continent.
There has been a notably unified and pronounced response from the Slavic Eastern European states in particular. Slovakia has declared it will accept only Christian refugees, Hungary has erected a fence along its southern border with Serbia and Bulgaria has done the same along its border with Turkey. Poland has agreed to take only 2000 Christian refugees rather than the 12,000 requested by the EU and in the Baltics protests have arisen over projected Syrian resettlement figures numbered in the hundreds.
Russia's military support will not only breathe new life into the Assad regime it will assure a continuing flood of migrants from Syria, into Europe, which will serve as a catalyst to create a "Pan-Slavic Europe" with a political, religious and cultural unity that could well transcend Eastern Europeans view of themselves as "European".Michael DeStefano
Jeez, what a nefarious plot. Flood Europe with immigrants until it bursts at the seams. I knew that Putin was no good. What a Svengali-Machiavelli hybrid.
Why just today I heard on Meet the Press that they're all running from Assad and really upset that he's just being really mean with ISIS and not letting them distribute food and chocolates to the masses.
IWH_rus
Look at the map of "Arab spring". These lands make a belt from Atlantica to Indian Ocean, blocking Eurasia from Africa. It is clearly the geopolitical project of the power, which wins situation, while EU, Russia, China loose. Who is greatest and faithfull supporter of chaos in Middle East? USA.
Assad is unimportant. No matter who rule there, Syria is the target. If you destroy Syria - lots of military staff and arms will be left abandoned, and go to search new destiny. How ISIS was created? Jobless soldiers, cheap weapons. That's the target. Putin, Assad, just a decorations. You are blind, if unable to see it, or you do it consciously, as the autor of article. He is not as stupid, as try hard to look.
Michael DeStefano
Well it looks like, if Russia is 'pivoting' to Syria, then Germany has just decided to pivot with them. They didn't exactly call our approach feckless and wrongheaded but I suspect they may have had something along those lines in mind.
Germany surprisingly left the alliance formed together with the United States which intended to block Russia's entry into the Syrian conflict.
Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen told Der Spiegel that she welcomed president Putin's intentions of joining the fight against the extremist organization "Islamic State". It would be a matter of mutual interests, she said.
A speaker of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs added, Germany would welcome additional efforts of Russia in the fight against IS. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even announced the starting of a joint venture between him, Russian foreign minister Lavrov and their French colleague Laurent Fabius with the aim of bringing the Syrian civil war to an end. Lavrov and Fabius are expected to arrive in Berlin this Saturday.
moore_te
BIll Maher said it this weekend: There are five million troops in the Gulf States vs some 30,000 ISIS fighters... Where are they? Why don't the ME nations take in any refugees? (Of course, who would want to live in any of them given a choice?)
Taking out Saddam and Gaddafi worked so well, so of course we need to repeat the procedure in Syria!
Forget about the assurances we gave Russia that the West would leave a buffer between it and Russia. So what if we renege on our agreements, it's all for a good cause, right? After all, look how Bush stood up to them in Georgia. (He didn't.)
Or best idea yet -- Send these WaPo neocons (Diehl and Hiatt) packing.
Whizdom
There is a Syria peace deal in the works. naturally, NeoCons are gonna hate it. I wonder if Syria will get the Golan Heights back.
Chortling_Heel
It is always a pleasure to receive the NeanderCon musings and misdirection of Jackson Diehl.
Rootin' Tootin' Putin and his hand puppet, Bashar al-Assad, are trying to run out the clock before their nations implode even further --- taking each down with them.
|
|
|
Information Clearing House - ICH
... ... ...Dissent as Treason
Since the Vietnam War, the belief that the media and other critics of government policies act as fifth columnists has become commonplace in military-oriented journals and with the American authoritarian-oriented political class, expressed in articles such as William Bradford's attack on "treasonous professors."
To the question "how a scholar pushing these ideas" did not raise a red flag, that might best be asked of the National Security Law Journal's previous editorial board. It is worth noting however that the editors who chose to publish Bradford's article are not neophytes in national security issues or strangers to the military or government.
As described on the NSLJ website, the Editor-in-Chief from 2014-2015 has broad experience in homeland and national security programs from work at both the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security and currently serves (at the time of publication of Bradford's article) as the Deputy Director for the Office of Preparedness Integration and Coordination at FEMA. A U.S. government official in other words.
The "Articles Selection Editor" is described as "a family physician with thirty years of experience in the foreign affairs and intelligence communities." Websites online suggest his experience may have been acquired as a CIA employee. The executive editor appears to be a serving Marine Corps officer who attended law school as a military-funded student.
Significantly; Bradford was articulating precepts of the "U.S. common law of war" promoted by Chief Prosecutor Mark Martins because nothing Bradford advocated was inconsistent with William Whiting's guidance to Union Generals. Except Whiting went even further and advised that judges in the Union states who "impeded" the military in any way by challenging their detentions were even greater "public enemies" than Confederate soldiers were.
This "U.S. common law of war" is a prosecution fabrication created by legal expediency in the absence of legitimate legal precedent for what the United States was doing with prisoners captured globally after 9/11. This legal invention came about when military commission prosecutors failed to prove that the offense of Material Support for Terrorism was an international law of war crime. So prosecutors dreamed up a "domestic common law of war." This in fact is simply following the pattern of totalitarian states of the Twentieth Century.
Government-Media-Academic-Complex
The logic of Bradford's argument is the same as that of the Defense Department in declaring that journalists may be deemed "unprivileged belligerents." As quoted above, George H. Aldrich had observed that in Vietnam, both sides had as their goal "the destruction of the will to continue the struggle."
Bradford argued that Islamists must overcome Americans' support for the current war to prevail, and "it is the 'informational dimension' which is their main combat effort because it is U.S. political will which must be destroyed for them to win." But he says Islamists lack skill "to navigate the information battlespace, employ PSYOPs, and beguile Americans into hostile judgments regarding the legitimacy of their cause."
Therefore, according to Bradford, Islamists have identified "force multipliers with cultural knowledge of, social proximity to, and institutional capacity to attrit American political will. These critical nodes form an interconnected 'government-media-academic complex' ('GMAC') of public officials, media, and academics who mould mass opinion on legal and security issues . . . ."
Consequently, Bradford argues, within this triumvirate, "it is the wielders of combat power within these nodes - journalists, officials, and law professors - who possess the ideological power to defend or destroy American political will."
While Bradford reserves special vituperation for his one-time fellow law professors, he states the "most transparent example of this power to shape popular opinion as to the legitimacy of U.S. participation in wars is the media."
As proof, Bradford explained how this "disloyalty" of the media worked during the Vietnam War. He wrote: "During the Vietnam War, despite an unbroken series of U.S. battlefield victories, the media first surrendered itself over to a foreign enemy for use as a psychological weapon against Americans, not only expressing criticism of U.S. purpose and conduct but adopting an 'antagonistic attitude toward everything America was and represented' and 'spinning' U.S. military success to convince Americans that they were losing, and should quit, the war. Journalistic alchemists converted victory into defeat simply by pronouncing it."
Space does not permit showing in how many ways this "stab in the back" myth is false. But this belief in the disloyalty of the media in Bradford's view remains today. He wrote: "Defeatism, instinctive antipathy to war, and empathy for American adversaries persist within media."
Targeting Journalists
The right-wing militarist Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), with mostly retired U.S. military officers serving as advisers, has advocated targeting journalists with military attacks. Writing in The Journal of International Security Affairs in 2009, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters wrote:
"Today, the United States and its allies will never face a lone enemy on the battlefield. There will always be a hostile third party in the fight, but one which we not only refrain from attacking but are hesitant to annoy: the media . . . . Future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media." (Emphasis in original.)
The rationale for that deranged thinking was first propounded by Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp and other authoritarian-minded officers after the Vietnam War. Sharp explained, our "will" was eroded because "we were subjected to a skillfully waged subversive propaganda campaign, aided and abetted by the media's bombardment of sensationalism, rumors and half-truths about the Vietnam affair - a campaign that destroyed our national unity." William C. Bradford apparently adopted and internalized this belief, as have many other military officers.
That "stab in the back" myth was propagated by a number of U.S. military officers as well as President Richard Nixon (as explained here). It was more comfortable to believe that than that the military architects of the war did not understand what they were doing. So they shifted blame onto members of the media who were astute enough to recognize and report on the military's failure and war crimes, such as My Lai.
But those "critical" journalists, along with critics at home, were only recognizing what smarter Generals such as General Frederick Weyand recognized from the beginning. That is, the war was unwinnable by the U.S. because it was maintaining in power its despotic corrupt ally, the South Vietnamese government, against its own people. Whether or not what came later was worse for the Vietnamese people was unforeseeable by the majority of the people. What was in front of their eyes was the military oppression of American and South Vietnamese forces and secret police.
Information Warfare Today
In 1999, the Rand Corporation published a collection of articles in Strategic Appraisal: The Changing Role of Information in Warfare. The volume was edited by Zalmay Khalilzad, the alleged author of the Defense Department's 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, which was drafted when Dick Cheney was Defense Secretary and Paul Wolfowitz was Under Secretary of Defense – and promulgated a theory of permanent U.S. global dominance.
One chapter of Rand's Strategic Appraisal was written by Jeremy Shapiro, now a special adviser at the U.S. State Department, according to Wikipedia. Shapiro wrote that the inability to control information flows was widely cited as playing an essential role in the downfall of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
He stated that perception management was "the vogue term for psychological operations or propaganda directed at the public." As he expressed it, many observers worried that potential foes could use techniques of perception management with asymmetric strategies with their effect on public opinion to "destroy the will of the United States to wage war."
Consequently, "Warfare in this new political environment consists largely of the battle to shape the political context of the war and the meaning of victory."
Another chapter on Ethics and Information Warfare by John Arquilla makes clear that information warfare must be understood as "a true form of war." The range of information warfare operations, according to Arquilla, extends "from the battlefield to the enemy home front." Information warfare is designed "to strike directly at the will and logistical support of an opponent."
This notion of information warfare, that it can be pursued without a need to defeat an adversary's armed forces, is an area of particular interest, according to Arquilla. What he means is that it necessitates counter measures when it is seen as directed at the U.S. as now provided for in the new LOW Manual.
Important to note, according to Arquilla, is that there is an inherent blurriness with defining "combatants" and "acts of war." Equating information warfare to guerrilla warfare in which civilians often engage in the fighting, Arquilla states "in information warfare, almost anyone can engage in the fighting."
Consequently, the ability to engage in this form of conflict is now in the hands of small groups and individuals, offering up "the prospect of potentially quite large numbers of information warfare-capable combatants emerging, often pursuing their own, as opposed to some state's policies," Arquilla wrote.
Therefore, a "concern" for information warfare at the time of the Rand study in 1999 was the problem of maintaining "noncombatant immunity." That's because the "civilian-oriented target set is huge and likely to be more vulnerable than the related set of military infrastructures . . . . Since a significant aspect of information warfare is aimed at civilian and civilian-oriented targets, despite its negligible lethality, it nonetheless violates the principle of noncombatant immunity, given that civilian economic or other assets are deliberately targeted."
What Arquillo is saying is that civilians who are alleged to engage in information warfare, such as professors and journalists, lose their "noncombatant immunity" and can be attacked. The "blurriness" of defining "combatants" and "acts of war" was removed after 9/11 with the invention of the "unlawful combatant" designation, later renamed "unprivileged belligerent" to mimic language in the Geneva Conventions.
Then it was just a matter of adding the similarly invented "U.S. domestic common law of war" with its martial law precedents and a framework has been built for seeing critical journalists and law professors as "unprivileged belligerents," as Bradford indiscreetly wrote.
Arquilla claims that information warfare operations extend to the "home front" and are designed "to strike directly at the will and logistical support of an opponent." That is to equate what is deemed information warfare to sabotage of the population's psychological will to fight a war, and dissidents to saboteurs.
Perpetual War
But this is a perpetual war driven by U.S. operations, according to a chapter written by Stephen T. Hosmer on psychological effects of information warfare. Here, it is stated that "the expanding options for reaching audiences in countries and groups that could become future U.S. adversaries make it important that the United States begin its psychological conditioning in peacetime." Thus, it is necessary "to begin to soften the fighting will of the potential adversary's armed forces in the event conflict does occur."
As information warfare is held to be "true war," this means that the U.S. is perpetually committing acts of war against those deemed "potential" adversaries. Little wonder that Vladimir Putin sees Russia as under assault by the United States and attempts to counter U.S. information warfare.
This same logic is applied to counter-insurgency. The 2014 COIN Manual, FM 3-24, defines "Information Operations" as information-related capabilities "to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decisionmaking of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own."
Those we "protect ourselves from" can logically be seen as the internal enemy, as William Bradford saw it, such as critical law professors and journalists, just as Augusto Pinochet did in Chile with dissidents.
With the totalitarian logic of information-warfare theorists, internalized now throughout much of the U.S. government counter-terrorism community, it should be apparent to all but the most obtuse why the DOD deems a journalist who writes critically of U.S. government war policy an "unprivileged belligerent," an enemy, as in the Law of War manual. William C. Bradford obviously absorbed this doctrine but was indiscreet enough to articulate it fully.
It Has Happened Here!
That's the only conclusion one can draw from reading the transcript of the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit. In that lawsuit, plaintiffs, including journalists and political activists, challenged the authority provided under Sec. 1021 of the 2012 National Defense Authorization for removal out from under the protection of the Constitution of those deemed unprivileged belligerents. That is, civilians suspected of lending any "support" to anyone whom the U.S. government might deem as having something to do with terrorism.
"Support" can be as William Whiting described it in 1862 and as what is seen as "information warfare" by the U.S. military today: a sentiment of hostility to the government "to undermine confidence in its capacity or its integrity, to diminish, demoralize . . . its armies, to break down confidence in those who are intrusted with its military operations in the field."
Reminiscent of the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can't Happen Here where those accused of crimes against the government are tried by military judges as in the U.S. Military Commissions, a Justice Department attorney arguing on behalf of the United States epitomized the legal reasoning that one would see in a totalitarian state in arguing why the draconian "Law of War" is a substitute for the Constitution.
The Court asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Torrance if he would agree, "as a principled matter, that the President can't, in the name of the national security of the United States, just decide to detain whomever he believes it is important to detain or necessary to detain to prevent a terrorist act within the United States?"
Rather than giving a straight affirmative answer to a fundamental principle of the U.S. Constitution, Torrance dissembled, only agreeing that that description would seem "quite broad," especially if citizens. But he added disingenuously that it was the practice of the government "not to keep people apprehended in the U.S."
Which is true, it is known that people detained by the U.S. military and CIA have been placed everywhere but in the U.S. so that Constitutional rights could not attach. Under Section 1021, that "inconvenience" to the government would not be necessary.
When asked by the Court if he, the Justice Department attorney, would agree that a different administration could change its mind with respect to whether or not Sec. 1021 would be applied in any way to American citizens, he dissembled again, answering: "Is that possible? Yes, but it is speculative and conjecture and that cannot be the basis for an injury in fact."
So U.S. citizens or anyone else are left to understand that they have no rights remaining under the Constitution. If a supposed "right" is contingent upon who is President, it is not a right and the U.S. is no longer under the rule of law.
In discussing whether activist and journalist Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a citizen of Iceland, could be subject to U.S. military detention or trial by military commission, Assistant U.S. Attorney Torrance would only disingenuously answer that "her activities as she alleges them, do not implicate this." Disingenuous because he knew based upon the answer he previously gave that the law of war is arbitrary and its interpretation contingent upon a military commander, whoever that may be, at present or in the future.
What could happen to Ms. Jónsdóttir would be completely out of her control should the U.S. government decide to deem her an "unprivileged belligerent," regardless of whether her expressive activities changed positively or negatively, or remained the same. Her risk of detention per the Justice Department is entirely at the sufferance of whatever administration may be in place at any given moment.
Any doubt that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, along with Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, is believed by the U.S. Executive Branch to give it the untrammeled power that Article 48 of the Weimar Germany constitution gave to the German President in 1933 was settled by the arguments made by the Justice Department attorney in Hedges v. Obama.
Setting First Amendment Aside
One does not need to speculate that the U.S. government no longer sees First Amendment activities as protected. Government arguments, which were made in the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit, revealed that the Justice Department, speaking for the Executive Branch, considers protection of the Bill of Rights subordinate to the claim of "war powers" by the Executive. One can only be willfully blind to fail to see this.
By the Justice Department's court arguments and filings, the protections afforded by the U.S. Bill of Rights are no more secure today than they were to Japanese-Americans when Western District military commander General DeWitt decided to remove them from their homes on the West Coast and intern them in what were initially called, "concentration camps."
The American Bar Association Journal reported in 2014 that Justice Antonin Scalia told students in Hawaii that "the Supreme Court's Korematsu decision upholding the internment of Japanese Americans was wrong, but it could happen again in war time." But contrary to Scalia stating that Korematsu had been repudiated, Korematsu has never been overruled.
The court could get a chance to do so, the ABA article stated, in the Hedges v. Obama case "involving the military detention without trial of people accused of aiding terrorism." But that opportunity has passed.
A U.S. District Court issued a permanent injunction blocking the law's indefinite detention powers but that ruling was overturned by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. A petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asked the justices to overturn Sec. 1021, the federal law authorizing such detentions and stated the justices should consider overruling Korematsu. But the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2014, leaving the Appeals Court's ruling intact.
The Supreme Court's decision to not overturn Korematsu allows General DeWitt's World War II decision to intern Japanese-Americans in concentration camps to stand as a shining example of what Brig. General Marks Martins proudly holds up to the world as the "U.S. domestic common law of war."
Todd E. Pierce retired as a Major in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps in November 2012. His most recent assignment was defense counsel in the Office of Chief Defense Counsel, Office of Military Commissions. In the course of that assignment, he researched and reviewed the complete records of military commissions held during the Civil War and stored at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
|
|
|
"By their deeds shall you know them."
Introduction
I am concerned with the way this administration operates. I am not talking about policy -whether we should be at war, or who is right about the economy. Instead, the focus is on what the administration does and how it does it. The actions of this administration have run counter to Bush's statements of April 2000 and have divided this country as no other administration has done in recent memory.
"I will set a different tone. I will restore civility and respect to our national politics. ... I will work with Republicans and reach out to Democrats ... I will treat the other party with respect, and when we make progress, I will share the credit. ... I will unite our nation, not divide it. I will bring Americans together." George Bush, April 2000 In August 2004, I created the website www.howbushoperates.info , describing the Bush Administration as I saw it, hoping that enough people would read the website and not vote for Bush again. I was alarmed at what the Bush administration had done in 2001 to 2004, and I was even more alarmed at what another 4 years of Bush would do to the US and the world. I did my best, through this website, to help. But not enough people looked at it to make any difference. Perhaps I should have blogged, or something like that.
(You can see the original website on the Wayback machine.)
My worst fears have been realized. Four more years of this administration has ruined the economy not only of the US but of the world. This administration has taken steps to harm, rather than help, the environment. Through its bullying tactics and its actual approval of torture, the US has lost any of its moral authority, and we have lost the US the respect of the world. Its lack of respect for our Constitution, its suppression of and manipulation of information, its lies, its incompetence in handling the Iraq war, its complete lack of planning for the Iraw war and the aftermath --all of these have hurt the United States tremendously. And we, the people, are now paying for it.
This website is the original website www.howbushoperates.info, with a few minor changes. It will remain as long as I have a website. I don't want people to forget how bad this administration has been.
I have had to change some links because, over the years, some links have been broken. In order to compensate for further loss of links, on most articles, I have copied the original webpage onto this website, and it appears as a "local version".
Read this site and weep at the fact that the American People knew what this administration was like four years ago but still allowed him to take over the Presidency a second time. We have ourselves to blame.
I am concerned with the administration's:
- Lack of honesty, which has brought about lack of trust.
- Manipulation of information to further its goals.
- Secrecy, which has kept the American public and Congress from making sound judgements.
- Conflict of interest.
- Lack of respect for others.
- Lack of reasoning and compromise -the administration's way of responding to differing views seems to be to ridicule rather than reason.
- Belligerent and arrogant attitude and mode of operation, which has cost our country the respect and compassion of the rest of the world.
I do want an administration that is forceful and strong. But that strong administration has to be:
- Honest, trustworthy, ethical.
- Respectful of all people and all nations.
- Able to engage in dialogue and make decisions based on reason.
- Without conflict of interest.
- A Uniting force, rather than one that divides.
Everyone - Democrat, Republican, Green, independent, etc. - should be alarmed at what this administration has done and what it may do in the future, if re-elected. A resounding defeat in November is the only way to let the world know that the United States people do not tolerate such an administration.
The links in the left column are to short discussions that back up my opinions. Again, remember that it is not the policies and programs that are at issue here, although I have problems with some of them. Rather, the issue is the way this government has operated, in a self-serving, untrustworthy, unethical, disrespectful, and even nasty, manner.
United we stand. If we stay as divided as we have been divided by this administration, we fall.
If an administration has integrity, ethics, and character, then policies will fall into place, for the administration will be guided by the good of the country and will engage in open, honest, and meaningful dialogue with the whole nation. If an administration has no integrity, ethics, and character, then the nation better beware.
Ethics and family values
The actions of this administration display a disregard for the values which Bush speaks of. Its actions have lost the administration the respect and trust of half the nation. The world is even less trustful and respectful. Below, I give some examples of this. "These are universal values, values we share in all our diversity: Respect, tolerance, responsibility, honesty, self-restraint, family commitment, civic duty, fairness and compassion." George Bush. White House Conference on Character and Community, June 2002. 1. The administration lied to us about the need for going to war in Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and there was no link between Al Quaeda and Iraq. Iraq simply was not the terrorist country that we were told it was. I discuss it here.
The issue is not the war itself; it is the way the administration misled and lied to Congress and the people about why we should be in the war.
2. The Bush campaigns have repeatedly resorted to slander and inuendo. I discuss it here.
3. The Bush-Cheney campaign in Pennsylvania asked their volunteers to obtain the names and addresses of the members of their churches. This is not only unethical; a church involved in such an action would be in danger of losing their status as a tax-exempt religious organization. Some conservative church leaders have denounced this action, but the Bush-Cheney campaign defended it. I discuss it here.
4. The administration withheld information or doctored information in order to sway people and the Congress to their side. Click on "Secrecy" and "Wide-spread misuse of science" in the left column for some examples.
I cannot vote for an administration that has such disdain for ethics and values, that has so little respect for the people that it is supposed to be representing. I would feel better if more people felt this way, for the character of an administration is of utmost importance.
Lies about the need for war
The issue at hand is not whether we should be at war or not. It is the behavior of the administration in getting us into war -the lies that got us into the war and lost us the respect and trust of the world. "Some people think it's inappropriate to draw a moral line. Not me. For our children to have the lives we want for them, they must learn to say yes to responsibility . . . yes to honesty." George W. Bush, June 12, 1999 The administration got us into war with Iraq for three reasons, they say:
- To eliminate Saddam Hussein's WMD. It is clear that he had no WMD, and it is also clear that the administration knew it. In fact, in 2001, both Powell and Condoleezza Rice stated publicly that there were no WMD; two years later, they and the administration told a different story.
- To diminish the threat of international terrorism. There was no such threat. It was known that there were no connections between Hussein and Al Qaeda.
- To promote democracy in Iraq and surrounding areas. This is hypocrisy. In the 1980s, members of the administration, like Cheney and Rumsfeld, were quite happy to embrace Hussein and Iraq. At that time, even though they knew that Iraq was using chemical weapons against its own people, Cheney and Rumsfeld did not speak out or suggest that the U.S. discontinue its support of Hussein. Instead, they embraced Hussein and Iraq.
Rep. Henry Waxman has released a report of the U.S. House of Representatives (16 March 2004) that identifies 237 misleading statements about Iraq made by President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in 125 public appearances. How can you trust the administration? . Here is the report (pdf file). This webpage contains a search engine that allows you to view all the misleading statements (and see why it is misleading). These are official items from the U.S. House of Representatives.
This website (here it is as text only) shows ten lies made by the administration regarding why we went to war. With each statement, facts are given to prove that it was a lie. You can find hundreds of websites with the same theme.
Whether we should be at war now is a complex issue, and I don't address it. For me, what matters is that the administration lied to get its way. Such behaviour in such a serious context means that the administration cannot be trusted, and an administration that cannot be trusted is a danger to us all.
Dishonest politics
One expects the administration to be honest and open in dealing with Congress and in presenting its case to the people, and Bush said he would be. But the behavior of this administration has been just the opposite. Besides its misrepresentations and lies about Iraq, here are some examples.
"And together we will create and America that is open .... I was not elected to serve one party, but to serve one nation. ... Whether you voted for me or not, I will do my best to serve your interests and I will work to earn your respect. I will be guided by President Jefferson's sense of purpose, to stand for principle, to be reasonable in manner, and above all, to do great good for the cause of freedom and harmony." George Bush, Acceptance Speech, 13 Dec 2000
- The Medicare bill. In November 2003, the House of Representatives passed a medical bill. Because of the rising deficit, they were worried about cost. Bush promised that it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years. But the administration's own analysis in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had told the administration that it would cost over $550 billion. The bill would not have passed had the truth been known. Chief actuary Richard S. Foster was told he would be fired if he revealed the figures to lawmakers. Read about it here. Public Citizen has information on how drug companies and HMOs led an army of nearly 1,000 lobbyists to promote this misguided legislation, spending almost $141 million.
- Misuse of science. Click on the link on misuse of science on the left to see just how much this administration has attempted to use politics, hiding of facts, and misrepresentation of facts for its political gain.
- Hiding poverty numbers. The number of people living in poverty rose by 1.3 million in 2003. The Census Bureau Report on such things comes out in September. But the Bush administration had it appear in August instead, well before the Republican Convention and when people generally take vacations. Read about it here (here is a local version)
- Leaking news. Bush promised to do everything he could to fight the war on terror. Yet, in August, for their own political gain, the administration leaked the fact that alleged terrorist Kahn had been apprehended. Kahn was a key intelligence source, and the leak allowed several terrorists to escape. Read about it here (here is a local version).
- Ashcroft repeatedly lied to Congress about the administration's counter-terrorism effort. He told them terrorism had been his number 1 priority before 9/11; records show that he did not include it as one of the department's 7 goals, putting it as a subgoal beneath gun violence and drugs. He said that his predecessor's (Reno) plan did not mention counterterrorism, which was false. He lied about the amount of money that the FBI requested and that the administration gave the FBI. Read about it here (here is a local version).
- Condoleezza Rice repeatedly lied to 9/11 Commission. She made over ten false claims. For example, she said that the Bush Administration has been committed to the "transformation of the FBI into an agency dedicated to fighting terror." The truth is that before 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft de-emphasized counterterrorism at the FBI. Moreover, in the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI. Read about it here (here is a local version).
Suppression of rights
Bush says he is for freedom and democracy, but his administration has not acted that way. The administration has held secret --and illegal-- deportation hearings. People have been hindered --sometimes illegally-- from voicing quiet protests at Bush appearances. And others have been investigated for no valid reason --partly because of the Patriot Act. Many people in the US are really afraid of the suppressive tone of this administration.
"Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil. There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides." John Stuart Mill. "Restriction on free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." William O. Douglas.
"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime."
Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.
Secret courts suppression of protesters Unwarranted investigations Search the internet and you can find many more examples of unwarranted investigations and suppression of protestors. 1. Secret Visa courts are illegal. (Article ( local version) in Guardian Newspapers, 27 Aug 2002). The Bush administration held hundreds of deportation proceedings in secret. A federal appeal court found them to be illegal. Judge Damon Keith wrote in his ruling that, "Democracies die behind closed doors." The ruling describes the secrecy surrounding the government's response as "profoundly undemocratic". The ruling concludes that, "The executive branch seeks to uproot people's lives outside the public eye and behind a closed door."
2. Suppression of protest at Bush appearances. A number of people have been hindered or stopped from appearing at Bush evenets, even when these appearances were on public grounds. Some people have been arrested, with the case thrown out of court later. Others have not been allowed into Bush events, even though they were doing nothing wrong. In several situations, dissenters are expected to stay in a restricted zone, away from Bush or his motorcade, while non-dissenters are allowed to approach much more closeley. This kind of suppressionof free speech is frightening. Here are just a few examples, some of which go back to 2002.
Nicole and Jeff Rank (local version) were arrested in Charleston; the judge threw out the charges. Nicole was immediately fired from her job with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but later reinstated with an apology. The City of Charleston said they should not have been arrested.
Daniel Finsel (local version) was arrested simply for carrying a sign at a Bush event.
Nelson (local version), an elected County supervisor in Wisconsin, was kicked out of Bush event for wearing a hidden Kerry shirt (the shirt was not showing, but someone had seen him in it earlier).
20 of 37 members (local version) of a Peace Action group were not allowed to fly from Milwaulkee to a protest in Washington because there names were on a "No fly" list. No one will say how their names got on it.
Anti-Bush students (local version) were completely silenced at their Ohio State Graduation when Bush came to speak.
Bill Neel (local version) was arrested in Butler, Pennsylvania; the district Justice threw the case out and returned his protest sign to him.
Jan Lentz, Sonja Haught, and Mauricio Rosas (local version) two grandmothers and a gay activist, were arrested for displaying dissenting opinions; others with pro-Bush signs were not. All charges were dropped.
3. Unwarranted investigations. Some people have been detained or investigated simply because they spoke out. Others, for what seems to be no reason at all. Here are some examples.
The Kjars were visited by the US Secret Service because they had a bumper sticker "KING GEORGE-Off With His Head".
Barry Reingold (local version) was visited by the FBI for speaking his mind about Bush, terrorism, and Afghanistan at a gymn.
Daniel Muller (local version) asked for 4,000 stamps without the American Flag on them. The police were called, and Muller was interrogated. He didn't get the stamps until the next day, and only after an interrogation by a federal postal inspector.
Incompetence
Suppression of dissent by the Bush administration is mentioned in several places of this website. Judging by what I read about the Iraq war, I conclude that the administration's lack of desire to listen seriously to dissenting opinions -basically their suppression of them- is responsible for his incompetence in leading the war. "I'm the Commander, see ... I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President... [I] don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." George Bush. See "Bush at War", by Bob Woodward
Yes, I mean incompetence. Although the troops have performed admirably, this war has not been led well. Bush may boast loudly about his war on terror, but his actions show incompetence. Do you remember 1 May 2003 (local version; the event used to be mentioned on the WhiteHouse website but was removed) when Bush flew onto the carrier, with a giant sign "Mission Accomplished" on it, and told us that "major combat operations have ended" and that we have prevailed --implying the war was won? Did that show any understanding of the situation? (Six months later, Bush disavowed any connection with that sign, but the White House later said that the White House asked a private vendor to produce it. See this article (local version)) And two weeks before, on 16 April 2003, Gen. Tommy Franks was telling commanders in Baghdad that it was time to make plans to pull forces out of Iraq. They simply did not understand the situation. (See this article (local version).)
Below are some points about the war. Some of them show that the Bush administration did not listen to advice. Others show that the Bush administration did not care about important issues and that they simply did not plan properly.
1. No plan for rebuilding Iraq. This article (local version)says that post-war planning was non-existent. It talks about a meeting of war planners and intelligence planners in March 2003 (the month the Iraq war started) in which a lieutenant colonol who was giving a briefing on the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war could say only, "To Be Provided".
A veteran State Department officer involved directly in Iraq policy said, "We didn't go in with a plan. We went in with a theory." The report was, "based on official documents and on interviews with more than three dozen current and former civilian and military officials who participated directly in planning for the war and its aftermath." Search the web, and you will find many articles reporting that there was no plan for rebuilding Iraq. To top of page
2. Warnings about preventing looting ignored. After the US troops took Baghdad, the looting began (local version). Hospitals, schools, university buildings, and more were targets. The worst looting was at the Iraq Museum, which contained the largest collection of Near East artifacts in the world. For two days, the looting went on, with no one trying to stop them. Not only the collection but computers, furniture supplies -everything was taken. This looting of so many places showed complete lack of planning by the Bush administration.
The Bush administration was warned about looting! This site (local version)says that archeologists and others spoke repeatedly to the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Pentagon about the need to protect musuems. Further, the U.S. is a signatory to the Geneva Convention, which makes clear that the protection of mseums, hospitals, etc., are the responsibility of the occupying force.
This website (local version) says that the only sites that the US Forces guarded were the Ministry of Oil, the Ministry of Interior, and oil fields. The Bush administration respected and protected oil, but not the Geneva Convention or the people of Iraq. To top of page
3. Inadequate planning, wrong expectations. The administration did not expect the Iraq war to last this long. Remember when Bush landed on a carrier and declared victory, saying, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."? (From his speech on 2 May 2003) Paul Bremer said (local version), "There was planning, but planning for a situation that didn't arise." The Bush administration simply did not forsee what would happen.
On 1 April 2003, Rumsfeld sharply rebuked (local version) a senior battlefield commander for telling reporters that Pentagon planners failed to anticipate the fierce level of Iraqi resistance, and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Myers complained that remarks by retired generals on TV was not helpful. These people were voicing rational but dissenting opinions, which the Bush administration did not want to hear.
In November 2003, John McCain criticized the Bush administration's conduct of the war and challenged Rumfeld's assertion that the 132,000 American troops in Iraq can defeat the insurgency in Iraq. "The simple truth is that we do not have sufficient forces in Iraq to meet our military objectives," said McCain.
An article in the Antagonist says that, "Prior to the war, the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, said publicly that he thought the invasion plan lacked sufficient manpower, and he was slapped down by the Pentagon's civilian leadership for saying so," and that "During the war, concerns about troop strength expressed by retired generals also provoked angry denunciations by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." Paul Bremer, administrator for the U.S.-led occupation government, has also said that there were not enough troops in May 2003.
The above paragraphs reinforce my opinion that this administration does not take criticism of its views easily and is swayed more by their ideology than by reason. To top of page
4. Disbanding the Iraqi army the worst mistake. In May 2003, a month or so into the war, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army. The order was reversed a month later, but then it was too late. Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni called the move the Bush administration's "worst mistake" in postwar Iraq. This mistake left a vaccuum. It left hundreds of soldiers with no work. This article looks at the poor planning and follow-through that caused this mistake. To top of page
5. Inadequate troop support. An article in washingtonpost.com says that Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez wrote to the pentagon in winter 2004 that "I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with rates this low." He complained about lack of spare parts for helicopters and tanks. Also, "his soldiers still needed protective inserts to upgrade 36,000 sets of body armor but that their delivery had been postponed twice in the month before he was writing."
This comes on the heels of reports that a group of soldiers refused to go on a mission because their vehicles were dangerously out of repair and didn't have proper armour on them.
On 1 October 2004, Bush said (local version), "When America puts our troops in harm's way, I believe they deserve the best training, the best equipment, and the whole-hearted support of our government. " His actions are not consistent with his words. To top of page
6. Rumsfeld doesn't act on advice. This 30 September 2004 (local version) says that a study commisioned by Rumsfeld says that "the military doesn't have enough people for its current pace of missions." But Rumsfeld is not acting on the commissions recommendations. What is more important, having enough troops to carry out all missions or postponing any such actions until after the election? To top of page
7. The Abu Graib fiasco. We have all seen horrible pictures of Abu Graib, and we know that prisoners were tortured and humiliated. I don't know whether officers were involved or whether orders came from the top to torture in this manner. But at the least, this fiasco shows incompetence at all levels. We storm Iraq as "liberators"; why weren't there procedures in place to ensure that prisoners would be treated properly, so that the Iraqis would see us as friends and not enemies? Why weren't all soldiers and civilians told to respect all Iraqis and their customs, even prisoners? How do you expect to be viewed as friendly liberators if you don't treat people respectfully?
The blame for this fiasco, in my mind, falls squarely on the Bush administration for not preparing soldiers and civilians properly.
See this article (local version) for a good discussion of this issue. To top of page
8. 380 tons of explosives missing. We are just learning (late October 2004) that 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives have been missing since April 2003, after the U.S. invaded Iraq. A NY Times article (local version) of 25 October 2004 says that the facility was supposed to be under U.S. military control but is now a no-man's land. The U.S. was warned about this stockpile of explosives before the war. Only incompetent planning could have led to such a fiasco, which puts the whole world in danger. To top of page
9. Washington Post cites Bush's failure to listen to advice. On 24 October, the Washington Post Editorial (local version) endorsed Kerry for President. The Editorial found good and bad things to say about both Bush and Kerry. But the Editorial says essentially the same thing I do: Bush's character and ethics did not let him listen to advice, in particular, in planning for postwar reconstruction. The Editorial, says that, "the damage caused by that willful indifference is incalculable." The Editorial also says that "the administration repeatedly rebuffed advice to commit sufficient troops. Its disregard for the Geneva Conventions led to a prison-torture scandal ...."
Bush talks a good game; he has everyone believing that only he can handle the terrorists. However, the facts say that he has been incompetent in leading the war effort.
10. Republican and Democrat Senators accuse Bush administration of incompetence. An article in USA Today (local version), 16 Sept. 2004, says that several Senators, including the two top Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, accuse the Bush administration of incompetence in its efforts to rebuild Iraq. Of $13 billion pledged by other countries to rebuild Iraq, only $1.2 billion had been spent. The article goes into more details.
Transferring full sovereignty. On 24May 2004, Bush said that (local version), "The first of these steps will occur next month, when our coalition will transfer full sovereignty to a government of Iraqi citizens ...." It was a lie, and everyone knew it. He knew he could not transfer full sovereignty, and he has not done so. Why does he lie so purposely? And it was not an error, for he repeated it at least in one other instance.
Flaunting and tampering with the regulatory process
Agencies issue rules and regulations to flesh out and implement laws passed by Congress. Agencies must go through an open and transparent process in making regulations, including obtaining comments from the public and justifying what they do in a written record. The Bush administration has tampered with this process, sometimes illegally, and has made widespread misuse of this process. In many cases, its use of the regulatory process has not been in the interests of the public.
"Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." Harry S. Truman "I'm the Commander, see ... I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President... [I] don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." George Bush. See "Bush at War", by Bob Woodward
Below, we outline some of the things this administration has done to the regulatory process and give you details on some specific cases. Some of this material (but not all) is culled from a Report by OMB Watch (pdf file), a nonpartisan, nonprofit research and advocacy center founded in 1983 that "promotes an open, accountable government responsive to community needs". We urge you to read it to see the extent of what this administration is doing. Many of these points can be found in other places on the internet.
1. Freezing the regulatory process. On inauguration day 2001, the Bush administration issued a directive to stop the processing of all regulations until it had reviewed them. Some of these regulations had already been published and were to go into affect some time later, and their postponement was illegal. Under governing law, an agency may not adopt a proposal to change a rule's effective date, but the directive suggested that agencies not seek public comment. This one directive illustrates the lack of respect this administration would have for the public throughout its tenure.
Hundreds of regulations, some of which had been in the process of development for years and years were stopped in their tracks. No other administration had ever issued such a blanket statement.
A report of the Majority Staff of the U.S. Senate (pdf file), ordered by Senator Lieberman, discusses this freezing. This report also goes into detail on three regulations that had already been issued and whose suspension was done without the required justification: (1) A rule concerning roadless forests. (2) A rule regulating hardrock mining on public lands. (3) A rule to lower allowable arsenic content in water. Two of these regulations were significantly weakened; the third was adopted only after a long struggle, mainly because the Bush administration could not find the scientific data to back up its case. To top of page
2. Postponing rules until after the election. A NY Times article on 27 September 2004 reports that the administration is postponing the adoption of regulations because of heavy lobbying by industry. One regulation would sharply restict what can be in cattle feed. The article says that the National Cattlemen's Beef Association broke its nonpartisan tradition and endorsed President Bush for re-election after the postponement. Other postponements have to do with prescription coverage under Medicare, healthcare, the environment, and telecommunication. The message is that big business takes preference over the needs and safety of the public. To top of page
3. Forbidding public release of data and other business-pleasing changes. A NY Times article from 27 August 2004 says that a new regulation forbids public release of data relating to unsafe motor vehicles. The article goes on to say that the adminsitration has been quietly changing health rules, environmental initiatives, and safety standards in ways that please business but dismay interest groups that represent the public.
4. Tuberculosis testing: an example of increasing secrecy. This item is from an article in WashingtonPost.com. Since 1993, regulations for dealing with tuberculosis prevention have been under developed. The Bush administration stopped the process when it ame into office. Then, on 31 December 2003, it canceled the process completely.
The article says that this is just one of many example of how the Bush administration ahs been using the regulatory process to redirect government out of the public eye. Bush has canceled more regulatory processes that he inherited than he has completed, and many of them have been canceled after years and years of work. The regulatory process has been changed profoundly, and it is has been at the expense of openness and public scrutiny. top of page
5. Protecting coal workers. An article in the NY Times on 9 August 2004 discusses how the administration is weakening and removing safety regulations for mining coal. One proposal to update technology to better protect workers in two-story-high trucks was scrapped in 2001; since then, 16 miners have been killed in hauling accidents. To top of page
6. Subtle changes. An article in WashingtonPost.com from 17 August 2004 discusses subtle, almost unnoticed changes in regulations that have profound effects. With regard to mountain-top removal to get at coal, a change reclassifying the debris from objectionable "waste" to legally acceptable "fill" makes it easier to dump mining debris into explicitly protected streambeds. One proposal would scale back the federal government's legal obligation to police state mining agencie, by reclassifying certain duties from "nondiscretionary" to "discretionary".
The Haliburton affair: conflict of interest at its worst
The issue of the company Haliburton represents the worst, in terms of conflict of interest and even corruption. It shows how much people in this government can do for their own self-interest and the interest of their friends if not held in check. "There is a fundamental difference of opinion in Washington, and it starts with folks in Washington forgetting whose money we're spending. All that money is not the government's money; it's the working people's money." George Bush, 3 September 2001 The White House would rather you not know about the Haliburton affair. Even though Cheney was CEO of Haliburton for five years before becoming Vice President, this is not mentioned in the White House biography of Cheney (as of 7 August 2004) --see http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/. (In case the White House changes this page, here is what it looked like, without the images, on 7 August 2004).
Below, we give a brief history of Haliburton. But first we note that Haliburton favoritism has been going on (local version) in spite of the Corps of Engineers' chief contracting officer objecting to it. She refused to sign the contract. Her signature is required, but they let it go through with her assistant's signature. She was threatened with demotion after raising the issue. This information has just come to light in the last few weeks. See also this article (local version).
Brief history of Haliburton:
1. Early 1990s. Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, gives contracts to Halliburton to rebuild facilities in Kuwait that had been destroyed in the first Persian Gulf war.
2. Early 1990 to 1993. Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, commissions Halliburton to do a classified (secret) study concerning replacing the U.S. military's logistics by work done by private companies. Halliburton says, yes, a company can do the work. In August 1992, with essentially no bidding, Halliburton is selected by the US Army Corps of Engineers to do all work needed to support the military for the next five years! Thereafter, Halliburton (or its subsidiary KBR) and its military logistics business escalated rapidly. In the ten years thereafter revenues totaled $2.5 billion.
3. 1995-2000. Cheney is CEO of Halliburton. Under Cheney, Halliburton increases its offshore tax havens from 9 to 44, cutting its taxes from $302 million in 1998 to an $85 million refund in 1999. That's almost $400 million they took from taxpayers in one year.
4. During Cheney's tenure at Haliburton, Halliburton did business with countries like Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Iran, and Nigeria even though the US had imposed strict sanctions on them. They skirted sanctions, and they lobbied against sanctions. Some of this business was illegal, and Halliburton was fined for it.
5. Spring 2000. Cheney heads Bush's Vice-Presidential Search committee --while continuing as CEO of Halliburton. He ends up picking himself as Vice President.
6. July 2000. Cheney is asked whether Halliburton or its subsidaries were trying to do business with Iraq. He says no; he had a firm policy that they wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even if it was legal. This was a blatant lie: subsidiaries sold over $73 million in oil-production parts to Iraq.
7. 2000. As CEO of Halliburton, Cheney clears $20 million in one year, after taxes.
8. July 2000. Cheney's severance package from Halliburton (as CEO) is far and above what other company officers got when they left --some say it is as high as $62 million in stocks and stock options.
9. December 2001. KBR (Halliburton subsidiary) is granted an open-ended contract for Army troops supply and Navy construction, wherever U.S. troops go, for the next 10 years (so far, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Yemen, Iraq). This unique contract has no ceiling on cost. KBR is reimbursed for every dollar spent plus a base fee of 1 percent, which guarantees profit. Plus, they can get a bonus as a percentage of company costs.
10. January 2003. Bush sends a letter to Congress exercising his authority, as president, to waive section 9007, thus removing sanctions and allowing assistance to oil-rich Azerbaijan (see point 4). This administration invites the head of Azerbaijan to the White House, even though this person was the main reason for earlier sanctions against Azerbaijan. Reason? Azerbaijan has oil.
11. September 2003. Cheney states that when he became Vice President, he severed all ties with Halliburton, as required by law. This was a lie. Government accounting offices said that the compensation he continues to receive is a conflict of interest.
12. Dec 2003. Halliburton, without competitive bidding, is given a contract to restore the Iraqi oil sector. It is billed initially as a contract for putting out oil-well fires, something in which Halliburton has little expertise. It turns out that the contract is really for the full restoration of the oil business in Iraq. It is kept secret because of the "emergency conditions". It is one of the highest military logistics contracts in history.
13. June 2004. Cheney has said all along that he had no contact with government officials who coordinated Halliburtons many contracts with the military. A March 2003 Pentagon email refutes this claim. It says that action on a no-bid Halliburton contract to rebuild Iraq's oil industry was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. This has to do with a no-bid contract given to Halliburton for rebuilding Iraq.
14. August 2004. The SEC (Security Exchange Comission) levies a fine of $7.5 million on Halliburton for illegal accounting changes in 1998, when Cheney was CEO of Halliburton. Some people think that politics may have shielded Cheney and others from being held more accountable.
Serious doubts remain about whether a company with a record like Halliburton's should even be eligible to receive government contracts in the first place. This company has been accused of cost overruns, tax avoidance, and cooking the books and has a history of doing business in government-sanctioned countries like Iraq, Iran, and Libya. Many of Halliburton's no-bid contracts are allowed because of waivers by the Bush administration that allow government agencies to handpick companies for Iraqi
World opinion
We live in an increasingly smaller -and dangerous- world, and all countries must work together to solve all the problems. The United States, as the one remaining "superpower", bears a special responsibility to use its strength for the good of the world. This requires a president who has the trust and respect of leaders around the world. We had that with Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton.
"But in the international online media, the vast majority of commentators are harshly critical of President George W. Bush. On every continent pundits are faulting Bush for his persona as well as his policies. Most dislike his conduct of the war in Iraq. Many say his attitude toward the rest of the world is contemptuous, misinformed and dangerous." Jefferson Morley, WashingtonPost .com (local version), 30 Aug 2004.
But, through his belligerent, arrogant, uncompromising, extremist attitude, Bush has lost all trust and respect. The message that this administration has sent to the world is (to quote Carl Bernstein), "the imperialist states can do what they want; the semi-colonial states must do what they are told." The support after 9/11 has given way to the vision of the United States as an imperial power of the worst kind. We are now simply an arrogant bully.
Condoleezza Rice sends the message when she defends the administration's refusal to join with all other countries in supporting an international war crimes court. She said, "The United States is special because it is a bigger target with forces all over the world. So maybe there is some difference in interests there." So, we are special. You little guys go work together; we'll save the world on our own.
Jimmy Carter, at the Democratic Convention in summer 2004, said, "Unilateral acts and demands have isolated the United States from the very nations we need to join us in combating terrorism." In just 34 months, he said, "all the goodwill [after 9/11] was squandered by a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and calculations."
Being strong does not mean you have to lose respect. John Kennedy was strong, but he had everyone's respect.
To see the opinion the world has, type in "opinion bush world" into the search engine google and read the articles that are found. The bottom of this page contains links to a few such articles.
The administration shows no sign of changing its operations and attitudes toward the rest of the world. Re-election would be a disaster.
Some facts
- The table on the left is from a newly released poll (9 September 2004) (local version) taken over the summer.
- An opinion poll (local version) by CBSNEWS.com (4 March 2004) reported these percentages of people who had a negative view of Bush: Britain, 66%; Canada, 66%; Spain, 75%; France, 80%; Germany, 80%, Mexico, over 50%, Italy, over 50%.
- In June 2003 (local version), a poll showed that nearly 2/3 of the British had an unfavourable opinion of Bush. Asked who is more dangerous to world peace and stability, United States was rated higher than al-Qaeda by respondents in both Jordan (71%) and Indonesia (66%). The US was rated more dangerous than Iran by people in Jordan, Indonesia, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil and more dangerous than Syria by respondents all the countries polled, except for Australia, Israel, and the United States.
- This page (local version) contains information on a number of polls like the ones mentioned above.
Do these polls matter? A leader leads with trust and respect. It is obvious that the Bush administration can no longer lead the world.
The isolationist, extremist attitude of the administration
Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor, said in June 2004, "It is not only the Iraq policy of the Bush administration that has caused this [the opinion of the world to turn against the United States]. The Bush administration is the first administration since the onset of the Cold War 50 years ago not to place itself in the political mainstream, not to reflect moderation, not to practice at least de facto bipartisanship, but to embrace extremist principles. Inevitably, extremism produces recklessness." The administration has become increasingly isolated from the world, due to its attitudes and its refusal to engage with other countries.
Below is a list of examples. Taken one at a time, one might find valid reasons for it. Taken together, one gets the feeling that this administration feels that it can do everything by itself. It is not leading, it is bullying.
- Started the War on Iraq without UN sanction for it.
- Refused to join with other countries in the international war crimes court.
- Refused to sign agreement on limiting the transfer of small weapons.
- Walked out of a biological weapons convention agreed to by 143 nations.
- Refused to sign treaty barring anti-personnel land mines.
- Withdrew from anti-ballistic missile treaty.
- Refused to sign the Kyoto agreement.
Links to a few articles
1. World opinion moves against Bush. Article (local version) by Simon Tisdall in the Guardian unlimited, 23 January 2003.
2. Bush withdraws from the world. Article (local version) by Ronald Asmus in The Age, 21 August 2004.
3. Foreign views of US darken after Sept 11. Article (local version) in the NY Times.
4. Bush turns Europe's consensus on its head. Article (no longer available; obtained from Wayback machine) in the Telegraph [UK], 20 September 2003.
5. Billionaire Soros blasts Bush, calls on President to honor world opinion. article (local version) in Post-gazette.com, 28 February 2003.
6. Mr. Bush is abusing both the UN and international law. Article (local version) by Jonathan Power in New War on Terror, 14 October 2001.
7. World opinion is more hostile to America than at any time in our history. Article (local version) in NPQ by Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1 June 2004.
8. History lesson: GOP must stop Bush. Article (local version) by Carl Bernstein in USA Today, 23 May 2004.
9. Bush demeanor fuels dissent. Article (local version) by Vijay Ramanavarapu in The Lantern, 10 March 2003.
10. Bush at the UN: Washington's war ultimatum to the world. Article (local version) by Editorial board, World Socialist Web Site, 13 September 2002.
11. Bush's unilateralism aggravates world's problems. Article (local version) by Robert F. Drinan, National Catholic Reporter, 10 January 2003.
12. BBC News: World wants Kerry as President, 9/7/2004. Article. (Here's a local, text copy)
Secrecy
The Bush administration would have you believe that it is a government for the people and by the people. The way the government operates suggests just the opposite. It is secretive and manipulative, attempting to show us only what it wants us to see. Below are examples. For more, see this website (local version). "Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." Harry S. Truman "I'm the Commander, see ... I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President... [I] don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." George Bush. See "Bush at War", by Bob Woodward
1. The Henry Waxman report. An extensive report released by Rep. Henry Waxman shows that the Bush administration has consistently undermined the laws that promote public access to government records while systematically expanding the laws that authorize secret government operations. Here is an official report (pdf file) of the U.S. House of Representatives. Below, I show just a few of the items that I collected before finding this report. To top of page
2. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). When the FOIA was enacted in 1966, President Johnson said, "No one should be able to pull curtains of secrecy around decisions that can be revealed without injury to the public interest." The Clinton memorandum (pdf file) told his government about the importance of the FOIA and instructed them to follow it in letter and spirit. The Ashcroft memorandum (pdf file) does the opposite: it expressly encourages agencies to look for reason to deny access to information. To top of page
3. The U.S. Dept. of Justice. After disregarding requests for more than a year for a consultant's study about the department's efforts to ensure diversity, the department released the 186-page document-with many lines and pages blacked out. It took more effort to get the whole document. It looks like the administration's policies on FOIA (see pt. 1) were being followed. Here are some of the sentences that had been blacked out:
- Minorities are substantially more likely to leave the Department than whites.
- Minorities are significantly under-represented in management ranks.
- Minorities perceive unfairness in a number of human resources practices, such as hiring and promotion.
Here is the blacked-out report (pdf file) and the real report (pdf file). Read about it here (local version). To top of page
4. Presidential papers and executive privilege. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 makes presidential records public property and requires that the records be made public 12 years after a presidency has ended. Therefore, the Reagan-Bush papers should have been made public when Bush, Jr. became president. But Bush immediately signed an excutive order keeping them hidden, and potentially indefinitely. What doesn't Bush want you to see? A coalition has filed suit in federal court, but the case has not yet been settled. Read about it here (local version). To top of page
5. Who was on the energy task force? In January 2001, Bush created an energy task force, under the direction of Cheney. This task force met and submitted recommendations to Congress. Congress asked to see the list of task-force members. The Bush administration refused, and the case is now in the courts. Why shouldn't we all be able to know who was on the committee? Wouldn't you like to know who is making energy policy for the nation? Why the secrecy? To top of page
6. Altering an EPA Report. The White House forced (local version) the Environmental Protection Agency to remove from its 2003 report on the state of the environment large sections that talked about the risks of global warming. For more examples of such actions, click on "Widespread misuse of science" in the left column. To top of page
7. Blocking an EPA Warning. The White House blocked a nationwide alert by the EPA about the danger of a certain kind of insulation that contained a dangerous asbestos for over a year. St. Louis Dispatch, December 29, 2003. (pdf file) To top of page
8. Hiding cuts in National Parks Services. In Spring 2004, the Interior Department was criticized for making cuts in visitors services and then trying to hide the cuts from the public. According to the memo, "the majority of Northeast Region Parks are beginning this fiscal year with fewer operating dollars than in FY03. Additionally, the absorption of pay costs, necessary assessments and other rising, fixed costs have further eroded operating dollars." The memo suggested using the term "service level adjustment" instead of "cut". The memo also said,
We will need to be sure that adjustments are taken from as many areas as is possible so that it won't cause public or political controversy. ...
and
A statement about cutting 10 seasonal positions does tells us how that affects the visitor so you must put it into words that describe service level adjustments to visitors, resource protection, facility operations, etc.
Here is the memo (pdf file). Here is an article about it (local version). To top of page
9. Altering facts during 9/11. Directly after 9/11, the White House forced (local version) the EPA to change its statements about public health risks in NY to make them sound less alarming. To top of page
10. The 9/11 Commission. Bush opposed the creation of the 9/11 commission, whose purpose (local version) was to find out how the goverment dealt with terror that morning. He gave in to pressure, and it was created. The administration stalled (local version) in letting the Commission read crucial documents, and the Commission had to ask for an extension of time as well as more funds. These were given only after pressure from Congress and the press. The administration tried to place (article no longer accessible) all sorts of restrictions on who could read certain documents and what they could do with them. To top of page
The administration refused to let anyone from the administration testify before the Commission. Again, only after pressure, did Bush himself and Condoleezza Rice testify, and only under certain conditions. This website (local pdf version) outlines how the administration sought to obstruct and discredit the 9/11 investigation. To top of page
11. Censoring the Supreme Court. In documentation for a case concerning the ACLU and the Patriot Act, the Justice Department blacked out passages that it felt should not be publically released, ostensibly for national security reasons. Here is one passage that was blacked out-not for security reasons but in order to stifle dissent:
"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."
As the webpage (local version) from which we got this says, this is a blatant misuse of power. To top of page
12. Ending media coverage of returning coffins. The administration banned the filming of coffins with killed soldiers arriving from Iraq. The reason, most people admit, is that it hurt the administration's image. Here's an article on it (local version). To top of page
13. Snowmobiles in Yellowstone. The administration touted the use of "quieter" snowmobiles in Yellowstone, even though they knew months earlier that the new snowmobiles were actually much louder. They simply suppressed the information (local version). To top of page
14. Auto safety data no longer public. A two-paragraph decision buried deep in the Federal Register makes previously public information relating to unsafe automobiles or defective parts unavailable to the public. Few people knew about this act, but awareness is growing. Here's a blog on it (local version) from 18 August 2004. To top of page
15. Bush administration doesn't want whistleblowers. (Article (local version) in the NY Times, 3 Oct 2004.) Whistleblowers are people who report fraud, waste, or wrongdoing when their employers dismiss their concerns. Whistleblowers are acting in the interests of the public, and they need protection. A bill before Congress would increase the very poor protections for federal employees, but the Bush administration doesn't want the new law.
On 15 March 2004 (pdf file), four Congressmen wrote to Bush, asking him and his administration not to retaliate against a Medicare official who came out with the fact that administration officials told him he would be severely reprimanded if he gave certain information to Congress. They cited two recent cases where the Whitehouse had tried to discredit whistleblowers.
Here are examples of what has happened to federal worker whistleblowers under this administration:
Misuse of science
- Two Border Patrol agents, Mark Hall and Robert Lindemann, were disciplined after they disclosed weaknesses in security along the Canadian border.
- Teresa C. Chambers was dismissed from her job as chief of the US Park Police after she said the agency did not have enough money or personnel to protect parks and monuments in the Washington area.
- The top Medicare official threatened to fire Richard S. Foster, the chief Medicare actuary, if he provided data to Congress showing the cost of the new Medicare law, which exceeded White House estimates.
- Airport baggage screeners say they have been penalized for raising concerns about aviation security. But in August, an independent federal agency, the Merit Systems Protection Board, ruled that they had none of the whistleblower rights available to other federal employees. The government, it said, can "hire, discipline and terminate screeners without regard to any other law.''
- Bunny Greenhouse, the chief contracting officer of the Corps of Engineers, refused to sign a Haliburton contract, citing violations. She was threatened with demotion. See this website (local version). To top of page
The Union of Concerned Scientists investigated the misuse of science by the Bush administration. So far, over 5300 scientists have signed a statement supporting the resulting report (March 2004), including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors, and university chairs and presidents. "Science, like any field of endeavor, relies on freedom of inquiry; and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity. Now more than ever, on issues ranging from climate change to AIDS research to genetic engineering to food additives, government relies on the impartial perspective of science for guidance." President George H.W. Bush, 1990 Here are the findings of the investigation:
1. There is a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies. These actions have consequences for human health, public safety, and community well-being.
2. There is strong documentation of a wide-ranging effort to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter to the administration's political agenda.
3. There is evidence that the administration often imposes restrictions on what government scientists can say or write about "sensitive" topics.
4. There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration are unprecedented.
The investigation found not one or two incidences but a widespread practice of abuse, ranging from deleting material in reports to undermining the quality and integrity of the appointment process. The report says that,
This behavior by the administration violates the central premise of the scientific method, and is therefore of particularly grave concern to the scientific community. But it should also concern the American public, which has every right to expect its government to formulate policy on the basis of objective scientific knowledge in policies that affect the health, well-being and safety of its citizens.
Here is the executive summary (as a pdf file), and here is the full report (as a pdf file). If you are a scientist, please take the time to read the discussion and the report and, if you are so inclined, sign the statement of support.
What they do counts, not what they say
If the administration has integrity, ethics, and character, then policies will fall into place,
for the administration will be guided by the good of the country, and
it will engage in open, honest, and meaningful dialog with the whole nation.If an administration has no integrity, ethics, and character, then the nation better beware.
Politicians may promise something but don't always deliver. They may say one thing but do another. We tend to get our information from TV, in small messages, political ads, and speeches that are designed to sway us rather than to give us information. In this sense, TV has been the worst thing for politics, for it emphasizes show and entertainment rather than content.
Today, it is best to go by what people do rather than what they say.
"This television image can have its disadvantages. One of the most prevalent drawbacks is that it shifts the electorate's - and the candidate's - attention from his policy to his image. People will judge the candidate on looks rather than ideas." John Gans "Television inherently simplifies complex ideas into emotional, self-oriented moral and political impulses." Jeffrey Scheur
"His [Kerry's] very skill in oratory may be his undoing, because in the political arena, the era of oratory is over. We live in the moment of the sound bite." Allan Metcalf
I suggest:
- Don't be swayed by political ads and speeches.
- Use discrimination, and compare what people say with what they do.
We can only estimate what a Kerry administration will do because he has not been president. But he has been a Senator for 20 years, and we can go look at his record there. There have been some issues of his honesty in campaigning again Weld in 1996, and there is talk of his and his wife's money, but I do not find the large patterns of secrecy, lies, abuse of power, and conflict of interest that I see with the Bush administration.
Consequently, I would expect a Kerry presidency to exhibit far more integrity, honesty, and openness -qualities that the Bush administration has lacked. For me, the character of the administration is far more important than its policies. With a good character, the policies will take care of themselves. This administration, through its actions, as discussed in the links to the left, have shown a complete lack of character and integrity.
If you are a scientist (or engineer) and you support the investigative report of the Union of Concerned Scientists, then please sign the statement of support.
And, if you agree in general with this website, tell your friends about it.
Websites
- Bushsecrecy.org. A project of Public Citizen, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1971 to to represent consumer interests (that means your interests) in Congress, the executive branch and the courts.
- Center for American Progress. Contains articles on all sorts of topics, e.g. Environment to the Iraq War to the Bush Administration's conflict with the 9/11 Commission.
- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Helps Americans use the justice system to shine a light on those who betray public trust.
- Common Cause. Founded in 1970 by John Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. A non-partisan citizen's lobbying group.
- MoveOn PAC. MoveOnPAC's campaign contributions provide financial support to congressional candidates who embrace moderate to progressive principles of national government.
- People for the American Way. "An energetic advocate for the values and institutions that sustain a diverse democratic society"..
This website is not written lightly. I am a computer scientist. I have been teaching and researching for over 35 years. I generally have little to do with politics, and I do not belong to a political party. No one is paying me to do this. I have no agenda except to see the people of the U.S. work together, in harmony and peace, for the good of everyone in the country and the world.
I believe that the statements in this website are based on facts.
